Leaving the main street, Waterman turned his truck in to a large parking lot and headed for a three-story parking garage, entering on the bottom level.
Daylight immediately darkened, and Rachel watched from the back seat as they slowed and began passing dozens of parked cars.
Waterman made a turn and continued down the next aisle, slowing even further as he and Reiff studied the vehicles.
“What are we doing?”
“Swapping vehicles.”
“Why?”
“We’re most likely being tracked by satellite,” answered Waterman, still scanning. “There’s enough traffic in and out of this garage that it should make it hard to follow us from here.”
He stopped when they spotted an aged green Jeep Grand Cherokee and motioned Reiff to the glove compartment, where he found and withdrew a square piece of metal resembling an old car part, along with an oversized screwdriver.
Rachel held up a hand. “Wait a minute, we’re stealing a car?”
“I’m not in the mood for an ethics debate. Besides, Wayne and Henry should be doing the same thing about now.”
Reiff opened the door and climbed out while Waterman scanned for witnesses. Reiff peered through the Jeep’s driver’s-side window, checking for an alarm, before smashing the glass with the base of the screwdriver. He opened the Jeep’s door and quickly ducked inside, reaching under the dash and popping the hood. He then moved forward and raised it, leaning in over the engine.
“What’s he doing?”
“Didn’t we just establish that?”
She frowned. “That’s not what I mean.”
“He’s replacing something called the engine control module.”
“The thing from the glove compartment?”
He nodded. “Compatible with a lot of similar makes and models.”
Together they watched Reiff drop the hood, then move back and slide into the driver’s seat.
“Now he just needs to break the ignition switch and—”
The Jeep’s engine suddenly roared to life.
Waterman quickly leaned over and pulled the truck’s passenger door closed, then straightened and immediately accelerated, speeding down the aisle and turning, watching as Reiff followed. It took a minute to find an open space in a far corner of the garage before pulling into it.
“Let’s go!” he barked, jumping out and opening the door directly behind him. He grabbed his large duffel bag and motioned for her to follow. As soon as they were both in the Jeep, Reiff accelerated toward the exit.
When they were back on the highway, Rachel leaned forward with a wince from her shoulder. “So where exactly are we going?”
“Running an errand.”
“I see.” She leaned back and continued staring at the men from the back seat. After a few minutes of silence, except for the whirling wind through Reiff’s broken window, she leaned forward again and raised her voice. “By the way, I think I know what Duchik is up to.”
Reiff’s eyes looked at her in the rearview mirror while Waterman spun around. “What?”
“I said—”
“I heard what you said. What is he up to?”
“It was something Robert said. Before the attack. About John’s DNA being changed to prevent ice crystals in his system. When he was frozen, and then when he pointed out that cryonics is not some path to immortality. Even though a lot of patients think that. That someday they will be reawakened, and their problems will be cured. Or their diseases. And for the record, aging could be classified as a disease.”
“But you just said it doesn’t give you immortality.”
“It’s doesn’t. Anyone revived will find themselves in the same body. The same age, the same condition. Maybe their cancer has been cured, or their pulmonary disease, or Alzheimer’s. But their body is still the same age it was when they were frozen.”
Reiff was still watching her in the mirror. “Yeah, we heard that part.”
“But there may be a way around that,” she said, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror. “What they did to you may be the key. Not the ice crystals per se, but how they did it. Robert,” she continued, “said they found a temperature that kept your system suspended but still allowed the virus with the genome changes to gradually propagate through your system. And that may be the key.
“You see, the common practice in cryonics is to freeze the person’s body at somewhere between minus two hundred and three hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Which basically turns the body into a frozen block.” She grinned at Reiff. “No offense.”
“None taken.”
“The problem, though, is that at that temperature there is no cellular activity at all. Nothing. Everything is like ice. Hence the ice crystals. But, if Robert is right, and whether Duchik or one of his predecessors found a way for frozen cells to still be manipulated, that could change things dramatically.”
“What would it change?” asked Waterman.
“Manipulating DNA is a regular occurrence now. It has been for a long time. We even made some subtle changes to John after he was revived, to help speed up the healing process. But they were very subtle and extremely targeted. We were stimulating cells to help natural processes. Therapies that have been around for a while now, like fasting, which releases large amounts of growth hormone and in turn builds and repairs a whole host of things. By affecting DNA we can maximize the cellular responses to some therapies, which are natural and safe. But,” she added, “the important point here is that we had to wait until he was revived. Until his temperature was back to normal.”
“And you’re saying that’s what Duchik found a way around?”
“It sounds like it. Whether it was Duchik or someone else, it sounds like they may actually possess the ability to make live DNA changes while the person is suspended. And that is a very big deal.”
“How big?”
“Huge,” she replied. “There are a whole host of regenerative therapies these days. Profound therapies, like turning skin cells into stem cells then back into skin cells. Which results in cells that are effectively much younger. Or liver cells. Or heart cells. A lot of these practices can literally reverse the age of our cells. The problem, though, is that they take time. But what if those therapies could all be done at the same time, while the body was near-frozen? Time would no longer be an impediment.”
“Wait a minute. So, you’re saying someone could wake up in a younger body?”
“Maybe. The process would likely be much slower at low temperatures, but you would have decades to wait it out. And to the frozen patient, it would seem like the blink of an eye.”
Reiff looked at Waterman. “I can attest.”
“And there’s more,” Rachel continued. “If the new timeline for rejuvenating cells is now twenty, thirty, or even fifty years, there’s another possibility. A very exciting one, medically speaking.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Like I said, a lot of these regenerative advances have been around for a long time, targeting specific types of cells. But there was also a discovery made a long time ago that could potentially apply to all cells, especially given enough time. Have you ever heard of something called telomeres?”
“No.”
“Telomeres have been studied for at least fifty years by researchers working to slow or arrest the aging process. Telomeres are little caps at the ends of our chromosomes that scientists believe determine how long a person lives. Kind of like a genetic switch that determines when cells stop reproducing. Each time cells replicate, the telomeres or the ‘ends’ of the cell’s chromosomes gets a little shorter. Over and over throughout our lives until finally the telomeres get too short and they tell the cells not to replicate anymore. And that, biologically speaking, is the end of the road. Old cells no longer reproduce, and they just get older, until … well, you know.”
“Okay.”
“Here’s the interesting part. Instead of trying to come up with therapies that target individual systems or tissue types, you might be able to affect all of them by targeting telomeres instead. I think it was back around 2020 that a research team discovered something big. Teams had been working on telomeres for a long time, but this team discovered something truly extraordinary. And surprisingly simple. Much simpler than having to change complicated DNA chains. This team figured out not only a way to stop the repeated shortening of telomeres, but to reverse them. As in relengthening them again. And they did it by using oxygen.”
“Oxygen?”
“Uh-huh. They found that by putting their subjects in hyperbaric chambers for a period of time every day, or in other words, by flooding their systems with very high levels of oxygen, they were able to relengthen telomeres in different cell types by as much as twenty percent.”
Waterman turned back around to look at Rachel. “Twenty percent?”
“Yep. And it took only several months. So, imagine if Robert is right and this Duchik guy has found a way for near-frozen cells not just to absorb DNA changes, but in this case high levels of oxygen for years. It at least suggests the possibility that a patient could actually wake up younger, at least biologically, than when they were frozen.”
A stunned Waterman continued staring at her, until finally turning back. “Well, color me impressed.”