Forever and Ever

by Dan A. Baker

  Rammy swung the door open to the big gray shipping container, which groaned and squeaked so loud it hurt Jasmine’s ears. The massive black six-foot high towers of the 9900 were just visible under a tangle of large cables. Crude holes had been cut in the container doors with a cutting torch so the large cables could pass through.

  “Who said junkies never gave the world anything?” Rammy said. “It’s cabled and ready to model,” he said excitedly.

  Jasmine looked at Marjorie, “How did you pull this off Rammy?” Marjorie asked.

  “Molecular loan sharking,” he said, wrapping a big black nylon tie around some wires and cables. “I loaned a guy some molecules he needed, when he needed them, then I loaned him more than he could pay for. It’s an old game. The credit card guys are better at it then I am, though.”

  “Did he steal it?” Marjorie asked, as the monitors lit up.

  “No, he merely moved it from the secure area to make room for a new arrival from Japan, and since it had to be stored on top of a large crate, he replaced the CPU towers with a lighter material,” he said, clipping off the end of the cable tie.

  “A lighter material?” Jasmine asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, sitting down on the roller office chair and pushing himself off to the crude plywood console, tapping in commands with his stubby fingers. “He did them a favor.”

  Jasmine and Marjorie watched as Jasmine’s protein modeling software loaded, finally displaying its ready screen. It was like seeing an old friend again. Jasmine rushed to the console and scrolled through the command screen. “It’s all here,” Jasmine said, breathlessly.

  “Do you know what this means?” Marjorie said, excitedly scrolling through the front end.

  “It means we might just make it,” Jasmine said.

  “We might. With this we might,” Marjorie said.

  “You could, uh, thank and hug your code talker, and renew your vows to help him with his tiny request,” Rammy said, with a big smile on his face.

  Marjorie went first. “For meritorious service and gallantry beyond the call of duty, I hereby, and forthwith, grant you a lifetime supply of molecules of your choice!”

  “Be it so! Be it so!” Jasmine said, smiling for the first time in a month.

  “Thank you, thank you, Rammy. We’ll be able to finish Earl’s work so much faster this way. I’ll be ready to start in a few days,” Jasmine said, looking around the cluttered parking lot, still trying to put herself in this scene, with thoughts of Earl in the background.

  “I can load some of your stuff in the meantime,” he said. “You look like you went a few rounds with a chainsaw. It must have been gnarly out there.”

  “Very gnarly,” Jasmine echoed.

  She hummed as Marjorie drove her home, finally remembering the lost verse.

  So go to sleep you weary Hobo

  Let the towns drift slowly by

  Can you hear the steel rails hummin’

  That’s the Hobo’s lullaby….

  I know the police cause you trouble

  They cause trouble everywhere

  But when you die and go to heaven

  There will be no policemen there.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Roy held the rope tightly with both hands and leaned back against the steep hill, pulling himself up, grunting loudly. “This is a big mountain, but I’m very strong!” he said huffing with every pull. His body had filled out rapidly and his dark brown hair had grown in.

  “I wish Earl could see this,” Jonelle said, watching Roy climb the hill next to the hot tub. “He’s given me something that I wanted so badly, even if it’s for a little while.”

  Jasmine watched Roy’s muscles tighten as he pulled himself up the hill with the rope. “Does he have pain when he’s playing hard?”

  “Just a little, only when he’s been running with the other kids,” Jonelle said. “The school district called, wanting to know if I was going to enroll him.” The question hung in the air for a long time.

  Jasmine sipped her fresh chamomile tea, glad that she had planted some in the kitchen garden. “We, we… need to continue Roy’s treatment without attracting too much attention,” Jasmine said. “Why don’t you move over here? I can find you a nice house in Pacifica for a few years.”

  “The commute to my job would be horrendous, but if it will help Roy, I’ll start looking right away,” she said.

  “How much do you make at the clinic?” Jasmine asked.

  “Enough to support a couple of hamsters, if they’re dieting,” she replied.

  Jasmine laughed softly. “Maybe I could hire you to take care of my father, and perhaps help Marjorie?” Jasmine said.

  “That’d be great. Then I could get Roy over here, and stop all the questions,” she said.

  “What questions?” Jasmine asked.

  “Our friends and the people in the neighborhood are just so interested in Roy’s recovery. They all thought he would die soon,” she said. “One of my neighbors is a reporter with Channel Five.”

  Jasmine sat up quickly, and tried to think about the consequences of Roy’s treatment becoming a news story. “We need to prevent any interest in Roy right now, Jonelle. Many, many things could keep us from the important work ahead, and if we don’t complete the second phase of his treatment, Roy will probably die. I know Earl went over everything with you, before he… died,” she said haltingly.

  “Yes, he did, Jasmine. I’ll start looking for a house right away,” Jonelle said. Roy clambered down from the steep grassy hill, falling hard in the dirt. Jasmine and Jonelle both started to jump up, but Roy popped right up, with just a wisp of blood under his nose.

  “I’m okay Mommy! I’m okay! I like the dirt, he said, throwing the dirt in the air. “I like dirt! And I’m tough! I’m tougher even than dirt!”

  Jonelle reached over and took Jasmine’s hand. “Thank you both,” she said, laughing a little as Roy headed back up the hill.

  Jasmine closed her eyes and thought about her cheerleading vision.

  ‘Life is Right! Right! Right! Right! Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight!’

  Marjorie’s new basement laboratory was suddenly cluttered with cardboard boxes and piles of papers, but her new computer was working beautifully, as she downloaded the entire Labrador genome at the stroke of a keyboard.

  “This is what your husband was doing here those three days and two nights after I got my computer,” Marjorie said, scrolling down the list of genes Earl had developed before he died. “He was a madman. He just worked and worked and worked. I was afraid you’d think we were having an affair,” Marjorie said.

  “This is incredible. How did he assemble these so fast?” Jasmine asked.

  “He said he got some help from the guys in San Diego, but I think he’s been working on this for a very long time. Look how complete it is, and how succinctly he’s placed the regulating genes,” she said.

  “It’s elegant,” Jasmine murmured. “He grouped regulating and silencing genes to express and slow down the senescence reversal progression.”

  “Beautiful, huh,” Marjorie said quickly.

  “I can see now why he decided to treat Roy. He’s done a decade of work here,” Jasmine said.

  “He was such a beautiful man,” Marjorie said. “Why is it the best always go first?”

  “I wonder where they go,” Jasmine said, scrolling through the gene expression micro array data.

  “What do you mean?” Marjorie asked.

  “I wonder if there’s a dimension, an existence for people after death or between lives,” Jasmine said solemnly.

  “I hope so, and I hope there’re a lot of men there,” Marjorie said.

  “We could take this gene list down to Rammy and he could start the algorithm development work,” Jasmine said.

  “Here’s a surprise,” Marjorie said, leaning over the console and deftly rolling the trackball. “I had a little time to run the BLAST work for some of the genes he described. This should save us burn time.”
Jasmine was amazed at how fast the mini-mainframe was.

  “I just can’t believe you can buy a computer this fast,” she said.

  “It’s a good time to be a revolutionary,” Marjorie said. “We’re ready to model, Jasmine,” Marjorie said, finally. “And with Rammy’s little gift, we can finish in…”

  “A month, easily,” Jasmine said. “I just can’t quite believe we’re here.”

  “Neither can I, but it is very exciting. Are you going up to visit Darla today?” Marjorie asked.

  “Yes. I haven’t seen her since she was admitted.”

  “She’s one character I hate to see go,” Marjorie said, in a strange tone.

  “I don’t think her condition will let her live much longer,” Jasmine said.

  “I think I’ll leave early.”

  The drive up to San Anselmo gave Jasmine a few minutes to try to absorb and comprehend the almost terrifying speed of events. The months of time they had anticipated to design the gene therapy had somehow been accomplished in several weeks. They were ready to start the actual protein modeling and the final sequencing of the genes.

  Jasmine stood at the door of Darla’s hospital room for a long second. Darla was sleeping in the big hospital bed with a clear plastic hose in her nose. She looked pale and deathly, and Jasmine had to struggle to put this face on her boisterous, happy friend.

  When Darla opened her eyes she looked at Jasmine for a long minute, with a “What am I doing here,” look. Then she threw up.

  “Puke is a lot more colorful than most people think,” Darla said, slowly tilting the little metal nemesis bowl in circles.

  Jasmine laughed softly, thinking just how irrepressible artists were.

  “I was going to die on the Internet like Timothy Leary, but now that’s so overdone,” she said, laying back and looking out the window. “I would like to paint it, though. What does it look like?” she asked Jasmine.

  “Lots of white,” Jasmine said looking at Darla’s battered hands.

  “I’m not good with pastels,” Darla said, slowly closing her eyes.

  Jasmine looked at her face for a long time. Her face was similar to Earl’s. It was direct, honest, and sincere with many laugh lines, and had a very austere forehead. Jasmine reached out and held Darla’s hand.

  “What a long strange trip it’s been,” she said at last, remembering an old Grateful Dead song.

  “I wonder if you miss people when you’re dead,” Darla asked.

  “I don’t know, but I know you miss dead people,” Jasmine replied sadly.

  “I’m glad I had a lot of fun and did some nice pictures. It would suck to be laying here, looking back on all of it and not liking it, or thinking God, I could have done this, or I should have done that,” Darla said softly, looking out the window.

  “Marjorie said she’s coming later today,” Jasmine said.

  “I can’t wait! I wanted her to tell her gangbang in Vegas story to my women’s artist’s group, but we missed the last meeting! I hear she looks sensational!” Darla chirped.

  “She does,” Jasmine said, reluctantly.

  “What did she do down there, go to a super spa?” Darla asked.

  “Something like that,” Jasmine said.

  “I waited too long to try a gang bang. Damn it!” Darla said sullenly.

  “Would you live your life again, if you could?” Jasmine blurted.

  “Of course,” Darla sat up suddenly. “I don’t want to be old though, like this, with all this pain and medical stuff. This hurts!” she said, pulling up her smock to reveal her emaciated ribcage.

  “I just wondered,” Jasmine said. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?

  “It’s so tedious! Who wants to talk about dying when you can talk about art, gossip, and food!” she said forcefully. “Besides, you’ve had enough bad news. How are you doing, anyway?”

  “Actually, I’ve just kind of blanked out. I didn’t bounce back from the injuries like I thought I would, and I think about Earl being gone day and night,” she said softly, beginning to realize she was going to lose another old friend, soon. “It hurts losing your very best friends.”

  “Well, I’ll haunt you then! Any particular haunting stuff you’d like? Shall I slam doors and turn on lights?” Darla said earnestly.

  “Turn the hot tub on just before I come home,” Jasmine said, trying to smile, but suddenly feeling very sad.

  “They say I won’t be able to get out of bed in another month, so Pablo is going to put a big window in the bedroom so I can see Tomales Bay.”

  “That’ll be nice,” Jasmine said, wondering now for the first time how she would handle her own death if she knew it was coming.

  “And I think I’ll do a big canvas. I’ve been thinking about it, lots of whites, and someone said there was this pinkish rain effect? Did you see that when you almost drowned?” Darla asked.

  “No, but when my mother died, she came to me in a dream, and there was a moment when I saw a cloud of sparkling pinkish light that descended all around me, and the feeling was complete peace.”

  “I can’t wait! Ooh, sparkling, pinkish light! That’ll be fun to paint!” Darla said looking at the jello in the pink plastic dish.

  “Look at this! Green jell-o in a pink dish! God! I’ll have to go down to the kitchen and teach them some basic color,” Darla said looking at Jasmine with a goofy little smile. Jasmine looked carefully at Darla’s eyes, still twinkling and glowing. Earl was right. The human mind is invincible.

  “I’d like to stay until Marjorie comes, but I have to take some data down to Santa Cruz,” Jasmine said.

  “I love Santa Cruz,” Darla said. “I shacked up with a guitar player and his dog for six months in Santa Cruz. We lived in a big, abandoned old boathouse. It was right next to the beach. He played the guitar all day, and played me all night,” she said.

  Jasmine looked at her dying friend for a long time.

  “Marjorie said something about a surprise,” Darla said, in a weak voice.

  “I hope it’s not more flowers.”

  The drive to Santa Cruz from San Francisco seemed like it was designed for thinking. Jasmine went the Great Highway out of the City, past the battered two-story row houses on ocean beach, past the joggers at Lake Merced and out onto Skyline Blvd. The northerly winds and years of storms had sculptured the big cypress trees and bent them back in graceful dark green arcs.

  As she left Half Moon Bay, she was suddenly visited with one of those rare moments in life, like leaving home for the first time; when one chapter is closing and another is opening.

  The emotions all ran together in a stream of excited apprehension. She found herself talking to Earl now, like he was there, when the anxiety rose and forced her to ask questions, she felt robbed of her life long companion by death. The absoluteness of death was infuriating.

  She stopped for a few minutes at Gazos Creek to walk on the beach. The summer pattern overcast muted not only the light but the sound as well. There wasn’t much wind, and the surf was very small. The ocean was a light gray, meeting the fogbank with a small black line. The quiet was exquisite. It was as if Mother Nature wanted some quiet time, and was tired of wind and breakers. Jasmine closed her eyes and just listened.

  “There go my people. I have to hurry up to lead them,” Mahatma Gandhi said once. In a very succinct way, he expressed Jasmine’s feelings. Events that she had helped put in motion were flying past her wherever she looked, starting a whirlpool of anxiety and worry that was suddenly cancelled by a sad thought.

  Her wonderful, beautiful, vivacious, artist friend was dying from old age. From the wearing out of the valiant molecular machinery that had conquered nothingness and the all-consuming monster- time. She knew instinctively that Marjorie would treat Darla. She had probably already asked Will to produce a stem cell treatment for her. She would get better, quickly, and would be wildly interested in what was happening to her. That was Darla’s nature. She would tell the world everything, because that’
s what artists do.

  Jasmine could feel it coming. It’s impossible to defy human nature. She knew that now, after years of assuming people could be changed.

  Maybe, just maybe they could contain this work long enough to save Roy’s and perhaps Darla’s life. The worry suddenly left Jasmine, as she turned to walk back to the car, a new surge of energy swept over her. “Darla will live, and she’ll be the best possible person to tell us all what it’s like, and she’ll go on to bless this planet for a very long time,” Jasmine thought, trying to imagine what it would feel like to become young again, to regain the energy, drive, and exuberance of youth.

  “Hope I’m funny,” Richard Pryor said when he walked out on stage at Carnegie hall after looking at the audience for a long time. Jasmine remembered that scene now, standing in the parking lot, looking at the fog enveloping the Pigeon Point lighthouse, feeling terrified and uncertain. She laughed aloud, startling a young Korean couple.

  “Hope I’m funny,” she said to the couple as she unlocked her car.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The cell phone ringer went off just as the fasten seat belt chime stopped in the Volvo. “Jasmine, I just got a call from the assignment editor at Channel Five! They want to do a story on Roy! He’s been telling my neighbor’s little girl all about Lake Havasu, and Mexico, and that he isn’t going to die now. They want to come over and do a story tomorrow! What do I do?” Jonelle said rapidly, with a tone of real fear in her voice.

  Jasmine was thunderstruck. The story would be seen, people in the medical community knew there is no treatment for Progeria, and the questions would come hard and fast. Earl was Roy’s doctor, they had been in the national news, and testified before Congress.

  “Can you leave tonight?” she asked.

  “Well, I guess I could invent something to tell the neighbors. I have talked about moving,” Jonelle said, her voice cracking with the stress.

  “Wait until later tonight. Call the assignment editor back and tell them you’re taking Roy back east for tests,” Jasmine said.

  “Okay, I’ll do my best to snow the neighbors, and get Roy ready,” she said. “I only hope this doesn’t affect his chances.”