“That would do it,” muttered Desh.
“It was a disaster. Whoever he was, having twenty-three doses of my therapy instantly made him the most formidable man on the planet. I began to take elaborate precautions, learned everything I could about bugs and how to find them, and took some pains to spread my fortune across various accounts. The next time I was enhanced it became clear to me I needed to create a number of flawless false identities as well as invent technologies that would help me stay hidden if I was forced to disappear.”
“Enhanced intuition also?”
She nodded. “Intuition is just your subconscious putting together subtle clues and coming to a conclusion that your conscious mind hasn’t quite reached. Since my rewiring gives me access to all the memories buried in my subconscious, it unleashes the full power of intuition.” Kira paused. “As later events were to prove, this intuition was right on target.”
Desh said nothing as he finished the breadstick and drained the last of his soda. There was certainly no arguing this point.
“Three days later,” continued Kira, “my boss, Tom Morgan, was killed in a car accident.”
Desh nodded, almost imperceptibly. Interesting, he thought. Another piece of the puzzle that was now—possibly—explained.
“I was never able to find any evidence, but I suspect Morgan stumbled onto what I was doing and was responsible for having the bugs planted. My guess is he later approached someone powerful to sell what he knew and access to some of the gellcaps. My unknown enemy. Moriarty, as you called him.”
Desh frowned. “And Moriarty had Morgan killed so he would have an exclusive on your treatment.”
“That’s my guess.”
Desh opened his mouth to ask another question but closed it again as the waiter approached with their pizza. As he carefully placed it on the table in front of them, Desh reflected on everything Kira had told him. Her chronology of events explained any number of loose ends. And the central premise of his assignment, that she was working with terrorists on a bioterror plot, had become laughably implausible. And she had warned them about Smith and had risked herself to extricate them.
And although he tried to resist, her looks and personality continued to cast a spell on him. As much as he needed to affix his gaze solely on the entrance and stay alert at all times, he found his eyes inexorably returning to hers as they spoke. He needed to keep the Greek myth of the Siren sea nymphs firmly in his mind. Was he really being as objective in considering her arguments as he needed to be? Were there holes that he was failing to consider?
However much she explained away, he kept returning to the same place: the deaths surrounding her childhood were indisputable. Griffin had verified as much when Desh had been asleep on the hacker’s couch. And the evidence against her in the killing of Lusetti and her brother was airtight. As appealing as he found her and as artful as her explanations had been, it was still more likely than not that most of what she said was an elaborate fabrication.
27
They both hungrily ate their first piece of pizza in silence, after which Desh announced his plan to use the restroom and scout the mall once again. He spent a few minutes in the restroom scrubbing his face with soap and cold water, feeling reinvigorated as he did so, and then exited the restaurant.
Throngs of brightly colored shoppers of every description paraded through the mall in all directions, creating a random, ever-changing mosaic of humanity. Some race-walked as if on an urgent mission while others strolled leisurely. Some were empty handed while others carried soft-pretzels, ice cream, elaborate purses, or plastic shopping bags filled to the brim with recent purchases. A young girl pointed excitedly to a pair of shoes though a window as her mother looked on with an amused expression on her face. Desh envied them their untroubled innocence.
He pretended to look in a few store windows and wander through the mall for the next five minutes, furtively scanning the crowd as he did so, but detected nothing out of place and no sign of pursuit.
He returned to the booth to find that Kira was almost finished with her last piece of pizza and the waiter had refilled his drink. Kira eyed him warily as he sat down. “Any suspicious activity?”
Desh shook his head. “I think we’re probably in the clear,” he said. “If they haven’t found us by now, they’ll have moved on. They’ll never believe we’d do something as stupid as making sitting ducks of ourselves—literally—in the middle of a busy restaurant.”
“Stupid like a fox,” said Kira with a twinkle in her eye.
Desh smiled. He lifted a large slice of pizza and gestured to Kira. “By all means, continue,” he said. “You left off when your boss turned up dead.”
Kira gathered herself and resumed her narrative. “After the break-in, Morgan’s death, and discovering the listening devices, I became more secretive than ever. I routinely swept for listening devices and I performed all animal experiments in my condo rather than at NeuroCure’s facilities.” She paused. “I worked on both of my primary goals at the same time, but I achieved the leap forward in neuronal optimization first.”
“How long after the break-in?” he asked.
“About nine months.”
“I assume you tested it to be sure it worked.”
“Yes. I engineered a batch with an exceedingly short half-life in case there were complications. I was only in this state of super-optimization for about two seconds, but it was enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough to be certain I’d succeeded. Those two seconds felt like five minutes. The first level of optimization is beyond description. The second level is beyond imagination.” Her eyes widened in wonder. “It was a transcendent level of thought. Awe-inspiring. So much so that I was afraid to ever try it again.”
This time Desh knew only too well what she meant. Once again, she had been afraid of the corrupting influences of untold power.
“The lower dose was having a cumulative effect,” continued Kira. “The more I transformed myself the greater my tendency to embrace the idea of ruthlessly selfish behavior. My emotional side became ever more suppressed, and my feelings of superiority continued to increase. It’s hard enough retaining the vestiges of altruism when you become convinced there is no afterlife. And when you’re powerful enough to do whatever you want. It’s even worse when you begin to see normal human intelligence as pathetically insignificant.” She looked troubled. “If this was how I began to view humanity when optimized to the first level, how would I view our species if I spent more than two seconds at an even more elevated level?”
Desh continued eating as she spoke but he was quickly losing his appetite. Was there really a plane of intelligence so elevated that normal human intelligence didn’t register? He killed insects without much thought. Beings whose intelligence was as far beyond human intelligence as his was beyond an insect couldn’t be blamed for indifference to human life, or even active slaughter of any human that stood in their way.
God as ruthless sociopath?
Or was God, despite infinite power and intelligence, the one exception to the “absolute power corrupts absolutely” rule? Even assuming everything in the bible was completely true, the answer to this question was not obvious. Religions that would be appalled at a characterization of God as anything but a loving father readily accepted that He had wiped all life from the planet, save for two members from each species, simply because He was annoyed at humanity’s bad behavior.
Desh pulled himself from his brief reverie and considered the woman in front of him, whose large, expressive blue eyes continued to act as black holes, drawing him into their irresistible gravity wells, defying his every effort at resistance. He needed to stay objective. It was time to get at the heart of the matter. “You’re very good,” said Desh. “I’ll give you that. But before you go any further I’d like to back up. I want you to explain the deaths of your parents and uncle. And the murder of one of your teachers and the disappearance of another.”
She frowned and shook her head. “My parents and uncle died in accidents. As far as the teachers go, I have no idea what happened to them. But I had nothing to do with it.”
“So you acknowledge that one disappeared and the other was killed horribly, by an obvious psychopath?”
“How could I not? It’s the truth. I’ll never forget it. It was all anyone could talk about for a long time.” She leaned in intently. “Are you suggesting you have evidence that I committed these crimes?”
“No. But the circumstantial evidence is pretty conclusive.”
“It’s only conclusive because of your bias. There’s no way I can prove I had nothing to do with those deaths. Whether you believe me or not depends on what lens you view them with. If you’re looking for trouble, you’re going to find it.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, if you already think I’m a psycho killer and you examine my past through this lens, you’re bound to find evidence to support this contention. This is classic data mining. You draw a conclusion and then mine the data retrospectively to find support for it. You invariably do. I’ll bet if we looked at your hometown and vicinity over all the years of your childhood we could find a disappearance or two, some murders, a few accidental deaths. Most that you wouldn’t even be aware of.”
“Probably. A few random events can be explained away as coincidences, but there is a limit. Your teachers—maybe a coincidence. But add in both of your parents and your uncle as well—I’m not buying it.”
Kira shook her head, pain etched in every line of her face, as if the wounds from these tragedies had never entirely healed. “I don’t know what to say. But I’m willing to bet you can find others who lost parents and also a relative in tragic accidents. Bad luck happens, David,” she insisted. “One of the ways I got through it all was by reminding myself of this. I was at least lucky enough to have many good years with my parents. There are orphans and kids in war zones who aren’t even that lucky,” she finished.
Desh frowned. This line of discussion was getting him nowhere. He wondered why he ever thought it would. What had he expected, a confession? And she did have a point. He did bring bias into the equation. If he hadn’t already been shown evidence she was a psychopath he would have viewed these events quite differently. He’d probably be consoling her for her loss right now.
Desh sighed. “Let’s table this one for a while,” he suggested. “Why don’t you tell me about your fountain of youth.”
Kira nodded as the waiter appeared again with their bill. Desh paid him immediately with cash, including the tip, so he wouldn’t have reason to disturb them further.
Kira waited for him to leave and then resumed the discussion. “I had achieved my first goal, a further leap in intelligence, but was afraid to use it. About fourteen months after I was robbed I achieved a breakthrough on my second goal. Smith was accurate. I can double the span of human life.”
“How?” asked Desh, not wanting to have the conversation bog down but unable to repress his curiosity. “Just give me the Cliffs Notes version.”
Kira paused, as if considering how best to frame her response. “As I said before, our brains aren’t optimized for thought. Well, not surprisingly, our bodies aren’t optimized for longevity either. Again, all natural selection cares about is reproduction.” She took a sip of iced-tea and set it back down on the table. “If you have a mutation that enhances your ability to survive to childbearing age, this mutation will preferentially appear in future generations. But longevity genes don’t kick in until you’ve already done all the reproducing you’re ever going to do. The guy who dies at forty has just as much chance of having scores of children, and passing on his poor longevity genes, as the guy who dies at eighty has of passing on his good ones. There’s no evolutionary advantage to long life.”
Desh’s eyes narrowed. “But parents who live longer can increase their offspring’s chances of survival. So longevity genes should confer an advantage.”
“Very good,” she said. “This is true. There is evolutionary pressure on our genes to keep us alive long enough to ensure our children can take care of themselves. But after this point there’s no advantage to further longevity. In fact, there might even be evolutionary pressure against it.”
Desh looked confused.
“The elderly can be a burden on the clan when resources are scarce,” explained Kira. “Decreasing the chances of survival for future generations.”
A look of distaste came over Desh’s face. “So those clans whose elders have the decency to drop-dead early on and not drain further resources thrive more than those whose elders live forever?”
“During times of scarcity at least, yes. This is one probable explanation for why most life on Earth, including ours, is programmed to die.”
Desh’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What does that mean?” he said “I thought aging was the result of errors accumulating in our DNA.”
“Partially true. But a large part of aging is due to a form of planned obsolescence. Our immune systems weaken, we stop producing hormones like estrogen, our hair grays or falls out, our skin shrivels, the acuity of our hearing diminishes, and so on. Our bodies are programmed, at the level of our genes, to die.”
“You’re the scientist, but it’s hard for me to believe that’s true.”
“That’s because it happens gradually,” she said. “In some species, like pacific salmon and marsupial mice, it happens all at once. One day they have no signs whatsoever of aging and the next—bam—they’re dead from old age.” She paused. “Other species aren’t programmed to die at all, like rockfish and certain social insect queens.”
Desh tilted his head. “But they do die, right?”
“They die. They just don’t age as we know it. Eventually accidents or predators or starvation kills them.”
Desh had further questions but knew that now was not the time. “Go on,” he said.
“I studied these species extensively to understand why they didn’t age. I also took DNA samples from people who suffer from a rare aging disease called progeria. By the age of twelve progerics look and sound like elderly people.”
Desh shook his head sympathetically. “I’ve heard about that. What a horrible disease.” He paused. “Can I at least assume their DNA was illuminating?”
“Very. It led directly to the breakthrough I needed,” she said. “I had been studying everything I could find on the molecular basis of aging for years. But when I added data on the genetic differences between progeria victims and normals my optimized brain was able to put all the pieces together.”
“And you’re positive your treatment will work? That it really will double the span of human life?”
“Absolutely certain,” she said without hesitation. “One hundred percent.”
Desh had become stiff from his angled position in the booth as he continued to watch the entrance, and he shifted temporarily into a more comfortable position. “How can you be so sure?” he asked, rubbing the back of his neck with his left hand while continuing to grip the gun with his right.
“There are a number of ways,” replied Kira. “But you’d need a much deeper knowledge of molecular biology and medicine to understand most of them. One way is to look at cellular doubling times. Most people don’t know this, but most of your cells will only divide about fifty times in culture. This is called the Hayflick limit. As they approach fifty doublings they take longer and longer to divide and show signs of aging.”
“What happens after they divide fifty times?” asked Desh.
“They die,” she said simply.
Desh pondered this for a few seconds. “What about cancer cells?” he asked.
“Good question. Cancer cells are the exception. They’re the immortals among cells. Not only will they go beyond fifty doublings, they’ll continue doubling forever. It’s this unconstrained growth that eventually makes them deadly to their host.”
Desh was fascinated by all of this but he was out of
his league and knew he needed to move on. “Let’s say I believe your longevity therapy works the way you say it does,” he began. “Let’s say I even believe you aren’t involved in bioterror. But here’s the question: if you really did discover the fountain of youth, why have you kept it a secret?”
Kira raised her eyebrows. “Because I didn’t want to be responsible for knocking humanity back to the Dark Ages,” she said simply.
28
David Desh spotted their waiter and motioned him over. They were in a dark, comfortable little corner of the vast mall and his fear of being discovered was waning by the minute. They had time before they had to catch the bus and he was in no hurry to leave.
“Can you start a new check for us?” asked Desh when the waiter arrived.
“Sure, what can I get for you?”
Desh quickly leafed through the menu. “We’ll both have hot fudge sundaes.”
The man nodded and hurried off.
“Hot fudge sundaes?” said Kira.
“I want an excuse to stay here longer,” he explained. He allowed himself to smile. “Besides, when I’m talking to you my brain needs all the glucose it can get.”
She looked almost bashful. “Sorry to have to throw so much at you at once. I know it’s like drinking from a fire-hose.”
Desh grinned at this. “Not at all. Once again you have me intrigued,” he said. “So please go on.”
“Smith told you his theory as to why I’ve kept longevity a secret,” she said. “To acquire great power and wealth.” She shook her head in disgust. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I’d love to share the treatment. The problem is, when I was still enhanced, I considered what the world would be like once I did. The conclusions I reached were shocking.”
Desh tried to guess where she was heading, but couldn’t.
“If everyone lives to be 150,” continued Kira, “what happens to the world’s population?”
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