The Methuselah Gene Read Free Page A

the number of people in nursing homes.   Young people wouldn’t have to pay as much in taxes to keep old duffs playing golf while busting Social Security.   And you could take the drug yourself, buddy, instead of Elavil , Paxil, or Prozac, so you wouldn’t have to worry about being alone in your long, lonely golden years, obsessing about the best way to end your jittery, angst-ridden life.”
    â€œThank God you’re not serious.”
    â€œOh, but I am.   True, it’d put a new slant on Anthony Robbins seminars, but think about how they could use it in the Third World to curb population growth.”
    â€œI’m not sure how that would work.”
    â€œWell, most wars are linked to overpopulation, right?   Too many people, not enough food, land?   Like on the West Bank, or in the Kasmir region.   Got any idea what it’s like there these days in India?   A billion Hindu people crowding the streets.   Beggars, rickshaws, banana carts . . . scooters belching smoke everywhere.   Seventy-two thousand people born every day.   That’s the population of Australia every year, buddy.   Malnutrition, disease, howling chaos in Delhi’s filthy shanty towns.   Opposite of Japan’s problem, or ours.   Those people don’t drive SUVs up to take-out windows to supersize everything on the menu, they just eat rice with fish heads while working the jobs we’ve lost to them by outsourcing.   And their government can’t control their own growth any more than you could stop some development company from building a new tract of condos blocking your view of the ocean!   So you mix whatever drug you develop from this up with the wheat we give’em , and maybe it’ll offset their women having six babies each.   Works for African countries and Islamic countries, too.   Maybe you’ll avert a future war . . . holy Jihad, another unholy skirmish for crude oil, or whatever.”
    I stared at the homeless man, asleep on the bench.   “God, I don’t know which intention is worse for this theft,” I said.   “But if either is in my future, maybe I should take your advice and end my ‘jittery, angst-ridden life’ right away.”
    Darryl chuckled, but stopped when I looked at him.   We were quiet for a long time before he said, “How did your partner kill himself, by the way—with a gun?”
    â€œNo,” I said, mimicking a gripping gesture with one hand, “he used a broken beer stein.   You know, the kind with a handle?   He busted it on his head, and sliced one wrist with it before he buried the shards in his neck.”
    Darryl stared at me for ten long seconds before speaking.   “Holy horse shit.   What was he, psychotic?”
    â€œNot before he stuck himself with that needle,” I replied.   “Or someone else stuck him.”

2
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    My apartment was a mess.   Nothing unusual there.   Still, it was a familiar mess.   One that hadn’t been recently tossed into a different jumble.   Of that I was certain.   Because if it had, I would have noticed more easily than if everything was tidy.
    I went through all my paperwork, methodically.   Finding nothing important amid the notes I’d taken home, I started up my MacBook in frustration.   As I prepared to enter my passcode , though, the screen showed a sad icon.   I used an emergency CD to restart, only to discover that the MacBook’s hard drive contents had not been inadvertently lost by some electronic glitch, or even via some cataloguing error.   It had been wiped.   Destroyed.   There was little doubt about it.   That had to be it.   And what else could do it but a—
    Virus.
    The word ballooned in my mind as I glimpsed the photo of Cindy, my internet ‘girlfriend.’   I’d printed out it.   It lay next to the mouse.   Boo.   I stared