Gary Braver - Elixir

"Also, geneticists, pharmacists, physical chemists with pharmacology backgrounds. I can give you names. And test animals, especially rhesus monkeys-very old ones and virus-free."

When he finished, Quentin looked at the list he had taken down. "You're talking major capital investment."

"And it may not be successful," Chris added.

"But I think you're on to something extraordinary," Ross said. "So we'll do whatever it takes. I want you to put together the best team and lab that money can buy."

Chris nodded, amused how in less than two hours he had passed from company crook to messiah. "I'll do my best."

"And the sooner the better," Darby said. "I'm just a couple years this side of my own warranty. You get it to work on old monkeys, and I'm next in line."

"If this works," Quentin said, "you'll be more famous than God and twice as rich."

Chris smiled. Fame and personal wealth were the least of his interests. He was by nature a private person and making enough of a salary to afford his and Wendy's needs. Yes, it would be nice to have a few extra thousand, what with a child on the way and Wendy's decision to take an extended maternity leave from teaching. But sudden wealth would only add an unnecessary edge of anxiety, like what put those Rocky Raccoon rings around Quentin's eyes. Maybe it was no longer fashionable, but he was a scientist motivated solely by intellectual challenges, not financial ones. Even if he could afford otherwise, he preferred L. L. Bean to Armani, a Jeep to a Mercedes, and vacations at Wendy's family lodge in the Adirondacks to chateaux on the Riviera.

Ross had one more question before they left. "Does anybody else know about this? Colleagues or friends?"

"Just my wife."

"Good," Darby said, "and let's keep it that way because if word leaks that we're putting our resources into an anti-aging drug, the media will be on us like vultures and competitors will be scrambling to learn what we've got. Think of this as our own Manhattan Project."

Later, while driving home, Darby's words buzzed in Chris's head. It wasn't the demand for secrecy that bothered him-he was used to that. It was recollection of the first words of Robert Oppenheimer moments after the original Manhattan Project made a ten-mile-high column of radioactive smoke over Almagordo: "I have become Death."

Chris didn't sleep much for the excitement. In a few months Wendy would give birth to their son or daughter. Meanwhile, Darby Pharms was going all out on tabulone. At times he could not distinguish which buoyed his spirits more.

Wendy's former apprehension about another baby had vanished like a low-grade fever. On the contrary, she happily anticipated the November birth and a year's leave of absence. To add to her delight, she had finished If I Should Die, and a literary agent had sold the manuscript on the second submission. It had garnered a modest advance, but her publisher loved the book and the series proposal. The publication date was February of next year. Wendy was ecstatic-a baby and a book, just months apart. It couldn't get much better than that.

Last week Jenny had flown down for another visit. The good news on that front was that her daughter Kelly was out of the hospital and planning to return to school in the fall. And Abigail was growing into a happy and healthy toddler.

Meanwhile, a SWAT team of workmen had over the months converted Chris's old lab into a state-of-the-art research site. Walls had been pushed out, and the floor space had doubled. Fancy equipment had arrived almost daily from all over the country. Also test animals. Mice they still procured from Jackson Labs. But finding the right monkeys presented problems. There were vendors all over the country, but only one had virus-free "retired breeders"-an isolated colony in the Florida Keys. Chris ordered two dozen ranging in age from twenty-one to twenty-nine-the oldest, named Jimbo, who was equivalent to a 105-year-old man. The younger animals cost four to six thousand dollars each. Because he might have been the oldest virus-free rhesus macaque in the world, Jimbo went for a cool ten thousand.

As director, Chris had also sought out the best talent he could find. But wooing them required special artfulness since he had to make the project alluring without revealing the objective. He explained that Darby had launched a project never before attempted in the pharmaceutical industry. As expected, his recruits were intrigued that a reputable company was investing millions of dollars in a steroid. Unique as its crystalline structure was, steroids was an area very few bothered with today. Intriguing also were the starting salaries-twice what they were earning. By the time Chris was through, he had hired six fulltime class-A researchers-two pharmacologists plus a medicinal chemist, a microbiologist, a protein chemist, and a geneticist. It was a pharmaceutical dream team.

The other good news was that Darby had received a patent on tabulone, which meant that no other institution could research the molecule for seventeen years.

By midwinter, the cancer toxogen had mysteriously dropped off the boards in spite of the initial media blitz. The official explanation was that a blight had killed off the apricot crops. The loss had cost the company dearly, and Chris guessed Quentin took some flak. Whatever the real story, Ross had managed to raise millions for the new lab from select venture capitalists. And he had done so with fantasies of developing a fountain-of-youth drug and turning investors into billionaires.

Toward that end, a special meeting was held in June with Chris, Quentin, Ross Darby, and a couple others to come up with a trade name for investors, research documents, and the FDA application. They met in the conference room where Chris wrote the suggestions on the blackboard. "Tabulone" did not impress anyone, given the product's momentous promise. Quentin said it sounded like an Italian dessert.

"What we need is something striking," Ross said. "Something that suggests what it's for- longevity, but not so literal. You know, something exotic and catchy."

So for nearly two hours they kicked around names until the blackboard was full and Chris was covered with chalk.

Eternity

Vitalong

VitaYou

VitaLife

AgeNot

For awhile they got stuck on puns, odd spellings, until the suggestions turned silly. They then moved on to various associations with time, clocks, life, then Latin and Greek roots, mythological and biblical names. And because the compound was a steroid not too unlike testosterone, they bandied around the -one suffix which produced some goofy tongue-twisters like Immorticone and Methuselone.

Next they played with prefixes like ever- and eva-, which yielded Evagreen, EvaYoung, EvaYou, and so on. That gave way to combos with vita-mega-, and omni-. Breaking the frustration somebody suggested Fuk4Eva and they all cheered.

Finally, into their second hour, Chris moved to the blackboard and in large block letters he wrote:

ELIXIR

For a moment everybody fell silent as they let the word sink in. Then heads began to nod. Ross straightened up in his chair, his eyes wide as he tested the suggestion. "Yes, I like it. Exotic, but not arcane. Overtones of alchemy yet with a sexy scientific X dead center." He slapped the table and rose. "That's it. Elixir," he said as if mouthing a spell. "Elixir. It's perfect, and can't you just imagine the great TV ads and promotional material? Yes! That's what we'll call it. Elixir!"