The Methuselah Gene (2 page)

“But why the reassignment, then?” Darryl wanted to know.
 
“Don't you have notes on your gene research?
 
Can't you reassemble the work you've done?”

I thought about what I might have at home, against strict company regulations.
 
Something I hadn't mentioned to Jeffers and his detective.
 
“Possibly,” I confessed, “but I doubt it.
 
In any event, I shouldn't be talking about it.”

“Never stopped you before.”

I glared at him in a returning flash of frustration, taking Van Buren street without slowing down.
 
“There's been an accident, okay?
 
An ‘incident.'
 
Let's leave it at that.”

“You mean involving the theft?”

“No, no, no, I mean involving my canceled project.
 
Seems one of my lab techs heard about our cancellation, and apparently injected himself with the formulation.
 
Last night, in fact.”

“What happened?”

“I can't talk about it.”
 
I roared around another corner, this time running a red light to do it.
 
The car's left wheels spun, making the Cavalier's frame shudder.

Darryl put one hand on the dash to brace himself.
 
“Hey, hey, you wanna have a real accident, right here and now?
 
Or will it be labeled an ‘incident?'”

I stepped on the gas to straighten out.
 
“Look,” I said, “last night I went out.”

“You did?”
 
Darryl seemed surprised.

“Yeah, a big night out.
 
So no alibi, unless you count fifteen minutes talking to a resident of
Tatooine
in a coffee bar.
 
And I think I was being followed, too.”

“Followed?
 
You?
 
By who?”

“Who knows?
 
But I think somebody's been watching me.
 
They must have been.
 
And now my project has been canceled for sure because the FDA would certainly succumb to pressure, after this incident.
 
I doubt that they'll even allow me to find out exactly what caused this, or if it's a fluke.
 
What do you think?”

“Hey, don't ask me—I'm just a computer programmer.
 
Plus I don't know what the hell you're blabbing about.”

“Blabbing?”

At the next turn we narrowly missed locking bumpers with a bus, and this time Darryl shouted: “Holy shit, man!
 
Talk to me.
 
Come on—get whatever it is off your chest before my heart stops beating.”

I gripped the steering wheel tightly, coming to my senses just as a lady, pushing a baby stroller ahead, crossed the street opposite the Olive Garden restaurant.
 
I swerved to the side of the road, hit the brake, and we slid to a stop.
 
The engine coughed in protest at the abuse as I cut off the ignition, and for a moment Darryl studied me in silence like one might a wounded animal.

“Sorry,” I apologized.

“You in trouble?” he asked me.

“We all are,” I replied.

“The company?”

“Them too.
 
Depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On who stole the research data, and why.
 
My assistant . . . he had such high hopes for what we were both doing.
 
And he could have used the bonus, if we'd succeeded, that's true.
 
But was that a reason to do this?
 
If he did what they say he did, it was reckless, not like him at all.
 
Jim, Jim, Jim . . .”

“Jim what?
 
And when exactly did this happen?”

“Just before the break-in took place.
 
He injected himself, or somebody injected him.”

“And he's not a suspect on the theft?”

“No, he's dead.”

Darryl touched his forehead, his hand hovering there as if taking his own temperature.
 
Finally, he said, “I'm sorry, but if you can't talk about it . . .”

I looked over at the small city park where the woman wearing a blue jumpsuit now wheeled her baby.
 
The span of green grass and oak trees was scarcely a hundred yards long, like an oasis amid the commercial traffic and pace of downtown Alexandria.
 
The woman took the right fork on the circling sidewalk, toward the fountain and away from a homeless man asleep on the bench to the left.

“Did I tell you much about the bristlecone pine gene?” I asked.

“What?
 
No, you didn't.
 
Not . . . specifically.”

“Well, we were searching for a delivery mechanism to test it on a unique worm that has at least half of the genes humans carry.
 
This worm is used in a lot of research projects—and even by NASA—for this reason.
 
Anyway, the longevity effects of this tree needed to be tested, and while my partner worked on finding a virus to carry the gene into other plant species, I got lucky in finding the perfect medium that could efficiently carry the gene into the cells of an animal species.”

“And what was that?” Darryl wondered aloud, despite himself.

“Can't tell you unless you promise to keep it secret.”

“Cross my heart, hope I don't die too.”

“Meaning we never talked, right?”

“When do we ever talk?
 
I mean, really.”

I sighed.
 
“Okay.
 
But I could lose my job, what there's left of it, if you let it slip.”
 
I paused, studying his blank expression.
 
Then I said it, letting it slip myself, like I'd let almost everything slip.
 
“It was HIV.”

“What?”

“The AIDS virus.
 
Only genetically modified to make it harmless.”

“You're not kidding.”

“Do I look like I'm kidding?”

“And a lab tech shot himself up with that?
 
What happened to him?”

“It was . . . kinda violent.”

“What was the cause of death?”

“Suicide,” I said, then, “but you mean the underlying cause.
 
That's part speculation, at this point.
 
From what I've heard, I'd guess inflammation of the brain, linked to a severe interferon reaction to the altered virus.
 
Apparently the bristlecone gene and the virus affected each other in a way I didn't anticipate.
 
Like A and B equaling C, and the sum being more than the parts.
 
All the time I was thinking of the virus merely as a transport device for the gene, and had no idea it would co-opt something by way of symbiosis from it.
 
After today, though, I can see that the way they fit together so perfectly should have alerted me.
 
But I had no idea Jim Baxter would do what he did, with human trials still unimaginably distant.
 
He was working on his own parallel project.
 
A plant virus, the tobacco etch.
 
While trying to make either of our viruses survive in solution, for ingestion without need of injection.”

“So he killed himself because . . .”

“Because of the pressure in his head, and the psychotic hallucinations that may have induced.”

“What you're saying is that it's an overnight AIDS death?
 
Not a decade?
 
And all because you attached a tree gene to it?”

“That's a rough way of putting it.
 
A modified virus acquired a longevity gene that it attempted to use as a defense mechanism to make up for being neutered.”

“You're. . . kidding.”

“Do I look like I'm kidding?
 
Jim's body tried using its own natural defense mechanism, but was quickly overwhelmed after the virus didn't die on its own.
 
Of course I'm just theorizing.
 
We may never know what really happened, now.”

“I'll tell you what happened.
 
Your Methuselah gene went to bed with the Devil, and got itself a new lease on life.
 
Namely, death.”

“How did you know I was calling it Methuselah?”

Darryl huffed surprise.
 
“You were?
 
Well, it makes sense, doesn't it?
 
Anyway, it sounds like you created a monster, and then it screwed you in more ways than one.”
 
He stared out the window at a large oak tree rising beside the path in front of us.
 
“How is the news going to cover this story?”

“With as little information as possible.
 
Tactar
is hoping to keep the FDA and the FBI out of the investigation.”

“So do you think whoever took your stole your research knows the truth?
 
And how do you know Jim didn't just dispose of everything while under the influence?”

“I don't know.
 
I'm told it's being investigated, including the possibility of murder.
 
They're saying murder's unlikely, though, and they won't tell me why.”

“Which is why they reassigned you, hoping it all blows over?”

I nodded once, then stopped myself.
 
“Only thing, our project was canceled before Jim died, which is curious to me.”

“How so?”

“There's just something about the timing.
 
Who knew what, and when.
 
Industrial espionage is big in our industry, as you might know.
 
But then again, the results for our project just weren't panning out, either.
 
Instead of prolonging life in the worms we tested, if anything it decreased their life spans.”

Darryl tapped his chin, still staring up at the oak tree.
 
“Well,
ya
know, if you could figure out how to stop this death wish your gene's now whispering, and just keep the shortened lifespan, you'd have more than just a Satan bug.”

“Excuse me?”

“Think about it.
 
A virus that doesn't kill you or affect you in any other way except to shorten your lifespan by ten or twenty years.
 
Bingo, population problems solved.”

“But that's the exact opposite of what I was trying to do.”

“Hey, you said A and B equals God knows what.
 
Reversals happen all the time with aberrant cells, from what I hear.
 
Look at cancer.
 
Isn't that a genetic disease where cells that are supposed to die acquire immortality instead, and start multiplying?”

“Right, the tumor cells develop morbid superpowers by genetic mutation, and somehow survive normal autodestruct mechanisms by manipulating their telomeres, the complexes of DNA and protein that protects the ends of each chromosome.”

“Well, there you go.
 
Why couldn't your tree gene be made to manipulate these telomeres in such a way that people age faster than expected?”

“To what purpose?”

“To what purpose?
 
Hell, to sell more cosmetics and cosmetic surgeries!
 
And vitamin pills and pricey health foods.
 
You'd become paranoid at age thirty instead of forty or fifty, when your friends start noticing your wrinkles, hair loss, and sagging jowls.
 
Die off younger, and the government saves billions in Medicare, too, for everything from prescription drugs and walkers to the number of people in nursing homes.
 
Young people wouldn't have to pay as much in taxes to keep old duffs playing golf while busting Social Security.
 
And you could take the drug yourself, buddy, instead of
Elavil
, Paxil, or Prozac, so you wouldn't have to worry about being alone in your long, lonely golden years, obsessing about the best way to end your jittery, angst-ridden life.”

“Thank God you're not serious.”

“Oh, but I am.
 
True, it'd put a new slant on Anthony Robbins seminars, but think about how they could use it in the Third World to curb population growth.”

“I'm not sure how that would work.”

“Well, most wars are linked to overpopulation, right?
 
Too many people, not enough food, land?
 
Like on the West Bank, or in the
Kasmir
region.
 
Got any idea what it's like there these days in India?
 
A billion Hindu people crowding the streets.
 
Beggars, rickshaws, banana carts . . . scooters belching smoke everywhere.
 
Seventy-two thousand people born every day.
 
That's the population of Australia every year, buddy.
 
Malnutrition, disease, howling chaos in Delhi's filthy shanty towns.
 
Opposite of Japan's problem, or ours.
 
Those people don't drive SUVs up to take-out windows to supersize everything on the menu, they just eat rice with fish heads while working the jobs we've lost to them by outsourcing.
 
And their government can't control their own growth any more than you could stop some development company from building a new tract of condos blocking your view of the ocean!
 
So you mix whatever drug you develop from this up with the wheat we
give'em
, and maybe it'll offset their women having six babies each.
 
Works for African countries and Islamic countries, too.
 
Maybe you'll avert a future war . . . holy Jihad, another unholy skirmish for crude oil, or whatever.”