Forever and Ever

by Dan A. Baker

  “Who’s Sid?” Jasmine asked.

  “Sid Vicious,” he said, holding the door open for Jasmine.

  “Is he here?” Jasmine asked.

  “Not today. He probably went to Mice For Less.”

  Jasmine looked into the dimly lit trailer as the large pale white shape became visible. “You have your own MRI?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “Ever scanned a Pizza?”

  “You do your research In silico?” Jasmine said. Looking at the powerful new mini-mainframe computer, as Will powered it up.

  “In Silico and In fedexia,” Will said, opening a refrigerator full of tissue samples. “They’re getting better and better. The guys at TissueX are the best. About two more generations and we’ll have the stem cell organ working fine. Just need to work out some ducting issues,” he said, holding up a small red pear shaped organ. Jasmine looked at it closely, suddenly laughing.

  “It has a logo,” she said, pointing to a small brand on the side.

  “Yeah, the guys at TissueX like to screw around a little. That one ran for about ninety days in a pig, then it quit for some reason,” Will said, tossing it back into the refrigerator. “But in the ninety days it pumped out about eight-hundred million cloned embryonic stem cells that completely healed all the damage we could heap on that poor pig, and it tasted good, too.”

  “It worked?” Jasmine asked.

  “Yeah, kind of like an Italian car. Hard to start when it’s cold, leaks a little, but it produces a lot of excitement,” Will said, draping his arm over the refrigerator door.

  “I can’t believe you actually have it working. That’s at least ten years of development,” Jasmine said, crossing behind Will to see the little organ.

  “In the No-No world, it’s ten-years of work. In the Yes-Yes world, a year is a very long time. There are some people in a big hurry, and they’re very interested in this little puppy.”

  Jasmine looked into Will’s eyes again, trying to absorb what he was saying through the infatuation, and the evocative smell of his dirty T-shirt. “I can’t quite believe I’m seeing this. Is this the entire lab?” Jasmine said, deeply impressed that the kind of work Will was doing could be done in such a small space.

  “Well, I have a few satellite campus buildings.”

  “But, you’d need…surgical suites, and DNA arrays, and …”

  “Not anymore. All I need is this,” he said, throwing down a current issue of Biotech News, and this.” Will held up a platinum Visa card.

  “The same thing that happened to the PC industry is happening to the biotech industry. Hundreds of small companies giving you anything you want. No labs, no grants, no papers to publish, no bioethics boards to blow.” Will stopped, realizing he had a huge smile on his face.

  “And you just do science,” Jasmine said, surprised to hear the pleading tone in her voice.

  “And you just do science,” Will said.

  “Where did you get all the human eggs? Jasmine asked suddenly, looking at the counts on the egg board.”

  Will pointed to the back of the trailer with one hand. Jasmine looked at him for a long time. “Mexico?” she asked finally.

  “Low cost producer. Who will you call when you want pig eggs, even long pig eggs?”

  “And what about a clinic?”

  “Moonshine,” he said, scrolling through a website. “The Swiss started the whole idea of cell therapy, but that was just a way to get rich people to visit Switzerland.”

  “You’re cloning embryonic stem cells and…”

  “Letting them flow ever so gently into the arms of the moneyed elite,” he said in a goofy little song. “Next time you’re feeling a little beat up, try a couple hundred million of your own stem cells,” he said, turning the label holders around so Jasmine could see the names on the cell incubators. “It was Nielsen’s idea, and it’s only a hundred and fifty thousand per treatment. Keeps out the rough trade, and gives us lunch money,” he said, humming softly.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” Jasmine said, genuinely shocked.

  “Neither can I. If Earl and the Genetechna board had any guts or vision we would be doing this with a market cap of five-billion, with a long list of prominent, very wealthy patients.”

  “How do you get away with this, Will? This is highly illegal,” Jasmine said, skipping the painful subject of Earl’s past refusal to help him pursue stem cell research.

  “Well, let’s put it this way. The patients who come to the clinic are prescribed an IV treatment of vitamin B, hormones, a few growth factors, and some high-end anti-oxidants. I do animal research here. Sometimes, a flask of cells spills into a treatment. It happens all the time. The funny thing is, the spills always contain the patient’s exact DNA. I don’t know how that happens.”

  Jasmine had to laugh, really laugh. This is how science was conducted in the dark ages, she thought, underground. Suddenly she wondered what they would call the age they were living in now, and she asked Will.

  “The age of bad choices,” he said, without thinking.

  “You do animal research too?” Jasmine asked, noting that the embryos had labels as pig embryos.

  “Sure, you helped in that area quite a bit. Do you remember your analogs for cross species data translation? Very handy, and the price was right,” Will said, clicking through several web pages.

  Jasmine chuckled a little, remembering the struggle she had with the Board when they posted the cross-species translation analogs she had developed with Rammy. “We only got one big donation for that one,” she said.

  “I know, I saw the check,” Will said, leaning over to smell her soft blond hair.

  The trip back on the big deck boat went surprisingly fast. The warm dry air and the sun on her face forced Jasmine to throw her head back and enjoy the moment. Will looked over at her. “You might start liking it out here,” he said over the roar of the V-8 engine.

  Jasmine looked out at the Martian like landscape, and felt the emptiness of the vast sea of space around her. The tension began to peel off and blow away with every mile. “I might,” she said.

  “This town has something else I like,” he said. “It has a great restaurant with a fifty-gallon margarita. Come on.” The short drive to the restaurant in Will’s black Jeep gave Jasmine a moment to absorb the breathtaking events.

  After the waiter set down the drinks in the restaurant next to the London Bridge, Jasmine asked him the question that had been on her mind all day.

  “Do you think you’ll be arrested?” Jasmine asked.

  “No,” Will said. “That’s why I’m here. Arizona is a place where if you leave people alone, they will leave you alone. Did that woman look familiar in the clinic today?”

  “Not to me.”

  “She’s Governor Stile’s wife. Nielsen has many friends in this state. They mostly think I’m just another Dr. Feelgood. And then the Feds, well, there aren’t any,” Will said. “They’re all over there,” he pointed over his shoulder to California, across the river. “Besides, those are pig embryos.”

  Jasmine looked at Will, trying to shake off her desire for him. “Earl has a patient, an eight year old Progeric boy. We, we… just don’t feel like watching him die. Marjorie is going to help us treat his circulatory system, so we can keep him alive another year or so and…”

  “Why don’t you toss in an even six-hundred million embryonic stem cells that are Progeria gene corrected? He’ll be in a much better position to handle his new Mighty Mouse heart,” Will said, finishing his giant Margarita in three long gulps, hoisting it high to the waitress for a refill.

  “You could do that? Clone that many cells for us?”

  “Sure, with or without logos,” Will said, laughing wildly.

  Will was like Marjorie, and other fiercely intelligent people. He was a little crazy.

  “We thought if we could keep him alive another year, maybe two…”

  “The ASCO would be ready?”

  “We were
hoping to have a trial gene therapy by then, but if an ASCO was ready, it would be wonderful,” she said.

  “You want stock, or high performance?” Will continued.

  Not sure if he was serious, she said slowly. “What’s the difference?”

  “One will give you normal performance and one will give you high performance,” he said, dragging it out.

  “I give up.”

  “People are tweakers, Jasmine. We have tweaked everything, so why not tweak a few cells here and there? If you want a red blood cell, why not hotrod the hemoglobin a little? If you want a bone cell, why not have a more resilient one? That’s mostly what I’m doing now; I’m hot-rodding,” he said, laughing his crazy laugh again, “accelerating the big one.”

  Jasmine looked at him for a long time, feeling his restless, wild intellect and the danger there. “The big one?” she asked.

  “Why not,” he replied.

  “Are you going to tell me what the big one is?”

  “No.” Will’s monster margarita arrived. He took a pencil from behind his ear and swirled it in tight little figure eights.

  “No?” Jasmine persisted.

  “The big one is not on the discussion list. The ASCO is, but not the big one,” he said, looking at her intently.

  Jasmine paused, not quite sure what to do. Will was an idea man, and idea men were dangerous. “What do we need for a stock ASCO in 12 months? We’ll have some of our own money,” she said finally, in a distracted way.

  “Money doesn’t exist in this world,” he lamented.

  “How about burn time,” Jasmine asked, turning her chair to him.

  “I need two-hundred hours soon,” he explained.

  “Can’t you buy a supercomputer cluster,” she asked.

  “Not that one. Still a licensed machine, but oh how sweetly it models.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, but I don’t think Sunahara will let us sublease,” she said.

  “We’ll work something out,” he stated, turning away from her. “We stick together in the underground, and we drive away from the dummies at a high rate of speed.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Victor liked to turn his back to people in his office in his big black leather chair and talk to the wall. “I’m sure they’ll be disappointed. They wanted you both on through human trials, at least through the UK trials anyway,” Victor said, convincingly. “You sure you don’t want a few years in sunny London?”

  “We’ve thought it over, Victor, and we’re ready for a clean break. We have already written the human trial protocols, and Jasmine finished the last of the modeling last month. They don’t really need us,” Earl said dryly.

  “You could train a monkey to do that work.”

  “You’re not getting near the Telomerase project Earl, if that’s what you have in mind,” Victor said bluntly. “They want to sit on that patent suite.”

  “I’m quitting, Victor. We’re going to buy a boat and cruise for a couple of years,” Earl said, watching closely to see if Victor believed him.

  “Maybe you can come to some of the Maxi races,” Victor said, preoccupied with his computer screen. “Maguey,” he said in whisper,

  “God damn it!”

  “You’re going to Mexico?” Earl asked.

  “No! I don’t like Mexico,” Victor snapped back.

  “Isn’t that where Maguey is?” Earl asked, sitting up in his chair to see the monitor.

  “No, no it’s not! I was just surfing,” Victor said quickly hitting the monitor off button. “What are you going to buy?” Victor asked, jotting notes in a black daybook.

  “We’re buying a Farr fifty-eight, with an open transom. It’s great for diving. We might even race it a little,” Earl said.

  “Nice boat, great boat. Yeah, uh, I’ll be over there for a year or so, maybe more on this acquisition, and then I’m going to buy a Maxi. I might even do a Rolex,” he added.

  “You can have the South Atlantic. That’s one hell of a tough course,” Earl said, tired of Victor’s bravado.

  “Well, since you don’t want to work for Sunahara, they might want to shut down a little early,” Victor said, taking a call.

  “Fine with me,” Earl said flatly, annoyed with Victor’s attitude.

  Jasmine watched Malia work in the company’s Bioinformatics lab, impressed at how much she had learned on her own. She carefully filed the data DVD’s and checked them into the run logs. Jasmine just tapped on the three DVD’s on her desk, and Malia knew. She knew they were not going into the library.

  Jasmine had been able to run several routines and was finally getting an idea of how many genes they would need to design and put on the artificial chromosome, to reverse Roy’s condition.

  Only about ten would require radiation modulation. With the six-hundred-million stem cells Will had promised, it might just work. Genetic engineering had finally arrived, she thought. If nature doesn’t give you the gene you need, you can just build it by chemical synthesis.

  Jasmine felt the exhilarating thrill of science again for the first time in several years. She looked at the display monitors for a few moments, realizing this was exactly what Marjorie had said. That it was a seeing machine, a vastly powerful machine, and it could take data and produce a picture of life’s molecular engines. In a moment of panic, she realized that it might be gone in two months.

  While driving home, both she and Earl struggled with the complex emotions coursing through them. Twice, she started to say something, finally reaching a point where she could identify her feelings, only to stop. Earl looked over at her and gently held her hand. “Its time to move on, it’s time to get goin’, what lies ahead, I have no way of knowin’. It’s time to move on. It’s time to get goin’.” I heard that on the radio yesterday. Tom Petty is talking to us.”

  “I wish I knew where we were a-going,” she said, starting to feel the anxiety rise again.

  The drive home seemed longer and slower. Events were happening so fast, even small delays seemed endless. She ran up the stairs from the garage and quickly ran their net worth calculator on the computer. She was surprised it exceeded twenty-million dollars. For a couple with no real interest in money they had done all right, she thought. “Will we lose it all?

  “There’s an emancipated woman!” Earl said, as Marjorie strode out on the deck. “How does it feel?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve only been out of the lab for three days,” Marjorie said, but she was beaming, and looking very relaxed.

  They shared a bottle of Earl’s favorite Berringer chardonnay on the deck as the setting sun lit up the sky. Jasmine suddenly felt like a hot tub, after the flight back from Las Vegas.

  “How was our wild and crazy friend? I assume you found him,” Marjorie said, throwing off the big towel, and slipping into the hot tub.

  “I did find him. He went back into medicine in a quiet little clinic in a quiet little town in a very big desert, on a very big lake,” Jasmine said in a little singsong, for no particular reason.

  “Is he behaving himself these days?” Marjorie asked.

  “No. But maybe that’s a good thing,” Jasmine said. “I forgot it’s been almost two years since he left Boston,” she added.

  “A man like Will can do a lot of damage in two years,” Earl said.

  They both looked at Jasmine. “Actually, he’s made some spectacular advances in those two years,” she said. “He hooked up with the sector leaders in organ printing and tissue engineering to build an artificial stem cell organ. It’s actually quite simple. He seeds the inner lining with the cloned embryonic stem cells, lying in a bed of ducts, and gives it a post capillary blood supply. In the pig they used an adrenal duct.”

  Marjorie was shocked. “And it worked?”

  “He said he was able to track about three-hundred-million stem cells a month from the prototype in the pig. They induced severe cardiac damage, removed all the lining from the upper leg joints, and a few other things and the stem cells fixed it al
l.”

  “Three-hundred-million a month,” Marjorie asked, breathless.

  “That’s what he said. He is also able to grow some staggering amounts of embryonic stem cells. He suggested that we infuse about sixty-million cells when we treat Roy’s endothelial system,” she said, watching the response carefully.

  “Sixty-million embryonic stem cells?” Earl said. That’s incredulous!

  “We send down the nucleus and he clones sixty-million stem cells, just like that? Where does he get the stem cells?” Marjorie asked.

  “Low cost producer,” Jasmine said, recalling Will’s reply.

  “This doesn’t involve any, any trade in body parts or anything does it?” Earl asked.

  “No, he said they have several little clinics in Mexico and they pay the women, treat them, and collect the eggs. The women have already had several children already. That’s what he told me,” Jasmine said.

  “How does he get away with it? Well, wait a minute. It’s only illegal if you use Federal money, here, and I don’t think it’s illegal to ship human cells across the border, or is it?” Marjorie asked.

  “Technically, it isn’t illegal,” Jasmine said, finally realizing the genius in Will’s operation.

  “And it isn’t illegal to conduct research on…

  “Synthetic biological material,” Earl finished Marjorie’s sentence.

  “And put them into animals,” Jasmine finished.

  “Roy is not an animal,” Earl said quickly. “We know that what we’re talking about to save Roy’s life is illegal, because we will be using unapproved treatments that use patented biological material,” Earl said.

  “If we administer them here in the U.S.,” Jasmine said, deciding to fly her idea of treating Roy in Mexico, “we’ll be in trouble.” If we actually administer the treatment in a foreign country, we are out of the jurisdiction of the Federal government, at least,” Jasmine said.

  “Puerto Penasco?” Earl said.

  “How did you know?” Jasmine said.

  “I looked at Lake Havasu on the map. Do you remember how we talked about having the boat trucked home from San Felipe instead of sailing it home? Puerto Penasco is right across the Sea of Cortez from San Felipe,” Earl said.