were able to locate either four new hormones or four synthetic hormones within the system of Pembroke Wyndham. Additionally, they found that Wyndham possessed no free-rads. Free radicals, Reubin understood, were an atom or a group of atoms as parts of molecules, which contained one or more unpaired electrons. Free-rads disrupted molecular activity which the body needed to function properly. The example Reubin remembered was that free-rads damaged DNA, which raised probability of out-of-control mutations or cellular divisions—cancer. They caused wrinkles in skin. Cataracts. Impeded the body’s immune system.
Something about Wyndham’s system. The researchers allegedly synthesized hormones from his pituitary, thymus, gonads.
Reubin wondered if Wyndham was still alive after all that testing.
At any rate, Reubin knew that the bigger and most important secret in the known human history was the recipe of the synthetic hormones. The secret of long life was locked within the Long Life Institute.
With as many people as possible receiving the Long Life treatment, the Change, life itself had altered. Ages were no longer important. You were “Young,” born, growing up, starting a new life. The next stage was called “Intermediate,” something a scientist would think up, nothing creative to match the new realities. Just about everybody was Intermediate. Reubin, Alex, even Tique. In this stage bodies were reparable and women were still able to bear children.
The third and last stage of life was known as “Indeterminate,” when someone had been around and through so many Changes that signs of aging showed, and weren’t reversible. This happened to people at different times in their lives. The body began failing here and there, no longer receptive even to transplants of cloned parts. Women no long could bear children. At the end, people suicided, an easy-go proposition these days.
People aged differently. Some lived twice as long as others. It was a matter of personal genetics and how well the treatments took. Reubin thought he was probably an extreme example of this. He didn’t want to consider what Habu’s contribution to his long life was.
However, at anywhere from eighty to one hundred and twenty plus Fed-standard years, most people’s brains could not function sanely with the accumulation of knowledge, experience, and memories. The LLI treated these symptoms and people were able to renew their lives. It was part of the deal with LLI. Nobody knew whether the treatment was separate or a part of the original hormonal treatment. Another LLI secret. So, to live longer than your brain could stand and before it went insane, you had to have LLI treatments.
The treatments allowed the mind to store all the excess information, experience, knowledge, memories. Some theorized the treatments merely opened more access to the unused but available space in the mind. Unfortunately, the process rejuvenated him physiologically. It never altered his fragmented persona. Personality remained unchanged. Reubin often wondered if the process didn’t open enough extra room in his mind to fit Habu. He also thought that if Habu was a mental defect in his mind, then it well could be that the process reinforced that defect.
Silas Swallow was a visionary. He built the LLI charter around this fact. You had to donate all your worldly goods to LLI (thus enhancing the LLI position), and LLI would send you off to the frontier, expanding man’s universe. You’d stay for a predetermined length of time, dictated by the situation and conditions. After a while, you got your money back from LLI as shares in the Institute. So if the LLI failed, the entire structure of the Federation would crumble. Everything was designed to further the LLI.
In actuality, most people taking the LLI treatment were ready to begin new lives. If not, they went mad, or suicided, or died.
But Silas Swallow had insured the survival of humanity by forcing its expansion to new worlds.
Expansion, almost by definition, brought on technological progress, keeping humanity technologically equipped to further its reach to the stars. Sounds poetic, Reubin thought, then remembered Karg and wondered if humanity hadn’t had a few too many failures along the way.
Reubin would take the Change and thus be good for another hundred years or so. And be able to remember his past lives. Alex would take the Change with him and they would begin a new life together, just as Silas Swallow had foreseen would become the custom.
Reubin and Alex. Reubin wondered where they would be sent. It made life seem worth all he’d gone through before.
Reubin and Alexandra together. He’d really looked forward to it.
Yeah, sure.
Webster’s Departure Central was full of people going everywhere in the known galaxy.
As a planetary minister, Alex was accorded VIP treatment. From VIP processing, a single aircar was to deliver her to her ship.
Reubin and Alex had said their good-byes earlier. Reubin gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “See you soon, Silver Girl.”
“High mountains and raging seas and bleak space could not keep me away, Mystery Man.” She searched his eyes one last time. “Until then.”
Yeah, sure.
The raging beast within him grew again upon the remembrance. The killer serpent threatened to burst through and take control.
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