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Honorable mention
 The Frame
 William Dummitt

I'd been working in research at Hi-Tek Pharmaceutical in St. Louis for 25 years, since graduating from college. It had been a good career - my group and I had spent years working on cancer treatments, and had considerable success. I thought I had a pretty good situation for someone whose working life primarily depended on having two or three really good ideas a year. So far, I'd done it well. I was a square peg in a square hole.

My only concern was that I was getting a little lazy. A possible early retirement was less than ten years away, I was divorced and my kids were grown. Sometimes I had an uncomfortable feeling that I was coasting. I drove a Mercedes to work every day, vacationed at expensive resorts, and lived in the right part of town. Still, there was a growing feeling that I was losing touch with some part of my life that was important.

I'd postponed confronting this feeling for about a year (maybe two), when I found an odd document on my desk. It was from Accounting, asking for an explanation for what appeared to be some very lavish expenses, turned in (by ME?) for reimbursement. The note had a very accusing tone - someone thought the company was being ripped off. After reading the reports, I thought so too. The trouble was, I never submitted those reports. Still, there they were, with my name and signature. By all appearances, I had stolen tens of thousands of dollars. I stared at the papers, closed my office door, and contemplated the fact that in a few minutes I had gone from feeling complacent to feeling I was in a Twilight Zone episode. This was a conservative and, frankly, somewhat dull company. Was it really possible that this place harbored someone who thought it worthwhile to set up someone as inconsequential as myself? I picked up my phone to call security and demand an investigation, but stopped.

Our companys head of security, Lester Zindler, was a former bail bondsman and private detective. If I thought my job was perfect for me, Lester had an even better situation for his talents - at least for the present day. If the Gestapo were still intact, Lester would be there and Hi-Tek would be looking elsewhere for a security wizard. I worked with Lester once, when I had to fire an employee who was stealing computer equipment. It wasn't a pleasant experience - the accused witches in Salem probably had someone like Lester manning the gallows. Lester didn't think much of me, either. He clearly considered the companys researchers to be ivory-tower elitists who never put in an honest days work. The fact that he was pretty close to the truth never bothered me much.

I closed my eyes and thought. Faintly remembering something, I flipped through a list of the companys recent patent filings. One notation had caught my eye when I skimmed it earlier. There it was - "Treatment for Small-Cell Lung Cancer," filed by one Dr. Robert Weinberg. Four years before, my group and I had a promising candidate for that indication. It looked great in early trials but was abandoned. My former boss, now retired, thought it was a long shot. Despite my protests, he stopped pursuing it. Robert Weinberg was my new boss, only with the company a few months. He seldom spoke to me and was the most distant boss I ever had. How did he get a patent filing in my area of expertise without my knowledge?

A little digging answered my questions. Weinbergs patent application described my invention from four years ago almost word for word. Weinberg had the vision to see what my former boss couldn't - this drug had the potential to make millions. This was good. He also apparently had the vision to see that, in order for him to reap the maximum personal benefit from it, I needed to be somewhere else, such as the unemployment line - or jail. This was bad. I walked over to the departments file cabinet and looked for the documents I had placed there years before on the drug we called HT-301.

Gone. Empty. I looked in Weinbergs office. He sat there, reading a journal, looking perfectly innocent and normal. I, meanwhile, began to sweat profusely. I walked back to my office and checked my personal computer files, where my own HT-301 information was stored. Not there. Not only was Weinberg conniving, he was thorough. My phone light was blinking - someone called while I walked away. The message chilled me to the bone - Lester Zindlers voice, friendly as can be, asked me to drop by his office. An accusing letter from accounting coupled with a message from Zindler probably added up to an armed escort out the front door to the police station.

I thought I might have one ace in the hole. I knew where most of the notebooks on HT-301 were stored, in a seldom-used lab. Weinberg almost certainly didn't know where they were. To my great relief, they were still there. I picked up the whole armful and walked out of the front door to my car. One thing was clear in my mind - I was not going to allow myself to be arrested on a phony charge and be on the defensive from that point. I stopped at the bank and withdrew everything I had in checking - about ten thousand dollars, good for about three weeks of my current lifestyle. Still confused, I drove home but stopped a block away. In front of my house was a gray Blazer I recognized as belonging to the guards at Hi-Tek. If they didn't already have me nailed for the phony expense reports, I had done them a favor by stealing the notebooks. Now they had a real reason to have me arrested. I turned around and drove to the home of Willie Ford, an old and trusted friend.

Willie didn't have a full-time job and worked out of his house, but was one of the best builders of machines I've ever known. He is always in demand for high-quality body work, metal fabrication, race-car design, or anything mechanical. I didn't come to Willie for that reason, though - I came because I could trust him and because Willie lived a little closer to the fringes of society than I did. I'd always lived the straight, safe life. Now I just wanted to disappear and have a chance to plan a response. I told him my story. Willie was quiet for a few minutes. Finally he walked me out to his garage.

He opened the door, and inside was something that stirred memories of dreams from 20 years before. It was a gleaming brick red Volkswagen van - a camper! I'd spent my entire youth lusting after one of these. I tried out the stove, refrigerator, looked through all the cubbyholes, and raised the poptop in Willie's spacious garage. Hearing the engine start up in the rear brought back lots of old memories. The waterboxer engine ran smoother than the air-cooleds that I remembered, but had the same comforting sewing-machine sound. Despite my immediate worries, I began to realize the sorts of things that were missing in my life.

"You can travel around the country for a long time in this with the money you have in your pocket," Willie suggested. "You'll never have to spend much time in one place if you don't want to. Not only that, but they'll never look for a tight-ass like you traveling around in a VW camper." I always appreciated Willie's honesty.

The camper was an '87, not the newest model but mechanically refurbished by Willie. That was good enough for me. Willie gave me the camper plus some cash for my Mercedes. With a set of semi-legal, untraceable-to-me license plates generously donated by Willie, I was ready to go.

I still didn't really have a plan. For over twenty years, my life had been much the same. Now everything was changing minute by minute - I was set up for embezzlement and my invention was stolen. I didn't know what my next move would be - I just knew I wasn't going into the clutches of the likes of Larry Zindler. All this was a lot to handle for a guy who gets upset when someone honks at him in traffic. For some reason though, being behind the wheel of that camper changed everything. I felt completely self-sufficient. I had a home, a place to go, and a way to get there, all in one. It gave me the same feeling as the treehouse I had as a kid, only with wheels.

I drove a couple of hundred miles that afternoon and spent the night in a state park by a river, deep in the Ozarks south of St. Louis. Over the next few days, I worked my way out old Route 66 as far as Albuquerque, then turned north through Colorado. Each day, I'd drive a few hours, then pick a scenic and secluded place to camp. I met people of all descriptions at the places I stopped and had long conversations about subjects I hadn't thought about in years. My only expenses were gas, campsites, food, and an occasional book to read.

For the first day or two, I thought constantly about how to handle the frame-up at Hi-Tek. After that, a strange thing happened. I didn't solve the problem. I just stopped thinking about it. The world of my camper, the places I saw, and the people I met became the real world. The mess back in St. Louis was just a bad dream. I knew I'd have to deal with it eventually, but with each passing day it seemed less important.

Three weeks passed and I was relaxing near Helena, Montana when finally I decided to call Marilyn, a longtime friend and a lawyer. I figured if there really was trouble, I could hire Marilyn as my lawyer on the spot and make the conversation privileged. That's what people did in John Grisham novels - why wouldn't it work for me?

"Where ARE you? Everyone thinks you're dead!" she shrieked. "That new boss of yours is in jail."

"What?" This seemed a positive development, but I wanted more information.

"Yes, police from the east coast came to arrest him. It turns out he framed someone at his old job and stole some inventions. They saw he was trying to do the same thing here. When you disappeared, they thought he'd killed you. They're holding him for your murder as well as the thefts. I'd better call someone and tell them you're alive!"

I might have expected elation at the news that it was OK to return to my old life, but it didn't feel the way I thought it would. Most of the elation came from the thought of Weinberg being grilled about my murder. I looked at my shiny camper a few feet away, and contemplated two possibilities. Either I could return to St. Louis and business as usual or continue up the road, continue my new life, maybe drive all the way to Alaska. It took about a microsecond to make up my mind. I saw no rush to get Weinberg off the hook for my murder, though.

"I probably won't make it back to town for a while, Marilyn. Go ahead and tell people I'm alive - but it's OK if you wait a while to tell the police."

I climbed back in the camper, popped down the top, and headed north.