FIVE

 

 

Stout just felt shocked about the very idea that Jenny could be cured of the cancer. He hadn’t been willing to accept the diagnosis at first, now he was having trouble accepting a possible solution.

But Jenny seemed to be fine with it. She was treating this like just another thing to deal with caused by the sickness.

For a moment the silence in the huge cavern just felt heavy.

Finally Jenny asked, “So what is exactly going to happen?”

“We’re going to jump you directly two hundred years into the future,” Jesse said. “We have two people jumping back from that time who will be your guides. Duster and I and Bonnie will meet you there.”

At that point in time,” Bonnie said, “two hundred years in the future, we have a medical facility here in the Institute that has been doing advanced research on all sorts of various human illnesses.”

“Your type of cancer was cured just over a hundred years from now,” Duster said. “So two hundred years in the future, the cure for your cancer is common and fairly easy on you.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Jenny said, smiling. “I like easy.”

Stout squeezed her hand. This sounded too good to be true, but when it came to Jenny living more than a few more months, that’s what they needed.

“How long will we be gone?” Stout asked.

“About thirty minutes from here,” Duster said. “But you will need to spend a few days in the future.”

Stout started to open his mouth to ask a question and then shut it. Over the years he had dealt with all sorts of puzzles about time travel. That wasn’t the focus at the moment. The focus was getting Jenny well.

“Now,” Jesse said, moving a step closer to Jenny and Stout and putting his hands on the counter in front of them, “there are a few repercussions, problems if you will, of this action that may sound silly to you at the moment, but they are deadly serious and I want you to consider them before agreeing to this.”

Stout nodded. “Here comes the too-good-to-be-true other shoe.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Jesse said, “yes.”

Stout glanced at both Duster and then down the bar at Bonnie. They were both looking very serious. Dawn and Richard just seemed to be as confused as he was.

“Go ahead,” Jenny said.

“First off,” Jesse said, “by taking this treatment, there is a side effect that can’t be helped. The treatment is going to also slow down your aging. You will look about ten years younger, you will feel younger, and you will live for at least another hundred years, if not more.”

Stout stared at Jesse for any sign of a smile, but clearly Jesse thought this was very serious.

“That’s a side effect?” Jenny asked.

“It is,” Jesse said. “And I have no idea if either of you have any moral or ethical or religious objections to that.”

Stout couldn’t help it. He actually laughed.

“I can look and feel a decade younger?” Jenny asked. “Be cured of the cancer and live for a few hundred more years?”

“Exactly,” Jesse said. “But realize that you will age slower than your children by a long ways. At some point you will have to stage your deaths and then watch them from a distance only.”

“Oh,” Jenny said.

Stout was starting to understand as well. What a horrid decision. Her children either watch her die in a few months or she lives long enough to watch them die.

“What is the second problem?” Stout asked.

Jesse nodded to Duster to tell him.

“If we jump you two hundred years in the future,” Duster said, “and then you come back about thirty minutes after you leave, you will, for all intents and purposes, be immortal.”

“Like I am and everyone else is here,” Richard said, nodding.

Stout looked at the much older face of his friend. Richard had once told him that when he returned to his normal time he would be young again.

“How does that work exactly?” Jenny asked before Stout could.

“Because of the nature of all this,” Bonnie said, jumping in, “once you are in the future, that is now your natural time. So when you come back here, you can live for hundreds of years and then die and when you die, you will find yourself back in the future just slightly over two minutes after you left, at the age and physical well-being of the moment you left.”

“Then you can turn around and come back to a point in the past again,” Duster said, “and live more lifetimes.”

“You can do that as often as you like,” Richard said. “That’s why I have lived thousands of years, yet in my own time, I have aged very, very little. In fact, in my time, I only joined the Institute about six months before.”

Stout looked at Jenny, who seemed to be a little shocked at all this. But he was understanding everything pretty clearly, thanks to a few conversations with Richard.

“Here is what they are saying,” Stout said, turning to face his beautiful wife. “You can be cured, we both will feel a decade younger and healthier, and we will live a long time. In other words, instead of only a few months together, we can spend lifetimes together, if you want.”

She looked at him, then did something he never expected Jenny to do. She burst into tears and hugged him.

After a moment she pulled back slightly. “You want to spend lifetimes with me?”

He brushed some of her tears away off her soft cheeks. “If they can figure out a way to make it longer than hundreds of lifetimes,” he said, “I would take that as well.”

She smiled. “Damn you are good, Mr. Radley Stout.” Then she kissed him.

Then she wiped off her eyes and turned to Duster, then to Bonnie, then Jesse. “Thank you for your wonderful offer. If you don’t mind too much and it doesn’t cause too many issues with the Institute, I would like to accept it, side effects and all.”

All Stout could do was hug her as around them the others cheered, filling the mostly empty cavern with the wonderful sound of applause.

Then he pulled back and looked down the counter at his smiling friend, Richard. “This next Christmas Eve,” he said, “that old jukebox really needs more than one toast of appreciation. It will have saved yet another life.”

“You’re both going to be there to give them,” Richard said, smiling. “That’s all that matters.”

To Stout, Richard was right. He and Jenny would be there.

Together.

And that really was all that mattered.