Rollback

A car coming toward them beeped its horn twice. He looked up and saw Julie Fein driving by and waving. They waved back.

"That’s not much better than the Borg scenario," Sarah said. "Even so, it’s so depressing not to have detected anything. I mean, when we first started pointing our radio telescopes at the sky, we thought we’d pick up tons of signals from aliens, and, instead, in all that time — almost fifty years now — not a peep."

"Well, fifty years isn’t that long," he said, trying now to console her.

Sarah was looking off into the distance. "No, of course not," she said. "Just most of a lifetime."

Chapter 8

Carl, the elder of Don and Sarah’s two children, was known for his theatrics, so Don was grateful that he didn’t spurt coffee all over the table. Still, after swallowing, he managed to exclaim "You’re going to do what?" with vigor worthy of a sitcom. His wife Angela was seated next to him. Percy and Cassie — in full, Perseus and Cassiopeia, and, yes, Grandma had suggested the names — had been dispatched to watch a movie in Carl and Angela’s basement.

"We’re going to be rejuvenated," repeated Sarah, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"But that costs — I don’t know," said Carl, looking at Angela, as if she should be able to instantly supply the figure. When she didn’t, he said, "That costs billions and billions."

Don saw his wife smile. People sometimes thought their son had been named for Carl Sagan, but he wasn’t. Rather, he was named for his mother’s father.

"Yes, it does," said Sarah. "But we’re not paying for it. Cody McGavin is."

"You know Cody McGavin?" said Angela, her tone the same as it would have been if Sarah had claimed to know the Pope.

"Not until last week. But he knew of me. He funds a lot of SETI research." She shrugged a little. "One of his causes."

"And he’s willing to pay to have you rejuvenated?" asked Carl, sounding skeptical.

Sarah nodded. "And your father, too." She recounted their meeting with McGavin.

Angela stared in open-mouth wonder; she had mostly only known her mother-in-law as a little old lady, not — as the news-sites kept calling her — "the Grand Old Woman of SETI."

"But, even if it’s all paid for," said Carl, "no one knows what the long-term effects of — of — what do they call it?"

"A rollback," said Don.

"Right. No one knows the long-term effects of a rollback."

"That’s what everyone says about everything new," said Sarah. "No one knew what the long-term effects of low-carb dieting would be, but look at your father. He’s been on a low-carb diet for forty years now, and it’s kept his weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar all normal."

Don was embarrassed to have this brought up; he wasn’t sure that Angela knew that he used to be fat. He’d started putting on weight during his Ryerson years, and, by the time he was in his early forties, he’d reached 240 pounds — way too much for his narrow-shouldered five-foot-ten frame. But Atkins had taken it off, and kept it off, he had been a trim 175 for decades. While the others had enjoyed garlic mashed potatoes with their roast beef this evening, he’d had a double helping of green beans.

"Besides," continued Sarah, "if I don’t do this, nothing else I start today will have any long-term effects — because I won’t be around for the long term. Even if twenty or thirty years down the road this gives me cancer or a heart condition, that’s still twenty or thirty additional years that I wouldn’t have otherwise had."

Don saw a hint of a frown flicker across his son’s face. Doubtless he’d been thinking about when his mother had cancer once before, back when he’d been nine.

But it was clear he had no comeback for Sarah’s argument. "All right," he said at last. He looked at Angela, then back at his mother. "All right." But then he smiled, a smile that Sarah always said looked just like Don’s own, although Don himself couldn’t see it. "But you’ll have to agree to do more babysitting."

After that, everything happened quickly. Nobody said it out loud, but there was doubtless a feeling that time was of the essence. Left untreated, Sarah — or Don, for that matter, although no one seemed to care about him — might pass away any day now, or end up with a stroke or some other severe neurological damage that the rejuvenation process couldn’t repair.

As Don had learned on the web, a company called Rejuvenex held the key patents for rollback technology, and pretty much could set whatever price they felt would give their stock-holders the best return. Surprisingly, in the almost two years the procedure had been commercially available, fewer than a third of all rollbacks had been for men and women as old as or older than he and Sarah — and over a dozen had been performed on people in their forties, who had presumably panicked at the sight of their first gray hairs and had had a few spare billion lying around.