The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller

by Pierre Ouellette

  Lane notes a strong hint of forced articulation in the man’s voice, a good sign that he has already had more than enough to drink. “Always wanted to have a place in the Portland area,” Lane replies. “And the timing seemed right. So here I am.”

  “What sort of thing do you do?” Ashley asks in a voice that indicates she couldn’t care less.

  “I’m an investor,” Lane replies, hoping his cover holds.

  “Ah! Stoking the entrepreneurial fires!” Bradford exclaims. “Good for you. I mean, somebody’s got to do it. Right?”

  “And what about yourself, doctor? Have you specialized?” Lane asks.

  Ashley belts out a guffaw that nearly spills her white wine. Bradford breaks into a deep, rolling chuckle. “As a matter of fact, I have, Allen. I’m a plastic surgeon.”

  “And business is good, I take it?”

  “In my particular part of the field, it’s very good indeed.”

  “And what part is that?”

  “Well, you see, I’ve limited my practice to the external genitalia.”

  “The external genitalia?” Lane asks, somewhat perplexed.

  “He means pretty pussies. And penises, too.” Ashley chimes in before Bradford can answer.

  “It was really a business decision,” the doctor offers in a slightly drunken slur. “If you look at the market for standard cosmetic surgery—faces, breasts, butts, that kind of thing—it’s pretty damn crowded. I decided to try something a little further afield, so to speak. Turned out to be a good move.”

  “It did?”

  “You see, we live in an age with a new sexual aesthetic. Flat stomachs, perfect breasts, taut buttocks, et cetera. And not only in youth—but well into middle age. I mean, what woman wouldn’t want a well-formed set of labia, symmetrical in every way? Or if you’re a man, what about the glans on the penis shaped to perfection?”

  “I’d never thought about it, really.”

  “Well, you’d be surprised how many have.” Bradford waves his hand out over the crowded living room. “I’d say about half the house here has been through my office at one time or other.”

  “And does that include you?” Lane asks Ashley.

  “I’ll never tell,” Ashley says with a sly look.

  The doctor smiles wryly. “Maybe your facial lips won’t, but your others will.”

  Bradford and Ashley burst into laughter while Lane smiles politely. “If you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time to get a drink.”

  Lane sees the bar set up on the patio, through a set of French doors, and heads in that direction. Along the way, he takes an inventory of the people in the conversational clusters. White teeth, trim bellies, firm jawlines, and thick hair abound. But he senses something else: an undercurrent of malaise that he can’t identify.

  He doesn’t figure it out until he reaches the bar, and carefully watches the group closest to him. One of the women gives it away. Her strawberry blond hair is cut short and lightly curled in a way that accentuates a tanned face with strong cheeks and full lips. The chin curves down to a smooth neck with a weighty gold necklace. The whites of the eyes are perfectly clear, and make a great backdrop for the large blue-green irises. But her hands don’t match. One clutches the stem of a martini glass, and Lane sees the ropy veins and rigid tendons, a mild bulge of the knuckles, and the ghostly remnants of liver spots over her tan skin. The woman’s face is forty and her hands are sixty.

  With a scotch on the rocks in hand, he circulates back through the room, looking for more evidence to back his observation. He finds it everywhere. More than half of these people are pushing seventy or more chronologically, but physically holding the line at somewhere in their forties. He can only guess at the maze of hormones, plastic surgery, exercise regimens, and organ replacements that keep them running in place while the clock ticks on.

  “Allen!” Virginia closes in on him, and this time he takes a closer look. The flesh about her cheeks and mouth has the vague, lizard-like stretch of plastic surgery. He can’t help but search for telltale scars, but finds none. She grabs his arm and leads him toward a dissolving cluster, where one of the occupants is wandering off toward the bar. “I think maybe you and I ought to have lunch tomorrow,” she purrs.

  “Down in the village?” Lane asks as he feels the pressure of her bosom against his arm.

  “Actually,” Virginia says, “I was thinking more about your place.”

  “I see,” Lane says, with as little commitment as possible.

  Fortunately, they reach the cluster before she can respond, and she introduces him to a man of powerful build and big hands and a willowy woman with black hair and pale skin.

  “Arnie, Beth, this is Allen Durbin. He’s new here.”

  “Mr. Durbin,” Arnie says, along with a handshake that’s surprisingly mild. As Virginia peels off into the crowd, Arnie turns back to a conversation in progress with Beth, leaving Lane time to observe. This time, it’s the ears. The man’s ears have a florid, puffy look of age about them, even though his face appears to be about forty.

  “A lung job? You’re sure about that?” Arnie asks Beth.

  “Well, that’s what I heard,” Beth says. “She was having a real problem with oxygenation. Down in the seventy percent range, something like that. It was beginning to affect all the tissues, so she really didn’t have a lot of choice.”

  “So what was she when they did it? Forty/seventy? Thirty/sixty-five?”

  “I think she must have been more around forty-five/eighty. So you can see her problem.”

  “Forty-five/eighty? No kidding?”

  “That’s what I heard. It would’ve been a terrible waste to lose it all because of her lungs.”

  For a moment, Lane is puzzled. Then he gets it. The numbers are physical age first, followed by the chronological age. In Pinecrest, the formula is obviously a familiar part of casual conversation. And the bigger the spread between the two numbers, the better.

  “So where do you suppose they did it, Moscow?” Arnie asks Beth.

  “That’d be my guess. They’re supposed to have some new technology, something that gets around the pig problem and keeps the prions out. It’s very hush-hush.”

  “Have you seen her since they did it?” he asks.

  “No, but Gwynn has. Saw her across the room at lunch. In Kuala Lumpur. At the towers.”

  “Well, Gwynn’s not doing so bad herself, is she?”

  “Absolutely,” Beth agreed. “I’d guess somewhere around thirty-five/seventy.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “She got lucky. Her bone mass was on the way down, but they recalcified her before it got too bad. Did it in New York, at that clinic up in the Bronx. You know the one I mean?”

  It occurs to Lane that the basics of this conversation are being repeated all over this room in cluster after cluster. The manic obsession of people all facing the same demon and warding it off with the same set of bio-amulets and techno-charms. He slips away from Arnie and Beth and drifts toward the periphery of the crowd, a crumbling fortress against the relentless onslaught of aging.

  Lane moves into a hallway and leaves the babble of the party behind him. It takes only a few moments to locate Dr. Bradford’s home office, with its big desk of chrome and glass and view of the hills. The wall to the left is the standard professional trophy collection: an undergraduate degree from Cornell, a medical degree from UCLA, numerous certificates of surgical achievement, and honors from several professional societies. Below these are various news clippings and hard copy extracted from the subnets along with pictures of the good doctor with several major film stars—most likely, grateful patients at one time or other. Is he connected to the Institute? Lane spots his computer, but thinks better of it. Too much exposure. He turns and heads back down the hall.

  He is halfway back to the bar when he spots her. It’s Linda Crampton, head of the Institute, a good match for her photo on their website. She stands in a conversational cluster, wineglass in hand. A silvery dress
features her handsomely engineered bosom. Probably a forty-two/sixty-one. He’s already getting the hang of it.

  Her cluster stands next to a large stone fireplace, a cavern framed in massive blocks of granite and filled with the blue-and-orange flame of gas-powered logs. It gives him an excuse to loiter in their vicinity, so he crosses and stares down at the flames, as if somehow warming himself. It doesn’t take long. The group soon dissolves in a round of smiles and polite nods, and Crampton walks by him. She sports expertly colored hair folded in loose curls and diamond earrings of a tasteful caliber. Her dress originates from one of the upscale houses in Shanghai, probably Shi Li. Lane’s downtown lover from the high-rise, the one with the cop fetish, has sensitized him to such distinctions.

  He preps himself to intercept, but doesn’t need to. Crampton fixes on him as she walks by. “Hello,” she purrs. The voice pours out as if from a slinking cat who’s unexpectedly crossed paths with a fat mouse. One look at her eyes and he knows why. The whites have a faint bluish cast. Concolor, the magic hormonal compound that blows midlife female embers back into an open blaze. Concolor was the scientific designation for the cougar family and this was the Cougar Pill.

  Lane replies with a warm hello. Even knowing the circumstances, he can’t help but feel a little flattered. Such is the male ego.

  “I don’t believe we’ve met,” she says. Lane recalls her clever eyes from the Web photo. In reality, they appear even more so, like two hard diamond bits.

  “Just moved in,” Lane replies. “I’m Allen.” He extends his hand and feels her warm, dry palm. “Allen Durbin.”

  “Allen, so nice to meet you.” She lets her grasp linger before letting go. “And welcome. I’m Linda Crampton.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Crampton.”

  “Is your wife here?” she probes.

  “Actually, there are several Mrs. Durbins. But I’m afraid they’re all past tense.”

  She reacts with a sultry smile. Whoever did her lips did a good job. “Oh well,” she shrugs. “It’s always better to live in the present. That’s what all the spiritual types say.”

  “Yes, it is,” Lane agrees. “And what about you?”

  She assumes a look of faux regret. “I hate to admit it, but I’m one of those people who’s married to their job.”

  “And what kind of job are we talking about?”

  “I’m the executive director of the Institute for the Study of Genetic Disorders.”

  “Wow,” Lane says. “That may be a little more than I can digest in a single sitting.”

  “It does take awhile,” she says sympathetically. Her eyes stray across the room to a young man of maybe thirty, who fidgets nervously by the bar. Her date, Lane surmises. She comes back to Lane. “Would you like to know more?”

  “Yes, I think I would.”

  “Why don’t you come by the Institute tomorrow? We’re over in the Medplex. You can take the air hop at eleven. I have a little time in my schedule late morning. I’ll show you around and we can have lunch brought in. Sound good?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Good. See you there.” She glides off toward the anxious cougar bait and Lane turns back to the artificial fire. It almost seems warm.

  Chapter 12

  The Real Thing

  Lane looks down on Pinecrest with a chaotic mix of fascination and horror. He hasn’t flown since he was a boy, and never in a helicopter. The aircraft is of advanced design, the latest from the Chinese—whisper quiet and turbulence free via compensatory artificial intelligence. He simply floats up and away in a soft leather seat while staring out the window on the side of the fuselage. Pinecrest recedes, the hillside houses, the upscale shopping village, the park with the ten-acre pond, the support buildings, and the cleared security strip on the outer periphery. No one notices but he. The other passengers watch the Feed on their personal displays.

  The air hop settles on a landing platform atop the Medplex’s administration building in the hills above downtown Portland. It does so with the gentleness of an exhausted party balloon coming to rest. As Lane exits, a young man flags him down. This is James, Ms. Crampton’s personal assistant. He appears smooth, muscular, fashionable, and slightly dense.

  He greets Lane with a practiced smile and silken delivery. “Is this your first time inside the Medplex?” he asks Lane.

  “Yes, it is,” Lane replies. He’s been here as Lane Anslow, but never as Allen Durbin. The accounting practices of deception require constant attention to detail.

  “If we had more time, we could go on a little tour, but we’re running kind of tight,” James says as they enter the elevator and descend to street level.

  “Some other time,” Lane responds. He’s already had about enough of James. They board an electric shuttle, taking them up the hill to the Institute. James throws out a few more conversational trinkets, and finally takes the hint and shuts up.

  The Institute’s lobby forms a canyon that ascends through all three floors to the building’s roof. Filtered light spills in through giant windows onto flooring of tiled stone. A giant Persian carpet sprawls over the waiting area with its couches of beige leather. A series of large pictures runs across the far wall. They depict doctors and children, scientists and children, mothers and children, and so on. Lane gets the idea. The Institute is supposed to be humanitarian in the extreme. After the requisite lobe scan by security, they take the elevator to the third story and emerge into a smaller lobby.

  James leaves Lane with the receptionist, who assures him that Ms. Crampton will be out momentarily. Lane takes stock of the tasteful furnishings, original art, and framed awards of excellence for this and that. Above the receptionist, a flat screen silently runs a video that surveys the Institute and its noble deeds. The Institute is generously funded, which means that it’s capable of momentous research, which means it will produce miraculous cures. But for whom? The video presentation doesn’t discuss the Institute’s location in the Medplex, or why it’s secured by uniformed skinheads shouldering automatic weapons.

  “Allen, how are you?” Linda Crampton comes across the lobby with her arms extended for a hug of socially acceptable length. A perfectly tailored business jacket and skirt have replaced the party gown from the previous evening. Heels of moderate height extend from shoes fashioned of some exotic animal hide, probably from one of the new hybrids coming out of Korea.

  Lane rises and reciprocates the hug, which lasts precisely one beat longer than the conventional prescription. “Let’s take a look around,” Linda suggests, “and then I’ll have a little lunch brought in.”

  As they move to the elevator, she gestures down a long hall interrupted at regular intervals by doors framed in glass enclosures. “This is all administrative and IT up here. Nothing too exciting. The real work is downstairs on the other two floors.”

  “Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself last night,” she says in the privacy of the descending elevator.

  “As matter of fact, I did.” What’s she referring to? The party? The pleasure of her company? Hard to tell.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologizes. “It seems like all we talked about was me. You got something less than equal time. We’ll make up for that at lunch.”

  “There’s really not much to say,” Lane says. “I lead a pretty quiet life. The most exciting part is totaling up the dividend columns in my financial statements.”

  Crampton smiles in amusement. “Let’s not be so modest. I’m sure there’s a bit more to you than that.”

  The elevator door opens to a more spartan lobby, with a security desk barring the way down the hall. “Good morning, Len,” Crampton says cheerfully to the officer behind the desk.

  The officer manages a slight smile. “Good morning, ma’am.” Lane gets the idea. She’s a benevolent dictator, an ideal blend of power and sexuality.

  After another lobe scan, they start down the hall. “This floor holds all the labs and clinical facilities. We’re currently working on dozens of d
isorders.”

  Each lab is fronted by floor-to-ceiling glass, and Lane looks in on spaces ordered pretty much like Johnny’s. Long counters, each with a jungle of glasswork, liquids, and tubing. Men and women in white lab coats spin, shake, stir, and annotate. Numerous computers digest the results.

  “Are you making any progress?” Lane asks. A simple yet profound query.

  Crampton gives him a sideways glance of heightened interest. “It depends on which disease you’re talking about. In some cases, we’ve increased survival rates and alleviated symptoms. In others, we’re still trying to define the targets to attack. A lot of these afflictions involve a complex interaction of multiple genes, sometimes hundreds.”

  “Nothing’s ever simple, is it?”

  “Not in this business.”

  They double back up the hall and take the elevator to the floor below. “We’re coming to the treatment facility,” she explains on the way down. “It’s really what we’re all about. This is where patients reside when they’re with us.”

  “You mean they’re not here all the time?” Lane asks as they walk out into a lobby with a more comfortable, homelike décor. Instead of a security officer, a female receptionist sits behind a small counter.

  “A lot of genetic disorders are progressive and gradual. Patients come here for treatment episodes and testing, and then return to whatever lives they may have. A lot of the patients here are children, still under the care of their families.” She looks over to the receptionist. “Hi, Denise. Could you tell us where we can find a vacant suite?”

  “Number Twelve is open,” Denise answers with an accommodating smile, and they head down the hall. Closed blinds over glassed-in walls conceal the interiors of the intervening rooms. “We always respect the patients’ privacy,” Crampton comments. “Only family and staff are admitted.”

  They reach the open suite, which appears much like an upscale hospital room. A standard array of medical instrumentation hovers around an adjustable bed. Several visitors’ chairs sit nearby, with a tiled shower and lavatory in the background.