New Life Dynamic Industries

The lab’s blinding white walls encapsulated twelve scientists. Their stark white hazmat suits seemed to blend into the walls. A chimpanzee, with half closed eyelids, lay on a metal exam table. A syringe sucked blood from its thigh. The attendant, holding the now full vial, pulled the needle from the chimps thigh. “Last one. We got four vials, right Cassandra?”

“Yep, this should be her last blood test. She’s a champion and we’re going to let her rest.” Cassandra stroked the chimp’s arm and bent close to her ear. “It’s okay Debbie. You’ve earned it.” She gave her arm one last pat and left the room. The remaining scientists cleaned up the lab and placed Debbie into her transport carrier.

Cassandra removed her hood and stepped into the sanitation chamber. Ten minutes later, she walked through another door in a grey pinstriped skirt suit. She ran her fingers through her shoulder length hair and shook her head. Locks of brown, with blonde highlights, swirled around her head until settling on her shoulders.

A man in a cheap blue suit clapped and whistled, then grabbed her arm. “Are we on for dinner gorgeous?”

She lowered her head and rose a single eyebrow at him. “What do you think?”

He winked. “Obviously yes. You wouldn’t want to disappoint your husband who hasn’t been able to spend any quality time with you for the past six months. You promised that your work on that experiment was concluded and we could celebrate.” He leaned toward her with his lips puckered.

She responded with a quick peck and continued walking down the corridor. “I’ll see you after work, but before then I have to meet with Dr. Craiger and go over some details of Debbie’s progress.”

His hand slid down her arm and his fingers traced hers as she pulled away. He said, “I love you babe!”

She turned her head and blew him a kiss. “Love you too Paul and stop whistling at your coworkers.”

***

Leaning stacks of multi-colored papers covered a dark red oak desk that filled more than half the office. Four computer monitors reflected off of the glasses of a grey haired old man. The sounds of rapid clicks from the keyboard mingled with his incoherent mumbling. Three rapid knocks sounded at the door and he stopped mid-stroke with his hands hovering above the keys. “I’m busy, come back next week.”

Cassandra’s gentle voice sounded from the other side of the door. “Oh, Okay, sorry to interrupt you Dr. Craiger. I’ll just throw the results of Debbie’s tests onto one of these piles of papers outside your office.”

The Dr's chair thudded against the wall, he scrambled to the door, and fumbled with the door handles. “No, Cassandra, I need those results now.” He yanked three more times on the doors and they rattled in their frame.

“Dr. Craiger, are your doors locked?”

The double doors swung inward and a wave of heavy cologne and stale cigarettes wafted into the hall. The grey haired man, with a full white beard, stared down at Cassandra. “Come in, we need to talk.”

She waved her hand at him.“Nah, you’re busy. I’ll check back with you next week. Maybe after your finished bathing in your cologne.” She turned to walk away.

Dr. Craiger grabbed her arm and turned her around. “Stop it.”

Her face was spread with a large sarcastic grin. “Sorry Dr. I thought you were busy?”

“You know very well that my work on that chimp is the most important work of my life. Stop messing around and get in my office. Now. I need to know how close I am to to finding the keys of long life.”

She cocked her head at him. “From where I stand I think you’ve already found long life. A really really loooong…”

He pulled her into his office and shut the doors behind her. “I have no idea why you insist on teasing me.”

“Oh, that’s easy. Because it’s just so much fun.”

“Fun for whom?”

Cassandra practically threw herself into one of Dr. Craiger’s visitor chairs and laughed. “Exactly.”

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean and honestly I don’t care. Please? Can we discuss Debbie now?”

She looked up at the ceiling, pursed her lips, and tapped them with her index finger. “Is that the cute blonde that works in the cafe’?”

Dr. Craiger grabbed the stack of papers from her lap, slouched into his chair, and started reading. “These are the papers from my shred pile that was outside my door, where is the paperwork from Debbie’s experiments?”

She squinted her eyes at him. “We we’re running tests on the lunch lady?”

He pounded his fists on the desk. “No, the chimp. Stop messing around and tell me what we’ve found out about my tests on the chimp or I’ll tell Paul to take the lead on this.”

“Oh, that Debbie. Right, I remember now. Her DNA is showing signs of regeneration. We have actually observed a complete reversal of senescent-cell build-up to such a degree that her DNA is closer to that of a teenage chimp rather than the forty-five year old that she is.”

The doctor’s mouth hung open and he shook his fist in the air. “I knew it. I mean obviously I didn’t know it, but I knew it. So, in your professional opinion, are we ready for human trials?”

She held up her hand. “Not quite yet. We have one last blood test that we’re waiting on the results for.”

“Have any previous blood tests showed anything to be concerned about?”

She shook her head.

He stood up and placed his hands on his desk. “Perfect. Then we need to prep the first test subject. We need to roll on this tonight.”

“Please sir, can we just wait one more day? We’ll have the test results back and then we can move forward.”

He heavy sighed. “Why?”

“Safety and an abundance of caution.”

The leather of his chair and the floor squeaked in defeat as he heaved himself back down. “Fine. Tomorrow then. What’s one more day?”

Her mouth curled into a giant grin. “Well, unless you want to possibly wipe out the human race just so you can start testing one day earlier.”

He rolled his eyes. “We’ll start tomorrow.”

“If her blood tests are good?”

Dr Craiger sighed. “Of course.”

***

Brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows reflected off of the black mirrored glass building of New Life Dynamic Industries. Cassandra and Paul walked hand in hand toward the front doorways. A man in a white lab coat pushed through them, followed by three EMTs. Cassandra stopped walking and Paul looked back at her. Cassandra’s brows furrowed and her lips pursed. “What was that?”

Paul shrugged and continued walking. “More drama at NLDI. What week do you remember when there wasn’t at least one?”

Cassandra started walking toward Paul. “No Paul. That was different. Something’s wrong.”

Paul stopped walking and turned to look at Cassandra again. “If you say so, but what’r ya gonna do? We can’t get excited over every emergency or we’d never stop being excited. You would look like this every minute of every day.” He threw his hands in the air, opened his mouth and eyes as large as they’d go, and shook his hands and face.

Cassandra slapped his hands down. “Stop it. Seriously, this is different.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Alright fine. Let’s find out.”

Inside the facility they were directed to the decontamination room. Behind the isolation glass Dr. Craiger sat up in a bed doubled over in pain.”

Cassandra pressed the intercom button. “Dr. Craiger? What happened?”

He never lifted his head. “I tried out the serum last night.”

Cassandra’s voice echoed through the halls. “You did what? Are you an idiot? What is wrong with you.”

“I woke up in the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.”

“But why? What were you thinking?”

Dr. Craiger lifted his head and revealed a small purple lesion on the end of his wrinkled nose. “I’m old Cassandra. The board told me last night that they voted for me to retire.”

“Retire? They can’t force you to retire?”

The doctor’s head bobbed. “The vote was unanimous.” He coughed for thirty seconds and then stopped. “They already let me stay twelve years longer than anyone before me. I cannot just fade into obscurity. I still have so much to offer. If I was a young man again then I could start over. I could discover so much…” He grabbed his stomach and lurched forward again. He coughed five more times and then looked up. Three additional lesions were on his face and his eyebrows were knit together. “I will not retire!”

Paul spoke up. “So dying instead of retiring seemed like a good plan to you?”

Dr. Craiger jumped from the table and pounded both fists on the glass. “I will not. I already feel younger and stronger.”

Cassandra held her hand against her cheek. “Sir, you look absolutely dreadful. I don’t understand. Debbie never showed any signs of distress.

Two men tried to coax the doctor back to the bed. He grabbed one and shoved him into the other. “Don’t touch me again!” The veins on his neck bulged and half a dozen additional lesions appeared on his face. “I don’t know about that chimp, but my distress is passing. I’m no longer in excruciating pain and the arthritis in my neck is all but gone. I feel amazing.”

Cassandra swiped her badge and Paul grabbed for her arm just as she slid through the door. Her badge retracted back in place at her waist with a zip. “Dr.?” She helped the older of the scientists up. “Obviously something is seriously wrong with you. You’ve never…”

The doctor raise his fists. The veins on his forearms were purple and bulged an inch from his arms. “Nothing is wrong with me. I feel ten times stronger than I did last night. He flexed his chest. “Look at this strength. It’s like I’m thirty years younger.” His face was practically filled with purple lesions.

The younger of the two scientists in the room stood directly behind the doctor. He injected a syringe into the doctor’s arm and pushed in the plunger. The doctor’s eyes glazed. He turned around and shoved the scientist into the glass plate window. A series of pops and pings followed the crack that zigzagged from where the scientist’s head hit the glass. A streak of blood dripped down the glass as the scientist crumpled to the floor. Dr. Craiger’s eyes fluttered, he wobbled on his feet, and then joined the scientist in a heap.

***

Two policemen stood to either side of an examination room in the labs. Inside the room, Dr. Craiger was strapped to a table. Machines to the right of the bed intermittently beeped and the quiet buzzing of a printer head spit out meandering lines on a thin strip of paper. Dr. Craiger jolted awake and strained against the straps securing him to the bed. He growled and the purple lesions on his face seemed to darken. “I’m not an animal. Let me go!” The muscles on his arms and neck pulsed with blood. The bed creaked and clanged as he attempted to flop on the bed. The straps holding him down didn’t budge.

Cassandra walked into the room and Dr. Craiger increased his efforts to escape. “You ungrateful arrogant know it all. You have no authority to hold me here.”

she pointed at the doors. “Yeah? Well, they do.”

He responded with a low growl like a savage wolf.

Her face quivered and her voice shook. “I just don’t understand. You’re smarter than this.”

His blood shot eyes glared at her as he growled and struggled to break the straps of his entrapment.

She inched closer to the gurney. “When we first started testing, the rats showed these same symptoms. We found out in the very beginning that we needed to supplement a number of medications to counter the side effects. We went over all of this in pain staking detail in your office. I had originally assumed you would have taken them with the serum. Hopefully those medications will still work. We never tried to administer them after injecting the youth serum.” She turned and walked out of the room as another scientist injected a sedative and the doctor’s eyes rolled back in his head.

***

Dr. Craiger’s hair and beard were dark brown at their roots. The wrinkles on his face were less pronounced than they had been in years. His foot bounced in the air as he sat thumbing through the pages of the latest science journal. Trails of smoke wafted from the cigar that sat in an ash tray on the table beside him. Three rapid knocks sounded at the door and his hand hovered above the cigar to his right. “Come in. I’m just in here soaking up this fluorescent lighting.”

Cassandra ambled into the room. Dr. Craiger picked up the cigar and took a long drag. A large smoke ring floated from his mouth and into Cassandra’s hair. She growled at the doctor, “That’s a disgusting habit.”

His face spread into a large grin. “You know you love it.”

Her head shook. “You know I don’t.” A smirk played at the edge of her mouth as she scribbled on a piece of paper that was attached to the clipboard she was carrying. “Anyway, how are you feeling?”

He stood up and flexed his arms and chest. “Like a new man. I haven’t felt this good in thirty years. This serum is amazing.” The grin on his face grew. “We’re going to be filthy rich and never have to work another day in our lives. Which now, thanks to our research, will be long and prosperous.”

Cassandra’s pen clicked against her clipboard matching the tapping of her shoe. “Look Glen. What you did was reckless and almost shut down our entire organization. President Stafford was prepared to pull the plug on every authorization we have. Thanks to you, you put almost two thousand people out of a job. In one single selfish act.”

The leather chair squeaked as he sat back down and inhaled another drag from his cigar. The smoke drifted from his mouth to the opposite side of the room from Cassandra. “But, it didn’t. So, why are you still going on about it?”

She cleared her throat. “I didn’t come here to argue with you about your childish and moronic decision. We need to fill out this questionnaire and then I need to submit it to the acting CEO of NLDI.”

Glen jumped out of his chair. “Are you kidding me right now?” His shoes squeaked across the floor as he paced in circles.” I put my life on the line,” he pointed his cigar at himself and thin wisps of smoke danced through the air, “to put us on top of the world,” ashes fell to the floor as he flailed his arms about, “and they respond by firing me?”

She scribbled notes. “You’re definitely more aggressive than you were last week.”

“I didn’t get to where I am by being genteel. Now that I’m regaining my youthfulness, I have the vigor I lost thirty some odd years ago.”

“That’s life Glen. We each have our time on this earth and then we step aside and allow our children and our grandchildren to take the reigns.”

He smirked at her. “Not anymore.” He blew a smoke ring straight into her face. “Not anymore.”