panicky.
“Please tell the Colony Offices that we are doing
everything we can. We will figure it out as soon as possible.”
Aria felt for the man. He’d be unlikely to keep
his job if the blight went on much longer. She thanked him and slipped into the
restroom as he walked to meet Theo.
When the sound of their voices faded from the
lobby, Aria left the building and headed for Kaia’s cottage.
***
Kaia
liked watching the children. They had become part of her, now, as well as their
parents. With her father off evaluating defenses in the southern cities of
Minea for the last several months, it grew too quiet around her cottage. She
kept busy tinkering with the basic house systems, improving the heat and the
cooling and, of course, visiting Coriol Scrap to gather robot materials to
entertain the children when they came.
They were playing now with the latest creation.
Well, specifically, Polara was playing with it. It was a go-bot, an invention
of which Kaia was particularly proud. The whole purpose of the go-bot was to
evade capture. Once programmed and turned on, it would careen endlessly around
a predefined space and simultaneously entertain and tire out its pursuer. She
made the first one when she, herself, became too tired to entertain Polara
effectively.
She was slowing down. There was no doubting it
and no denying it.
She had visited the doctors about it and finally,
after the hundredth time she’d donated her blood to further medical knowledge
and save lives, she’d asked the question none of the doctors had ever
addressed: “Why have I aged?”
The doctor smiled. “Everyone ages, Ms. Reagan.”
Kaia looked away, following the lines of the
window blinds with her eyes as she blinked back tears. She reformulated the
question. “When I was on Beta Alora, and even afterwards, in the ship, I healed
impossibly fast. I thought I would stay . . . young, somehow.”
The doctor took off his glasses, cleaning them on
his lab coat. “Many people don’t realize that healing and aging are two
different processes in the body. When we receive wounds and our bodies heal, it
is the result of cells rushing to the wound and multiplying rapidly to repair
it. Your genetic modifications seem to have made that rapid multiplication
remarkably fast. However, unchecked multiplication can cause other problems,”
he searched for an example, “diseases like cancer, that blight of the
twenty-first century. So human cells have natural mechanisms to avoid endless
cell division. Each cell can divide well about fifty to seventy times, but then
the cell becomes inactive or dies. That is actually what is happening during
aging. It’s not a wound, an accident that happens and can be repaired, though there
is some promising research. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that your
modifications have changed the amount of times your cells can divide. In fact,
while your ability to repair your wounds is enhanced, your aging process is
actually slightly increased, because each time you heal, you’re using up your
supply of cells more quickly than the rest of us.”
That was three weeks ago, and Kaia was at least
glad to have an answer. That changed how she would spend her days. Who wanted
to be immortal anyway?
Kaia’s body ached as she settled into a chair
next to Rigel. Her trip to the junkyard yesterday, and her early-morning
tinkering with the go-bot, had left her sapped of energy.
The baby reached for his shoe, which he’d knocked
just out of his own reach, and she looked down and tried to speak his name.
But it wasn’t there. She started again, “Sweet—” She
waited for his name to leap to her tongue, but it was as if she had opened a
drawer in her mental filing cabinet and suddenly found it empty. His name was
gone. He looked at her quizzically, sensing, she supposed, her distress.
“Sweet baby,” she finished, fighting an edge of
frustration that was slowly pulling through her chest. She hunted for the name
again and
“Please tell the Colony Offices that we are doing
everything we can. We will figure it out as soon as possible.”
Aria felt for the man. He’d be unlikely to keep
his job if the blight went on much longer. She thanked him and slipped into the
restroom as he walked to meet Theo.
When the sound of their voices faded from the
lobby, Aria left the building and headed for Kaia’s cottage.
***
Kaia
liked watching the children. They had become part of her, now, as well as their
parents. With her father off evaluating defenses in the southern cities of
Minea for the last several months, it grew too quiet around her cottage. She
kept busy tinkering with the basic house systems, improving the heat and the
cooling and, of course, visiting Coriol Scrap to gather robot materials to
entertain the children when they came.
They were playing now with the latest creation.
Well, specifically, Polara was playing with it. It was a go-bot, an invention
of which Kaia was particularly proud. The whole purpose of the go-bot was to
evade capture. Once programmed and turned on, it would careen endlessly around
a predefined space and simultaneously entertain and tire out its pursuer. She
made the first one when she, herself, became too tired to entertain Polara
effectively.
She was slowing down. There was no doubting it
and no denying it.
She had visited the doctors about it and finally,
after the hundredth time she’d donated her blood to further medical knowledge
and save lives, she’d asked the question none of the doctors had ever
addressed: “Why have I aged?”
The doctor smiled. “Everyone ages, Ms. Reagan.”
Kaia looked away, following the lines of the
window blinds with her eyes as she blinked back tears. She reformulated the
question. “When I was on Beta Alora, and even afterwards, in the ship, I healed
impossibly fast. I thought I would stay . . . young, somehow.”
The doctor took off his glasses, cleaning them on
his lab coat. “Many people don’t realize that healing and aging are two
different processes in the body. When we receive wounds and our bodies heal, it
is the result of cells rushing to the wound and multiplying rapidly to repair
it. Your genetic modifications seem to have made that rapid multiplication
remarkably fast. However, unchecked multiplication can cause other problems,”
he searched for an example, “diseases like cancer, that blight of the
twenty-first century. So human cells have natural mechanisms to avoid endless
cell division. Each cell can divide well about fifty to seventy times, but then
the cell becomes inactive or dies. That is actually what is happening during
aging. It’s not a wound, an accident that happens and can be repaired, though there
is some promising research. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that your
modifications have changed the amount of times your cells can divide. In fact,
while your ability to repair your wounds is enhanced, your aging process is
actually slightly increased, because each time you heal, you’re using up your
supply of cells more quickly than the rest of us.”
That was three weeks ago, and Kaia was at least
glad to have an answer. That changed how she would spend her days. Who wanted
to be immortal anyway?
Kaia’s body ached as she settled into a chair
next to Rigel. Her trip to the junkyard yesterday, and her early-morning
tinkering with the go-bot, had left her sapped of energy.
The baby reached for his shoe, which he’d knocked
just out of his own reach, and she looked down and tried to speak his name.
But it wasn’t there. She started again, “Sweet—” She
waited for his name to leap to her tongue, but it was as if she had opened a
drawer in her mental filing cabinet and suddenly found it empty. His name was
gone. He looked at her quizzically, sensing, she supposed, her distress.
“Sweet baby,” she finished, fighting an edge of
frustration that was slowly pulling through her chest. She hunted for the name
again and
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