David Silva - The Disappeared

Before virtual reality had been an option, the use of drugs and hypnosis in combination had served in a similar role. While the doctor had not been able to substitute a false memory, he had been able to erase any memories the subjects might have had of being at the lab. It was a process that left them not quite knowing what had happened. They simply closed their eyes at the park and when they opened them again, two hours had passed. In the place of those two hours sat a blank spot. No explanation.

The elevator arrived at the basement. The counterweight set, the car settled onto the buffer, and the doors opened. Childs escorted the three teenagers into the car. They were the walking dead, fixed gazes, expressionless, going through all the motions and only distantly aware of their surroundings. He pressed the button for the first floor. The elevator doors closed.

Pam was waiting in the lobby for them. She checked her watch as the doors opened and the four passengers stepped out. “Right on schedule.”

“Couldn’t have gone any smoother,” Childs said.

“The lab’s got everything?”

“They’re already doing the work up.”

They went out through the back entrance, where the Buick was waiting. The kids climbed into the back seat. They would be back at the park, innocent and safe for another three months, in less than the usual two hours. Childs closed the door behind the girl.

“I think I’ll go straight from the park to the airport,” he said. “No sense in hanging around here twiddling my thumbs for the next three hours. Maybe they’ll be able to get me on an earlier flight out.”

“I’ll fax you the prelims tomorrow.”

He paused a moment, the driver’s side door open. He looked across the top of the car, a wistful longing in his eyes. “You know, we’ve been doing this for I don’t know how many years now. I sure as hell wish we could get over that last little hurdle.”

“We’re getting closer.”

“For many years we believed that aging was a process beyond our control. There was only so much punishment the body could take, we believed, before it lost its ability to renew itself. Death, we believed, was inevitable.

“I’m here to tell you tonight that we may very well have been wrong.

“Please, let me explain.

“The most interesting development to come along in recent years has been our increased understanding of the nature of a genetic disease called progeria. More specifically Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome. This is a degenerative disease which afflicts children. By the age of ten or twelve they begin to demonstrate many of the signs of old age. These signs may include gray hair, baldness, loss of body fat, and atherosclerosis, which refers to the fatty deposits lining the arterial walls. While the cause of progeria is still unknown we have discovered that its victims demonstrate a dramatic reduction in the number of times their cells are able to regenerate themselves.

“We know that progeria is a genetic disease and therefore we can now conclude that the aging process is a genetically-controlled process. If we’re able to learn to identify and manipulate the gene or genes that trigger this process, then there’s no reason to believe we won’t be able to delay and perhaps even permanently suspend the aging process.

“This is not idle speculation, ladies and gentlemen.

“This is, in fact, quite achievable. Perhaps even as early as the end of this century.”

Beep… beep… beep… beep…

Cody Breswick heard the beat of his heart on the ECG machine before he heard anything else. It made a sound like the old Pong video game his father had shown him at the San Francisco Exploratorium the last time they were there. Beep. Beep. Beep. A steady, almost monotonous sound that called him up from the black, murky waters where he had been floating aimlessly for longer than he could imagine.

The ring finger of his left hand twitched, then fell motionless again.

Air escaped from his lungs in a short, sharp burst.

He tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry and what little saliva he could gather together wasn’t enough to coat the inside of his mouth much less the inside of his throat. It felt raw and burning when he tried to swallow.

He moaned.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

At the edge of the darkness, he could see the first bluish-purple glow of a sunrise. There was light out there somewhere beyond the darkness, beyond the black, formless landscape. He sensed it more than saw it, but it was there all right, gradually drawing in the surrounding darkness the way a Black Hole draws in the light. The black sky turned dark blue… turned light blue… turned white-orange… turned

…turned bright and illuminating, a burning, sparkling sun.

His eyelids fluttered open against the light, and he was startled by the intensity. He blinked back the glare several times, felt his eyes water, and raised his hand to shade his eyes against the brightness. Overhead, a small fluorescent lamp cast its gaze over his pillow and halfway down the bed.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The machine making that rhythmic sound stood against the wall, next to the bed. Across a screen near the top, a graph line moved from left to right, spiking synchronically to each new beep. Cody didn’t know exactly what it did or how it did it, but he thought the beeping had something to do with his heart. Small round bandages on his chest and wrists and ankles were connected to long wire leads that seemed somehow to join him to the machine.

He tried to move his legs. They felt as if they were cased in concrete. A dull throbbing pain went spiraling up his calves and through his thighs. His right arm, which lay in some sort of contoured half-cast, strapped across the biceps and forearm, spasmed then fell still again. There was a needle protruding from beneath several layers of medical tape across the inside of his elbow joint. The needle ran into a tube, the tube ran into a machine that sounded as if it were gnawing on something, and above the machine someone had hung two bags of clear liquid from a metal stand.

“Mom…”

He glanced to his right, beyond the machinery, and realized he was not alone in this room. There was a girl in the bed to his right. She looked as if she might be a year or two older than him, her hair blond-brown, her fingernails unpolished and long. She took in a shallow breath and her chest expanded briefly then fell back again. Cody wondered distantly if she were dying.

“Mom…”

It was scary here. Beyond the girl, there was another bed, another girl. And beyond her, another bed still. Each of the beds had its own overhead light, its own staff of machines. It brought to mind images of a hospital, though this seemed as if it were one step beyond the hope of a hospital, a place where they brought the hopeless to die.

“Mom…”

He called out another half-a-dozen times before the door finally opened and a woman he didn’t know walked through. She seemed as surprised to see him as he was to see her. And though later he would wonder about his mother and why she wasn’t there, initially he didn’t care that the woman wasn’t his mother. Initially, all that mattered was that someone had finally arrived.

Someone who wasn’t hooked up to a machine.

There had been no early flights out of O’Hare and Childs had ended up hanging out at the airport for nearly three hours before his eight o’clock flight was ready to board. The plane landed a little after ten, Pacific Daylight Time. It took him another thirty minutes to retrieve his luggage and make it to his car, which was parked in the overnight lot half-a-mile from the terminal.