way.”
“Okay. So what you’re telling me is that somehow your friend has found a way to continue to look younger than he is and to stay healthy?so what?”
“It is more than that Keith,” his father said annoyed slightly by his son’s flippancy. “He can do things; you’ll have to ask him for the technical terms, to make your system immune to the conditions on the surface. He can then do the same for everyone else if you are successful in obtaining what he needs to achieve that.”
Keith thought about that statement, and the whole conversation. He knew his father would not want him simply to do something that would cause his death. He also knew his father might not tell him everything, but he had never before told him an outright lie. “What does this treatment involve, and what is it I would need to find?”
“First you need to let me know if you are willing to do it. If not, then you don’t need to know, and I’ll have to find someone else.”
“I’ll do it. I think you knew that already Dad. You know I’m not one to put something off on someone else’s shoulders just because it might be a little dangerous.”
His father nodded in acceptance. “The procedure will not be painful, and it is done under sedation. I’m told you will be injected with several chemicals, all of which are safe, and some of which will need to be placed into the bone marrow. As to what it is we want you to find, it is a small worm called a planarian. They are generally less than a half inch in size, and are located in water, and sometimes under logs or in moist soils in humid areas.”
“You’re telling me that miniature worms are going to allow everyone to get out of here, and go back outside,” he stated skeptically.
“Yes.”
It was beginning to sound surreal. If he did not know the individual who was telling him this as well as he did, he would have laughed in his face and walked away. But he did know him, and he was saying it. His father challenged Keith throughout his life. He asked more from him than he did anyone else he knew, including his brother. He never lied to him, at least not that he ever knew of, but his father was also a very reserved man when it came to discussing anything of a personal or intimate nature. Keith respected him more than any other person he knew. But, he also realized there was another side of him that he would possibly never know. As incredulous as the conversation seemed, he found himself saying, “When do I start?”
The following morning his father escorted him to a private lab located behind several secured doors. This was not the lab in which Terri worked. In fact, it did not look to Keith like anyone worked there at all. Dr. Maddow explained some of the treatments he was going to receive, but in a way that Keith understood little more than when he had walked in. There was one attending nurse who Keith did not recall seeing before. That was strange, as he knew most of the people inside the mountain, at least by sight. After he was prepped by the nurse in another room, she wheeled him back out on a gurney. His father was gone.
“This is going to make you sleep. You won’t remember a thing,” she said as she injected the drug into his IV tube.
Dr. Maddow dismissed her and said he would notify her when she was needed again, and to remain ready to return. She was a little taken aback by this, but she did as she was told.
Once he was sure the sedative was in full effect, he started with the first of several procedures. It was an injection of the same treatment he had received himself and had given to Frank Bishop. This one went into the bone marrow of the femur. He injected both legs to ensure success. When this was finished, he completed a series of other injections. Some went directly into glands, others into muscle. When these were complete, he moved the straps alongside the gurney across Keith’s body and cinched them down tight. He moved the IV line out of the way, released the catch from the bottom of the table, and rotated it until the patient was now upside down and facing the floor. He locked it in place and reached for a metallic device, which resembled a brace. This he secured around the patients head. He placed the long hypodermic syringe into the slot specifically made for it. When he was sure that it was lined up with the brain stem, he slowly pressed on the part of the device that held the needle. Once this stopped, he depressed the plunger of the needle itself.
Having completed this, he removed the metallic device, returned the patient to his original position, and removed the straps. All of the vital signs were good, but he knew that would change. He detached the IV bag containing the sedative, and replaced it with a much stronger one; however, it was labeled the same. The entire procedure lasted nearly one hour. He went into a glass walled office and turned on the portable monitor, which displayed the patient’s vital signs. He sat down and called Frank Bishop. “It’s done.”
“I take it everything went well?”
“Fine; I won’t know for sure until I take some tissue samples to determine the full effect. I’ll do that in twenty-four hours.”
“What else did you do to him? You weren’t exactly clear on that earlier?”
“I just made him a little better is all. What I did for us, will allow our bodies to live indefinitely. That is, unless we experience trauma we are not able to recover from.”
“I know about us, what about him? And put it in terms I can understand.”
“Okay. He’ll need to do more than just survive the elements. He’ll need to be able to deal with anything he is faced with, and to deal with it alone. His immune system, as you know, will control the things he can’t see. His physical properties are what I manipulated. I injected a chemically modified form of follistatin, which will help temper the cellular activity from the cell regeneration, controlling both proliferation and differentiation. In other words, his regenerative abilities will work even better than ours does. This chemical will also increase his lean muscle composition nearly threefold. It will not be a threefold increase in size so much as it will be in strength. Another treatment was for his senses. His vision, hearing, motor skills, and so on will function at a heightened state.”
“Won’t his body burn itself out?”
“Not at all, I didn’t put his systems into overdrive, just enhanced them; a state beyond reach by natural means. The regenerative abilities I hope to see will easily accommodate any increase in performance. Even his sleeping needs will diminish.”
“When will he be ready?” his father asked.
“I want five days with him. Some things will show up sooner than others will. I want to make sure we have the best chance to ensure we get what we are sending him out there for. Nothing can be left to chance.”
“I agree.”
“I’ll need to have some follow up visits before we send him out. Say, two months.”
“Okay.”
“I suggest you also take care of things with his wife. I can keep her busy while she’s at the lab, but I don’t think she knew he would be gone for this long and why.”
“I’ll take care of it. Call me when he is about to come out of sedation. I’ll want to be there.”
The nurse was instructed to administer enough sedation to keep the patient under. After three days, she had increased the amount to a level that worried her. When she called the doctor, he asked her to relate his vital statistics then instructed her to continue as before. By the next day, his amount of sedation was seven times greater than what they started with. On the fifth day, Dr. Maddow had returned to examine the patient himself. He listened as the nurse made her report, while analyzing his chart at the same time. He thanked her for her help, and advised her to return to her normal duties as the patient was going to be released shortly. It was with relief that she left. She did not know what exactly was going on, but she had never seen anything like it before.
He now made a call, “As soon as you can, stop by; I would like to show you something,”
“I’m on my way,” Frank Bishop said from his extension.
Dr. Maddow was talking while removing a scalpel from a metal tray. The only word that really registered with Keith’s father was “watch,” as he grasped the scalpel, holding it in a downward stabbing position, and did just that to Keith’s upper right forearm. His father reacted as anyone would. He flinched in shocked surprise. He was about to say something when he realized the doctor was still talking to him. “This is the third time I’ve done that.”
