“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.”
The old man grunted. “This’s about the time you start losing people, right?”
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.”