Then it hit him. Could she have had—No, it couldn’t be! No way could she really be as old as him!
“Uh—thirty?”
The doctor’s full pouty lips smiled again. “Thanks for underestimating by two years. But you should see my grandmother! Now she makes me look like an old hag!”
Afterwards, Agnes was even more quiet than usual. In fact, what few sentences she spoke to him over the next month rarely had more than three or four words. Though they stayed in their same old routines, like grocery shopping on Saturday and church on Sunday, an invisible wall seemed to divide them. He wanted to reach out, hold her, comfort her—but she wouldn’t let him.
And she never talked to the doctor when they went for their appointments. At the last one, Dr. Renard had said, “Everything’s right on track. Your tests are looking fine.”
“But, to be honest, I still can’t say I feel any different. Or look any younger. Do I, Agnes?”
Agnes shrugged.
The doctor said, “So far, all the changes in your bodies have been on the inside. They’ve been ‘invisible’—nothing you can see, or feel. But the tests we’ve done show they have happened. Hormone levels returning to ‘young’ levels. Your bodies’ resistance to infection and cancer—boosted far beyond what it was even fifty years ago. All your organs and body tissues—regenerated, or beginning to regenerate. Now, it’s just a matter of time.”
Out of curiosity he’d asked Dr. Renard for a hard copy of their test results. Not that he understood what “GH,” “DHEA,” “FSH,” “LH,” “ASF,” or even the terms that were spelled out meant. But it was reassuring to see the “before” and “current” values—and see how they now fell within the “normal” range for someone in their twenties.
Then, after getting out of bed one morning, just as he started to shave, he saw something in the mirror that startled him. The stubble on his face wasn’t white. It was black. Even more shocking was the fine brown fuzz covering the top of his head, putting the few wispy gray hairs that had been its sole occupants for the past several decades to shame.
From then on, he had trouble sleeping at night. It was almost like being a kid again on Christmas Eve—overexcited, anxious to see what new surprises awaited him in the morning. Every day, when he woke up and looked in the mirror, he looked different—younger. It was like pushing the “reverse scan” button on one of those old VCRs. The command “Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,” wasn’t only a nice line of poetry anymore. Now, Time was actually obeying!
And Agnes was changing too. Although she never said anything about it, sometimes he caught her looking in the mirror—stroking her softer, rosier cheeks, and running her hand through gray hair to search for slowly lengthening brown roots.
Not that those changes didn’t have disadvantages. His old clothes didn’t fit his new physique—more muscular, and without the potbelly that had been his companion for so long. And he no longer bothered using their senior citizen discount cards. It took too much time explaining the situation to skeptical, acne-faced ticket sellers and checkout clerks. The most embarrassing incident was when he’d ordered a glass of wine at that restaurant—and the waitress had asked to see his driver’s license! Despite telling her over and over why the picture and date of birth didn’t seem to match the way he looked, she hadn’t believed him.
But through it all, Agnes remained cold and distant. Every time he tried to get close to her, she wouldn’t respond. Desperate to get some kind of reaction from her, he’d even tried starting arguments with her. But that didn’t work either.
The disgusting part was, those raging hormones from his first youth were making a dramatic reappearance. Although, as the years had gone by, the flames had never died out, he had to admit now that just before the treatment they’d been more like a pilot light. Sometimes the rational part of his mind was almost overwhelmed by feelings and urges that, in their intensity, bordered on temporary insanity. Especially when he saw his wife taking a bath. Every morning she looked younger, more radiant and desirable. The beads of moisture glistening on her bare voluptuous flesh made her look like a water nymph from Greek mythology, or a houri.
If he’d asked her, Agnes would probably have let him do what he wanted. But he never asked. That, he knew, would have just been using her body. If it wasn’t a mutually desired act of shared love between them, what really was the point? So, after all those years, the cold showers started again. Worst of all, after nights with particularly vivid dreams, sometimes he had to take a shower when he first woke up in the morning for an embarrassing, hygienic reason.
He’d almost laughed when Dr. Renard, in one of their recent visits, had even brought up the subject of birth control. Even if their bodies really had changed that much, considering how things were between his wife and him, fat chance they would need that!
The only times Agnes seemed even a little happy or almost smiled at him was when the boys were scheduled to call. She always asked them so anxiously how they were feeling. If they were eating the right foods to keep up their strength, and getting enough sleep. He half-expected her to ask if they always wore clean underwear in case they got hurt and had to go to a hospital. Or tell them to wear something warm if they went outside.
She never seemed to grasp that it took nearly two seconds for her words and image to reach their older son, and at least another few seconds for his reply to come back. When his picture on the ’screen didn’t respond to her immediately, she always asked, “Can you hear me? Did we get cut off?” The other night Gerry told them that he’d been selected as a crewperson on one of the new ships that would be heading for Mars in six months. Schrader had felt his eyes mist over when he’d told his son how proud he was of him. Agnes had cried too but, he knew, for a different reason. Her little boy was going even farther away from her.
At least there wasn’t a noticeable transmission delay when they talked with David. He’d had good news, too. Next week he’d finally be leaving the space station and heading up to Lunar Base 4 to join his big brother. No, he wouldn’t be going with Gerry on the new fleet. You had, he said, to have at least a year’s experience on the Moon to qualify. But they were scheduled to build another few ships next year, and if he kept his nose clean and worked hard, he might be able to hop a ride to Mars on one of them. Just before he had to end the call, David said, “I still can’t get over how good you and Dad look. It’s almost like looking at our old home holos when we were growing up.” His last words actually did make Agnes smile.
“Mom, you look so—young!”
And then, one morning, he woke up and saw Agnes lying on her side in their bed, staring at him with a frightened expression on her face. When he asked her what was wrong, her answer terrified him. She said, “Who are you? Are you my husband?”
Fortunately, he was able to get through to Dr. Renard almost immediately. She had apparently just arrived at her office. The ’screen showed her exchanging her winter coat for a white lab jacket.
She said, “The side-effect you’re describing is not uncommon, though it’s usually not as severe or sudden. Some of the medicines we gave your wife as part of the rejuvenation treatment were designed to cure her depression and Alzheimer’s disease. They either ‘reprogram’ brain cells that aren’t acting properly, or replace cells that have been destroyed by making the remaining, healthy ones multiply. While those ‘good’ cells are busy growing new brain tissue, however, they have to temporarily stop working themselves. So, if enough healthy cells are ‘off-line’ at one time making repairs, the problem they’re trying to take care of—like Alzheimer’s—can seem to get worse before it gets better. Do you understand what I’m saying?”