The Words - An Autobiography

Volunteers

Finding volunteers for human testing was the most easily resolved of the potential hurdles my wife had anticipated. The younger employees at her lab felt less compelled to risk the untested procedure, but the older members clamored loudly enough to be the first or second my wife decided to have a lottery. Her administrative team referred to this as the Lottery of Life, each immediately including their names.

A married couple in their sixties were the winners of the first lottery. Or the wife was, then decided she wouldn't go through with the procedure without her husband. She'd never expected her name would be drawn, so she hadn't considered the possibility of living forever without him. A debate followed. Some of the other participants in the lottery agreed that the husband should have the procedure too. That was the right thing to do. While others thought it was unfair to everyone waiting their turn, and if the wife insisted that her husband be allowed to jump ahead in the line to join her, she should forfeit her spot and wait until they drew her husband's name. While the argument continued, rather than wasting additional valuable time, my wife performed the procedure for both without any announcement. Everyone else could continue debating what was fair for as long as they liked afterward.

Both husband and wife survived the procedure. And, though they'd observed the phenomenon in mice, everyone still expressed surprise, and delight, when both began to appear younger after a few months. It wasn't a radical rate of change at first, but after a year, they seemed to be a good five years younger than they had before having the procedure and, after two years, appeared to be no more than their late forties. Both also confessed that the return of their youthful libidos had raced far ahead of their increasingly young faces.

Unfortunately, they were afraid they would also need to leave the home where they'd lived for so long because of the responses from neighbors. Not because of their sudden scandalous behavior, although there'd been several instances in the new hot tub they'd purchased where they'd thrown caution to the wind, running out naked, whooping and hollering, and cavorting quite shamelessly. The problem wasn't their behavior so much as the dramatic change in their appearance.

On several occasions, questions arose: What happened to that old couple who used to own their house? They weren't comfortable explaining that they were that old couple or legally allowed to do so, given the explicit wording of their non-disclosure. And what would they say in another few years when they appeared to be who knew how much younger.

Then, while caution might have been better served by waiting to see whether any ill effects manifested themselves in this brave first couple, none of the others with their names in the hat were willing to wait longer for their chance, nor was my wife. So, the subsequent two procedures were only a month after the first. Again, one of an older couple's names was drawn, who didn't want to face forever alone. And again, There was bitching the same as with the first set. But as consensus grew that no one should need to choose to leave their spouses behind, my wife performed the following procedures only two weeks later without a pause. Then several more each week for that first year.

Most of the procedures were successes, but not all the recipients were so fortunate. After ten successful procedures, one recipient had a horrible reaction and died within days. Her immune system declared war on her body, which immediately began destroying itself, leaving her husband of nearly fifty years, whose name was not selected, to face the possibility of forever alone. Some doctors remarked that her symptoms were similar to those of Graft-Host disease. Some of the cautious members of the team wanted to curtail any further procedures until they had a better understanding of why this reaction occurred. Others argued that hundreds of mice survived the procedure. None had died horrible deaths. So, it was likely an anomaly.

Anomaly or not, the older among the lottery hopefuls were still willing to accept the risk and take their chances. What was the worst that could happen? Without the procedure, they'd die, a certainty approaching far too quickly. They asked, Who their age in their right mind wouldn't accept the possibility of dying immediately for the chance to live forever? Especially since, within a year, those who survived already appeared and felt younger - and many believed they'd also be free of illnesses that would likely kill them before old age had a chance, as did my wife, privately. However, she cautioned that she wasn't ready to make such claims. But, if the body systematically rids itself of cells with deformed DNA, how could a cure for cancer not be the result?