Chapter Twenty Four

"Many people wondered about us, about how long we've been here, about how old we are. To my knowledge I am about one hundred and sixteen now, but who is to know? After living on Terra Two for so long one is bound to lose track of Earth years. The days are different here, the years too. No two years are the same, the paths of the suns oscillate and their cycles are roughly ten Earth years long,  but it's almost impossible to discern repeating patterns."

"We lost track of our age in this coffee paradise with no seasons, how does one weigh the passing of time when one's body doesn't change? I think I'm around one hundred and sixteen now, give or take a few decades."

 

"Have you seen sister Roberta?" Seth asked. She was walking very fast towards the weather station and the sisters to whom she addressed the question started following her around, just to be able to answer. If one watched Seth walk places and didn't know her one would think that the world was in a constant and imminent crisis that she and she alone was capable to address. If one spent some time with Seth as the sisters did, one knew there was no particular urgency to any of her daily tasks, she just walked fast.

The logistics team had panicked a few times during the early years, seeing her swoosh across the landscape as if the universe was coming to an end and dropped what they were doing to assist in whatever seemed to be the emergency, only to later get used to ignore the commotion and follow up with their tasks.

Seth didn't close any doors behind her, she just busted carelessly through them like a force of nature, so fast that she created air movements around her passage. Sarah found this somewhat endearing because it brought back fond memories of her grandfather who was exactly the same: he never sat down for more than three minutes, never spent more than fifteen minutes without planning a new activity, and never closed a door, a drawer or a cabinet. If it didn't leak, waste energy or smell, whatever it was, he left it open.

The consequence of this habit was that her grandparents' house was some form of sheltered extension of the outdoors where one experienced nature without being impacted by it.

Of course on Terra Two the weather was a non-issue, since the temperature never changed and the rain didn't really fall like it does on Earth, evenly distributed from a large and undefined cloud formation. Rain on Terra Two felt like the amusement park giant bucket, you had to be right under the condensation cloud at the precise time it poured out.

"She's in her lab", sister Jove said, trying to catch her breath and keep up with Seth.

"As grateful as I am for all the wonderful innovations sister Roberta contributed to our community I have to say I am a little worried about whatever she's doing right now that occupies all her attention. I still break into a cold sweat whenever I think about her mega magnet antigravity machine."

Seth and the sisters reached the weather station where the former recorded the 82 degree temperature and the 87% humidity on her tablet and observed the wind direction: N to NW. She turned on her heels and started rushing back, with the poor sisters being pulled in the vacuum she created behind her like small boats in the wake of a coast liner.

"She's working with Sarah", sister Novis added, and this piece of information made Seth stop and turn around.

"Now I really have to know what they are doing", Seth frowned, curious. She changed direction suddenly and started towards the lab.

In the middle of the room a holographic projection of Sarah's insides floated two feet above ground, while sister Roberta was asking the machine to peel off layers and turn organs and body systems on and off. Ten feet to the left, like a commentary on the virtual image was Sarah in the flesh, also floating two feet above the ground, but fortunately with her epidermis fully intact. All around the device the cats of Terra Two gathered in tight concentric circles, so close together it was really difficult to walk towards it without stepping on them. They all looked delighted and their collective purring almost covered the strange low hum that emanated from the machine.

Sister Roberta kept giving commands to the machine, asking it to slice thin layers and magnify, magnify, magnify.

"Here they are, the sweet little darlings", said sister Roberta as she watched a little immortal colony move about its business on the surface of a mitochondria, graciously assisting in the metabolism of glucose while keeping the lion's share of boron for themselves. "They look very healthy and happy."

"As they should, I never ate so much cabbage in my life, there should be enough boron in my system to feed three times as many!"

Sister Roberta increased the magnification to a wavelength of 10nm. An enormous image of one of the immortals filled the room in exquisite detail.

"Wow!" Seth couldn't help exclaiming. "How did you do that?"

"I modified the clarity of the boron lens. Magnify!" she ordered again.

The zoom reached molecular level and they all watched the dizzying buzz of electrons moving around the nuclei. The immortal kept generating enzyme keys that rearranged the cellular components, fixing broken chains and restoring symmetry.

"Magnify!" said sister Roberta again. The machine looked deeper into the enzymes' composition, a stuffy and repetitive chain of amino acids vibrating silently with an electronic buzz. "Freeze frame. Identify chemical formula."

"Are you trying to duplicate these?" Seth asked.

"If we can, I'm not sure what they are made of yet. Or how they function at cellular level."

The machine diligently wrote down an exhaustively long series of hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and germanium arranged in every combination possible, clustered together in long strings, endlessly repeating but no two the same.

"Germanium?" asked Seth. "This life form is germanium based?"

"Stranger things have happened", sister Roberta replied, watching with fascination how the long organic molecules kept fixing and rearranging Sarah's chemistry, in an almost obsessive focus on restoring perfection into any system that seemed out of balance.

"Zoom out", sister Roberta said. The machine brought magnification back to cellular level and they all watched with their mouths open as the enzymes digested a damaged cell and spit it back out, rearranged the pieces in the right order and dissipated.

"Congratulations, Sarah, whatever cells you have right now will live forever in everlasting perfection."

"What happens with the new cells?" asked Sarah.

"I guess your little immortal friends sent signals to your body to stop generating them unless they're absolutely needed. I never thought I would experience this in my life, but as far as biological beings go you are now in a state of perfection: every functioning system is optimized."

"Do you think you can synthesize the enzyme?" asked Seth.

"That would be quite easy, I just don't know how to introduce it to a living entity and if it would work the same. I don't know who would volunteer to be a human guinea pig."

"Test it on other creatures first and then I'll try it myself", said Seth. "By the way, what's with the cats?"

"They just like the hum of the electro motor. It soothes them. No connection."

"What's it like being immortal?" sister Mary-Francis's question resonated in Sarah's memory.

"I guess you are going to find out", she thought, smiling.