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Forever and Ever

Page 29

by Dan A. Baker


  “Well I hope I look as good as you do when I’m almost sixty,” Malia said.

  Veta stood patiently while Malia and Jasmine caught up. Jasmine noted she was carrying a small canvas bag with pads and pencils.

  “Hello again, Jasmine,” she said and hugged Jasmine carefully. “You do look terrific,” Veta said, looking carefully at Jasmine.

  “Thank you,” Jasmine said.

  Veta looked at her, suddenly reaching out and touching her arm. “Your skin is beautiful! Doesn’t the dry air and sun affect your skin?”

  Jasmine was more than a little annoyed at her gesture, and answered her question while walking away. “No, no it doesn’t.”

  “Where’s Will, Mom?” Malia asked, as they walked into the big house.

  “He’s in Phoenix for the rest of the week, doing some computer work.” Jasmine did her best to sound boring.

  “My god, a Venter 237,” Koji said, looking at Will’s mini-mainframe in the big garage. “I didn’t know these were out yet. It’s so small, Malia! Come look at this new Venter! Can you imagine it? He has a mainframe this fast, and it is this small! It’s incredible and extremely expensive.”

  “Forget the computer, Malia, look at this view!” Veta yelled from the huge living room. They all hurried out to the pool and stopped when they saw the view. The dark green lake looked like a huge mirage at the base of the stark treeless mountains.

  “Mom, there’s like no trees on those mountains,” Malia said.

  “Perhaps they should name it the Edward Teller Memorial Forest,” Koji said, referring to the Father of the hydrogen bomb.

  The house was on the perimeter of the desert on the northern end of the city, with no houses to the north. Malia walked over to the wall around the pool and looked out at the desert. “There’s nothing there,” she said.

  “I think I like nothing,” Koji said standing next to Malia.

  Malia turned back to Jasmine and smiled. “It’s great to see you, Mom,” she said, and dove into the pool.

  The rest of the day spent swimming, the obligatory tour of the London Bridge, and a nice lunch at Shugrue’s.

  “They must have damaged it during shipment from the Thames,” Koji said, to the tour operator, commenting on the chunks of rock missing from the eastern support of the bridge.

  “It was the blitz,” the tour operator said. “That damage was from German bombs during the war.”

  “Oh,” Koji said, quietly turning as they went under the graceful arches of the beautiful old bridge.

  “I just can’t believe this place.” Malia said, looking back at the jade green water, and the London Bridge framed with palm trees on sandy beaches.

  “It’s a great place to live,” Jasmine said, enjoying seeing Malia again. As the paddlewheel, tour boat headed down the narrow channel, several high-powered cigarette boats idled past, with the obligatory hot rod flames and babes with G-string bikinis and sparkling pasties splayed over the big boats. The thumping music from their stereos and the loud bracka da bracka from the straight exhaust pipes, ending conversation.

  “This is funny, Mom,” Malia said in Jasmine’s ear. “So much for treading lightly.”

  Jasmine looked at the long line of garish boats and raw display of opulence. The red ski boat almost disappeared in the traffic, until Jasmine was able to make out the woman in the straw cowboy hat sitting on the wake board rack. She was laughing hysterically, and holding a big insulated drinking cup.

  “Malia, look up here! That’s the famous Topock gorge.” Jasmine frantically tried to get Malia over to the starboard side of the boat to look north, but it was too late.

  “Hi Malia!” Darla yelled above the hip-hop beat. Malia was stunned. Darla looked about forty, a very good forty.

  “Mom, that’s Darla! I thought she was sick!” Malia said.

  “She was,” Jasmine said, slipping into her mode of quiet acceptance.

  “But Mom, she looks …” Malia walked to the rail and waved.

  Darla suddenly stood up and pulled up her shirt to her chin, exposing her breasts, shot her hand in the air, rocking out with the music and laughing so loudly, it carried over the throbbing engines and music.

  “Who’s that? Veta asked.

  “She’s an old friend of the family,” Malia said.

  Jasmine looked at Malia. She was just able to control the urge to stare at her intensely, but conveyed a pleading look instead.

  “Is she staying with your mother?” Veta asked.

  “She’s just here for few days.” Jasmine said, and went below. Jasmine hurried the rest of the tour of the town, and skipped a stop at the grocery store. Darla didn’t have a cell phone, so all Jasmine could do was hope for the best. At least she didn’t look sun burned.

  The long interview went quite well, Jasmine thought. She had asked Veta to delete the place of the interview, which was concurred. After all, Jasmine was still a grieving widow, and this helped.

  The last question hung in the air for a long time.

  “Will you join the growing movement of American scientists protesting the ban on stem cell research and human trials testing in gene therapy?” Veta asked.

  “I don’t plan any work in retirement. I may become involved in the movement to liberate American science at a later date, but I need some personal time, just now,” Jasmine said.

  “Do you think you will be awarded a Nobel Prize for your single gene disease therapy work?”

  “The work I did on the PIES project was basically applying known automated techniques to eliminate single gene diseases. My team developed several new processing and computational approaches that made this effort possible.” Jasmine started to get up.

  “You must have been very disappointed when…” Veta’s question trailed off as Jasmine stood up, straining to hear the voice on the answering machine in the kitchen. When it ended, she sat down again.

  “You must have been disappointed when the human trials for the PIES project were halted by the President’s order…”

  The phone rang again. Jasmine excused herself and walked quickly over to the sliding glass door as the beep finished.

  “Jasmine, help, help! I’m in jail! I’ve been arrested, and I don’t have any money!” Jasmine hoped it was just a joke. “Really, I have been arrested and I’m in jail. It’s cold in here, and I don’t have any clothes.” Jasmine picked up the phone. “Jasmine, they arrested me!” Darla yelled into the phone.

  “They arrested you?” Jasmine asked, as Veta crossed the deck.

  “Yes! They arrest everyone here! It’s how they make money, I guess. Come and get me and bring, uh, a thousand dollars,” Darla said, suddenly becoming sullen.

  “Why did they arrest you?” Jasmine asked as Veta stood next to her.

  “They arrested me for flashing my tits! I thought they were just going to give me a ticket, or two tickets, but they arrested me! My first offence-how rude!” Darla almost yelled into the phone.

  “I’ll be right down,” Jasmine said.

  “Is there a problem?” Veta asked, watching Jasmine carefully.

  “I just need to run out for a few minutes and help a friend.”

  The parking lot of the huge police building in Lake Havasu was completely full. Every few minutes a steel door would open and a young person would come out, tearing off their pink plastic bracelets and throwing them up in the air to the hoops of their friends. Jasmine finished filling out the bail forms and writing the check.

  “It’s always been this way here,” the young women said. “They arrest everyone they can, and they have a thousand dollar minimum bail. Most people are from out of town, so they end up with the bail money,” she said, peeling off the pink copies for Jasmine. “It’s a racket!”

  “They arrest tourists all the time?” Jasmine asked, wondering about the justification.

  “They arrest everyone. The State has never made them stop, so they’ve built up a big police force and they arrest two or three hundred people on a big
weekend,” she said. You need to watch what you do here. It’s like a weird little police state,” she said, ominously. “It’s kind of like Mississippi, the Bible belt, and a police state which is a bad combination.”

  When the door opened, Jasmine froze. Darla stood in the doorway with a muscular police matron holding her up, with a blue jail blanket draped around her shoulders. She was badly sunburned, and tried to manage a smile, but couldn’t.

  “What fun,” she said meekly.

  “Darla, you, you’re burned to a crisp!” Jasmine said quietly, belting her into the car.

  “I’ve never been arrested before! After all the Civil Rights marches, and anti-war demonstrations, and even my time in East Berlin, this has never happened to me. I didn’t even have the biggest tits!” she said, laying her head back on the seat. The convulsions started in her hands, quickly shaking her whole body.

  The ten blocks to the hospital seemed like ten miles. The struggle to get her into the emergency room was a tense blur. Jasmine tried to rehearse how she would handle Darla’s death when the young intern motioned her into a small examination room. “I think your friend will live, but she experienced three very serious cardiac arrest sequences, which we were barely able to overcome with the defibrillator. She’ll recover and be in the hospital for at least a week, but I have one question,” he said looking at Jasmine.

  “Yes?” she answered.

  “You’ve listed her age as seventy-six, was that a mistake?” he asked.

  Jasmine froze. “I don’t actually know her background, maybe it should be, uh…”

  “Forty six?” the Doctor asked.

  “Yes, that would be about right,” Jasmine said.

  Jasmine walked out into the nicely decorated reception area and sat on the curved couch, trying to think through the possibilities. Could it have been dehydration, shock, insulin overload, or anaphylaxis? Severe UV damage could shift some of the gene expression in her skin fibroblasts, but that should only be temporary. What about alcohol? Darla never drank much, except for a little red wine occasionally. A young doctor and a man in a polyester coat approached her.

  “Jasmine Metcalf?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes,” Jasmine replied.

  “I’m Dr. Leone and this is Mr. Seers, our Admissions Director. We understand that you brought Ms. Speakes in?”

  “Yes I did,” Jasmine said.

  “She’s very ill. She went into cardiac arrest and almost died a few minutes ago, and she’s on life support at this time,” Dr. Leone said.

  Jasmine folded her hands in her lap and tried to control the flood of emotions.

  “Is she taking any drugs, or is she on any kind of therapy that you know of?” the doctor asked.

  “Why do you ask?” Jasmine said, lamely.

  “The reaction to her sunburn has been very abnormal. We were barely able to keep her heart beating. There seemed to be some kind of blockage of the signals to her heart, which has since dissipated, but none of the cardiac specialists we have here at the hospital have ever seen this condition, and we wondered what her medical history is,” he said.

  “She’s always been very healthy to our knowledge, Jasmine said. “I’m just an old friend though,” she added.

  “You listed her age as seventy-six on the admissions form here,” the other man said softly. “Is this correct?”

  Jasmine lapsed into a moment of non-reply that she did not intend.

  “Mrs. Metcalf?”

  “I just guessed,” she said finally.

  “She appears to be a much younger patient, and age is an important consideration in treatment. Do you know her correct age?”

  “Forty-six,” Jasmine said. “She would be about forty-six, I believe.”

  “That sounds about right,” the man said, starting to walk off.

  “We are required to ask another question,” he said.

  “Yes?” Jasmine asked.

  “Is she using any illegal drugs to your knowledge?” he asked, looking directly at Jasmine.

  “Of course not, I mean, not that I know of,” Jasmine said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “She was dying is why,” Jasmine said, working very hard to keep the edge off her voice. “Just like Roy.”

  “Mom, how could you go from a straight arrow, t-crossing, i-dotting scientist, to… mad scientist, just like that?” Malia asked.

  “Your father and I watched American science change dramatically, from a benevolent, academic, humanistic field, to a corporate feedlot in ten short years. We’re scientists, and we want to do science, and we want to save our patients’ lives, and that’s why,” Jasmine said, very irritated with Malia.

  “What’s going to happen when the story gets out?” Malia asked, with a nasty note of cynicism.

  “We don’t really know, but we do need another year of obscurity. That would help tremendously. I am going to ask you to help us with that, as it could mean Darla’s and Roy’s lives. Help us work quietly for another year, that’s all I ask,” Jasmine said, reaching out to hold Malia’s hand.

  “Mom, did you, I mean did you treat yourself yet?” Malia asked.

  “No. I have taken some stem cell treatment, to prevent any further damage from aging, but I won’t treat myself for a very long time.”

  “Why?” Malia asked honestly.

  “Because, I think there will be many adjustments, many developments until your father’s work is refined to the point where we can be sure it’s safe and effective, that’s all.”

  “So Darla was a guinea pig? You’re using her as a guinea pig?”

  “She was dying. She chose to help us. She chose to live,” Jasmine said, with growing irritation.

  “What’ll happen to her now?” Malia asked.

  “Well, if she survives the treatment, she’ll regress in body age to about age thirty, and she’ll remain at that age for as long as she likes.”

  “And everything will come back, that is, can she have babies and…”

  “Sure. She’ll need donor eggs or donor embryos, but yes, she’ll function as a normal thirty year old woman,” Jasmine said, standing up to watch the last rays of the day spread across the sky.

  “What if something goes wrong?” Malia asked.

  “She’ll die,” Jasmine said.

  “What about the rich people? Are they helping you and Will with this?”

  “Yes,” Jasmine answered immediately.

  “That sucks, Mom! Those people are ruthless, and they’ll do anything to anyone to get more money and power and more…

  ” “Life,” Jasmine finished the sentence for her.

  “And you’re cool with that? Helping those people live forever while everyone else dies?” Malia asked.

  “Yeah, I’m cool with that, because I don’t think it will be long before this treatment is available to everyone. Your father and I were going to see to that. The future has just arrived a little early is all, and your father and I hoped we could help in guiding the world through this,” Jasmine said.

  “I’m scared for you, Mom. I mean this is really big, and if something goes wrong, or if the rich people want to keep it to themselves, they could do some really terrible things,” she said.

  “We passed that decision point a long time ago, and we made the decision to move ahead for a lot of reasons, and I do have some fears, but my involvement is almost finished, and I feel like we owed it to your father to continue his work,” Jasmine said softly. “Roy is still alive and so is Darla,” she added.

  “I’ll help you keep it quiet. We’re leaving tomorrow, and Veta doesn’t know anything about Darla, so I’ll just keep quiet. You gave her a nice interview anyway. By the way, when do they make the Nobel announcement?” Malia asked.

  “Soon,” Jasmine said.

  “There was a lot of white light,” Darla said weakly, picking at the skin on her arm. “Now I’m sure I don’t want to die, because the colors are terrible, all washed out. I hate pastels,” she added, while the b
uzzing of the MRI drowned her words out.

  Will and Easton looked at the images all day, and shipped samples of her blood out to labs all over the country. Will ran the digital EKG over and over on the big flat panel display. “I can see why the cardiologists were freaking out,” he said, stopping at several places in the display where the signals to the heart simply stopped.

  “How?” he kept saying. “How could overexposure to UV cause a shutdown in the heart?”

  “For the life of me, I can’t see where any of the genes in your treatment could have caused that,” Easton said, cracking his knuckles. “It must have been some kind of pre-existing cardiac condition.”

  “Darla, have you ever had sudden heart palpitations?” he asked her when the MRI table stopped.

  “When the sex was good,” she said.

  They all laughed, which echoed around the trailer for a few minutes.

  “I mean, has your heart ever stopped, or have you had dizzy spells?”

  “Oh no, my heart has always been good, as far as I know,” she said.

  “And you didn’t drink that day?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t like industrial beer, and that’s all they had,” Darla said.

  “Whatever it was, it was related to her sunburn,” Jasmine said as Will’s cell chimed quietly.

  Will answered the small phone, and stood up suddenly. “What do you mean it’s gone!” he yelled into the phone. Jasmine and Easton looked at each other. “Everything?” he asked, then slowly folded the silver phone.

  “The 9900 is gone,” he snapped.

  “Gone?” Jasmine gasped.

  “Rammy said he came back from Yosemite and it was gone, the containers, the mainframe, the console, everything,” Will said.

  “Fujitsu?” Jasmine asked.

  “They would have used the police. No, it was probably stolen,” Will said.

  Marjorie walked in the cramped trailer after arriving from San Francisco. “Hello, comrades,” she chortled, looking at each face for a moment. “Who died?” she asked.

  “The 9900, it’s gone,” Jasmine said.

  “Gone?” Marjorie said, arching her eyebrows.

 

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