Tuesday, May 8
1:04 A.M.
Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan
220 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Lyle hurried through the darkness, clutching the bottle of ReBirth tightly in his hands. The lid was taped shut, and the bottle was sealed in a plastic bag, and then the whole thing was sealed inside another bag, but he was still worried. This was not a part of the city he liked visiting during the day, let alone at night. One bad mistake, he thought, one stupid accident—anything from a mugger to a slip on the sidewalk—and I’m ruined.
He slowed without stopping, checking the address he’d scribbled on a piece of paper. He was close; just one more block. He heard footsteps in an alley and voices on the other side of the street; he was practically running now.
Where is it?
And then there it was—a simple storefront, humble but well maintained, with the words YEMAYA FOUNDATION painted across the glass in large letters. There was a light on in the back. Lyle jogged to the door, tried it, then knocked loudly when it didn’t open. He glanced around nervously, seeing thieves and killers in every shadow. A figure moved inside the building, coming toward the door, and Lyle swallowed, holding his breath in a panic.
A tall man opened the door, long haired but clean shaven, wearing a brightly colored dashiki shirt. The stranger spoke in a warm, deep voice. “Are you the man I talked to on the phone?”
“Yes,” said Lyle, pushing the stranger back as he rushed through the door. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you my name, but … well, it’s a very long story.”
“Don’t be afraid,” said the tall man. “We are all brothers.” He made some kind of gesture with his hands, then closed and locked the door. “Please join me in the back. I’ve prepared some rooibos tea; it will help calm your nerves.”
“Um, thank you,” said Lyle, following the man.
It had been unsurprisingly difficult to find a charity willing to accept an unidentified medicinal substance, especially since Lyle had refused to give his name to any of them, or to explain where the substance had come from or what it did. Secrecy was too important, and he didn’t want to share too much information until he was 100 percent sure he’d found the right place.
He desperately hoped the Yemaya Foundation was the right place, because at this point it was pretty much the only place left.
“Are you Dr. Halley?” Lyle asked.
The man nodded. “I use that name for legal purposes only; please call me Kuvam.”
“Dr. Kuvam, I can’t thank you enough for—”
The man stopped, turned, and shook his head. “‘Doctor’ is too limiting. I prefer ‘guru.’” He led Lyle into the back room, lit not by electric lights but by some kind of oil lamps. The walls were hung with brightly colored fabrics edged with tassels, and there was no furniture. Kuvam gestured at the floor, covered with exotic pillows and homespun blankets in fierce orange and blue. A small Bunsen burner sat in the center of the blankets, heating a clay pot suspended above it. Lyle paled at the fire hazard, and stepped carefully around it.
“You are a doctor, though, right?” Lyle asked. He smiled nervously and sat on one of the pillows, hesitantly, as if expecting them to burst into flames. Or insects. He looked closer at Kuvam and saw, in the light, that he was tanned and leathery, like a man raised in the wilderness. “I mean, you are a licensed medical doctor?”
“Of western medicine, yes,” said Kuvam, “and of many more besides. I’ve studied acupuncture in the mountains of central China, and lived for five years in the jungles of the Amazon learning their deepest, most powerful herbal secrets. They called me White Fingers, and taught me how to speak with my ancestors.”
“That’s … great,” said Lyle. “What kind of medicine do you practice, exactly?”
“The Yemaya Foundation is dedicated not simply to wellness but to wholeness.” He gestured as he spoke, making circles and waves with his hands. “True wholeness comes not from the individual but from everything—from our interaction as a society, and our integration as cells in the vast organism of Earth. My name, Kuvam, means ‘Sun,’ and it is through the sun that we gain life and power, yet it is only through us that the sun gains light and power. We call this bioluminescence—life creating light.” He picked up the clay teapot and poured Lyle a bowl of red, sharp-scented liquid. “Your light is very weak. Drink.”
Lyle accepted the bowl delicately. What on earth have I gotten myself into?
Kuvam lounged back casually on the pillows, his face breaking into a wise, fatherly smile. “I can see that you’re not convinced. Know then that I studied medicine first at Harvard, and then at Johns Hopkins. For ten years in that hospital I tended the sick as a resident internist, not merely healing but teaching so that others might heal, as well. On the day my financial debts were paid in full I left and began a new life, a greater life, as a student of the world. My western education was inherently narrow, blinded as we are by our faith in observable science, but if those are the credentials that move you, then I do not deny them.”
Lyle nodded. As much as he hated to admit it, a man like Kuvam might be the only person he could safely give the lotion to: a man with a solid medical background, capable of understanding ReBirth’s potential, but at the same time loose enough and liberal enough to share that potential with everyone. Mastering western medicine gave Kuvam the first credential, and turning his back on it gave him the second. The third point in Kuvam’s favor, Lyle mused, is his overwhelming ridiculousness. No one will believe that he created this technology. When I finally have a chance to stand up and take credit for ReBirth, the world will be ready to accept me. “Thank you,” said Lyle. “I’m sorry for interrogating you like this, but I need to know that you’ll understand what I want to give you.”
“Indeed,” said Kuvam. “I suppose that depends on what it is.”
“This is where it gets strange,” said Lyle, setting down his bowl of tea and pulling the well-wrapped lotion from his pocket. “I work for a company that … well, you’re going to know who they are sooner or later no matter what I do, successful or not, but for now I think it’s safer for you—legally—not to know. Plausible deniability. So I work for them, as a scientist, and a few months ago I invented—well, I should say it was mostly an accident—but I invented a technology that turned out to be incredibly powerful. World-changingly powerful. The medical potential alone is … well, it’s staggering, it’s completely mind-blowing, but all this company wants to do with it is make money, and…” He looked at Kuvam, eyes pleading. “I need a Robin Hood.”
Kuvam nodded. “You need someone who can bring this technology to the common man.”
“Yes,” said Lyle, “but it’s more than that. You’re already more or less okay about stealing this, so I hope you won’t balk when I say that the technology itself is illegal—we’ve broken the law even by testing it, let alone trying to sell it. But once it comes out and people see what it can do, we think everyone’s going to want it so much they’ll just go with it and look the other way—or they’ll shut us down and we can make our zillions selling it like an illegal drug. Which is horrible, in so many ways, but it gives us an opportunity—a tiny little crack of a window of an opportunity where you and I might be able to make this work. You see, because there’s no chance the government would ever approve this product in advance, we haven’t taken any steps to protect it in advance. Not legal protection, I mean. And now another company—we don’t know who—has stolen it, so the race is on, and whoever gets it to market first wins: they’ll have the only binding evidence of origination, which means they’ll get the patent and the exclusivity and the legal right to sell it for whatever they want. Instead of curing diseases it’ll end up in resort salons, giving breast enhancements to millionaires’ girlfriends, and the people who need it—the poor people, the sick people—will never see a drop. But if you can find a way to use this technology in a big, public way, saving lives the way it really, morally needs to be used, you can kill their exclusivity. If it comes from a charity group like yours it won’t be owned by a corporation, and anyone will be able to sell it to anyone.”
Kuvam stared at Lyle, sipping a bowl of tea. Lyle waited for an answer, but Kuvam simply stared.
“I…,” said Lyle, “I don’t know what you—”
“Tell me what it does,” said Kuvam.
Lyle shrugged, looking at the wrapped bottle in his hands and laughing. “I know this sounds impossible, but … it overwrites DNA.”
Kuvam raised an eyebrow.
“Right now it’s blank, but as soon as it touches human tissue it will read the DNA and imprint itself with that pattern. Then whoever touches it after that will be ‘infected’ with that DNA. That’s really the only word for it. The new DNA would spread from cell to cell, changing the genetic makeup to match, say, my DNA instead of yours. You’d still be you—you’d have your own personality and your memories and all of that—but you’d also be me. Sort of. You’d be you, but in an exact copy of my body.”
Kuvam was silent again, his brow furrowed in thought. Lyle let him think, hoping he would understand. Will he freak out? Will he accuse me of lying? Even if he believes me, will he see the potential for healing, or will he get caught up by the prospect of money?
Kuvam nodded slowly. “So if I have a congenital disease, and I use lotion imprinted on someone who does not, I would then be free of that disease.”
“Exactly,” said Lyle, relieved to hear him grasp the idea so quickly. “You won’t be you anymore, but you won’t be sick and dying, either.”
“What about extra mass?”
“Sloughed away or excreted as waste,” said Lyle. “One of our … accidental tests was a woman, and as the gene shift took effect her body simply rejected everything that didn’t match the new template—she lost her hips, she lost her breasts, she lost so much tissue the hospital thought it was leprosy.”
“In that case,” said Kuvam, “it should also cure cancer.”
Lyle straightened, staring.
“Cancer cells would be overwritten,” Kuvam continued, “returned to their original, healthy state, and the tumors would be rejected by the body as remnants of a foreign template.”
Lyle leaned forward, eager and excited. “Yes! Yes! This is exactly what I’m talking about—a cheap, accessible cure for cancer. I told you this could change the world!”
“What does it do for age?” asked Kuvam.
Lyle frowned slightly. “Why would it do anything for age?”
Kuvam smiled. “Embracing the truths of natural healing does not mean that I have abandoned the truths of modern science. I have many former colleagues on the cutting edge of medical research.” He sat up straighter, leaning forward. “Your biological age is determined not by chronology but by the expression of your genes—they exist in different states during the different stages of your life. As a child your DNA told you to grow, to form neural connections, to lose your infant teeth; when you reached puberty those same expressions of DNA changed, and started telling your voice to deepen, your facial hair to grow, your sexual organs to mature. In your thirties your metabolism changed, giving you that slight paunch around the middle, and in your fifties it will change again, and again in your sixties, and on and on until you die. We assume that our body ages over time, but in fact our body ages only because our genes tell it that it must.”
Lyle whispered. “You didn’t learn that in the jungles of the Amazon.”
Kuvam nodded sagely.
“But that would mean…” Lyle sat back, losing his balance and almost falling off his pillow. He glanced nervously at the Bunsen burner and continued. “If age is carried genetically, then…” He held up the bottle, feeling cold and lost and small. His voice was a whisper. “What is this going to do?”
“It’s going to save us,” said Kuvam, reaching out to take the bottle from Lyle. Lyle resisted feebly, but Kuvam pulled it from him with surprising strength. “With this we shall eliminate not just illness but age; not just disease but death itself.” He held the bottle up, examining it reverently. “With this we shall usher mankind into a new and enlightened era.”
Lyle stared at the bottle, its plastic wrapping bright in the lamplight. This is it, he thought. I grab it and run, or I let this lotion loose upon the world. He looked at Kuvam. Do I trust him? He grimaced. Do I have any other choice? The guru’s supply wouldn’t last long, but it didn’t have to—all he had to do was get it out there so no one else could own it, and the free market would take it from there. Even if he does something crazy with it, we’ll only have to deal with him for a week or two and then the damage will be done and ReBirth will be public domain.
Lyle cleared his throat. “Will you do it? Will you help people with it?”
Kuvam nodded. “I accept this charge humbly, my friend.” He cocked his head, still staring at the bottle. “What do you call it?”
Lyle whispered, “ReBirth.”
Kuvam smiled. “Of course.”