Eve & Adam

I peek around the corner into your room. You’re almost back. You’ll wake up soon.

How many times is this? I lost track long ago.

Time. What does it even mean now? What has it been? Weeks? Years? Decades? Millenia? I no longer have any sense of when this all began.

Beginnings. Still sharp, clear within my accursed nevermore-failing memory. Platelet Factor 4 (PF4) research. So promising, the implications for cognitive repair & restoration of health. Better living, longer living, with sound bodies & minds both enduring.

We were so eager, so naïve. With news of our work spreading, money flowed in from all across the Russ-Americ axis & beyond. With that funding our studies expanded, combining with telomeres, DNA sequencing & nanobot technology, morphing into more than we had ever imagined.

What have we done to you, Adam? To us?

I check the settings for the hydroponics & life support systems (the same as NASA uses, assuming they still do). All systems go, holding steady, same as yesterday, & the day before, & the day before that. Whoever built these things knew what they were doing—or got extremely lucky. No challenges with O-rings to whatever date this is.

I head to the kitchen. You’ll be hungry when you wake up. I wonder if you will still be partial to tofu in this incarnation.

I gather the vegetables & pick up the knife to prepare the stir fry you have favored at least ninety percent of the time. More likely to hit the spot than anything else I’ve tried, though you do seem to appreciate variety. I pause, staring at my hand & arm. They feel even more foreign to me than just this morning, as though they are more a part of the knife than of me. I set about to chopping—smooth, fast & easy. I’m getting better at this. Almost automatic.

With everything ready, I return to your room. I sit in the chair next to you & take your hand in mine. It’s still slightly clammy & gelatinous, but warming to the touch. I haven’t bothered with the gown, mask & gloves for a long time. Not like it matters anymore.

It shouldn’t be long.

I’m so sorry, my love.

My love. How strange to think how we’ve progressed. Time will do that to people left alone together. You were destitute when we found you, living on the streets, strung out on whatever you could find, dying of more things than we could identify. You were the perfect candidate. Offered a warm bed & hot meal, you quickly volunteered for anything we wanted to do with you.

If only you had known. If we had known. If I had…, I never would have allowed it.

Nanobots, smaller & more discreet than ever before known, keyed to the human genome with a single biologic imperative: learn how to survive within this specific genome & do it.

From a small sample introduced into your bloodstream they replicated, creating a neural network throughout your body. They studied your stem cell DNA, how it produced both tissue & organs, what made for healthy & what made for not, & they applied it. Gathering raw materials from anything you ingested, respirated or simply came in contact with, they repaired any damaged DNA, shortening telomeres, tissue, organs & beyond.

We estimated your age at 67 when we brought you in. Shortly after your first & only treatment, we estimated 23. We had youth-anized you when euthanizing is what we should have done.

And man, oh man were we excited!

So were our investors. The cash infusion for our work kept increasing. They wanted fast-tracking for what they hoped would become a universal vaccine against disease, injury, aging, & perhaps even death itself.

We needed to do testing on you, to study, experiment, introduce pathogens & injuries, discover from what you might recover, constantly pushing the boundaries of your endurance.

I’m so sorry. It was an accident. But had it not happened, we might never have discovered what we had done before it was too late.

And you & I might never have been placed in quarantine, here in this underground biosphere, alone together forever if I cannot find a way to deliver us from this purgatory of Eden.

We don’t have much time.

You squeeze my hand lightly. Sensory stimulus & motor function are coming back. Next will be awareness, memory, recognition, speech…, then time to eat & try again. I have the next proto-vaccine ready to go in what…, twenty minutes? An hour? Maybe two?

A part of me feels rested. Yet I am so tired.

I can see that you’ve entered REM. Sweet dreams, my love.

Sweet dreams. Someone had been nodding off. They missed something. There was an explosion. You died.

And then you didn’t.

Whatever remained attached to your brainstem continued to live, to regenerate & heal.

The portions of you which had become splattered all over this room became something else.

The nanos had learned how to survive in each particular organism, to adapt & mutate & become. What they became I can’t even begin to describe. And the only way we knew to destroy them was to burn them in a fire so intense not even the nanos could survive. 3500˚ Celsius. 6330˚ Fahrenheit. Getting them to the solar furnace in Odeillo, France was quite the ordeal. We prayed that none of them escaped, learning to adapt to the heat.

They left me here with you. I was the one who nodded off, who missed something.

I was behind a wall in the bathroom, splashing water on my face to stay awake, noticing slight changes in my appearance, a little younger, fewer wrinkles. My injuries were not nearly so severe as yours.

But they healed just as quickly as yours ever had.

We hadn’t known that I should not have been holding your hand. Everyone else took precautions, wore the gowns, masks & gloves at the very least. Most used the medical isolation suits.

I couldn’t bear what we were doing to you. We had inflicted every pathogen & injury we could upon you. You had already died clinically several times for us. But to me you were no lab rat. I had to hold your hand, to provide what little comfort I could.

And then we knew the nanos could be communicated by touch.

Still, we did not understand the worst of it.

I watch your eyes flutter open, ever the steel grey they were on that day after the accident. I can see you in them somewhere, but not really. Something has changed, probably had been changing in you for a long time, we just hadn’t noticed it before.

Dr. Asha had some thoughts. She began investigating, narrowing her suspicions until one was confirmed. Whatever the nanos repaired was not organic, it was manufactured from raw materials. Everything looked & tested the same, but it was not. Your body was becoming a machine.

And you were infectious.

Where does the soul go when the body it inhabits is no longer there? Are you still here with me? Am I? How much remains? I search your eyes & features for some kind of answer but find none. Your expressions remain the same, your memory as good as ever. Ninety percent of the time you still want stir fry. What happens when that becomes only the ten?

I have fallen in love with you. You tell me that you have, too. Do I believe you?

The only way to prevent this infection from spreading throughout the population is either for me to find a vaccine to remove the nanos entirely from our systems or to head in isolation suits to Odeillo.

Is that even a possibility anymore? It’s been so long since we’ve heard anything from the outside. Have they decided to hide the mistakes we made from public view, deny that the two of us even exist? Are we to remain as ticking time bombs in a Pandora’s Box never meant to be opened & where hope has long ago evanesced? Or have the nanos gotten out & spread among the masses? What is out there right now?

And France means I’ve lost you forever. I cannot let that happen. I have to find an answer.

As of now my limbs seem to have developed minds of their own. I’m no longer sure whether I am telling them what to do or they are telling me. Staring at our two hands, my eyes go out of focus. Numbly, I watch as our hands appear to fade & meld into one another.

I glance at the camera above your bed. Are they still observing us? We used to communicate over closed network, sharing thoughts & ideas, studies & research. Not anymore. Not for what seems like forever. Are they still there? Is anyone? What is going on?

Your eyes turn to me. I see you smile. Is it memory, a recognition of your companion through this nightmare, your friend, comforter, confidante, your lover & beloved? Or do you see in me something now I have yet to recognize? A battle I’m about to lose?

“Eve?”

It’s our little joke. Adam & Eve, alone in our own little “paradise”. I can’t remember what name you had when we first found you. I barely remember my own. Una, I think. I’m pretty sure anyway.

“Do we have any fry? I’m famished!” At least that much of you is still here. Or at least it’s under warranty.

I wrap my arms around you, kissing you tenderly on the forehead. Where our skin touches, I feel an electric tingle, a sort of vibration as though blurring the boundaries of where I end & you begin. With every fiber of my being, I want simply to melt into you. I think you feel the same.

“Of course, my love. I have it all ready to go, I just need to turn on the stove.” I sit up & begin to stand, ever so reluctant to release my fingertips from yours.

As I turn to the door, I hear you say still half-asleep, “That’ll be good. I think we can both stand a little heat.”

*****

I am deeply indebted to J. R. Lowe & his article “Vampires & Neuroscience” https://todaysurvey.life/longevity/vampires-and-neuroscience published here on Vocal. I was already thinking about the role of telomeres in the aging process & how nanobots might be used to affect it, but this provided so much more.