by Ed McBain
Tal clipped his seatbelt on, deciding that being a real cop was the last thing in the world he wanted.
∞
A beep on the intercom. “Mr. Covey’s here, sir.”
“I’ll be right there.” Dr. William Farley rose from his desk, a glass-sheet-covered Victorian piece his business partner had bought for him in New England on one of the man’s buying sprees. Farley would have been content to have a metal desk or even a card table.
But in the business of medicine, not the practice, appearances count. The offices of the Lotus Research Foundation, near the mall containing Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, were filled with many antiques. Farley had been amused when they’d moved here three years ago to see the fancy furniture, paintings, objets d’art. Now, they were virtually invisible to him. What he greatly preferred was the huge medical facility itself behind the offices. As a doctor and researcher, that was the only place he felt truly at home.
Forty-eight, slim to the point of being scrawny, hair with a mind of its own, Farley had nonetheless worked hard to rid himself of his backroom medical researcher’s image. He now pulled on his thousand-dollar suit jacket and applied a comb. He paused at the door, took a deep breath, exhaled and stepped into a lengthy corridor to the foundation’s main lobby. It was deserted except for the receptionist and one elderly man, sitting in a deep plush couch.
“Mr. Covey?” the doctor asked, extending his hand.
The man set down the coffee cup he’d been given by the receptionist and they shook hands.
“Dr. Farley?”
A nod.
“Come on into my office.”
They chatted about the weather as Farley led him down the narrow corridor to his office. Sometimes the patients here talked about sports, about their families, about the paintings on the walls.
Sometimes they were so nervous they said nothing at all.
Entering the office, Farley gestured toward a chair and then sat behind the massive desk. Covey glanced at it, unimpressed. Farley looked him over. He didn’t appear particularly wealthy—an off-the-rack suit, a tie with stripes that went one way while those on his shirt went another. Still, the director of the Lotus Foundation had learned enough about rich people to know that the wealthiest were those who drove hybrid Toyota gas-savers and wore raincoats until they were threadbare.
Farley poured more coffee and offered Covey a cup.
“Like I said on the phone yesterday, I know a little about your condition. Your cardiologist is Jennifer Lansdowne, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re seeing someone from the Cardiac Support Center at the hospital.”
Covey frowned. “I was.”
“You’re not any longer?”
“A problem with the nurse they sent me. I haven’t decided if I’m going back. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.”
“Well, we think you might be a good candidate for our services here, Mr. Covey. We offer a special program to patients in certain cases.”
“What kind of cases?”
“Serious cases.”
“The Lotus Research Foundation for Alternative Treatment,” Covey recited. “Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think ginseng and acupuncture work for serious cases.”
“That’s not what we’re about.” Farley looked him over carefully. “You a businessman, sir?”
“Was. For half a century.”
“What line?”
“Manufacturing. Then venture capital.”
“Then I imagine you generally like to get straight to the point.”
“You got that right.”
“Well, then let me ask you this, Mr. Covey. How would you like to live forever?”
“How’s that?”
In the same way that he’d learned to polish his shoes and speak in words of fewer than four syllables, Farley had learned how to play potential patients like trout. He knew how to pace the pitch. “I’d like to tell you about the foundation. But first would you mind signing this?” He opened the drawer of his desk and passed a document to Covey.
He read it. “A nondisclosure agreement.”
“It’s pretty standard.”
“I know it is,” the old man said. “I’ve written ‘em. Why do you want me to sign it?”
“Because what I’m going to tell you can’t be made public.”
He was intrigued now, the doctor could tell, though trying not to show it.
“If you don’t want to, I understand. But then I’m afraid we won’t be able to pursue our conversation further.”
Covey read the sheet again. “Got a pen?”
Farley handed him a Mont Blanc; Covey took the heavy barrel with a laugh suggesting he didn’t like ostentation very much. He signed and pushed the document back.
Farley put it into his desk. “Now, Dr. Lansdowne’s a good woman. And she’ll do whatever’s humanly possible to fix your heart and give you a few more years. But there’re limits to what medical science can do. After all, Mr. Covey, we all die. You, me, the children being born at this minute. Saints and sinners . . . we’re all going to die.”
“You got an interesting approach to medical services, Doctor. You cheer up all your patients this way?”
Dr. Farley smiled. “We hear a lot about aging nowadays.”
“Can’t turn on the TV without it.”
“And about people trying to stay young forever.”
“Second time you used that word. Keep going.”
“Mr. Covey, you ever hear about the Hayflick rule?”
“Nope. Never have.”
“Named after the man who discovered that human cells can reproduce themselves a limited number of times. At first, they make perfect reproductions of themselves. But after a while they can’t keep up that level of quality control, you could say; they become more and more inefficient.”
“Why?”
Covey, he reflected, was a sharp one. Most people sat there and nodded with stupid smiles on their faces. He continued. “There’s an important strand of DNA that gets shorter and shorter each time the cells reproduce. When it gets too short, the cells go haywire and they don’t duplicate properly. Sometimes they stop altogether.”
“I’m following you in general. But go light on the biology bullshit. Wasn’t my strong suit.”
“Fair enough, Mr. Covey. Now, there’re some ways to cheat the Hayflick limit. In the future it may be possible to extend life span significantly, dozens, maybe hundreds of years.”
“That ain’t forever.”
“No, it’s not.”
“So cut to the chase.”
“We’ll never be able to construct a human body that will last more than a few hundred years at the outside. The laws of physics and nature just don’t allow it. And even if we could we’d still have disease and illness and accidents that shorten life spans.”
“This’s getting cheerier and cheerier.”
“Now, Dr. Lansdowne’ll do what she can medically and the Cardiac Support Center will give you plenty of help.”
“Depending on the nurse,” Covey muttered. “Go on.”
“And you might have another five, ten, fifteen years. . . . Or you can consider our program.” Farley handed Covey a business card and tapped the logo of the Lotus Foundation, a golden flower. “You know what the lotus signifies in mythology?”
“Not a clue.”
“Immortality.”
“Does it now?”
“Primitive people’d see lotuses grow up out of the water in riverbeds that’d been dry for years. They assumed the plants were immortal.”
“You said you can’t keep people from dying.”
“We can’t. You will die. What we offer is what you might call a type of reincarnation.”
Covey sneered. “I stopped going to church thirty years ago.”
“Well, Mr. Covey. I’ve never gone to church. I’m not talking about spiritual reincarnation. No, I mean scientific, provable reincarnation.”
Farley laughed hard. “That’s right. Pretty much at that sentence.”
“Well, you ain’t lost me yet. Keep going.”
“It’s very complex but I’ll give it to you in a nutshell—just a little biology.”
The old man sipped more coffee and waved his hand for the doctor to continue.
“The foundation holds the patent on a process that’s known as neuro stem cell regenerative replication. . . . I know, it’s a mouthful. Around here we just call it consciousness cloning.”
“Explain that.”
“What is consciousness?” Farley asked. “You look around the room, you see things, smell them, have reactions. Have thoughts. I sit in the same room, focus on different things, or focus on the same things, and have different reactions. Why? Because our brains are unique.”
A slow nod. This fish was getting close to the fly.
“The foundation’s developed a way to genetically map your brain and then program embryonic cells to grow in a way that duplicates it perfectly. After you die your identical consciousness is recreated in a fetus. You’re—” A slight smile. “—born again. In a secular, biological sense, of course. The sensation you have is as if your brain were transplanted into another body.”
Farley poured more coffee, handed it to Covey, who was shaking his head.
“How the hell do you do this?” Covey whispered.
“It’s a three-step process.” The doctor was always delighted to talk about his work. “First, we plot the exact structure of your brain as it exists now—the parts where the consciousness resides. We use supercomputers and micro-MRI machines.”
“MRI. . . . that’s like a fancy X-ray, right?”
“Magnetic resonance. We do a perfect schematic of your consciousness. Then step two: you know about genes, right? They’re the blueprints for our bodies, every cell in your body contains them. Well, genes decide not only what your hair color is and your height and susceptibility to certain diseases but also how your brain develops. After a certain age the brain development gene shuts off; your brain’s structure is determined and doesn’t change—that’s why brain tissue doesn’t regenerate if it’s destroyed. The second step is to extract and reactivate the development gene. Then we implant it into a fetus.”
“You clone me?”
“No, not your body. We use donor sperm and egg and a surrogate mother. There’s an in vitro clinic attached to the foundation. You’re ‘placed,’ we call it, with a good family from the same social-economic class as you live in now.”
Covey wanted to be skeptical, it seemed, but he was still receptive.
“The final part is to use chemical and electromagnetic intervention to make sure the brain develops identically to the map we made of your present one. Stimulate some cells’ growth, inhibit others’. When you’re born again, your perceptions will be exactly what they are from your point of view now. Your sensibilities, interests, desires.”
Covey blinked.
“You won’t look like you. Your body type will be different. Though you will be male. We insist on that. It’s not our job to work out gender-identity issues.”
“Not a problem,” he said shortly, frowning at the absurdity of the idea. Then: “Can you eliminate health problems? I had skin cancer. And the heart thing, of course.”
“We don’t do that. We don’t make supermen or superwomen. We simply boost your consciousness into another generation, exactly as you are now.”
Covey considered this for a moment. “Will I remember meeting you, will I have images of this life?”
“Ah, memories . . . We didn’t quite know about those at first. But it seems that, yes, you will remember, to some extent—because memories are hard-wired into some portions of the brain. We aren’t sure how many yet, since our first clients are only three or four years old now—in their second lives, of course—and we haven’t had a chance to fully interview them yet.”
“You’ve actually done this?” he whispered.
Farley nodded. “Oh, yes, Mr. Covey. We’re up and running.”
“What about will I go wacko or anything? That sheep they cloned died? She was a mess, I heard.”
“No, that can’t happen because we control development, like I was explaining. Every step of the way.”
“Jesus,” he whispered. “This isn’t a joke?”
“Oh, no, not at all.”
“You said, ‘Forever.’ So, how does it work—we do the same thing in seventy years or whatever?”
“It’s literally a lifetime guarantee, even if that lifetime lasts ten thousand years. The Lotus Foundation will stay in touch with all our clients over the years. You can keep going for as many generations as you want.”
“How do I know you’ll still be in business?”
A slight chuckle. “Because we sell a product there’s an infinite demand for. Companies that provide that don’t ever go out of business.”
Covey eyed Farley and the old man said coyly, “Which brings up your fee.”
“As you can imagine . . .”
“Forever don’t come cheap. Gimme a number.”
“One half of your estate with a minimum often million dollars.”
“One half? That’s about twenty-eight million. But it’s not liquid. Real estate, stocks, bonds. I can’t just write you a check for it.”
“We don’t want you to. We’re keeping this procedure very lowkey. In the future we hope to offer our services to more people but now our costs are so high we can work only with the ones who can cover the expenses. . . . And, let’s be realistic, we prefer people like you in the program.”
“Like me?”
“Let’s say higher in the gene pool than others.”
Covey grunted. “Well, how do you get paid?”
“You leave the money to one of our charities in your will.”
“Charities?”
“The foundation owns dozens of them. The money gets to us eventually.”
“So you don’t get paid until I die.”
“That’s right. Some clients wait until they actually die of their disease. Most, though, do the paperwork and then transition themselves.”
“Transition?”
“They end their own life. That way they avoid a painful end. And, of course, the sooner they leave, the sooner they come back.”
“How many people’ve done this?”
“Eight.”
Covey looked out the window for a moment, at the trees in Central Park, waving slowly in a sharp breeze. “This’s crazy. The whole thing’s nuts.”
Farley laughed. “You’d be nuts if you didn’t think that at first. . . . Come on, I’ll give you a tour of the facility.”
Setting down his coffee, Covey followed the doctor out of the office. They walked down the hallway through an impressive-looking security door into the laboratory portion of the foundation. Farley pointed out first the massive supercomputers used for brain mapping and then the genetics lab and cryogenic facility itself, which they couldn’t enter but could see from windows in the corridor. A half dozen white-coated employees dipped pipettes into tubes, grew cultures in petri dishes and hunched over microscopes.
Covey was intrigued but not yet sold, Farley noted.
“Let’s go back to the office.”
When they’d sat again the old man finally said, “Well, I’ll think about it.”
Sheldon nodded with a smile and said, “You bet. A decision like this . . . Some people just can’t bring themselves to sign on. You take your time.” He handed Covey a huge binder. “Those’re case studies, genetic data for comparison with the transitioning clients and their next-life selves, interviews with them. There’s nothing identifying them but you can read about the children and the process itself.” Farley paused and let Covey flip through the material. He seemed to be reading it carefully. The doctor added, “What’s so nice about this is that you never have
to say good-bye to your loved ones. Say you’ve got a son or daughter . . . we could contact them when they’re older and propose our services to them. You could reconnect with them a hundred years from now.”
At the words son or daughter, Covey had looked up, blinking. His eyes drifted off and finally he said, “I don’t know. . . .”
“Mr. Covey,” Farley said, “let me just add one thing. I understand your skepticism. But you tell me you’re a businessman? Well, I’m going to treat you like one. Sure, you’ve got doubts. Who wouldn’t? But even if you’re not one hundred percent sure, even if you think I’m trying to sell you a load of hooey, what’ve you got to lose? You’re going to die anyway. Why don’t you just roll the dice and take the chance?”
He let this sink in for a minute and saw that the words—as so often—were having an effect. Time to back off. He said, “Now, I’ve got some phone calls to make, if you’ll excuse me. There’s a lounge through that door. Take your time and read through those things.”
Covey picked up the files and stepped into the room the doctor indicated. The door closed.
Farley had pegged the old man as shrewd and deliberate. And accordingly the doctor gave him a full forty-five minutes to examine the materials. Finally he rose and walked to the doorway. Before he could say anything Covey looked up from the leather couch he was sitting in and said, “I’ll do it. I want to do it.”
“I’m very happy for you,” Farley said sincerely.
“What do I need to do now?”
“All you do is an MRI scan and then give us a blood sample for the genetic material.”
“You don’t need part of my brain?”
“That’s what’s so amazing about genes. All of us is contained in a cell of our own blood.”
Covey nodded.
“Then you change your will and we take it from there.” He looked in a file and pulled out a list of the charities the foundation had set up recently.
“Any of these appeal? You should pick three or four. And they ought to be something in line with interests or causes you had when you were alive.”
“There.” Covey circled three of them. “I’ll leave most to the Metropolitan Arts Assistance Association.” He looked up. “Veronica, my wife, was an artist. That okay?”