“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?”
“It’s fine.” Farley copied down the names and some other information and then handed a card to Covey. “Just take that to your lawyer.”
The old man nodded. “His office is only a few miles from here. I could see him today.”
“Just bring us a copy of the will.” He didn’t add what Covey, of course, a savvy businessman, knew. That if the will was not altered, or if he changed it later, the foundation wouldn’t do the cloning. They had the final say.
“What about the... transition?”
Farley said, “That’s your choice. Entirely up to you. Tomorrow or next year. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
At the door Covey paused and turned back, shook Farley’s hand. He gave a faint laugh. “Who would’ve thought? Forever.”
In Greek mythology Eos was the goddess of dawn and she was captivated with the idea of having human lovers. She fell deeply in love with a mortal, Tithonos, the son of the king of Troy, and convinced Zeus to let him live forever.
The god of gods agreed. But he neglected one small detaiclass="underline" granting him youth as well as immortality. While Eos remained unchanged Tithonos grew older and more decrepit with each passing year until he was so old he was unable to move or speak. Horrified, Eos turned him into an insect and moved on to more suitable paramours.
Dr. William Farley thought of this myth now, sitting at his desk in the Lotus Research Foundation. The search for immortality’s always been tough on us poor humans, he reflected. But how doggedly we ignore the warning in Tithonos’s myth — and the logic of science — and continue to look for ways to cheat death.
Farley glanced at a picture on his desk. It showed a couple, arm in arm — younger versions of those in a second picture on his credenza. His parents, who’d died in an auto accident when Farley was in medical school.
An only child, desperately close to them, he took months to recover from the shock. When he was able to resume his studies, he decided he’d specialize in emergency medicine — devoting his to saving lives threatened by trauma.
But the young man was brilliant — too smart for the repetitious mechanics of ER work. Lying awake nights he would reflect about his parents’ deaths and he took some reassurance that they were, in a biochemical way, still alive within him. He developed an interest in genetics, and that was the subject he began to pursue in earnest.
Months, then years, of manic twelve-hour days doing research in the field resulted in many legitimate discoveries. But this also led to some ideas that were less conventional, even bizarre — consciousness cloning, for instance.
Not surprisingly, he was either ignored or ridiculed by his peers. His papers were rejected by professional journals, his grant requests turned down. The rejection didn’t discourage him, though he grew more and more desperate to find the millions of dollars needed to research his theory. One day — about seven years ago — nearly penniless and living in a walk-up beside one of Westbrook’s commuter train lines, he’d gotten a call from an old acquaintance. The man had heard about Farley’s plight and had an idea.
“You want to raise money for your research?” he’d asked the impoverished medico. “It’s easy. Find really sick, really wealthy patients and sell them immortality.”
“What?”
“Listen,” the man had continued. “Find patients who’re about to die anyway. They’ll be desperate. You package it right, they’ll buy it.”