The Gift of NewLife

When NewLife opened their doors to the public, my mom was patient zero, she was one of the first to get gene editing therapy. My 63-year-old mother now had her natural hair color back, from silver to chestnut brown, she looked 20 years younger.

We met for dinner at our traditional birthday spot, The Cats Caboose. She handed me an envelope across the table, “happy birthday sweety!” She pronounced.

I thumbed open the flap and pulled the thick parchment paper from it's envelope. “NewLife Certificate for One Treatment,” I read aloud.

Mom always stressed the importance of being a good gift receiver, always make a show of whatever you get, someone took time out of their day for you.

“Wow! Mom, thank you so much!” I beamed at her. “I hope you didn’t spend too much.”

“Don’t worry about the cost sweety,” she pushed her hair forward to show me, “You have to go on the website and pick a treatment.”

Mom was never afraid to try anything, whether that be hoping in a cryogenic chamber or getting a stem cell injection. All l know about this new gene editing technology is that it nuked the cosmetic industry in to a pile of ash. The major cosmetic companies tried to stop it, but advocates of gene therapy framed it as a human rights issue.

That night I went on the NewLife website. I read the company mission-statement and terms and conditions. I clicked the drop-down menu for treatments. There were treatments for everything, you could change your hair and eye colour, even your skin tone, enhance breast size, or change your muscles composition from ectomorph to mesomorph.

Something caught my eye, beard! I’ve never been able to grow a beard, I had a thin mustache and sparse patchy hair on my cheeks. I made up my mind impulsively and selected beard, which led me to the book an appointment icon. I held the curser over the icon, I was hesitating, gene editing was still fairly new, they have been testing it for years, but I felt apprehensive. I ignored my discomfort and clicked the icon and selected an appointment date. 

NewLife had the most opulent clinic I had ever seen, polished marble floors, exotic wood panelling on the walls, large pots with tropical plants and air was perfumed with Eucalyptus. The place was intimidating. A receptionist led me into a private room to wait for Dr. Van Zan. 

I pulled a pamphlet off the table and began to read, “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats or CRISPR. A component of bacterial immune systems that can cut DNA, and has been repurposed as a gene editing tool.”

Doctor Van Zan opened the door before I could finish reading, “welcome Adam,” he looked down at his clip board, “we’re doing beard today, very nice, we’ll have you in and out.”

He had me remove my shirt and stretch out on a table, he inserted an IV in my arm and I watched the liquid ran into my veins. The doctor pressed a sanitized cotton ball over the needle and pulled it out.

“And that’s it, all done, it will take some time for the cells to become saturated, did you have any questions?”

“No, doctor, thank you very much,” I put my shirt back on and grabbed my pamphlet on my way out.

The first week was uneventful. Right around day 13 I started to see it, hair! I was in full bloom, hundreds of new hairs sprouting on my face like a Chia Pet.

Shortly after my coworkers started to notice. “You got a little scruff going,” said Kevin, with a look of approval.

“My first beard in 20 years,” I replied. I didn’t divulge it was gene editing, they had never seen me grow a beard, I had always been clean shaven, so I could pretend this was my first attempt. 

I subscribed to the 3-month beard rule, no trimming for 12 weeks. It was very itchy until the hair passed a couple inches then it became soft. The beard felt like a metamorphosis, like a second puberty. It added much needed colour to my pale face, and somehow made my eyes look brighter. There was a dusting of grey in my beard, giving me a sage look. The saying that beards were like makeup for men held true, a real enhancer.

Kevin recognized before I did that it was time for a trim, my mustache was growing past my lip and food was getting caught in it.

“It’s time for a trim bud, get some beard oil too, so the hair doesn’t crack, it'll makes the hair look healthier. Go see my barber Chris, he’s the only one I’ll let touch my beard.”

I thanked Keven for the recommendation and booked an appointment. I went to the barber shop after work and Chris went straight to work, first on my haircut, followed by a beard trim and alignment. He trimmed my beard with a comb and scissors, then used a straight razor to shape hair lines on my cheeks and neck. Chris made my beard so tight and crisp you would have thought I was a bonsai tree. My jawline looked chiselled and more masculine.

I settled up at the register, all together my haircut, beard trim, oil and tip came to $70. Significantly more expensive than usual, but I didn’t care, I felt electrified. I walked out of there with a charismatic swagger and new found confidence.

I uploaded some new pictures to Meta and Instagram, I decided to make my profiles public, a very unusual move for me because I’m an introvert and I cherish my privacy, but this felt like a possible new beginning; a phoenix rising.

There was a significant uptick in likes on my photos. I was getting a lot of compliments on my beard. But what I focused on most was the increase in female attention, I was getting comments with fire and heart eye emojis, even flirty private messages. I was noticing it in public as well, sustained eye contact from the fairer sex, ‘hungry eyes’ as my buddy Cam liked to call it. It was an amount of attention I wasn’t used to and I was lapping it up.

After a few weeks I booked another appointment with Chris, my hair was growing fast and I needed another trim and alignment. 

After Chris finished with the beard he asked, “Eyebrows?”

This was new, I’d never been asked if I needed my eyebrows done, “do I need it?

“Yes, real quick,” He ran the clippers across my eyebrows to trim them back. 

NewLife was catching on big time, I had my suspicions I wasn’t the only one at work who had gotten a treatment. Scott no longer had eczema, Connor was looking leaner, and Kelly was looking more 3 dimensional, I couldn’t be sure but I swore she was up two cup sizes. 

Kelly looked at me from across the boardroom. It caught me off guard so I looked down at my documents, my focus immediately shifted to my forearm hair which was creeping up onto my hands. 

When I got home, I read through reviews on NewLife’s website looking for anything hair related, but there were no alarm bells. I typed a message asking if anyone was having trouble with their hair treatment.

I was incessantly posting pictures of myself, completely addicted to my new found attention. I noticed my Meta list was beginning to change, they were all 40 plus, but aging backwards; people were looking vibrant, colourful, youthful. This had to be NewLife treatments.

The next day at work I swiped the office key pad and walked in, Kelly was standing on the other side of the door. She was wearing a low-cut top, miss three-dimensional was about to break into the fourth dimension. Word had gotten around work about her NewLife treatments, mainly because Kelly couldn't keep quite about it.

I pulled her aside, “Hey, I need to talk to you about NewLife.”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“Are you having any side effects?”

“Like what?”

“Did you get more than you bargained for?”

“No! I’ve always wanted big natural breasts, and now I have them,” she said with pride.

“I have to tell you something, I got a NewLife treatment,”

“No shit Adam,” Kelly laughed at this, “you went from a sphynx cat to werewolf.”

“Is it that noticeable?”

“Yes, you look like a Komondor”

“What! Anyway, are you having side effects? Because I’m growing hair everywhere, and it’s growing faster.”

“Not that I know of, but these can grow until I tip over, I’m not concerned,” she said.

I realized she wasn’t going to be any help and left her to her work. In my office I typed NewLife into my browser and found my comment, it was loaded with replies, people were having the same problem as me: hand hair, nose hair, ear hair. I sent a text to my mom asking her to call me later that evening when she had time.

I hadn’t spoken to my mom in weeks, when her face appeared on face-timed, I was shocked, my mother had several inches of grey roots growing in.

“Mom! Your hair is grey!” 

After a lengthy talk she admitted she was, “just over it.” After the call I decided with relief that I was going to have my treatment reversed, the experiment had failed, it was expensive, unmanageable, and I felt like a poser.

I booked an appointment and had the whole thing reversed. Lucky for me the genes could be removed. The "unsaturation" process took a few more treatments, I was shedding for weeks like a ripe dandelion, until finally I returned to my old self. My mom regretted buying me gene editing therapy, I had to reassure her for years that she had inadvertently given me and even better gift; self-appreciation.