A Little More Time E-Book

Peter W. Richter

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 255

Beschreibung

In a few decades, medical progress will make it possible to extend human life significantly, even to infinity. How would this change people's minds, actions and coexistence? These are the questions the four stories deal with. DURATION, as the new process is called by the author, plays a decisive role in all of them. Their styles are rather different, including realistic storytelling, science fiction, crime thriller and a philosophically inspired grotesque. A LITTLE MORE TIME: Irmgard Rominski receives an offer to be the first one with a significantly prolonged lifespan. GAMMA FLASH: The spaceship Golden promise is en route to the Alpha Centauri star system. BOMB DEPOSIT: Sirlana's self-driving car is hacked and hijacked. ZEUS IS TELLING A JOKE: The immortal gods are wasting away because no one believes in them.

Leseprobe

In a few decades, medical progress will make it possible to extend human life significantly, even to infinity. How would this change people’s minds, actions and coexistence? These are the questions the four stories deal with. DURATION – as the new process is called by the author – plays a decisive role in all of them.

Their styles are rather different, including realistic storytelling, science fiction, crime thriller and a philosophically inspired grotesque.

A LITTLE MORE TIME: Irmgard Rominski receives an offer to be the first one with a significantly prolonged lifespan.

GAMMA FLASH: The spaceship “Golden promise” is en route to the Alpha Centauri star system.

BOMB DEPOSIT: Sirlana’s self-driving car is hacked and hijacked.

ZEUS IS TELLING A JOKE: The “immortal gods” are wasting away because no one believes in them.

Peter Werner Richter, born in 1946, grew up in Freiburg, Germany. He studied economics and regional planning. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he moved to Eastern Germany, where he worked as a town planner. This job, which often bears the traits of a real-life satire, certainly inspired him to realise his secretly harboured literary ambitions. His professional experiences are probably responsible for the fact that his primary interests lie in foreseeable developments in the near future.

Today, P.W. Richter lives in a small village in the state of Brandenburg, Germany and devotes himself entirely to writing.

Content

A little more time

Gamma Flash

Bomb Deposit

Zeus is Telling a Joke

Epilogue

Acknowledgement

Just when you are ready to start, you have to die.

Immanuel Kant 1724 – 1804

I A Little More Time

The car arrived a little earlier than announced. Even much sooner would have been fine for Irmgard Rominski. She had been waiting at the window for more than an hour, dressed in her coat and hat. A few days ago she’d received an announcement she would be picked up at ten a.m. in front of her house, and since then she had hardly managed to get anything done. When the car finally found a parking space, she was already in the street, and the driver hurried to open the door and help her in.

With a quick look in the back of the Mercedes, he made sure the old lady was secured and sitting comfortably. Then he steered the car out of the parking space, drove trough the bumpy lanes of the southern suburbs of Eberswalde, and finally turned left onto the 167, which led straight to the motorway.

The man drove calmly and with concentration, like someone who had been doing his job for many years. Irmgard Rominski estimated him to be in his late forties.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked.

‘To Berlin, to the Charité.’

‘I know that. I mean, where exactly?’

‘To the Campus Mitte. That’s near the Reichstag.’

Irmgard wondered if he didn’t want to tell her the exact destination, or if he couldn’t because he didn’t remember the name of the institute. To him, it probably sounded as curious as hundreds of other scientific institutions. She decided on the latter.

‘Is it perhaps the Institute for Cell- and Neurobiology?’ she asked.

‘That’s right, ma’am, that’s the name. You are expected there at eleven thirty.’

She nodded. Of course, she knew the time and place; it had been mentioned in the invitation. But it reassured her to hear it again.

The car drove silently; it had an electric engine like most newer vehicles. Outside the old buildings of the Crane Construction Company passed by, like in a film. But the car’s slight sway, caused by the poor condition of the road, made it clear that it was she who was moving.

Irmgard felt the tension of the last days slowly easing. Now a first step has been taken, she thought. Now things are on the move. The fact that she still had to make a serious decision seemed only a formality.

She knew the Institute for Cell- and Neurobiology well. As a professor of evolutionary biology at Humboldt University, she had often attended lectures in other fields to keep up with the latest findings. Some years ago, the institute had made a real splash with its breakthroughs in stem cell research. It attracted worldwide attention, especially with its new approaches to treating the widespread Alzheimer’s Disease. Though Alzheimer’s was not her field of expertise and did not affect her personally, despite her seventy years, the research on it was of such general importance that one should always stay best-informed. Well, while it lasts, she thought.

‘We’re almost on the motorway,’ the driver said, as they followed the elegant sweep of the road over the tree-lined Finow Canal and entered the next village. The buildings stood closer to the roadway here, and the car slowed its pace. It seemed to her they were only rolling at walking speed through the hotchpotch of small houses, some of which dated from the GDR Era and some from before. The colourful shrubs and trees in the tiny front gardens scarcely softened the drabness of the unadorned façades.

‘A bypass would be fine here,’ the driver remarked, obviously trying to make a little small talk.

‘Yes, they’ve been planning it for about forty years now,’ Irmgard answered.

‘Oh! And still not finished?’

‘No. It will probably take another forty years before it’s ready!’

‘I don’t think we’ll live to see that.’

She sighed. You might, she thought. I might not.

Big blue signposts arose in front of them, and when they had passed the slip road, the grey ribbon of the motorway lay before them, straight and long like the downhill slope of a ski jump, leading directly to the Charité Anatomical Centre in the heart of Berlin. The electric engine accelerated silently but powerfully, pressing Irmgard into the upholstery.

What am I getting into, she thought. Looking back, she realised the first omen had already occurred on her seventieth birthday, just four weeks ago. Among the gratulants was a guest she had never met before.

On that special day in 2033, the sun had summoned up all its strength to create a summer’s day in late September, which allowed the celebration to be held in the garden behind the house. For a few days, her two daughters had forgotten their eternal quarrels and managed the entire organisation on their own. That is to say, lending a hand almost everywhere and kindly but firmly ordering their mother out of the kitchen and the rooms to be decorated. Even their husbands had appeared for a short time and taken care of the technical installations. Irmgard had not taken all this for granted, and appreciated it as a special expression of family harmony.

Finally, on the day of the celebration, almost twenty people were gathered in the garden, the inner circle of her family. She was happy, except for those moments when she thought of Thomas, her husband. He was no longer with her. He had died two years ago ’after a long and serious illness”, the usual euphemism for ’cancer”. In his case, it had applied in a terrible way.

Then there were some unexpected guests who were welcomed with a big hello by the others. She had not invited them but was still happy about their visit. One of them was the editor of the local newspaper, whom she already knew from previous interviews. And there was a delegation of colleagues from Humboldt University. Even the dean of her faculty had turned up and congratulated her personally. With a theatrical gesture, he handed her a large flat package, which, as she correctly suspected, contained the latest illustrated book on Humboldt University history. An ordinary standard edition, initially intended as a present for the university’s honourable guests from abroad, but more often used as a makeshift gift for all occasions.

But this package was no ordinary gift, for on its cover was attached a whimsical whitish shape. It was about twenty centimetres high and had long appendages that could almost be called spikes. They were decorated with numerous red bows, which gave the whole thing a carnivalesque appearance. It painfully confirmed Irmgard’s estimate of her colleagues’ aesthetic taste. But the mere idea of presenting her with this sculpture, using the university as its base, so to speak, she found quite impressive.

It was the shell of a sea snail, a Siratus alabaster. one could find it kitschy or mysterious – it was clear to everyone that this thing must have a deeper meaning.

The alabaster snail belongs to the family of spiny snails. It consists almost more of spines than shell, which is actually more of a hindrance for snails that crawl glidingly – in this case with predatory intent – because they could easily get stuck. So why aren’t these animals content with a simple shell, like their relatives, the famous cowries, for example? Not to mention the marine nudibranches, which, as the name suggests, do not have a shell at all.

The question had suddenly occurred to her during a discussion on evolutionary mechanisms. It had not left her since. A student of hers claimed the spines were meant as a defence against other carnivores. ‘Yes, perhaps,’ she had replied. ‘But that is certainly not the whole truth.’

All her scientific work since then had revolved around this question: How could it be that some living beings carried around a jumble of body parts, obviously of little use but needed a large amount of nutrients and energy and could even put their owners in great danger? Were we humans simply too stupid to see the point?

No, she’d said. There is no sense. It is pretty clear that even ‘senseless’ features are not necessarily eliminated by nature, as long as they do not have a detrimental effect on the daily struggle for survival. This, however, is what happened to the giant deer Megaloceros, a contemporary of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros. Like its modern successors, this stag grew new antlers every year. But unlike them, they covered a span of up to four metres! He didn’t have them because he needed them – he had them because he could afford them. To show off, so to speak.

At this point in her lectures, she never forgot to compare it to the drivers of big, expensive posh cars, which always led to great hilarity in the hall. The megaloceros’s luck, however, ran out when the last ice age glaciers retreated northward. The forests became denser again, and the trees refused to leave distances of four metres between their trunks. Noble cars and spiny snails would suffer a similar fate as soon as their biotopes became too cramped. So in nature, she concluded, everything not forbidden is allowed.

A nice sentence that the students were happy to take with them as general wisdom. As she pointed out, it also applied to life in a much deeper sense. Natural life itself seemed as superfluous on the planet as the spines of the alabaster snail or the antlers of the deer. Life only existed because inanimate matter could not prevent it, apart from the fact that it could not even intend to.

The memories of her scientific activities warmed her heart. The driver, who regularly glanced in the mirror to see if his passenger was comfortable, did not miss her pensive smile.

‘Is it a pleasant visit you are making?’ he asked.

Her cheerful mood puzzled him, for most elderly people came to the Charité for medical treatment, not for a pleasant occasion. And these persons came with their own means or were brought by ambulance, not by a service car with a driver, and not over such a large distance. This Irmgard Rominski seemed to him quite spry, as they used to say about elderly people. He had noticed that right away, as he’d seen her rushing towards his car in Eberswalde. So she was probably not a case for the hospital. But that she was going to an official appointment also seemed unlikely to him. None of his passengers smiled when he drove them to an appointment.

‘I don’t know yet.’ Her smile disappeared and gave way to a thoughtful expression. ‘That depends on what they’re going to tell me.’ The driver seemed a little too curious to her. She didn’t feel like explaining the whole issue to him, also because he probably wouldn’t have understood. Or would he? She faltered. Perhaps he of all people?

There was also a person in the university delegation she had never seen before. A petite man of around fifty, dressed just as casually as the other guests, with Asian features and a reserved demeanour. He was introduced to Irmgard as Professor Yi from Seoul, who had held a chair at the Charité for several years. Despite her good contacts to the university hospital, this had escaped her attention, but at least she thought she could vaguely remember some articles under the name Yi. The customary small talk with him was not difficult for her, as the media were full of reports and speculations about Korea these days.

‘Do you think your two parts of the country will come together in the near future?’ she asked.

After all, the North had been moving discretely towards the South in recent years, reacting quite calmly to the latter’s military manoeuvres – that is, not threatening with World War III on any occasion – and even relaxing the censorship a little. The Western media had made this a focal topic during the previous summer slump; since then, the word reunification had dominated the headlines.

‘Well, the beginning is half the way,’ Yi answered ambiguously. ‘We have learnt a lot from Germany,’ he added with a smile.

‘I hope you will use our example to do better.’

‘Oh, the Koreans think you’ve done very well. And you did it fast! That is very important!’

‘First of all, we unified the German bureaucracy! Hopefully, they’ll take a more generous view of that in Korea.’

‘Oh, I’m afraid not.’

They smiled, and after a slight bow he disappeared to join the groups at the back of the garden.

Irmgard Rominski couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was still secretly watching her.

A second conversation took place in the late afternoon. Yi sat down next to her at the garden table with a glass of mineral water. He said abruptly, ‘I have read your book on the control mechanisms of evolution. It is highly interesting, I must say.’

She felt a little taken off guard. ‘I see the Koreans flatter just as boldly as the Germans,’ she said.

‘No, seriously. I think you are consistently carrying forward Darwin’s ideas. The theses on selection-free mutation, for example, are also discussed in our country. You should definitely give your lectures in Seoul too, we would be very pleased...’

Irmgard looked him in the eyes, which were smiling mischievously behind his glasses. You could almost believe him, she thought. ‘Oh, you know,’ she murmured thoughtfully, ‘Korea... isn’t that more or less on the other side of the world?’

‘Not quite. But if you would like to, we would of course be happy to support you as part of our cooperation with New Zealand as well. So, if you mean to... ’

‘Oh, stop it, Mr Yi, I’m an old woman! Just turned seventy. Seventy! I don’t like travelling anymore. I’m wobbly on my feet and not quite right in my head!’

‘No, Mrs Rominski, you are young, believe me!’ Again, he beamed at her like a schoolboy. ‘You are really young. I can see it!’

With that he had managed to make her feel exactly as she had just stated, wobbly on her feet and confused in the head. She was usually good with compliments on her health and appearance, but with this fifty-year-old Mr Yi, it was something else. Something she couldn’t fathom.

‘I still have a question.’ Now he sounded completely matter-of-fact again. ‘A question about your field of expertise. May I?’

‘Very well. If you stick to the facts, ask.’

‘I’m thinking of symbioses, for example. What do you think, can mutation and selection really explain these special adaptations of individual organisms that we find everywhere? The ones that look like both sides know each other intimately and evolve towards each other?’

She looked at him warily from the side. Was he serious, or starting to flirt again? ‘Are you a creationist?’ she asked gruffly.

‘I just mean – that question does arise. Wouldn’t this be the next chapter in your research, so to speak?’

She turned her face away. His profound smile, that infinite confidence in his gaze... they would have completely upset her. Of course, he had hit her right on the nerve. Was it so obvious what she secretly dreamt about in her quiet hours? Was he perhaps one of those all-knowing symbionts he had just spoken of? She felt the urge to get up and check what was happening in the kitchen, but stayed put.

‘You know, it’s my research, but it’s open to everyone. Not only is it open to anyone to read, it’s open to carry it on. And there are many young scientists who can earn their spurs here. And are already doing so.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘You have to know when to let go. Truly, things are no longer down to me.’

Yi objected. ‘Things are down to everyone! Isn’t that what you say here, in Berlin?’

*

A week later, the message came that was to shake her life from the ground up. It was not an e-mail but a real letter on paper. And it had not been delivered by the post office but by a special messenger, who had only handed the letter over on presentation of the recipient’s ID and signature. The sender was the Institute for Cell- and Neurobiology in Berlin. When she tore the envelope open, her vague assumption that it was a letter from Professor Yi was confirmed. He wrote:

Dear Mrs Rominski,

I would like to congratulate you once again on your very successful birthday party. I also want to thank you for welcoming an uninvited guest so kindly. I may state that I was deeply impressed by our conversation in your garden.

You said that you have to let go of your place in research. I got the impression that you said this out of respect and humility for nature, which has brought us forth and thus also has the right to take us back. You are honoured by this attitude. I hope you will not blame me if I nevertheless believe that this is not the whole truth. Our conversation showed me that you would very much like to continue working if you were offered the appropriate perspective.

I am honoured to be able to inform you that our institute can now offer you this perspective.

Please treat the following with utmost discretion...

Irmgard Rominski stopped reading and let the letter sink. She was still standing next to the entrance door of her large house, staring into the wardrobe mirror without seeing herself. Who was this mysterious Professor Yi? While her thoughts wandered to the situation in the garden, she felt a slight dizziness and hurried to get into the living room, where she let herself sink into an armchair. From the start, she had suspected that something was wrong with this person! Looking back, it seemed to her that his friendliness – one could even speak of a certain charm – had also something intrusive about it, something illicitly confidential, especially considering he had come to her party as a stranger. She wanted to kick herself for not becoming suspicious...

Who could have guessed that at her party, which she wanted to enjoy, where she wanted to feel really good once more in the company of her loved ones and friends (because who knew what was to come at her advanced age?)... that such a dubious well-wisher as this Yi would turn up? He had checked her out and, at the same time, softened her up like an insurance agent. But perhaps she was focusing too much on the dark side. She hadn’t even finished reading the letter. She adjusted her glasses and picked it up again.

For over a decade, our institute has been researching the possibility of prolonging the human lifespan. We have not gone public with this because it is a highly sensitive development that could be dangerously abused in the hands of malevolent interest groups. The criminal machinations in the trade of human organs are a well known and very sad example.

You will be pleased to learn that our Berlin institute, in cooperation with the Clinical Research Institute of the SNUH, Seoul, made a breakthrough in the intended direction several years ago. We have already tested the method (Anti Ageing Approach – AAA) in laboratory experiments. All experiments have resulted in a significant increase in the average lifespan of the test animals.

SNUH, she thought. Seoul National University. And what did the ’H” stand for? Hospital, perhaps? Then it would be an organisation similar to the Charité. She found it very gratifying how globally connected the local institutes were. For no rational reason, she saw this Yi in a more favourable light again. Perhaps her confusion was only based on the slight differences in behaviour.

The final experiment with primates has also been extremely successful so far. Please understand that these experiments can only be finally evaluated when the primates die. At present, it does not look like this will happen soon. Not only are they in good health, there are also clear signs of rejuvenation.

We are sure that AAA is now ready for use in human medicine. Naturally, it is not yet an approved treatment. However, our cooperation partners believe that a selected group of people should already benefit from the advantages of our findings.

I like to recall our conversation at your party. There I gained the impression – no, I am quite sure – that your spiritual aspiration is also directed towards our mutual goal, the improvement of human life. I would like to ask you to continue on this path! Give your plans a little more time! I take the liberty of quoting from your writings: What nature does not strictly forbid is permitted!

You sly fox! Trying to defeat me at my own game! Attempts like that, she thought, always fail. At least with me. Nobody likes to be beaten with his own words. And besides, he argues in a very suggestive way. What does it mean – our mutual goal of improving human life? That sounds almost as respectable as the claims of the agricultural genetic engineering industry to fight world hunger.

Using AAA would probably extend your life expectancy by twenty to thirty years. Enough time to see all your wishes and plans come true.

I’m sure you have questions. We can discuss all this on site at the Charité. I have reserved a ride for you in a week’s time. Our driver will contact you by phone beforehand.

Thank you again for your understanding and discretion!

Yours sincerely

Prof. Dr. Yi Hae-Chan

Institute for Cell- and Neurobiology

Charité Berlin

And now she was gliding in this large grey limousine closer and closer to her destination. Why, for goodness sake, had she accepted this invitation? She couldn’t quite explain it to herself. She remembered sitting in her armchair for hours in a daze, until it had become dark outside, and hadn’t rationally weighed up the pros and cons of this venture at all.

A thunderstorm of images had run through her head, flashing all the possibilities of being, from new infatuation to endless infirmity, alternately bringing sweat to her forehead and cold shivers down her spine. Finally, she had resorted to red wine to take the sharpest edges and spikes out of her thoughts, which of course had gone grandly wrong in the end. She hadn’t come to any decision until the driver’s call, which had only been yesterday morning.

She was healthy, she felt well, she was mentally in top shape. She had every desire in the world to go on living, not only to proceed with her scientific work, but also, for example, to see her grandchildren grow up. She wanted to travel, maybe even to Seoul one day, to actually give her lectures there. Or take a trip into space on one of those new tourist spaceships.

Every day exciting things happened that were either good or bad, fruitful or devastating, but in any case interesting. For example, the recent victory of medicine over two scourges of mankind, cancer and multiple sclerosis. Or holographic television, plastic products produced on one’s own PC printer, traces of life on Mars... not to mention the only just avoided meltdown at the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant in California, which might have cost thousands of lives, and finally prompted the USA to rethink their policy of environmental protection.

There were so many new things that already existed, and so much more to come. Yes, she still wanted to experience a lot, wanted to know what would happen next, didn’t want to just walk out in the middle of the film without knowing the end. Didn’t a famous poet – wasn’t it Elias Canetti? – say that death was nothing less than a scandal?

She wasn’t sure, though, how she would cope if everyone around her grew older, and she didn’t. If she had to watch Klara, her best friend, pass away, possibly after a serious illness like Thomas. Or, even worse, if her own daughters overtook her in the ageing process and were buried while she herself stood at their graves in the best of health. Is there anything worse than burying your own children?

Of course, perhaps she could arrange that her daughters would be the next to benefit from the therapy.. .and her sons-in-law. and her granddaughters with their relatives... Would she manage to avoid all the questions that were sure to arise – or to answer them with stock phrases?

She hardly noticed how the world around the car was gliding by more and more slowly, and only when it came to a halt with a gentle jolt did she wake up from her reverie and struggle back to the reality of the 11 motorway.

‘A traffic jam?’ she remarked anxiously.

‘Don’t worry, it won’t be long,’ the driver said. ‘I can already see the construction site.’

‘What are they building again?’

‘They are laying induction lines. Have you heard of Smacar?’

‘Isn’t it called Smart Car?’

‘Actually, it’s called Smart Caravanning. It’s about a power cable embedded in the roadway that takes over the control of the motor vehicles. They then automatically follow the cable without the driver having to intervene. He can sit back and take a nap or even stay at home.’

‘ Hmm... but hasn’t that already been around for quite some time?’ she asked in surprise.

‘Yes, self-driving cars have actually been around for a longer time,’ the driver confirmed. ‘But remember how unpredictable they were. There were always crashes, and afterwards people argued about who was to blame... the owner, the manufacturer, the builder of the road... Anyway, then they came up with the idea of the cable. By the way, this car is already prepared for it. It has all kinds of sensors and automatic controls. But so far we are lacking the corresponding roads.’

‘And that would be safer?’

‘Yes and no. Besides the cable, there is a second system, a chain of transponders on the crash barriers, just to be on the safe side. Things never go as they should in the beginning. What would happen, for example, in a power cut?’

‘Hmm.. .I see,’ Irmgard murmured thoughtfully.

‘If I had to pick you up in two years’ time, I would possibly just send the empty car. But then you would have to take a taxi to the motorway. And vice versa in Berlin.’

‘How convenient,’ she wrily replied.

They reached the Berlin Ring, and Irmgard felt the scheduled meeting with Professor Yi was becoming more and more tangible reality. Her hopeful optimism began to fade and give way to a feeling of distress. It is not at all certain that everything will run smoothly, she thought. Nothing works right from the start. Should she perhaps see herself more as a victim than a pioneer? As a guinea pig?

It wouldn’t even be necessary for the therapy to fail. Even if it worked wonderfully, there’d be numerous problems that no one was thinking about now. What would happen, for example, if she became ill? Or, more simply, if she had a serious accident that confined her to a wheelchair? Would she then be in it for fifty years or more? Where would that leave all her dreams for the future?

Last but not least: Who would actually pay for such a long-term care? Wouldn’t the insurance companies refuse? Wouldn’t they already do so in her case right now? After all, they had enough to do with the normal ageing of society. She imagined herself being cared for by a nice robot nurse who fetched her for dinner every evening with the words ‘Have we done our research today?’. She found herself once again in the middle of a huge avalanche of heavy, black thoughts.

With thin lips, she observed how the buildings of the city became taller and denser. In Pankow, the motorway changed into a six-lane city street, and soon they turned right into Tor Straße, which led to Oranienburger Tor.

‘We’re almost there,’ the driver remarked.

She pulled her handbag towards her, clutching it tightly.

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Of course, go ahead.’

‘What do you think about eternal life?’

The driver looked back, wondering. This was a question he rarely heard from his passengers. He concentrated on the traffic for a while before answering.

‘When, now, or hereafter?’

‘Now.’

‘Hmm... does it have to be forever? But a few years wouldn’t be bad, I guess.’

‘Are you sure?’

The driver shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, let me say it this way: Who really wants to die?’

II Gamma Flash

1.