Forever and Ever

by Dan A. Baker

  Jasmine parked quickly and walked through the lobby. Every face had the same expression. A bustling, energetic confident company was now reduced to an eerily quiet fear museum in a few short hours.

  “Is it a stunt?” Jasmine asked hopefully, pushing the door open to Earl’s office.

  “They say they’ve got the genotyping. They’re holding a press conference… now.”

  The live press conference aired from a hospital in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. This time they had the evidence, two identical baby boys, with genotyping results just returned from the University of Florida. The babies were identical clones of Soonay, head of the cult. Jasmine and Earl watched the coverage silently. The cult had scored a big coup and thumbed their noses at the Federal government, who now had to try to enforce the ban on human cloning, somehow.

  “They put on quite a show,” Earl said sarcastically.

  The cameras rolled endlessly on the bubbly red newborns, as they blinked and sucked their hands, appearing perfectly normal. The wild-eyed cult leader held them up to his face, one in each arm and said, “The world will have hundreds of me! They’ll have hundreds of me, forever!” His shining eyes, baldhead, and white gown deeply terrified Jasmine.

  Newly minted science pundits scrambled to top each other in worst-case scenarios. The rich will clone themselves and whole armies of clones will be produced as disposable soldiers. The gene wars were here, and the Pope weighed in with a dire warning for mankind. The polyester Priests, as Earl liked to call them, had a field day, warning of the coming cost of man’s latest insolence.

  When the camera closed in on the table holding the completed genotyping results, Jasmine was surprised to see a new Affymetrix GeneChip machine. They were very new and super expensive. She was surprised that a University would have one.

  “Earl, look! It’s a new Affymetrix Gene Chip, and it’s newer than ours.”

  “They must have a hell of a budget at that school,” Earl said, looking closely at the shot, rocking the video back and forth.

  “The pressure on the White House will be tremendous,” Earl said. “I wonder if they’ll act.”

  “They will,” Victor said, watching the coverage from the doorway.

  “The timing for this couldn’t be worse,” Jasmine replied slowly, holding the notification of clearance to begin human trials for PIES in her hand.

  “Yesterday we were heroes, conquering human disease by the yard. Now we’re… we’re…”

  “In the bull’s eye,” Victor said, standing in the doorway, looking down at his ringing cell phone. “Zurich,” he said, turning to his office.

  Four hours later, the President announced a three-year moratorium on human testing of any therapy that involved permanent changes in the human genome. Biotech stocks plummeted. The next day the biotech E-zines were reporting a wave of American companies announcing plans to re-locate overseas, as a widely discussed “comprehensive” Genetic Bill of Rights, suddenly stood a real chance of passage in Congress.

  The gaggle of Bible belt Congressmen actually shoved each other to get to the microphone to shout their “firm resolve” to see this legislation passed. Jasmine turned the TV off and sat at her desk for a long time. Earl said nothing. “I’m going to go out to Father’s house. He’s out of groceries and I need some time outdoors,” she said to Earl.

  “Say hello to Herbert for me. Tell him nothing has changed in the science wars,” Earl said bitterly.

  Jasmine drove slowly on the winding Highway 92, past the lovely, trendy nurseries and the tiny wineries. The cloning debacle would be devastating in the current political climate. The religious right was hungry for another blood meal, and this development was perfect for whipping up anti-science sentiment. When her cell phone rang, Jasmine was not sure she would answer it.

  “Solista pulled out,” Earl said.

  “They pulled out just like that? That fast?” Jasmine asked.

  “Just like that, and thanks, but no thanks. We don’t want to own one of those disease preventing companies if they’re a foolin’ around with the Lord’s work, no matter how careful they’ve been.” Earl was becoming bitter.

  “Well, we’re stopped then,” she said lamely. “I’ve modeled and modeled, and modeled. We have run every diagnostic we have a thousand times. We have nothing left to do but stick it in humans,” she said.

  “How do you say goodbye to thirty-seven million dollars?” Earl said.

  “It’s only three years. These diseases have been around for two-million years. They’ll come back to us when they’re tired of caring for sick people who will never recover,” she said, listening to her own words.

  Herbert’s house in Princeton-By-the-Sea was one of those places the realtors call, “A cute cottage by the sea.” Actually, it was much closer to Earl’s description-a handsome shack.

  The little yard was looking pretty messy now. Jasmine’s father had always kept the yard so nice, but he just couldn’t do much anymore. Jasmine pulled a few weeds on the way to the porch, and tried to straighten the big bird feeder in the yard. She knocked on the door, which swung open.

  Lying on the floor at the foot of the stairs in a pitiful heap was her father, whimpering softly.

  “Father,” Jasmine cried, dropping the grocery box. As she carefully held his head up, he looked at her like a badly hurt child.

  “I really did it this time,” he said, suddenly crying in terrible pain. “Don’t! Don’t try to turn me, the pain is just…” He began crying out in the most pathetic animal cries Jasmine had ever heard. Each high-pitched wail tore her heart out, as she frantically tried to reposition him in the cramped little stairwell.

  “Oh father! Oh father!” she said over and over again, as he clutched her arm so tightly the skin broke. He began to shudder, and turned his face up to her, trying to see through the horrible pain.

  “I, I…,” he said in a hoarse croak and passed out. Jasmine lunged for his wrist to feel his pulse. His arm was so fragile and cold she dropped it for a moment, afraid she would break his wrist, but it was there. She looked down at the battered hand: with joints swollen from arthritis; with blue veins and spidery red capillaries; with skin so thin you could see his pulse through it.

  She could just see the insistent little thumping of his pulse next to the white tendon, defying the world of nothingness. The monster did this. The monster did all this, she thought, in a strange detached moment. It was the silent, unseen insidious monster of time. No wonder life spent so much energy defeating this monster. She stroked and squeezed his long forearm, feeling the rough and bumpy skin. In a moment of real fear, she was finally realizing what death from old age would mean.

  She rocked him gently and felt each heartbeat, remembering the time when she ran her new bike into the clothesline and hit her head. He held her just like this and rocked her gently until the blinding pain went away.

  When the EMT’s arrived, she hesitated for a moment to give him to them. She wanted to hold her proud father through this awful moment: hold him and make the pain go away. The visceral hurting in her father’s cries never left her consciousness for the next two days. The image of his battered hand popped into her mind at odd times, causing her to look down at her own hands, and at the new wrinkles and cracks in her once perfect skin.

  CHAPTER NINE

  As Jasmine turned into the parking lot of Genetechna she could feel the fear and the uncertainty in the air. Genetechna had gone from a hard working, exciting company on the forefront of medicine to a beehive of rumors and fear. The buyout was off. The stock had tanked over fifty percent, and now the company had no product and no income stream. The words death plunge, heard in little snippets of conversation, “Death plunge, Death plunge! Death plunge!”

  It happened fast in biotech, sometimes a matter of days, after an unsuccessful FDA approval process. The day passed slowly with the printers working in every office, and in every lab, printing out resumes. Everyone in the building was on their cell phones and running ou
t for appointments. Blood was in the water.

  The protestors had begun to chant on the street. Their confidence and overbearing stridency went through the heavily tinted windows. Jasmine decided to run a gene array routine, which crashed twice. When she left, she was the last person to leave. The rank injustice of the last two days welled up in her, as abrupt waves made her stand up suddenly and grab the back of her neck. Her neck muscles felt like steel cables.

  So many dilemmas swirled through her mind, and on the way home she almost drove through the red light at Rockaway Beach and had to slam on the brakes. Although it was almost dark, she decided to go to the beach and listen to the pounding surf for a few minutes, hoping the ocean would work its magic and give her mind a few minutes of rest. She pulled into the big parking lot at Linda Mar Beach, patiently waiting for a parking spot. The winter surf was up and the lot was still full of surf- mobiles, as Malia called them.

  Linda Mar was a perfect walking beach, almost flat, with a lovely bowl at the north end. Jasmine liked to walk on the hard wet sand but tonight the surf was too big. The exhausting work of walking through the loose sand got her heart rate going, which felt good, and the loud walloping noise of the waves distracted her from the torrent of feelings.

  She was beginning to feel overwhelmed with responsibilities, emotions, and a series of dilemmas that affected most American scientists. “I’m not a fighter, I’m a scientist, but someone has to fight, suck up, get in the ring, take the abuse, throw the punches, line up the support, and, and…,”she tried to tell herself, but somehow the fight seemed endless, and strangely pointless.

  She thought about Earl and his heartbreaking work with the Progeric children. She thought of his patient, careful advocacy for the beginning of a treatment for these children, no matter how few. She remembered his terrible disappointment when Victor announced the telomerase research was to be superseded by the PIES project, because the market sector was bigger and the development costs lower.

  Suddenly she realized why Marjorie was taking early retirement. Maybe the fight was over. Maybe it was time to move on.

  The taste in her mouth was bitter and new. She was giving up, after bringing a powerful advance to human medicine. She could feel it reaching up for her, massaging her, telling her to stop.

  “What if we could design a gene cluster, and what if we could make an artificial stem cell organ? What if?” she thought, as the beautiful intoxicant of curiosity overcame her and made her smile, all alone at the end of the dark beach.

  “Life is a series of small victories,” she said aloud. Then she shouted,

  “Life is a series of small victories!” It felt good to shout.

  She thought of her mother, slowly going through her old friends in her little red book, and the way she looked at Jasmine. She was so distant and so small. She thought of the horrible cries of her once strong father, in helpless torment at the foot of the stairs, and then she saw Roy, asking his mother if she was going to come with him into death.

  The thoughts came in great surges now. She stared at the big waves, trying to listen to the noise, hoping the sea would work its magic on her mind, but it didn’t. A moment of panic overcame her when she realized she couldn’t do much about the things that were happening to her.

  She started to explore the empty feeling of being a passenger in her own life, in her own field, in her own family, when she realized a big wave had broken just up the beach and the white water had hooked around behind her.

  The water rushed past her feet, the cold forcing a quick little laugh. Her loafers kept slipping in the sand as she tried to walk against the knee-deep white water. When she turned around, the face of the wave was just curling over and it broke with a heavy whooshing thud, violently slamming on her back. Jasmine couldn’t breathe, and she hesitated a moment to struggle to her feet as the white water raced past her. Just as she stood up, the water reversed suddenly, spinning her around, and slapping her on her back again. The icy cold water was rushing down the collar of her coat, pulling her back into an arch. The next wave crashed right on her stomach, pounding the air out of her lungs, and seizing her breathing.

  She felt her feet slip off the sand ledge, and the undertow grab her, pulling her backwards and down into the blackness. She tried to scream, but nothing happened. When she reached the surface, she tried to take a deep breath, but the sting of the cold seawater burned her throat.

  While in a frenzy, she tried to peel the coat off but the sleeves stuck to her skin and only gave a fraction of an inch, no matter how hard she pulled.

  She tried to swim, but she was coughing so hard she had to stop, and was slammed to the bottom by a huge wave. The salt water blasted into her nose forcing her to gag in sharp painful spasms.

  She swam desperately for the surface, but her arms just wouldn’t move, and she began to see blue flashes when she closed her eyes. She broke the surface one more time, just as her lungs were bursting, and turned her head to breath, when she was smacked again in the face, inhaling a mouthful of salt water, shocking her lungs and forcing her to cough underwater.

  The panic began as a desperate pulsing of fear and quickly became a flood of terror. Her violent thrashing in the blackness quickly consumed her strength. Then her ears began to ring. Then it was quiet.

  Suddenly she saw her father, holding out his arms and waving his hands. Then she saw her second grade teacher, standing over her. Next, there was a naked boy, sitting with his back to her. Then there was a man, handing her a degree. Earl was there, the first time she saw him. She saw Malia’s face, as the nurse handed her baby to her. Then her mother was packing for the trip to Sweden. This was all in rapid and impossibly livid flashes.

  The ringing in her ears stopped. The vivid images faded out, and the cold went away. She relaxed, closing her eyes, as the bright blue became a very dark black. She heard a loud buzzing.

  A soft white light came from somewhere far away and rushed to her, blinding her, taking her backwards at an incredible speed, flying so fast, yet so gently. Then it stopped. A soft white light was shining in her eyes, but she felt wonderfully at peace, completely contented and happy.

  Her mother drifted to her, looking at her carefully for a long time, then she smiled. There was no sound. Other people were standing in the light.

  A long time passed. Jasmine tried to explore the gentle waves of complete bliss that washed over her. It was a feeling she had never felt before. It was so intense, full, and perfect.

  The white light became all encompassing, like a strong wind. Suddenly the entire solution to Roy’s condition occurred in her mind as an overwhelming sensation. She saw it all so clearly it was almost painful, and shimmered through her mind in a blinding rush of pure realization.

  “Not now, Pumpkin head, not now,” her mother’s voice was repeating softly, and she faded away. The light slowly dimmed, and she felt a sudden impossible velocity of backward movement, through a long black tunnel. Then the motion stopped, and she felt as though she was in the dark place of nothingness, with no people or light or sound; a place where she would be alone forever. She screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

  Suddenly there was water around her. She could see the streetlights in the parking lot and hear the surf. She was past the breakers now and started treading water, coughing loudly. She was terribly cold. As she turned toward the ocean to get her bearings, a long dark shape moved through the water toward her very fast. She screamed so loud she almost blacked out, flailing the water to get away.

  “You okay, lady?” the surfer asked.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I just want to sit out on the deck for awhile,” Jasmine said, so softly Earl missed it. The salt water in her throat and nostrils burned, and made her hoarse, but she wanted to be outside under the stars.

  Nothing would ever be the same again. The feeling wasn’t really a feeling, but a deep and unshakable understanding. The dilemmas and the anxiety were gone completely. The question of work on a therapy f
or Roy was over. She laughed a little, recalling the towering question of using the technology she and Earl had envisioned in the hot tub to treat people who were aged.

  What was the difference, really? Someone dying of old age was in the identical position that Roy was. Although they had lived a full life, but then, why die at all? Nature had seen fit to produce creatures and plants that do not age, and never died, like sea anemones, and creosote bushes. Then she remembered one of her biochemistry professors saying that whatever occurs in nature, we may consider acceptable.

  For whatever reason, something deep inside Jasmine told her that the extension of human life beyond the arbitrary limits set by evolution was okay, it felt right, and now there wasn’t any question.

  She sat on the deck all the next day in a warm woolen sweater doing nothing. She didn’t read, make calls, take calls, or even eat much.

  She could feel her mind working all by itself. Organizing the effort, prioritizing the work, anticipating the insurmountable problems, but there was no conceptual thinking. She knew the treatment design was there. It was whole, and it was perfect.

  The profound experience and the full day of rest made her feel so calm and self-assured she almost stopped talking. On the way into work Earl talked to Victor and reporters, as the entire biotech world reeled from the human cloning. “I don’t know what it’s all about, Victor says it’s big, that’s all,” Earl said, merging onto highway 380 East. “Maybe the Feds are just going to outlaw scientific knowledge altogether.”

  “Death plunge?” Jasmine asked, not really sure what the cash position of the company was.

  “No, we should be okay for a year, at least. It’s probably Solista circling back for a bargain,” Earl said with a cynical slant. Jasmine noticed little back up, as the commute traffic was noticeably lighter in the Bay Area these days, since industry after industry began outsourcing, including biotech.

  The small conference room was almost full. Jasmine was surprised to see most of the Board of Directors there. Victor walked in, wearing a beautifully cut beige jacket and coral colored shirt. His hand painted silk tie was just a little loud, Jasmine thought. He carefully ushered in a distinguished looking Asian man, and sat at the head of the table.