Dr. Marsteller Chapter 4

Mrs. Viscane had spent most of her married life as a trophy wife reading scientific literature. Her husband George was the CEO of a company that manufactured computer hard drives since the 60s. After the advent of personal computing, they worked with companies such as Dell, Compaq and Gateway who provided the plastic shell for the personal computer. Now all the major companies used Viscane hard drives. If the plastic shell was like the body of the car, the Viscane hard drives were like the engine and the Windows/Mac operating system was the steering. George Viscane was the driving force behind making them longer lasting and more proficient and even dabbled in computer intelligence for the government.

Mrs. Viscane was obsessed with life extension and had attended various conferences when her husband was abroad or doing business. When George died, she pulled all the money out of his company and gave a large grant for research to combat aging. She never understood his obsession with artificial intelligence when she believed it was technologically possible to extend biological life and natural intelligence itself. After reviewing all the grant applications, she decided on Dr. Marsteller based on reputation and proximity. George’s company had been based only 100 miles from the small college town of Garret. She considered it a sign from the cosmos that the foremost anti-aging researcher happened to coincidentally only be 100 miles away. She built a massive house in the tony section of Cedar Bluff and moved to Garret.

While married to George, her frustration burgeoned as she began to age. She employed any new surgical advance to maintain her looks. When she was 30, she looked 18, when she was 40, she looked 25, when she was 50, she didn’t look a day over 30. But at the age of 69, nature was defeating surgeons and she resembled a badly burned porcelain doll that escaped fire damage to its face. Regardless of her attempts to mask her age, she realized her heart could not continue to beat forever and her brain could not function indefinitely. Modern science could find a cure for death and deterioration, she reasoned, but they just haven’t been ambitious enough or imaginative enough to try. It’s ironic, she thought, most humans can’t seriously ponder death, because if they did, they couldn’t blissfully live.

She was also annoyed with everyone who thought what she was trying to do was a big joke. They figured her goal was a Bradburian fantasy that only existed in the minds of the eccentric- unsophisticated science fiction and out of touch with reality. She heard the giggles behind her when she walked past. She mistakenly interpreted them as being directed towards her ideas, but were really directed towards her odd appearance. I am the only one who is intelligent enough to understand death can be beaten and the only one with the means and strength to be the driving force behind getting it accomplished. It was her thought every live waking moment. It would have been better if it had been discovered when she was 25, but that ship had sailed. Thank god for plastic surgery, she thought now, while running her wrinkled fingers over her smooth face, smiling, waiting for him to call. Let’s see what he tries to pull as he’s being told to walk the plank before I push him overboard. At one o’clock on the dot, the phone rang.

-Mrs. Viscane, I’m telling you this in the utmost confidence and you must never repeat it to anyone.

-Of course Dr. Marsteller.

Here he goes with his theatrics, she thought.

-About 10 years ago we conducted an experiment in which embryonic mice cells express telomerase. Anyway, I won’t bore you with the scientific details. But all of those mice are still living. Increasing their life span by 500%. We were going to wait until they died to publish the results, but as you can see, they simply haven’t died, so we decided to use the ten-year anniversary to publish them.

Mrs. Viscane was flabbergasted. Retain my composure. Make sure he’s not trying another one of his ploys.

-Why wasn’t I notified about the project before?

-You understand; it was kept in the utmost secrecy. All of the students were blinded to some aspect of the project. No one knew for certain what the purpose of the mice was, except myself, of course. Many students where involved. It started back when Steve Clemens was here.

Dr. Marsteller could tell he made an impact on Mrs. Viscane. She was as stunned as John Glenn viewing the earth from space. He also thought it was clever of him to claim the graduate students didn’t know anything about the project. If someone came snooping around, they couldn’t expect them to know anything.

-Dr. Marsteller, I have to ask you a question. Please tell me this is the truth. Are you being completely honest about these mice? There are absolutely no defects?

-Well, not that we can see, but we haven’t begun cognitive testing.

-I must see these mice at once.

-Certainly.

That was easy enough, all he had to do was move some cages into a room and say they were the mice that were 10 years old.

-I must ask you one more question Dr. Marsteller. These experiments were done with embryos. Do you think it is possible to save an old mouse? So that it will not die?

-Yes, Mrs. Viscane, it’s entirely possible. All we have to do is transfect certain cells with a retrovirus linked to the gene so that they express this protein. It is the next set of experiments we are going to do.

Well, drastic measures had to be taken, thought Dr. Marsteller. I’m just giving her what she wants to hear. Nothing less than a cure for death will appease her at this point. What would she do with her money if she didn’t use it for my research? Give it to Dr. Bill Claren over at Harvard? Please. His research is a joke. As bad as it is to lie to her, it’s worse to have her wasting her money on the research of an idiot. Would she spend it on being a space tourist? Christ she could be a space tourist 20,000 time over. Maybe she could buy Guatemala or something. Clearly, her passion is anti-aging research and the fact is I perform the best research in this field and it’s better for her to be with me no matter what she thinks.

If Alexandria’s experiment doesn’t work, I’ll just drag her on a little more. If it does, well, then I really didn’t lie. It’s a shame it’s come to this.

Mrs. Viscane grinned on the other end of the phone. So her philanthropy paid off. She would have kissed her face in the mirror. It was happening. It was actually happening. She was going to save the world.

👉 Chapter 5

This originally appeared in Dr. Marsteller