I could, but I still didn’t understand why they picked me. “What about another up and coming leader? Someone not under the microscope?”
“Same problem, plus politicians seek power, that’s what they truly desire. What we are giving you is ultimate power. In the wrong hands it would be a disaster.” For sure I wasn’t interested in power or money. Well, not riches, I enjoyed being well-off. Okay, I’ll go with that.
“I drink a lot,” I said. Was I trying to quit the position before I’d got started? Was I looking for a reason to shed this awful burden. I couldn’t conceive of a solution that made any sense. I looked at Sally, they must have figured out a way. Her blue eyes and perfect skin were so real. I zapped over here in less than a second, I’ve tested the anti-gravity thing. I changed what I look like. It was all a marvel, completely bizarre, yet I’d experienced it.
“You are a most reasonable man, Jo-el. That is paramount. It’s not something that you know how to measure on earth, but on Cirion it is the prime measure for our leaders.” She said, “you don’t drink that much,” she added.
Ka-el had mentioned reasonableness, I’d glossed over it. It was true, I did see both side of issues and I could be swayed. Sally’s compliment made me feel good. But I’d drifted away from the ultimate reason. If what she said was true it was going to take me a while to get used to it. I needed time to think.
“What’s the probability? This can’t be a certainty, surely?” I asked.
“Maybe eighty to eight-five percent.” Sally replied.
“So a twenty percent chance it won’t happen.” Better than nothing, I hung on to that glimmer of good news.
Sally shrugged.
“We should go back to San Francisco,” I said. Maggie is coming for dinner tonight.
Chapter 15
MORE DETAILS
I paid the bill and we found a secluded section on the beach not far from where I had arrived and out of sight. I bounced back to my family-room after taking a deep breath, I stumbled again on the landing, I’d have to work on that. I changed back to Dave, my mind spinning in every direction. Seventy years was a long time. I was fifty-seven, I wouldn’t see the end of all this. My head was a little light from the beers so I went upstairs and slept for a while. It was gone four when I went back downstairs and cleared away the container and other packages. There was one package I hadn’t opened a small, rectangular box, smooth edges. I opened it and immediately Sally appeared in her usual spot.
“What are these?” I inquired. The box was filled with orange colored pills, or that’s what they looked like.
“On Cirion they’re called life pills.”
My head raised up and I furnished Sally with a Dave Murphy glare, waiting for further explanation.
“You take two, then one tomorrow, then one two days later and one a week after that. Then you can take one every fifty days.”
“What happens?”
“They will make you feel great; they work by regenerating dying cells. On Cirion everyone starts taking them at about the age of thirty. They will approximately double your life span; it varies from person to person and with three percent of the population they don’t work. We are pretty sure they will work for the humans on earth. Because of your current age they may only add thirty or forty years to your life.”
My skepticism was enormous. Here we go again. I don’t believe and then wham! I’m proved wrong.
“There’s a lot in here?”
“Yes, about five hundred.”
“Why so many?”
“Your family.”
My head swung up and I looked wistfully at Sally. “I’m supposed to tell them about all this?”
“Not now, but there may be a time.”
“Can these be replicated here?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
A devilish glee crossed my face, “I could be rich. These would sell better than Viagra.” I looked at her waiting for a response.
She smiled, “a bargaining chip.”
“Huh! For what?”
“You’ll see.”
“You’re not telling me everything, are you?”
“I can’t, we don’t know exactly how things will turn out. We can model the likely outcome but things change and our model will be based on the Cirion experience.”
I was doing the math. Normal lifespan for a man, seventy-five to eighty years, plus forty, a hundred and twenty. I’m fifty-seven now, so that’s another sixty-three. I still wouldn’t be around to see if the galactic storm wipes us out. But my children would be.
“So my children could live to a hundred and fifty?”
“Yes.”
I was lost again. What father wouldn’t want that for their children? “Is life okay at that age?”
“The last years are always difficult, but most people on Cirion live to one hundred and seventy-five. Some more. The last ten or so years are, well you know, challenging.”
I was a believer. I went to the kitchen, poured a glass of water and popped two pills. With my usual impatience, I expected instant results, but nothing happened. Whatever.
Maggie said she would be here at five, so I spent the remaining time cleaning, not my favorite task. When the front-door bell rang, it was dead on five. Maggie was always punctual. My disposition bloomed as she entered the house. A vivid smile adorned her lips, her green-grey eyes shone like opals. She was a pretty girl, about five-eight, with short brown hair that she wore close. She hadn’t yet followed my wife’s path of weight gain but she was no stick-insect either. She wore black jeans and a warm sweatshirt advertising Queenstown, New Zealand, one of her favorite places. While there she had completed the daredevil canyon swing and brought home a video to prove it. My stomach turned when she first showed it to me.
She told me about her week and how Adam was doing. Her frustrations with the position and how she looked forward to being a homicide detective one day. At six we took the train two stops to our favorite Thai restaurant. All the way she continued her recitation of the trials of being a police officer.
“You know, there was one funny thing, this week.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“A couple of officers from Taraval got called out to a café by the beach near Judah. Suspected theft by a black guy.”
I was all ears, my face glowed red.
“You okay?” Maggie said.
“Oh, yea, just a little warm in here.”
“Anyway,” she continued. “The black guy turned into a white guy just as they were going to bag him.”
“What?” I feigned surprised.
“Yea, they told Mike at the station, he was over at Taraval.”
“Told him what?”
“That the perp they’d seen exiting the café was black but when they caught up to him, it was a young, white guy. They swore the man was black. Plus, the café manager said it was a black guy and he was the only person who’d left the café at that time.” She continued to eat.
“So, what did they do?” I asked.
“Nothing, what could they do? I guess they’re still talking about it. Anyway, how was your week, Dad?”
Glad to be off that subject. “Pretty good,” I said.
“Do anything interesting?”
Oh, if I could only tell you. Let’s see, I met a guy from another planet, who introduced me to Sally, a computer that looks like Bridget Bardot. I killed a Hispanic guy in the City. (That thought fired up a concern about my reasonableness.) I can now change my looks and clothes by just thinking about it. Oh, don’t forget the database of every piece of history for hundreds of millions of years. I can fly and bounce around the globe to anywhere in less than a second and the world is going to end in about seventy years and I’ve been tasked with saving it. Just thinking about it convinced me I was going mad.