The Methuselah Gene by Jonathan Lowe Page A

you feel, George.   Right now, I mean.   Are you taking any medication?”   I studied his eyes closely.
    â€œMedication?   No.   And I feel fine.   I feel . . .”   He stopped, as though considering a new experience for the first time.   In my own memory I shuffled the images of previous drug test subjects, some of them with this same look—what we called the placebo look.   The non-reactive response prior to any display of measurable side effects.   But this was not my test subject.   If he was anyone’s, he was perhaps Sean’s or Walter’s or whoever the hell else had been skulking around Zion’s water tower in the night.   “I feel . . . great,” George concluded.
    â€œLike you usually feel in the morning, you mean?”
    He looked right at me, the jade green irises around his dilated pupils sprinkled with tiny flecks of gray, as if he’d just emerged from a tornado that had sucked up sand from a riverbed.   His cheeks flushed as he spoke.   “I feel . . . alive,” he said, simply.   “Don’t you?”
    â€œNo, not really, George.   I haven’t been drinking the water.   At least not cold.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”   His perplexed alien eyes searched for clues in a face I kept as calm as I could manage.
    â€œI don’t know, but listen to me, George.   Try not to overreact to things today, okay?   Remain calm and observant.   Do your job, and don’t drink any more water unless you heat it first.”
    â€œWhy?   Where are you going?”
    â€œI’ve got to go see the Sheriff, okay?   It’s something I should have done the minute I got here yesterday, but I’m going to straighten everything out now.”
    â€œWith your wife?” George asked.  
    â€œNo, I mean with everyone in town.   I just hope I’m not too late.   What time is it?   My watch stopped last night.”
    George looked at his watch, dutifully.   “Um, it’s ten-fifteen now,” he said.   “What would you like for lunch?”
    â€œLunch?”   I tripped over my own feet.   On regaining balance, I happened to look into the mirror in the adjoining bathroom.   And there was Tactar’s office clown, purveyor of dry, ironic humor few truly appreciated.   Bachelor, loner, jet lag victim.   And also the perfect patsy, now.
    â€œWhat is it?” George asked me.   “What’s wrong?”
    He followed me out toward the front of the store.   What I’d only imagined in theory was beginning to settle on me like an enormous weight—that a conspiracy actually existed, and that something had been produced in short order to be tested on this small town, as if on guinea pigs.   But why, and who was doing it?
    I paused at the front door, my fingers circling the brass knob.   I turned to find George behind me.   His look might have been one of empathy had he known my dilemma, and his concerned gaze increased my sense of guilt.   “Charlie?” he said.
    â€œNo, not Charlie,” I confessed.   “That’s not my name.”
    â€œIt’s not?”
    I began to pace like a rat left behind.   A rat which has just discovered that the only way out meant jumping into the ocean.   I thought about what I would tell the Sheriff, when I found him.   Would he even believe me?   “Water dispersal is not viable,” I heard myself say, as though trying to convince myself.
    â€œWater?” asked George.   “What about the water?”
    â€œStomach acids.   It shouldn’t work.   And how could they manufacture so much of the formulation so quickly?   And who were they, anyway, George?   The paranoid THEM.”
    I fished out the last of my change and used it to pull a grape soda up through the gray metal gates of George’s old cooler.   I checked the