The cancellation.

By October of 2006, rumors were circulating that our superiors were going to cancel the project. I, and many others, ignored them. There was simply no reason to cancel something that had been such a massive breakthrough in psychology and one of the few examples of such a lofty investment paying off. I thought the rumors stemmed from the fact that the funding increase after the success of the initial test was less than what would be considered standard. It was a sign of hesitance that made certain people anxious.

On November 17th, 2006, we all found out that the project was indeed canceled. The reasons were vague and peppered with words like "unsatisfactory", "mundane", "questionable", etc. These words were, for the most part, contradictory to everything the project had proven to be. If they were not satisfied by a successful test run, what would satisfy them? I thought about it and considered the possibility that they expected something longer or something that gave more of a glimpse into the human mind. As a scientist, this bothered me.

Science is not a series of gigantic leaps. Scientists of the 20th century did not just send a man to the moon overnight. First, you had to get the machinery into orbit, then you had to send up animals to see if the experience was even survivable, then humans could only go so far into orbit, then we had to build better and more powerful machinery, then we had to test that, and only then, after years of research and trial and error, was a moon landing possible for humans.

I would say this experiment is the equivalent of sending a man into orbit. There's been all sorts of techniques and ideas as to how examine the human subconscious: the theories of Freud, hypnosis, typical psychoanalysts, and so on. This, however, is the first time we've actually been there. For them to cancel such a project seemed foolish at best and downright detrimental to human progress at worst.