"I thought you might want to show it to me." Her leg brushes against his.
Andy's mind whirls. "Uh, possibilities. I’ll be right back.”
He quickly decides to head to the restroom and texts Becca to see what her plans are. Just as he gets up from the barstool, he feels his phone vibrate in his pocket. He pulls it out and looks down at a message from Becca—she trumped him.
In car accident. They're taking me to Georgetown U Med Ctr. Can you come?
Andy stares at the message, both concerned and disappointed. He reaches down and taps in the response.
On my way.
Andy uses the restroom and heads back to tell Cathi the breaking news.
"Hey, you won't believe this, but I just got a text. A friend of mine was in a car accident, I’m going to meet her at the ER."
"Was it something I said? Are you joking?"
"No, I wish I was. It was nice seeing you again. Will you take a rain check on the office tour?"
She fumbles through her small clutch, finds a pen, and scrawls her name and phone number on the napkin from under her drink.
"Sure, of course. Here’s my number. Let’s do lunch or something.”
She hands it to him with two hands, touching him for an extra moment before she moves her hands away.
"Yeah, okay."
Fairly certain he will never make that call, Andy turns and pushes through the Monday night football revelers.
The emergency room receptionist repeats herself.
"I'm telling you we have no Rebecca Patricks brought in by any rescue squad. No Patricks on my intake sheets at all, and I’ve been here all evening. Are you spelling her last name correctly?"
"Of course I'm spelling her last name right. She’s my girlfriend, I can spell it. Any chance she got taken somewhere else connected with Georgetown?"
"Can’t think of anywhere else they’d go. This is the only emergency room around here. You can call around to some of the other area hospitals, like GW."
Andy stalks away from her and immediately texts Becca.
Are you here at the ER? At Georgetown?
He waits for what seems an eternity, even though it’s only 60 seconds.
What are you talking about? I'm closing down at the shop.
Andy stares incredulously at the text from Becca. Then he scrolls above to the one he received at the bar to make sure he didn’t read it incorrectly and decides to call her.
"You didn't text me about being in a car accident and meeting you at the ER?"
"No, why?"
"Guess I got a misdirected text message, but I'm looking at it on my phone. Crazy."
Andy heads out of the emergency room.
“You shouldn’t have done that, even if you thought it was the right thing to do,” Solarez tells the young analyst.
“Sir, your instructions were to keep eyes and ears on this target 24/7, and I had no clue who this woman was or what her sudden interest meant. If in doubt, get him out. That’s what my training taught me. I didn’t have time to call for permission. Would you like to know who she is?”
“Let me guess. Chinese operative?”
“No, Melanie Franklin, Paul Franklin’s wife. Andy Michaels had no idea who she really was.”
“She’s trying to seduce him. I didn’t expect that.” Solarez says.
Some kind of sicko payback, yes sir.”
“So, your text created an impromptu exit plan? Extricating him before he explored further. Pretty slick. Sorry I doubted you, but he’ll be wondering where it came from.” Solarez pats the analyst apologetically on the shoulder before walking away.
Chapter 35
Junior crush
Almost no mail ever comes for her. In fact, more still arrives addressed to Kyle Perless, the former farm owner, than to her. Amanda takes them over to the Crossroads Broken Halo rehab facility and asks Helen, the coordinator, to forward them to him at his condo. Once in a while there’s a stray letter to Kent. Every time one arrives it still hits her right in the gut, robbing her of her breath. She thinks of the first time she walked in his room in the farmhouse, the feeling of it all. But this one is addressed to her, so she flips the envelope over and checks the return address as she tears open a corner. If the contents are what she thinks they are, they might help her remember something, anything.
Looking for somewhere comfortable, she walks down the hallway to her room and plops down on the bed, the perfect spot to read her old high school letters she wrote to Jonathan. Before she starts reading, she lays the folded papers down and gets up to light some incense. She blows air over it, ensuring the stick is lit, and takes in the pine-needle scent. Back on the bed, she unfolds several pages and her eyes focus in on the one on top:
Jonathan:
It's so boring here this summer without you. My mom's always trying to do stuff with me. Not what I want to be doing though. I'm doing the club soccer team with Reston and practicing twice a week. Charlyne and Iris and I went to a movie last night at the Starr Center. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were spies or something. I didn't think it was any good.
Bobby Firstine totaled his dad's Suburban after Michael Beasley’s party last Saturday night. Holy shit. The cops arrested him, he flunked the DUI test. Big trouble! His parents were out of town and he’s up shit creek. Wonder where that creek is, anyway. Ha ha.
Jonathan – I miss you sooo much. Can't wait until you're back!! Can you come home now?
xxooxx Amanda
The second page is a photocopy of a handwritten letter, just like the first:
July 16
Jonathan:
I saw your mom at the Giant supermarket with your sister. Your mom's always so nice to me. She wants me to come on another trip with your family. She says the ski trip we went on was one of her favorite family trips ever. Do you remember how cold the weather was at Seven Springs? And the night we had that snowball fight outside the cottage after dinner? Your sister was so mad at you when you stuffed that snow down the back of her coat, I thought she was going to kill you. We have a game tomorrow at the Loudoun Striker Field. You know I hate the Strikers team. They beat us on penalty kicks the last time we played. Anyway, I miss you and wish you were here right now.
xxooxx Amanda
P.S.: What day are you getting home again? I always forget, is it the 15th or the 16th of August? Write me back!!
Instinctively she closes her eyes: Jonathan, in a dark blue puffy ski jacket; chasing his sister, he pounces on her in the snow and stuffs the mushy snowball right between the nape of her neck and the top of her pink coat.
Why didn’t I help her? Why did I laugh at her?
She’s crying. Her brother climbs off. Seeking revenge, she jumps up and grabs any snow she can, throwing it at him, tears running down her cheeks. I’m still laughing. So mean…
“Help me Amanda, help me!”
Oh my God, I remember? Why didn’t I help her? What a bitch I am. I was.
She opens her laptop, finds Jonathan’s profile on Popchat, and sends him a private message:
I got the old letters. Thank you for sending them. Remember when you shoved the snowball down your sister’s ski coat at Seven Springs? I remembered it! Maybe things will keep coming back to me. I saw David the other day, we rode horses here at the farm.
Amanda waits, hoping for a quick response, and just before bedtime she notices his reply:
I thought they might help. Hope to see you later this summer? I’m coming home at some point.
Amanda starts imagining herself getting back together with Jonathan, imagining what that will be like.
Chapter 36
Walston
"Walston, you have any plans tonight?”
"No, Dr. Michaels, why?"
“Wanna have dinner with me? 7:00?”
"Uh, sure, I can hang around."
The semi-private dining area holds only eight tables and is open to supervisory scientists and directors and their guests only. Featuring a special menu no
t unlike an elite resort, this is where Ron eats seven days a week, unless he skips dinner, which he frequently does. It offers white tablecloths, shiny silver utensils, and a second-floor view looking out over the river birch, oak trees, and trimmed hedges dotting the grounds beside the research building. Sometimes he spies a deer wandering warily through the tree line.
After they are seated and order, Ron gets down to business.
“You're quite a thinker, Walston. You seem to enjoy thinking things through, like the big picture, not the small minutiae.”
"Uh, sure Dr. Michaels."
"Call me Ron. No more doctor."
"All right, sir."
The young research scientist is being ultra-careful. He wears a rumpled Tattersall checkered button-down shirt, having ditched his white lab coat earlier. Being in his late 20s, he’s still amazed by how he got here. A recruiter contacted him by email at Stanford and wanted to arrange an interview with an unnamed but prestigious bio-genetics lab. He only learned toward the end of the vetting that the position would be at a facility operating under the general direction of the CIA somewhere on the East Coast and his actual employer would remain confidential. He’d receive a significant raise to work on research having a major impact on all Americans. As soon as the recruiter spoke those words, he knew he would accept the position.
"Walston, do you think about the effects of the typical American living to be 100 or longer?"
"Well sir, sure, we’re all aware our research targets life expectancy.”
Ron stares at one of the empty wine glasses and taps it with his fingernail, creating a high-pitched clinking sound. He watches the waitress enter the kitchen, one of the two swinging doors swooshes toward the dining room and back. The other table across the room is occupied by a couple researchers who aren’t on their project.
"Stem cells are always discussed when we consider how to deliver a telomere solution. But if we have to modify the stem-cell level at birth and let it run its course, do you realize our research would not affect the majority of the population clamoring for solutions to aging?”
“So—you're suggesting we find a different time to transmit the telomere change?”
“Yep. Dozens of genetics labs not only in the United States but in Europe are trying to develop a proprietary medicine that will become the leading anti-aging miracle drug. If our solution only works with newborns, it’ll be of no use to millions of seniors. And we could fall behind the competition if theirs can be applied to the elderly in the next few years.”
"Huh, I hadn’t really thought about it, Dr. Michaels. We’ve been focused on devising a delivery method.”
"I told you, just Ron, not Dr. Michaels. Anyway, our solution must be deliverable at any stage in life, not just birth. Hell, those wanting a magic pill or whatever we come up with aren’t going to be babies or 18-year-olds. They’re going to be 65, 70, 85-year-olds who want to lead meaningful lives for another decade or more. What would you pay if you were, say 70, and you can get a drug that buys you, 10 or 20 more years to live? Even two more decades of decent health. How much would that be worth?”
“A lot. A whole lot.”
“Precisely. It's not a matter of whether we'll come up with the solution, we will. But it must be deliverable at any point in life.”
The waiter presents a bottle of wine to Ron.
"Walston, do you drink red?"
"Sure."
A glass is poured for each of them.
“Resveratrol. Caloric restriction. Do you think they might have some meaningful effect on aging?” Ron asks him.
"Sure, but aren't we shooting light years beyond a phenol like resveratrol? Or a temporary change like caloric restriction? Anti-oxidants, caloric restriction, all those things are efforts to cause an external compound to possibly impact the cell. Altering the internal structure of the cell by modifying and lengthening all the telomeres is a better biological solution to extending its life than using some agents with unclear impacts. If we propagate longer telomeres, that means more series of DNA code to divide, and so on.”
Walston takes a sip of his wine, feeling like he made some darn solid arguments, but another analogy pops into his mind. “It’s the difference between adding a new synthetic oil to an existing car engine that might make it run smoother by lubricating the parts, versus replacing the entire thing with a new one proven to last longer.”
“I considered all the blood treatment methods that could deliver enzymes to coax cells into creating longer telomeres. Some of the presentations were excellent, but I don't think any of them will be viable.” Ron says.
"Why not? A bunch of the things the teams are working on show promise. You lost me."
"None of them will spread fast enough, I mean, to every cell in a human body. Blood transfusions, daily medications, every one of those methods are non-starters. They will either take too long or be too invasive.”
“So, what would be better?"
Ron looks around, then whispers, “Viruses. Because the virus hijacks a cell and directs it to spread the viral code to other cells. And a small number of them can quickly spread throughout the body. They’re micro-robots with one specific task. We've got to create a virus with chromosomal directions to lengthen each telomere. It might carry telomerase, directing cells to lengthen the telomeres, or maybe it carries telomerase and rapamycin. The consumer just swallows a capsule with the viral concoction or something. We gotta figure out that part.”
"Sure, better than transfusions or repeated oral medications, but we can’t control a cold virus much less a telomere-targeting one.”
Michaels taps his fingernail lightly on his glass again, now partially full. "I devour every journal article about viruses as soon as it appears. They're already experimenting with cancer treatments using a virus and have made headway with herpes simplex viruses. Don't you see? A virus is the logical way to spread something rapidly that can structurally change each cell without us doing anything except dropping the virus into the body. It works its way through the bloodstream on its own, targeting the telomeres."
Silence pervades the table for about 30 seconds while they both think this over.
“I read your thesis, Walston. It’s the reason you’re here.”
“You did? How’d you get it?”
“I was searching for viral research and found it. I was intrigued by your thoughts on the herpes simplex virus and your proposition on how to suppress its expression.”
“Wow, I thought I was recruited based on my academic rank.”
“No, I sent our recruiter because of your paper. Now I have a bigger question for you. Let's say we can increase the age of every human being to 100 on average. What becomes of all the pesky diseases and cancers? Alzheimers, ALS, heart disease? Won’t extending lifespan automatically decrease the incidences of these killers known for randomly picking off people before their life expectancies?
“If lengthening the telomeres means longer cell lives, it’s gotta reduce them, because they contribute to thinning out the longest-living humans. I hate to be overdramatic, but you realize we’d effectively be destroying the entire underpinning of natural selection and survival of the fittest, right?” Ron says.
"I agree. But all kinds of modern drugs contribute to that also. Look at GMOs and the chemical-resistant insects now evolving to counteract the new crop chemicals we've developed. We're turning natural selection on its head, creating a world of artificial, unnatural selection, or even worse. We're selecting what we want to do within our own species and without affecting others. No, actually, we’re affecting them too, come to think of it. Longer lives may adversely affect other species by consuming more meat and plant life, by creating massive increases in carbon dioxide, every human expanding their carbon footprint with every additional year they live.” Walston says.
After another slow sip, Walston places his glass back down on the white tablecloth. "I haven't had a discussion like this since grad school biology and genetics."
>
"It’s important for us to consider.” Ron continues. “If we succeed, and the average human lives to be 100 or older, it completely blows up natural selection, which says our species needs to procreate, but once we deliver our kids and prepare them for this world, we’re no longer materially contributing to humankind procreation. What is there, evolution-wise, that makes humankind more successful by having a lot of 100-year-old people hanging around who aren’t contributing more offspring for our species?" Ron says.
"Older persons may contribute other advantages to mankind beyond procreating."
"Give me one.”
"I don't know if I can, Ron," he congratulates himself for remembering to use his first name, “Unless a 100-year-old figures out how to make humans live to be 125, how to utilize renewable resources, or how to ensure it doesn’t adversely affect all the other species on Earth.”
Ron’s young guest looks at his glass, which is about empty. Ron reads the nonverbal cue and fills it before continuing. He takes a sip from his own glass, then continues.
“Switch back to our research projects. Let's say I put you and your team on viruses. We know Rapamycin inhibits TOR, which extends the lifespan in mice even if they're fairly old when treatment begins. And Rapamycin is being used to prevent the immune system from rejecting transplanted organs. It could help for cancer treatment, sure, but may make the body not quite as capable of fighting other infections. What if the treated cells show increased chromosomal mutations? What if what we're doing could be the ultimate genetic modification, the stuff you read about in sci-fi books decades ago?"
“Maybe if we could lengthen telomeres without genetically modifying the cell, just kind of coaxing the longer telomere in a stem cell and then using—"
Ron cuts off Walston’s brainstorm. “I’m sure you studied something called antagonistic pleiotropy theory in one of your post-graduate classes.”
Targeting the Telomeres, A Thriller Page 10
