Except from Dr. Marsteller
1
Death is
infinite, which is why no one can understand it. Death is not perceived as an idea, but
considered a fact. The idea of death is
engrained evolutionarily so we cannot create a way to overcome it. Or maybe the idea of death and the fact of
death are both incomprehensible and only an exceptional mind will push humanity
through the breach into eternal existence.
A Jonas Salk of anti-aging is what we need. An Einstein!
A Jesus Christ!
Mrs.
Viscane pitied her reflection in the mirror as the thoughts splashed through
her head. She ran a brush through her
stringy wig like a Berber stroking a camel.
Then depression swarmed in and her eyes drooped. I’ve picked a lemon, she said to
herself. I’ve hitched my wagon to a dull
dying star. It’s entirely my fault.
She looked
in the mirror again. She pursed her
lips. She stuck out her chin. She looked at the right side of her face, and
then the left, and noticed the tautness of it.
Like shrink wrap on a casserole.
She raised her hand to feel it – smooth as marble and white as
alabaster. Her wrinkled hand entered her
view through the reflection, with sunspots and slimy veins like city highways
surrounded by decades of trash. Her
fingers were no longer long and elegant but the craggy boughs of an autumn elm;
they repulsed her - she quickly drew them back and cursed.
-I’m a
heathen, she whispered to her face in the mirror out of her tight grotesque red-lipped
mouth. She dropped her face in
shame. But her glance happened back to
her hands. She gasped.
She would
wear gloves. If she could get to the
store and buy them before she shriveled up entirely and expired. Suddenly, her blood boiled. She was irate at her existence and the
meaninglessness of its transience. Her
anger spilled out like blood from slaughtered swine. I could die in a day, or an hour or a minute
or in the next moment or right now, her thoughts spat. She was too hideous to have lived this long,
skin on her arms flopping in the breeze as it sagged towards the center of the
earth, compelled by the gravitational pull.
The thought of dying repulsed her notion of life. The thought of the cells in her body,
oxidized, terminating, sagging and expiating, unable to confront the challenges
of living, disgusted her. We know so
much about why but we must figure out how to stop it. The human mind is too exquisite to die, that
is why we will conquer aging with technology.
-Dr.
Marsteller’s mind, though, is sluggish from old age, she said aloud to the
mirror. He has not taken proper care of
his brain cells. Mine are a smooth
machine but his are unable to process the simplest pieces of information. The flicker in his brain burns like a 60-watt
bulb. I need someone energetic, fueled
by nuclear power and running on gigawatts.
He’s been sucking from my tit for too long. I absolutely cannot believe I’ve made this
mistake and stuck with him this long.
Unfathomably I have wasted so much time with this charlatan.
She nodded
to herself in agreement. She picked up
the phone. In her impatience, each ring
panged her ear like a honking horn.
-Hello.
-Dr.
Marsteller.
-Mrs.
Viscane, what a pleasant surprise.
The voice
was gruff and pained by its own obsequious tone.
-There’s
some things we need to discuss.
-I saw you
in the paper the other day. At the
governor’s mansion for something. You
were given an award for your charitable contributions to the state. Anyway…how are things?
-Dr.
Marsteller, I won’t draw this out any longer than I have to, she said sharply.
-Is there a
problem?
-As you
know, I’ve always been a proponent of your research and although your work the
past 20 years has been impressive, I think I’m going to take my money elsewhere. I hope you understand.
Dr.
Marsteller knew he had to think fast. He
had been blindsided by a right-hand hook to the chin. Her precarious nature always struck fear into
his very core. Mrs. Viscane called for a
progress report occasionally, so he wasn’t surprised by her demands. He had never seen her so abrupt to swing her
money out of his lab. Usually she
dangled it in front of him to try to expedite results.
When he
heard her voice, he knew she had had pangs of fright about her impending
death. Sometimes when this happened,
she’d march down to the lab and ask him what he was working on and pester the
students. She was passionate, but she
understood little. However, she had
never called so abruptly at this hour in the night and threatened to pull
money. I have to be quick and delicate,
he thought. He knew it might come to
this.
-Mrs.
Viscane. I hope you aren’t too eager to
pull out. We actually just received some
results with a new project I’m doing.
It’s late, and if you can forgive me, I can give you a call tomorrow and
tell you about it if you’d like.
-Dr.
Marsteller, I hope this isn’t another fruitless project. I am serious about pulling my investment with
you. I’m tired of dead ends and
ineffectual pathways that help you devise some pointless theory. The way I see it, you have taken advantage of
my good nature. You have led me on for
decades. You think I would have learned
my lesson. But I am gullible. I am gullible to a fault. Do you understand me?
-You’ll be
pleasantly surprised with what I have to say, I think.
-Fine, call
me tomorrow at one o’clock and we’ll discuss this new project.
-Okay, have
a good night Mrs. Viscane.
She hung up
the phone. This was it for him. He didn’t even have the common courtesy or
strength to go over things with her now.
He’ll elaborately confuse me with the convoluted scientific jargon of
another half-brained scheme. She knew
how he worked; he only cared about the money.
Not the results. He’ll spend 15
minutes tonight composing a late night scheme that will go nowhere and sound
impressive with considerable use of various chemical and molecular terms that
will make me wretch. He’s a leech.
She looked
in the mirror. Her eyes behind her
smooth face betrayed her age and anger.
Tears welled like glistening quarters lying on newly laid cement. She grabbed another mirror from the top of
the dresser, held it over her shoulder and looked at the back of her head. Her black hair was ratty as seaweed baking on
a rock at low tide. Using her other hand,
she lifted the ends of her hair and looked at the back of her neck. The wrinkles and spots in folds looked like a
dirty rumpled dinner roll. Then she
pulled the black stringy wig off to expose patches of white hair on top her
splotchy bald head contrasted with her surgically repaired face. Tears streamed down the smooth whiteness of
her cheeks. Straggles of hair were
tufted in bits like the back of a cat with mange. She put the mirror down, reached despondently
for the light above the dresser and flicked it off.
This originally appeared in Dr. Marsteller