The Eternal World Read Online Free

for the exorbitant profits and dividends that Conquest has always delivered, Mr. Khan said. But with someone like Mr. Oliver at the helm, the big financial firms have decided the trade-off is no longer worth it.
    Through a representative, Mr. Oliver and Conquest declined to comment for this article.

 
    CHAPTER 2
    CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
    TODAY
    D AVID ROBINTON WATCHED the screen carefully. This was a crucial moment. The scanning tunneling microscope was fixed on his latest batch of test cells, and he needed to see the precise moment of division to know if this would work. If he’d actually been able to adjust the length of the telomeres, he could—
    He realized he wasn’t alone in the lab. Someone was standing at the door, watching him. Then he realized he had no idea how long she’d been standing there.
    He dragged his eyes away from the screen and saw Bethany waiting.
    David looked at his watch. Past 3:00 A.M. A pang of guilt went through him. He knew they were supposed to have done something tonight, before his trip. But his grant was over, his time at the grad school was done, and very soon he wouldn’t have access to this lab anymore.
    Damn it. He looked back at the screen just in time. The cells began to divide rapidly. Too rapidly. He’d failed. All he’d done was create tumor cells, and frankly, the human body didn’t need any help getting cancer.
    She saw the disappointment on his face as she crossed the room to him.
    “Another misfire?” she asked.
    “Yeah,” he said.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “No, I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “I know we had plans. I just really thought that this time, I might have hit on the solution. And no one had anything scheduled for the lab at night.”
    “It’s all right.”
    “No, it isn’t. I’ll make it up to you. After I get back from Florida, we’ll get away for a couple of days—”
    He stopped himself. She’d taken something from her pocket and slid it across the lab table toward him.
    The key to his apartment.
    “No,” she said. “We won’t.”
    David didn’t know what to say. “Did I miss something here?”
    Bethany laughed, but didn’t sound all that amused. “My birthday. Meeting my parents. Two out of three of our dates. I could go on.”
    It was true. David was one of the most gifted—perhaps the most gifted—students to come through Harvard’s School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. At twenty-five, he’d stunned his professors and the other students alike with his sudden, almost intuitive leaps in altering cellular DNA to increase longevity. He had picked up two Ph.D.’s in the time it took most people to earn one. And now that his latest research fellowship was over, there were a dozen big corporations chasing him, from Pfizer to Merck to Aperture and everyone in between, all convinced he would be the one to develop the next multibillion-dollar medicine or treatment.
    But all of that came at a cost. Sure, he was smart—but he had to work, and work hard. He taught classes, authored papers, and still made time for his own experiments. He’d seen 3:00 A.M. in this lab many times.
    Thinking about it rationally, David was surprised Bethany had put up with him for this long.
    She had met him when he was a guest speaker for her biology class. She was a med student, and pretty damned smart in her own right. With her previous boyfriends, she had been the one who had the busy schedule; that earned him some slack at first. But eventually she had learned that David was not just busy. He was driven. No one required him to be in the lab until dawn. There was something inside him that wouldn’t let him quit.
    She argued that he should be able to choose to spend time with her, the same way he chose to work. He agreed with her, but only to avoid the argument. In his heart, he knew that most of the time, he wouldn’t be around, and he hoped she’d just live with it.
    Still, he tried to mount some kind of defense for himself. “I don’t