The Methuselah Gene

by Jonathan Lowe

  I tallied who was left, and decided on Roger Sandford, my neighbor. I didn’t care about waking Roger. Maybe he knew nothing, but maybe he’d seen someone suspicious at my apartment door, or had a clue about someone watching. Roger was a paranoid SOB, alert to anyone who might pull the rug out from under his injury compensation scam on the city sanitation department. I had the operator dial through for me.

  “Yeah?” Roger answered, and sounded groggy.

  “Roger, hi. It’s me, your neighbor Alan.”

  “Huh?” Roger muttered.

  “Alan Dyson,” I said.

  “What the hell . . .”

  “Listen. Roger. Have you seen anyone snooping around my apartment recently?”

  “Whaaat?” Roger said.

  “Think about it, try to remember. Roger, it’s important.”

  “Where you at?” Roger asked. “Ain’t seen ya.”

  “I had to leave the city,” I lied. “There are people after me.”

  “People? What people?”

  “Syndicate types.”

  “Mob, ya mean?”

  “That’s right, Roger. They’re after a formula I been working on. It’s worth lots of money. I think my notes on the formula are still in my apartment.”

  “How much money?”

  “What?”

  “How much money we talkin’ about?”

  “Potential, Roger?” I asked. “Millions.”

  There was a pause, then: “What time is it?”

  I knew that was coming. I could hear him routing around for the light switch now. “I’m desperate here,” I said, before he could see a clock or watch.

  There was an audible gasp. “Holy shit.”

  “Yes,” I said, remembering Darryl’s usual curse, “Holy horseshit.”

  “Whatcha want from me?” Roger asked, with renewed agitation. “I ain’t seen nobody. Wait a sec. How long ya been gone, did ya say?”

  “A few days. Why?”

  “Well, I did hear somebody over there.”

  “You heard who? When was that?”

  “Friday, I think. Morning, early.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Somebody,” Roger confessed.

  “Any talking, conversation?”

  “Nope. Thought it was you.”

  “Roger, listen,” I said. “I need you to—”

  “And then there was somebody out front in a car later on, kinda like he was waitin’ or watchin’ for something.”

  “A Cadillac?”

  “No, it was a . . . a Toyota. Land Cruiser, I think.”

  “CIA,” I said. “Maybe NSA.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Nothing. Roger, listen. I need you to break into my apartment.”

  “What?”

  “I need you to secure my notes, my computer, anything you can find related to my work. Bring it all out, store it in your closet. Do it now. If anyone asks you anything about me, you haven’t seen me since Thursday. All right?”

  “You gotta be jokin,’ right?”

  “This is no joke, Roger. I’ll pay you for your trouble when I see you.”

  “Pay me how much?” Roger asked. “A million?”

  “I’ll give you a thousand,” I told him.

  Roger laughed. “I’d need more than that for bail, if they catch me.”

  “A thousand can get you ten in bail, but it won’t come to that. You’re doing this at my request. Just slip over and snatch my stuff. The thousand is for storage, and for keeping your mouth shut.”

  “Just slip over, eh?” Roger repeated, his tone haughty. “Sounds dangerous ta me.”

  “Okay, two thousand.”

  “This is gettin’ more interestin’ all the time. Let’s make it three.”

  “Don’t push me, Roger. The clock is ticking.”

  “I see the clock. I can’t believe it. This formula, it’s worth millions, ya say?”

  “Someone thinks it is. Okay, Roger. Three thousand. But that’s only if you get all my paperwork, my computer, and all the disks and backup. You don’t turn on the radio or TV all morning. Instead you listen for anyone outside. If anyone comes to your door and knocks, you don’t answer. You’re not home. Got it?”

  “When can I expect my money?” Roger wanted to know.

  “Soon as I arrive there and see you’ve followed instructions,” I said, and clicked off.

  Soon after I ended the call a man came back to sit beside me, leaving one empty seat between us. He was a thinset balding man in his mid fifties, round glasses perched on his hawkish nose. He carried a laptop computer case, and as he sat said, “Sorry, but it’s cramped up there, next to this kid keeps staring at my screen. Hard to get any work done. Do you mind?”

  I did, but then I didn’t. As he opened the computer, I stared at his screen too. “Any chance,” I said, “you could send an e-mail from up here?”

  He looked down at his laptop, then over at me, and away. He said nothing, although his pursed lips clued me to his state of mind.

  “Is it possible?” I asked him again. “It’s more important than you know.”

  He took a deep breath, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look,” he said, trying hard not to lose civility, “I’ve got a lot of work to do. I have a seminar to give in . . .” He checked his watch. “Nine hours. I’d like to take a little snooze before then too, if I could. If it’s not too much to ask.”

  “Sorry,” I told him, and held out my hand. “Name’s Alan. Alan Dyson.”

  He shook my hand once, reluctantly. “Kyle Metcalf. Sorry.”

  “Theoretically speaking, Kyle, are you even able to send e-mails from up here?”

  He eyed the air phone I’d just replaced, surreptitiously. I saw where he looked. A small plugin below the plastic popout button read I.A.. Knowing that I’d identified it, he made his confession in defeat. “The airline has a direct Internet access eight hundred dial-up number. It connects to other servers and ISPs,” he admitted.

  “Like AOL?”

  He nodded, again reluctantly.

  “Interesting,” I said, nodding back. “And what is it you lecture about, Kyle? What kind of seminar do you give?”

  His voice was flat. “Oceanography, okay? I’m with UCLA.”

  “Really? Is it Dr. Metcalf, then?”

  I thought he might yawn, but he nodded instead. “I’m going to New York for a conference on how global warming and oceanic pollution is affecting base food chain organisms like plankton.”

  “That’s . . . very ironic,” I told him.

  “Oh? And why is that?” A petulant look from him, now.

  “Well, because I’m a research biochemist who’s been working on a gene that we thought might prevent telomeres from shortening, to prolong life. It came from the bristlecone pine tree, and was tested on . . . well, another tree. And on humans too.”

  One obvious trait of intelligent people is that they can see the connection between unrelated concepts or situations. It took only a moment for Kyle to see the connection. I could see it in his widening eyes. And yet in the end he blinked at me, furrowing his brow as those blue eyes narrowed. “On humans?” he asked, doubting my veracity.

  “Unfortunately,” I told him. “My research assistant injected himself with the gene, which was linked to a modified delivery retrovirus, and his death became the first of many.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there was a side effect I hadn’t foreseen. One involving hallucinatory psychosis.”

  The good Dr. Metcalf stared at me for a moment, and then shook his head, although not in total disbelief. Instead he leaned back like a man who’d just been told another one of his favorite sports stars had been caught with twenty bricks of uncut cocaine. Next he closed his eyes and chuckled to himself. Finally, he took a deep slow cleansing breath, like they say to do on those bogus meditation audio tapes. “That’s . . . that’s what I expected,” he admitted, looking weary. “Something like that.”

&
nbsp; “You did?”

  “Oh yeah. Every failure of science persuades more people against coming to any real agreements. Oceans dying, the poles melting, and we argue over which politician sounds better on TV. Meanwhile, the general public? Only thing they want to do is stay home and watch race cars going in circles.”

  “Ovals,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  Kyle huffed. “Not that we need longevity. Thirty years it’ll all be over. Fossil fuels exhausted, no more rainforests except what’s protected within parks, and the remaining coral reefs decimated. Then we induce even more extinctions with drift netting, with major famines everywhere. Hell, most of the third world may go the way of Easter Island. Did you know they had the biggest palm forests in the Pacific at one point? Then they cut everything down, tree by tree, until they didn’t even have poles to erect their statues anymore.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Reverted to cannibalism. Ate themselves into oblivion.”

  “I think in our case, considering all the Boomers retiring, we might be gumming ourselves into extinction in thirty years,” I said.

  I tried to think of a way to tell him what I needed to tell someone, especially now that time was running out. But then he made it easier with his next question.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  I held the thing up, turning the white lump in front of my face as if about to interpret a modernist sculpture. Although the meaning behind it eluded me. “You’d be shocked how close people are to just letting go,” I heard myself say, “and giving way to whatever baser instincts lie beneath. Sometimes, Kyle, I think this veneer we call civilization is as thin as cheap primer paint.”

  He looked at me with heightened curiosity. “What happened to you?”

  It was the question I’d been looking for. So I told him everything, or almost everything. In the end, dazed and defeated somehow, he let me use his computer.

  The dial-up via airline airphone link yielded a menu of ISPs, and AOL was first. My credit card still being valid—at least for the time being—I was granted access to the service, then used my screen name and passcode to get online. The e-mail I wrote to the address printed on the card I’d taken from Darryl was in bold 18 point type:

  TO: Clifford Seagraves: cseagraves@hahq.com

  SUBJECT: Darryl Alexander/URGENT

  Mr. Seagraves— My name is Alan Dyson. I’m a friend and colleague of Darryl, who has just been killed. Urgent that I speak to you. Please reply to this e-mail with a phone number where I may reach you right away. Repeat: Darryl has been murdered, and the party responsible is getting away.

  I hit the SEND button, then turned back to Kyle. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll need to check for a response before we land in New York.”

  The good doctor nodded, looking down at the half empty vial of Dilaudid he held, and which he’d insisted I show him when I mentioned it near the end of my strange tale. Then he looked over at my pant leg again, which bulged with its hidden bandage. He returned both my wallet and the drug as I disconnected the laptop and swapped belongings with him. He said nothing for a moment, his eyes still pained with something on the philosophical side of pessimism. “Are you a changed man?” he asked me at last.

  I wondered about his own personal history, but the question did not come as a surprise. “I suppose I am,” I acknowledged. “Who wouldn’t be?”

  He looked past me at the dark window, where the jet’s narrowly illuminated and riveted wing stretched out into a void. “Of course people never change,” he mused, “unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless something changes them. Something big.”

  “This is big, all right,” I confessed.

  He only wanted to work on his seminar notes, but I’d ruined that for him. Maybe I’d changed the thrust of the speech he planned, too. As it was, he couldn’t take a nap, or even close his red eyes. But I could. I wanted to sleep for days, and could have done so easily if not for the ironic cry of a baby several rows behind us, along with Kyle’s touch on my shoulder. Before being awakened, though, a strange dream had come over me, like the bank of clouds into which we’d flown. As soon as I’d closed my eyes I was gone, escaped from the world like a tethered astronaut adrift high above my physical self. For that moment it seemed so natural to be suspended there, too, with no benzodiazepenes like Valium to occlude my perception. I was aware of Julie’s presence with me, in that alternate unreality possessing its own inexplicable meaning. At first we drifted together, looking down at the earth below us, and I wanted to drift forever in this aura. But that was not to be, because we descended to a beach together, and I saw my father waiting for me there.

  Promise, I heard Julie repeat. Promise me.

  I tried to hold onto the dream—to retain the fading feeling and image on my closed eyelids—but Julie was gone, and suddenly I couldn’t remember her face. A momentary panic. Her face! It had been erased from my short term memory. Had she been a dream all along—a construction of my loneliness? Only with the full return of sensory reality did my panic subside, as the memory of her face returned to me too.

  Kyle shook my shoulder. “We’ve begun our descent,” he informed me, and then handed me his open laptop. “You haven’t much time to check your e-mail before they cut you off.”

  “Time,” I said, coming back to life. “Time, yes. I have time, don’t I?” I quickly connected the cable, activating the airphone link. Moments later I was online.

  And I had mail.

  I clicked on the little upraised flag and saw three e-mails. The first two were junk. It was the third that read:

  From: cseagraves@hahq.com RE: Darryl Alexander/URGENT

  I clicked on the e-mail and saw ten digits there. That was all. The first three digits indicated a Washington DC area code.

  Kyle handed me a pen, and I scribbled the number on the back of an in-flight magazine. Then I signed offline, and used the airphone again, punching the numbers as fast as I could, fearing the announcement would come any moment that electronic devices could not be used anymore. The number rang four times before the call was picked up, and after a pause a mechanically nondescript voice answered, “Hello.”

  “Clifford Seagraves?” I asked it. Another pause, this one suggesting confirmation. “There isn’t much time, Mr. Seagraves. I believe we’re being framed by Carson Jeffers, vice president of Tactar Pharmaceuticals.”

  “We?” asked a new voice—this one more real, and with a distinctive nasal quality, making me suspect the first was computer generated. “For what?”

  “Zion, Iowa,” I replied.

  “How?”

  “That’s why I’m calling you. I believe Jeffers has planted evidence in my office at the company lab linking me and possibly Darryl with hiring a team to film an experiment with the stolen—”

  “Team? Headed by Stephan Rudnic?”

  “Who?” I was listening to what sounded like a printer in the background. “Who did you say?”

  “Walter Mills is an alias. Rudnic is his real name. He’s former CIA, black projects. He resigned four years ago to open a security consulting group. They do surveillance too.”

  “Not anymore,” I told him. “And that’s not all they did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Rudnic is dead, along with Darryl and dozens more in Zion.”

  There was a long silence during which even the printer stopped printing. “Say again,” Seagraves intoned at last.

  “The story will break very soon, if it hasn’t already. It will be bigger than any high school shooting or Internet virus. The virus couldn’t be contained, and Rudnic filmed it. Either for a secret agency within the CDC called the Studio, or for Jeffers himself. Jeffers has escaped, and may not know I’m alive.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “No idea. Kevin Connolly, a Tactar lawyer, was involved too, but he’s out of the picture now. Permanently.”
/>
  “Where are you calling from?”

  “I’m on a plane about to arrive in New York. I’ve got a connecting flight into Washington. I need help accessing Tactar computers before it’s too late. It may already be too late.”

  “Their system is accessible from the outside,” Seagraves told me. “I have Darryl’s protocols here. I can get in. What am I looking for?”

  “Anything linking me or Darryl with stealing M-Telomerase. It may be a subtle trail.”

  “I understand. And this theft should be linked to Jeffers and Connolly?”

  “I don’t know how you would do that.”

  “Trust me. I’ll find a way.”

  “There’s no time,” I insisted.

  “We’ll see. Don’t go to Washington. Rent a room at an airport hotel in New York, and call me back when you know your room number.”

  “What? There may be physical evidence too, in my office! I need to go there and check it out. You can’t get in without me.”

  “It’s too risky. They may be waiting for you there, and at your apartment.”

  “They?”

  “A third party.”

  “The CIA?” I asked. “Mills, or Rudnic, whatever, said the CIA was involved at first, then got out when things got too hot. Anyway, I’ve taken care of my apartment. My neighbor Roger will be storing my computer and papers. He has instructions not to talk to anybody.”

  “Can he be trusted?”

  “For a price.”

  “Okay. You handle that, I’ll check Tactar computer files. Call me in an hour and we’ll decide what to do about your office.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “What about Darryl’s wife Hannah?”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “Not yet. She will soon enough, though.”

  “How well do you know her?” Seagraves asked me.