Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 100561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
The key to deception is to lead with the lie you want the world to see. With that in mind, from the moment I leave my lab every day to head home, I mentally reconstruct the fictionalized version of myself: Dr. Emery Martín, a project lead whose team develops novel optical resonators for surgical laser devices… the details of which are still so wah-wah and overtly boring, no one stays focused long enough to ask many questions.
But some days it’s exhausting to be so compartmentalized. With Luca, I’m an affectionate—if work-obsessed—wife. On Sunny Sundays together, I love the beach and eating his cooking, or spending the entire day naked in bed. At work, I am a driven, inspired scientist with a gift for innovation.
But lying doesn’t just increase mental load and create stress, it rewires the brain. I once read a study where researchers found that the part of the brain that processes emotions—the amygdala—is very active the first time a subject tells a lie, but the more times it’s told, the more this activation diminishes.
Simply put, the more I lie, the more my brain becomes wired to say, “Eh. No big.” Every morning and every night, I shed each side of myself so easily, I sometimes wonder if I’m slowly and deliberately creating a split personality.
I went into my marriage knowing it had to be that way. I was hopeful and in love… and possibly a little self-important—but the lying is getting harder. I know I’ll have to tell Luca eventually; I just have to get through this presentation first.
So, as I pull into the parking lot and steer into the spot with my name—DR. EMERY MARTÍN—I compartmentalize like the pro that I am and shed the public-facing side of myself, transforming back into the one that very few people ever see. I climb out of my car. My back straightens, my strides become longer and more confident. My gaze turns sharp. Two assistants rush toward me, Tom Halliday taking my bag, Claire Morgan handing me another coffee—Claire is my favorite—both updating me in overlapping words.
“Wei, Johns, Dunn, and Zimmerman logged on early,” Tom says.
“A/V is up and ready for you,” Claire adds. “Your slides are loaded, and I confirmed they’re the most recent ones that you sent this morning.” Her pause carries unspoken judgment. “At 3:36 a.m.”
I wince in apology. “I couldn’t stop tinkering.”
“Behold my shock,” she says with a single raised brow. Claire is my favorite for more than just feeding my caffeine addiction; she’s also an active member of the Friends of Tony Bennett fan club (I support fangirl enthusiasm at any age), and the most dependable yet no-nonsense assistant I’ve ever had. I used to attribute this to the twenty years she spent working around politicians, but I think raising six sons might have had something to do with it as well. She is not here for shenanigans. Mine included.
And while she’ll always point out my crack-of-dawn timestamps, she’ll also admit that none of us have what you’d call a “normal” work-life balance. It’s the price we pay for what we do, and we all knew that going in. Signed a large stack of papers agreeing to it, in fact. “Has anyone checked in on Honey?”
“Subject 10142 is stable as of 0545 this morning,” Tom reports robotically. If Claire is the most dependable assistant I’ve ever had, Tom is the most detail-obsessed. He’s twenty-eight but looks fourteen and can often be found double-checking compound batch codes on his lunch break because he finds it soothing. When he used the words onboarding, pharmacovigilance, and gravimetrically during his first interview, I knew he was my guy.
I take a folder from him, leafing through it. “CRP and platelets?”
“Both look great.”
“Awesome. That’s the cherry on top.” Feeling a rush of excitement, I pass the folder back as we walk through the marble lobby of the glossy steel-and-glass building with the gigantic SURGOPTIX sign visible to anyone driving past on the nearby 805 freeway.
We wave to the security guard behind the desk, who waves back at the three employees his computer screen tells him work in the Laser Optimization department on the tenth floor.
The elevator call buttons look ordinary enough but are fitted with undetectable biometric scanners. As Claire casually presses the one indicating UP, the fingerprint of her right index finger is read and the doors to the second elevator on the left automatically open. Once we’re inside, another scanner verifies our identities, and a hidden panel on the back wall slides open, revealing a short hallway.
When the elevator is called again, the car will be empty, even though it never left the ground floor.
We continue through a door requiring simultaneous retinal scan and handprint clearance, down two flights of metal stairs, to a desk manned by another security guard, through a solid steel door, along a lengthy, concrete tunnel, and into an open, clean, centralized workspace surrounded by a series of modern rooms and laboratories.