The Fountain of Youth

"I want some of the weed you've been smokin'!" Sam Beckett exclaimed, "Or a taste of your psychedelic mushrooms!"

"You can call off the narc squad - I'm as clean as a set of bowels after a gallon of polyethylene glycol colonoscopy prep," bantered Tom Kiernander, one of Sam's poker buddies and a fellow sales associate at Kevvexx Pharmaceuticals. "Besides, I have the information on the highest authority."

"Whose? The redhead's in accounting whose skirt you've been chasin' the last couple of weeks?" Sam chortled.

The other two men at the table joined in Sam's laughter. Tom did not.

"Higher," replied Tom, "someone privy to the executive suite. Can't name names or I'll be cut off."

"Better there than with the redhead," said Sam.

The night got deathly quiet. Tom's face lost all expression. One might have heard Kenny Rogers crooning "The Gambler" somewhere in the darkness. How appropriate for a poker game.

"Samantha," scowled Tom, rising to his feet as if preparing to do battle. A fair maiden's honor was at stake. Tom's chivalrous instincts had kicked into high gear.

"What?" asked Sam. His deer-in-the-headlights look registered blatant confusion.

A blue cloud of cigar smoke performed a primal dance between the two men.

"The redhead. Her name's Samantha. Sam for short. And she's classier than any other Sam I know." Tom's fists were clenching, his knuckles alternating between white and a reddish purple.

"Touché," admitted Sam, the leer abandoning his mouth but not his eyes. "Forget I mentioned her - sorry about that."

His friend slowly unclenched his fists, stretching his fingers as if to re-engage the blood flow.

"But I still don't believe your imaginary executive suite pal's story," continued Sam.

Tom reluctantly parked himself back in his chair. "Your choice," said Tom, a slight smile tickling the edge of his lips.

An awkward pause was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing his throat.

"I heard about it from a girl in research," interjected Harjinder Singh, crushing his cigar butt on a paper plate. Classy card games call for classy dishware.

Harj worked in IT but spent most of his time developing simulation programs for colleagues in the research department at Kevvexx.

"You guys are pullin' my leg - you're in on it together!" Sam retorted, deliberately withholding the inappropriate aspersions that he would routinely have cast in the direction of Harj's unidentified female research colleague. Sam's relational perspective had never really graduated from the schoolyard.

"Not from what I hear," offered Thurston Grosvenor, the most poker-faced of the poker foursome.

Sam's attention flitted in butterfly fashion, landing on the owlish figure seated across the table from him.

While often difficult to decipher, Thurston was not known for feigning the truth. He was a master of misdirection and media spin in his work as a communications advisor for Kevvexx, but he was no bald-faced liar to his friends.

"They have us working on plugging the leaks on this," he continued, "The top dogs in the corner offices want to control the flow of information like this were Roswell or something."

Thurston, the government conspiracy theorist. The believer in past and present terrestrial visits from intelligent life on other planets. The quantum physicist turned media gatekeeper. The bespectacled egghead with impeccable credibility. Dead serious no matter the role he played. The younger, Ivy League bookworm version of Clint Eastwood.

Sam fixed his stare between Thurston's Coke-bottle lenses. The stare-down continued for a good fifteen seconds. Sam raised his left eyebrow in typical Spockian fashion. Finally, he spoke. "T.G., you wouldn't shit a shitter, would you?"

Thurston flashed Sam his most potent Eastwood nose flare. His steely gaze gave Sam the answer he sought.

"For real?" asked Sam.

Thurston's barely perceptible nod provided full affirmation.

Sam's mouth gaped wide, his eyes once again flashing their Bambi-in-the-spotlight pose. "The fountain of youth? Oh, my God..."

"Shut up and deal," Tom whined.

* * * * *

Natalie Beckett tried not to fidget as she waited in the oncologist's reception area. She badly needed a cigarette. But wasn't that a large part of the reason she was here in the first place?

Her ring finger satellite phone began playing Pachelbel's Canon in D. "That's Sam," she thought, recognizing the ring tone, "the big oaf still hasn't lost his sense of timing."

She raised the false gemstone to her lips to respond, but then noticed the death stare being leveled at her by the colossal figure seated across the magazine-strewn coffee table. She noted bulging biceps and a scowl that spoke of possible constipation. The man pointed toward a digital sign instructing patients to "Please disengage all communications devices."

"End call," Natalie instructed the gemstone, using the device's voice technology to end the call prematurely. "Poor fella," she thought while returning the bodybuilder's stare, "all those 'roids probably shrunk his gonads. No wonder he's in a testy mood."

She immediately felt a pang of remorse. She decided she needed to purge herself of negative thoughts. Now was no time to focus on the petty side of human nature. She breathed slowly while counting to ten, then managed a bland smile at the Hulk Hogan wannabe.

"Ms. Beckett!" shouted the receptionist, "you're up!"

Natalie stood, wondering momentarily why doctors' offices did less to protect their patients' privacy than Red Lobster restaurants did for their dining clientele. "Get some of those vibrating pagers, already!" she willed silently.

She moved toward the front desk, where a white-stockinged nurse with white-frosted hair directed her through the door to one among a cluster of identically nondescript patient examination rooms.

"You can keep your clothes on, honey," the wizened woman advised her.

"Gee, thanks," replied Natalie absently. She sat uncomfortably on the swivel chair in the corner as the nurse closed the door. It was either that or hop up onto the vinyl gurney covered by a paper sheet. Neither option left her in position to have an eye-level discussion with Dr. Messina, and the chair was the lesser of two evils where comfort was concerned.

Seconds passed. Minutes passed. Natalie found creative ways to uncross and re-cross her legs. She wished she had brought a book. Or maybe she should re-engage her ring finger satellite phone.

The finger phones were simple and sleek, having shed all the progressively gauche distractions that Steve Jobs and his ilk had foisted upon a mesmerized constituency over the past few decades. And the gemstone with its counterpart stud earring synchronized hearing device had single-handedly (and single-earedly) brought unisex jewelry fashion back into vogue. Now that's progress.

The examination room door flew open suddenly, without pomp, without circumstance. Natalie was momentarily overtaken by a constriction in her chest, squeezing like a bra that was bought twenty pounds ago. Dr. Messina's stoic face revealed little regarding the diagnosis.

"Hello, Ms. Beckett - nice to see you again," stated the doctor, as if this were just another ordinary day on which to exchange pleasantries. Natalie half expected him to begin talking about the weather.

"Hi, Doctor." She managed a saccharine smile, clearly sweeter than the pallid one she had directed at the muscled communications enforcer back in the waiting room. She waited for the oncologist to take the lead.

Dr. Messina maintained silence but not eye contact. His attention seemed to have landed like an errant dropping of bird excrement on Natalie's shoe.

"No, they're not Prada," Natalie wanted to say. Dr. Messina labored to clear his throat.

"Um, Ms. Beckett, I have your test results," he proceeded slowly, as if defusing a particularly intricate explosive device.

"Yes?"

His hand stroked his chin thoughtfully. "As you know, our screening procedures have advanced exponentially in the last decade or so, especially since 2017 when the 2020 Project was launched by the American Cancer Society." He paused expectantly.

Natalie followed his lead. "Yes, I think I've heard something about that..."

He caught the metaphorical ball she had tossed back his way. "Tens of billions of dollars were raised and spent on developing early detection techniques for a large number of forms of cancer. The idea was to have the technology to eradicate all deadly forms of cancer by the year 2020. That was six years ago. We're now able to identify potential tumors before they metastasize in nearly ninety percent of such cancers."

"That's encouraging," Natalie answered. The expression on his face still revealed nothing. Dead silence.

Finally, he muttered, "Then there's the other ten percent. Like yours."

Natalie wanted to give him a swift kick to the groin, to lash out at his insensitivity. But she seethed silently, as still as a south Georgia summer breeze.

"Unfortunately," continued Dr. Messina, "pancreatic cancer treatment hasn't advanced much in recent years."

"So - what's the prognosis?" she muttered.

Dr. Messina re-commenced his visual inspection of her non-Prada shoes. "I'm sorry," he replied.

"How long?" Natalie heard her own voice from afar, as if being roused from an extended nap.

"Three months. Maybe six. A year if you're extra lucky."

This couldn't be for real. She'd just had her thirtieth birthday. "Extra lucky" to have a year left? Something's wrong with this picture. People don't die at the tail end of their twenties unless they're in a bad accident - right?

But there it was. "Exponential advancements, my hind leg," she thought. The 2020 Project had brought no progress in pancreatic cancer treatment.

Statistics deal with populations. To an individual like Natalie, outcomes are Bernoulli variables. A zero or one outcome; on or off like a light switch. Actuaries and other misfits feast on this type of insight as fodder for party conversations.

As Natalie made her way back through the reception area, she called Sam on her ring finger phone. "Dial Sam," she commanded the gemstone. Muscle Man looked up from his seat and glared at her. She extended the finger beside her ring finger in silent retaliation. Pettiness in the face of one's own mortality - humanity stains even the gentlest soul.

* * * * *

Armond Devereaux was pissed. His contacts in a couple of the big pharmaceuticals were hearing rumblings about a breakthrough drug at Kevvexx. And he'd be damned if his company were going to foot the bill for thousands of clients to go chasing after another wonder drug.

"Get me Fleischmann on line two," he demanded of Julia, his executive assistant. Not secretary. Not even administrative assistant. Executive assistant. As in: Devereaux was a big wig.

Armond Devereaux was president and CEO of Heartland Assurance, a mid-sized insurance company in southern California. Here in the mid-2020's, the good ole USA remained the last bastion among "civilized" countries that failed to provide basic medical care for all its citizens. The dark side of rugged individualism was to be found in conscienceless capitalism - the profit motive trumps the public good.

The major pharmaceuticals were kings of the American medical profit hill. And the insurance companies were the jesters of their courts, spinning their exclusions and pre-existing conditions in a desperate effort to keep their slice of the pie. Hills and pies - a mixed metaphor lover's delight.

But Armond Devereaux was no simple jester, no easy fool.

"Mr. Fleischmann on line two," called Julia to her irate boss. Heartland Assurance was old school, opting for traditional land lines rather than the state-of-the-art ring finger (or in the case of weightier callers, pinky finger) phones. Devereaux pushed the speaker button on the base of the archaic desk phone.

"Myron, it's Devereaux," spat Armond.

"So I gathered," replied Fleischmann, "what's up?"

"I need a favor." Armond's tone was less demanding than with Julia, more persuasive. Something about catching flies with sugar or vinegar drifted across Armond's consciousness.

"Gotta know what's going on at Kevvexx," stated Devereaux, "it's got me worried."

"So you've been hearing the rumors, too?"

"You bet your sweet derriere, Myron. And they're whoppers. Imaginative enough to make a fisherman blush."

"So you what do you want to know?" asked Fleischmann.

"I need you to look into it. Talk to some people. Substitute facts for appearances, demonstrations for impressions. Ideally, get copies of the paperwork."

Myron Fleischmann was an ex-employee of the U.S. Postal Service. The USPS was now a relic of a simpler time, drowned in the wake of the onrushing digital age. After its demise, Myron had needed to find gainful employment. He turned to private investigation, occasionally tapping into his roots by "going postal" to intimidate potential informants.

"Are you asking me to break the law?" he queried.

"You and I both know you aren't getting a straight answer to that. Just do what you have to do. I'll make sure you're compensated appropriately according to the level of assistance you're able to provide."

Without further pleasantries, Devereaux slammed the receiver back in its cradle.

"Son of a bitch," Myron murmured.

* * * * *

Sam Beckett spoke to the ring on his right hand. "End call - please," he stated beseechingly, his voice quivering with each word. Waves of sorrow cascaded mercilessly over him.

He leaned back in the lumbar chair provided to him by Kevvexx, tears surging past his squeezed lids in microbursts. His desk gave him no privacy. Kevvexx sales guys and gals were expected to spend minimal time in the office and maximum time chasing clients. The second floor of Building 3 on their corporate campus was littered with dozens of tiny cubicles designed for sales force drive-by use only.

Sam needed privacy to process the news he'd just received from Natalie. He grabbed his jacket and strode purposefully out of the building, toward Building 2. He reached his destination, kicking a locker as he entered the men's change room adjoining the Kevvexx corporate fitness center. In no time he was changed and running at 8 miles an hour on one of the state-of-the-art treadmills.

"It can't be!" he thought to himself, sweat beginning to trickle down his brow. "She's my baby sister."

His initial shock had begun to morph into something resembling anger. "This is some friggin' nightmare! I'll wake up and everything will be okay..."

Truth be told, Sam had a propensity for bad relationships with women. Thirty-three years old and his brain remained stilted by teenage hormones. Look up the word "objectify" in the dictionary and you'd find Sam's picture.

But then there was Natalie. Sam's beloved younger sister had captured his heart from the moment he pointed a chubby finger toward the bundle on the other side of the glass at the hospital nursery.

Despite his otherwise misogynous ways, Sam placed Natalie squarely on the proverbial pedestal. She could do no wrong in his sight. Well, maybe her fondness for eating boogers when she was little was simply wrong.

But throughout her adolescence and young adult years, Natalie's biggest fan was her big brother, especially after their parents' divorce and their mother's subsequent death. None of Sam's high school buddies dared utter a word of innuendo about his sister, despite the fact that Sam himself was the master of sleaze talk where other girls were concerned. A handful of years later, Sam erupted in a "YOU! YOU! YOU!" chant when Natalie crossed the stage to become the family's first college graduate. Even in her divorce two years ago, Sam cheered her kahunas in tossing the lying, cheating bum out. Too bad she wouldn't let Sam beat the living crap out of him like he'd wanted to do.

Sam's legs chugged with unchained resentment at the unfairness of the news. "I can't make it without her," his inner voice whispered in his inner ear, "I'd do anything to save her..."

* * * * *

Thurston waved across the Kevvexx cafeteria to Harj, motioning for him to bring his tray over to Thurston's table and take a seat. Harj hesitated, not wanting to get entangled in one of T.G.'s notorious philosophical rants. "It's okay," grinned Thurston, "we'll keep it light."

Harj gingerly placed his tray on the table, careful not to spill any of his prized acquisitions - two burgers, onion rings smothered in ketchup, and a strawberry milk shake. Taking his seat, he noticed Thurston's butter chicken, basmati rice, chickpeas and naan bread. Oh, the ironies of the great melting pot.

"So, what do you think about the news on the fountain of youth?" Harj queried.

"Do you really want to know?" toyed Thurston.

"Well, yes..." Harj responded, leaving off the "I think so" and the "but keep it short" qualifiers that were top of mind.

"Well, if the end result has been achieved, I'm very curious about the particular methodology that they've used to get there."

"You mean the kind of chemical compounds they've used?"

"Not exactly. For that matter, not even remotely. I'm thinking more about process than component parts." He took a bite of butter chicken and eyed Harj's body language.

Harj was blissfully enraptured by a tasty morsel of juicy onion ring. A trail of vegetable oil dribbled down his chin. "Go on," Harj managed to semi-articulate.

"Well, as the saying goes, there are many ways to skin a feline," Thurston offered. "One might start with a slight incision at the base of the tail, for instance, or peel back layers from the umbilical region. Of course, any method is highly influenced by whether the cat is dead or alive at the outset. But the same end result may be achieved along numerous paths."

Harj's grimace suggested that his bliss had been interrupted by visions of the unfortunate tabby. He dropped the remaining morsel of onion ring on his plate.

"Sorry, Harj," Thurston apologized, "I'm merely attempting to illuminate by way of analogy."

"And your point is?"

"If Kevvexx research has come up with a wonder drug to slow down, halt, or even reverse the aging process, there are some interesting questions as to how they've gone about it. For instance, I think we can eliminate some of the possibilities from the world according to Einstein..."

Harj's eyes began to glaze over. "You promised to keep it light..." he murmured.

"More like speed of light. Which is key to the tie between space and time, at least according to Einstein," T.G. continued.

"Tell me more. Please. Really. I mean it..." Harj rolled his eyes and raised his hands in mock surrender.

"Humor me, Harj. I need to bounce a couple of ideas off a rational human being. But you'll do," he laughed.

Harj's eyes repeated their roll, but he nodded his assent for Thurston to proceed.

"One way - albeit an indirect one - to skin the cat of aging is to affect the passage of time with respect to the individual," Thurston postulated, "and that's where Einstein comes in. He demonstrated that time is linked to speed - as in motion, not amphetamines. The passage of time depends on relative motion between observers. If one is traveling near the speed of light, one ages at a much slower rate than if one is stationary. It's called time dilation."

"So when the Star Trek crew travelled at warp speed, they should have aged more slowly? I guess that's what keeps William Shatner so spry at nearly a hundred years old," quipped Harj.