Chapter Forty-Three
D-DAY
1
Alex spent all of spring and half the summer of 2008 buried in the laboratory. He laboriously worked through the thirty DNA samples and noted the results. He drew some graphs and finally wrote up a summary.
Lloyds phone rang at 8.30 in the morning on Saturday, December 20, 2008.
‘It’s your money.’
‘Lloyd, it’s Alex; I’ve got to see you. I’ve got something to show you.’
‘Good morning, Alex. What a surprise. We were wondering what happened to you. You seemed to have disappeared off the face of the Earth.’
‘I was in the lab up to my neck in process. Sorry that I’ve been a bit antisocial. I have some results and I’ve got to tell you that they raise more questions than provide answers.’
‘You know my love of mystery, Alex. I’ll be on the boat out the back when you come over.’
‘OK, Lloyd, I’ll see you soon.’
Alex showered, gulped some toast and coffee then slipped out of his apartment into the lift with his thesis under his arm. He stepped out of the lift into the basement garages. Everyone in the building knew when Alex was going out. Old Mrs. Berkowitz on the ground floor, referring to Alex’s Pantera, informed all the tenants that,
‘That thing registers on my sphincter scale.’
He parked the Beast in Lloyd’s driveway and walked through the open house down to the jetty out the back.
‘Lloydie.’
‘Alex.’
‘Are you provisioning for a trip?’
‘As a matter of fact, we are. We’re sailing up to Bobbin Head. We might stay there for a couple of days. I thought I’d catch the southerly predicted on Monday and tailwind it all the way up. We thought we’d spend Christmas Day on the boat.’
‘How lovely for you both.’
‘We would have invited you …’
‘We couldn’t have made it anyway. I am totally out of the loop and Sophia works on Christmas Day.’
‘It would have been very crowded anyway. You look like you could use a coffee.’
‘That would definitely hit the spot, Lloyd. So, you’ll be on the water for what, about a week?’
‘Yes, about that, give or take, depending on the winds. I’ll wait for the nor’easter to sail back down.’
Alex followed Lloyd into the modern kitchen. He watched him brew the coffee and said,
‘I’ve brought my summary.’
‘I see it there under your arm.’
‘There is something very perplexing about the picture that is emerging from the data, Lloyd.’
‘Perplexing?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, let me refresh my memory,’ said Lloyd scratching his chin. ‘You have now tested thirty more samples of numbered individuals who were alive when the samples were taken. And you have their dates of birth.’ He paused for a few moments, shook his head and remembered, ‘and now you have calculated their dates of death?’
‘Yes, all thirty of them.’
Lloyd poured the coffee. ‘One sugar and black for Alex. … So, we must sit down and go through your results. I am quite curious to find out why they are so perplexing.’
They relaxed in Mecca’s teak cockpit with their feet up on the bench seats taking sips of their coffees. The day was sunny but pleasantly cool as it was still early. They both wore their peak caps and Ray-Bans and truly looked the part of gentlemen at leisure.
Alex became momentarily mesmerised by the aesthetics of the surroundings. To his left was a line of magnificent, harbour-side mansions. In front of him were the rustic, wooden jetties with a small flotilla of expensive, recreational craft tied to them. On his right was the blue expanse of Rose Bay with all its moored boats and lively foreshore, which sparkled in a string of lights at night, and out in the distance was the magnificent harbour.
‘I stuck to people under forty,’ Alex began. ‘There are ten teens and sub-teens, ten in their twenties and ten in their thirties.’
‘Were those their ages when their samples were taken?’
‘No, that is their age now. I went by the birthdays. A couple of them are already dead, going by the data. They died sometime between when their in-vitro samples were taken and now.’
‘So … what? … You’ve got twenty-eight samples that are still alive and will die sometime in the future?’
‘I know the exact day.’
‘That is your postulate?’
‘In a nutshell.’
‘It will be impossible to prove as all the samples are anonymous. You won’t be able to track their lives and wait for them to die.’
‘No … it’s a problem.’ Alex thought for a while, then remarked, ‘The data revealed a statistical anomaly.’
‘You don’t say?’
Alex rummaged through his papers and produced a graph of the death dates. He had the years going up the left side and the cases along the bottom.
‘You see, Lloyd, the progression of deaths is as one would expect, fairly sparse and random, until you hit 2023, when they all die.’
‘What?’
‘September 2023, to be more exact. Out of the thirty samples, two are already dead, five die before 2023, and the other twenty-three of them all die on the same day, September 23rd 2023.’
‘On the same day?’
‘All twenty-three of them. I have not found a sample that will live beyond that day.’
‘I will attempt to wrap my brain around that, Alex. Do you have any theories?’
‘I don’t have the data on where these samples originate from. They could all have come from one area or they could all be very far from each other. It’s part of the anonymity protocol.’
‘So, they could be from all over Australia?’
‘I think there was even an exchange program with California. It is possible that all of the samples might have come from there, but there is no way of knowing for sure because all that data has been deleted.’
‘And they all die on the same day?’
‘Yep!’
‘What could kill all the people on the same day?’
‘A plague could,’ speculated Alex, ‘propagated through the airlines. Something that is immune to all our antibiotics.’
‘But would a plague kill everybody off on the same day? I don’t think so. It would have to be something else.’
‘Maybe a near-Earth object finally hits the bullseye.’
‘A near-Earth object, like a rogue asteroid or something, could definitely wreak enough havoc if it was big enough.’
‘An asteroid eh?’
Lloyd morphed into his disaster-movie-fanatic mode.
‘All the oxygen would get sucked out of the atmosphere in the humungous fire. All the cities on Earth would crumble to dust in the off-the-chart earthquakes that would follow the impact. There would be tidal waves everywhere. Everything would come to a stop and everything would die. The atmosphere would turn black and the Earth would go into a fifty-year, mini ice age. After fifty or a hundred years, when all the dust had settled and the skies cleared and ice melted, life in the form of plants would gradually re-emerge from the barren ground. But there would be no animals or insects, or people for that matter. Some fish might make it.’
‘So, all my samples get taken out by some great global event?’
‘Who is to know? No one will ever know until it happens.’
Alex gazed far into the distance and quietly assessed,
‘So, our numbers could be up, as well, on September 23rd 2023.’
‘Logic would have it.’
‘And the girls as well,’ moaned Alex.
‘2023 is not so far off,’ whined Lloyd.
‘Not now it isn’t,’ sighed Alex.
Lloyd rose to his feet, picked up the cups and declared, ‘I think we’re ready for another coffee.’
Alex followed him into the kitchen.
‘You know, Lloyd, I’ve just about made up my mind to test my own sample.’
‘Now that is the sort of statement that makes me think of movies about rooms with mattresses on the walls. It conjures up thoughts of unhinged brain surgeons trying to squeeze in a quick lobotomy before golf. Nobody could handle knowing his or her death date. Why put yourself through the trauma?’
‘My curiosity is my Achilles’ heel, Lloyd. When it itches I can’t relax until I’ve scratched it. And I have decided that I am not really that afraid of death, whenever it comes, so hang it all, I’ll test myself.’
‘I suspect that this thesis of yours is far from finished, Alex.’ ‘Yes … if it’s ever finished.’
2
The Royal National Park, just south of Sydney, echoed with the roar of a rampaging V8. It was 2.00am, Saturday, March 21, 2009. There was only one car negotiating the twenty miles of convoluted road through the Park and it sounded a lot like the Beast.
Behind the wheel of the supersonic projectile was Alex, oscillating between the heebie-jeebies and some type of strange euphoria. He had been working for a week analysing his own sample of junk DNA. He completed his analysis just after midnight on Friday night and immediately felt like he needed to drive to clear his confused mind. He drove south out of town and through the National Park. He’d driven the road before, and he loved it, although he thought it was a little ‘tight’ for the Beast.
He stopped on Bald Hill and admired the glittering south coast from there. There was no one around. Only one thought passed through his brain, over and over.
‘What does it all mean?’
He continued driving down the coast, all the way to Macquarie Pass. He snaked up the Pass and roared on to Robertson where he turned right onto the Hume Highway. He cruised down the empty freeway, back to Sydney, at a leisurely 130mph.
He either had his late dinner, or early breakfast, at McDonald’s in Engadine. He drove to the Eastern Suburbs and sat through the sunrise on a park bench in Rose Bay. He waited there for the hour to become ‘civilised enough’ to call Lloyd.
He heard the familiar sound of tennis balls being hit. He turned around and spotted two athletic-looking women warming up for a game. He glanced at his watch and thought to himself,
‘Seven-thirty. Another bloody hour.’
He killed a bit more time by admiring the sleek, sculpted lines of his Pantera, which were exquisitely highlighted in the morning light. As the sun rose further, he watched the harbour come to life in a myriad of watercraft. He watched the Watson’s Bay ferry round Point Piper and glide towards Rose Bay wharf. He could see Lloyd’s house from where he was sitting. During all this time his brain kept echoing with the same questions, ‘What does it all mean? ... How could it be possible?’
3
Lloyd’s phone rang at exactly 8.30am.
‘It’s your money.’
‘Hey, Lloyd. Are you up yet?’
‘I am now, Alex.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
‘Don’t be, I was up already.’
‘Are you good for a visit?’
‘Does the Pope wear a dress?’
Alex took the two-minute drive to Lloyd’s house, parked in the driveway, got out of the car carrying his notes and rang the doorbell.
‘That was quick,’ came the greeting.
‘Lloydie.’
‘Good morning, Alex,’ said Eva from the kitchen. ‘Come in and have a cup of coffee with us.’
‘Thank you, Eva.’
Alex couldn’t help but notice Eva. She still looked radiant for a lady in her early fifties. She had just been for a swim in the pool and her long, blond hair was still wet. She looked tall, tanned and slim, only dressed in her sunglasses, bikini and tie-dyed sarong, which was seductively wrapped around her slender waist. Alex thought that she looked like a ‘Nordic goddess’.
‘And to what do we owe this unexpected pleasure, Alex?’ asked Lloyd.
Alex placed a folder full of papers on the kitchen bench and exclaimed,
‘I am totally freaked out. I don’t know whether to scream for joy or shudder in fear?’
‘Ahh, the old joy, fear conundrum, eh?’ joked Lloyd.
‘What could be so frightening?’ asked Eva.
‘Plenty, trust me.’
‘Black with one sugar for Alex,’ said Eva as she stirred the coffee.
‘Yes. I like my coffee like I like my women,’ Alex quipped in humour.
‘Wouldn’t you say that Sophia’s complexion is more … cappuccino?’
‘Yes, that is true, but there is coffee in it, and it is sweet,’ replied Alex.
‘So, what has Alex come up with this time? I assume it is the thesis that has brought him here so early on a Saturday morning? It usually is the thesis.’ ‘The mongrel thesis, Lloyd,’ growled Alex.
‘More conundrums? Should we start organising a funeral?’
‘Conundrums? Try this on for size.’ Eva and Lloyd listened with interest. ‘I finally got the guts to test my own junk DNA. I had accepted the consequences of knowing my death date. It took me a week to find the repeats. It was about nine o’clock last night when I finally got to count them. And guess how many there were. I bet anything that you never guess.’
‘We’re not going to guess,’ said Eva. ‘This is too serious.’ ‘I’ll guess,’ said Lloyd.
‘No, you won’t! How many repeats was it, Alex?’
‘Seven hundred and twenty-three.’
‘Seven hundred and twenty-three?’ exclaimed both hosts at the tops of their voices. Lloyd broke into a belly laugh,
‘You’ll outlive us all, Alex.’
‘That’s impossible,’ surmised Eva. ‘What year will it be when you are 723?’
‘I’m thirty-two now and it’s 2009. When I’m 723 it will be the year 2700.’
‘Clearly, this throws a spanner into your junk-DNA-slash-time theory.’
‘It certainly does, Lloyd. The idea of me living that long is preposterous.’
‘At least you don’t get to check-out in 2023 along with the rest of us.’
‘No. Except that this is all too surreal.’
‘Something must be amiss. Are you sure that you followed correct procedure?’
‘You know that I’m a stickler for detail, Lloyd. I checked and re-checked and rechecked, and it came out the same every time. But it’s still impossible.’ ‘What now?’ asked Eva.
‘Well, I’ve got to analyse more samples. I need to expand the data base.’
‘Maybe you are an aberration, Alex,’ said Eva. ‘Maybe you are a one in a million individual whose DNA doesn’t behave like other people’s. Maybe the repeats in your junk DNA represent something else, something other than time.’
‘Not too many maybes about it, it would seem,’ replied Alex slightly dejected.
They sat there drinking their coffees and thinking about Alex’s thesis when Lloyd suddenly perked up and said,
‘What the hell, Alex, Eva and I have been talking it over and we’ve decided to volunteer as guinea pigs in your research.’
‘And that was even before we found out that you were going to live for seven hundred odd years.’
‘Yes, we definitely want to do it now.’ They both nodded.
‘Aren’t you guys afraid of knowing? You don’t have to volunteer. I’ve got plenty of samples.’
‘We’re intrigued.’ Replied Eva.
‘Yes, that’s the word … intrigued,’ Lloyd agreed.
4
Highly exhilarated by the fact that he hadn’t been foreordained to an early grave by his research, Alex returned to the painstaking work of analysing the junk-DNA samples of another thirty anonymous individuals. As well as those, he also had Lloyd and Eva’s cheek swabs and hair follicles.
It turned out that his personal relief at not being given an early death sentence outweighed his disappointment over his theory being potentially completely wrong. He thought about it for a very long time and figured that there were twelve deceased cases that supported his theory and only one that didn’t. And that was only because he completely dismissed the possibility of him living for 723 years. He just couldn’t conceive of a situation where that could be possible, so he discounted it out of hand.
He thought about his friends and wondered if he should perhaps conceal their results from them if they turned out to be too disturbing. In the end he decided to reveal everything to them because he knew that they trusted him implicitly and that there was no way that he could break that trust.
For the thirty samples he chose ones with the most recent birth dates. He wanted all of them to be alive at the time of testing and he wanted them to have the greatest potential for a long life.
The arduous analysis ground on for months. He forged ahead slowly, determined to solve the problem one way or another. Even though he refused to allow himself to believe the stupidity of living for 723 years, he did find, particularly during those long, late-night sessions in the lab, that his mind drifted into fantasies about it. He imagined what a life like that would be like, and how many friends he would lose through their dying out on him. Then he would suddenly snap himself out of it, mumbling something like, ‘That’s so dumb! Concentrate on your work.’
He decided that he was in no hurry to analyse Lloyd and Eva’s samples, and he told them so. He felt that he needed a deeper understanding, and more results, before he tackled their junk DNA. ‘If I tackle them?’ he thought.
He found the repeats, sub-repeats and sub-sub-repeats within the first sample and calculated its death date.
‘23rd September, 2023. Amazing!’
He analysed the second, third, fourth and fifth samples and their junk DNA indicated that they would also all die on 23rd September, 2023.
‘Incredible.’
Alex sat and thought about it for a while. He had the original twelve results that confirmed his theory. They were all samples taken from deceased people. He had another thirty results, two of which died between sampling and analysis, five of which would die before 2023 and twenty-three of which would all die on 23rd September, 2023. Now he had five more results all of which would also die on 23rd September, 2023. He still hadn’t found any samples that would live past that day, except for his own.
Over the next few weeks he analysed another five samples. The data indicated that one was going to die in 2019, but that all the rest would die on ‘D-day’, for death-day, which was what Alex now called the 23rd of September, 2023.
One time, while Lloyd paid Alex a visit in the lab, he suggested that Alex might want to test more deceased samples to reinforce his theory.
‘Twelve is hardly enough, Alex.’
‘I know, Lloyd, but the D-day phenomenon has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons. My focus has been deflected and I don’t know what is more important, my hypothesis, or trying to figure out why everybody carks it on the same day in 2023.’
‘Everybody except you, Alex.’
‘Yes, everybody except me.’
‘When will you analyse Eva and me?’
‘Are you sure that you want to know?’
Lloyd laughed, ‘We are absolutely positive. We’re not afraid of a little knowledge. You just go ahead and do it and let us worry about the consequences.’
‘Alright, I’ll do you guys next, but I don’t …’
‘Forget it, Alex. You just go ahead with the analysis and then come over for a visit and tell us what you have found. We’ll be waiting for your call.’
‘OK, Lloyd. Give me a couple of weeks to get it done and then I’ll come over.’ 5
It turned out that they got together for a mid-week lunch at Doyle’s. As it was Sophia’s day off, she joined them as well. It was a beautiful, clear, winter’s day and they all relaxed in the sun sipping their beers and perusing the menus.
They all noticed that Alex was behaving a tad more strangely than usual. In fact, he had been weird ever since he called them the night before. He appeared like a person that had seen the Almighty Himself. His whole face glowed and there was a strange, faraway look in his eyes.
‘We are well prepared for your news,’ said Eva. ‘Be completely relaxed telling us.’
‘Yes, Alex, let us have it right between the eyes,’ said Lloyd feigning gameness. In truth he was a little nervous and he did harbour some doubts about knowing his death date, although he concealed those doubts very well.
‘We cannot separate ourselves from new knowledge due to fear,’ he thought to himself. ‘If everyone did that, we’d all still be in the stone age.’
They all looked at Alex. He just sat there reading his menu. They looked at each other, smiled, and then looked at Alex again.
‘So, what is this, Alex, some kind of new torment?’ asked Eva.
‘Yes, Alex, are you going to tell us?’
‘Alright, alright,’ Alex replied slightly discombobulated.
There was more silence.
‘Well?’
Sophia placed her arm around Alex’s shoulder and kissed his cheek.
‘Please tell us, mon cheri.’
Alex opened his folder, pulled out the top page and gave it to Lloyd. Lloyd glanced at it, laughed out loud and passed it on to Eva.
She read it and exclaimed,
‘It says here that I’m going to live till 2686 … and that Lloyd is only going to live till 2613. What gives, Alex?’
‘That’s one unlucky 13,’ joked Lloyd. ‘How come I get short-changed?’
‘86 minus 13 is 73,’ Eva calculated.
‘What am I going to do without my Lloydie for 73 years? That is a whole lifetime.’
‘I told you not to do this, didn’t I?’ said Alex.
Lloyd completely lost control and broke out in a fit of hilarity. The others all looked at each other. Lloyd finally said,
‘Let’s see, I am fifty-nine now and it is 2009, plus, give me another look …’
‘It’s 2613, dear,’ said Eva.
‘I was born in 1950 and I’m going to die in 2613. I’m going to live to be 663 years old? Imagine the candles.’
‘It’s still not as old as Alex,’ said Eva. ‘He’s going to live till … what was it again, Alex?’ ‘2700.’
‘Obviously, this is some kind of practical joke, eh Alex? You’ve pulled the odd prank before.’
‘I wish it was, Lloyd.’
‘So, nobody lives past 2023, except for us? Won’t that be a bit lonely?’
‘I don’t know, Lloyd, but I’ve got to get more data. I would really like to find somebody else that is going to live past 2023 and have a normal lifespan.’
‘I think that you might have stumbled us into the twilight zone, Alex,’ said Eva.
‘Yeah, Alex,’ agreed Lloyd breaking into another bout of laughter. ‘I think I need another bloody beer, and is everyone ready to order?’
Everyone smiled and nodded, then Sophia announced,
‘I have been thinking about this, and I have decided …’
Lloyd cut her off. ‘Don’t tell me, please don’t tell me …’
‘I have decided that I want to know as well, whatever the truth is.’
‘Oh great,’ joked Lloyd, ‘now Sophia wants to book a ticket to the funny farm.’
‘Where my Alex goes, I go,’ she answered as she gave him another kiss on the cheek. 6
Over the next eighteen months, Alex searched out every deceased sample he could get his hands on. Each one of them confirmed his theory. The illusive segment of repeats in the junk DNA perfectly recorded the lifespan of the person from whom the sample was taken. This raised his confidence in the hypothesis, but increased his mystification in his, and his friends’, aberrant results.
He analysed Sophia’s sample and to his, and her, amazement he found out that her junk DNA revealed that she would die on 22nd December, 2700, the same day Alex was supposed to die.
The four of them spent New Year’s Eve, 2010, on Mecca, floating in Sydney Harbour just off the Opera House, waiting for the world-famous fireworks display.
Alex had completed his thesis and submitted it to Lloyd, his professor. It had been almost five years since he began his research into junk DNA. He had never worked so hard on anything before. He felt that now, finally, he had uncovered the true function of the mysterious part of the human DNA strand. However, no one on Earth was going to share in the knowledge. He and Lloyd had discussed it at length during many late evenings and decided that the public was not ready for this information. They felt that knowledge of their death date would change people’s behaviour in bizarre and unexpected ways. They could not explain why everyone else was supposed to die in 2023 and the four of them were supposed to live on through that date.
‘Nobody could handle it,’ surmised Lloyd.
‘It could lead to social chaos and only God knows how predetermination would affect organised religions and their philosophies.’
‘I think that it would even affect things like stock markets and economies.’
‘I accept your thesis, Alex, well done, but I think that you better think up another one for your master’s degree.’
‘I think so too, but what a ride, don’t you agree?’
‘Oh yes!’
‘Another glass of champagne anyone?’ asked Eva.
Everyone held their glass up. She topped them all up.
‘What should we drink to?’ she asked.
Sophia stood and suggested,
‘Let’s drink to life and love.’
Everyone stood and clinked their glasses, and repeated in unison, ‘To life and love.’
…….