“You are a doctor, though, right?” Lyle asked. He smiled nervously and sat on one of the pillows, hesitantly, as if expecting them to burst into flames. Or insects. He looked closer at Kuvam and saw, in the light, that he was tanned and leathery, like a man raised in the wilderness. “I mean, you are a licensed medical doctor?”
“Of western medicine, yes,” said Kuvam, “and of many more besides. I’ve studied acupuncture in the mountains of central China, and lived for five years in the jungles of the Amazon learning their deepest, most powerful herbal secrets. They called me White Fingers, and taught me how to speak with my ancestors.”
“That’s … great,” said Lyle. “What kind of medicine do you practice, exactly?”
“The Yemaya Foundation is dedicated not simply to wellness but to wholeness.” He gestured as he spoke, making circles and waves with his hands. “True wholeness comes not from the individual but from everything—from our interaction as a society, and our integration as cells in the vast organism of Earth. My name, Kuvam, means ‘Sun,’ and it is through the sun that we gain life and power, yet it is only through us that the sun gains light and power. We call this bioluminescence—life creating light.” He picked up the clay teapot and poured Lyle a bowl of red, sharp-scented liquid. “Your light is very weak. Drink.”
Lyle accepted the bowl delicately. What on earth have I gotten myself into?
Kuvam lounged back casually on the pillows, his face breaking into a wise, fatherly smile. “I can see that you’re not convinced. Know then that I studied medicine first at Harvard, and then at Johns Hopkins. For ten years in that hospital I tended the sick as a resident internist, not merely healing but teaching so that others might heal, as well. On the day my financial debts were paid in full I left and began a new life, a greater life, as a student of the world. My western education was inherently narrow, blinded as we are by our faith in observable science, but if those are the credentials that move you, then I do not deny them.”
Lyle nodded. As much as he hated to admit it, a man like Kuvam might be the only person he could safely give the lotion to: a man with a solid medical background, capable of understanding ReBirth’s potential, but at the same time loose enough and liberal enough to share that potential with everyone. Mastering western medicine gave Kuvam the first credential, and turning his back on it gave him the second. The third point in Kuvam’s favor, Lyle mused, is his overwhelming ridiculousness. No one will believe that he created this technology. When I finally have a chance to stand up and take credit for ReBirth, the world will be ready to accept me. “Thank you,” said Lyle. “I’m sorry for interrogating you like this, but I need to know that you’ll understand what I want to give you.”
“Indeed,” said Kuvam. “I suppose that depends on what it is.”
“This is where it gets strange,” said Lyle, setting down his bowl of tea and pulling the well-wrapped lotion from his pocket. “I work for a company that … well, you’re going to know who they are sooner or later no matter what I do, successful or not, but for now I think it’s safer for you—legally—not to know. Plausible deniability. So I work for them, as a scientist, and a few months ago I invented—well, I should say it was mostly an accident—but I invented a technology that turned out to be incredibly powerful. World-changingly powerful. The medical potential alone is … well, it’s staggering, it’s completely mind-blowing, but all this company wants to do with it is make money, and…” He looked at Kuvam, eyes pleading. “I need a Robin Hood.”
Kuvam nodded. “You need someone who can bring this technology to the common man.”
“Yes,” said Lyle, “but it’s more than that. You’re already more or less okay about stealing this, so I hope you won’t balk when I say that the technology itself is illegal—we’ve broken the law even by testing it, let alone trying to sell it. But once it comes out and people see what it can do, we think everyone’s going to want it so much they’ll just go with it and look the other way—or they’ll shut us down and we can make our zillions selling it like an illegal drug. Which is horrible, in so many ways, but it gives us an opportunity—a tiny little crack of a window of an opportunity where you and I might be able to make this work. You see, because there’s no chance the government would ever approve this product in advance, we haven’t taken any steps to protect it in advance. Not legal protection, I mean. And now another company—we don’t know who—has stolen it, so the race is on, and whoever gets it to market first wins: they’ll have the only binding evidence of origination, which means they’ll get the patent and the exclusivity and the legal right to sell it for whatever they want. Instead of curing diseases it’ll end up in resort salons, giving breast enhancements to millionaires’ girlfriends, and the people who need it—the poor people, the sick people—will never see a drop. But if you can find a way to use this technology in a big, public way, saving lives the way it really, morally needs to be used, you can kill their exclusivity. If it comes from a charity group like yours it won’t be owned by a corporation, and anyone will be able to sell it to anyone.”
Kuvam stared at Lyle, sipping a bowl of tea. Lyle waited for an answer, but Kuvam simply stared.
“I…,” said Lyle, “I don’t know what you—”
“Tell me what it does,” said Kuvam.
Lyle shrugged, looking at the wrapped bottle in his hands and laughing. “I know this sounds impossible, but … it overwrites DNA.”
Kuvam raised an eyebrow.
“Right now it’s blank, but as soon as it touches human tissue it will read the DNA and imprint itself with that pattern. Then whoever touches it after that will be ‘infected’ with that DNA. That’s really the only word for it. The new DNA would spread from cell to cell, changing the genetic makeup to match, say, my DNA instead of yours. You’d still be you—you’d have your own personality and your memories and all of that—but you’d also be me. Sort of. You’d be you, but in an exact copy of my body.”
Kuvam was silent again, his brow furrowed in thought. Lyle let him think, hoping he would understand. Will he freak out? Will he accuse me of lying? Even if he believes me, will he see the potential for healing, or will he get caught up by the prospect of money?
Kuvam nodded slowly. “So if I have a congenital disease, and I use lotion imprinted on someone who does not, I would then be free of that disease.”
“Exactly,” said Lyle, relieved to hear him grasp the idea so quickly. “You won’t be you anymore, but you won’t be sick and dying, either.”
“What about extra mass?”
“Sloughed away or excreted as waste,” said Lyle. “One of our … accidental tests was a woman, and as the gene shift took effect her body simply rejected everything that didn’t match the new template—she lost her hips, she lost her breasts, she lost so much tissue the hospital thought it was leprosy.”
“In that case,” said Kuvam, “it should also cure cancer.”
Lyle straightened, staring.
“Cancer cells would be overwritten,” Kuvam continued, “returned to their original, healthy state, and the tumors would be rejected by the body as remnants of a foreign template.”
Lyle leaned forward, eager and excited. “Yes! Yes! This is exactly what I’m talking about—a cheap, accessible cure for cancer. I told you this could change the world!”
“What does it do for age?” asked Kuvam.
Lyle frowned slightly. “Why would it do anything for age?”
Kuvam smiled. “Embracing the truths of natural healing does not mean that I have abandoned the truths of modern science. I have many former colleagues on the cutting edge of medical research.” He sat up straighter, leaning forward. “Your biological age is determined not by chronology but by the expression of your genes—they exist in different states during the different stages of your life. As a child your DNA told you to grow, to form neural connections, to lose your infant teeth; when you reached puberty those same expressions of DNA changed, and started telling your voice to deepen,
your facial hair to grow, your sexual organs to mature. In your thirties your metabolism changed, giving you that slight paunch around the middle, and in your fifties it will change again, and again in your sixties, and on and on until you die. We assume that our body ages over time, but in fact our body ages only because our genes tell it that it must.”
Lyle whispered. “You didn’t learn that in the jungles of the Amazon.”
Kuvam nodded sagely.
“But that would mean…” Lyle sat back, losing his balance and almost falling off his pillow. He glanced nervously at the Bunsen burner and continued. “If age is carried genetically, then…” He held up the bottle, feeling cold and lost and small. His voice was a whisper. “What is this going to do?”
“It’s going to save us,” said Kuvam, reaching out to take the bottle from Lyle. Lyle resisted feebly, but Kuvam pulled it from him with surprising strength. “With this we shall eliminate not just illness but age; not just disease but death itself.” He held the bottle up, examining it reverently. “With this we shall usher mankind into a new and enlightened era.”
Lyle stared at the bottle, its plastic wrapping bright in the lamplight. This is it, he thought. I grab it and run, or I let this lotion loose upon the world. He looked at Kuvam. Do I trust him? He grimaced. Do I have any other choice? The guru’s supply wouldn’t last long, but it didn’t have to—all he had to do was get it out there so no one else could own it, and the free market would take it from there. Even if he does something crazy with it, we’ll only have to deal with him for a week or two and then the damage will be done and ReBirth will be public domain.
Lyle cleared his throat. “Will you do it? Will you help people with it?”
Kuvam nodded. “I accept this charge humbly, my friend.” He cocked his head, still staring at the bottle. “What do you call it?”
Lyle whispered, “ReBirth.”
Kuvam smiled. “Of course.”
PART TWO
MAKEOVER
17
NEWSCASTER: We take you live this morning to the Regional Cancer Center in Trenton, New Jersey, for continuing coverage of what doctors are calling a medical miracle. Donna Pickett has spent the last seven years in a vicious battle with breast cancer, becoming something of a celebrity last month when she publicly rejected modern medicine in favor of naturopathic treatment. Still unable to leave her bed in the cancer center, she brought in an alternative doctor named Guru Kuvam and began some kind of treatment with him. Last night the story took a surprising—indeed, a shocking—turn, when Donna awoke from her latest bout of cancer symptoms not only healed, but seemingly decades younger. In many ways, the sixty-year-old woman is the spitting image of her twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Melissa.
DOCTOR: I don’t know what to say. After seven years of cancer and chemotherapy Donna was a shell—she was bald, she was frail, her skin was damaged. She looked like she’d been living on the streets, or in a desert. Now … well, I don’t know what to tell you. If she hadn’t been in our hospital, connected to our machines, I wouldn’t believe this is even her. I still don’t know if I do believe it, because it’s not just the cancer: I performed her mastectomy myself, four years ago, and yet … well, look at her. They grew back. It’s like Donna disappeared and Melissa’s long-lost twin showed up, except Melissa doesn’t have a twin. That’s really Donna. I … I don’t know what to say.
MELISSA: I’m just so happy to have my mother back—just so, so, happy. It’s like she’s been given a new life, a new start. I can’t thank the Yemaya Foundation enough for giving us this incredible chance.
NEWSCASTER: The Yemaya Foundation itself, and its mysterious Guru Kuvam, may be the most interesting facet of this bizarre story. Originally a medical charity based in a crumbling Manhattan neighborhood, the Yemaya Foundation has recently turned into something of a New Age religion.
KUVAM: What you see in Donna Pickett is not merely new health but new life—literally a new body to replace her old one. Through the love of her daughter, and through her own efforts at self-healing and mind-body communion, Donna has been born again, and through her example we, too, can achieve our highest standards of human perfection. [Kuvam holds up a small plastic bottle.] This is the secret—a special lotion that is nothing less than a secular reincarnation. Through this, we have the power to shed our forms and gain new strength—new life—in each step of our immortal cycle. We must take this as a sign, a message not from gods but from our own selves, our collective consciousness, that the next step is not just for Donna but for the entire human race. Set aside the things of the past, and set your eyes not on our limits but on our potential. Today is the first day of the new human race.
18
Monday, June 11
8:51 A.M.
NewYew headquarters, Manhattan
186 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
“Bastard,” said Cynthia, staring at the TV. “Pig-brained, half-witted, self-righteous little bastard.”
“He can’t be the one who stole it,” said Jeffrey. He looked around at the other executives. “Can he?”
“We need to kill him,” said Cynthia. “We need to rip his lying lips right off his tree-hugging face and shove them down his throat.”
“We’re not sunk yet,” said Kerry, absently stroking his biceps. He’d searched for weeks for a new body—something to replace Lyle’s unwanted DNA—and finally settled on an Italian underwear model. “I know it looks bad, but everything has a good marketing angle. We just have to find it.” Kerry’s new body was nearly seven feet tall, with a naturally fast metabolism and a genetic predisposition for lean, well-defined muscle. His wife had become a half-black, half-Korean bodybuilder with full lips and rich brown skin. Lyle still had no idea what they’d paid for the DNA, or how they’d convinced the models to sell in the first place. He had visions of them locked up in the company’s new headquarters on São Tomé, imprisoned with the rest of the security leaks.
That’s where I’ll go if I’m not careful, he thought. Or maybe Cynthia will gut me first and hang me from her office window.
“A good angle?” asked Cynthia. “We just lost the race to the market—we can’t get a patent, we can’t get exclusivity, we can’t get anything. Find a good angle in that.”
“We can still turn this our way,” Kerry insisted. “Even if this guy popularizes the lotion, we’re still in the best position to supply the lotion. He’s practically doing us a favor.”
He moves differently, thought Lyle, watching Kerry closely. It’s the same Kerry, thinking the same old thoughts in the same old way, but he moves like a completely different person—different muscles moving different bones, rotating against each other with a completely different set of joints. He’s … smoother than Kerry used to be. More flowing. Changing his body has changed the way he interfaces with the world.
How will that change his brain?
“We need to find him,” said Cynthia, “and figure out how he got our product, and then we need to make him regret it with every breath he takes.”
“We don’t even know it’s our product,” said Jeffrey. “It’s probably just a passing thing with this lady—the cancer went into remission or whatever, so she cleaned herself up and they call it a miracle.”
“Mastectomies don’t go into remission,” said Sunny. “This is definitely our product.”
“You need to stop moping about what went wrong and start looking for what went right,” said Kerry, flexing slightly. “We have our own hospital girl, for one thing: why can’t we just use that?”
“Because it’s come and gone,” said Sunny. “We cured her, sure, but nobody knows it was us because we were trying to be so careful. And now she’s been released from the hospital and it’s old news. Besides, all we did was heal a sick girl, and people do that all the time. This guy brought a cancer patient back from the brink of death, with a twenty-year-old body to boot.”
“We gave Susan a twenty-year-old body,” said Kerry.
“N
ineteen,” said Lyle. “Those epithelials were older than we thought.”
“You’re looking at this wrong,” said Carl, his giant face filling the screen on the wall. He was in São Tomé, overseeing the establishment of the new headquarters, and was attending the meeting through a webcam. “This guru isn’t competition, he’s free advertising. Thanks to him every cancer patient in the world wants our product.”
“I told you to focus on health,” said Lyle.
“Lyle has a point,” said Kerry. “All of our applications are cosmetic, and this guy’s saving lives—we look kind of shallow in comparison.”
“I think you missed the point of my point,” said Lyle.
“It’s all in the presentation,” said Carl, “and we have a month to make them work. I want every presentation at the launch event to focus on the ‘whole body health’ aspects of the product, and I want all the press releases rewritten to reflect the same kind of touchy-feely crap.”
“It’s too late to change the products and the packaging,” said Cynthia.
“We don’t want to change those,” said Carl. “Those are going to the clinics, and those are just stores, and in stores people make decisions based on good old-fashioned self-interest—we tell them a product will make them beautiful and they buy it. All we’re changing are the press releases, to make sure we look just as altruistic as this hippie Kuvam.”
“We have to start running the commercials now,” said Kerry. “We made them vague for legal reasons, and now that might work in our favor—people might see them and think the cancer cure was connected to us, which we will never confirm, of course, but if they think it that’s a point in our favor.”
“That’s only jumping the gun by two weeks,” said Sunny. “I say we do it.”