Forever and Ever

by Dan A. Baker

  “We just need to stay ahead of things for awhile,” Jasmine said, feeling the tight knot of stress in her stomach. “My broker found a little house in Pacifica that’ll work for you. I’ll sign the lease tomorrow. Can you come down to Pacifica tonight?”

  “I’ll do my best, Jasmine,” Jonelle said.

  Jasmine floored the Volvo wagon for the first time, surprised at how much power the car had, and at how much she liked the sensation of intrigue.

  The boathouse was abandoned when she arrived. Rammy refused to carry a cell phone, and would never give a reason why. Jasmine finally heard some voices on the beach and quickly walked down the path. Rammy was out on the beach, standing in the middle of a group of people, who were building a six-foot high paper mache vulva.

  “We can’t use the push broom bristles for the pubic hair!” Rammy shouted. “We need something softer, maybe a mop.”

  “We could die the mop yellow or red,” a tall girl with green hair said.

  “We need them to curl too,” Rammy said, seeing Jasmine.

  “Rammy. I need to get started on the work right away. We need to… what is this for?” Jasmine had to ask.

  “It’s for the cannon,” he said, retying his red kimono.

  “The cannon?” Jasmine asked.

  “Yeah, we’re building it to shoot people out of it at the Burning Man Festival and this is the end of cannon. We thought the vulva was a nice touch; kind of an explosion of birth thing. Next year we’ll build a twenty-foot long woman. We’re a little pressed for time now, though.”

  Jasmine looked around at the bizarre group of young people who were laying big strips of wet newspaper on the giant vulva.

  “Opening has to be 36 inches for the pipe!” Rammy reminded them, starting to walk away.

  “You’ll shoot people out of the cannon?” Jasmine asked.

  “Yeah, I’m too big to fly. But it’s a lot of fun. I’ve always wanted to be shot out of a cannon,” he said. “I’ll show you the video from last year.”

  “Why are you working out on the beach?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s the neighborhood association. You know, they’re always complaining about stuff like that in the driveway,” he said.

  As they entered the boathouse, Rammy opened a door to a shipping container and showed her a new console and workstation for the 9900. “See what 25 G’s and a shoe box full of designer drugs can do in three days!” he said. “Just wanted you to know I’m spending your money as fast as I can.”

  The large curved counter with built in trackball and three large flat panel displays was the same set up that worked so well at Genetechna. Jasmine saw that Rammy had wired up three large data recorders.

  “I need to start right away and get through the burn time as quickly as I can,” she said. Marjorie said she thought we could get through the runs in three weeks.”

  “That’s about right,” he said.

  “Earl did more of the preliminary work than I thought,” Jasmine said.

  “I did a few runs for him just before Christmas. Basic stuff, but it took a long time. He was happy with the data,” he said.

  “I didn’t know he was down here,” Jasmine said.

  “Earl liked it here. He treated the tribe for me.”

  “The tribe?” Jasmine asked.

  “Yeah, he smoothed out some medical issues for the unwashed. Earl felt the pain,” he said, folding his hands on his huge stomach.

  Jasmine began to work through the start-up procedure for the big main frame. Standing up quickly when the screen read FUJITSU LICENSING PROTOCOL COMMENCING.

  “Rammy! Did you disable the Phone Home?” Jasmine yelled out the door, watching the work bar advance across the screen.

  “Yeah, it thinks it’s in Tokyo. Say, mushi mushi three times!” he said laughing. “But don’t go out to any karaoke bars with it.”

  A few seconds later the opening screen to her gene-modeling program appeared with the cursor blinking. She quickly loaded the data from the DVD drives and started the first run. The hours passed in a blur as Jasmine ran modeling run after modeling run, impressed with how well her architecture worked. Her eyes were just beginning to bother her when her cell phone rang.

  “They caught me,” Jonelle said. “It was a slow news day. I looked out and they were videotaping Roy playing in the yard. I had to talk to them.”

  “On tape?” Jasmine asked.

  “Yeah, I was stuck. I did my best,” Jonelle started to chuckle.

  “Jonelle, what happened?”

  “Watch it at five. I’ll come down to Pacifica right after church.”

  “Church?” Jasmine asked.

  Rammy dug through a cookie box of remotes on the hatch board table, with his big hands. “Channel five, which one, Bay Area, LA, New York, Dallas, Guadalajara, or Tokyo?” he asked.

  “In the city,” Jasmine replied, suddenly annoyed.

  “No problem,” he said, tapping some numbers into a satellite remote control. A Spanish language station came up in Guadalajara.

  “I can’t remember who hacked the Sat last,” he said, rummaging around behind a satellite receiver.

  “Ahh, there’s my drill!” he said. The TV suddenly went black. Jasmine looked at her watch and fought the panic that was slowly rising in her.

  The Channel Five logo appeared briefly, then went to black, and faded in again. She saw Roy pushing a toy lawnmower, and then it went black.

  “Rammy that’s it!” she shrieked.

  “Cheap coax,” he said, as the TV began to glow again.

  “Neighbors here in this quiet neighborhood in Hayward are saying an eight-year old boy with a rare terminal disease has received a miracle cure and is recovering, Roy?”

  “I’m not going to die now, and go to heaven to go fishing. I can fish right here in California!” he said, pushing a small toy lawn mower around.

  “And how did you get better?” the reporter asked.

  “I went to a big lake in Mexico and had Huevos Rancheros and three milk shakes!” he said.

  “The boy’s mother, Jonelle Wiedeman, a well known patient advocate, is here with me now. Jonelle, what disease did Roy have and what new treatment has he received?” the reporter asked.

  “Roy has a very rare disease that the Lord only puts in a very few children to teach us that all life is precious,” she said nervously.

  “And what disease is that?” the reporter persisted.

  “I can’t quite pronounce the medical name and all, but its there to tell us all children are precious, especially the unborn ones that are murdered everyday in America,” she said.

  “And Roy has had some new treatment?” the reporter leaned in.

  “We went to a Christian healer in Mexico, who laid hands on Roy, and brought the mercy and power of our Lord into his body, and healed him,” Jonelle said, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “Well the neighbors say he looks much better,” the reporter said.

  “What you’re seeing is the power, the power of our God and the Lord,” Jonelle said. “Let’s pray.” She reached out and took the hand of the reporter, and bowed her head.

  “We ask thee, Lord, to continue to bless our boy Roy, and to bless his life from this day. Amen.” Jonelle looked up to the reporter who turned awkwardly to the camera.

  “Do we have a medical miracle here in Hayward? Only time will tell. This is Jason Andrews for Channel Five news in Hayward.”

  “He sure looks a lot better than he did. I’ll have to stop giving the Jehovah’s Witnesses such a hard time,” Rammy said, giggling as he walked off. “It’s on the digital video recorder too,” he said, stepping over Barney, a fat old Labrador who slept in the dusty hall.

  Jasmine sat down in the shipping container, wondering who would see the story, hoping Jonelle’s religious act had worked. “They say they’re only going to run it once,” Marjorie said as she walked in with a large black legal case. “I thought Jonelle should get an Oscar!”

  “We sh
ould have moved them over to the peninsula sooner,” Jasmine said, deeply worried. She turned to Marjorie and realized her skin was beginning to shine, and her eyes were beaming.

  “Aren’t you excited?” Marjorie asked.

  “I’m surprised. Surprised at how much of this work Earl did before he died,” Jasmine said.

  “Not that! Darla! I treated her today. I think she’ll live just long enough to be our second human trial,” Marjorie said, smiling broadly. “Will has some problem with the stem cell operation, but he promised to have a batch for her in a couple of weeks.”

  “I knew you would,” Jasmine said.

  “She’s a terminal patient, and what better a patient to tell us how age regression feels, and what the experience is like. Of course, I spent a lot of time explaining that she will probably die anyway, but she’s game. She just wanted to know if she would have enough advance notice to plan a death party! When I left she was making a list of things she wanted to do in her second youth,” Marjorie said.

  “Did you?” Jasmine asked.

  “Of course and I tried to tell her how important it was to remain quiet, but has anyone ever succeeded in keeping artists quiet? It’s like outlawing gravity, but I tried,” Marjorie said.

  “I really don’t know what I’ll do when this is all discovered,” Jasmine said. “We’ll probably go to jail.”

  “What are they going to do? Give us a life sentence?” Marjorie said, laughing hysterically. “We can live circles around your life sentences!” she shouted. “Let’s turn and burn!”

  The long modeling session ran perfectly. “Jasmine, I can’t tell you how much better this protocol works than our stuff at UCSF, or even the ALS lab. It’s too bad Victor wouldn’t allow you to freeware it for other researchers,” Marjorie said.

  “Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, almost everything that happened at Genetechna was strange, after Victor became CEO,”

  Jasmine said, taking a sip from her green tea.

  Jasmine took a break to call Jonelle. “Praying with the reporter was good, very good and not mentioning the name of the disease was brilliant,” Jasmine said. “I think that kept him from asking more questions. Great job, we all got a kick out of it.”

  “I thought they would use the name of the disease for the slug line, so I tried to defer from that. I’m just about packed up,” Jonelle said.

  “The key is in a fake rock in the flower bed just before the first stair on the front porch. I’ll be late down here, and I might just nap and finish some work in the morning. Then I’ll be up,” Jasmine said, her voice thin.

  “How… how is it going?” Jonelle asked tentatively.

  “We’re a lot farther along then I thought, and Earl was just, well, he was inspired. We think we’ll have the genes assembled and ready for the protein runs in about three weeks,” Jasmine said.

  “I just treasure every day, hoping there will be another one,” Jonelle said.

  When Jasmine walked back into the shipping container, Marjorie was on her cell phone, she looked at Jasmine with an awkward look on her face.

  “Well, I can’t wait to see you and hear all about your hotrodding. Here she is now…” Marjorie said, holding out the little silver phone.

  “Who is it?” Jasmine asked.

  “Someone you need to talk to,” Marjorie said, walking off.

  Jasmine expected the conversation with Will to be highly charged but it wasn’t. Will was brilliant and very introspective. He sensed her emotional exhaustion and kept the conversation very low key. There was exciting news in the development of the artificial stem cell generator. “I nailed it and fixed the last problem. The first one arrived today and I’m loading Roy’s cells in it now.”

  “That’s incredible news, Will. How did you turn it around so fast?” Jasmine asked.

  “Fast, Jasmine, it’s been over three months since you were here. That’s a lifetime in the Yes Yes world,”

  “Has it been that long? The time for me has been very hard.”

  “I’ll be up there tomorrow. I want to see you, and ask a favor. I tried to wait a little longer, but this was the best I could do.”

  Jasmine was surprised when the pause was so short. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” she said, and punched the End button on the phone.

  The emotions surged through Jasmine’s mind, and only diminished to the background when she worked on the big mainframe. The bewilderment and pain of losing Earl rose up in tight little swirls to keep her off balance. The bitch’s brew of anxiety, uncertainty, fear, and discomfort with intrigue was just barely offset by the unshakable belief that what was she was doing was right, and work that Earl wanted to see completed. She collapsed on one of the couches in the boathouse.

  “The mornings are so beautiful in Santa Cruz they wake you up,” the tiny old man said to Jasmine as she half walked, half stumbled out on the beach. It was late morning, but the light was still a warm orange, and a soft breeze blew tiny white feathers along the beach.

  “All the pieces are there,” she said to the old man, who looked at her.

  “You must have been lucky,” he said, and walked off.

  Jasmine sat down next to a huge white driftwood log, and rolled in and out of consciousness. The soft warm breeze helped her relax, and forget the screens of data floating around in her mind.

  Will walked out on the beach wearing a black T-shirt with a big Mexican sun hat and khaki shorts that were too big. He was carrying a small white cooler. Jasmine sat with her back against the big driftwood log and felt her heart fly away.

  “You can tell when you’ve arrived in the biotech underground when you have your own couch at Rammy’s boat house,” Will said, leaning back against the big white log with his arms crossed. “Yours is the only one with a clean sheet.”

  “What does your T-shirt say?” Jasmine asked.

  “Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms. Who’s bringing the chips?” Will replied. “I’ve been in the desert too long. There’s no coming back.”

  “The 9900 is running beautifully,” Jasmine said.

  “How are you running?” Will asked.

  “On empty,”

  “Marjorie told me you took a hell of a beating in the accident,” Will said softly. “You look like you’ve recovered from that part.”

  “It was horrible, and it happened so fast…,” Jasmine said.

  Will said nothing for a few minutes. He leaned back against the big log and took long deep breaths.

  “Marjorie said Earl was a lot farther along then we all thought.”

  “He worked on Marjorie’s computer for three days and corrected his gene expression cascades after seeing the effect your stem cells had on Roy’s recovery. It’s magnificent, elegant work,” Jasmine said, reaching up to hold Will’s hand as she started to cry.

  Will put his arm around her, as the wind blew the sand into little eddies around them. Jasmine cried softly, and then fell asleep, squeezing his hand in erratic little movements.

  Two hours passed while they both slept in the warm Santa Cruz sun. When Jasmine woke up Will was holding a small plastic bag with a heart shaped organ in it.

  “We hotrodded the ducting, and used a much better permeable membrane layer. Look at this,” he said, as he turned over the stem cell organ in the sealed bag. A tiny tattoo was on the side of the organ, and Jasmine slipped her reading glasses on to read it. It was a Germanic cross with the words West Coast Choppers barely legible.

  “It was the organ printers joke.”

  “Whoever the West Coast Choppers are, they sure get around,” Jasmine said, recalling the waitress in Lake Havasu.

  “We gonna barbecue?” Rammy asked looking into the cooler.

  “If you want to spend two-hundred thousand dollars,” he said, “Long time no see, Rammy! You’ll have to come out to the desert, they’ve got a liposuction shop there that charges by the cubic foot,” Will said.

  “Gonna make my own liposuction machine! And I’m gonna desig
n a candle making attachment for it! They’re a little smoky, but ooh, so personal!” he said, cracking Will and Jasmine up. For the first time, Jasmine realized Rammy always wore long sleeves.

  Will looked at Jasmine as she laughed. She couldn’t avoid his eyes any longer. It was just a quick glance to see if the electricity was still there. The connection paralyzed her for a second, the intensity forcing her to lower her eyes and move over to Will who stroked her hair gently.

  “I’m going to need a place to stay in Santa Cruz,” he said to Rammy. “What do you recommend?”

  “The Jack London Suite, and it just opened up,” he said. “Jillian went to New Haven to get married, so it’s available.”

  “Who’s Jillian?” Will asked.

  “My old girlfriend’s new wife,” Rammy replied. “You’ll like the suite. You can walk there from here. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  The old eighty-foot wooden schooner Volunteer was so big it only fit on an end tie in the small, crowded Santa Cruz harbor. She had a low house for a ship that big, with tiny brass portholes, two huge wooden masts and a huge raked back wooden wheel.

  “She won the first Transpac ocean race to Hawaii in 1933!” Rammy said, moving a mountain bike to get aboard. “I won her in a card game, by accident. I always wanted to be a pirate!”

  “Maybe you are a pirate,” Jasmine said.

  Will stood looking at the beautiful old ship as Jasmine followed Rammy down below.

  “The galley could use a little cleaning up,” he said, stretching out his arm and sweeping the pizza boxes and beer cans off the huge teak dinette table. “But the skipper’s stateroom, that’s ah, so nice.” He opened the door to the aft cabin, which had a double bed hanging on big steel cable gimbals, and two big oval portholes facing aft. “A lot of life has been lived in here. Anyway, it’s yours if you want it.”

  “I guess we could clean it up a little,” Jasmine said.

  “I gotta go see someone about risk-taking behavior,” Rammy said, bounding up the companionway. “Have fun.”

  Will came down and leaned into the stateroom. “I was just looking at her win record. She won the Transpac twice,” he said. “She’s in great shape too. She’s been loved, really loved.”