Gloria spent the week half in anticipation of a day without Porter and half in anxious worry over her plans.  But if her plans worried her, her future beyond them worried her more.  She had never been a risk-taker or a rule-breaker.  Lately she had doing a lot of both and she felt uneasy, like someone waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for fate to lower that proverbial boom and she was sure when it did, it was going to come smack down on her.

She had prepared to spend most of Friday running data through the computer models, and producing the month's reports.   She had to alter the data on 5110 or they might question further and find the rat missing.  The Institute had their own agenda as well and she often wondered if the work that she was doing actually meant anything.  If they had cared at all about real research they wouldn't hire someone like Porter.  They would have noticed her reports on Einstein.  She suddenly felt as if she had wasted the last six months of her life working for people who cared only about return from their clients and nothing about the real miracles going on right under their noses.  She realized that she had to go through with her plans, only she was going to care about the possibilities that she had discovered in these two rats.  

"Or am I just insane?" she asked herself out loud. She nodded to herself. Yes she was mad as a hatter.  Then she giggled, and it surprised her a little to hear herself sounding so happy.  In the stillness of the lab the slight echoing of her giggle made it sound maniacal.  She liked the effect.
Gloria had spent her whole life playing by the book.  In college she had been the complete nerdy bookworm; she studied hard and was known as the "death of the party".  She was careful in relationships, so careful that she usually didn't have one.  Her life was a long list of "do's" and "don'ts".  But something very freeing had happened to her that day she had taken Einstein; a self-imposed carefulness about life had disintegrated and she realized that she felt alive.   It was wonderful and invigorating but it created a hunger in her for more of life than she had allowed herself up until now and that hunger was creeping into every area of her thinking.

Willoughby spent the week perfecting his catapult that turned the Etch-A-Sketch over with enough force to clear the screen and then flipping it back over the same way.  He was also learning the names of letters and a few words and short phrases.  He was starting to see the meaning in these language patterns.  He had learned that "H E L L O" was a greeting that humans used when coming into contact with someone who had not previously been present.  It was fairly easy to make on his writing screen too, mostly straight lines and right angles.  It was a possibility as a first communication with Gloria, but it didn't really express all he wanted to say.   He kept watching and practicing and learning; his determination to succeed overruling even his desire to lie on his back and let the warm sunlight bake through him while he napped.  He needed to talk to Gloria, to end this loneliness.

He hadn't wanted to admit it at first, he had been somewhat disdainful of the crowding and pushing of the masses of rats at the lab.  But it had been a long time since he had talked with any creature that understood him and although he was starting to understand Gloria more and more, he could not reach her.  He sighed at the loss of a good nap and perhaps a dream about cheese prizes at the end of simple, easily navigated mazes.  He thought about friends and one in particular whom he missed.  Then he shook off these thoughts and returned to his work.  Letters, letters, letters.  These were the keys to Gloria; he would unlock this door of silence somehow.