And I’ve read everything about it that I could, like everyone has. Some of it conflicts. I’m not entirely certain of what’s true about it and what isn’t.”
“Do you know how gene therapy works?”
“Vaguely.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to go over all this anyway, even if you know it. So, what this involves is me taking a sample of your DNA, then finding and altering—or, more precisely, deactivating—a specific gene in your DNA, and then reintroducing it to your body through what’s known as a vector, or a carrier. In this case, that means a virus. So I’m going to take some blood from you today, isolate the gene, change it, create the vector virus, and then inject that vector back into your system at three distinct points: your inner thigh, your upper arm, and your neck. That’s two weeks from now. And then we’re done. After you go home, the virus will replicate that new gene code throughout your system. Within six months, it will be present in all of your tissue, and your body will stop telling itself to age. The aging of your body will be permanently frozen in place. The rest, after that, is up to you.”
“Will it make me sick?”
“No. No side effects. No allergens.”
“Is it guaranteed to work?”
“Well, I’ve had to re-inject two or three people. But that’s pretty rare, and it’s never taken more than two tries to get it working. I won’t charge you if I have to do it again.”
“Can I still die afterwards?”
“Yes. Of course you can. You can still catch cold. You can still die of AIDS or a heart attack. You can still get cancer. People can still murder you. In fact, that’s why I give people two weeks until they come back.”
“What do you mean?”
He took a deep breath. “Well, you have to take a moment to consider what all this entails for you. When people come through my door, the first and only thing they think about is, ‘Oh boy, I’m gonna live forever.’ But they don’t stop to consider what that means. They want to live forever, but they don’t think about what they’re going to have to live with. What they’ll have to carry with them. And whether or not that’s something they really, truly want. Let me ask you: Why do you want to do this? Is it out of vanity?”
“I don’t think so. I’m just curious, I guess.”
“Ah, but think about what curiosity is. Curiosity is seeking out answers to your questions. It’s about satisfying everything you want to know about you or things around you. It’s about your personal fulfillment, isn’t it? So really, is there much difference between curiosity and vanity?”
He had me nailed there. I don’t know why I tried to sugarcoat it for the doctor. I always lie to doctors. Maybe that’s why I want to stay healthy forever and ever. So I can avoid situations where I inexplicably lie (poorly) to stern-looking medical professionals. I relented and gave him the raw truth of it all.
“Okay,” I confessed. “You got me. I don’t want to die. I’m terrified of death. I fear there’s nothing beyond it and that this existence is the only one I’ll ever possess. That’s why I’m here.”
He patted my leg to give me reassurance. “That’s why they’re all here. Even the ones that believe in heaven and seventy-two virgins and every other good thing supposedly waiting for them in the afterlife. But again, this is no cure for death, even if everyone is calling it that. It’s merely a cure for aging. In fact, if Malthus’s theory is right, you almost certainly will die. It may be a hundred years from now. It may be ten thousand years from now. But it will happen. And not in a pleasant fashion, mind you. What this cure guarantees is that you will never die a natural, peaceful death. And you’re going to have to spend the next two weeks asking yourself if it’s worth all those extra years knowing that your demise will inevitably come at the hands of disease, starvation, or a bullet.”
I immediately pictured myself being gunned down in an alleyway, a smoking revolver barrel the last thing my eyes ever have a chance to focus on. Then the sliding door in my brain shifted and I was eighty-five years old on my deathbed, fat nurses sponging off my rotting skin.
“I don’t think most people die natural, peaceful deaths,” I said. “All the loved ones I’ve seen die have died sick, frail, and helpless. Undergoing chemo. Lying in hospitals. Soiling their beds. Two of my grandparents died alone, with no one to talk to. I don’t think natural death offers much in the way of gentle relief. I think it’s a slow, wrenching thing I’d like to get far, far away from.”
“Okay.”
He stood up and gestured to me to do the same.
“How many of your patients have come back after two weeks and decided they didn’t want the cure?”
“Oh, I think you already know the answer to that. Come on. We’ll take your blood in my lab.”
He walked me over to the apartment’s open kitchen. The cupboards and drawers were all white, painted ages ago and done so in a sloppy fashion, with big streaks of dripping paint frozen and hardened in places. Inside the cabinets, where you normally would see dishes, glasses and assorted sundries, were medical supplies: swabs, gauze, syringes, scalpels, tongue depressors, etc. I marveled at the lack of food or items to help prepare it. He quickly got out everything he needed to extract the blood and slapped a tourniquet onto my arm.
“What do you do if you want to eat here?” I asked him.
“I never eat here. Tell me, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Oh, dear. Another lawyer? I should put a moratorium on you folks. Last thing we need are a bunch of godforsaken lawyers hanging around forever. Here comes the needle.”
He pulled my arm toward him, gave a firm slap to the underside of my elbow, and drew one large vial of my blood. I’d never stopped to consider my own blood before. I’d only really thought of it as the fluid that occasionally seeps out of my body, causing me great alarm. Nothing deeper than that. Now I stared at the blood filling the vial, and it was that deep, rich, unmistakable red, the kind of red they try to reproduce in paint and in lipstick but can never quite match. It looked vital, as if it had its own pulse. Active. Alive. If all went according to plan, I thought, it would soon return to me even more so.
“Let me ask you something, Doc.”
“Of course.”
“What’s your normal practice? What’s your doctor day job?”
“Orthopedics.”
“Ah.”
“I almost went in to plastic surgery, but I didn’t. Thank goodness. Those guys will be doing nothing but sucking out fat from now on.”
“So you run a successful practice, yes? I assume you make a nice living just through your day job.”
“That I do.”
“Then why do this? Why do more than what you need to do? Why risk losing your license to practice medicine by giving this out? Hell, you’re risking your life. What’s the benefit to you, besides making extra money you really don’t need?”
He
