The Immortality Virus

by Christine Amsden

  “Of course. Why else?”

  Sam’s face turned slightly pink, and Grace bit back a smile that quickly turned into a frown. Why did she care what he thought of her after so many years?

  “Look,” Sam said, “why don’t you get started here? You can use my terminal. I’ll go back to the office and figure out what’s going on.”

  “How do I know your terminal’s not bugged?” Grace asked, maintaining the anger in her voice despite the relief she felt in her heart that this lie might just work.

  “Newton,” Sam called. He still called his computer the same thing. “Run diagnostic. Search for viruses and spyware.”

  “Working,” Newton responded in a somewhat effeminate voice. They waited in tense silence for about two minutes. Finally, Newton reported, “No viruses detected. No spyware detected.”

  “My computer found the spy programs right away,” Grace said. “Looks like you’re clean.”

  “All right,” Sam said. “You get to work. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Wait,” Grace said as Sam headed towards the door. “I’ll need a login.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Sam paused long enough to create a user account for Grace on his terminal. Then he slipped out the door without looking at Grace or saying good-bye.

  Grace stared after him for a minute, then shook her head and asked Newton to begin the search for Jordan all over again.

  While she waited for it to finish, she picked up Jordan’s audio diary and told it to start playing entry number two.

  My Dearest Margaret, it’s January 18, 2050,

  I know I started this diary over two weeks ago and haven’t made an entry since then, but I wasn’t sure what to say. I don’t want to upset you, but maybe there’s no way to avoid it. I can’t lie to you and I can’t sit here, watching you, and pretend that everything is all right.

  Ethan and Kevin are filing a petition to have you euthanized.

  I can’t believe Kevin would... It must have been Ethan. I know you don’t like it when I say bad things about him, but Kevin’s always been so sweet and loving. Ethan has always been the bad seed, more concerned with money than anything else. Although why he’d choose to spend money to fight this...

  The whole family is torn over this. Even the grandchildren. Sweet Margaret, Kevin’s little girl–although I guess she’s not so little now that she’s in college–she came over to sit with me yesterday. Alex, always my favorite, is off at school, but he called. He told me he hated what his father and Uncle Ethan were doing, and that until I’m ready to let go... I think he thinks I should let go, but he doesn’t know I’m working on a cure. I’ll find it, too.

  I love you,

  Jordan

  My Dearest Margaret, it’s January 20, 2050,

  It’s hard for me to look at you like this. I see the woman I love everywhere except for the eyes. Those are vacant. This shouldn’t have happened to you, it should have happened to me. I deserve it, not you. You were always so kind and decent. You loved our boys unconditionally, even when Ethan set things on fire and conned the other children out of their lunch money. It was because you couldn’t see evil. You’re lucky.

  I can see evil. It surrounds me everywhere I go, especially at Medicorp. The men there don’t care about people, only about results and the bottom line. Well, no, Alan cares. He doesn’t see evil, either, but not because he’s pure like you. He’s just kind of stupid. Well, no, stupid isn’t the right word, either. Maybe naive. He doesn’t really care about anything except the research. He lives for it. He doesn’t understand that there’s a world out there.

  Speaking of Alan, he unlocked the most fascinating thing within the human genome. He found proof that aging is caused by our very genetic structure and he thinks the process could be turned off. It’s linked to all kinds of conditions, including Alzheimer’s. We’re tapping into the core of human aging. Well, you never did like me to talk shop around you. I wish I had something else to talk about. There’s just you, work, and the kids with their attempt to get the courts to side with them and kill you.

  It’s time for me to be off to work.

  I love you,

  Jordan.

  “Pause.” Grace stared at the diary for a while. He was “tapping into the core of human aging,” according to the last entry. Was that why Matt had believed him to be the one responsible for all of this? There had to be more.

  But for some reason she wasn’t ready to keep listening yet. She marveled at the way Jordan had loved his wife. To sit by her bedside, to hold her hand though there was nothing left inside her. It was amazing. It seemed nothing could break their bond.

  What was it about today? Perhaps it was the endless time. Jordan and Margaret had been together for fifty years, just as Grace and Sam had. Yet for Jordan and Margaret, it had been an eternity.

  Grace rubbed her eyes. She needed to stop thinking about the past. It was in the past. Sixty years gone.

  “Play entry four,” Grace said.

  My Dearest Margaret, it’s January 24, 2050,

  The boys found a sympathetic judge, and he’s given the okay for your death. I’m still fighting, though, so hang in there. I’ve filed for an appeal. They can’t do anything until another judge hears the case.

  Alan and I have almost found a way to stop aging. I know when we find it we can use it to help you. It can’t be too late, it just can’t be. Alan’s so excited it’s shameful. He never goes home. I’m not sure he has a home. I asked him if he was married, and he stared at me blankly. We have a woman in our group, and it occurred to me that Alan won’t speak to her, not even when she asks him a direct question.

  The woman is being a pain. Her name is Chrissy, and that should be your first clue; no self-respecting woman should have a name that rhymes with “prissy.” She’s the smartest damn thing I’ve ever met, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her or hear her speak. She’s always flinging around her hair. I think she does it on purpose. She’s slept with everyone on the research team except me and Alan. Anyway, she’s saying we shouldn’t pursue this research and it might be dangerous. Bah! How long are humans going to be held back by people refusing knowledge?

  Besides, I’d do anything to help you, Margaret. She doesn’t understand. She’s young. She probably thinks she’ll live forever. I wonder if she’s ever lost anyone she loves.

  Kevin called last night. I almost refused the call, but he begged me to hear him out. He didn’t talk about you, though. He said his kids missed me. I suppose I’m not being fair to them. I haven’t picked up the phone in over a week, not even when the grandkids call. Alex and I always got along so well, and the kid’s smarter than I am, though I hate to admit it.

  This week will be keeping me busy at work. I’ll be by to see you as much as I can.

  I love you,

  Jordan.

  My Dearest Margaret, it’s February 4, 2050,

  I’m going to have to move you to a new location. I don’t think my appeal is going to succeed. I’ve found a vacant apartment downtown, very close to Medicorp. I’ve also found a pro-life nurse, who won’t say anything about you being there. The trouble is…well, I won’t be able to see you anymore. If I go by the apartment, the boys will find you there. We didn’t raise stupid boys. I can’t believe this is going to be good-bye. I’ve got nothing left now, Margaret, nothing but my work and the possibility I might be able to save you yet.

  Which reminds me... Chrissy is threatening to take our discovery to Matthew Stanton, the president and CEO of the company. She says we’re messing with things we have no business messing with, and she thinks Mr. Stanton will put a stop to it. I don’t know the man and neither does she, but I am a little worried, I admit. What we’re doing can save and prolong a lot of lives, especially yours.

  I saw all the grandkids today, even Alex, who flew home to be with me. Alex has been accepted into MIT’s graduate program, but we knew he would. I didn’t realize how much I missed him until he dropped by.

&n
bsp; Carl, though…he’s taken after his father, if you ask me. The kid doesn’t care about anything except money. He’d sell his own mother if it would make him rich. Trouble is, he’s not even smart about it. He got his father’s ambition but none of the brains.

  This whole family is falling apart, I fear. At least you don’t really understand what’s happening. Sometimes I envy you that ability. Sometimes.

  I love you,

  Jordan.

  My Dearest Margaret, .it’s February 7, 2050,

  It’s been agony since you’ve been gone. I wanted to sneak away to see you, but the kids have been hounding me every minute of every day. Kevin said, “I felt sorry for you until you pulled this.” I couldn’t believe he’d say that to me. I have a picture of you, but it’s not the same. Not that you were the same as you were on the day I last saw you. I can still see the laughter in your eyes in this photo. It’s the one I took of you on our honeymoon, with you wearing nothing but the rose I bought you. We thought we were so daring to take those pictures.

  I do have a bit of good news, though. Yesterday, Chrissy did what she threatened to do and talked to Mr. Stanton about our research. He was so excited he came down to personally introduce himself and to quiz Alan and me on the implications. He wants a weekly update on our progress delivered to him personally, no middle men. Turns out Mr. Stanton had been secretly hoping to find the fountain of youth ever since he started the company forty years ago. Maybe Medicorp isn’t as evil as I thought, or at least Mr. Stanton isn’t.

  We’re working on a way to help the entire human race with this discovery. I was thinking about bringing in some of my bio-warfare background and engineer a virus that could alter the human genome. At least it would make some good out of all the bad I did back then. Well, enough of the technobabble, my dear.

  I love you,

  Jordan.

  My Dearest Margaret, it’s February 26, 2050,

  Today I received a court order to turn you over to the hospital so they could...

  They say...they say I’ll go to jail if I don’t comply in two days. If I go to jail, you’ll die because I won’t find the cure. If I turn you over, you’ll die. What can I do?

  I love you.

  The entries stopped abruptly.

  “Continue play,” Grace said.

  “No more entries,” came a mechanical voice.

  Grace leaned back in her chair and sighed, taking in what she had learned. She wanted to be mad at Jordan for causing The Change. She desperately wanted to be mad at him. He had overlooked the needs of all of humanity for the sake of his wife. But she just couldn’t get the anger together. Somehow, it just wasn’t malicious enough. His crime, if it could be called that, had been to love a woman too much.

  No, wait, there had been another crime. A few days after the end of this diary he had allegedly killed his coworkers and gone on the run. She tried to imagine the man on this tape picking up a gun and shooting people, especially Alan, who he seemed to like in a fatherly sort of way.

  She couldn’t make the image work.

  Matt hadn’t seemed to think Jordan had done it either, though he had left it to her to draw her own conclusions.

  A virus. The words came drifting back into Grace’s subconscious, and she considered the implications of that. A virus had caused all this.

  No one had ever really known the origin–they just knew people stopped aging. Some religious nuts thought it had been a gift from God. Later, some other religious nuts decided it was a curse from God.

  A virus. He had infected the entire human race. He had not given anyone a choice in the matter. Much of the sympathy Grace had felt for him earlier began to fade as she thought about it. How dare he mess with people’s will like that? How dare he play God?

  Grace winced at her last thought. How many times had people accused Natural Life of the same thing–wanting to play God? So many claimed to speak for Him, saying that God, whoever He was, wanted this or did not want that. He seemed to speak His intentions to certain lucky people, and His intentions managed, remarkably, to reflect precisely what the lucky people wanted.

  Now here was Grace, becoming one of those people. Hypocrite, she chided herself.

  But she wouldn’t have chosen this life. And she wanted that choice. She could have had Sam forever.

  “Search complete,” Newton said, cutting into the silence in a way that made her jump.

  “Display records.” Grace set aside the diary and headed over to the console.

  Though the easiest and most logical place to begin, net searches rarely provided useful information about the people she needed to find. She had a little more hope than usual this time, because Jordan was an old timer, and back before The Change the nets had included information on practically everyone. When the new system came online three hundred years ago, they had uploaded the old information, so it remained intact.

  New information, on the other hand, could be difficult to find. Only people who had a job or went to school had any record on the net. As for old timers–well, their information tended to be centuries out of date. Houses, addresses, and entire streets had changed since then.

  But she had a feeling she would find something on Jordan. Nothing recent, but something to give her a clue who he had been.

  At the top of the search results was a newspaper headline she had expected to find, dated February 28, 2050.

  Brilliant Scientist Goes On Shooting Rampage

  Yesterday morning at the Medicorp Plaza, eight brilliant young people were killed in a violent workplace shooting the likes of which have not been seen in over a decade. The team had been working on a cure for Alzheimer’s, which affects some twenty-four million people worldwide.

  Evidence today suggests that the team leader, Jordan Lacklin, may have been the man responsible for the shooting. Police Chief Daryl Richardson said, “The gun used in the shootings was registered to Jordan Lacklin, and his fingerprints were all over it. Unfortunately, we can’t find him to question him since he seems to have fled after the shootings.”

  Christina Atkins, the one member of the team who escaped the shooting, says the team leader, Jordan Lacklin, had been under a lot of strain lately. His own wife, Margaret Lacklin, suffered from the very disease he hoped to cure, and Jordan would work late into the night, often keeping his team up with him around the clock. “He was passionate about this,” Ms. Atkins said late yesterday afternoon. “I never saw a man work so hard, but I have to wonder if that’s why this happened.”

  Ms. Atkins managed to escape the slaughter because she had to pick up her five-year-old son from school. He was sick with the flu.

  Authorities are asking for your help to find Jordan Lacklin, who is considered armed and dangerous. If you see him, contact the Kansas City Police Department.

  No, she couldn’t picture the author of that diary picking up a gun and shooting all his co-workers. Why would he, when he still had not found the cure his wife needed?

  Or had he? He must have done, or The Change would not have happened.

  Something strange had happened in those two days, and Grace wanted to know what. Who was Jordan, anyway? Before she could find him, she needed to learn more about him. Brilliant scientist? Hopeless romantic? Mass murderer? Somehow, it didn’t fit.

  But there was Alex, his grandson, who he had loved and who Matt thought would be a good place to start.

  “Newton, new search. I want you to find Jordan Lacklin’s descendants, including current addresses and vidphone channels.”

  “Working!”

  “Newton, display the rest of the results for the search of Jordan Lacklin,” Grace said.

  Newton had them ready, so they were practically up on the screen before she finished issuing the command. Most of the records were innocuous and completely out-of-date. There was a record of his years of service in the army corps of engineers with a note that most of the details of his time there were classified. There were records of his graduation from the Univer
sity of Illinois with a Ph.D. in biochemistry. There was a marriage certificate on record with the state of Kansas, though Grace had already known his wife’s name from the diary.

  Jordan’s name had also been mentioned in his wife’s obituary, dated a few months after the shootings. The obituary did not mention that terrible event; the only thing it had to say about Jordan was he had been Margaret’s husband.

  Margaret had been put in the ground, something they used to do a long time ago. The ancient cemeteries still existed, but only because people were funny about the dead. They didn’t want to touch them or disturb their resting places.

  It occurred to Grace to wonder about the woman Jordan had loved. His romantic ramblings were too idealistic–they did not describe a real woman. The paper had included a picture of Margaret in her obituary–one clearly taken before the illness had ravaged her. She had sparkling green eyes, a pointed nose, and a tiny, smiling mouth that made her look like a person to trust.

  Why would Jordan have gone on a shooting rampage while his wife needed him so badly? Why would he have killed the people helping him to find a cure? He had loved her. Truly loved her.

  “Only when life is short can one imagine that love lasts forever.” Sam had told her that once, during their long and arduous breakup. That had been the night she’d stopped believing in love.

  “Newton, I’m away. Save results of current search to my password and voice print.”

  With that, Grace grabbed her coat and backpack and headed out the door, towards the graveyard where Margaret Lacklin rested.

  Chapter 7

  Overland Park had been an upper crust suburb at one time, but Grace only knew this from information she had on the history of the Kansas City area. Jordan’s salary and position had corroborated that information. Now, not a single one of those homes remained. Instead, there stood row upon row of community apartment complexes, like the one Sam had remembered Grace living in. Every floor had a single, shared bathroom and every resident had a single, ten by fifteen square foot room to do with as they pleased.