Syndrome

by Thomas Hoover

  "And you think we should do this? The world would be thrown into chaos."

  "But look at the incredible cure rate we've already effected here using the telomerase enzyme. When our clinical trials for the NIH are announced, it will be the medical equivalent of the shot heard round the world. Nothing we know will ever be the same again."

  "That's where you should leave it. To go further is obscene."

  "I fear recent events may have proved you right. Against my better judgment, I went ahead and experimented with the Beta procedure. And the results thus far have turned out to be disastrous."

  "I guess you're referring to Kristen."

  "One day I casually mentioned the Beta to Winston Bartlett and without telling me, he brought it up with Kristen. She insisted on trying it." His expression grew increasingly pained. "I want you to know I was against it. I warned her that it was highly experimental, that I could not guarantee what the side effects might be, but she begged me to do it anyway. Then Bartlett essentially ordered me to do it."

  "So what happened?"

  He grimaced. "I got the dosage wrong. That's my best guess. After I performed the Beta on Kristen, the enzyme was stable in her for over two months and appeared to be having an effect. All signs of aging abruptly stopped. It gave me a false sense of confidence. Also, there were no side effects. That was when Bartlett wanted to try it too. So I went ahead with him. But then, to my horror, she started evincing side effects. I now believe the dosage I gave her was badly calibrated. It was too high-by how much I think I've finally determined-and the enzyme eventually began replicating too rapidly. It got away from me." He paused. "What happened to Kristen, we now call the Syndrome, for lack of a better name. And it's about to happen to Bartlett."

  "But what does all this have to do with me? Why was I brought out here with all kinds of bribes and pressure and-"

  "Do you want a simple answer? Of excruciating honesty?"

  "It would be helpful."

  "The simple answer is, Winston Bartlett has an extremely rare blood type. It's AB. You have the same."

  "How did you know-"

  "Your brother. You see, I need to try to develop antibodies to the telomerase enzyme that won't be rejected by his immune system. I think there's an outside chance that I could culture antibodies taken from someone with the same blood type and use them to arrest the rampant multiplying of telomerase enzyme about to begin in Bartlett's blood."

  "I'm here because you'reusingme!" She couldn't believe her ears. And Grant had set it up. No wonder he was finally feeling guilty.

  "I just need to borrow your immune system for a few days. It's very safe."

  "Idon'tthink so. I'm out of here."

  "Actually, the procedure is already under way. While Debra was taking your last blood sample, she also injected a minuscule amount of the telomerase enzyme in active form, the proprietary version used in the Beta, into your bloodstream. Don't worry. It's perfectly safe. The dosage was so minute that there's no way it could have any effect on you."

  "You have got to be kidding!" My God, she thought,I could sue the hell out of-

  "Don't worry, think of it like a smallpox vaccination." He paused. "Now, though, I have to tell you that I just learned the initial dosage probably didn't do the trick. The amount of antibodies created was, unfortunately, minuscule. Which means we need to go to a slightly higher infusion. But again, don't worry. It's still safe."

  "I can't believe I'm hearing this," she said finally, gasping for air in her fury. "You didn't ask-"

  "Alexa," he cut in, "right now I have something like two weeks left to try to head off the Syndrome in Winston Bartlett. If we achieve that, then I'm hopeful the antibodieshecreates can be successfully used to start reversing the Syndrome in Kristen. We will know how to manage the Beta. Who knows where that could lead? But it all begins with you. You're the clean slate we need to start."

  "Before we go one step further, I want to know what, exactly, happens with the Syndrome. I think I know, but I'd like to hear-"

  "Something that's too bizarre to believe. It literally defies every natural law we've ever known."

  He couldn't bring himself to put it in words, she thought, but she knew she’d guessed right the first time. The Syndrome.

  Kristen Starr wasgrowing younger. That was the horrible development and nobody could deal with it.

  Andthey couldn't stop it.

  Karl Van de Vliet had created a monstrosity.

  "I amsoout of here," she said struggling to rise from the wheelchair. "If you try to keep me here, that's kidnapping. We're talking a capital crime."

  "Alexa, I understand you're upset, but you're in no condition to be discharged. I'm very sorry." He pushed a red button on a radio device on his belt. There was genuine agony in his eyes. "I've never in my life coerced a patient in any way. But you have to understand that so much is dependent on you now. There are no easy choices left."

  He's lost control of the situation here now, she told herself. He's truly terrified of Winston Bartlett.That'swho's really got control of my fate.

  Moments later, the security guard from the lobby, accompanied by Marion, came through the door of the laboratory.

  "No, I'm not going to let you do this," Ally declared. "I'm not letting you do any more medical experiments on me."

  As she struggled again to get out of the wheelchair, she felt a prick in her arm and saw the glint of a needle in the dim light.

  "I'm sorry, Alexa. It should all be over in just a couple of days. And I swear no harm will come to you."

  She was feeling her consciousness swirl as Marion began rolling her through the steel air lock.

  The last thing she heard was Van de Vliet saying, "Don't worry. A week from now, all this will seem like a dream."

  Chapter 31

  Friday, April 10

  7:04a.m.

  Stone felt his consciousness returning as the blast of an engine cut through his sedative-induced reverie. Where was he? There were vibrations all around him and a deafening roar that was slowly spiraling upward in frequency and volume.

  As the haze that engulfed his mind slowly began to dissipate, he wondered if this wasn't more of the fantasy he'd been having, of flying through some kind of multicolored space-time continuum. Or was he waking up to something spectacularly real?

  As he opened his eyes and looked around, he realized it was no dream. He was in a cramped airline seat, strapped in with a black seat belt. His head was gently secured to a headrest by a soft cotton scarf, but his hands were free, lying in his lap.

  Somebody had lifted him into the seat and strapped him down.

  On his left was a Plexiglas window, and when he looked out, he saw the earth beneath him begin falling away.

  My God.

  Then he realized he was in a white-and-gray helicopter that had just lifted off from a rooftop helo pad. He watched spellbound quickly coming awake, as the craft quickly began a flight path that circled around and past the lower end of Manhattan.

  Then he heard the pilot speaking curtly to an air controller somewhere and he looked up and realized it was the same samurai bastard who’d slugged him on the street and then aided in his kidnapping.

  But that had to be yesterday, or God knows how many days ago. He was realizing he’d just lost a chunk of his life.

  And now he was being taken somewhere. In a very big hurry.

  "Being up here always seems like being closer to God" came a voice from behind him. He recognized it with a jolt. It was the man who thought hewasGod.

  Shakily he removed the scarf that had been holding his head and turned around. Winston Bartlett was gazing down through his own plastic window, seemingly talking to himself.

  "What. . what the hell is going on?" He could barely get the words out.

  "Oh," Bartlett said turning to look at him. "Good. I particularly wanted you to see this. It should help make my point."

  Stone struggled to comprehend what was happening. He was with the
man he had wanted to callFatherfor nearly four decades, whether he could admit that to himself or not. It could be the beginning of the kind of bonding he had always hungered for, but he didn't want it like this. They finally had a relationship, and it was completely antagonistic. He had just been drugged and kidnapped by his own father, this after being threatened and fired. Again, Daddy dearest.

  So what wasthisevolving chapter about? Winston Bartlett, he knew, could be ruthless, but he also was a visionary in his own way.

  Then he remembered what had happened. He'd been trying to track down Kristen.

  "Where. . where are we going?"

  "We're going to the place you seem to find so interesting," Bartlett declared over the din of the engine. "But I was hoping that we could have a rational discourse along the way. What's been happening thus far doesn't serve either of us. I'm hoping things have cooled down a bit and we can call a truce."

  Stone was still trying to clear his head, get the cobwebs away. It was difficult. He'd lost consciousness in a town house in the Village, on solid ground, and regained it here, where the earth itself seemed in motion. And now Bartlett was trying out another bargaining style, so even the rules appeared to be in flux.

  "Look, down there." Bartlett was projecting through the din around them and pointing toward the wide expanse of New York Harbor. "This McDonnell Douglas is my Zendo, my monastery, and the world below is my contemplative garden. I come up here to find peace. This is an intersection of the great forces of nature, one of a finite number on earth, where a mighty river returns to the salt sea from which it came. These waters have flowed in the same cycle for millions, billions of years, mingling, evaporating, separating again-just as life on this planet continually replicates itself, growing and aging and dying, but not before producing the seeds of its replacement. How can something be at once both timeless and constantly changing? I ponder that a lot and I always end up thinking of this river meeting the sea. Down there, nature is a force unto itself, oblivious to good or evil, to human desires or human laws."

  Bartlett was doing a riff on some obsession of his own, Stone decided. Or maybe it was some of the Zen philosophy that went along with acquiring a world-class collection of samurai swords (if you believed the published profiles).

  All the same, looking down at the sprawling city and the harbor full of ships, it was hard not to feel omnipotent and humble at the same time. The thing Bartlett seemed to be getting at, though, was that nature could not be told what to do. And he seemed to be on the verge of declaring himself a part of that unbridled natural force, also powerful enough to do whatever he pleased.

  Now they were heading up the Hudson, teeming with early-bird tourist cruises and small single-masted sailboats. Bartlett paused to take in the view with satisfaction. Finally he continued his monologue.

  "I know we've had our differences, but I'm prepared to try to get past that. I want to talk to you about something I always think of when I fly across this river. Time. I call my obsession Time and the River. Physicists will tell you that time should be thought of as a kind of fourth dimension. Things are always at a certain place in three dimensions, but when you describe the location of a subatomic particle, for example, you also have to say when it was there. To locate it accurately, you need four dimensions. We think of them all as rigid but what if one of them could be made fluid? What if you could alter the character of time?"

  In spite of himself, Stone took the bait. "I don't know what this has to do with anything. Nobody can alter the pace of time." He found himself recalling a snippet of verse by John Donne:

  O how feeble is man's power,

  That if good fortune fall,

  Cannot add another hour,

  Nor a lost hour recall!

  "Strictly speaking, that's true," Bartlett said gravely, turning away again to stare out the Plexiglas window, down into the morning space below them. The Hudson was now a giant ribbon of blue heading north into the mist. "But what if we could alter the clocks in our body to make them run slower?" He smiled then pointed off to his left. "All this below us has happened in a couple of hundred years. What will it look like down there in another hundred years? Will we still need these puny machines to fly, or will there be teleportation? Whatever it is, what would you give to be around to see that? To have your own time slow down while the world around you went on?"

  Stone was looking out into space, wondering. . notwhetherWinston Bartlett was an egomaniacal madman but ratherhowtruly mad he really was.

  Flying in the helicopter, he felt like Faust being shown the world by Mephistopheles. Except here Satan was his own father, offering him a teasing prospect of what it would be like to live on and on.

  It would make a hell of a story. The problem was, miracles always came with some kind of terrible price. What was the price this time?

  Then he had another thought. Was that what had happened to Kristen? Was she paying the price for some kind of hubris that pushed nature too far? Nobody had claimed she had any kind of medical condition that necessitated a stem cell intervention. So had she been experimenting with some other procedure? Had Mephistopheles now called in his marker?

  He wanted to ask but the vibration and the noise made his brain feel like it was in a blender.

  "Do you understand what I'm saying?" Bartlett went on. "Do you want to be part of the most exciting development in the history of medicine? Well, this is your chance. There is a majestic experiment under way. But now we know it's not for the fainthearted. The question is, do you want to live life or just write about it?"

  "I think it's time I heard the whole story," Stone said finally, forcing out the words. "What's your part in this 'experiment'?"

  "I've put everything at risk, but now I'mthisclose to controlling the clock. So. . are you my son? My flesh and blood? Do you have the balls to try it too?"

  Stone suspected the question was rhetorical. He was already up to his neck in whatever was going on. He just didn’t yet know howbiga part of it he was. While he'd been sedated overnight, had they started experiments onhim?

  He knew that some of the buzz about stem cells involved the fantasy that someday they might be used to forestall the aging process. Responsible researchers all said that they weren't trying to extend life; they were only hoping to make a normal lifetime more livable. Rejuvenative medicine. Winston Bartlett, however, had just taken stem cell potential to its obvious conclusion; he was talking about doing what others did not dare. Regenerative medicine.

  "What would we give to be able to look forward to thousands of mornings like this, ending it all only when we chose?" he declared his hands sweeping over the dense green beneath them. "Time would become something that merely flows endlessly through us, ever renewing. So-called old age would cease to exist, at least for those with the courage to take the necessary risks."

  Now they were moving above the pine forests that comprised the outer ring of the Greater New York suburbs, as below them the green wilds of New Jersey, north of the GW Bridge, were sweeping by.

  Hmmm,Stone pondered,if a man somehow stopped growing older and nobody else did, at some point he'd end up being the same "age " as his grandchildren.That caused him to think again about Amy and wonder if Bartlett would ever reconcile himself to her existence. .

  A few minutes later, he looked down and saw a wide clearing in the trees and a red-tile roof. They had arrived but from the air, the Dorian Institute gave no clue to the momentous research going on inside.

  Bartlett said nothing as they began their descent, and in moments they were settling onto the rooftop landing pad. The downdraft from the rotor cleared away a few soggy leaves, which had somehow blown there, and then the Japanese pilot cut the power and the sound died away. When Bartlett opened the side door, the first thing Stone noticed was the fresh, forest-scented morning air against his face.

  He found himself wondering whether the roar of the engine had disturbed the patients, but that was almost beside the point. The Dorian Institute
was not, he now realized, merely about using stem cell technology to heal the sick. Bartlett had been letting him know that it was also about an experiment that was much, much more profound.

  In the silence that followed, Bartlett stepped onto the pad and lit a thin, filtered cigar. (For somebody who’d just been talking about how long it was possible to live, the act confounded credulity.) He took a deep drag, then tossed it onto the paving and peered back through the opening.

  "Are you able to walk yet?"

  "I think I can manage," Stone said. He actually wasn't sure at all. The vibrations of the chopper had done serious damage to his sense of equilibrium.

  But he did find he could take small steps. As they moved to the stairwell leading down to the third-floor elevator, Bartlett said, "I know you've been here once before. You tried to sneak in. Grant saw you and sent you packing. Well, this time you're here for real. The full experience. We're going to start by taking you down to the lab and checking you in."

  The man, Stone suspected, was trying to hide everything that was going on in his mind. He wanted to talk about grandiose themes, but his mind was really somewhere else. Beneath all the braggadocio, there was the smell of deep, abiding fear. Winston Bartlett was in some kind of major denial.