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H. G. Stratmann

The Best is Yet to Be

Illustration by John Stevens

“But what if I don’t want to live forever?”

Schrader looked at his wife and frowned. Agnes, don’t be so difficult!

Swiveling a little in her chair behind the long wooden desk, Dr. Re-nard replied calmly, “The treatment won’t make you immortal. It makes you much more resistant to infections and life-threatening diseases, but you’ll be just as vulnerable to accidental injuries. And, of course, it makes you younger.”

“Agnes, don’t you want to be twen-ty-five years old again?” Schrader took her wrinkled hand in his. “It’ll be just like when we were first married!”

“But we won t really be younger. We’ll just look that way.” She glanced at the doctor. “This treatment won’t really ‘turn back the clock,’ like she said. We won’t really be newlyweds again, with our whole marriage still in front of us. It’ll just seem that way. We’ll still be in our seventies, retired, with our family already raised and gone! What will we really have to look forward to?”

Before Schrader could think of an answer Renard spoke again. “Mrs. Schrader, I can tell you how the rejuvenation treatment will affect your bodies. I can’t, however, tell you how it will affect your lives as a whole, for better or worse. Only you can decide whether having it is the right thing for you. But I will try to give you all the medical information you and your husband need to make the best decision you can. Now, with your permission, I’d like to go over the results of your tests.” She cleared her throat.-“Display file Schrader, Thomas J.”

The holoscreen on the nearby wall flashed to life. The doctor nodded approvingly at the text and complicated multicolored diagrams that appeared and disappeared at her command. Schrader winced, remembering what those dozens of invariably smiling, pleasant, white-coated people at the medical center had done to Agnes and him over the past month. It seemed like every square centimeter of his body—both outside and inside—had been poked, prodded, and scanned. Not content with draining what seemed like a couple liters of blood a few cc’s at a time, they’d also requested samples of every other kind of bodily fluid too. He’d thought that, at his age, nothing could embarrass him anymore. But when that perky nurse had handed him the little cup and graphically suggested several ways to obtain the required specimen, he’d blushed. Her patience in waiting over an hour and cheery “That’s all right, a few drops is all we need,” only made him feel worse.

The doctor said, “I’m happy to say, Mr. Schrader, that you’re in remarkably good shape for a man of your age. Your profile shows just the usual ‘wear and tear’ problems. Mild atherosclerosis. Some diverticula and polyps in the colon. A small focus of cancer in your prostate.”

Schrader blinked. Cancer?

Renard continued, “Nothing out of the ordinary. Most important, the tests we made of your cognitive functions and psychological status showed no significant impairments. You meet all the physical and mental requirements for the treatment.”

Then she said, “Access file Schrader, Agnes M.” The doctor frowned as a new display appeared. “As for you, Mrs. Schrader, your physical condition is also well within acceptable range for the treatment. However, your psychological tests showed a moderate level of depression, and we also found evidence of mild Alzheimer’s disease.”

She paused. “That’s the bad news. The good news is that the depression can be treated very easily and, as long as it’s dealt with relatively soon, we can reverse the Alzheimer’s, too.”

Alzheimer’s. Schrader looked at his wife, seeing how she would react. The expression on her face was completely blank. Then he said to the doctor, “So you think the treatment will work?”

“Yes. The overall success rate is nearly 100 percent.”

“And it won’t hurt?”

The doctor laughed. “Compared to what you’ve been through already with the profiling tests, the treatment itself will seem like nothing. Remember when both of you came in last year to receive those medicines for your teeth and eyes? We’ll give you these new ones the same way.”

Reflexively Schrader ran his tongue over his newly re-grown teeth. He was still getting used to not needing glasses anymore. Then he said, “And it’s safe?”

“To a very high degree. After the treatment, you’ll be monitored for any signs of rare problems, like uncontrolled cell growth. In my personal experience, the only problems I’ve seen have been relatively minor, and temporary.”

Renard leaned back in her chair. “The effects of the treatment are, in a way, very straightforward. Think of the body as a very complicated machine. Basic ideas about how the different parts of the body work and the cells they’re made of have been known for hundreds of years. It was only in the 1900s, however, that we really began to identify and understand the different chemicals the body produces, and how they affect things like aging. Then, after a map of the human body’s genetic structure was finally completed early in this century, what we know about those chemicals and the genes that produce them has increased astronomically.”

She smiled wryly. “My grandmother was a doctor around the turn of the century. Back then she was a ‘specialist’ in heart disease—a field of medicine that, at the time, was considered very ‘high-tech’ and prestigious. Now, looking back at what they knew and could do then, it’s almost like they were using leeches and magic potions.”

Schrader smiled back. “I read that the treatment is sort of like renovating an old house.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the general idea. After we become adults, our bodies start to deteriorate. Cells in certain important organs, like the brain and heart, can no longer divide, so if they’re destroyed the body can’t replace them. As the years go by, the damage from infections, environmental hazards like radiation, poisons the body itself produces, and general ‘wear and tear’ keep adding up. Meanwhile, the body is losing its ability to resist and repair all this damage. Over time, it also starts producing cells that don’t act the way they ‘should.’ The bad effects that problem produces range from making your hair turn gray, to getting cancer.

“The so-called ‘smart molecules’ we use are programmed to either turn certain genes back on or change the way they’re working, so the body can repair and rejuvenate itself from the basic DNA and protein level on up. Once they’re done, it is sort of like having a ‘new house’ again. You’ll just need to have booster treatments every five years or so to keep it ‘renovated.’ ”

Schrader turned toward his wife. “Agnes, don’t you think we should—”

“It’s not right!” Agnes glared angrily at him, then at the doctor. “What you want to do is#’t natural! We’ve lived our lives, we’ve already done all the things that were important to us! What would we do with all those extra years, except do the same things all over again? Have the same problems, the same heartaches we’ve had before? They were hard enough to bear the first time. I don’t want to have to go through them again!”

“But Agnes—”

“No, Tom! There’s a reason God meant us to live only so long. We struggled and worked hard all those years; we’ve done the best we could in this life, and now we’ve earned our rest. We should be satisfied with whatever time we have left on this world and then, when it’s our time, go on to our eternal rest.”

Schrader looked pleadingly at the doctor for help. The latter shrugged her shoulders. “As I said before, I can’t tell you whether having the treatment is the best decision for you. Think about it. Talk about it. If you decide to go ahead, or if you just want to discuss it with me again, please make an appointment to see me.”