_Wednesday, April 8
8:25 P.M.
_
Alexa watches as the prow of their forty-one-foot Morgan, two-masted,
cuts silently through a placid sea. She vaguely remembers the vessel.
It was teak and magnificent. Steve had chartered it, bare-boat, for two
weeks and taken them cruising through the Bahamas. By the end of that
time, she felt they could have sailed it around the world.
But that was six years ago, when he was still very much alive. Now the
boat feels like a magical carpet taking them someplace together,
effortlessly. The genoa, the mainsail, and the mizzen are all full and
blossoming outward even though there's no wind. She's at the helm,
holding a course toward something white on the horizon, and Steve is
with her. He's alive again and he's with her. She feels her body
suffused with joy. Then she looks at the reflection of herself in his
sunglasses and realizes she's a little girl, still a child. This is all
a dream, she realizes, a cruel dream. Then she looks again at the
horizon, the blazing white light, and senses that it represents the
future. Their destiny.
Now the sea around them, which had been placid, starts to roil. The
wheel is becoming harder to control, and the sun is starting to burn
her. In its pitiless glare she feels herself beginning to age rapidly.
She glances at Steve and she can see his skin starting to shrivel. She
senses he is dying, right there before her eyes, but her hands feel
glued to the wheel and she can't let go to try to help him.
Now the sea is growing ever more choppy and the white symbol on the
horizon has begun to bob in and out of view. Sometimes she can see the
"future" and sometimes she can't. Waves are crashing over the sides,
inundating the deck, and she feels anxious about what lies up ahead.
Will they ever get there, and if they do, will she want what she finds?
Even more important now, will Steve still be with her?
As the waves pound against them both, oddly she doesn't feel wet.
Instead, what she feels is a stab of muted pain in her upper chest,
pain she knows would be searing if she were to experience its full
impact. She looks down to see that the wheel she thought she was
holding is gone, and her chest is pierced by the steel mechanism to
which it was attached. It has gone all the way through her.
Next a huge wave comes straight over the bow and slams against her and
Steve. Her body convulses with pain and she senses that he is being
swept overboard, directly off the stern. She screams at him to hold on,
but then he is gone, lost in the dark sea.
Now the boat itself is starting to disintegrate, as both masts tip
backwards, then come crashing down. Up ahead, the white light that is
the future is growing ever more flame-like. It is part of a shoreline
she is trying to reach, but now she doesn't think she's going to get
there. Around her, the boat's lines and cleats are being swept into the
pounding sea.
In moments the boat has disappeared, but she continues on, propelled by
some force she cannot see, until she finally crashes onto the rocky
shore.
It is a chiaroscuro landscape of blacks and whites. Oddly, Stone Aimes
has appeared and is holding her hand as they make their way along the
barren seascape, where everything is hazy and trapped in fog. She
thinks she sees figures lurking in the mist around them but can't make
out who they are. Everything is static and frozen in place, like the
images of motion on the Grecian urn caught for eternity.
She reaches out to touch Stone and her hand passes right through.
That's when she realizes the white light and this rocky shoreline
represent the other side. Is this what death feels like? she wonders.
Like the white tunnel drawing you in?
But then she has another thought. Maybe she isn't dead at all. Maybe
she is in a third place, somewhere suspended between life and death.
She looks again at Stone and tells herself they're not dead, they're in
some kind of time machine. This voyage is about time.
Now time has begun to flow around her like a river. Days, weeks,
months, years, they all course by. But she knows it is a chimera.
Nothing can make time go faster or slower.
Then the bright lights are gone and she feels alone. Very alone.
But she isn't. She hears voices around her, drifting, echoing, and she
tries to understand what they are saying.
"She's stabilized. We're past the critical phase."
"Do you want to bring her up now?"
"Not yet. We still don't know how it's going to go."
There was a pause, and then a male voice.
"This was the Beta too, wasn't it, Karl?" Another pause. "Well, wasn't
it? The injections. That's the first time since . . ."
Again the voices drift off. She listens, not sure what she is hearing.
She tries to process the word "beta" but makes no headway. In computer
slang, "beta" means a program that is still being tested. Then she
remembers hearing the word just hours earlier. She had been talking to
some woman. But she can't remember who--"
"I changed the procedure this time," comes a voice. "I injected the
special Beta enzyme separately from the activated stem cells. Whatever
happens will happen at the enzyme's own pace now. And I kept the dosage
as low as I could. We'll be monitoring her telomerase levels throughout
the day. If there's no rejection, we will be past the first phase."
"Is the dosage the only difference from before?" comes the other,
accusing voice.
"At this point, David, manipulating the Beta is an art, not a science.
I'm just attempting to create antigens, the way a smallpox vaccination
does. Then we'll try to harvest them. This is not really a full-scale
Beta procedure. I don't plan to do that ever again."
There was another long silence.
"That man who was here with her. Her cousin, did he say? I saw no
family resemblance, but he seemed very upset."
"That's why I had him sent upstairs. I think he's the reporter W.B. was
so concerned about. Anyway, he's gone."
Stone. She realizes that's who they're talking about. And now he's
gone. She's on her own.
Next the voices drift away for a time, into some echo space that mutes
them. Finally, though, they come back.
"This should be adequate for another four hours. After that, you'll
need a glucose IV to keep her hydrated."
"I've already put it on her chart. By then we should have some idea of
which way this is going. I'm thinking, I'm praying, that this time is
going to be the charm. That I've learned how to modulate the enzyme."
"Is she ready for transfer to IC?"
"Anytime."
The voices start drifting away. A fuzziness is enveloping her senses,
leaving everything soft and muted.
The pain is gone from her body now, and the bright lights around her
seem to be dimming. The figures in the white haze on the perimeter are
now disappearing, one by one, as though filing out of a room. And now
she feels like she's floating, with things moving past her.
Then, finally, one lone voice is talking to her, is really talking to
her, in a private and unmistakable way. And as she drifts back into the
gulf of anesthesia, she listens to words that do not make a lot of
sense.
"The Fountain. Through all the ages, we've been looking in the wrong
place. It's within us. Together, Alexa, we have this chance."
She listens as the voice begins to drift away. Yet she feels a genuine
sense of closeness to it. She realizes she no longer has control of her
destiny. But still she wants to be where she is.
Now the sea is coming back, flowing around her, and she tries to
remember where she is and why, but all she is aware of is the sea
rising, until she is engulfed.