Greg Bear: Vitals

‘Don’t try to take this tour on your own, Dr Cousins,’ Shun warned me on the clay floor of an indoor tennis court. ‘Without a permission wand, you’ll be locked in the first room you enter.’ She held up a tiny plastic bar. ‘Security will have to come and save you.’ She looked at her wristwatch. ‘Owen doesn’t need a wand. The house recognizes him on sight. His steps, his voice –’

‘His DNA?’

She smiled and tapped her watch. ‘Owen should be ready now. We are exactly a hundred and fifteen feet from him, as the laser flies.’ She gave me a look that might have spoken volumes, but I was unable to open, much less read, any of them. ‘Why were you let go from your last research job?’

‘At Stanford?’

She nodded.

‘Money ran out in my department. I was junior.’

‘Wasn’t there some dispute?’

‘A few of the faculty disagreed with my work. But my papers still get published, Ms Shun. I am still a reputable scientist.’

‘Owen is fond of oddball thinking, and even fonder of tweaking academic whiskers. But I hate to see him disappointed, Dr Cousins.’

‘Hal.’

She shook her head politely; keep it business. ‘Owen needs something to commit to. Something solid.’

Betty Shun left me with Montoya on the west wing’s biggest porch, overlooking the boat cove. It was eleven-thirty. We talked pleasantries for a while and listened to the splash of the waves, blankets over our legs, sipping from chilled glasses of draft beer, our heads warmed by radiant heaters. Did I like baseball? Montoya owned a baseball team in Minneapolis. I conversed as much about baseball as I could, having read USA Today in the Hotel W that afternoon.

Then Montoya drew back to our main topic.

‘You don’t say much about reduced caloric intake,’ he said. ‘According to most experts, that’s the only antiaging technique proven to work.’

‘It’s just the tip of the iceberg,’ I said.

‘You haven’t sunk your harpoon yet, Hal. I need to know more – much more.’ He smiled wearily. Make or break.

I put my glass on the center table and leaned forward. ‘The real problem is that we breathe. We respire. We accumulate poisons over time because of the way we burn fuel. We’re part of a vast biological conspiracy, billions of years old, and we have to shake ourselves loose and grab the reins.’

‘You’ve experimented on yourself, haven’t you?’ Montoya asked.

‘I’d rather keep some things confidential until we firm up a relationship.’

‘You have experimented,’ he said, brooking no dissent. ‘You’ve injected yourself with virus shells delivering modified genes, but nobody knows which genes, nobody on my payroll, anyway.’

‘I’ve taken one or two things beyond the theoretical stage,’ I admitted.

Montoya lifted his eyes to meet mine. ‘And?’

‘Obviously, I didn’t screw it up too badly. I’m still here. But it’s just the beginning,’ I said. ‘Until I know why individual obsolescence took hold a few billion years ago, I’m still going to grow old and die. And so will you.’

I was still being vague, and I knew it. The sweat under my armpits chafed.

‘So far we’ve been dancing around the center. It’s been a great dance, but I need something more. I’ve signed your NDA, Hal.’ Montoya smiled, putting on the patented charm that had brought him so far in the business world. ‘Give me a hint what’s behind door number one. It’ll be worth a few days on my ship, gratis. I’ll put that in writing, too, if you want.’

‘No need,’ I said, swallowing.

‘I’m all ears. I have all night.’

‘It won’t take that long,’ I said, mentally arranging my cue cards. This was probably going to be the most important speech of my life. ‘I start by altering a few genes in E. coli, common gut bacteria.’ I tapped my abdomen. ‘Then I modify a few of my own genes…‘

‘Radical gene therapy,’ Montoya mused.

‘Some call it that,’ I said. ‘But it’s just baby steps to solving an ancient murder mystery. Who designed us to die, and why? It turns out we’re being betrayed by cellular organelles, little organs, called mitochondria. Mitochondria make ATP. ATP is the molecule our cells use to store and release energy. Once upon a time, mitochondria were bacteria. We know that because they have their own little loops of DNA, like bacterial chromosomes.’

He watched me intently. ‘Respiration…seems pretty important. Breathing, using oxygen, right?’

I nodded.

‘So why do we let old bacteria do that for us?’

‘Mitochondria used to live free, a few billion years ago. Then they invaded primitive host cells, became parasites. Eventually, the hosts – our one-celled ancestors – found that the invaders had a talent. They were eight times better at converting sugar molecules into ATP. We formed a symbiotic partnership. The mitochondria became essential. Now, we can’t live without them.’

‘And mitochondria tell us when to grow old and die?’

‘They have a big say.’

He pinched and tugged his earlobe. ‘Explain.’

‘The mitochondria turn state’s evidence. Kind of a fifth column. They monitor our stress levels, track our physical and mental health, and pass that information on to tiny bacteria hiding in our tissues.’

‘We have germs in our tissues?’ Montoya asked, frowning. ‘Doesn’t the immune system clean them out?’

‘Some bacteria burrow deep and hide out for years. They trigger diseases like atherosclerosis – clogging the arteries.’

‘So what if I just spend my life relaxing? No stress.’

‘Everything we do causes different kinds of stress,’ I said. ‘You can’t stay healthy without some stress. But if we fail at our job, if we’re unlucky in love, if we get sick, if we’re feeling angry or frustrated or sad, our bodies fill with stress hormones. Bacteria and viruses mount challenges to our immune system, and the immune system is more likely to fail. But even if the immune system doesn’t fail, over time, for some reason, we don’t recover as quickly. We accumulate genetic errors in our cells. We deteriorate. We get weaker. The mitochondrial network reads these signs and reports to the deep-tissue bacteria, and the whole conspiracy tattles to the bugs in our gut. The bugs, in turn, tell the mitochondria to work less efficiently. That’s the ultimate cause of aging. Together, they act as judge, jury, and ultimately, executioner.’

‘That’s a lot to swallow all at once,’ Montoya said. ‘I’m skeptical about bacteria communicating and cooperating. Don’t they just grow and eat randomly?’

‘What kind of toothbrush do you use?’ I asked.

Montoya shook his head, puzzled. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Just tell me.’

‘A Sonodyne. I’ve got a big investment in the company.’

‘It uses high-frequency vibrating bristles, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘There are over five hundred different kinds of bacteria in our mouths,’ I said. ‘Not all of them cause cavities. Some repel or destroy their disease-causing cousins. A healthy mouth is more like the Amazon jungle than a Listerine commercial.’

Montoya puffed into his palm and sniffed the result. ‘Do I offend?’ he asked, smiling.

I smiled back. ‘Not at all. But some of them stick to each other and cement themselves to your teeth. After a while, they build up layers of bacterial architecture on your enamel. Dentists call it plaque. It’s a community of cooperating bacteria of many different kinds – a biofilm. The Sonodyne vibrates the biofilm until it falls apart – breaks the cement the bacteria use to fasten to the teeth. In essence, you’re demolishing their houses and shaking them up so bad they can’t even talk.’