The Man Who Lived

I

“I’m gonna live forever, Jess,” he told me one day. This moment has seared itself into my memory. He was in his office, standing at the large open window, looking out at the sun setting over Palo Alto. I just put a tea tray down on his standing desk. He said this to me without even turning around.

Since then, I’ve often thought about it; how he probably worked on this sentence for far too long to make it sound cool; how it showed his growing sense of self-importance; how this was really the beginning of the end. But for a long time, I’ve only thought about one fact: how easy it would have been to just shove him out the window.

II

Really, John’s obsession with life and death began much earlier, from what I can gather; before I became his secretary and even before he made his first million. In his autobiography he talks about how the death of his family dog impacted him. The way the ghost writer handled John’s messy notes, you could really feel that this was the only real companion he had growing up. His parents didn’t seem to care about him all that much. About his grades, yes, but not the person achieving them. Thus, their ugly little terrier was the only one that cared about and spent time with him. And then, when John was thirteen, old Hunter fetched his last tennis ball and left John alone with his parents, house maid, private tutor, two gardeners and cleaning aid. If he were a comic book super villain – and the comic book part is the limiting factor here – this would be the origin of his villainy.

He frequently talked about bringing his dog back via technology, back when he was starting to venture into AI. He wanted to feed all the childhood memories he had of Hunter into an AI and transfer it into one of those robot dogs they make for the police. In reality, the dog itself probably didn’t mean that much to him – realistically he could buy a few hundred thousand of them and they would have, essentially, the same personality as his old pooch. Personally, I think he just misses having someone who unconditionally loves him and who he doesn’t have to spend large amounts of money on to convince them to spend time with him. But that’s just speculation.

John Brian’s rise to fame is pretty well known by this point, at least the canonical version. The version that has been so mythologized that its taught to students in business and technology classes all over the country, to the detriment of said students. He studied computer science at Princeton, dropped out during his master’s program and founded a start-up in Silicon Valley with his father’s money, like thousands of other Gen-X’ers. And like dozens of others, he made it. His first company Save Up, a finance management service, was bought out for two-hundred million dollars which allowed him to invest in all kinds of other ventures. Food delivery, stock trading, smart home technology, non-food delivery, medical technology etc. It’s the last one, which will become important.

Anyway, he made a lot of money, even if he never became famous because of it, like some billionaires. He is a perpetually awkward guy, which means he can’t market himself on his personality. Where other crazy rich weirdos would just seem eccentric or like such powerful geniuses that us mortals could not wish to understand their reasoning, he exposed them for what they really were: detached from reality and with no one to tell them that their ideas are insane. The kind of guy who likes Jurassic Park but somehow thinks that the whole ‘they didn’t stop to think if they should’-thing doesn’t apply to them. No, his ideas were great, he just needed people to sort the good ideas from the even better ones.

That’s why he hired me. Mostly because I do his personal assistant work which means directing all his tasks and responsibilities to other people who basically run his life for him. But also to discuss ideas with me. However, he doesn’t really discuss as much as he seeks approval. That’s why he hires women to talk about his plans with; if he were talking to a man, he might need to take their criticism seriously.

His ideas were mostly unrealistic or impractical with no readily apparent use outside of fulfilling his childish scifi fantasies. Atmospheric mirrors to direct sunlight to solar power plants? Why not. Pneumatic high-speed transport pods? Yeah, that’s never been done before. AI-powered crime detection system. Sure, can’t see how that might go wrong.

Most of them never took off. They died somewhere in the planning stage, dropped like unloved toys. The ones that did work made him a lot of money but they were too boring for his taste. His just sold his latest venture, a rollerblade rental service plus app, for a low ten-digit sum, which made him depressed. He was slouched in his gray office chair, immersed in his gloomy mood. “I feel like Alexander, Jess,” he said. He was listening to military history podcasts during his morning workout at the time. “I have no more worlds to conquer. At least, none that interest me.”

“How about a new world, then?” I said. “I’ve sent you a couple of articles on the metaverse two weeks ago.” You had to know how to handle people like him.

“No, I don’t like this crap. That social media freak’s got his finger prints all over that already. Maybe it’s not that I don’t know what to do, it’s just… there’s so many ideas in my head and I don’t know which one to work on first. It puts me in a bad mental state, you know? Can you look up what that’s called?”

I scrolled through Wikipedia for a minute. “Choice overload or choice paralysis,” I told him.

“That’s it. I’m paralyzed. There’s just too much to do and too little time on this world to do it. I feel like a dog caught in the headlights.”

“You’ve got plenty of time. You’re still young, you work out a lot and eat healthy. Your last check-up showed that you’re in perfect health. You could maybe get a bit more sleep, but that’s it.”

“No, I can’t sleep even more. That’d just waste time.” He stared at the abstract art on his wall. The paint splotches looked vaguely phallic. “Actually, can you run the numbers, please? I need to know if getting more sleep would outweigh the benefits of losing that time in the long run. I need to know the optimal amount of sleep. Then look up optimal sleep times and postures. You should also look into a new mattress.”

“John. Do you really need to know this? You’re doing fine. I can reschedule your other appointments so you can take the rest of the day off and relax, if you need to take your mind off things.” Sometimes history happens around you and you are unable to stop it.

“I don’t need to take my mind off things. I think, the world needs my mind on things, now more than ever. How many of my unfinished ideas did you write down?”

I checked my notes folder. “One-hundred-and-nineteen in the last quarter.”

“See, I don’t have time to rest. I need to maximize my potential. If I just do a little off-the-cuff calculation: I’m currently forty-three. I have about one-hundred-and-nineteen ideas per quarter. I think we can round that down to one-hundred-and-fifteen, some are probably not that great. That makes over four hundred ideas per year. If I live to be the average age of an American man, how many ideas does that come to, Jess?”

“About fifteen-thousand-and-two-hundred ideas.”

“See. Some people only have one good idea their whole life. There’s this one guy, James Watt. He invented the steam engine. Imagine if he had also thought of the car or the computer. And then the self-driving car. We’d be living on Mars by now, Jess. But we don’t, because the steam engine was his only thing. And most people don’t even have one such great idea. No, Jess, the world needs me. They need my ideas and my drive, for as long as possible. I’m gonna work on myself and then I’ll make this world better. I’m gonna make it at least fifteen-thousand-two-hundred times better.”

I could feel a bout of hypomania coming on, so I preemptively rescheduled his next appointments. “Do you want me to get you your running outfit?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I need. You can really read my mind, can’t you? You’re exactly what a man like me needs.”

Some compliments really test your gag reflex.

III

The first sign of his descent into his health fixation were the supplements. He began supplementing every vitamin and mineral. This meant taking about a dozen pills each day and drinking about half a gallon of dissolved powder with lemon flavor.

“I looked it up in my free time, Jess,” he told me the day before he started. “I can take as much as I want of most vitamins without any side-effects. I only need to watch A, D, E and K. This will get my body functioning at one hundred percent in no time. Look at this: B12 is responsible for maintaining your nervous system and brain. Vitamin C will strengthen my immune system, so I don’t get sick as often. All of this will directly translate into a more efficient workflow.”

He had already bought all the supplements. Giant bottles with hundreds of pills each, ordered directly from an online retailer. He introduced the maid to his new diet plan as well and told her how to prepare the liquid supplements.

“I already feel so much better, Jess,” he told me on day three of his new regimen. “It feels like I am building an immunity shield around my body. I can feel my head clearing up.”

This went on for a few weeks. He started listening to health podcasts as well. Out went Alexander the Great, in came Alex the wellness coach. His ability to discriminate between good advice and a good sounding sales pitch was pretty much zero, however. By the end of the month, he had started ordering more supplements. The earlier ones came in standard off-brand packaging: white bottles with a vaguely Latin sounding name on it, maybe a few leaves or green swooshes to imply good health and natural ingredients. These ones were black, with lightning patterns on them and names like “Brain MaXX” or “Muscle Booster for Men”. About half of them were explicitly for men. I was glad to not be involved.

He started taking these in the recommended dosages as well. Recommended by their respective podcast host, that is; none of these would ever get approved by an official health agency, not even the corrupt ones.

A week later he was sick with diarrhea. Even the handful of online meetings he had left in his schedule had to be canceled. He chalked it up to growing pains. “My body has to adjust,” he said. “It’s like how scuba divers can’t return to the surface instantly, they need to do it slowly to acclimate to normal pressure. I’m gonna break the surface soon.” Usually, when a scuba diver returns to the surface and gets violently sick that’s called decompression sickness and it’s usually a bad thing which you should treat at a hospital, but he was scrambling back to the toilet before I could bother him with the details.

After two months I had to send him to the doctor. He had long recovered from the diarrhea, but his skin was turning suspiciously orange. His blood work showed that he had highly elevated beta-carotene levels; the doctor said it wasn’t harmful and so John stopped listening. I rummaged through his mountain of supplements after he took the rest of the day off. He was on his fourth or fifth bottle with some of the sketchier ones. After skimming over the labels for them, I found the culprit: three almost empty bottles of “Lobster Man Grip Strength Power-Up Gummies”. They had an anthropomorphized lobster with a giant claw on the front and inside were fiery red seafood-shaped gummy bears. And on the back, sure enough: “food coloring (carotene)”. Sixty gummies per bottle, take three per day. 20 mg beta-carotene each. I threw away the unopened bottles. John didn’t seem to notice and returned to his usual skin color within a few weeks.

This went on for a while. Had he stopped at sketchy crustacean sweets, I wouldn’t have minded. He went through phases like this. Before this it was military history. Before that it was space exploration. He had had about four different artificial intelligence phases, each accompanied with different ludicrous ideas and anxieties. I expected him to drop the pills by the end of the year and return to his usual type of relatively healthy lifestyle that only the Californian climate, a stress-free job and several billion dollars can afford.

He didn’t stop. The week before Christmas he handed me my holiday gift: a bottle of vitamins with a little pink bow taped to the front. He didn’t remove the price tag. “These will make your skin look better,” he said. I smiled. Showing teeth is considered a sign of aggression in dogs.

“I have plenty of plans for the new year, Jess,” he said. “I have done some research already, but my capacities are limited and your time is better spent on dealing with the business side of my day. I’ll be bringing someone new to the team to help me out with all of this health business. Can you pick him up from the airport for me? I only want the best welcome for our honored guest.”

“Sure. Who is it? What’s he called?” I asked.

“Doctor Ma. He’s a master of Chinese medicine. You’ll be picking him up the day after tomorrow at six PM.”

The day after tomorrow, in this case, was Christmas. I had already planned to spend the day with my boyfriend, eating take-out and catching up on some series, but what is a private life and a healthy relationship when you could work for a billionaire with a malfunctioning survival instinct instead.

So, I was spending Christmas at San Francisco International Airport instead of at home, holding a sign that read “Doctor Ma” instead of holding my boyfriend. I spent twelve dollars on a mediocre Italian sandwich which I was going to bill John as a business expense. Doctor Ma’s flight was delayed twice, so he only got out of the terminal at around midnight. I was looking for an elderly Chinese man who John had described as looking “very legit.”

At half past midnight, I spotted Doctor Ma. He stood at just under five feet and looked a bit like my boyfriend’s dad: a tiny Asian man with a receding hairline and dressed just a bit too formally for whatever the occasion was. I held up my sign and he soon spotted me and came walking over. He only had a handbag and a tiny rolling suitcase. “You must be Mr. Brian’s secretary. Nice to meet you. I am looking forward to working with you and Mr. Brian,” he said. Something in the back of my mind told me to be skeptical, but I just couldn’t bring myself to mistrust this tiny old man.

He insisted on carrying his own luggage, which we put into the trunk of the corporate SUV. He wanted to sit in the back, so I handed him the sandwich and water I bought for him at a kiosk, which he was incredibly thankful for. He started eating as we drove off to the house John rented for Doctor Ma.

He was quiet for the first part of the ride but didn’t seem particularly tired yet. He just looked out the window at the flashing cityscape. I didn’t want to bother him – he was a very considerate passenger so far – but I also felt an urge to scope him out, to find out what his deal was. “So, you’re a doctor of medicine, I take it?” I asked in a slightly too jovial tone.

“Yes, I am.,” he said. “Mr. Brian asked me to direct his health efforts. We already talked over the internet and he indicated that he liked my methods.”

“Oh, then it’s very nice of him to fly you out here and even pay for a house and everything.”

“Yes, he is very nice.”

Silence again.

“How is working as a doctor in China, then? Do you think it’s very different from the States?” I asked.

“Oh, I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I am from Chicago.”

IV

Doctor Ma was a doctor of medicine, but only if you counted chiropractic as medicine. He received his doctorate from the Midwest Institute of Chiropractors, which as far as I could find operated out of a single two-story building on the west side of Chicago. As far as his actual practice was concerned, however, Doctor Ma considered himself a sort of polymath. His website showed that he had attended workshops on Ayurvedic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy, Reiki, energy healing and he was planning to lecture at an upcoming online seminar on faith healing. He had an extensive collection of healing crystals – and in confidence he later told me he also possessed a select few specimens of what he claimed to be “harming crystals”.

He didn’t bring any of that, however. His plans with John weren’t focused on traditional medicine, but rather present practices. So present, in fact, that there existed little evidence for their effectiveness. “Doctor Ma will help me optimize my daily routine and bring my body’s performance up to one hundred percent,” John said to me on his first day back from his break. His schedule now included regular daily talks with the Doctor. He ordered me to assist Doctor Ma and help him set up everything he needed.

He brought an ECG machine, a spirometer, a mini centrifuge and a whole load of other medical equipment. I had to drive him around the city as he picked up all these devices. For a man who could generously be described as medicine-adjacent, he seemed to have a pretty easy time getting his hands on legitimate equipment. We set all of these up in a spare room at John’s home, which soon looked like the kind of intensive care unit you’d find in a shopping catalog.

They immediately put these machines to use. “Quantification is the first step to improving health," Doctor Ma said. He began taking measurements of John’s heart rate, blood oxygen levels, blood nutrient concentration and pretty much every metric you could measure outside of a hospital. “The goal will be to get all of your parameters within range of a twenty-year-old male. You are already doing a good job, but there are a few things we need to adjust,” he said. John was lying on the examination couch with electrodes attached all over his body. “Anything you say, doc.” He stared at the ceiling.

He started following the doctor’s orders. Eight hours of sleep, from ten to six; a strict vegetarian diet, with eating only allowed between eight AM and noon; ninety minutes of exercise per day; supplements of all relevant nutrients. No more lobster gummies, now came injections. He had his blood tested every week, then every four days, then down to every day. He started sleeping with electrodes on to monitor him during his sleep. Doctor Ma was still staying at a rented house, but John was thinking of moving him into a room at his own.

I have to admit, he looked fine during this time. To be fair, it was probably the lifestyle changes; exercise, diet and so on. I doubt the daily bloodletting helped much. But he was confident in his success. “I’m gonna live forever, Jess,” he told me confidently. He picked up a cup of tea. He was drinking about a gallon of liquid per day. “Doctor Ma told me that he had a colleague in Dallas who he was thinking of bringing in. He said the guy knows a lot more about rejuvenation and age-reversal. This could be the key, you know. Right now, I’m only trying to slow down my aging, but with his help, maybe I could even stop it. It’s worth a shot, don’t you think?” He looked at me expectantly.

“Sure.” I didn’t really know what to say in that moment. “Yeah, I mean you’re doing great, but you can always do better.”

“Exactly. Just think of how long I might live with this colleague’s help. Doctor Ma already told me I am going to make it to one-hundred-and-twenty just with his current routine.”

“That’s… a lot.”

“Yes. I’m going to get so much more done this way,” he finished his cup of tea. “Now excuse me, I still need to drink two more cups.”

V

Doctor Ma’s colleague arrived two weeks later. I was surprised, when he arrived at the lab, as John had taken to calling his room. I expected an older man, like Doctor Ma, but with a kind of Frankenstein-look, but this guy was young, maybe in his thirties and seemed pretty genial. He introduced himself as Michael Young and went right into talking with John and Doctor Ma, while I went off to manage John’s remaining responsibilities. They spent the rest of the day in the office talking and didn’t want to be disturbed.

While I was finishing work and was getting ready to close up – long after John had already gone home – I casually ran into Michael, who was stumbling around the hallways. “Can I help you with anything?” I asked. He seemed like was looking for something.

“Yes, I wanted to talk to you. The doctor and I were wondering if you could help us set up a second medical room here in the building. That would mean that John could do all of his tests and exercises here instead of having to drive home.” He smiled a bit too much.

“Sure, I’ll see what I can do.” I really didn’t need more things to do, when I should have been home two hours ago.

“Thanks. I’ll be looking forward to working with you.” At this, his smile seemed to grow even wider. He looked possessed.

“Oh, we won’t,” I said. “I’m John’s PA, I’m not involved in all of this medical stuff.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, although he didn’t seem in the least affected by it. “Well, I hope you have a nice evening, ma’am.” He tipped his invisible hat and strolled off down the hallway. Some people seem so ordinary that when you meet them, you actually feel as if you just had an encounter with an alien.

They moved some equipment into a spare room. John began doing all of his tests there and started exercising in the office gym, which he blocked for all the other employees during his workouts. He, the doctor and Michael had daily talks, either in a meeting room or walking around the tiny office park. They seemed to be having a good time.

I, on the other hand, was getting frustrated at John for neglecting his business duties, but at some point you just have to learn how to compartmentalize this frustration or you won’t be able to make it through working for a billionaire for long.

I was surprised when John came by my desk half an hour before closing time to talk with me; normally he shirked responsibility even when he wasn’t busy with other ventures. “How’s work coming along?” he asked.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I managed to solve or reschedule most stuff. But you still have to attend the meeting with Eliza about the new line of Watt cars. I’m afraid we can’t postpone that. Not if we don’t want the board to get angry.”

“Sure. Listen, do you have time tomorrow evening? Michael, the Doctor and I are going to have dinner downtown to talk some more and I’d like you to come along.”

The thing you have to understand about Silicon Valley guys is that they behave very much like feudal lords. They think they have God’s mandate to do what they feel is right and that they can press anyone they deem important into serving them. Sure, you can refuse, but only if you want to keep your family and fields. I wanted to keep my apartment and, although my boyfriend’s life was not in any immediate danger, my job helped pay for his tuition. And so, I accepted. John would pick me up at six at my place.

“Sure, I’ll be ready then. Are you going to join the meeting now?” I asked.

“Tell them I’m busy. I have to catch up on my workout.” In that moment, I was just about ready to storm the Bastille.

VI

“I just don’t get why you let yourself be bossed around by him like this. You need to say no to him,” Jake said. We were sitting on our sofa with a cooking show on in the background. We just had Chinese take-out, although neither of us had had much appetite.

“You don’t get it,” I said. “He’s a maniac. Every few months he gets a new bullshit idea and anyone who doesn’t play along gets fired. When some employees told him that his battery powered cars were exploding too much, he just fired them and a whole bunch of others. He doesn’t care about them. And they can’t do anything; they will sign any contract to work for him, because they are just as idiotic as he is.”

“But you’re not just some employee, you’re his personal assistant. He trusts you, doesn’t he? You should be able to sway him a little bit.”

“No. He fired his last PA because she told him she didn’t want to drive him up and down California at 3 AM to look at his stupid satellite launches. She told him to take a taxi and the next day her keycard was deactivated. Didn’t even give her a warning. The only reason I made it for so long is that I just nod along and do what he says.”

Jake poked around in his chow mein. “So you’d much rather keep this job where you have to work till ten and can’t even spend Christmas with your boyfriend than look for one where you’re treated like a human?”

“I don’t want to work there, but I can’t just say no and get fired. There’s blacklists. I won’t be able to get hired by a company like this again if I just leave.”

“But you can still quit. If you put in your notice, they won’t be able to hold it against you, will they?”

“They’ll find a way to. These people don’t play fair.”

“You haven’t even tried talking to him. You’re just playing defense for him. Do you even see how much this job is hurting you?”

“It’s not hurting me, I am doing–“

“You started smoking again because of his new bullshit,” he cut me off. “You’re trying to rationalize your investment into a job that doesn’t even make you happy. Do you even want to leave?”

I didn’t answer; I was dumbfounded. He stood up and started cleaning up the coffee table. He was right, somewhat. I didn’t know if I even wanted to leave. I was getting paid well, but I like to think I’m not that bribable. No, at this point it was some kind of morbid fascination that prevented me from quitting as John’s assistant, even if it was tearing me apart.

I went into the kitchen where Jake was just emptying the take-out cartons into the trash. “I’ll hand in my resignation by the end of the year. You’ll have your degree by then, so money won’t be as tight when I get a job with a lower wage.” I didn’t tell him that I wanted to see this latest obsession of John’s through to the end.

Jake put the cartons down and hugged me. “You know what you’re doing.”

VII

The next day, John let me off early. “Remember, you should look presentable,” he said as he dismissed me. He was sitting next to Doctor Ma with electrodes connecting every body part to a computer. I’m not the one looking like Neo coming out of his pod, I thought, but sure, I’ll look presentable.

I had put on some light make-up and an appropriate dress and was waiting for John in front of my apartment building. He was ten minutes late when he pulled up in his Watt car. “Sorry for being late,” he said. “The car had an autopilot malfunction at an intersection and it caused a bit of a jam.”

We didn’t talk much on the ride. He didn’t know anything about me to talk about and he’s terrible at small talk; I knew too much about him and didn’t feel like talking because of it. Instead, I looked at all the other Silicon Valley corporate HQs drifting by and tried not to listen to the godawful music he was playing. It was some kind of tacky jazz-pop, the kind you’d hear in dying malls and which only grandparents and apparently billionaires enjoy. In my mind, John and Patrick Bateman were inching closer to each other with every single thing I learned about him.

We were driving all the way to San Francisco and parked in front of a brightly lit upscale restaurant. Apparently, this was a popular location for the rich, because I saw at least two CEOs dining there with women who, I was pretty sure, were not their wives. We were brought to our table at the back where Michael and Doctor Ma were already waiting for us. They all shook hands, as if they hadn’t seen each other just a few hours ago, and we sat down. “You look great,” Michael told me quietly while the other two talked. I answered with a tight smile; joblessness seemed ever more appealing.

Food was coming every fifteen minutes, tiny portions on big irregularly shaped plates. Clams and asparagus, glazed eggplant, roasted plantain. All the food was weirdly phallic, although the others seemed to like it. They jumped from topic to topic: the weather (good), politicians (corrupt), business (booming), the future (bright). I didn’t chime in and they seemed to forget I was even there. After the dessert – a cone of white foam that didn’t taste like anything – they began talking about their plans, about which machines they would still need to procure, what the best timetable would look like and so on. I was beginning to wonder why I was needed here at all, when John turned towards me.

"Jess, you see, we’ve been planning all of these new routines and treatments, but there’s still a big problem. The office in Palo Alto is just not big enough for all the things we want to do, the stuff we need et-cetera. And the air is just terrible, you know. Aerosols and so on. I’ll just say it: we’ve decided to move this operation to Nevada.” They all looked at me expectantly.

“Oh, do you want me to help organize the move there?” I asked. “We’d have to inform the board members of course. And we’ll need to restructure your schedule significantly, if that’s what you want.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” John said. “Your replacement will be doing that.”

I was in free fall. “You’ve hired a replacement,” I said.

“Yeah, of course. You’ll be coming to Nevada with us. You’re my PA after all. I’ll be taking a bit of a break from all the business stuff here and focus on my health and aging. I’ll need your help with that. You’ll be the brains of our little operation, pulling all the strings in the background.” He was trying to make it sound fun. He was pulling my life apart and he thought it was like an action movie.

“I’ll have to think about it,” I said. My voice was failing.

“Sure, we’re moving in next month, but I’ll need you to be there early to oversee the set-up, so you’ll get plenty of time to familiarize yourself with everything and think about it.”

They went back to talking about politics and tech stuff after this. I didn’t want to cry in front of John and the others, so I went to the toilet and locked myself in a cubicle for half an hour. I didn’t even want to text Jake. I didn’t know how to tell him. I could talk all I want about how I’m only doing it for the money or to stay in the industry, but I didn’t realize how much was depending on this job until now.

When I’d calmed myself down sufficiently, mostly by stuffing all my feelings into a big box marked “for later”, I left my cubicle. I met one of the not-wives of one of the CEOs while fixing my eyeliner and quickly practiced looking unconcerned in front of the mirror. Barely passing. They didn’t even seem to have noticed my half-hour leave, engrossed as they were in their discussion of the merits of different Republican candidates.

I simply tried to make the best of what remained of the evening. I ordered a nice cocktail and forced myself to enjoy the corporate jazz music quietly playing in the background. At around 11, the conversation slowly fizzled out and we were getting ready to leave. “I think, we can pay now,” John said. “Separate, of course.”

VIII

John and the rest arrived at the Nevada compound about two hours late; the autopilot couldn’t handle the open roads and they had to drive manually. They stumbled in through the door, went straight to their rooms and collapsed onto their beds, thoroughly cooked through.

I had spent the past few weeks preparing the place for their arrival. Whoever John had tasked with construction, they had done an amazing job: in the span of a few weeks, they had built a whole complex from nothing. Living quarters for us and other staff, several rooms for medical equipment and a high-tech security system with 24/7 on-site guards.

I had kept mostly to myself and occasionally talked with the nurse and maid John had hired for the place. There was nothing else to do, really. Outside was desert, as far as the eye could see. Creosote bushes and dirt. The lack of anything sort of defies description.

The next day, John had a meeting with everyone, explaining his goals and daily routine. He would embark on a medical journey, that would hopefully rejuvenate his body. To that end, he would adhere to a strict diet and exercise plan and undergo near constant monitoring to make sure that all his bodily parameters stayed not only within acceptable limits but within optimal limits.

His vegan diet came to one-thousand calories, consumed between ten AM and noon. The appetizer: three walnuts and a handful of berries. The main course: broccoli, kale and ginger – raw, of course – with a pinch of salt. On the side, a drink of almond milk, algae extract and activated charcoal powder, which looked like a sample taken from the La Brea tar pits. There was no dessert. Instead, he started taking supplements. One-hundred-and-eleven pills, powders and drops per day. These included everything from simple vitamin C supplements to beaver gland extract.

His exercise regimen involved cardio training for one-hundred-and-twenty minutes per day, targeting every major muscle group in the human body, followed by a twenty-minute ice bath. Before bed he would do a sixty-minute yoga routine, guided per video call by a yogini from Manhattan.

In the meantime, he would be examined thoroughly in Doctor Ma’s and Michael’s lab. Daily blood tests, stool and urine testing, neural activity monitoring etc. Any deviation from the calculated acceptable range would mean an adjustment of the next day’s supplements. The rest of his time was spent in meditation or serious thinking about serious problems, before retiring to bed at eight PM.

I explain all this in detail, because I had to attend every step of the way. John needed, as he explained it to me, “quiet guidance and support”. This meant, that I had to eat with him, watch him exercise and blow into a plastic tube and not say a thing. After being released from my duties at eight thirty – I had to make sure he fell asleep – I was too tired to do much of anything. Doing nothing all day tires you out so quickly. By the end of the first week, I had trouble falling asleep at night and staying awake during the day. By week two, I was so sick of eating nuts and berries that I wished for nothing more than shitty take-out food.

I had put John to bed one evening, when I stepped outside to have a smoke. I couldn’t get cigarettes myself out here obviously, but one of the security guards, Darryl, smoked too and he shared with me. Being so far out in the desert, miles from any settlement, the night sky was so much more impressive than in the city. A giant band of pinpoint stars smeared across the sky. It’s a welcome moment of actual tranquility after a day of forced dullness.

I pulled out my phone and called Jake. We had talked on the phone every day these past few weeks; it was my way of trying to keep our relationship alive. He picked up after two rings. “Hey,” I said, “sorry for being late, he was having trouble sleeping again.”

“I hope he didn’t break the other kids’ toys again,” Jake said. I had to laugh.

“He really does act like a child sometimes. They just can’t live on their own.” I paused for a few seconds. “How was your day?” I asked. I mostly listened to him talk about his day during these calls, what art projects he was working on or what happened during his classes. None of us ever brought up the fact that I was out here in Nevada for the foreseeable future and that this was straining our relationship.

I stared at the Milky Way overhead while listening to him talk. A tiny grid of light beads moved across the sky at relatively breakneck pace disturbing the natural serenity: satellites; part of John’s and his competitors’ new space race. Even out here he had his eyes on me.

We started talking about plans for summer, where we should vacation, what we should do with the ugly old dresser in the living room, what kind of pet we would adopt once we moved to a bigger place. At some point I said that I was getting tired and Jake said that he had to go to sleep because of classes the next day and we hung up. He hadn’t said “I love you” in more than a week, but I wasn’t going to start calling him out on it.

I saw Darryl making a sweep around the compound, a dark silhouette walking its flashlight cone. He waved. I waved back. “How’s it going?” he asked once he got a bit closer.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I feel like this job is slowly destroying the life I built for myself and my boyfriend. I hate it out here.” I leaned back against the bare concrete wall and slid down.

“Have you tried talking about it with Mr. Brian?” he asked. I wanted sympathy, but all I got was a solutions-oriented middle-aged man. I hadn’t tried talking with John because he only listened to women when they complimented him and even if I had, there was no job in Palo Alto for me to go back to.

IX

I was standing in the doorway looking out over the desert landscape, watching the sand plume on the horizon slowly grow bigger. The interview crew were half an hour late but who could fault them with such a lack of road.

I had been up since five AM preparing for the interview. I helped Elena, the maid, set up the living room, talked to Darryl about the tour around the compound and decluttered the gym room to make sure the crew had enough space to film John as he worked out. I was practically ecstatic from being able to do something.

The SUV stopped a few meters from the compound gate and the passengers looked confusedly at the wire mesh fence and security cameras; they were probably expecting a futuristic mansion made from glass and not a bunch of squat concrete buildings that looked like an army training ground.

After he gate was opened and they had all gotten out of the car and stretched, I greeted them and asked them if I could help. “Oh, no. Just show us where we’ll do the interview,” they said. It was only three guys: a reporter, his assistant and a camera man. They carted their equipment into the living room, mostly lighting stuff for the subsequent photo shoot. Meanwhile, John was hopefully taking his meal, bravely assisted by our maid.

At twelve PM they began the interview. I attended from behind the camera. It was mostly boring stuff about John’s life, business ventures, current routine and so on. One part stuck out to me, though. The interviewer asked him, “Why did you adopt this whole routine? Wouldn’t it be enough to just exercise regularly and eat a balanced diet?”

“It would be easier,” John said laughing, “but I don’t just want to be healthy. I want to reverse my aging. I can take a scan of my skin and compare it to an average and this morning I already had the skin of an eighteen-year-old. That’s twenty-five years younger. My doctor estimates that due to the new diet, my gut flora is like that of a twenty-eight-year-old, which means fifteen years of improvement. If I can keep this up, I’m gonna live forever. That’s the goal. Not just old age or fitness, but eternal youth, essentially.”

“Those are pretty ambitious goals,” the interviewer said. “What are you going to do with all that time?”

Here John laughed, not saying anything. “Well,” he began. “I guess I’ll have plenty of time to figure that out.” He looked off into the distance. He did look great. He had grown his hair out a bit which gave him a more majestic look. His skin almost glowed. All of this distracted pretty well from the drawn-out silence. “I think it’s more about just doing it, rather than any specific goal. The point is that it hasn’t been done before. We’re revolutionizing medicine here.”

The interviewer looked satisfied with the answer and they carried on with the interview like nothing happened, talking about the impact on his current business projects and such. I, however, was still disturbed by the fact that he simply didn’t have an answer. He wanted immortality for the sake of it.

When he approached me after the interview, I decided not to press the issue, what with the schedule and all that. “How did I do?” he asked. His forehead was glistening with sweat, though I didn’t know if it was the desert heat, the lighting from the interviewers or the content of the interview itself.

“You did fine,” I said plainly. “Even gave them some great photo opportunities. Your skin looks great today.”

“Thanks. I guess it’s the estrogen. Will you accompany them on their tour of the property? I need to go to Doctor Ma for a bit.”

“You are taking estrogen?”

“Yes, I needed to get my libido under control, it was becoming distracting. Although I am getting chest pains, which is inconvenient.”

I was stunned into silence; his skin looked healthier because he was on feminizing hormones. That was certainly one way out of a midlife crisis. “I’ll show them around,” I said and hurried off before I could ask him out any further.

The crew didn’t really care about the actual compound; they just wanted some images of the less weird looking parts. I showed them our living quarters and let them take some shots of the buildings against their desert background. When we came back inside, John had had his check-up and was already exercising. They got pictures of him on every machine. The cameraman half-jokingly asked if they could get a picture of him topless on the pec deck, which John declined. You could barely see the straps of the sports bra he was wearing under his shirt. I almost laughed out loud.

X

I could barely hear my own thoughts over the AC in the lab. Summer in the desert was brutal. Outside temperatures were well above one-hundred degrees and being outside for longer than a few minutes felt like it might actually kill you. Darryl even stopped doing perimeter sweeps during the day; not like anyone would survive trying to break in anyway.

John was hooked up to the blood transfusion and leaned back with his eyes closed. It was obvious that he was unwell and tired, though he chalked it all up to the heat. His exercise routine was now reduced to the evening yoga sessions and he was beginning to consider lifting his caloric restrictions somewhat.

High intensity rejuvenation was declared a defeat; his latest plan involved finding some way to reduce the amount of work his own body had to do to stay alive. Doctor Ma’s first idea was to give John regular blood transfusions and hook him up to a dialysis machine from time to time. The doctor said that his organs would stay young for longer if their work was done by machines instead.

Meanwhile, Michael was working on some contraption of his own in another room. He didn’t let anyone in, except for two colleagues he had had flown in to help him set up some machines. I tried to bring them some coffee once, just to steal a glance at whatever they were doing, but they told me to put it down outside the door and not come in. John had given them carte blanche and they clearly thought they were onto something, judging by the amount of effort involved. They even caused blackouts in the compound a couple of times.

After he was done with his transfusion, I escorted John to the living room, where he lay down on the sofa and fell asleep within a few minutes. I went outside, crouched down in the slim strip of shadow along the residential building’s northern wall and lit a cigarette. His medical procedures were taking a lot longer now that transfusions and other treatments were added to his usual tests and so I hadn’t smoked since breakfast – I was very much on edge.

I could hear what Michael and his colleagues were doing through the open window of their room on the other side of the small courtyard. I slowly creeped towards the other building and stopped below the window, even though it was painful being in the sun. They were talking about their project, so I didn’t really understand any of it. It did sound like they were just finishing up before having a break, so I decided to stick around till they left the room and I could make sure that no one was in there anymore. Once the room had been quiet for a few minutes, I stood up and looked in the window. I could barely reach it, so I only saw part of the room, but I was still surprised. It looked like they were trying to resurrect Frankenstein’s monster in there. The whole room was crammed full of equipment, everything from ventilators and heart monitors to what looked to me like a mix between a hospital bed and a sarcophagus. It looked like they were building an intensive care unit out here in the desert.

I snuck back into the main building and decided to take a shower. John had given me the afternoons off, now that he didn’t exercise much anymore. I didn’t even know what to do anymore, being out in the desert and all, and aimlessly walked around the hallways or scrolled mindlessly on my phone. When it came time for John’s yoga session, which I still had to attend, I was surprised to find him sitting alone in the living room, scribbling something on a notepad. “Jess, come here,” he said. “Let’s sit down a minute and talk.”

I sat down opposite of him in one of the big armchairs. We hadn’t had a real conversation that went beyond bare utility since we moved here and even before then he was not very interested in what I had to say. Him wanting to spend time with me seemed to me like a sign that something must be seriously wrong. “What is it?” I asked cautiously.

“I want to tell you about my plan. But first, how are you? I know we haven’t had much time to calm down lately.”

“I’m doing fine,” I said. I wasn’t. I was stressed out and bored at the same time. I felt like I was burning up and freezing to death simultaneously.

“Good. Great. How’s your boyfriend? Everything all right at home?” he asked.

“We’re doing well. Making plans for the future and all that.” Jake hadn’t answered my calls for three weeks; the future was bleak.

“Alright. Very nice. See, I wanted to talk to you about where we will be taking our little project from tomorrow onwards,” he said. Pleasantries out of the way and he was already launching into business mode.

“Is it to do with the stuff Michael and his colleagues have been setting up in the spare room?” I asked.

“Exactly. They’ve been building a machine that will hopefully completely prevent my body from aging, so that I will become functionally immortal. They’ve been working very hard on it and tomorrow we’ll see if it works. Or I guess we’ll see the results in a few hundred years or so, when I’m still alive.”

“Haven’t you tested it? How do you know it works?”

“Oh, we know that the components work. Basically, what we’ll do is that we will replace every function in my body by a machine so that my biological body becomes practically irrelevant. For example, we’ll redirect blood out of my body to remove waste products and supply me with nutrients directly into my bloodstream. My hormone levels will be artificially regulated by–“

“What do you mean it’ll become irrelevant,” I interrupted him. “You’ll become hooked up to a machine, right?”

“Yes, that’s what I meant. That’s the plan. My body will essentially replaced by a machine so that I, my consciousness, will be able to live forever. Once we invent a way to upload our minds into machines, like how I wanted to do with Hunter, I’ll be able to have a robot body and share my intellect with the world.”

I couldn’t say anything. He was dead serious. “But of course, I’ll have to make sure that my physical body doesn’t die until then or otherwise it would look dire for my mind. Hence, why I need your help. I need someone to manage my affairs while I am on, let’s just call it extended leave. In short, I want you to become my legal guardian and manage my personal and business affairs."

He handed me a paper he had typed up. It was an agreement to make me his legal guardian. “I’ll have a friend of mine come in tomorrow morning to notarize it,” he said.

“John,” I said, “why are you doing this? Do you really think that this is the best way to use benefit humanity? What if you will never be able to transfer your brain to a robot? What then?”

“Well, I believe that scientific progress makes it inevitable. There are already tests done on chimpanzees to see if they can establish a brain-machine-interface and the lethality is constantly going down. As for your first question, I do believe that this is the best way. We already did the math, remember? My biological body will die, I acknowledge that now, but if I can keep it alive just long enough, my value to mankind will not just increase, it will become infinite. It’s the only rational choice, really.”

I had so many questions and objections. Why do you believe that scientific progress even exists? Or that it will lead to robots with hard drive brains? Why do you think your only value is in generating ideas for bullshit that no one needs? Why can’t you spend your time on earth just enjoying your enormous wealth? Why are you unable to comprehend that you might be wrong?

But I had too much common sense. I just asked, “Do you have a pen?”

XI

I woke up the next morning feeling like I would never have to go to sleep again. I wasn’t euphoric, just calm beyond belief, like the weight of a mountain had just been lifted from me.

They were already making the final preparations when I came into the room. Michael and his colleagues were making some last-minute adjustments to their contraption, Doctor Ma was going over his last evaluations and John was sitting at a desk with his notary friend. It all went by like a haze. We finished signing the document and shook hands. John took off his clothes and laid down in the machine. He gave me a last thumbs up and smiled at me. I waved back. They inserted cannulas into his arms, put electrodes all over his body; they hooked him up so thoroughly that you could hardly see his body anymore. They even covered his eyes and ears.

The room was filled by the steady and beeping and whirring of machines. “Is that it?” I asked Michael.

“We will still have to monitor how he responds to the situation and make some adjustments as he reaches equilibrium, but mostly, yeah.”

“Alright. Tell me if you need anything here. I’ll go back to Palo Alto. I have some matters to attend to.” In left them in the room to sort out the rest and went to get my stuff into the car. When I stepped outside, the Nevada desert heat felt not oppressive but like coming home from walking in cold winter streets.