The Words - An Autobiography

The Greatest Gift

My wife was awake the morning of my sixtieth birthday, waiting for me to open my eyes. She made love to me with a tender passion, as opposed to the angry sex she'd preferred of late, then she cried, which surprised me, because she'd cried so rarely in all the years that I'd known her, which was now approaching forty. When I asked what was wrong, she asked, "Do you want to live forever?"

I smiled and told her, "Of course. With you. Isn't that the plan?"

She looked at me with sad, serious intensity. "Yes, that's been the plan; although we still can't be entirely certain of the outcome, I also don't think we should chance waiting any longer."

I rolled out of bed to put on clothes, assuming her intent was for us to head straight for the launch that would take us to the yacht in international waters. But she pulled me back into bed and told me not to be in such a hurry. The process required a couple of days between drawing the bone marrow, altering the genes, then reintroducing the modified marrow. I ought to remember the first time she'd asked for a sample of my bone marrow. I was too sore to feel frisky afterward for several days. Then, after the procedure, there were several days of recovery when no one felt well. She wanted to spend the day making love and drinking champagne. We should wait until the morning for the first phase of the procedure and enjoy my birthday. Did I have any special requests?

I assumed she meant sexual acts or positions, but she also pointed out wigs, merkins, and jars of body paint and displayed a variety of outfits for my inspection. I considered asking if we could make a trip back to the old mansion and play naked-hide-and-seek, trying to recall whether Bob was still living there. But I was soon too distracted to care to be anywhere other than where I was at that moment.

I didn't count how many times we made love that day, but it was a hell of a day for a sixty-year-old man, pills or not, which I was not embarrassed to take. I didn't need pills to get an erection, but I doubted many sixty-year-old men could still get an erection like they were fifteen again. If a pill could do that, why the hell not? Add the benefit of not being one and done, which was more often the case than not at my age. On special days, like my birthday, or my wife's, I could usually manage a couple of times without assistance, but if I could keep getting it up at regular intervals for an entire day, and maybe the following day as well, then please, give me the damned pill.

Of course, my wife would have had sex all day if it weren't for my biological limitations on her sixtieth birthday. And she had pleasured herself or encouraged me to do so dozens of times when she was ready again, but my body refused to cooperate. But she was infinitely patient on this day, waiting when she couldn't arouse me and trying again a few minutes later. If each experimental attempt to encourage an erection had counted as a blowjob, that may have been a world record. I think she had me in her mouth again every few minutes, just checking when we weren't already actively engaged. But the instant I was even partially at attention again, she swung on top, not for angry sex, but taking her time, riding slowly. Closer to Tantric Sex than angry sex. She wanted me to come as hard as possible but savored watching me enjoy her body as she encouraged the pressure building within me. She had quite a few orgasms that day as well because I insisted upon it, but that was not her focus. It was my turn to have the best birthday ever.

The following day, against my protests that I would be perfectly capable of flying our helicopter to and from our yacht myself, my wife insisted that our pilot would do the flying. And we spent no more than an hour on the yacht, having our marrow drawn, before returning to our oceanfront estate to recover from no more than minor soreness. We returned to the yacht two days later to have the procedure complete. She'd never made any effort to have human testing for the procedure officially approved, for which we'd still have been waiting. And have been shut down the instant of our first death, long before we'd been allowed to establish a mortality rate of ten percent. However strongly we made our case, or potential recipients pleaded theirs, the government would have insisted that people continued dying of natural causes rather than allow them the chance of dying from a procedure that might allow them to live forever. My wife never had the patience for that kind of stupidity.

The second part of the procedure was straightforward. The doctors created ports during the first part they left in place while the DNA in our marrow was being altered rather than drilling additional holes in our femur to return it. We drank a cup of a liquid filled with the hybrid nanobots, much like we had Pixie Dust in Kool-Aid. Done.

We flew back to spend our recovery at our oceanfront estate when I'd thought we'd spend a nostalgic night on the old yacht, which was at sea not far from the newer vessel. Our primary suite there was a fabulous place. But my wife had other ideas. Even though we were sore and it was uncomfortable, my wife insisted that we spend several hours enjoying Tantric Sex, listening to the sound of the waves, watching the sunset, then gazing up at the brilliant blanket of stars above late into the night. We didn't talk much. Neither of us felt our best. Our altered stem cells had begun their work while nanobots raced through our bodies, seeking defective cells, and destroying those too damaged to repair. It was not uncommon to feel sick enough from the activity of the nanobots for a few days that you thought you might die. Sixty-year-olds typically already had a lot of cells with damaged DNA, or we wouldn't have aged as much as we had. Add the body's immune system reacting to our altered stem cells, which also occurred to some degree with everyone. It was just a lot worse for some and remained fatal for many recipients, as the statistics had established.

Neither of us had orgasms while having tantric sex, and my wife wanted to make sure both of us did once before we went to sleep for the night. So, I used my fingers, and she held me hard until she came, then buried her face against my neck, leaving it damp with tears again. When it was my turn, she rolled away, slid her ass against me, like she had so many late nights, stroked me gently until I was ready, then guided me into her body, pulling my right arm around her and placing my hand on her breast. A short time later, when she felt my body spasm, she stroked my hand and told me that she loved me.

My last thought, as I drifted off with a smile, even though I felt far from well, was: We're going to live forever. My beautiful crazy wife had done just as she'd promised.