Introduction

FOREVER and EVER is the first fiction title on the topic of gene-based aging reversal and engineered human immortality. Developed over a four-year period with eminent molecular biologists and bioinformatics experts in the SF Bay Area, FOREVER and EVER is a fascinating journey through the unprecedented social dilemmas, intense international power struggles, and bizarre possibilities of unlimited life in a youthful state. “The pieces are all there. The pieces are all there.” Jasmine looked out at the horizon on San Francisco Bay again, wondering how many other people were thinking the same thing. “We could do this. We could live forever. Regress in body age and live forever, as young people. The pieces are all there. The pieces are all there.” Forever and Ever is the deeply personal story of Jasmine and Earl Metcalf, highly principled scientists at a Bay Area drug discovery company. When their research in genetic disease therapy is banned by a political response to the first human cloning, they bolt the constraints of the corporate biotech world in a desperate attempt to treat Roy, a child dying of old age. Dying from one of evolution’s most bizarre mistakes. Progeria. The revolutionary gene-based therapy they are developing will reverse normal human aging and provide immortality in a youthful state. They struggle with the unprecedented ethical dilemmas and conclude that the desire for life is unconquerable, and the quest for new knowledge irresistible. Interest in their work is intense. The brilliant gambits of powerful interests intent on capturing the treatment and ending further development involve them in a bizarre and murderous struggle. The long postulated “gene wars” has suddenly arrived, and the effort to control the age of biology has begun...

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Excerpt

PROLOGUE

The distant roar of the surf on Linda Mar beach ducted into the steep little valleys of Pacifica and blended with the wind off the ocean to create a natural lullaby. Jasmine Metcalf listened closely to the sound because it quieted the insidious chatter in her mind. She lay peacefully in a near sleep, grateful to be relieved of the endless fears and overwhelming forces that swirled around her.

The exquisite luxury of not thinking, even for a few minutes, made

everything else possible: the leaps of imagination, diligent bench work,

and brilliant protein modeling she was known for. But most importantly,

these lapses into the natural world opened an unfelt connection to something else. To some distant, mysterious and powerful force that always lay just beyond comprehension, but now seemed closer than ever.

Just as her alarm clock struck, Jasmine pressed the brass plunger. It

was 5 a.m., more or less. The endlessly refreshing sound of the surf was

slowly washed out by the gathering traffic on Highway One, and the first

jets from San Francisco International would be overhead soon.

Far more importantly, the powerful minds in the Bay Area, this bowl

of geniuses, as she called it, were awake. Thinking. Emanating.

Searching and wondering. Together, these acutely focused minds made a

roaring sound. You couldn’t hear this roar, but you could feel it. In your

temples, and through the ground. It felt like an urgent unspoken rumor,

and today it was very loud. Today, many of these powerful minds wanted

something.

EXCERPT CHAPTER ONE

Roy slowly crossed the big conference room, bent over his little aluminum cane. Earl glanced at the TV producer as Roy came into the light. She gasped quietly as Roy’s pale, badly wrinkled face and droopy red-rimmed eyes turned slowly, sadly to her. He looked like a miniature old man.

“Roy, you’ve been to Mexico?” Dr. Metcalf asked.

“No, but my grandpa went to Mexico! And he caught a big fish like

this, and he gave me a picture of his big fish. I get to go fishing next year!” Roy said, taking off the hat, “if I’m not died then.”

The producer walked over in a carefully measured stride. Earl

watched her air of professional concern evaporate, as she got closer to

Roy. His bald head, furrowed little brow, and striking blue veins were a

shock to most people, but when she got close enough, she could see the

terrifying frailty of his condition. Roy looked right at her with his

watery eyes.

“It has a rope,” he said, holding up the little hat, “so the wind on the

boat won’t blow it away, and the sharks won’t get it!”

“That… that’s a very nice… hat… then, isn’t it?” she said.

Seeing an eight-year-old child dying of old age from a rare disease

deeply affects people, which was the point. The point was to affect people. To put the maddeningly esoteric work of gene therapy into

emotional, human terms.

EXCERPT CHAPTER FOUR

One of her mother’s favorite movies was Alfie, the 1960’s movie

with Michael Caine. The song in that movie used to play on the radio

when she was young. What’s it all about, when you sort it out, Alfie? It was such a lovely melody, and such a deep question. She turned to Earl.

“What’s it all about, Alfie?” she said in a distant voice. The pause was so long, Jasmine thought he might have fallen asleep.

“I don’t know,” Earl said earnestly, as he turned slowly to her. “I

like Roy. For some reason he’s different from the rest. He’s such a little

optimist. He knows all about his condition. We told him last month.

Jonelle did such a beautiful job of telling him he’s going to die. It cut

me in half, this time.” Earl rubbed his finger slowly around the lip of

his wine glass.

“What did he say, when she told him?”

“Are you coming with me, Mommy?” Earl said, looking at Jasmine,

who felt his old doctor’s heart breaking. The hot tub jets finally stopped. The distant sound of the surf played in and out with the sound of the wind in the trees behind them, as the small wispy clouds hurried over them. It was like they were happy to be over land at last. She reached out and held Earl’s big hand to her face and felt a great stirring in her soul. Vague and unformed, it was a deep sensation of entering a new time in life. Searching for something to say, Jasmine started to reply to Earl’s

heartbreak, twice stopping, wondering if there was anything you could

say to a doctor who had to let his young patients die. In a rush it came

back to her.

“Life is a series of small victories. Victories over the inertness of

space, victories over cold, and darkness, and unimaginable pressure.

Victories over randomness and chaos. And victories over the master

monster, time itself. Life is a series of small victories that we scarcely

notice until they end.” She recited from the eulogy she had written for

her mother.

“And death is defeat,” Earl drained his glass.

EXCERPT CHAPTER FIVE

“We can do a few simple things, like PIES, but to ever treat one of

your children will take a complete biological systems approach, and

that’s years and years off.”

“Nanoballs are working perfectly, at least that much of the puzzle is

in place,” Earl said, reminding her that a new method of inserting genetic

information into the nucleus of cells was working beautifully.

“There’s so much you’d have to change in the cells of these children,

Earl. And then you’d have to repair the damage, lots of aging damage.”

“It would take a wheelbarrow full of stem cells.” Earl slowly added

up what it would take to reverse the devastating effects of premature

aging. “You’d have to carefully design a, a… cascading gene expression

program, kind of like body development during puberty, that would…”

Jasmine finished the sentence for him. “Re-extend telomeres, and

insert an additional p53 cancer checkpoint, with an apoptosis mine if the

cells fail…”

“Phase in the reversal of senescence in specific tissues and organs at

specific times, so you don’t overload the ability of the body to process all

the lipofuscin and cell debris from the rejuvenating cells…” Earl trailed

off.

“And overload metabolism pathways…”

“You would have to design and build synthetic genes, modeled on

developmental gene regulation that would orchestrate the regenerative

process…”

“And put them on an artificial chromosome that would be delivered

to all the body’s cells by nanoball…”

“With a series of radiation responsive genes to modulate de-senescence…”

“That you could remotely control by highly selective radiation signals

fed into an MRI…”

“While you monitored the whole body regenerative process…”

During the long pause, Jasmine mentally calculated how many differ-

ent phases it would take to do what they were envisioning. Big grants,

licenses, computer farm burn time. It would be a ten-year, 100 million dollar project. Throw in the bioethics battles and resistance from the religious right, and it would be a twenty-year effort.

“Earl, do you know how long would it take to negotiate the licenses,

write the grants, set up the royalty stacks, and the reach-throughs for 20

patented genes, an artificial chromosome, a license for Xpresscon’s radiation-activated cell-specific gene expression controllers…?”

“Ten million in licensing fees, ten years in the lab, ten years to fight

the Bible-thumpers, five years of bioethics gumming…”

Jasmine spoke without thinking. “You’d want to restore the telomere

length in existing somatic cells and immortalize adult stem cells…”

“So you wouldn’t have to have any follow-up treatment…” Earl

countered.

“Then?”

“You could select a target age…”

“And prevent further aging…”

“For?”

“Ever?”

“Forever?”

“Forever and ever,” Jasmine said slowly, suddenly realizing what they

were talking about. Human immortality. Human immortality in a youthful state.

The realization washed over them like an avalanche. No one had ever

treated a Progeric child. The biological system therapy they envisioned

would also work on naturally aged people, and could be controlled.

“What if?” Earl said, as the wind eased and it became still.

“The pieces are all there,” Jasmine said quietly.

EXCERPT CHAPTER TEN

A long, covered porch opened out on a backyard littered with computer server cabinets and a weird collection of Day-Glo painted mannequins covered with rhinestones. Seats from Rammy’s wrecked

Porsches sat on crudely welded frames and looked like giant office chairs.

“You like the sculpture garden?” he asked. “I got the idea from Stanford.”

“Is this your Rhinestone period?” Jasmine asked.

“Early Rhinestone period,” he said, slowly kissing Jasmine’s hand,

then reaching over to shake Earl’s hand. “What brings you to Santa Cruz?”

“Genetechna was bought out and shut down rather suddenly, and

I’ve decided to stay in protein modeling. Earl and I are designing a rather

large gene-based therapy, and I need to encode models for about sixty

proteins, including a suite of control and modulation genes. I need your

help,” Jasmine said.

“You don’t have access to the mean 9900?” Rammy asked.

“They wouldn’t let me sublease it,” Jasmine said.

“So, Fujitsu picked it up? I mean, where is it?” Rammy asked.

“I don’t know, but I need access to a machine in that class, for about

two hundred hours maybe more,” Jasmine said.

“Not going to be easy. The Feds are really touchy about who’s using

hot supercomputer clusters, and you can’t just go buy one,” Rammy said.

“What do you have here, now?” Earl asked.

“The Monkey. But it would take us two, maybe three years to run

what you’re talking about on the Monkey.”

“What’s the Monkey?” Jasmine asked.

“My first born,” Rammy said. “Wanna see it?”

He walked down the porch to a small door that opened into the old

boat shed. Before he flipped on the light, Jasmine could just make out

thousands of blinking green lights. When the loudly buzzing fluorescent

lights went on, Jasmine’s mouth dropped open. Stacked on three thirty-foot rows of banquet tables were hundreds and hundreds of PCs all

cabled together with a jungle of wires, and painted in bizarre oranges

and reds and revolting greens.

“A PC supercomputer cluster for the unwashed,” Rammy said, walking down the rows of PCs. “We hit seven megaflops last week! A new

record for Homegrowns!” Rammy grabbed a battery-operated child’s

wand and threw himself into a huge pea green Lazy Boy chair. “Life, I tell

you! My Creature has life!” he shouted as he touched a keyboard with

the wand and all the PCs blinked on. The dusty fluorescent lights

dimmed and buzzed as the rows of PCs started. A huge, flat screen was

suspended from the ceiling with rusty chains, and snapped as it came out of standby mode.

EXCERPT CHAPTER 21

“She won the first Transpac ocean race to Hawaii in 1933!” Rammy

said, moving a mountain bike to get aboard. “I won her in a card game

by accident. I always wanted to be a pirate!”

“Maybe you are a pirate,” Jasmine said.

Will stood looking at the beautiful old ship as Jasmine followed

Rammy down below.

“The galley could use a little cleaning up,” Rammy said, stretching

out his arm and sweeping the pizza boxes and beer cans off the long teak

dinette table. “But the skipper’s stateroom, ahhhh.” He opened the door

to the aft cabin, which had a double bed hanging on big steel cable gimbals and two oval portholes facing aft. “A lot of life has been lived in here. Anyway, it’s yours if you want.”

“I guess we could clean it up a little,” Jasmine said.

“I gotta go see someone about risk-taking behavior,” Rammy said,

bounding up the companionway. “Have fun.”

Will came down and leaned into the stateroom. “I was just looking

at her win record. She won the Transpac twice. She’s in great shape, too.

She’s been loved. Really loved.”

Jasmine closed the door to the small closet, slowly turning to Will.

They melted together in one long gesture. They held each other in the

doorway, their eyes closed, caressing each other, letting the future take

its time.

“Ob la di. Ob la da,” Will said softly.

“Badda, how the life goes on,” Jasmine sang the old Beatles song softly, turning her face to kiss him.

The gentleness and carefully measured passion they both expected

lasted for only a second, then the love, long overdue, released an explosion of desire, deep kissing and fitful caressing.

Will held her face to him like a precious sculpture, pushing her back

to look into her eyes. The brilliant light in her eyes was so powerful the

sensation was overwhelming. They both had to look away and the sensation melted into a warm river of desire and complete abandon.

EXCERPT CHAPTER 25

Malia was brushing her hair when jasmine returned.

“Koji showed me some very weird video in his van. It looked

like an old woman becoming young again, then she’s dead

with a horrible big cancer thing. It was real! And it came from

Genetechna! You aren’t involved in any of this work, are you Mom? Tell

me you’re not.”

“We don’t know what that video is. Will thinks it might be a human

trials project that went badly. Victor might be involved, but your father

and I certainly were not. I’m trying to finish your father’s work. We want

to help Progeric children, and that’s all.”

“But Mom! How could you possibly help those children? They’re so

badly damaged.”

“Your father felt it could be done, and he decided to try it.”

“Mom. There’s more. Please tell me.” Malia stopped brushing her

hair.

“We don’t want to see Roy die.”

“Bullshit! Mom, there’s more! Tell me!” Malia screamed.

Jasmine sat down in the dark blue camp chair, feeling exhausted.

“The therapy your father, Marjorie, and I designed to treat Roy could,

that is it may, at some time, if everything worked perfectly, which it

almost certainly will not…”

“No, Mom. No. Don’t do this,” Malia interrupted.

“Reverse and prevent aging in normal human beings.” Jasmine finished, and turned her face to look at Malia.

“People are going to freak, Mom! Freak! There’ll be like, people

killing to get their hands on this treatment, and no one will get old or die

anymore and the population will be horrendous, and only rich people

will be left! It’ll be terrible, Mom!” Malia said. “What were you thinking?”

“We, we wanted to treat Roy, and…”

“And screw up the entire world?”

“See if it could be done,” Jasmine instantly regretted the remark.

“See if it could be done? Mom, this will change everything! No one

will get old and die anymore, and, and…”

“People adapted to big changes before, it’s the one thing people are

really good at. People will adapt to this change too, and the changes

won’t be all bad.”

“But, Mom, is it right? Is it right to change the natural way that people were made, I mean evolved? Is that right?”

“We’ve been changing nature for a long time, Malia. We’ve changed

plants and animals to help us survive and prosper. This is the same

process, and it will prevent tremendous suffering. It might even mean

some real progress for the human race.”

“What progress could this possible produce? We’ll all live in a

hideous overpopulated world with everyone looking the same and rich

people owning everything, and, and…”

“Your father hoped that if people live longer life spans, that they may

become wiser, more enlightened, and provide much better leadership.”

“And what if it goes the other way, Mom? It’ll just give the rich people

more time to scoop up everything into hoards of wealth, and find

even better ways to screw everyone else! We already have leadership by

stupid old white men now. They couldn’t get enlightened in another five

hundred years!” Malia wailed, and ran out of the tent.

EXCERPT CHAPTER 36

The trip down the lake was a magical moment for Jasmine. Will

turned up the radio and zigzagged the boat to the outlaw country

music. Jasmine looked at Darla and Easton as they roared along in the

sun. The treatment was really working. They looked like normal 35-40

year-old people. In the prime of life, healthy, exuberant, and completely

full of hell. Darla kept flashing every boat that went by and finally just

took her top off. Easton did his best to rock out to the country music,

but he seemed a little stiff. “Take off your shirt!” Darla yelled over the

motor.

Fun! Jasmine thought as she looked at Will, bobbing his head to the

music and turning the steering wheel to the beat. We can have fun again!

That beautiful gushing exuberance of youth that seemed so impossible

and so distant was here! Right here! She reached behind her and clicked

the top of her bathing suit and flashed the next boat that went by, laughing loudly.

“You have to wiggle them!” Darla said. “Like this!” She stood up and

shook her shoulders rapidly. Easton shot his fist in the air and roared with laughter.

They were young again! And young was fun! The world was just one

big toy, Jasmine thought, hugging Will and fighting an urge to go down

on him. “I feel like life just couldn’t get any better!” she gushed.

“Wait till we get to Paris!” Will shouted over the engine.

“I want to ski!” Darla yelled to Jasmine and Will. They looked at each

other for a minute.

“Her last MRI looked pretty good. The high calcium diet helped her

connective tissue regenerate a lot faster than I thought it would. Let her

go,” Will said, slowing the boat.

“Take it very easy on your arms and shoulders,” Jasmine warned.

Darla leaped over the side holding hands with Easton. They swam

around the boat twice while Jasmine hooked up the ski line and tossed

the ski out. Will shut the boat off and dived in. “It’s hot today,” He

said.

They started swimming around the boat out in the middle of the big

lake. It was a weekday, so there wasn’t much boat traffic. Jasmine stopped to look at the incredible scene before her, before she dived overboard. It seemed like they were on another planet.

Will swam as fast as he could to catch Darla, but she was slim and

very strong. Jasmine closed in behind Will, and swam as fast as she could. The damage in her shoulder from the accident had completely healed and she was able to stretch out and stroke with all her strength. Darla finally stopped, laughing hysterically.

“Do you think I’ll get arrested for skiing naked?”

“We’ll just tell them to complain to the manufacturer!” Easton said.

Darla got up on the first attempt and surprised them all with her skiing. She made graceful turns and leaped over the wake in perfect form. Will even pushed the throttle open a little more after she jabbed her thumb in the air, yelling for more speed.

Jasmine looked around the boat and laughed, laughed long and loud.

For a tiny moment she realized what was happening before her eyes. She

was flying down a magnificent lake in the bright sunshine with a man she loved deeply, towing a 76 year-old woman who had been dying just

months ago, and the man who had first visualized the DNA molecule.

“I’m a Nobel Laureate,” She said out loud. Will looked at her and

smiled, putting the boat into a wide turn at Three Dunes.

Jasmine heard it first. The high-pitched whine of the jet engine.

Nielsen’s shiny, dark-blue chopper came in low over the dunes above

them and banked sharply, hovering directly overhead.

A door on the underside popped open and a torrent of glittering,

brightly colored confetti was suddenly blowing all around them. “Hip hip

hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!” Nielsen’s voice bellowed from

the loudspeaker as the chopper banked away steeply, picked up some altitude,

and sat down on top of the big white sand dune.

Marjorie and Nielsen came bounding down the sand dune to the

beach, laughing, and carrying Magnum champagne bottles. Marjorie fell

into Jasmine’s arms with a long squeal. “Yipppeeeeee!” she yelled at the

top of her lungs, hugging Jasmine tightly and stabbing the bottle in the air.

“I knew you’d get it! I knew you’d get it!” Marjorie pushed back to

look at Jasmine. Jasmine froze when she looked at Marjorie. Her face was shining, and her skin was soft and radiant. Her hair was shining and full. The lines on her neck were almost gone, and her hands! Her hands were beautiful and soft. Jasmine held her hands and looked at her arms. All of the aging spots and freckles were gone.

“How does it feel?” Jasmine asked Marjorie.

“I feel like a kid on a long, long water slide!”

“I thought the stem cell treatment was great, but this, this is…”

“Paradise,” Nielsen said, turning to Jasmine. She was stopped cold

again, and had to look closely at his face. Nielsen had regressed about

twenty years, and she could see the vibrant, handsome man he had been. She saw the bearing of a born leader in him. As she hugged him, she felt his muscular back through his silk Aloha shirt.

“How, how are you going to…” Jasmine stammered, still shocked.

“We’re going to Europe for a year. We’re leaving next week, and we

will of course be in Stockholm!” Nielsen said. “And we’ll look forward to

your help when we all return, from the, ah, continent.”

“Here! Here!” Easton said, walking behind Nielsen and shaking his

hand.

“I see you’ve been fooling around with Mother Nature.” Will said to

Marjorie. “How many days from treatment?”

“One-twenty-seven and counting.” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the Author:

1. Is the story based on current science or is it science fiction?

2. Could gene-based human immortality actually happen? When?

3. What would happen to society if human life spans were dramatically increased?

4. Does a biotech underground exist?

5. How would your thinking change if you knew you would virtually live forever and someday be the same body age as your children?

Weblinks

»	Forever and Ever web site
»	Author Q&A
»	Reviews
»	Author Bio

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