The Methuselarity Transformation
Rick Moskovitz
Copyright © 2014 Rick Moskovitz
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 9781497532489
ISBN-10: 1497532485
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014906482
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina
Illustration and design by Mary Verrandeaux
To unintended consequences
Acknowledgments
I WOULD LIKE to thank those friends and family who were kind enough to read earlier drafts of this work and guided me in shaping its final form. Particular thanks to Travis Bickford for his thoughtful review of the very first draft, to my wife Nancy for both her critiques and support through the creative process, and to my son Dustin for reviewing multiple drafts for both narrative content and technological integrity. Thanks also to Joan Druckman, Nancy Pearlman, Ed Stein, Tex Chalkley, Halie Chalkley, Elias Sarkis, and to Kelly Lynne Schaub for her editorial guidance. I am especially grateful to those who made me accountable and restrained me from the preposterous to the merely implausible.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
About the Author
Prologue
NOBODY WOULD EVER choose this death.
The limbs of the passenger in the wreck were intertwined with the twisted carbon fiber frame of the hovercar. The human form and the vehicle looked as if they had been woven together by a cosmic pair of hands into a permanent and painful embrace.
Nearby stood another man, much younger and more robust than the dead man. Except for the blood on his face and arms, his skin had the pristine appearance of those select few who had undergone the Methuselarity Transformation, but his musculature had the fullness and definition more often seen among the data deprived masses whose focus was on physical rather than intellectual achievement. He stood erect and tall, gazing intently at the inert form at his feet. The muscles of his face struggled with the emotions that empowered them, his eyes narrowing and the corners of his mouth trembling. His Adam’s apple rose and fell as he appeared to choke back sobs.
The rescue team broke out the resuscitation unit, but even from the top of the hill, they could see that its use would be futile. The driver had been thrown from the car and his body shattered upon impact with the brick wall. The victim in the car was long past saving and even recovery of the body from the wreck would be a daunting, if not impossible task. They put aside the unit and made their way down the steep grade of the winding street.
Jagged edges of the wreck had torn away some of the smooth transparent membrane that had long covered the street’s cobblestones to adapt it to hovercraft. The exposed stones evoked earlier times when wheels rumbled over uneven road, their speed constrained by a series of closely spaced switchbacks. Even a hovercar had no chance at high speed on this tortuous street. The sun was now high in the sky, reflecting brilliantly from the tranquil waters of the distant bay in stark contrast with the carnage close at hand.
As they approached the remains of the vehicle, more details emerged. The victim was a man who had aged naturally. His skin was white, his forehead deeply ridged like the folds of loose fabric on an aging cushion, and there were tiny lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and the corners of his mouth. A scattering of small coffee-colored irregular spots appeared just under his eyes, further attesting to his age.
The paramedics watched the young man crouch by the wreckage and reach out gently to touch the dead man’s face. His fingers rested softly on the right cheek, the tip of his middle finger just below the right earlobe and pointing inadvertently at a tiny bulge in the skin behind the ear.
“What’s that bump?” asked one of the paramedics.
“Microprocessor.”
“What’s it for?”
“Long story,” said the young man. “Right now, we’ve got to get him out of here. He can’t stay here like this.”
“Easier said than done. It’ll take some time to move the wreck. The body might have to come out in pieces.”
“Not on my watch,” said the man. “He deserves a decent burial.”
The lead paramedic struggled to make sense of the scene before him. The younger man seemed to know the victim, but couldn’t have been a passenger in the vehicle. It was totally destroyed, but this man was unscathed. What was he doing there at all?
“Relative?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” said the man, rubbing at the dried blood on his own face.
The paramedic glanced down at the twisted wreckage. At close range, the painful nature of the victim’s death screamed out at him. His last minutes or seconds of life must have been excruciating.
What was most remarkable about this picture, however, was a single, inexplicable anomaly. The old man’s eyes were open and appeared almost to be making contact with his. And his features were relaxed, the corners of his mouth turned slightly upward. His expression was serene.
1
MARCUS WAS ON the thirteenth mile on the Endless Park. The ache was building in the backs of his thighs and his calves were beginning to burn. The green space surrounding him remained monotonous as the miles ticked off on the holographic display projected from a tiny opening in front of the rotating patch of grass. His arms glistened from the sun reflecting off the microthin chemical film that coated his body.
At first, the figure that appeared slightly behind him to his left, watching and studying him, escaped his notice. Her flowing red hair first caught his attention before he noticed that she was glancing back and forth between him and the sky. Her right hand poked fingers at the space just in front of her face and he realized that she was watching a display, visible only to her, that was tracking a flow of data. She was interacting with the data, entering information...about him? His performance? A bird broke the monotony of the landscape on the right and caught his attention for the blink of an eye. And when he looked back, she’d vanished.
His breath started to slow as he sank into the silky patch of HibernaTurf at the end of his run, the sun melting beads of sweat off his skin, when her shadow cast across his body. She was looking toward the sky and poking fingers of both hands at the invisible screen before her. “Marcus Takana, born August 4, 2019, New Quest, Oregon,” she read just loud enough for him to hear. “Six foot three inches tall, 182 lbs. Disease scan clear. Drug scan clear. Cortical database 2.3 petabytes. Basic unenhanced dataset.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Ignorant and vulgar,” she mouthed silently. “I’m Terra, Mr. Takana. And I have a proposition for you.” Her body was now framed against the sky, her face in shadows, the sun directly behind her fringing her hair with light.
“Tel
l me,” she went on, “are you happy with your life as it is?”
“It could be better.” He looked up at the spectral figure, trying to make out the features of her backlit face.
“Then are you ready for it to change?” Terra maintained the advantage of her position, towering over his outstretched form.
“So you’re the devil and you’ve come to buy my soul?”
“Not your soul, Mr. Takana. You can keep that. It’s no use to us at all. It’s your body we want. And we’re prepared to pay you handsomely for it.”
“What do you mean? Are you recruiting me for some sort of team?”
“Not exactly. We want you literally to sell us your body...to part with it...permanently.”
“You’re asking me to die?” Marcus sat up and got to his feet. With the direction this conversation was headed, he wanted to be on more equal ground and to see the face of his adversary. Now he had the advantage of height, his eyes level with the top of her head. As the sun struck her face, he was unprepared for her exquisite beauty. The red hair cascaded over her shoulders, framing a face of perfect symmetry, with pale unblemished skin that seemed never to have been exposed to the harsh solar rays that now penetrated an ever thinning atmosphere. Most striking were her eyes, an emerald green that reflected light with the intensity and sparkle of gemstones. These eyes now held his gaze.
“Yes. In a way. Your mind would cease to exist while your body lived on with another mind within it. I represent a few wealthy individuals who are willing to pay huge sums for healthy new bodies.”
“But what good would money do me if I no longer exist?”
“It wouldn’t happen right away. It’s a future contract to be completed at such time that your benefactor’s body is ready to die. In your case, your benefactor is in his mid-40’s, so that could be anywhere from 25 to 70 years. And he’s an exceedingly cautious man, so he could live for many decades to come. Meanwhile, you’d have access to everything that extraordinary wealth could buy. The years you’d have could be infinitely more rewarding than the life that faces you now. Imagine what you could accomplish with unlimited resources.”
Marcus remembered when he’d been young and ambitious, ready to save the world, before disaster struck his family and his dreams evaporated.
“And there’s a bonus,” Terra continued. “Few people have both the means and required youth to have the Methuselarity Transformation. By 29 or 30, cells have already aged beyond the capacity of the Transformation to help. This arrangement is only worthwhile for your benefactor with the conversion so we will of course arrange for you to undergo it. While it will not confer you with immortality, it will enable you to avoid aging as long as you continue to...exist.”
She had his attention. He did the math. If he rejected the offer, he could live perhaps eighty or ninety more years, but his body and mind would gradually fall into disrepair and he could be burdened with disabilities for decades. Even with cutting edge medicine, short of the Transformation, mental processes still began to slow as early as the fourth decade of life.
What would it have been like, Marcus thought, to have been Mozart or John Lennon or John F. Kennedy, all of whom accomplished extraordinary things and won world renown, but at the expense of dying before their time? Would it be worth it to live large and die young?
Marcus’s adult life so far had been unremarkable. Data deprived at 22, he’d had a string of dead end jobs in the meat growing factories, leaving him circling just beyond the edge of poverty. He was all alone and hadn’t ever had a relationship with a woman that lasted for more than a few weeks. All he had going for him was his dedication to running and climbing that had honed his body to sculpted refinement. An enormous chasm separated even those with advanced education from the lifestyle and achievements of those who could afford a MELD chip. He now had a chance to live on the other side of that chasm.
“Can I have some time to think about it?”
“Of course. This is a life-changing proposition that deserves proper consideration. But I’ll need an answer in the next 24 hours or the offer will go to someone else.”
“How will I find you if I decide to accept your conditions?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll find you, just like I found you the first time. And Mr. Takana,” she added, “One of the conditions is that you must not tell anyone about our arrangement...not now or ever. Secrecy is a crucial aspect of these arrangements. Your benefactor will need to assume your identity along with your body. Until tomorrow, then.” Marcus blinked and she was gone.
As he sped home on his motorcycle, Marcus wondered if his bizarre encounter with Terra had been an elaborate hallucination. Was what she proposed even possible? He’d not had a chance to ask how consciousness could be transferred from body to body or what would happen to his consciousness in the process.
The bike slipped sideways toward the edge of the road, bringing his attention abruptly back to his driving. The roads had long been designed to accommodate hover vehicles and only a few aficionados and daredevils still ventured upon their slick surfaces with wheels. Motorcycles were especially risky, even with their specially modified tires.
Halfway home he detoured into the commerce center and made an impulsive stop at the virtual dispensary. He touched the screen in front of the item he wanted and looked into the retina reader on the payment pad. The machine debited two hundred dollars from his account and dispensed a transparent packet that appeared to be empty. He smiled as he rolled it up and slipped it into a pocket. He’d been eying this item for a long time, but it was an extravagance that he could little afford. Now that he might be on the brink of fabulous wealth, it seemed like a reasonable risk.
Once home, Marcus stripped off his clothes and stepped into the cleansing pod. The short blast of water stung his skin, followed by the viscous sanitizing wash that oozed over every inch of his body. The second blast of water was mixed with air and blew off the excess chemical, leaving the surface of his body slick and dry like the membranes swimmers wore to eliminate drag. The whole process used only two ounces of water and left his body with a breathable coating that would repel contaminants for days.
Marcus remembered the times as a small child when his mother would let him play in the bathtub and then lather his hair and body. He remembered the sweet sensation of warm water dribbling over the top of his head and down his face, neck and shoulders and the snug warmth of her wrapping him in a fluffy towel when the bath was over. Bathing became illegal when he was six. The high efficiency sanitizers and surfactants that he’d just used weren’t perfected until he was in his teens. Hygiene had been a dicey issue during the intervening decade.
He stood naked in front of the mirror and looked approvingly at the definition of his musculature. The detail was worthy of the image he once saw of Michelangelo’s David. And like the statue, his body was hairless and smooth. Like most of his contemporaries, every bit of body hair had been permanently removed in order to optimize the power of the chemical membrane to repel pathogens and prevent contamination. Which made Terra’s lush red hair all the more striking.
Still naked, he moved to the all-purpose room of his small abode and stood in front of a blank wall. When he waved both hands upward and apart over the surface of the wall, it became transparent and images began to form behind it. He stepped back and the images followed him into the room. He waved his right hand in a circle and the images changed until a series of women appeared in front of him, one at a time, each as exposed and as hairless as he was. He moved his left hand over the length of one of the figures and suddenly she had blond hair on her head and wisps of flaxen hair between her legs. Marcus smiled.
He could barely afford the the ten-year-old holotron when he bought it despite it already being obsolete. The newer models allowed for more fluid interactivity without the need for ancillary devices. For the very wealthy, holotrons had been completely replaced by the functionality of the MELD chips, which provided virtual experiences at will w
ithout any external device. but Marcus was grateful for the pleasure that even this primitive device was about to provide.
He took the transparent package from the platform on which he’d placed it when he got home and carefully removed the outer wrapper. Inside were several delicate membranes that he carefully separated and unfolded. He applied one around each of his arms and legs, one to each palm, one to his torso, and one like an invisible mask over his face and lips. They clung with static force to his slick body. The last one he wrapped carefully around his half-erect penis. Then he turned back to the figure standing before him and scrolled further through the images of women, each now adorned with luxurious hair covering her head and enticing curls peeking from between her legs.
Each of the women standing before him was also viewing him among other men as a potential partner for this experience. Some of the images blinked out of view as they ruled him out on their side of the selection process, but a handful or more remained available. In the virtual world, Marcus’s physical attributes were all that counted. In the world of real relationships, intellectual prowess trumped physical attributes every time. And in the real world, casual sex was more than ever a risky business. Sexually transmitted organisms continued to evolve beyond the capacity of medicines to contain them. And they had become increasingly virulent and fast-acting. One such pathogen was as devastating as Ebola.
So virtual encounters were the only opportunity for loners like Marcus to get laid. And these were expensive, requiring the disposable transduction membranes that Marcus, and whoever he wound up choosing, each now wore. There were some perks to this approach, including total safety and the capacity to embellish the image of one’s partner according to personal taste. While hair was particularly important to Marcus, he had no idea how his image would be enhanced by the woman he was about to embrace.
Marcus pointed the fingers of his left hand at one of the women and held it steady. The parade stopped abruptly. The woman standing before him was his ideal combination of fitness and sensuality. Her waist was slender and her abdominal muscles well-defined, while the curve of her hips was pleasing and her breasts were round and full. Her skin was the color of almonds, very similar to his, and her hair was jet black. He moved his left hand over the length of her body and her skin turned an almost porcelain white. He passed his right hand past her head and genitals and her hair turned the same fiery red as Terra’s. Now she was perfect.
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