The Eternal World (5 page)

He went from having a family to being an orphan before he was fifteen. He spent a few years with an aunt and uncle he barely knew, then escaped to college and a series of dorm rooms and cheap apartments.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You dug up the worst time in my life. Brilliant recruiting strategy.”

“David—”

David was suddenly on his feet, his finger in Simon’s face. “You want to be really careful about what you say next.”

Simon opened his mouth and then closed it. “I’m sorry.” It almost sounded genuine. “I didn’t bring up your sister to insult you. Or upset you. Really.”

“So why did you?”

The party-boy facade seemed to drop from Simon then. He sagged on the couch. He looked almost apologetic. No, David thought. Not apologetic. Humble.

“I wanted you to know that I get it. That I’ve lost people, too.”

David felt a sudden pang of guilt. “Your father. Right. I’m sorry.”

Simon smirked, as if David had made a joke—but the expression vanished almost immediately. “Not just that. I’ve lost more people than you can count. And you might not believe me, but I feel every one. You are the first candidate I’ve seen in a long, long time who might understand that. Who wants the same things from this as I do. I know you don’t really give a shit about the money. I know you can turn that down. When you strip away everything else, you’re just that kid who never wants anyone else to die.”

After the sudden rush of anger, David simply felt drained. All he wanted to do was get Simon out of here. He sounded sincere, but David wasn’t ready to buy it. “Thanks. But I’ve heard it already, from better therapists than you. I know the drill: It wasn’t my fault. Everyone dies. That’s how the world works. No matter how hard I work, no matter what I do, I can never change that.”

“But what if you could?”

“What?”

Simon smiled. It was calm. Peaceful. A different kind of smile from his usual shit-eating grin. “This is what I’m offering you, David. This is a chance to change the world. I’m talking about an end to human misery in our lifetimes. I’m talking about the end of disease. I’m talking about a cure for cancer, for AIDS, for everything. I’m talking about the greatest discovery since Jesus Christ rolled out of bed three days after being nailed to a hunk of wood.”

David hated to admit it, but he was curious. This sounded like something much bigger than the drugs and stem-cell treatments Conquest bragged about in its annual reports. “What exactly do you mean? What are you working on?”

Simon seemed to sense him wavering. “You’ve got to see it. It’s the only way you’ll ever believe me.”

David turned away. Simon grabbed his arm.

“Just let me show you this one thing,” he said. “If you still think I’m an asshole who’s wasting your time, well, great.
Vaya con Dios.
I’ll drive you to the airport myself. But I know you won’t. I know you’re going to take the job.”

David looked at Simon for what seemed like a long, long time.

“All right,” David said. “Where are we going?”

“To see the future,” Simon said. “So you’d better get some pants on.”

CHAPTER 4

C
ONQUEST’S MIAMI CAMPUS
was nowhere near as big as the Tampa headquarters David had seen in the publicity materials, but it was still impressive. An armed guard let them through a gate into the parking lot. Another one issued David a badge with a computer chip and an RFID tag at the front desk. Simon used his own badge to get them past the first set of doors, and from there put his eye to a retinal scanner to unlock more passageways, deeper into the facility.

If this was all for show, David thought, at least they were putting some effort into it.

They stepped past another locked door. David could feel the slight puff of air that came from a negative-pressure seal. They were entering a biologically secure zone. So he wasn’t surprised when Simon pointed to a side door and said, “Strip down and shower. There will be a set of scrubs for you.”

It was the first thing he’d said to David in a while. In the limo on the way over, Simon had tried to strike up a conversation. It didn’t go well.

“Did you know that the early Christians believed in the actual, physical resurrection of the body?” he’d said. “Not just the soul. They believed that we’d actually crawl up out of the ground on Judgment Day. Like zombies.”

David had just stared at him.

“Saw it on the Discovery Channel.”

David hadn’t replied, and since then, they’d mostly ignored each other.

David’s head pounded and the coffee burned in his stomach. He wondered if he should have taken a cab to the airport. But since he was here, he might as well see it through.

He put on the scrubs and stepped through another air lock. He looked around and saw a fully equipped diagnostics lab. Everything from chemical testing equipment to a portable MRI to a table of centrifuges and analytical tools. Once again, Conquest had not gone cheap.

David turned and saw Simon. He was on the other side of a thick observation window. It made David a little nervous.

“You’re not coming in?” David asked.

“I already showered once this morning,” Simon said, pressing a button to speak through an intercom. “Messes with my skin regimen. Besides, I don’t want you saying I tried to influence you or what you’re going to see.”

David sighed. Whatever. His patience was nearing the bottom of the tank.

Then a door on the other side of the lab opened, and a nurse pushed an old man in a wheelchair through.

David was not a medical doctor, but he’d done plenty of research in hospitals and med schools. He recognized the symptoms immediately. Vacant stare. Eyes covered with milky-white cataracts. Unkempt hair. Open-mouthed breathing and muscular degeneration. And, of course, the smell of human waste from a soiled diaper. The patient had an IV hooked to one arm, probably running fluids, since he could not feed or hydrate himself properly.

Severe dementia. Most likely late-stage Alzheimer’s.

Wordlessly, he looked at Simon through the plate glass.

“Check his chart,” Simon said through the intercom. “I’m not holding anything back from you.”

The nurse handed over a metal clipboard. David flipped through it. It said everything he thought it would. Buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain. Steady loss of memories and physical abilities. The man’s name was Robert Mueller, but that hardly mattered anymore. David was looking at a dead man, a body that was simply waiting for his brain to forget everything, even how to breathe.

He handed the chart back to the nurse, who took it without a word. All of this passed over Mr. Mueller’s head without the patient noticing a thing.

“Why?” David asked. “Why is he here? Shouldn’t he be with family? He doesn’t have much time left. You must know that.”

“You think he’d even notice? He’s gone already,” Simon said. “Besides, he has no family. We pulled him out of a homeless shelter.”

“So that gives you the right to experiment on him? That’s pretty sick.”

“Check the file before you get all righteous on me, please. Back when he still had some marbles, he signed up with us. Free medical care in exchange for a few tests. It’s all ethical and legal. We take better care of him than anyone ever has in this life.”

“Great,” David said. “Good for you. Now, what did you want me to see? I’m ready to be done with this.”

Simon looked at the nurse and nodded to her. She took out a syringe, tapped the needle, and, before David could object, injected the contents directly into the patient’s IV.

“What was that?”

The nurse didn’t answer. Simon didn’t, either. They both stared at Mueller.

“I said, what was that?” David asked again. Still no answer.

David marched over to the glass and got as close to Simon’s face as he could.

“Hey. I’m talking to you. Whatever forms he signed when he was competent, that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want—”

“David,” Simon said, as gently as possible through the intercom. “Shut up and look.”

David turned around.

Mr. Mueller was blinking and moving his head. He stared and stretched, as if waking from a long nap.

“What happened?” he said. “Where am I?”

Then he stood up, out of the chair.

Impossible, David thought. Even if Simon had hired an actor, there was no way to fake the degraded muscle tone, the loss of motor ability that David had witnessed just a second before.

The man in that chair did not have the self-control to keep from crapping his pants, let alone stand.

Now he was walking.

David noticed more changes in Mueller. Muscle tone. Skin texture. Even the old man’s hair seemed to be thicker. He looked a decade younger in every way. At least a decade. Maybe two.

The nurse finally spoke, since David was gaping in silence.

“Mr. Mueller, you’re in a long-term care facility. Do you remember coming here?”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. It just seems like it’s been a long time.” He looked down at himself. “Have I been sick?”

Simon’s voice came over the intercom again. “You were, Mr. Mueller. But I think you’re going to feel a lot better from now on.”

“I feel pretty good already,” Mueller said.

“Well, why don’t you let our doctor here check you out,” Simon said. “Just to be sure.”

He meant David. And David was ready. Whatever kind of hoax this was, whatever kind of sick joke, he was sure it would take him only a moment to unravel it. He wasn’t a medical doctor, but he knew there was no way to undo the damage he’d seen in this man.

To Mueller—if that was the man’s real name—David was achingly polite. He smiled so hard it hurt his face.

“Just have a seat on this table over here, Mr. Mueller,” he said. “I’d like to run a few tests.”

“Whatever you say, doc,” the patient said. “It’s just, uh, you think I could have a fresh change of drawers? I seem to have messed these ones up pretty bad.”

Mueller smiled at David. Jesus Christ, did the man suddenly have more teeth? No. That had to be David’s memory playing tricks on him.

“Of course,” David said, and the nurse led Mueller to a changing room. David accompanied him the entire way, to make sure no one played any more tricks he couldn’t see.

When Mueller was freshly cleaned, David guided the suddenly quite limber older man to the exam table, still playing the dedicated M.D.

He spared a moment to glance through the window at Simon. Simon looked peaceful.

David had no idea what was going on. But he would find out. He didn’t like being played. He was sure this whole joke would collapse once he got to work.

SIX HOURS LATER, MR.
Mueller was not smiling anymore. He’d become cranky and bored as David ran every test he could. The old man was clearly getting tired of having his blood drawn and sitting his ass on a cold metal table.

But he was still healthy. Still vital. Still a completely different patient, in every way, from the end-stage Alzheimer’s case that had been wheeled into the room.

David had put Mueller through an MRI, a CAT scan, and a PET scan. He compared the resulting images with scans taken just a week before, according to the charts. Dark spots from miniature strokes in the man’s brain had disappeared. Cerebral tissues that had once been clotted with Alzheimer’s plaques were now free and clear.

David assumed, of course, that the earlier scans were fakes, planted in the file for just that purpose. But the recovery wasn’t just internal, either.

The cataracts over Mueller’s eyes that David had clearly observed were gone. Mueller’s vision was back to 20/20, unassisted. “Haven’t seen that well since Nixon was in office,” the old man joked after David and the nurse ran the eye exam.

Muscle tone and skin elasticity were improved as well—Mueller appeared to have the flesh of a man twenty years younger. Gum recession had been reversed. And David hadn’t been imagining it—Mueller now had white, cavity-free replacements for his missing teeth.

Jesus Christ, he grew new
teeth
.

The only way this could be possible was if they’d switched patients on him. But he’d never turned his back on Mueller, not for a second, and even the best magician would need a momentary distraction to pull that off.

What’s more, he’d seen it happen. And it kept happening. The man’s arterial blockage shrank by twenty percent between two different tests. Capillary circulation improved, and kept improving every time David measured it. David suspected stimulants, or adrenaline, so he rechecked the old man’s reflexes. Motor response improved, hour over hour. He put Mueller on a treadmill and the patient’s cardiovascular function improved each time. Liver, kidneys, colon, all healing from years of abuse and neglect. Mueller was getting healthier—no, go ahead, say it,
younger
—as David watched.

David’s hangover was gone, his fatigue burned away as he worked. Every now and then, he checked the window, but Simon was there only some of the time. Apparently, he felt so sure of his trick that he didn’t feel the need to stick around and monitor the whole ordeal.

Surreptitiously, David checked his own blood for the presence of hallucinogens or other drugs. Maybe there was something in that coffee that Simon gave him.

Nothing. Not a thing.

David was at a loss. It was simply impossible.

But the evidence was all in front of him. In charts, computer readouts, and chemical analysis. Not to mention the living, breathing man sitting nearby.

Whatever they’d injected Mueller with, it had stripped at least twenty years of aging away.

David felt numb. It sounded odd, echoing around in his skull. He found he was having trouble saying the obvious.

But there it was, right in front of him.

He was looking at something that made people younger.

An honest-to-God fountain of youth.

“Well?” The angry voice of Mr. Mueller woke David from his reverie.

“I’m sorry, sir,” David said. “You’re in perfect health for a man your age.” David was aware of the irony in his words, even as he said them.

“Does that mean I can go?”

David nodded dumbly.

“About damn time,” he said. The nurse, who had been nothing but quiet and helpful throughout the whole day, took Mueller’s arm and led him into another room.

David heard the seal on the outer door hiss. He didn’t look up until Simon, freshly dressed in new clothes, came into the lab and sat down across the steel table from him.

Once again, he brought coffee. David didn’t care if it was drugged. He might even prefer it that way. He gulped it gratefully.

They sat together in silence for a moment.

“I don’t understand,” David finally said.

“Give yourself a little more credit,” Simon replied. “Sure you do. You just don’t want to believe it.”

“How did you do it?”

Simon smiled. “Ah. Well. That is the trillion-dollar question, isn’t it?”

For a moment, David again felt like punching Simon. He was in no mood for riddles.

“That man was dying of Alzheimer’s when he came in here,” David said. “You cannot fake that kind of late-stage deterioration. And in two minutes, he was twenty years younger. Now you tell me how the hell that was possible.”

“That’s just the problem,” Simon said. “I can’t.”

David stood up. Now he was pretty sure he
was
going to punch Simon.

“I’m not playing around, David,” Simon said. “We have, for lack of a better word, a compound. This compound can do everything you just saw. And more. That was a diluted sample. At full strength, it can reverse the aging process altogether, not just stop it or slow it down. It can grant years of life to terminal patients. This compound is exactly what you saw. It’s the answer to all our prayers. It is eternal life in a bottle.”

David sat down again. It was ludicrous. But he believed Simon. He trusted his own intellect, and his own instincts, that much. There were ways he could be fooled, sure. But not inside a lab. And not like this.

There was only one answer. Simon was telling the truth.

“So why do you need me?” he asked.

“Because we can’t duplicate it,” Simon said. “We know it works. But we don’t know how. We’ve got the cure for aging, the cure for almost every disease, right at our fingertips—but we’re not smart enough to crack the code.”

“And you think I can?”

“I know you can. Not just because of your credentials. Or all the letters behind your name. But because you have to. This is your chance. Your whole life, you’ve wished you could save your sister. And I swear to God, I wish I had found you then so that this would have been available for her. But it’s too late for her. It will always be too late for her.”

David winced a little, hearing it said so baldly like that.

Simon grabbed his arm, forced him to meet his gaze again.

“But that’s why we need you. Without that loss, you wouldn’t be able to do this. Because you know what’s at stake, you can save others. You can spare them the pain that she endured. We need you to figure out how it works. So together, we can save everyone.”

The relentlessly logical side of David’s brain argued that it was too good to be true. The world did not dispense candy and free beer in response to wishes. There was always a hidden cost.