Scientist Jeff Conover is placed in a vacuum chamber to simulate the conditions 10 miles above the earth, except he is more comfortable than a Delta passenger.  An experimental drug enables his cells to store oxygen, so he can survive without breathing, which would be good on some of those summer flights.

Jeff is the crème dela crème of test pilots.  In fact, he is the whipped crème dela crème, as he has to ask  his wife’s permission that night to perform the experiment in an airplane the next day.  Lucky for the world of science, she says OK.

Jeff takes an airplane up to 50,000 feet and exits via the ejector seat.  I assume there was another guy in the plane, but that still seems like a strange way to disembark.  Unfortunately, the experiment is a failure as Jeff blacks out almost immediately and parachutes to the ground.  After the doctors leave, he confides to his wife that his whole life flashed before his eyes in the seconds before he lost consciousness.  He takes this to mean the human brain can outperform any machine created.

The next day, Jeff plays his boss a tape of him giving a lecture at 20X the normal speed.  He says that by using the experimental drug, people could understand that high pitched whine and retain it.  Why, this breakthrough could allow college students to becoming f***ing idiots in days rather than years!

In the next 2 weeks, he interviews people who have had similar rapid replays of their lives in dangerous situations.  Wait, didn’t the drug cause that?  While Henry Mason was caught in a cave-in, he recalled a dance he once took his wife to.  He estimates it took 3 – 4 seconds to relive the 4 hours they were at the dance, which is the opposite of how time passes for me at a party.

A little blind girl named Alice is able to give the day of week for any day in history.  Jeff quizzes her on 06/23/1412 and 07/04/2113.  He says she gives the correct answers, although, a fact-check shows that she actually got both answers wrong.  C’mon, no one could check an almanac?  Alice says she got this skill — the sociopathic ability to lie, I guess — after the skeet-surfing accident that blinded her last year.

He asks old Mr. Stevenson the square root of 317.  He says 17.0448.  Oh, so close!  It is 17.8044.  Maybe the elderly actor just screwed up.  Stevenson is played by Burt Mustin who somehow played 100 year old men for 25 years on TV.  He is best known as Gus the Fireman from Leave it to Beaver.  He sat in a chair outside the fire station every day despite having reached the retirement age for city workers 75 years earlier.  However, he totally boots the cube of 4,209 — he gives the answer as 1,309,516,011, the rube!  He is next given a list of phone numbers to sum in his head.  The producers wisely hide the numbers from us, but it is safe to say his answer was wrong.

Finally the scientists refine a serum that speeds up mice in a maze to 10X their normal speed.  Stop, I know where this is going!  Don’t give it to the janitor!  They have less success increasing a dog’s hyperactivity, but probably should not have started with a Jack Russell Terrier.  With time running out (in their research, not — God help me — the episode), they decide to test the serum on a human.

Of course, Jeff decides he will be the first test subject.  He orders his assistant to inject him with 5 cc’s of Solution 012.  They had previously identified the drug as Solution 31d, so I don’t know WTF he’s taking.  He is injected, and his senses are accelerated 100X.  He sees his lab assistants moving very slowly, although they are able to converse normally.  Soon he burns out while Good Will Hunting his way through complex math problems.

He has proven his point.  For this astounding breakthrough that will change humanity and send the stock value into the stratosphere, Jeff is given 2 weeks vacation.  Big Pharma, man!