Hiding From Nobel

by Brad Aiken

* * * *

The years rolled by in my mind as I pulled through the gates of Hidden Meadows, an upscale development in northern Maryland. It hardly felt like twenty-five years had passed, yet what had happened that day seemed like an eternity ago. I drove through the now unfamiliar landscape, winding my way toward the crest of Girls Hill. At least that’s what we called it back then. It was there under the shade of the uppermost tree in a row of pines that lined the edge of the hill that we had made our pact.

Benny Solomon swiped at the beads of sweat dripping off his short-cropped wavy black hair. “Hard to believe another summer’s gone,” he said, extending an index finger to readjust the horn-rimmed glasses that had slid down the bridge of his nose.

“Ah, c’mon, Solly.” Zeke scratched at the fine hairs of a nascent adolescent beard that hadn’t changed all summer. “We got two more whole weeks. Quit your whining.”

“At least you guys get to start high school,” Jeffrey said. “I got another whole stinkin’ year of junior high.” He aimed a puff of air at the strand of straight blond hair that always seemed to be dangling in front of his eyes.

“Yeah,” I huffed through the best sigh I could muster up. “Hard to believe this is it. Next year we’re gonna be too old to be campers. At least most of us,” I grinned at Jeffrey.

For the past five summers we had been coming to Camp Ramblewood. I was just ten years old when I started. That was Solly and Zeke’s first year too. Everyone else in Bunk 9 knew each other from prior years, so the three of us had a common bond. We became pretty tight that summer, but when camp ended we lost touch. There was no Internet back then, at least not for kids; long-distance phone calls were too expensive; and boys are too lazy to write letters. But when summer rolled around again each year, it was like we’d never been apart.

By the third summer, we had taken Jeffrey under our wings. We were twelve and girls were starting to look pretty good to us. He may have been a year younger, but his longish blond hair and blue eyes were like dangling bait at the Saturday night socials.

We grew closer each year and by the summer of 1985 we were inseparable.

“Let’s make a pact,” I said. “Twenty-five years from today, wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, we meet right back here on this very spot.”

“Let me check my calendar,” Solly said.

Zeke shot him a dirty look.

“That’s like forever, guys.” Jeffrey was wide-eyed at the proposition. “Very cool.” He put his hand out and made a fist, thumb side up.

We each followed suit, stacking our fists up in a column.

“August 1, 2010, at high noon,” I said.

We broke the column and reassembled our balled-up hands knuckles to knuckles.

“At high noon,” we all repeated in unison, and then tapped our fists together twice before breaking ranks.

We were all so innocent then.

Glancing in the rear-view mirror, I wondered if they’d recognize me. I winced at the budding crow’s feet around my eyes and the streaks of gray beginning to cut through my thick black hair.

“Hell, they probably won’t even show up,” I said to my reflection. It had been my idea, this pact. A boyhood fantasy, a moment of adolescent bonding surely forgotten by three grown men.

As I approached the spot where history was to be repeated, my heart sank. What was once nature’s paradise was now suburbia. It took a few minutes to get my bearings, but the lay of the land began to bring back memories. I pulled to the side of the road and turned off the engine. Somehow it didn’t seem right to drive over what was once the grassy crest of Girls Hill. About fifty yards up and to the left was the spot where we’d made our pact twenty-five years earlier. The pine tree that shaded us that day was long gone, as was the whole row of trees leading down the hill to the pool and L-shaped dining hall framing a part of it. What had once been a soft bed of pine needles nestled under filtered shade and sunlight was now an asphalt road.

I locked my car and walked past the meeting spot along the ridge of the hill. Cabins that had once housed the female campers had been replaced by a row of two-story red brick homes, which continued around the corner and followed the contour of the gentle slope down to its base, once the center of camp activity.

The pristine land that had made up Girls Hill and Boys Hill, with the dining hall in the valley between them, had been preserved as a neighborhood park. Pausing by the roadside, I closed my eyes and listened to the chirping of the birds; for a brief moment I was back in 1985.

To my left, the row of pines stood serenely against time, leading down to the dining hall and then back up to the cabins on the crest of opposite hill. Those wooden shacks where I’d spent much of my youth were lined up like dominos, housing five-year-olds in the left-most building and progressing along the ridge, ending with the hormonally charged teens of Bunk 14 at the edge of the woods to the right. The dense green forest making up those woods formed a boundary that stretched down toward the pool and then back up again to the girls’ cabins, which lined the land behind where I now stood, enclosing the rectangle of camp life as they connected the woods to the pine trees on this side of heaven.

And then, as they inevitably do, the memories led to that moment, and I winced in pain.

“C’mon squirt,” Zeke said to Jeffrey. “You chicken?”

Jeffrey grimaced. “I ain’t scared of nothing,” he snapped.

“Then come with us tonight.”

We’d been planning this raid all summer. It was tradition. The senior boys’ bunk would pull a night raid, sneaking up through the woods to Girls Hill long after the counselors had fallen asleep. Armed with shaving cream and toilet paper, they would decorate the cabin of the senior girls’ bunk, then steal back to Boys Hill under cover of night.

“My counselor will kill me. He told us there would be hell to pay if you guys pull the raid this year.”

“So, what, are you gonna turn us in?” I said.

“Hell, no.”

“Then come with us. You’re almost a senior camper now, anyhow.”

“I don’t know...”

We all knew at that moment that Jeffrey was going with us.

I surveyed the top of Ramblewood Lane, the street that they had paved over Girls Hill. There was no bench, no pine trees, but a young oak at the top of the hill provided a bit of shade. I could swear they had planted it in the very spot that we had made our pact. I plopped down onto the ground and leaned back against it, then glanced around hoping to catch a glimpse of a familiar face. A group of kids rode by on their bikes and looked back at me dubiously. I couldn’t blame them. A thirty-nine-year-old stranger sitting in the grass at a lonely suburban intersection was a strange sight. I expected to see the police shortly.

I closed my eyes and the memories washed over me once again.

“You ready?” Solly tapped me on the shoulder. He was our alarm clock. Solly had an uncanny ability to program his body to awaken at any preordained time.

“Hmm?” I mumbled. “Is it one already?”

“Yeah. Get a move on,” he whispered. “You get Jeffrey and I’ll get Zeke. We’ll meet by the edge of the woods.”

I nodded and dragged myself out of bed. Ten minutes later, Jeffrey and I were walking behind the cabins toward our traditional meeting spot behind Bunk 14, near the edge of the woods that would provide cover for our clandestine mission. Zeke and Solly were waiting.

“What took you guys so long?” Zeke snapped.

“Hey, we’re here, aren’t we?”

It was dark, but there was a quarter moon that night, and I could see that everybody had their gear. We each carried a small satchel of supplies that we had readied the day before—shaving cream, a roll of toilet paper, and a flashlight, which we would use only in case of emergency.

It was just the four of us. The rest of our bunkmates had decided not to chance the wrath of the camp owners who had issued the edict banning this summer’s senior raid. Solly, Zeke, and I had pretended to agree with them, but there was no way we were going to pass up an opportunity that we’d waited five long summers for.

“Let’s go, then.”

Zeke led the way down the hill, sticking close by the tree-line, concealing himself in the moon shadows. Solly and I were right behind. Jeffrey’s legs were shorter, and much to his chagrin, his timidity got the better of him in the darkness of the night. He lagged a dozen yards behind, urging himself on and trying to keep up.

I glanced back a few times. “Wait up,” I called ahead.

Zeke looked over his shoulder and snickered. “If the squirt can’t keep up, that’s his problem. It’ll make a man of him.” He increased his pace.

Solly and I looked at each other and shrugged. Jeffrey wasn’t that far back. It wasn’t like he was going to get lost or anything, and we all wanted to get the job done and get back as quickly as possible. We forged on.

“Catching a few z’s?”

Much to my surprise, I recognized the voice immediately. Squinting up from my spot under the oak tree, I struggled to focus on the figure silhouetted against sunlight.

“Good to see you, Solly. I can’t believe you came.”

“We swore on it, man.”

“Yeah, but that was a long time ago.”

“Many moons.” He plopped down next to me.

“I was beginning to think no one else would show.”

Solly looked at his watch. “Right on time.”

I should have known. Solly was always punctual, even as a teenage boy. “Guess I was early.”

“That you were. How the hell have you been, man?”

“Life’s been good to me. Gorgeous wife, two kids, and a dog. The all-American dream.”

“Way to go,” Solly said with a smile.

“How about you?” I asked.

“Well, I was pretty messed up for a while.”

“You?”

“Yeah, well, you know. I took it pretty hard. My parents did too. After I got expelled from camp, they were humiliated. That kind of stuff doesn’t happen to Solomons. They sent me away to a boarding school. I ran away after two years of that crap.”

“Jeez,” I muttered.

“Yeah, well. I grew out of it eventually. I went to BU and took over my old man’s business. I’m all respectable now. I did the family thing too—wife, two kids; no dog, though. I’m allergic.”

I laughed.

“What?” Solly feigned offense.

“Sorry,” I giggled. “It’s just... well, it’s not too surprising, you know?”

Benny Solomon shook his head. He knew.

Solly couldn’t stop sneezing as we tried to sneak down along the forest line.

“Jeez, keep it down, would you?” Zeke snapped.

“I can’t help it,” Solly said. “It’s the honeysuckle.”

The native plant was plentiful along the forest’s edge.

Solly’s effort to suppress nature’s curse was defeated by a trumpeting blast of moisture that made his head ricochet.

Zeke spun around and gave him a dirty look.

“Look,” I said, “he’s allergic. He can’t stop it. The sooner we get past the honeysuckle, the sooner he’ll be quiet.”

Zeke grunted and turned back toward Girls Hill, quickening his pace. Solly, trying desperately not to sneeze, followed close behind with me at his side. Jeffrey was falling farther back, just within eyesight in the dimness of the night.

The shade of the oak felt good in the heat of a Maryland summer’s day.

“Think Zeke will show?” I asked Solly.

“What, you didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Zeke died, man. Motorcycle wreck, back in ‘94.”

My mouth opened, but nothing came out. It’s not like we were all that close; hell, I hadn’t seen him since we were kids, but still, it felt like a part of me had been chopped off.

“I can’t believe you didn’t hear about it. There was a ton of coverage. Flew his bike off an overpass into oncoming traffic on 495. Real gory accident, the kind of stuff the press just love.”

“Must not have made it to the Baltimore papers.” Jeffrey, Zeke, and Solly lived in DC back then. I was from Baltimore. “They say anything about Zeke? What he was up to all those years?

“Nah, not much. Just that he was in and out of jail all the time. It probably was a little harder on him after we got kicked out of camp; no family to lean on.” Zeke was never too shy when it came to talking about how his foster parents treated him.

“Ah, come on. Nothing bothered Zeke. He never even liked Jeffrey that much.”

“Guess he had us fooled.”

We sat quietly, and I was sure Solly was thinking about the same thing as I was: the tough kid who pushed us to the edge of trouble but never let us fall in. I had always admired the fact that nothing rattled him. I guess we all have our breaking points.

“At least it was quick,” Solly said.

“Yeah.”

“And at least he didn’t have to live with the guilt anymore.”

I looked at the stress lines on my old friend’s face. “That part would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Solly nodded.

“The nightmares don’t come as often, but they still come.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“We never should have let him get so far behind....”

Solly had given up the futile effort of trying to suppress his inevitable reaction to the omnipresent honeysuckle and let loose with a nice long, loud one. We were half way up Girls Hill by that time, well within earshot of the cabins.

Zeke spun on his heels, right into Solly’s face.

“Shut that snout of yours, Solomon, or I’ll shut it for you!” His fist was clenched.

“Come on, Zeke,” I pleaded. “It’s not like he’s doing it on purpose.”

“It don’t matter why he’s doing it,” Zeke said. “Hell, every counselor on the hill’s probably up by now.”

We all glanced up toward the girls’ cabins, expecting to see flashlights pointed our way.

And that’s when it happened.

A hideous roar. Surreal. One vicious growl and then a yelp of terror from Jeffrey. We strained to see into the night. Solly was the first to get his flashlight out and just as Zeke was about to yell at him for turning it on, we saw something dart into the underbrush at the edge of the woods. The beam of light followed its path to two red eyes trained on us from between the branches, and triggered a malicious snarl that seemed to rumble back along the trail of illumination.

“Wolf!” Solly rasped.

We stood motionless. We’d heard rumors of wolves roaming the woods, but always figured it was the counselors’ way of keeping us out of the forest. Nobody had ever actually seen one.

Leaves rustled from behind the wolf and a sound... like a swarm of crickets... rose from the area. I was too scared to run. We all were.

Then, without even acknowledging our presence, a man whose considerable height was amplified to near cartoonish proportions by his wiry build strode calmly out from the bushes. His gaunt face was devoid of features in the darkness of the night, a long gray beard the only hair decorating his odd visage. A brown plaid trench coat draped loosely on his frame hid any other details we could have used to describe him later. As he walked toward Jeffrey’s supine body, I felt as if I were in a dream, watching from a precarious position that could have been inches or light-years away, but unmistakably close enough to be pulled into that nightmare in an instant. Frozen, helpless to retreat, I was resigned to the feeling that no distance would be a safe one.

When he reached the spot where Jeffrey was sprawled out, he stopped and the wolf edged out of the forest to sit obediently at his heels. The man knelt over Jeffrey and raised his left hand, scanning it over the motionless head and torso, which glowed a faint tint of blue at the effort. The light went out for an instant, and then the pale blue haze poured back over my friend’s face. In the stillness, I couldn’t even feel myself breathe, and then Jeffrey started to stir. At the very same moment, the man stood his six-and-a-half-foot frame upright, turned back toward the woods at an angle that continued to shield his face from us, and disappeared calmly into the woods with the wolf loping along behind.

Zeke shined his light in their direction. “Gone. Who the hell was that guy?”

“Who cares?” Solly said, training his light on Jeffrey. He and I scurried over to check on Jeffrey while Zeke continued surveying the trail, or lack of it, where the stranger and the wolf had vanished.

The rock under Jeffrey’s head was covered with blood, but the stickiness had stopped oozing from him. He winced as he tried to raise himself up, and we helped him sit.

He began to mutter something but passed out before we could make out what he was saying.

As we settled him back down on the soft grass, we were blinded by the headlights from a camp security jeep. It stopped a dozen yards away and by the time my retinas had recovered enough to allow me to focus, we were surrounded by a mob of counselors, campers, and two gray-haired security guards with glasses like Mountain Dew bottles, who looked more frightened than most of the children.

It was all a blur, what happened after that. One of the counselors motioned for us to get away. We couldn’t bring ourselves to move, but as we were dragged from the scene, I could see her bending over my friend’s limp body. A helicopter arrived about fifteen minutes later and whisked him off to a hospital in Wilmington.

Nobody believed our story. Jeffrey didn’t have a mark on him besides the gash in the back of his head, and there was no trail, no sign of the wolf or the skinny giant. They figured we’d coerced Jeffrey into coming with us, and then didn’t look out for him like we should have. That we made him run to keep up, and then when he tripped and whacked his head on a rock, we concocted that crazy story about a wolf and a giant. They were right except for the last part, of course, and we had no proof.

The next day, the three of us were picked up from camp by our angry and embarrassed parents.

Solly and I sat under the oak in silence, thinking about the day that had changed our lives.

“Did you ever find out?”

“Nope,” Solly said.

“Me neither. My folks wouldn’t let me have anything to do with camp anymore. Not the place or the people. I figured Jeffrey must have died or they would have told me, not let me suffer so much. But I think they never really knew either.”

“Did you ask them?”

“Nah. It was too painful—for all of us. We never mentioned it again. I check the Internet every once in a while, you know, to try and find out what happened. But I always come up dry.”

“Maybe just as well,” Solly said. “Sometimes the past is better left in the past.”

We sat back against the tree again in silence. No one else was left to come to this reunion today.

“But sometimes it’s better to know.” A lilting feminine voice wafted in from the other side of the oak tree.

Solly and I both spun around.

“Mindy?” I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“In the flesh.” She smiled serenely.

Solly and I both stood. Mindy was my first girlfriend. A summertime fling for a twelve-year-old is not a serious thing... except to that particular twelve-year-old.

“But...”

“What am I doing here?” she finished my question.

Solly and I both nodded.

“Jeffrey sent me.”

My jaw dropped.

She smiled, but with a tear in her eye. “He wanted so much to tell you. He never blamed you for what happened.”

“Where the hell has he been all these years? I Googled him, tried Facebook, even tried to track down his family... nothing. It was like he’d dropped off the face of the Earth.”

“In London,” she said matter-of-factly. “With me.”

“You?”

She took a deep breath. “After the accident at camp, it took Jeff a while to recover. Physically he was okay, but he had panic attacks. Post-traumatic stress syndrome, they called it. He struggled in school and became alienated from his friends, so his parents moved to London for a fresh start. Eventually, he found his way, became a psychologist.

“About ten years ago, I was vacationing in London with some friends and spotted him sitting at a pub in Soho. Even after all that time, his face had hardly changed. We started talking and one thing led to another; we were married a year later.

“We had a quiet life there. Then one day, about a year ago, it all changed. A new patient walked into Jeffrey’s office and, well... it’ll be easier if I just show you. Jeff keeps video records of all his sessions.”

Mindy pulled out her iPhone, started the video clip, and handed it to me. Solly sidled up to get a better angle. We could only see Jeffrey’s back, but the view of the patient was plain as day, even on that tiny screen.

The wiry man who walked into that room was so tall the camera angle cut off the view of the top of his head. He sauntered up to the desk with a deliberateness that conveyed a complete disregard for the constraints of time, and sat. His long gray beard was the only hair visible, and a loose-fitting brown trench coat hid the details of his frame.

“Shit,” I muttered. Turning to Solly, I got the confirmation I dreaded.

Even on the iPhone’s tiny screen, the image immediately reactivated the feebly suppressed memory of the Ramblewood hermit who had revived Jeffrey that night. His steely gray eyes were mesmerizing, and he looked considerably younger than I had imagined, despite deeply set cheeks and pale, nearly albino skin tone. After all these years, I finally had a face to put to that gaunt profile.

The sound of Jeffrey’s voice coming from the iPhone drew me into the conversation. “Mr. Zile?” He extended a hand. “I’m Dr. Blon-dell.”

The man shook his hand and nodded. Jeffrey motioned for him to sit and they each settled in on opposite sides of the bean-shaped oak desk.

“My name,” the man started in an authoritative, deeply timbred voice that was contrary to any I would have imagined coming out of him, and I had imagined a great deal about this man over the years, “is not Zile, but it’s best for both of us if you do not know my true identity.”

Jeffrey’s head tilted. “Look, Mr.... whatever your name is, if you’re not going to be honest with me, I can’t help you. Whatever you tell me in this room is confidential.”

“But I don’t need your help—you need mine.” Jeffrey rocked back in his high-backed leather chair. “You’re here to help me?” “I am.”

“Okay,” said Jeffrey, “I’m listening.”

The man studied Jeffrey’s face. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” After a brief pause, he answered his own question. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. You were dead the last time we met.”

“Dead,” Jeffrey repeated flatly. “I was dead?”

The man nodded. “Only briefly.”

“Don’t recall ever being dead,” Jeffrey said, with a tinge of amusement coloring his voice.

“1985. Northern Maryland. Camp Ramblewood.”

Jeffrey leaned in and rested his hands on the desk, fingers intertwined. “I don’t appreciate your dredging up my past, Mr....”

“Zile will do.”

“Fine. Mr. Zile. I think it’s time for you to go.”

Jeffrey stood but the man in the chair did not budge.

“I was there, Jeffrey. I was the one who revived you.”

Jeffrey sat back down. Even if he had heard our version of what had happened that night, it would have been relayed to him in a tone tainted with the doubt of those who had pegged us as liars. We’d been told at the time that Jeffrey didn’t remember any part of what had happened, and probably never would. He had no reason to believe our bizarre story. Until now.

“My name is not important, but I’ll need to tell you a little about myself for you to understand how I saved you, and why it’s important only now that you understand.

“When I was a young man, I studied theoretical physics at Princeton. Shortly after graduation, I was invited to Los Alamos to work with Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project.”

“Come on,” Jeffrey said. “You’re going to have to do better that that. That was like... what, around 1940?

“Forty-three.”

“Okay, 1943. So that would make you ninety-something. You don’t look a day over sixty.”

Zile ignored him and continued. “It was during my time in Los Alamos that I met another young physicist named Richard Feynman.” He paused, but obviously saw no recognition from the other side of the table. “Physicists generally don’t get the notoriety that entertainers do, but Feynman was a star in his world, went on to win a Nobel prize. Feel free to look it up.”

“Just did,” Jeffrey said, typing into his keyboard. “Okay, so you proved you’ve researched Feynman.”

“Maybe that page you’re looking at mentions something about a talk he gave on nano-machines.”

Jeffrey worked his keyboard. “Yeah... yeah, here it is. 1959 meeting of the American Physical Society at Cal Tech. There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.”

“Right. Well, we’d actually started tossing the idea around back in the ‘40s, but that was the first time anyone took it seriously. You ever hear of nanotechnology?”

“I’m a Trekkie,” Jeffrey said.

Zile smiled for the first time. “Many are, which begins to explain why I’m here. See, back then, nobody had heard of it; nobody thought it was possible, except Richard. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was possible. In fact, it was the next natural progression in scientific evolution—controlling the world from within its smallest structures. And nowhere was that idea more intriguing than in medicine.”

“So I’m supposed to believe that you succeeded in making nanobots that could cure a dead man over thirty years ago?”

“Let’s just say there was a fortunate twist of fate. Shortly after the war, I was reassigned to a base in Nevada, where I was exposed to the kind of technology people only dreamed of in the civilian world.”

“Area 51? Aliens?”

Zile waved him off. “I never saw anything alien other than a bunch of meteorites, but it was one of those meteorites that got my attention, a small iridescent hunk of blue metal, more dense than anything I’d ever handled. I isolated a mineral from it that had never been seen before and hasn’t been seen anywhere else since. We jokingly called it Roswellonium, but the name stuck. It had a unique property that allowed us to construct the basic building block we needed to fabricate complex nanostructures.”

He paused, staring at Jeffrey’s face, then clarified. “It allowed us to build submicroscopic machines.”

“Very cool. But what’s that got to do with me?”

“Just keep listening,” Zile snapped. “We kept the Roswellonium to ourselves, but some of the techniques we developed were passed on to companies like IBM and Intel. We taught them what they needed to know to build the first microprocessors. But I wanted much more. I wanted to develop medical applications. Do you know how much red tape there is when it comes to experimenting on animals, much less people?” He didn’t wait for a response. “A shitload. You can’t get a Goddamn thing done without some sniveling activist getting a lawyer to try and cut your balls off. We had the material, we had the techniques, and I had the ideas, but my hands were tied behind my back. After a decade of fighting that kind of crap, I finally said the hell with it and walked away from my cushy government job, but not before pilfering a sample of the Roswellonium.

“I built a lab in my basement. It took most of my inheritance, but I managed to duplicate the technology I needed. The work went a whole lot faster after that. By the mid-’70s, more than two decades before Freitas published his blueprints for the first medical nanorobots, I already had a working prototype, a microscopic machine that could analyze and repair damage to any cell in the body.”

Jeffrey fidgeted. “So why didn’t you go public? You could have made a fortune.”

Zile’s face squinched up. “You don’t steal from a top-secret government facility and then brag about it.”

Jeffrey leaned back into his chair as Zile continued. “I had tried these little machines, nanites, on mice, cats, dogs, all with varying success. Each new tweak in the design worked a little better and by 1974, they were ready. I injected Ralph first.”

“Ralph?”

Zile shrugged. “Some people have dogs, I had Ralph, a gray wolf.”

“That was your pet that jumped me?”

Zile nodded. “Call me eccentric.”

“Oh, I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first.”

“No doubt. After I injected him, I monitored him closely for the next few years. Everything seemed okay. By that point, I only had enough Rosewellonium left for two more sets of nanites. I wasn’t going to waste a dose on primate research, and besides, age was catching up with me. I injected myself in 1981 and carried the final set of bots with me every day after that, paranoid that the Feds would figure out where I lived and steal them.” He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “In the summer of 1985, I was walking Ralph through the woods near our home.”

“Walking your wolf... Why am I listening to this?”

“We’d go out at night. I couldn’t exactly walk him around the neighborhood during the day. Anyway, that night he heard you, saw your lights flickering, and it spooked him. He charged you and knocked you down. By the time he realized you were a harmless child, the damage was done; you’d hit your head on a rock and passed out. I got to you a half a minute later, scanned your life signs.”

“What, you mean like with a tricorder?”

“This is real, Jeffrey. And I suggest you start taking me seriously if you want to keep your freedom.” He paused and must have gotten Jeffrey’s attention. “I had developed a hand scanner that could measure life signs—pulse, respirations; it was a safe way to monitor my animals without risking my fingers. Anyway, I scanned you. You had stopped breathing and your pulse was thready, barely detectable. So I pulled out the vial and gave you the final set of nanites.”

“You shot me up with your experiment? What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“It was the only way to save your life.”

“Ever hear of paramedics?”

“Your right pupil was already dilated, barely reactive. It was obvious that blood was building up in your head, putting pressure on your brain. You would have been dead before they got you to a hospital.”

“I thought you said I was dead?”

“You might as well have been.”

Jeffrey spun around to his left, and just before he dropped his head into his hand, I caught a glimpse of his face. His boyish good looks had only enhanced with age, but there was something more. Some people age better than others, but Jeffery could have passed for twenty.

“I guess I should thank you.”

Zile sat silently.

“So you used the last of your nanites on me, huh?”

“Yes. The last.”

“And I’ve still got those little buggers inside of me?”

“That’s what’s keeping you... young.”

“And I thought it was just good genes.”

Zile grinned. “No genes are that good.”

We were looking at the back of Jeffrey’s head again, but he appeared to be studying Zile. “So,” he said, “no offense, but then why do you look so old?”

“I was already sixty-seven when I injected myself. The nanites keep you healthy, but they don’t reverse aging. In your case, they didn’t stop your body from aging to maturity, but once you got there the cells stabilized, and they’ll stay that way for as long as you live.”

“So why tell me all this now?” Jeffrey asked. “Why risk blowing your cover?”

“Simple, really. Medical science has advanced to the point where someone might accidentally discover the nanites if you go into a hospital for testing. Up until recently, the technology didn’t exist, but the latest generation of PET scanners is capable of detecting positron emissions from the nanites. And if you’re in one of those scanner tubes when that discovery is made, they’ll make a lab rat out of you. You’ll spend the rest of your life locked up in some government research facility while they try and explain how those things got inside of you.”

“Which could lead them back to you.”

“Possibly, but not likely. I just don’t want the guilt of knowing I turned you into that.”

Jeffrey rocked in his big easy-chair. “So... why would I ever need to go to a hospital anyway? Nothing can hurt me now, right?”

“You could get into an accident, get shot; the nanites don’t work fast enough for that. But you never have to worry about cancer, stroke, heart disease; the sorts of things that kill most people. Your biggest worry is your looks.”

“My looks?”

Zile gave a half nod. “Me, I’m an old man and people don’t look too closely at old men. I don’t have any close friends, and nobody else will notice if I look the same year after year. But you can never stay in any one place too long, never stay with the same group of friends for more than a dozen years or so. People will notice you. They’ll notice you as their own faces shrivel up and their hair turns gray while you still look like your high school yearbook picture. At first, they’ll compliment you, but eventually you’ll make them uncomfortable and they’ll start asking questions.”

“Can you at least inject my wife?” Jeffrey’s voice had grown barely audible. “I don’t want to not grow old without her.”

“I told you, there are no more.”

“Well, make some.”

“Even if they haven’t used up all the Ros-wellonium by now, I could never get my hands on it.”

“Then give her some of mine.”

“Once the nanites enter your body, they imprint themselves with your immune system. That’s how they survive inside of you for so long. They can never be reprogrammed. Even if I could take them out and inject them into your wife, at best they’d have no effect. At worst, they’d make her very, very sick.”

Jeffrey’s head dropped, then after a brief pause he looked back up in Zile’s direction. “So we keep this between us then?”

Zile nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Jeffrey sat silently.

“And I’d suggest erasing the video file of this meeting.”

“Oh, shit.” Jeffrey spun around and reached under the desk.

***

The screen on the iPhone went blank and a message came up asking if I wanted to replay the video. I handed the thing back to Mindy.

“So why did he keep this copy?” I asked her.

“To show me... and the two of you.”

“Us?” Solly said.

“He always felt bad that you guys took all the heat for that night. He felt he was every bit as responsible for what happened as you were, if not more. He never blamed you for what happened. In fact, since the meeting with Zile, he considers the accident a blessing.”

“So why didn’t he come here himself, then?”

Mindy smiled and waved to the midnight blue Toyota Prius parked behind us about fifty yards away. The driver’s side door opened and out stepped a young man with blond hair and blue eyes, a black backpack slung over his right shoulder. Aside from the limited view of him that had been afforded by the iPhone clip, I hadn’t seen him since he was thirteen years old. But he was unmistakably Jeffrey.

As he approached, I couldn’t help but think he looked closer to my son’s age than my own, betrayed only by the swagger of someone with much more maturity.

“How the hell are you guys?” His smile gleamed as he extended a hand.

Solly took it. “Obviously, not as good as you.”

I couldn’t help but stare. “Jesus, it’s true, isn’t it?”

“Every word of it.”

“Then why risk coming here?” I reached out to greet him. “I mean, you don’t know us anymore. It’s been twenty-five years. Why trust us with something like this?”

“Because you’re the only ones I can trust. See, I’m not so sure old man Zile’s leveling with me. He’s so paranoid that somebody will find out about that meteorite dust he pilfered that he doesn’t ever want anyone to see his research.”

“And you can get your hands on it?”

“Nah. Even if I knew where the old coot was, he’s probably burned it all by now. But technology has advanced quite a bit since he made those nanites thirty-plus years ago. And I’m betting that there are a couple of guys who could reverse-engineer the things if they could get their hands on them, use something else to substitute for the Roswellonium.”

I mopped back my thick damp hair and tried to fan a breeze in my direction. “Mind if we...” I motioned toward the shade of the oak. Jeffrey stuck out a hand. “After you.”

As we turned to move into the shade, Mindy said, “I’ve heard this all before. How about I go get us something to drink while you boys catch up? I saw the Quick Stop is still there. I can be back in fifteen minutes.”

The Quick Stop. Camp. I couldn’t shake the thought... “I’ll have a Yoo-hoo.” I wasn’t even sure if they still made the stuff.

Solly and Jeffrey broke out in laughter.

“Make it three?” Mindy asked.

“Sure,” Solly said. “Disgusting, but what the hell.”

We watched her walk away, then sat under the shade of the tree.

“I’ve done my homework on this,” Jeffrey said. “There are a handful of guys in the world advanced enough in nanomedicine research that they might have a chance at doing this, and two of them are right here in Maryland, one at Hopkins and the other at UM. If we can get the nanites to them and let them each know the other is working on it to fire up their competitive juices, I think we’ve got a chance.”

I let out a deep breath. “It still doesn’t explain... why us?”

“Like I said, you’re the only ones I can trust.”

“That’s pretty pathetic,” Solly said. “All these years, and we’re the closest thing you’ve got to friends.”

“I’ve got plenty of friends, but none who have had absolutely no contact with me since I was thirteen. None who can’t be tied to me without a background search that would stretch the imagination of even the most anal government agent.”

He swung his backpack around onto his lap and unzipped it, then pulled out two brushed aluminum cases. They were each about a foot long, ribbed along the sides, and with a black plastic handle that folded out from the top. He handed one to each of us.

“Each of these contains a sample of my blood; there should be dozens of nanites in each one. There’s a note in each case explaining what the sample is and what I want them to do with it. Those cases, along with everything in them, are untraceable as long as you don’t leave any fingerprints.” He reached into the backpack and pulled out two envelopes. “These will tell you everything you need to know: who the researchers are, where to find them, every detail of their lives you’ll need to get these cases to them anonymously. Follow my instructions to the letter and you’ll never get caught.”

“And if we do?”

“People will be pretty curious where you got these, people who can make your lives miserable. Just do what’s in the letter and you’ll be okay.”

Solly studied Jeffrey’s face. “You’re just afraid we’ll lead them back to you.”

Jeffrey shook his head. “I’ll be long gone. I’ve got considerable financial resources and my friends were already beginning to question the way I look. Once I knew what was happening, I started making arrangements to disappear. Dr. Jeffrey Blondell no longer exists. When I drive away from here today, Jeffrey will be dead to the world. My concern here is for you two... and for the success of this project.”

“Touching,” I said. “And why should we risk our necks for this?”

“Because I’ll be tracking the work of these two labs, and by the time either one makes the breakthrough, I’ll own a controlling interest in the company that will take it public.”

Solly nodded. “So it’s about the money.”

“Not about the money. It’s about the nan-ites, about Mindy. I don’t want to be without her. I don’t want her to grow old. I need those nanites, and every day counts. Mindy will be first in line to get them. And you two will be next... if you help me. Is eternal youth worth the risk?”

Stupid question.

When Mindy returned, we nursed our Yoo-hoos as we strolled around what was once an adolescent’s paradise. We argued about the spot where the barn was, where we’d hang out on rainy days, how many baseball fields were on the vast lawn by the camp entrance, whether that old wooden house was really the original white house where the camp nurse was always available, and most of all, which pine tree provided the best cover for a first kiss.

The sun was beginning to set as we found ourselves standing next to the blue Prius. Solly and I waved as they drove off. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see Jeffrey again. But if I did, I knew what he would look like. If things went well, he’d know what I would look like too.

Copyright © 2010 Brad Aiken