скачать книгу бесплатно
By the time Otto had published these subsequent findings, the biotech community was busy stress-testing the cure in every conceivable way. Not once were they able to poke a hole in what Otto had discovered. So miraculous were the cure’s effects that many doctors began to confess on the party circuit that they had injected themselves with the vector. According to urban legend in the community, one such doctor, David Spitz, accidentally let spill to a prominent socialite at charity gala in Seattle that he had given himself the cure. The socialite demanded the cure for herself, eventually wearing Spitz down with offers of cash and signing secretly prepared documents that absolved him of all legal liability. Thus the black market for the cure was born, well before it had even crossed the FDA’s desk.
To the very end, Otto remained ambivalent about what he had discovered and its rapid spread. “I was overjoyed when we did the Alzheimer’s study and found what we found,” he wrote in his journal. “The idea that we could cure this disease that had ravaged so many families, the idea that we could prevent people’s memories from being erased—that was wonderful. And certainly, I was excited at the financial prospect of the cure, the kind of money it could generate for the university, as well as me and my family. I’m not immune to that part of it. That was all very exciting. But when I heard about David Spitz, and what he had done with it, I realized that we had triggered a kind of frenzy we were totally unprepared to deal with. You know, science is usually agony. You conduct millions of experiments just to move the world forward a millimeter. But in a way, that’s a good thing. Science usually gives us time to adjust. But the cure hasn’t been like that. I discovered it too quickly, odd as that may sound. That’s why, from the outset, I agreed with the president’s decision to ban it. I was glad someone was willing to step back and declare outright that we needed to know everything about this treatment before we unleashed it upon every citizen. Obviously, that didn’t stop it from spreading. But I’m glad someone stood up and took that stance. It needed to be done. A lot of the world fell in line quickly after that. And that’s good. Just because I benefited from sloppy handiwork doesn’t mean the rest of us will. Because we still don’t know what future effects this cure will have. Think about how many treatments have been fast-tracked for approval by the FDA that eventually needed to be recalled. This cure could end up not working. And that might be the very best case scenario! Heaven help us all if it really does work.”
Graham Otto would never get to find out.
It was another late night in the lab. Despite his astonishing success, Otto had yet to realize any of the potential financial gain from his breakthrough. He dedicated himself to making sure the cure was 100 percent bulletproof, so that it might one day gain legitimate FDA approval and prompt the president to overturn the ban; that is, to overturn it at the right time, not when people found it most convenient or profitable. Otto was monitoring over a half-dozen species that night, comparing their statuses against control groups, trying to detect the slightest sign of aging: the first gray hair, any paunchiness around the middle, anything. The Hair Bears were with him: Dr. Peter Madden, Dr. Brian Lo, Dr. Sidney Brown and three other PhD candidates (Candace Malkin, Dinesh Ganji, and Michael Duggan) in his now-growing department.
The University of Oregon has a security infrastructure that is the envy of most other colleges. Every building requires hologram identification worn on a lanyard. Every entrance is covered by surveillance cameras. The campus is extremely well lit, and hundreds of emergency phones dot the area, for easy access by students and staff who feel immediately threatened.
But the Hair Bears’ lab was no longer located on the Oregon campus. Due to the success of Otto’s program, the university had agreed to build a new lab for him and his cohorts—a facility they hoped would rival that of any genetics lab in America. But, while that was being built, the team was forced to work out of a makeshift lab in a nearby office park.
The Shelby Office Park looks very much like any other office park in the nation. It’s located on Shelby Circle, right near a strip of chain restaurants and home improvement stores. It’s a poorly lit complex—even now, after what happened. A walk from the Shelby parking lot to one of the main buildings in the dead of night is enough to jangle even the toughest nerves. A card-key is needed to enter any of the buildings on the park’s campus. But the parking lot has no such requirement. Parking is free, and there’s no gate to check into. Anyone can drive up to the main buildings. And on the night of August 7, 2016, someone did.
An unmarked van pulled up to the curb in front of Building D, where the Hair Bears made their temporary home. The team typically finished up work at the same time, but Otto was known to tell everyone to go home and get their rest, while staying on alone in the lab—sometimes for a little while, sometimes for hours. (Although he enjoyed the company of his coworkers, Otto claimed to focus better when undisturbed.) From what police have been able to reconstruct, it seems that night he bade his colleagues goodbye and stayed in the lab for a scant ten extra minutes. After he closed up shop, he grabbed his briefcase and made his way down to the lobby.
As he exited the building, he saw the van. He likely also noticed that there were still four bikes parked in the rack next to the building entrance. Many of the team members used bikes, instead of cars, to get around town. The rack should have been empty. In the time it took Otto to recognize that something was amiss, three men had exited the van and accosted him.
They wore black from head to toe, with black hoods covering their heads. They had guns. They forced Otto to the ground and bound his legs, arms, and mouth with duct tape.
They dragged Otto to the van and opened the back. There Otto saw, to his horror, all six of his colleagues similarly bound and thrown in the back on top of each other—a writhing tangle of bodies. They threw Otto in with the rest, doused them and the rest of the van with gasoline, and set it on fire. The three assailants then fled the scene as the van burst into flames. Only one of them, Casey Jarrett of Tacoma, has been identified and charged. Jarrett, who belonged to a pro-death evangelical sect known as Terminal Earth, defended his actions only by saying, “A little bit of bloodshed now, or a lot later on.” Otto, Madden, Lo, Brown, Malkin, Ganji, and Duggan all perished in the blaze. Just hours later, David Spitz was gunned down outside of his home in Seattle.
President Lack still has trouble accepting that his friend and colleague died in such a horrifying manner. “It’s inconceivable to me,” he says. “If there was anyone you wanted to invent this cure, it was Graham. He wasn’t some power-mad scientist hell-bent on destroying the world. He had real integrity, and he rarely acted without considering all the consequences of his behavior. The cure was safe in his hands. I don’t think he even gave it to himself. That someone would stalk him down and murder him and six other bright, wonderful minds like that is just… It takes away my faith in humanity, a faith that people like Graham helped build in me. He’s not here to guide us through this anymore, and we’re so much poorer for it.”
Two floors above where the van burned and burned, a window from Otto’s lab looks out over the parking lot. Perched on the windowsill is a very small glass case containing five fruit flies, five very special fruit flies that turned Graham Otto from a desperate redhead into perhaps the most important scientist in human history. They were the first creatures on earth to be cured of death by Otto, and they were among the last creatures on earth to see him alive.
Date Modified: 7/5/2019, 9:17PM
“How Could You Be So Dumb?”
I had to get out of Manhattan. Katy merrily haunts me in this space, which I more than deserve. I see visions of her all around: in the kitchen, by the television, lunging out the window. Soon there are so many ghosts of her crowding me that I feel engulfed. Sound reason told me I risked insanity to stay around much longer. I had to go see my sister.
I have the good fortune of not having to deal with Penn Station on a daily basis. I’m amazed that current events have managed to create an environment in which dealing with Penn Station is somehow even worse than before. I did not know it could get worse. It already seemed to operate at maximum awfulness. Oh, but I was wrong.
This was an exodus. There was a line just to get in the station. I’d never seen that before. A fire marshal was stationed outside every entrance, holding back travelers until a certain number had exited. They let a handful of people in, then held the line again. It was like trying to get into a nightclub—which is perfect in its symmetry. My goal was the six-thirty train. They ran every half an hour, so I figured if I missed the six-thirty, I could just hop on the seven with a tall boy of Budweiser, and off I’d go. I just barely made the ten-thirty train.
It was around midnight when I pulled in. My sister was waiting for me. She looked tired, but she has two kids, so I think she looks the same way at midnight as she does at all the other hours of the day. Polly exists in a perpetual daze, run down by the burdens of motherhood and falling further and further behind in rest, never to again reach complete wakefulness. I had specifically asked my dad not to tell her what I had done, because I knew she’d make me feel bad about it. I had already suffered through four hours at Penn Station and a train ride so tightly packed you couldn’t have slipped a dime between the bodies. But then, seeing her, I figured I may as well get all the pain out of the way immediately. She drove us back to her house and poured us both a drink.
I confessed almost immediately. “I got the cure.”
She snapped awake (she can only be alert in short bursts). “What? When?”
“Three weeks ago. That’s not all of it. My roommate and the doctor who gave it to me were killed in the July 3 attacks.”
“Oh my Jesus. Katy? Was that her name? Are you joking?”
“No. I referred her to my cure doctor, and when she went to get her blood drawn, the office was bombed.”
“Oh my God. Are you okay?”
“Not particularly. I… I was so excited for her to get it. I didn’t think this could happen and I still don’t know how it did. Now she’s dead, and I feel like I deserve the same fate.”
“Why did you get the cure? How could you be so dumb? You have to swear right now that you won’t tell Mark that you did it. He’s been talking about it and talking about it. The last thing I want is for you to egg him on.”
“Please don’t castigate me for this.”
“But didn’t you realize the danger you put your roommate in? The danger you put yourself in? These crazy people didn’t just start killing doctors a couple days ago, John. And you don’t even know if the thing works. I just can’t believe you’d go to some back-alley Guatemalan Dr. Nick to get your life fixed.”
“He wasn’t some quack,” I said defensively. “He was a legitimate doctor with a well-known practice.”
“Yet he chose to engage in some shady side business. Why is that?”
“It was just some ego thing.”
“And that doesn’t bother you, even now? I saw the doctor Mark wanted to visit to get it done. His name was Frankie, and he looked like he stole furniture out of trucks. I’ve heard some of the people offering to do it aren’t even real doctors. They’re like chiropractors times ten. I’m not judging you for getting it. I’m just worried about you. That’s all.”
“I’m grateful for that, P. I really am. But I’m fine. Mentally, I’m a disaster. But physically, I feel fine. Great, as odd as that sounds.”
She grew a touch curious. “So, you think it really works then.”
“We won’t know for a while. I’ve been taking a photo of my face every day just to see if there are any changes over time I don’t readily notice.”
“And you’re not worried about, you know, hogging all the food and stuff?”
“I promise I won’t eat all the Nilla Wafers in the house, like last time.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. There’s a reason people are fighting so fiercely to keep this cure out of people’s hands. You don’t have kids. I do. I think about this stuff. I think about what’ll be left for them.”
“So you’re never going to get it? And you’ll never let Mark get it?”
She let out a low groan. “I have no idea. I really don’t. I’m guessing there will be a point where it’s legal and everyone has it and I feel obligated to get it too. I was like that with cell phones. I was easily the last of my friends to get one. Everyone else had one. And there I was, outside school at some disgusting pay phone that didn’t even work. Now, of course, I have one and I’ll never go back. That’s how I am. I usually have to be dragged into things. I know it’s probably inevitable that I’ll get the cure and that we’ll all get it. It’s just gonna be something you do. But it opens up all sorts of odd questions that I don’t want to deal with right now. I mean, what happens to Mark and me?”
“Are you guys having problems?”
“No! Not at all. But it’s a whole weird thing, to think you’ll be with someone for that long. I love him, and I’m willing to do it. It’s just… daunting. And the kids… Jesus. You become a parent, and your whole life becomes about worrying. You just worry constantly that they’ll be okay. And the idea that I’ll be worried forever about them and what they do… I almost have a panic attack when I think about it. I’m worried, and I’m worried about having to worry so goddamn much.”
I told her about all the bankers getting divorced.
“Oh, Christ,” she said. “Don’t tell me that.”
“Sorry.”
“See, that completely freaks me out. One day we’ll get it, and Mark’s friends will all say, ‘Hey, what are you still doing with that old bag?’”
“But you won’t be old.”
“But I’m old already. I have two kids. That makes you old. So then I have that to worry about. Do I have the ability to keep my husband happy for centuries upon centuries? Do I need to get lipo so that I can look like some perky goddamn cheerleader? I have no earthly idea, and I don’t like the idea of having to confront all those issues somewhere down the road. Right now my whole life is plagued with decisions that have to be made: what to get for dinner, which school the kids should go to, which kid’s birthday party we should go to this weekend. It’s just decision after decision after decision, from trivial crap to really important things. By the end of the day, I’m mush. I don’t even eat dinner because I don’t want to choose what to have. I have cereal and call it a day. And now there’s this. Big, huge decision alert. Every question I ask myself about it begets a dozen more. It’s giving me a migraine right now, and I haven’t even done anything.”
“It has to be better than the alternative, though.”
“Does it? I don’t know.”
“Well, you already say you’re old. How does growing old feel so far?”
She sighed. “It sucks.”
“Well, now I feel somewhat better about my decision.”
We changed the subject. Polly handed me a plate of cold roast beef and corn on the cob. We talked, and I ate and, for the first time, Katy’s death moved to the back of my consciousness, if only for a moment. This is bereavement: the slow, eventual reassertion of your own meaningless preoccupations. As I ate, the look in Polly’s eyes made it clear she was still thinking about the cure. She had tried for so long to stem the tide, to avoid being overwhelmed by it all. But now here I was: the tsunami at her doorstep.
Date Modified: 7/17/2019, 5:09PM
DC Apparently Stands For
“Don’t Come”
I have a friend in DC who emailed me this in response to reports about the expanded security perimeters to accommodate protesters in Midtown:
Dude, the security bullshit you have to deal with up there is nothing compared to what’s going on down here. The entirety of Northwest DC below M Street has been cordoned off since that girl was beaten to death for her DieStrong bracelet and the riots in Germany started. You can’t drive anywhere downtown. I’m talking about miles the hell away from the White House. And when you come up out of Metro, there are National Guard members with loaded rifles, their fingers ready on the trigger, ready to pull you aside if you look like a threat. They increased the restricted airspace above the town by nearly twentyfold. If you come down on a shuttle from Boston to National, you practically have to go through Ohio. It’s insane.
Downtown DC around the Wizards’ arena is essentially a pedestrian thoroughfare now. I have no issue with this, since people in DC can’t drive for shit, except that Metro stops can be goddamn light years away from each other. That scene you described at Penn Station? That’s every Metro station, except here the station escalators never work, so you have to haul ass up four thousand stairs before you get to emerge above ground. And the buses aren’t running. All the protesters have been forced to demonstrate on the other side of the Potomac, along the bike trail in Arlington. I saw a bunch of them trying to swim across the Potomac to get to the Mall, only to have cops pick them up in a riverboat and haul their sorry asses out of the water. One of them almost drowned in the rip currents.
I have a friend who works on the Hill who says the Supreme Court judges will be moved to an undisclosed location to argue the California case. Lots of bomb threats.
Fucking crazy, man. Fucking crazy.
—MK
Date Modified: 7/18/2019, 11:07AM
A Blonde Everywhere I Turn
I was walking down Third Avenue today when I spotted a woman across the street with a remarkable body and blonde hair that broke just past her shoulder blades. I turned electric. I saw a gap in traffic and sprinted across the avenue. A cab rounding from Forty-third blithely took the corner and nearly plowed into me. I kept my focus on the blonde as the driver honked at me three hundred times in the space of four seconds. She didn’t turn her head and kept bouncing down Third, with me trailing behind her and trying to figure out a plan in my head before quickening my pace to identify her. I kept thirty yards behind, dodging dog walkers, tourists, and the meandering hordes of the unemployed. I took out my phone and queued up the number for the police without hitting Send, so I would have it at the ready. I took her picture so I could post it to my feed if need be. If this blonde was the blonde, I’d call the police and alert them to her presence, then follow her until they arrived to detain her.
I made the decision to pass. I sprint-walked closer and closer, until I was side-by-side, then I feigned interest in the window of a Hot & Crusty on the other side of her, and caught a quick glimpse on her face. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t even close.
This sort of wild-goose chase has now taken up firm residence in my daily routine. Spy blonde. Suspect blonde. Chase blonde. Realize I’ve misidentified blonde. Think of my friend bursting into flames sixteen days ago while I remained outside, like a dumb dog that no one bothered to train. Doomed to follow every pointless distraction that crosses my path.
Date Modified: 7/19/2019, 9:34PM
The Worst Since Kent State
From the Washington Post website:
DEVELOPING: FOUR DEAD IN CONCORD CURE PROTEST
By Luke Spiller and Candace English
CONCORD, NH (AP)—Four pro-cure demonstrators were shot dead today by National Guardsmen in the New Hampshire state capital of Concord after a massive protest turned into the most violent cure-related conflict since two students were shot dead in a Berlin riot three weeks ago.
After a widespread report was released yesterday accusing the United States military of offering the so-called cure for death to its own soldiers in exchange for extended pension benefits, protesters here in the Granite State marched on the Capitol. Many were incensed.
“They were trying to force their way inside the building. They wanted to take it over,” says lawyer Jim Watley, who works in the Capitol. “I don’t know what they would have done if they had gotten in, but that was their aim.”
A small group of National Guardsmen aimed with protecting the Capitol tried to keep protesters at bay with shields and threats of tear gas. But witnesses say a crazed protestor threw a lit Molotov cocktail at the guardsmen, which prompted two of them to open fire into the crowd, causing protesters to flee in mass panic. Four people are now confirmed dead. An unspecified number of people were injured, including Jackie Frost of Nashua, NH, who was shot in the leg.
“They were supposed to use rubber bullets!” she cried. “No one else was armed! Why didn’t they use rubber bullets?”
The number of people killed in today’s incident is equal to that of the number killed in the 1970 shootings at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.
Further details forthcoming.
I looked outside my window just now and saw a man running down the median of the avenue, screaming his head off as cars threatened to sideswipe him from both directions. He wasn’t saying anything. He was just unleashing the most primal noise he could possibly make. He was holding up a sign that said GIVE IT TO US NOW.
On the TV right now, they’re showing protesters lined up against the barricades in DC. They look like a mob of shoppers waiting to get into a department store at 7:00 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving. The President is due to speak at 8:00 p.m.
Date Modified: 8/14/2019, 3:20PM
“One Infinite Generation”
Here’s the full text of the President’s speech, copied from CNN:
My fellow Americans:
This is a very tense time. The world has been confronted with a medical innovation that represents a seismic change in the very nature of who we are and how we interact. I am not an enemy of science, nor do I ever wish to be someone who stands in the way of progress. Three years ago, when I first issued the executive order banning the black market sale of the cure for aging, it was never with the intention that the ban would be permanent. Like many of you, I marvel at possibility opened by this cure. It means the potential to have a very long, very wonderful life, surrounded by those we love for perhaps thousands of years or more.
But we must consider the impact that kind of longevity will have, both on our fellow men and women and on the large yet delicate planet we call home. For the past 243 years, we have existed as a country united in a single goal: liberty for all. We believe in freedom because we believe it is not only the right of every man, woman, and child, but also because freedom serves as the catalyst for our very highest ambitions.
It is this idea—the idea that freedom can make the world a better place—upon which we have built our nation. It is this idea that so many brave young Americans have fought and died for. At Valley Forge. At Gettysburg. In Normandy and Iwo Jima. In Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Our men and women fought not only for their fellow countrymen, but for future generations—generations they knew they’d never live to meet face-to-face.
But there aren’t going to be future generations anymore. Not after this. There will only be us. One infinite generation, forever growing and reaching an unknown and incomprehensible size. And so now we are charged once again with the task of sacrificing for the sake of our nation’s future—a future in which we will all now serve a much larger role than we ever dreamed possible. Because while we may now have a virtually unlimited lifespan, our natural resources almost certainly do not. Gas. Clean water. Land. Mother Nature has blessed us with only a finite amount of each of these things.
We have known, long before this cure was discovered, that we have been consuming resources at an unsustainable pace—a pace that will now quicken at an unimaginable rate. We are a nation of strong, hardworking people. But it is, I’m afraid, part of human nature that we adapt only when forced to. We are told there is only so much crude oil left in the earth. Yet we can still buy gas at the station on the corner, and for a relatively decent price. We haven’t changed our ways because we don’t feel we have to.
It is only in the face of grim reality that we are able to dig down and discover just what we are made of. And that reality is coming, hurtling towards us faster and faster every day now. I cannot tell you when it will come—perhaps long after I’ve left office. But it will come. And the question we must all ask ourselves is: Are we ready for that reality?
I banned this cure three years ago because I wanted us to have as much time as possible to be ready for when that day comes, to be prepared for all the responsibilities this cure demands of us.
But the time has come for me to stop prolonging the inevitable.
One hour ago, I signed an executive order reversing the original ban on the sale of the cure for aging. The cure will be submitted for FDA approval and, pending all relevant testing, people will be free to purchase it from their physician as they please. However, I again remind us all that we must think about what is fair. As part of my executive order, all citizens who get the cure will no longer be eligible for Social Security or Medicare benefits, regardless of how long they live. Furthermore, in accordance with the recommendation of doctors across the country, no citizen under the age of twenty-six will be allowed to purchase the cure. Doctors who violate this edict will have their licenses revoked and be subject to swift prosecution. I also take this moment to again condemn the attacks on doctors administering the cure in New York and Oregon. Anyone found to be coordinating terrorist attacks against doctors offering the cure will be subject to federal prosecution and the death penalty.
This has been a tragic, awful day in our history. Four of our own were killed in New Hampshire. Our hearts go out to them and their families. We grieve and pray with them, and we promise to take all possible measures to prevent deaths like theirs from ever occurring again. They were four young people, passionate in the cause of retaining their youth, of seeing what they could make of a life extended indefinitely by the miracles of technology. They were willing to fight for what they believed in, for their personal liberty, and that makes them Americans to the very core. We will not forget them, nor shall we let them die in vain.
The nation that adapts to the effects of this cure and masters a world changed by postmortality is the nation that will lead the world into the next century and well beyond. Today, I declare my faith that we can and will be that nation. So many gave for our future, and now that future fully belongs to us all. We are ready. We have no other choice.
God bless us all, and God bless the United States of America.
I heard cheers burst out from the street as the President closed his remarks. I looked out the window and saw protesters hugging and raising their fists in victory. They sang songs and drank from open containers. I could see the excitement in their faces, the pure delirium at all the new and wonderful (and legal) possibilities. They had the same look in their faces that Katy had just as we were walking to the doctor’s office.
