10. LIFE EVERLASTING

The professor explains what he and his wife are up to.

Professor Reuben Styx, his wife by his side, glared at Inspector Wasp.

“I want you to know,” he said is a wispy voice filled with a strange almost ethereal kind of venom, “that I am on good terms with your Chief Constable and am due to enjoy a round of golf with him very soon.”

Ah, thought Wasp, that old line! I’ve heard it before and it invariably gets followed by an arrest and a plea of guilty before a judge…

“I’m only doing my job, Professor,” he said in the tone of voice that suggested me might be fed up with doing it, “and I have this elderly fellow with no mind who believe it or believe it not might be your clone.”

It struck the Inspector as odd when he saw the way the professor reacted to that simple statement of his. To start with he jerked as though someone had applied an electric current to an unmentionable part of his anatomy and then he fell slowly backwards into a seat that, fortunately, was just behind him.

Then, “what do you mean by ‘clone’?” he asked, his voice strained in much the same way as it might be if he was trying to suppress a sneeze. Then he regained control and stood up rather awkwardly.

“You have no right to use such language here,” he said, his voice now authoritarian. “There are no clones here! Now, if you don’t mind I must ask you to leave and be assured that your Chief Constable is going to receive a detailed account of this conversation from me when I see him!”

“Reuben...” his wife said, “don’t start spoiling it...”

“Now Dolly,” he said, turning to her, “don’t you start putting your nose into what doesn’t concern you...”

She looked suddenly indignant. “But it does, Reuben,” she said, quietly yet with determination. “We’re both in this together, remember? It’s our voyage into eternity, yours and mine, and we can’t do it if anything goes wrong...”

What in the name of goodness is she saying? wondered the Inspector as the Professor turned and faced his wife. Then he took her by one hand and held it tenderly.

“I’ve started to sow the seeds of understanding in the world, but it’ll take a long time before the general run of people is ready,” he said to her quietly, “meanwhile you and I must be the forerunners of immortality as we walk side by side into eternity as living, breathing and physically able people. We must show the way, establish the rules, make sure that everything runs smoothly before we spread the news...”

“But it must start well,” she said, “you know it must. We agreed, you and I, at the outset, when the shadows were us. It would be silly indeed if either of us ended up in a prison cell, doing life for something we wouldn’t actually dream of doing, because life for us could be a mighty long time.”

What in the name of goodness is she talking about? The Inspector was getting confused and he never felt in charge when he was confused.

“Quiet, Dolly,” breathed the Professor, and he turned to the two officers and eyed them closely, from the Inspector to the Sergeant and back to the Inspector.

“You might be wondering what my wife is referring to,” he said after a few moments, “and if I believe I can trust you to keep it to yourselves then I might let you a little way into a world you’ll struggle to understand.”

“I can’t ignore matters to do with breaking the law,” replied Wasp after a moment’s thought, “but if what you’ve got on your mind doesn’t contravene the laws of the land then I see no reason why it should go beyond me.”

“And you, sergeant?” asked Professor Styx.

“What the boss says,” he replied, nervously.

“Then let me explain a little of what we do here,” began professor. “Come, sit down won’t you, and try to understand.”

The two officers sat on wooden chairs with upright backs, as did the professor and his wife. With these chairs he doesn’t mean us to drop off to sleep, thought Sergeant Stone as he tried to make himself comfortable.

“You will be awarwe that I have the title of professor, and may even know that my speciality is longevity,” began the Professor, and in case the police officers were typical plods he decided to elaborate, “which means increasing life expectancy. And so far Dolly and I have been successful. To look at us you wouldn’t believe we are in receipt of a state pension for the elderly, but we are. It’s a nuisance, but as we passed pension age without there being a certificate proclaiming that we are dead, authority saw fit to award us a modest sum each week. Yet neither of us looks, shall I say, ancient, do we? And, in truth, neither of us needs the money. But what can we do? Send it back and draw unwanted attention to ourselves?”

“So looking at you I’d guess you can sort of turn back time?” asked Inspector Wasp.

“In a way I suppose that’s exactly what we do,” nodded the Professor, “I like the phrase, turn back time. It suits us! And, to put it into layman’s parlance, there are two ways this might be achieved. It might be possible to extend human life, but the problem with that is there are parts of the human body that might not take too kindly to extreme old age. The brain, for instance. Yes, it can be fed nutritious and preserving drugs, but in the end it will start to become feeble. And other parts of the body can’t be made to last for centuries even if use is made of organ transplants and the like. Neither of us believes that any drug or system could cause the human body to live for extreme periods of time.”

“I saw the magazine you wrote in,” confessed Sergeant Stone.

“That didn’t say much,” smiled the Professor, “I carefully made sure that I didn’t let out a single clue as to what’s really going on here. But our experiments are being successful, aren’t they Dolly?”

“They most certainly are!” she smiled broadly, and winked at him.

“You see we have two triumphs to our names, triumphs that must not be made public until the public is ready to understand the implications, and that may take a generation or two. But, and here you must open up your own minds, Dolly and I are clones. Yes, the word you used. We are exact genetic copies of ourselves, but a generation younger, and you must swear, here and now, that you will tell nobody on this planet that I told you that!”

© Peter Rogerson 20.09.19