Trouble in Mind: The Collected Stories - 3

by Jeffery Deaver

  "Not a clue."

  "Immortality."

  "Does it now?"

  "Primitive people'd see lotuses grow up out of the water in riverbeds that'd been dry for years. They assumed the plants were immortal."

  "You said you can't keep people from dying."

  "We can't. You will die. What we offer is what you might call a type of reincarnation."

  Covey sneered. "I stopped going to church thirty years ago."

  "Well, Mr. Covey. I've never gone to church. I'm not talking about spiritual reincarnation. No, I mean scientific, provable reincarnation."

  The old man grunted. "This's about the time you start losing people, right?"

  Farley laughed hard. "That's right. Pretty much at that sentence."

  "Well, you ain't lost me yet. Keep going."

  "It's very complex but I'll give it to you in a nutshell--just a little biology."

  The old man sipped more coffee and waved his hand for the doctor to continue.

  "The Foundation holds the patent on a process that's known as neuro stem cell regenerative replication...I know, it's a mouthful. Around here we just call it consciousness cloning."

  "Explain that."

  "What is consciousness?" Farley asked. "You look around the room, you see things, smell them, have reactions. Have thoughts. I sit in the same room, focus on different things, or focus on the same things and have different reactions. Why? Because our brains are unique."

  A slow nod. This fish was getting close to the fly.

  "The Foundation's developed a way to genetically map your brain and then program embryonic cells to grow in a way that duplicates it perfectly. After you die your identical consciousness is re-created in a fetus. You're"--a slight smile--"born again. In a secular, biological sense, of course. The sensation you have is as if your brain were transplanted into another body."

  Farley poured more coffee, handed it to Covey, who was shaking his head.

  "How the hell do you do this?" Covey whispered.

  "It's a three-step process." The doctor was always delighted to talk about his work. "First, we plot the exact structure of your brain as it exists now--the parts where the consciousness resides. We use supercomputers and micro-MRI machines."

  "MRI. That's like a fancy X-ray, right?"

  "Magnetic resonance. We do a perfect schematic of your consciousness. Then step two: You know about genes, right? They're the blueprints for our bodies, every cell in your body contains them. Well, genes decide not only what your hair color is and your height and susceptibility to certain diseases but also how your brain develops. After a certain age the brain development gene shuts off; your brain's structure is determined and doesn't change--that's why brain tissue doesn't regenerate if it's destroyed. The second step is to extract and reactivate the development gene. Then we implant it into a fetus."

  "You clone me?"

  "No, not your body. We use donor sperm and egg and a surrogate mother. There's an in vitro clinic attached to the Foundation. You're 'placed,' we call it, with a good family from the same socioeconomic class as you live in now."

  Covey wanted to be skeptical but he was still receptive.

  "The final part is to use chemical and electromagnetic intervention to make sure the brain develops identically to the map we made of your present one. Stimulate some cell growth, inhibit others. When you're born again, your perceptions are exactly what they are from your point of view now. Your sensibilities, interests, desires."

  Covey blinked.

  "You won't look like you. Your body type will be different. Though you will be male. We insist on that. It's not our job to work out gender identity issues."

  "Not a problem," he said shortly, frowning at the absurdity of the idea. Then: "Can you eliminate health problems? I had skin cancer. And the heart thing, of course."

  "We don't do that. We don't make supermen or superwomen. We simply boost your consciousness into another generation, exactly as you are now."

  Covey considered this for a moment. "Will I remember meeting you, will I have images of this life?"

  "Ah, memories...We didn't quite know about those at first. But it seems that, yes, you will remember, to some extent--because memories are hardwired into some portions of the brain. We aren't sure how many yet, since our first clients are only three or four years old--in their second lives, of course--and we haven't had a chance to fully interview them yet."

  "You've actually done this?" he whispered.

  Farley nodded. "Oh, yes, Mr. Covey. We're up and running."

  "What about will I go wacko or anything? That sheep they cloned and died? She was a mess, I heard."

  "No, that can't happen because we control development, like I was explaining. Every step of the way."

  "Jesus," he whispered. "This isn't a joke?"

  "Oh, no, not at all."

  "Let's say it actually works...You said, 'Forever.' So, what? We do the same thing in seventy years or whatever?"

  "It's literally a lifetime guarantee, even if that lifetime lasts ten thousand years. The Lotus Foundation will stay in touch with all our clients over the years. You can keep going for as many generations as you want."

  "How do I know you'll still be in business?"

  A slight chuckle. "Because we sell a product there's an infinite demand for. Companies that provide that don't ever go out of business."

  Covey eyed Farley and the old man said coyly, "Which brings up your fee."

  "As you can imagine..."

  "Forever don't come cheap. Gimme a number."

  "One half of your estate with a minimum of ten million dollars."

  "One half? That's about twenty-eight million. But it's not liquid. Real estate, stocks, bonds. I can't just write you a check for it."

  "We don't want you to. We're keeping this procedure very low-key. In the future we hope to offer our services to more people but now our costs are so high we can work only with the ones who can cover the expenses...And, let's be realistic, we prefer people like you in the program."

  "Like me?"

  "Let's say higher in the gene pool than others."

  Covey grunted. "Well, how do you get paid?"

  "You leave the money to one of our charities in your will."

  "Charities?"

  "The Foundation owns dozens of them. The money gets to us eventually."

  "So you don't get paid until I die."

  "That's right. Some clients wait until they actually die of their disease. Most, though, do the paperwork and then transition themselves."

  "Transition?"

  "They end their own life. That way they avoid a painful end. And, of course, the sooner they leave, the sooner they come back."

  "How many people've done this?"

  "Six."

  Covey looked out the window for a moment, at the trees in Central Park, waving slowly in a sharp breeze. "This's crazy. The whole thing's nuts."

  Farley laughed. "You'd be nuts if you didn't think that at first...Come on, I'll give you a tour of the facility."

  Setting down his coffee, Covey followed the doctor out of the office. They walked down the hallway through an impressive-looking security door into the laboratory portion of the Foundation. Farley pointed out first the massive Mistsuhana supercomputers used for brain mapping and then the genetics lab and cryogenic facility itself, which they couldn't enter but could see from windows in the corridor. A half-dozen white-coated employees dipped pipettes into tubes, grew cultures in petri dishes and hunched over microscopes.

  Covey was intrigued but not yet sold, Farley noted.

  "Let's go back to the office."

  When they'd sat again the old man finally said, "Well, I'll think about it."

  Farley nodded with a smile and said, "You bet. A decision like this...Some people just can't bring themselves to sign on. You take your time." He handed Covey a huge binder. "Those're case studies, genetic data for comparison with the transitioning clients and their next life selves, intervi
ews with them. There's nothing identifying them but you can read about the children and the process itself." Farley paused and let Covey flip through the material. He seemed to be reading it carefully. The doctor added, "What's so nice about this is that you never have to say good-bye to your loved ones. Say you've got a son or daughter...we could contact them when they're older and propose our services to them. You could reconnect with them a hundred years from now."

  At the words "son or daughter," Covey had looked up, blinking. His eyes drifted off and finally he said, "I don't know..."

  "Mr. Covey," Farley said, "let me just add one thing. I understand your skepticism. But you tell me you're a businessman? Well, I'm going to treat you like one. Sure, you've got doubts. Who wouldn't? But even if you're not one hundred percent sure, even if you think I'm trying to sell you a load of hooey, what've you got to lose? You're going to die anyway. Why don't you just roll the dice and take the chance?"

  Farley let this sink in for a minute and saw that the words--as so often--were having an effect. Time to back off. He said, "Now I've got some phone calls to make, if you'll excuse me. There's a lounge through that door. Take your time and read through those things."

  Covey picked up the files and stepped into the room the doctor indicated. The door closed.

  Farley had pegged the old man as shrewd and deliberate. And accordingly the doctor gave him a full forty-five minutes to examine the materials. Finally he rose and walked to the doorway. Before he could say anything Covey looked up from the leather couch he was sitting in and said, "I'll do it. I want to do it."

  "I'm very happy for you," Farley said sincerely.

  "What do I need to do now?"

  "All you do is an MRI scan and then give us a blood sample for the genetic material."

  "You don't need part of my brain?"

  "That's what's so amazing about genes. All of us is contained in a cell of our own blood."

  Covey nodded.

  "Then you change your will and we take it from there." He looked in a file and pulled out a list of the charities the Foundation had set up recently.

  "Any of these appeal? You should pick three or four. And they ought to be something in line with interests or causes you had when you were alive."

  "There." Covey circled three of them. "I'll leave most to the Metropolitan Arts Assistance Association." He looked up. "Veronica, my wife, was an artist. That okay?"

  "It's fine." Farley copied down the names and some other information and then handed a card to Covey. "Just take that to your lawyer."

  The old man nodded. "His office is just a few miles from here. I could see him today."

  "Just bring us a copy of the will." He didn't add what Covey of course, a savvy businessman, knew. That if the will was not altered, or if he changed it later, the Foundation wouldn't do the cloning. They had the final say.

  "What about the...transition?"

  Farley said, "That's your choice. Entirely up to you. Tomorrow or next year. Whatever you're comfortable with."

  At the door Covey paused and turned back, shook Farley's hand. He gave a faint laugh. "Who would've thought? Forever."

  + [?] < = > /

  IN GREEK MYTHOLOGY Eos was the goddess of dawn and she was captivated with the idea of humans as lovers. She fell deeply in love with a mortal, Tithonos, the son of the king of Troy, and convinced Zeus to let him live forever.

  The god of gods agreed. But he neglected one small detail: granting him youth as well as immortality. While Eos remained unchanged Tithonos grew older and more decrepit with each passing year until he was so old he was unable to move or speak. Horrified, Eos turned him into an insect and moved on to more suitable paramours.

  Dr. William Farley thought of this myth now, sitting at his desk in the Lotus Foundation. The search for immortality's always been tough on us poor humans, he reflected. But how doggedly we ignore the warning in Tithonos's myth--and the logic of science--and continue to look for ways to cheat death.

  Farley glanced at a picture on his desk. It showed a couple, arm in arm--younger versions of those in a second picture on his credenza. His parents. Who'd died in an auto accident when Farley was in medical school.

  An only child, desperately close to them, he took months to recover from the shock. When he was able to resume his studies, he decided he'd specialize in emergency medicine--devoting his life to saving lives threatened by trauma.

  But the young man was brilliant--too smart for the repetitious mechanics of ER work. Lying awake nights he would reflect about his parents' deaths and he took some reassurance that they were, in a biochemical way, still alive within him. He developed an interest in genetics, and that was the subject he began to pursue in earnest.

  Months, then years, of manic twelve-hour days doing research in the field resulted in many legitimate discoveries. But this also led to some ideas that were less conventional, even bizarre--consciousness cloning, for instance.

  Not surprisingly, he was either ignored or ridiculed by his peers. His papers were rejected by professional journals, his grant requests turned down. The rejection didn't discourage him, though he grew more and more desperate to find the millions of dollars needed to research his theory. One day a few years ago, nearly penniless and living in a walk-up beside one of Westbrook's commuter train lines, he'd gotten a call from an old acquaintance. The man had heard about Farley's plight and had an idea.

  "You want to raise money for your research?" he'd asked the impoverished medico. "It's easy. Find really sick, really wealthy patients and sell them immortality."

  "What?"

  "No, no, no, listen," the man had continued. "Find patients who're about to die anyway. They'll be desperate. You package it right, they'll buy it."

  "I can't sell them anything yet," Farley had replied. "I believe I can make this work. But it could take years."

  "Well, sometimes sacrifices have to be made. You can pick up ten million overnight, twenty. That'd buy some pretty damn nice research facilities."

  Farley had been quiet, considering those words. Then he'd said, "I could keep tissue samples, I suppose, and then when we actually can do the cloning, I could bring them back then."

  "Hey, there you go," said the doctor. Something in the tone suggested to Farley that he didn't think the process would ever work. But the man's disbelief was irrelevant if he could help Farley get the money he needed for research.

  "Well, all right," Farley said to his colleague--who was none other than Anthony Sheldon, of the Cardiology Department at Westbrook Hospital, a man who was as talented an entrepreneur as he was a cardiovascular surgeon.

  Five years ago they'd set up the Lotus Foundation, an in vitro clinic and a network of bogus charities. Tony Sheldon, whose office was near the Cardiac Support Center, would finagle a look at the files of patients there and would find the richest and sickest. Then he'd arrange for them to be contacted by the Lotus Foundation and Farley would sell them the program.

  Farley had truly doubted that anybody would buy the pitch but Sheldon had coached him well. The man had thought of everything. He found unique appeals for each potential client and gave Farley this information to snare them. In the case of the Bensons, for instance, Sheldon had learned how much they loved each other. His pitch to them was that this was the chance to be together forever, as they so poignantly noted in their suicide note. With Robert Covey, Sheldon had learned--by ransacking the CSC files--about his estranged son, so Farley added the tactical mention that a client could have a second chance to connect with children.

  Sheldon had also come up with one vital part of the pitch. He made sure the patients got high doses of Luminux (even the coffee that Covey had just been drinking, for instance, was laced with the drug). Neither doctor believed that anyone would sign up for a far-fetched idea without the benefit of some mind-numbing Mickey Finn.

  The final selling point was, of course, the desperate desire of people facing death to believe what Farley promised them.

&nb
sp; And that turned out to be one hell of a selling point. The Lotus Foundation had earned almost $93 million in five years.

  Everything had gone fine--until recently, when their greed got the better of them. Well, got the better of Sheldon. They'd decided that the cardiologist would never refer his own patients to the Foundation--and would wait six months or a year between clients. But Tony Sheldon apparently had a mistress with very expensive taste and had lost some serious money in the stock market recently. Just after the Bensons signed up, the Whitleys presented themselves. They were far too wealthy to pass up and so Farley reluctantly yielded to Sheldon's pressure to go ahead with the plan.

  But they learned that, though eager to proceed, Sam Whitley had wanted to reassure himself that this wasn't pure quackery and he'd tracked down some technical literature about the computers used in the technique and genetics in general. After the patients had died, Farley had to find this information in his house, burn it and scour the place for any other evidence that might lead back to the Foundation.

  The intrusion, though, must've alerted the police to the possibility that the families' deaths were suspicious. Officers had actually interviewed Sheldon, sending a scream of panic through Farley. But then a scapegoat stumbled into the picture: Mac McCaffrey, a young nurse/counselor at the Cardiac Support Center. She was seeing their latest recent prospect--Robert Covey--as she'd been seeing the Bensons and the Whitleys. This made her suspect to start with. Even better was her reluctance to admit she'd seen the Bensons; after their suicide the nurse had apparently lied about seeing them and had stolen their files from the CSC. A perfect setup. Sheldon had used his ample resources to bribe a pharmacist at the CSC to doctor the logs and give him a couple of wholesale bottles containing a few Luminux tablets, to make it look like she'd been drugging patients for some time. Farley, obsessed with death and dying, had a vast library of articles on euthanasia and suicide. He copied several dozen of these. The drugs and the articles they planted in her garage--insurance in case they needed somebody to take the fall.

  Which they had. And now the McCaffrey woman had just been hauled off to jail.

  A whole 'nother story, as Covey had said.

  The nurse's arrest had troubled Farley. He'd speculated out loud about telling the police that she was innocent. But Sheldon reminded him coolly what would happen if Farley did that and he relented.