He rode the train for an hour and a half, until he got to the last station, a small town out in the sticks, one main road, a few shops, and a lot of nothing. Exactly what he was looking for. Outside the train station he had found a taxi and asked the driver to take him to a good hotel, somewhere where he could take a break from the city.
The taxi-driver, an ex-New Yorker, knew exactly where to go.
"My sister-in-law runs a lovely place not far from here. It's quiet…but very plush…and surrounded by fields, and nature. It's very restful, if you like that sort of stuff…" He said, looking over his shoulder at Kerrin as he drove and not paying enough attention to the road ahead.
Kerrin checked in, took a room at the back of the hotel, and showered. Only after he was refreshed did he sit down on the bed with the parcel in front of him. He sat staring at it for ages, until the exhaustion overtook him and he fell into a deep sleep.
When the late morning light woke him the next day, the parcel was still where he had left it.
He looked at it nervously, scared to pick it up and open it.
It didn't look much, but everything rested on the brown parcel and its contents. The lives of Dana, Fiona and himself. What would he do if he opened it, and found that it contained nothing important?
He had slept fitfully for over ten hours, but Kerrin was still tired: his hands were shaking, and one of his eyelids had started to twitch uncontrollably, and for a second he worried that he was on the verge of some sort of breakdown. His stomach was a tight knot, and he couldn't think clearly.
He looked in the mirror on the wall in his room. His face was tired and drawn. The man who looked back at him was desperate. A pathetic figure whom he didn’t recognise. Kerrin was fed up of running. He had come to the end of the line. The parcel was his last chance.
Swallowing hard, he picked the parcel up, ripped off the end, and spilled the contents onto the bed in front of him.
--------------------
Rohloff Tower
New York
Sonderheim coughed.
"Please excuse me…" He leant forward and picked up a glass of water from the table and took a few sips.
"That's better…" he continued. "Now, in trying to understand the ageing process, we began to look more closely at the role of mitochondria, and to understanding the chemical reactions that take place within in the cells…"
"…As we get older, more and more mitochondria are destroyed throughout the daily course of our lives, which leads to an overall drop in energy production. Some parts of the body get weaker, some parts of the body die …and the body ages…"
"As we saw earlier, it is the mitochondria that produce energy for the cells in the respiration process. In the course of these vigorous chemical reactions, many electrons are observed to 'leak' away from the mitochondrial cell structure. These 'leaking' electrons also interact with the oxygen which is present, to produce imbalanced chemicals which we call superoxide radicals…or 'free radicals'…"
"…'Free radicals' are really best described as molecules that possess one or more unshared available electrons as part of their structural configurations. The unshared electrons in their chemical make-up make them unstable and highly destructive compounds, which try desperately to find another electron in order to achieve stability."
"In their hunt for electrons, these free radicals act like little bombs, which destroy or damage other cells and molecules. Unfortunately, some of the free radicals which the mitochondria produce actually kill or damage other mitochondria…"
"Now, although in the normal course of respiration, mitochondria do create many free radicals, the situation is made far worse when the mitochondria get damaged…as this causes more and more electrons to leak from the reactions which fuel the respiration process, which in turn leads to an ever increasing number of free radicals being spewed out of the cells into the body etc., etc. The whole process increases exponentially as we get older."
"…When too many of these free radicals are produced, the normal repair mechanisms of the cells in the body are not able to cope, and are unable to repair all the damage being incurred by the free radicals …So the cells start to get permanently damaged, or die…or start behaving badly…and when the cells of our body start to behave badly and start reproducing in the wrong way, this could lead to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, etc."
Sonderheim walked around the table speaking slowly as he went. As he paced the room, the eyes of the audience stayed glued to him. They were absorbing every word he said.
"Before I come on to describing the Orlando Treatment…I want to add one more thing…I have mentioned to you that free radicals are produced during the respiration process, when mitochondria react with the oxygen and the foodstuffs we eat…Well, a natural conclusion from this is that the more we eat, the more reactions take place in the respiration process and hence the more free radicals are produced, which as we have seen is bad, bad, bad!"
"In other words, the more we eat…the faster we die…!"
There were a few murmurings around the table, particularly amongst the more overweight of the group.
"In fact, it has been well documented by many independent groups, that if you cut down the calorific intake of many creatures, these creatures live longer. There's no question in fact, that by reducing the amount of food, and hence the number of calories, by 30% to 70% it is possible to extend the life span by up to 40% in a number of different animals or creatures. In the laboratory, we ourselves have shown that by reducing the calorific intake of mice by 40%, they will live almost twice as long as their fatter siblings… Now, that gives us some food for thought…doesn't it?"
There were a few quiet laughs around the table.
--------------------
Day Twenty-Four
Burgess Hill
Pennsylvania
Kerrin stared at the pile of documents lying on the bed. There were a number of folders, several files in brown dividers, a box of CDs, a single high density DVD, and several USB memory sticks. Kerrin picked up one of the brown folders, flicked through its contents and realised immediately what he had in his possession. The folder contained pages and pages of documents, copies of laboratory tests, reports on the research the group had been conducting, with drawings, schematics, chemical formulae. The works! There were documents on 'therapeutic cloning', folders containing details on the "Treatment of Mitochondrial Dysfunction", another on "The Role of Ziatimine Beta 6 in the Reduction of Oxidative Stress". And more. Much, much more. Report after report, of which he couldn't even understand the titles, let alone the contents.
He didn't know what the reports said, but in a way he didn't need to. It was obvious what Martin had sent him. He had just struck gold. This was exactly what he needed in order to save Dana, Fiona, and himself, and he suddenly felt an immense gratitude to Martin, for helping them from beyond the grave.
Calming himself down, Kerrin searched slowly through the files and the documents, trying to put them in some sort of order. He would need to look carefully at everything, and as best he could, he would have to try and understand the scope of the information he had.
It took him several hours to go through the documentation and the files, and it was late afternoon before he came round to the problem of trying to find out what was on the DVD, CDs and the memory sticks. Perhaps the manager of the hotel would have a laptop he could borrow…
The lobby of the hotel was empty, but the smell of a wood-burning fire drifted gently on the air, wafting its way into the hall from the main part of the hotel.
As Kerrin opened the door to the guest's lounge, a roly-poly lady in her early sixties with white hair and an apron stretched around her large waist looked up from the fire, where she was busy putting a few new logs onto the glowing embers beneath.
"Mr Graham," she said with a warm smile. "How are you? Is your room okay?"
Mrs Doyle was the hotel manager, the sister-in-law of the taxi-driver who
had checked him into the hotel the previous day. Unlike the taxi driver whose accent had been one hundred percent New York, Mrs Doyle spoke with a lilting Irish accent. It sounded like she had just arrived off a steamship from Dublin, but Kerrin could guess that she had probably been living in America for years.
"It's excellent, thank you. And I love the view."
Mrs Doyle stood up, putting both hands on her hips and stretching her back up straight.
"Aye, that's a fine view, that is…that's why I bought the hotel in the first place. Fell in love with it straight away I did. Just what I wanted. Glad you like it."
"Mrs Doyle, I was wondering if I could ask for your help?" Kerrin asked politely.
"Certainly my boy, I'll be glad to help out if I can. What can I do for you?" she replied, moving over to an armchair by the fire and resting a hand on the top of it.
"I was wondering if you had a computer in the hotel that I could borrow, maybe a laptop, if you're not using it?"
"So it's a computer you'll be wanting is it? Aye, no problem. My nephew put one in for me last year, but I can't tell you how to work it…I hope you know how to switch it on? …Good…I don't touch the thing myself…I just let the accountant use it when he comes by every month. He says it's a good one, though…even got a connection to the Wide World Web, or whatever it is you call it!"
"The World Wide Web…Excellent. Thank you very much…and could you maybe tell me where I might be able to make a few photocopies in town?"
"Oh, that I can show you myself. I've got one of them in the office. Couldn't exist without the thing. Everybody always wants me to copy something. I'm always having to send off copies of receipts and invoices…always having to prove everything to them nosy IRS people…"
Chapter 39
Rohloff Tower
New York
David Sonderheim stood before them. He could feel the power.
To each and every person in the room he could offer health and long lasting youth. They were the elite of American society, and soon they would be flooding from all over the country to his clinic in Purlington Bay.
His clinic.
Soon they would agree to provide him with the funding for the next phase of his research.
$1 billion dollars.
Enough money to help him smash through the final barriers to understanding why cells die.
Enough money to find the holy grail of genetics.
Enough money to make him a veritable god.
To find the secret of eternal life.
The power to choose who would live life everlasting, and who would die, young and diseased.
His eyes glazed over. He was so close.
--------------------
"Okay…" David continued. "…So now we know a bit about why the body ages, what can we do to stop it? This is the area a lot of our research has concentrated upon for the past few years. It's an incredibly exciting field of research and every day we come across new things. Every day we push back the frontiers of known science…"
"Our research followed several different paths. First of all it was pretty clear to us all, that the big enemy of our body seems to be the free-radical. In effect, they are nature's terrorists…they go around blowing up our bodies' utilities in a random fashion, hitting us hard and fast, and we never know exactly where they'll attack next…"
"What we needed to do was to find some way of getting rid of them. A way of attacking the free radicals, before they attack us!…Our research led us to two discoveries. First of all we realised that the body has its own inbuilt missiles, a type of enzyme called Superoxide Dismutase or S.O.D. for short. S.O.D. enzymes hunt out the free radicals and destroy them. What we have done is to develop an synthetic enzyme mimetic which mimics the process of this natural enzyme. We inject this into a patient, and the mimetic circulates throughout the body and systematically reduces the number of free radicals in the body. We have also developed a mimetic filtering mechanism using the synthetic enzyme, which enables us to put a patient on dialysis, pass his blood through a special filter, and remove the free radicals directly from his blood."
"…It sounds simple, but let's not underestimate the effect this can have on the body. Without it, as the number of free radicals in the body increases, the cells are put under an increasing stress load just trying to keep track of the cellular damage as it occurs, and then to repair it as fast as possible. We call it oxidative stress. The body wastes a lot of time and energy doing this…Now, if we can subsequently reduce the oxidative stress, even eliminate it, the body can spend this time and energy doing more constructive things, and we should observe the body's natural repair mechanisms kicking in with a powerful rejuvenating effect…resulting in a healing of the damaged tissue caused by ageing… "
"In other words…the combinative effect of healing residual damage and preventing further cellular damage may be to either halt the ageing process or even reverse it… as the old cells are replaced by new fresh ones, an older man may begin to look younger…the years would literally begin to drop off him, and it may be possible for him to regain the physical appearance of himself when he was ten, maybe even twenty years younger…And if we start this process in say, a twenty-three year old female…well, she could potentially remain twenty-three for an indefinite period…"
Suddenly all eyes were on Colonel Packard and Trevor Simons.
"Gentlemen, perhaps you would both like to stand up and take a bow?"
The excitement in the room was electric. Emotions were running high as the two men stood, and theatrically waved their arms in front of themselves, and bowed to the other board members, who burst into spontaneous applause.
Every man and woman in the room was thinking the same thing: "if it can work for them…it can work for me! "
Sonderheim let the applause subside and then continued.
"…So you can see that we have made at least one step in the right direction. Another approach is to try and stop the mitochondria being damaged by the free radicals in the first place… Some of our scientists have undertaken some really quite revolutionary work! By reaching deep inside the DNA of the mitochondria, they have found a very exciting way of switching on a natural defence mechanism within the mitochondria themselves. So now, we are able to chemically induce the mitochondria in a patient's body to start defending themselves against any attack from free radicals. The effect of this is two-fold: fewer mitochondria now die, and hence energy levels within the cells and within the body are now maintained at more constant levels…and secondly, because fewer mitochondria are damaged, fewer of them become 'dysfunctional'…which means we get fewer damaged mitochondria spewing out free radicals as they go haywire…"
"In one stroke we have cut down the number of free radicals being produced, and stopped the mitochondria from dying so fast."
"We were all very proud of what we had achieved so far, but then one day, one of our scientists had another idea…a really clever one…"
"About a year ago, our company decided that instead of just focusing on preventing the mitochondria from dying, we would also look at the mechanism by which they were created in the first place. After all, every time a new cell is created, thousands of new mitochondria are generated inside it…"
"After quite a few false starts, we eventually realised that when a cell divides, a certain chemical button is pushed, which causes the mitochondria to make thousands of copies of themselves, and when the cell splits and divides into two new cells, these new mitochondria are shared between the two new cells which are created…"
"So what we have done is to find out how to chemically trigger the replication process in the cells within our body, which automatically starts reproducing new mitochondria within existing cells so as to replace the mitochondria which have become damaged or are now dead."
"So what does this mean? Well, actually it's quite startling…using this new treatment we are able to reverse the years of damage that have been done to the cells, and are able to res
tore the energy production levels within them to the same level as they were when we were adolescents…"
He hesitated for a second, the words he had just spoken left hanging in the air, their meaning being soaked up by the eager-eyed disciples before him.
"…Wow…that's a hell of a lot of information to take in all at once.."…he said, stepping forward to the edge of the table, and resting his hands on it, leaning forward and raising his eyebrows. "…Are you all still with me?" David asked.
Yes…yes…we're all still here…tell us more…tell us more…
"Can you manage a little more? There are two more aspects to the Orlando Treatment that I would like to cover briefly with you all!"
Yes…yes…tell us more…
"Good, then unless there any objections, I'll proceed…"
"…This is the unpopular bit, the part of the programme that we find we get most resistance from…It's the one part of the programme that although we recommend, is not obligatory. We can't force you to do it, but if you're serious about possible life extension or wanting to maximise the years God has given you on this planet, then you'll all be wise to take it seriously…"
"Diet. The simple way to stay young. As I mentioned before, it's already been well-proven that by cutting down on the number of calories you eat, you reduce the amount of oxidative stress you put on your system…Diet, and you will live longer and more effectively…"
"So…if you sign up for the Orlando Treatment, the first thing we'll do is put you on a detox diet, analyse your eating patterns, change the way you think about food, and replace your old diet with a new, nutritional, low calorie diet…which, incidentally, will also increase your energy levels and your libido. Now that can't be bad, can it?"
Smiles all round.
"Fine…and now for the last part of the programme…" He turned and walked back to stand beside the screen.
"…When we started looking at Parkinson's disease, some of our scientists turned their attention to a growing area of new scientific interest…cloning. There was a lot of excitement about the possibility of using the latest therapeutic cloning techniques to repair the damage that disease or old age had done to our bodies. What excited our scientists was the possibility that by understanding how cells grew and multiplied within our bodies in the first few days after our parents conceived us in our mother's womb…by understanding how our bodies created our livers, our hearts or our kidneys in the first place…perhaps we would be able to repeat the process, one bit at a time, repairing or replacing parts of our bodies that had become diseased or worn out…"
The Orlando File Omnibus : (Omnibus Version-Book 1 & Book 2) Page 34