The Nebuchadnezzar magazine

A short story by E.K. Anderson

“Put this on,” said the Salesman. He handed Demetria a halo-shaped visor. 

With difficulty, she placed it over her pompadour, and head. Then, with a buzz, the visor turned on. 

She rolled her wheelchair closer to the aquarium. 

“I don’t see anything,” she said.

“That’s because they glow in the infrared.”

The Salesman clapped his hands, and the living room lights turned off.  Then the tinted, photochromic glass of the aquarium cleared.

In the dark, Demetria watched the aquatic animals swim. They were of a simple sort: like archaic, large jellyfish with bulbous heads, two meters in diameter. Fleshy gills umbrellaed from under the mushroom crests, as hundreds of tentacles trailed beneath their bells.  Like a kaleidoscope, prismatic light reflected from off the creatures’ skin.

“They’re called Methuselahs,” said the Salesman.“How’s the display?” 

The Salesman put on his visor. 

“They’re beautiful,” Demetria said, “Absolutely spectacular.”

In the dark, the Salesman grinned. “Most of our clients say that.” 

He knelt at the foot of the aquarium, and tapped the glass.

Instinctively, one of the four Methuselah creatures directed several needle sharp tentacles in his direction. With a clang, the stingers struck the glass. 

Demetria flinched. 

“You’re safe. The plexiglass is seven inches thick.” The Salesman laughed. 

He clapped twice, and the living room lights came back on. 

With a sigh, Demetria relaxed in her wheelchair. She felt a bit of tension leave her frail body. 

“How long until I’ll be able to walk again?”

“That depends,” began the Salesman. “Most clients take a week tops.”

Demetria shifted in her wheelchair.

“And the procedure? How long will that take?”

“An hour.” He walked over to the aquarium. 

“Tomorrow, we will begin the procedure,” said the Salesman. “It is recommended to rest beforehand.” With a tip of his gray fedora hat, he left through the front door out of sight.

Demetria was left alone.

It was silent in her house, since the passing of her late husband. With the little eyesight she had, she looked at the hazy relics of her past life: the ottoman, the desks, the furnished cabinets. Everything reminded her of him.

The aquarium tank which was bought by Methuselah Enterprises, stood in the middle of her living room — under the chandelier. She liked it that way: always glowing, colorful, and vivacious against the silver backdrop of the living room decor.

She was feeling tired. A malaise: the sort of fatigue brought on by anticipation, and waiting. 

She turned her attention back to the aquarium.The Methuselahs’ soft undulating tentacles in the stream of the aquarium felt lulling as they bobbed and dashed in a trance-like faction. 

“Janus,” she said, “It is time for me to sleep.” 

The House mec folded from the charge station in the living room wall, and with assistance she was led to her bed room. 

Demetria slept well that night. She slept under the penumbric illusion that soon she would be safe from her delusion of old age; that soon she would be in a better place, as a result of the procedure she was to undergo tomorrow.

*

She was awoken by the doorbell, a small tintinning that registered on the intercom in her room.

“Methuselah Enterprises,” said a voice on the Telex. 

She could barely make out the face on the Telex screen, but she noticed the gray of the Salesman’s hat and suit, along with his black tie. 

Hurriedly, she commanded the House mec to gather her clothing, and spray her with Eau de Parfum rose-colored water. 

She met The Salesman in the living room. The Salesman carried a briefcase.

“Perfect,” said the Salesman. “I thought I’d catch you a little past the hour. It is eleven past seven.” He grinned. “Shall we begin?”

“Yes. Let’s begin.” 

He put his visor on.

The Salesman opened up his briefcase. Out from the briefcase came a strange oblong apparatus; one that, when unfolded, rolled on one wheel and balanced gyroscopically. It followed him like a dog.

“Our procedure begins with the centrifuge machine.”

He walked to the aquarium, and gazed at the glass through razor thin bifocals.

“That’s odd,” said the Salesman. 

“What?” asked Demetria. “What is it?” 

The Salesman pointed to the aquarium.

“You see this here?” His finger touched the glass. “These phosphorescent patterns.” 

“Phosphorescent?” she asked, “What do you mean by phosphorescent?” Why did the Salesman have to speak in such cryptic language? thought Demetria. Couldn’t he speak plainly?

He remarked at the perplexed expression on her face. 

“The colors,” he said, “They’re  abnormal.”

He clicked his tongue 

 “To be blunt,” he began, “They are irregular.” He paused. 

“In what way?” Demetria asked.

“Usually the colors – whatever they may be – remain the same. Here, though, we see a sort of strobe-like flashing, like an S.O.S. mechanism that the creature employs. This is an advent similar to hyperventilation in humans with an increase of cortisol. The creature employs this during moments of predation and camouflage. It does this normally during predation, but not usually before transdifferentiation.”

He sighed. 

“In other words, the creature is stressed.” 

“It’s nothing to worry about,” he continued. “It will be taken care of. We shall keep an eye on it.”

“What do you mean: transdifferentiation?”

“They’re maturing, that’s what I mean. Changing from one form to another, by cellular repair. It’s what makes them practically immortal.”

The Salesman put on his visors. He flipped on the light switch. Immediately, the aquarium glass darkened. 

“On.” the Salesman said. A red colored eyelet turned on from the mech that came from his suitcase; this then turned to blue. With sudden speed, the mec rolled over to Demetria, who remained in her wheelchair. 

From a door in the mech’s center came two tubes. The larger tube extended to the aquarium. With a serpentine protrusion, it entered through a vent hole. With much precision, it captured a Methuselah creature. A large needle punctured the bell, and subsequent flesh.

Demetria squirmed.

A green substance–most likely blood–seeped through the tube. 

From the second, a smaller tube protruded a needle. It snaked towards Demetria like a cobra.

“Not to worry. It is only taking a sample of your blood.”

 A blue light turned on from the end of the tube.

“Roll up your sleeves,” said the Salesman. “The mec is searching for a viable vein.” 

Demetria nodded in acquiescence.

“Scanning,” said the mech. Demetria saw a green light and the network of veins on her arm. The veins and capillaries looked like branches, small tributaries. 

The mec found her brachial artery, and with absolute precision, stuck.

“Very nice,” grinned the Salesman. 

Blood flowed from the tube to the center of the console, in the heart of the mech. 

“Sample viable,” said the mech.

“So begins our first dose,” said the Salesman. 

He collected the sample.

“This will be the return,”  said the Salesman. The green fluid from the aquarium of the Methuselah creature flowed through her veins. When the green serum reached her she tasted a metallic flavor in the back of her throat. Something like the faint taste of sea water. 

She closed her eyes. She imagined water, a vast body of water– like the lake she had grown up by, near Townsend. She could see the lake in her mind’s eye: at summer time. Just faintly, she could feel the golden heat of the midsummer sun. 

After an hour, the procedure was complete. The Salesman grinned. 

“Well done.” He looked at his silver watch. “Perfect. Enough time for breakfast.” He cleared his throat. “How do you feel?”

“I feel—” Demetria began, “I feel okay. Quite well in fact, but tired. Oh so, very tired.” She searched for the term. At ease. Spritely. Youthful. Awake.

“Wonderful,” said the Salesman. He whistled and the Rover removed her IV. It sanitized itself, folded neatly with a pneumatic hiss, and returned back into his suitcase.

“As always let us know of any new advancements,” the Salesman said. “Including any side effects.”

He tilted his head.

“May I have the visors back, Demetria?”

Demetria shuttered. She liked observing the Methuselahs. 

“How much are they?” Demetria said. 

“One hundred denarii for every kilowatt hour.”

“I’ll take it.” 

She nodded her head, haphazardly in her wheelchair. As a widow, she had saved her ex-husband’s pension. He had left her with a modest sum: enough for the house, enough for the Methuselah startup hedge fund, and enough for her purchase.

She missed late husband dearly. Just then, she redirected her thoughts, and came back to herself in the living room, and back to her body in the wheelchair.

“Ah, yes. Of course!”

Something about The Salesman, irked her. He was unlike her ex-husband. His demeanor: uncanny.

Impatient, she tapped her foot on the floor, desiring to observe the creatures in solitude. She adjusted her buttocks in the seat uncomfortably. The Salesman, observed, subconsciously aware of her demeanor, seemed to catch on to her reluctance, and subtle apprehension.  

“Ahem!” said the Salesman.

“Feel free to notify us with any questions!” he said. “The new program for administration has already been downloaded to your House mec. It now knows the surgical functions it is to perform.”

The Salesman turned, and pulled out a pamphlet from his chest pocket.

“As for us at Methuselah Enterprises, here is a brief history of us, and our cause,” said the Salesman. “And as always feel free to donate to our charity—.”

“I’m good,” Demetria said. 

“Very well,” said the Salesman.

He tipped his gray cap, and left. “I wish you well.” 

She skimmed over the pamphlet for a clarification of her problem – but not for insight. Demetria read the history of the company. This is what she deduced:

When the surveyor submarines found the Methuselahs at ten thousand feet below sea-level, the oceanographers had thought them a species of jellyfish. They’re infrared lighting, along with their translucent bodies had made them difficult to find, but after a submersible thermal expedition for underground volcanoes — they were found. After collecting several specimens, the marine biologists had discovered them: an unclassified species, apart from current taxonomy. The Methuselahs were another animal, classified as something else entirely.

The first discovery was that the species could not be categorized under present nomenclature. No counterpart of their kind had yet been discovered, and as such needed a nomenclature of their own: Methuselah Faux – Cnidaria. The second discovery was that Methuselahs exhibited extraordinary curative properties from their secretions. 

These secretions, integral in the process of “transdifferentiation,” or cellular reprogramming, as it was called — gave the Methuselah’s extended life. According to the scientific paperwork, they contained an abundance of “myelin and glial bodies.” When injected in humans, the panacea mended broken neural tissue. Such ailments as paralysis, and cognitive deficiencies could be cured –provided the subjects continued their purchase of new Methuselahs from the Organization of the Enterprise on a monthly basis.

When the harvesters came after the polyp blooms, and the prospectors bought plots of subterranean land near the vents of the Marianas Trench, the corporations claimed the site under civil pretense, and booted out the biologists. 

The secretion–sold under the same name as the animals–was auctioned to drug testing facilities, and after passing the necessary governmental statutes (of which there were many) sent pharmaceutical companies for mass distribution to ailing consumers.

That was how the Methuselah Project was born. 

She selected the digital Universal product code with her visor, and watched the convention talk. A holograph of a tall, wan man appeared on her visor, with a caption: Dr. Ralph Fineburge, Ph.D. CEO.

He wore a black zipped cardigan, and black tie.

“These animals…” began Ralph. “These pockets of life are the answer to our mortality. A fountain of life, discovered in an organism. They have been scouted out and appreciated for their beauty. Their prismatic horror is awe-inspiring. Methuselah is the answer. Welcome to the founding of Methuselah Enterprises!” 

The crowd clapped and cheered.

“We are currently in lieu of testing the Methuselah serum, and their bodies on human subjects. Trials begin next year.”

The crowd of academics, and socialites applauded gainfully.

Demetria turned off her visor. That was all she could take for today. She felt tired.

Then her Telex phone buzzed, and she turned off the television. She answered the sales representative in gray. He greeted her with a cordial grin. 

“Mrs. Conde,” said the rep, “We have just finished the first trial of the myelination process.” His voice boomed over her rec room speakers. 

“That’s good to hear,” she said. 

“You should be feeling the effects within a day’s time or so,” The Salesman said.

“As for now,” he said, “We recommend that you get a good rest after your dose.”

“You should be good for the next week until your next dose.”

With a blink of her eye, she set the humidifier to a higher setting. In her wheelchair, she ambulated to her bedroom. 

“Up,” she said, and the mechanical crane aided her into bed. 

She rested well that evening. 

This is what she dreamed.

She was seated in an operating theatre. Down in the center, was an operating table covered in a dome of glass.

Within the dome, she saw a large pale creature, human-like in form, laying flat on an operating table in the laboratory. She struggled to tell if the creature was breathing, but a frill of purplish gills flowed from its neck. These expanded and retracted.

From her vantage point, the creature was large, nearly the size of two technicians. It lacked a nose, eyes and facial features. Surrounding its head, about its mouth, was a mane of tentacles. 

With its body attached to a quantum server, the neurotranscriptionists set to work. They brought smaller relay machines forward, and began cataloguing its memories on a Telex, picosecond by picosecond. They’d regressed back on to earlier memories. Back into subterranean wilderness, back in the murk of the subterranean trench.

Xosia, read the code upon the Telex. My name is Xosia. 

The main laboratory technician walked over with a syringe. From the creature’s torso, he harvested green serum.

“Polyps,” said the laboratory technician. “We must harvest them. An entire life tucked away in quantum drives.”

“Check it under the microscope,” said the lead technician. “I need to know the side-effects of the serum.”

“Of course,” said the less senior tech.

The lead tech was speaking to the audience now, from inside the globe.

This is what he said:

“It is during this process of transdifferentiation, that we imbue the Cnidarian with an auto phagocyte, prompting its cells to emigrate away from its intended flowering body. The consequence is a depletion of cells on its hermaphroditic behalf, but the cause is just. These cells are highly myelinated, similar to our glial cells in our nervous system. What we harvest though are stem cells, which when the polyp replicates, is a panacea to end all ills. 

He continued.

“The side-effects of Methuselah, though, is a heightened tolerance for the drug. An exponential decay of glial bodies, which results in shorter youthful vigor. Hysteria, such as self-bifurcation, or personality incongruities have been reported in our sub-humanoid, sentient subjects. These subjects have then required a greater dose, after each sequential administration. The Methuselah Cnidarians, have been all but depleted. With similar nematocysts to the now extinct Portuguese Man o’ war, a single sting is fatal. 

However as a defense, this is how they breed themselves. 

“These larger alien hosts,” said the lead surgeon, “are their final metamorphosis.”

She saw the face of the Senior tech. It was the Salesman. 

*

The next week, Demetria awoke before the alarm clock. Oddly enough, she had woken before the House mec had detached from the wall. With apprehension, she sat up. She no longer felt the pain in her lower back. The ache and arthritis she had endured in her hips were gone. 

She sat up without a moment’s hesitation, and placed the full weight of her body on her feet. This full weight, she felt without any difficulty. 

Ambulating to the bathroom, she dropped her glasses. They fell on the linoleum tile, and shattered on the floor. 

When she looked back up at the mirror, the expression on her face changed immediately. Looking back at her was her own youthful reflection. She saw her rose-puckered lips, the supple porcelain flesh of her face, and a brightness in her eyes that she had not captivated for some time. 

The gray in her hair was waning — and the tussled clumps she had manically attempted to comb through had fallen out like wool.

She was young again. She yelled.

The House mech whirred towards her. “Do you need assistance, Ms. Conde?”

“No,” she said pensively, “I do not.”

Just then the Telex display turned on. It was the Salesman. 

“Good morning, Ms. Conde.”

His grin showed his entire top rows of teeth.

“How do you feel this morning?”

“I feel alive,” said Demetria. “I feel young again.”

The Salesman smiled.

“Good.”

“We are ready for the second dose,” said the Salesman.“As far as the Methuselahs go: they only require feeding once a month,” said the Salesman. “Like the now extinct Greenland shark, their metabolism runs extremely slow.”

*

The next morning Demetria woke. She could hear a resonance in her voice, a high pitched chipper that she’d remarked in her early twenties. She combed her hair, and laughed at her reflection. 

Today, though, she felt even more spritely and young. She felt a spring in her step, unlike the past ten years spent in her wheelchair with Lou Gehrig’s disease. 

In fact, she felt like swimming. 

With a subtle apprehension, she whistled towards the House mec. It remained in a state of Repose. 

This is what we are made for. Said a voice in her head.

She placed the visors back on, and observed the Methuselahs. 

Of the four that were in the aquarium, three remained.The one though, that had been pricked,  swam tiredly. The bell was drooping, and several of its tentacles dragged along the aquarium floor.

Runt. I need water. Said the voice. 

She paid the voice in her head a little heed though. She thought it little more than a tired chant of her mind. Thus, she began the continuation of her day. 

She called on the House mec to start her breakfast. She called on the gramophone to begin the music of the Day. 

She was happy. She could observe a lot of the world from her living room with a youthful, sharpened eye. 

Demetria saw the objects in her living room with sudden, sharp clarity. Like a gossamer veil, the fog of her legal blindness slowly lifted. Here was the Chesterfield loveseat with a tatter in the Egyptian cotton fabric. There, her scattered collection of the Harvard classics lay atop the counter. Everything rested as the House mech left them, in a disarray she was familiar with, and to her preset specifications.

She imagined herself outside of the senior home, in the real world outside the Air Dome. In the days before the Yellow Smog.  

She set her dose to 30 cc’s, and the Telex on to distract herself.

In the living room Buddy Hackett’s hologram laughed, and she laughed along with him.

She heard a shrill cry, like an infant on a baby monitor. Buddy Hackett laughed in her ossicle intercom. 

Herein lies your salvation, in your bane.  The voice waned… 

As she sat on the levitating couch, she watched the green Methuselah serum enter her veins from the plasmapheresis machine. Up through the cylinder, it flowed through plastic tubules. The sensation felt like several hundred fire ants under her flesh, each biting with serrated mandibles. 

The intense discomfort lasted a minute, however. Then, after her platelets returned, the pain abated. The House mech slowly weaned her off the machine. It removed the needles, and disinfected the puncture sites. 

“Administration complete,” said the House mech. Its resonant voice sounded watery, and sweet over the living room amplifiers. It walked over to her on eight feet, and extended four open arms.

 “Now, do you require any assistance ambulating?“

“Not today,” Demetria said. “Let me lie here for a bit.” Demetria felt a sudden conviction in her voice. The timbre of it, now at a higher octave, bore a livened resolve she remembered decades ago. 

As she tried to stand again, Demetria noted two things. 

The first was that the rasp in her breath was gone. The second was that her wrinkled flesh had become smooth and supple enough to regain sensation in her extremities. 

An hour later she could stand without the aid of the couch, unbidden and unassisted. Even so, the burning persisted to a lesser degree. Her condition was chronic, a suffering she bore every second of each day- the severity of which she barely kept at bay.

Two years ago, her doctor had diagnosed her with a slew of afflictions: acute pulmonary thrombosis, fibromyalgia, arthritis, and early onset Alzheimer’s. At the time, she hadn’t known how to take the diagnoses, but she’d welcomed his prescriptions. She would ingest or aspirate any pharmaceutical drug if only it meant life, with less pain.

She looked at the wedding pictures with her and her late husband. She saw the myriad of faces: the faces of her children who had moved away, the faces of her late aunts, cousins, sisters. 

No one paid her a visit anymore. No one sought her out anymore, via a visit or Telex. Everyone had either moved on or passed on. 

She looked at the photograph. In chronological order she witnessed herself aging in living color. 

She ate her breakfast in peace.

She stood for a second to allow the blood to flow to her feet. Like a toddler she walked over to the window wearily.

One step, she thought, two steps. 

She looked back at the aquarium. Three of the Methuselahs swam placidly. The smallest one with a droopy bell bobbed idle in the water, tentacles drooping.  They all appeared to be looking at her — following her through the outskirts of the aquarium.

 Outside the sun shone with such brilliance, a remembrance of the lake she had lived near in her youth. 

She opened the door and took an ice-cold breath of fresh air. She changed into a slim black swimsuit from her closet. 

The Retirement community was quiet. She had lived at the facility for the past decade after her diagnosis.

The Julian sisters — both eighty– and twins — would remark on her passing.

“There she goes,” they’d say. “The old crow,” Sharon remarked. 

“I wonder how long until she bites the dust,” Sheryl Julian said.

“I bet she rolls over in her grave tomorrow,” Anna said laughing.

Both sisters were both wheelchair bound as a result of their osteoporosis. Both had suffered edema with giant swelling in their feet. Both were bitter.

Demetria deemed them observers only, and tried imagining herself swimming in water.

“How long until you get rid of that hairstyle?” Anna remarked. “It looks like a crow’s nest.”

“Not any time soon,” said Demetria.

Anna Julian smirked.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve got an egg for a brain in there somewhere. Doesn’t make sense to get rid of what little’s in there.”

And they laughed and they laughed.

Demetria ignored the crass statement. Instead she turned her attention to the pool boy, Carl.

Normally, she could get along with most folks with passivity, but the Julian sisters enjoyed a rise out of her.

She chose not to react.

Gossipping geese! She thought as she wheeled herself away.

On Fridays,she could barely stand the chatter at bingo. It was rare that anybody passed through but senior citizens and their aides.

She was beginning to feel like a pariah in her own community.

She wheeled on over to the community pool. The poolboy mopped the deck under the awning. He used a skimmer and net as he cleaned. 

“Good morning, Demetria,” the poolboy said. 

“Good morning, Carl.” Demetria gave him a wry sensuous smile. 

“New swimsuit?” Carl said.

“Yes.”

 She blushed sheepishly, and laughed-tussling her hair. 

She placed her feet in the shallow end of the pool, and slowly descended. She tilted her head back in the water.

Instinctively, Carl rushed over.

“Ma’am do you need help?”

“Not today, Carl. “Today I feel well enough to do it myself.’

She noticed his musculature, his smooth and tanned bronzing skin. With an abdomen like a Grecian Adonis, he wore aviator sunglasses. He smiled at her.

She smiled back.

He walked toward her, she turned her head. 

The aged ladies of the retirement home sat under the awning. They drank Nutri smoothies, wore orange bronzer, and sported Nylette bathing suits.

Clucking hens, she thought. 

She stayed in the pool for some time, until the sun bothered her. She had an insatiable thirst, and a craving for fish.

Dark hair filaments extended from her arms and legs. Her hair grew coarse.

She noticed a bump on her rear, near her tailbone.

Once more said the Salesman there are indeed side effects, a risk you well know of.

The vestigial tail should shrink with time, as well as the webbing with a subsequent dose.

A subsequent dose!

The Salesman caught his breath.

“Yes, Demetria, this is a long term treatment, a panacea solution for your, uh—”

“Condition,” said Demetria coldly.

“Yes, your condition.”

Well I want it reverted.

“We can’t cut you off all at once,” said the Salesman. “That would require a slow titration.”

“No worries though!” said the Salesman with a jovial expression, “Our geneticists are busy at work making clones of their original counterparts. They base them off flaked, stray cells. Though these clones won’t be able to produce the equivocal polyp serum output, they will ease the side-effects.”

“So you mean to say,” started Demetria, “that I bought the last Methuselah, and as such can’t have anymore.”

She looked at the aquarium tank. One remained.

“It seems they are–” she struggled for the correct word. “Cannibalistic.”

“Correct! It is their nature. Thus, we are out of stock. But only temporarily. Might I suggest our other products, of the aphrodisiac variety? For only eighty denarii,  we can ship and handle them to your address—”

“No!”

She ended the call on her Telex display. The stock of Methuselah Enterprises was increasing. The spike she could see on her Telex display rose to an exponential rate. 

In the year 3001, people didn’t just die of old age anymore; there was always a name for it – an over specificity of the condition. Not knowing was the scary part, so the medical books were rewritten to cater to the mental wellbeing of patients: to tickle the ears of the people and tell them what they wanted to hear. The predominant social mantra was this: if it was broken, it could be fixed. And if whatever ailed you couldn’t be fixed, you merely lacked the tools for the job. 

For a moment she took solace in her pain, knowing that very soon her misery would lessen.

No sedative, no pain reliever could assuage the effects of the serum’s direct neural stimulation. To combat it, the Institute had prescribed intravenous Methuselah extract, a multi-panacean, and anti-hysteric. 

The Enterprise had also prescribed a cervical ViComm implant that would superimpose placid images on her retina to distract her from the discomfort. 

“Turn on meditation lecture 270 of The Lebanon courses,” she told the House quantum server. 

“Lebanon course 270 in progress,” said the server over the living room amplifiers. 

Demetria focused inward and closed her eyes to view the guided presentation. She saw mountains and a great river with countless tributaries. Cedars lined its banks. The images, superimposed on her retinas with the aid of a ViComm device to her visual cortex were meant to calm her. This Nirvana, of which she had become habituated, eased her pain.

When she opened her eyes, she discerned an afterimage outlaid over her furniture. A face flashed. Who’s

She wasn’t sure. She ignored it. 

“I want Bach,” she said, “Followed by Beethoven” and the music conducted to her ears.

“Your threshold is getting higher,” said the House mech. 

“Thank you,” she said. “Take a break today. Charge.” 

“As you wish,” said the House mech. It bowed its forelimbs in a sort of humble courtesy, then shuffled off to its vaulted charging port. As its limbs folded in upon itself like a dying spider the vault closed.

Though the House mech normally did the chores, Demetria felt the strength after the serum to do them herself. Besides, after retiring without any living relatives the work provided her with purpose. She started her chores early on this day, dusting the kitchen surfaces, and spraying anti-allergen over her upholstery. She tended to the organic garden, and fed the rabbits before their scheduled slaughtering time.

She adjusted the humidity of the glass display, where she kept two peonies in a climate controlled environment. Though they hadn’t grown past their budding phase, and were indefinitely sterile,  her daily CryoMist expenditures had kept them alive for two years. True, the cost of Cryo upkeep was well beyond the means of her pension, but the trillion denarii funds from her late husband’s life insurance would ensure her comfort for a very long time.

The greatest investment from CryoGen, of course, was the Methuselah jellyfish – what the techs called a miraculous Cnidarian discovered in the Merriana’s Trench. 

From the Cnidarian, the Methuselah substance it secreted had kept her alive for well over a century. 

Demetria’s skin burned. 

*

Again, she felt it in her body. She felt the serum work in her bones, the osteocytes mending, her vertebrae straightening. The pain she had felt in her lower back was gone.

Her glasses fell on the linoleum floor. The glass in the lenses shattered.

When she looked back at the mirror she saw a crispy look, a serene face – the face she recalled before Aaron proposed. Free, and youthful, joyful, youthful, and fresh.

She applied a rosy Eau de Parfum, and set out towards her wardrobe. 

She inspected the clothes, the type that she’d long worn after her diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s. Most were frayed, tattered, some were sun worn, and moth-bitten. 

She found a sun dress at the back of her closet, something she had worn in her late 30’s.  

She gazed at herself in the mirror. Her form had been thinner, before the onset of her disease. Her legs wan. 

*

She walked out the portico to the awning by the pool. The Julian sisters were gone and she could only see Carl.

Her and him.

She swam freer than she’d ever swam before.

She noticed the dark hairs alongside her arms extend. When she placed them in the water they wriggled.

Cilia.

Strange, she thought. Another side effect she would have to tell the Salesman.

She spent the better half of the morning swimming. Then, at last when the sun reached noon, she took her towel, and walked alongside the pool.

“You look well,” Carl remarked. “In good form.”

She smiled, and gave him a wink.

*

Carl, and her talked late into the evening. Though younger than her, the man had a charm to him that she could not readily forget. Like Apollo, his blue watery eyes seemed to flicker against the backdrop of the pool.

His soft gaze never left hers – even when she looked away sheepishly.

*

They drank red wine, and ate an order of hors d’oeuvres. They talked about the days before the Yellow fog, and his days living in the domed city.

They enjoyed the evening together. Her hips and loins gyrating to him: in unison. 

*

She woke up next to Carl. The first stream of golden sunshine splayed through her window. 

“Carl?”

His body was smooth, and pristine. His tan body lying against the pillow.

As she got up she recognized dark splotches and bruises on his abdomen. She saw purple veins from his groin, up to his abdomen. 

There was a bite-sized hole in his chest.

“Carl?” 

“Carl!” she yelled. His cold body rocked as she tried to rouse him. In his eyes she saw the pallid azure of many waters in his eyes.

Before she could react, the tentacles spewed from her fingers. She felt a surge flow through her. 

Poison. 

She walked to the bathroom and looked at her countenance. In the mirror she saw a stream of blood trickle from her lips. She opened her mouth, and observed her teeth. Like a sea urchin, another row was impacting down her throat.

The purple, barbed tongue flicked.

She could feel the hairs on her arms and hands grow.

*

The rest she could hardly remember. She broke the mirror at her own reflection. She called on the Telex for the Salesman, but it was the weekend and there was no answer.

Water.

She needed water. That was her instinct. 

She ran outside her house, and to the resident pool. 

The Julian sisters were laying outside. Both were sunbathing on their white patio chase chairs.

Demetria crept up slowly.

The stingers stuck in Anna’s flesh, usurping her neck, crushing the larynx.

Then Demetria’s other tentacle grabbed Sheryl’s arm, snapping the humerus bone from shoulder.

Like knives the barbed tentacles punctured her chest and heart.

We need the intercostal stem cells, said the voice. The fruition of the stem cells. Harvest. Fresh, supple blood. 

Then, Demetria gorged. With a proboscis she lapped up the intestines. She ate the brains and liver.

Before Demetria could react, a plume of tentacles sputtered forth from her face.

Demetria was now a creature that she could not recognize.

You are his rib. Go!

She walked to the pool side. 

She witnessed the last Methusah umbrella lying out faintly.

She noticed thick hairs about her face. Thin, and dark they pointed downwards like thorns.

She attempted to pluck them. They receded. 

She took out her razor. They bled.

What the–?

She tasted crimson iron in her mouth and threw up blood. She opened her mouth. She saw a purple winding spike for a tongue.

And her teeth. They felt loose around jaw. She checked her canines. And behind her human teeth, she saw another row. They were sharp.

She walked to the living room. The Methuselahs floated all together. The fourth was gone, and the remaining three looked bigger. No trace of the fourth one was left, only a select few tentacles upon the aquarium floor.

We are stealing their memories.

Hurriedly she dialed the Salesman on her Telex.

“Please leave your virtual message after the call—”

It is only I who remain. Said the creature.

She stumbled into the living room — a globular carnage, hulking and steaming.

“Water!” She said, “I need salt water!”

Drink. Said the last remnant.

She lumbered to the center of the living room.

“Do you need any assistance Mrs. Conde?” said the House mech.

“No,” she said. She broke the mech by its arms, and flung the remnant rubble on the couch.

She stuck her proboscis in the aquarium tank vent. Siphoning a plume of water, she drank.

Like a slug, she drank from the tank. Her face suctioned to the glass.

The struggle was brief. The creature swam desperately away but the suction was too much. Demetria’s tentacles waged against the Methuselah’s. Then, like a tug of war, Demetria seized the creature by the bell, and began eating.

I suppose I will make the sacrifice.

Demetria ate the tendrils. Though her mouth stung, she ate the nematocysts, the flowering body, and then the bell.

She bit with a crunch into the tentacles.

The aquarium tank has a similar Ph and pressure to that of the creatures’ subterranean habitat, Demetria. 

“We will do our utmost to circumvent any difficulties you may undergo. But for right now, breathe.”

She contorted her body, and entered the aquarium through the oxygen vent: her muscle, and bones now pliable. 

She felt free. Free to breathe. Free to drink the salt water with her new set of gills she breathed in rich salt water. 

Finally,  she thought,  I can breathe.

Like a mermaid she lay at the bottom of the tank, with a bloated belly. She was full.

Xosia, the voice said, I am Xosia.

*

The next morning she woke to a tapping on the other side of the aquarium.

The Salesman grinned. 

“Test subject 144. Trial completed.” he said.