Fast

The end of humanity started out innocently enough: as a weight loss tool.

Jackie Meeks and Lisa Day were the power duo behind “Fast,” the latest quick-fix weight management program that took the nation by storm. Sales skyrocketed in the first month producing millions in profits by the first fiscal year. Lisa, the stick-thin, gorgeous interventional geneticist, and Jackie, the fit and muscular no-nonsense corporate attorney. Best friends throughout graduate school and their professional careers, the duo shortly became the femme fatales of the seemingly everlasting weight loss industry.

The bones of the program itself was nothing new, just more of the “less carbs, more weights” variety. Well, except for the secret method. That little thing. It’s what separated “Fast” from all the rest — unlike its counterparts, it actually worked. With a few caveats, of course.

True to form, Lisa was the first success story of “Fast.” When she first discovered the method, she was about fifty pounds overweight. By the end of the first week, she was a cool twelve pounds lighter, by the first month, twenty-five. Jackie had been ripe with worry when she saw her friend at the two month mark, with Lisa weighing a full sixty pounds lighter. “I don’t like this, Lis. I just don’t understand how this is possible, much less healthy.” Jackie had protested, alarmed for good reason. Lisa had reassured her stating that if she didn’t believe the method was safe, she wouldn’t have tried it on herself.

Admittedly, Lisa looked great, and Jackie felt the slightest twinge of jealousy. Lisa had always been a powerful force in interventional genetics, a niche highly competitive field, with a focus on developing genetically tailored cancer treatments. And now her next project was this, a Nobel Prize-smelling solution to the obesity epidemic. Despite her reservations, Jackie saw the great potential in Lisa’s discovery, and with a few strings pulled and several phone calls to friends in high places, “Fast” was soon on a fast track of clinical trials, exclusive patent rights, and FDA approval.

It was easy enough to make the program look healthy. Just ostensibly emphasize the evils of carbohydrates here, add some weight training there, and voila! A million dollar weight loss business is born. So what if they had to add a patented injection here and there? So what if the injection had a few, shall we say, side effects?

At first, the clinical trials were a ridiculous success. The subjects were losing weight, cholesterol levels were improving, liver and kidney function tests were holding steady. Most importantly, all of trial’s fifty-five subjects were thrilled by the results. Jackie could hardly believe it. There didn’t seem to be any adverse effects whatsoever.

Six months into the trial, Jackie began to notice changes in Lisa. It wasn’t something she could pinpoint at first, just little things. Lisa would seem distant, almost dream-like, and she would sometimes say odd things in the middle of conversation. She was still the girl Jackie knew in many ways: high-powered, slightly obsessive, secretly introverted with an infectious laugh. But her laugh sounded a bit different now, louder in volume, but more hollow. Lisa’s appetite had also been increasingly pathologically voracious. Jackie estimated she must eat upwards twenty to thirty thousand calories a day. Jackie gathered all this even though she saw her friend rarely, with Lisa spending most of her days sequestered working in the lab.

As the months went by, Jackie became increasingly convinced that there was something beyond what they were monitoring in the clinical trials, and Lisa, naturally the lead scientist of the project, was being sinister about it.

Finally, the long-awaited confrontation occurred and Jackie found out the true cost of the method.

Lisa spoke to her carefully. “Jackie… I know this must sound troubling. But you must have known I couldn’t genetically edit metabolism that much without causing a change somewhere else…”

“Lis, this doesn’t feel right, I don’t know if I could be part of this knowing what it truly does.”

“I know... That’s why I was waiting for the right time to tell you.” Lisa said gently. Suddenly, she took her friend’s hand and smiled, a gorgeous million dollar smile. “Jackie, look at me. I’m happy, I look great. Do you know how differently everyone had been treating me since I lost the weight? Doors are literally being opened for me left and right. I feel more confident, I feel like I’m riding a high all the time. I wake up, open my closet, and it’s an absolute joy to pick out clothes to wear for the day. I have never felt that way before, Jackie. Even with what we know now, it’s worth it, without a shadow of a doubt. If I had to do it again, I would, a million times over.”

“But the ethical implications…” Jackie shook her hand free as she felt a chill creep up from her friend’s hand. “Lis, this will never be approved. And the test subjects! There is no way they fully understood what they signed up for…”

Lisa’s expression became unreadable. “They understood.” She said simply.

“You told them? Everything?”

“Of course.”

“The advisory board?”

“They know.”

“If we could find a way to reverse it, would you do it?” Jackie pleaded, feeling defeated. “Please, Lis, you may think it’s worth it right now, but later, later…” Tears stung Jackie’s eyes. She was beyond the point of surprise and anger, she was now grieving for Lisa, her best friend, the girl in front of her who she could now barely recognize. “I promise you Lisa, you will not want this later.”

Lisa shook her head, almost sadly. But then she smiled, her million dollar instagram model smile. “I really don’t think so, Jacks.”

—

At the end of it all, perhaps because she could not bring herself to let go, Jackie decided to stand by her best friend. She supported Lisa through the clinical trials and bringing the program to market. Jackie handled the legal aspects and drafting the non-disclosure agreements while Lisa continued to work in the lab. Potential clients were first thoroughly screened before they were brought in for official entry into the program, after which they signed the iron-clad NDA, wrote a check, and finally told the true nature of the method. A handful of clients walked out at this point, but more stayed. Thus, in short order, “Fast” became the most exclusive, profitable, and invariably successful weight loss program with an unheard of 100% weight loss retention rate.

Years go by and Lisa continued to change. Slowly, the program did too. It became less about weight loss and more about Lisa’s covert gene editing. On the outside all seemed well: everyone lost the weight and gained the model good-looks as promised. But Jackie knew that they were all different now, no longer the people they were before. There was no way the method would give and give, and not take something back in return.

From the limited information Lisa gave her, Jackie knew of at least one thing the method took from its subjects: time. The method’s edited gene appeared to have one main adverse effect, it shortened telomeres, shortening the subjects’ natural lifespans.

As the program grew Lisa also became more and more distant. Before Jackie knew what was happening, she was seeing her friend less and less.

Jackie went on with her life, eventually married another attorney, and much to Jackie’s own surprise, had two children. The joy of being a mother had amazed her. All of sudden her entire world spun around her children, the love she felt for them deep, instinctive, visceral. She wept with the understanding of just how deep a mother’s love goes, and felt a sudden surge of gratefulness toward her own mother who she knew must have felt towards her what she feels now towards her children. Savoring motherhood as much as she could, she returned to work only part-time after her youngest started grade school.

On the ten year anniversary of the program, Jackie decided to take Lisa out to lunch for old times sake. She chose a vintage overly-priced coffee shop in the middle of downtown, figuring it would appeal to her old friend. Jackie arrived first, as usual, and when Lisa appeared, Jackie almost dropped her mug in awe. “Lis..”

“Hi Jacks.” Lisa was positively luminous. Ten years did not touch her good looks. However, Lisa’s ethereal demeanor had increased tenfold. She sat down delicately, gingerly, almost floating into the chair, as if she was no longer made of physical matter. “What a lovely place. Thank you.”

Jackie was momentarily speechless.

“I hear you’re a wife and mother now, a part-time small town attorney… who would have thought?” Lisa’s voice pierced through the silence. She waved over the waiter with a menu. “A latte please, and a croissant.” She turned back to Jackie. “I guess we have a lot to catch up on.”

“Lis… what is going on, how are you feeling?” Jackie finally asked, concerned, she was never very good with small talk.

Lisa laughed, a touch cruelly, and suddenly she appeared more solid. “God, I can’t take it with you Jackie. You just can’t admit that maybe everything is going swimmingly for me for once. Look at you, you are just waiting for something to go wrong. You are hoping for something to go wrong. It’s not enough that I shared the profits with you, you have to be able to tell me ‘I told you so!’ You can’t take that I invented something world-changing, while you… you —-” Lisa stopped, as if realizing a mistake. She flashed a tight smile. “I’m sorry Jackie. I get outbursts like that sometimes. It’s…. one of the things.”

The accusations stung, but Jackie shook them off. Lisa was not well, she has not been for quite some time. Not where it counts. “Tell me about the things.” Jackie said softly, kindly.

Lisa’s smile faltered and then she let out a sigh, as if acquiescing. “It’s hard to explain… physically and mentally, I’m as healthy as a horse.” Lisa chuckled mirthlessly. “But there’s something… fading. Most days I feel like I’m not really here…”

Jackie decided to skip the pleasantries. “How many years, Lis? Do you have left?”

Lisa’s reply came slow. “My telomere length suggests ten, maybe five.”

A gasp involuntarily came out of Jackie. “That’s way too fast! Ten years ago you said you had at least thirty!”

“I continued with the injections even after I found the telomeres shortening. I figured a few more years here and there wouldn’t make a difference. There came a point when I didn’t really care any more.. It just felt like something I needed to do.” Lisa gestured to herself with detached coldness. “I couldn’t stop. My theory is that with gene editing I was changing something fundamentally human within me, and the more I edit myself, the less… human I became.”

“This doesn’t bother you?”

Lisa held her gaze, her cornflower blue eyes flat. “No.”

“Are you happy?” Was it worth it? Jackie really wanted to ask.

Lisa sighed, like an exhausted teacher explaining to a child. “Jacks, that’s really beside the point, isn’t it? I’ve come beyond that. I’m evolving, changing, into something better. We all are.”

Jackie wasn’t sure about that. “So what is the next step, what will you become, after all this?”

“I become… whatever we are all supposed to be.” Lisa said in all seriousness. “Perfect, beautiful.”

“With shorter lifespans? How is that worth it?” Jackie challenged.

“So what? Shorter lifespans with an amazing quality of life. We all live too long. Like a cancer on this planet. We live longer but we live poorly.” Lisa spoke seriously. “Think about it Jackie. Think of every human being as a cell in a larger organism which is humanity as a whole. There are those of us who live too long, devouring resources, polluting the planet, overcrowding it… like a tumor. A malignancy growing out of control, metastasizing, slowly killing the larger organism of which it is part.”

Jackie stared at her friend incredulously. “Are you serious? You’re really… treating human beings like you treat your cancer cells?”

“Yes.” Lisa answered flatly. “With my calculations, if things keep going the way they are, there would be enough subscribers to the program to reduce the carbon stress on the planet in twenty years. There would be less chronic disease, less stress on the health system, less people getting older but not better.”

“Well, I for one would like to be old enough to see my children graduate, get married, have kids of their own.” Jackie said defiantly. “And how about you? You’re willing die early? Don’t you want to stay and…” she stopped, realizing that her friend did not have any family or any real human connections tethering her to this world. “…finish your research?”

“Well, really, I’m done with what I have to do.” Lisa answered slowly. “My utility could be over.”

“Lis…” Jackie was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness for her friend, finally accepting that the friend she knew has long been gone, lost years ago.

“Jacks, don’t feel sorry for me.” Lisa suddenly said, her gaze steady, piercing, as if reading Jackie’s mind. “My life has been extraordinary. I’ve discovered something world changing. People can choose, Jacks, to live beautiful and die young, or live long and take their chances. All I’ve done is offer that choice.”

Lisa then flashed her a gorgeous smile, showing perfectly straight white teeth. The smile felt strangely out of place, beautiful but also somehow menacing, like that of a predator beguiling its prey. Suddenly Jackie remembered Lisa’s exact words when asked about her mortality. She had answered her utility could be over. Emphasis on could.

“Besides,” Lisa continued in a hauntingly lilting voice. “What do you think I’ve been doing in the lab for the last ten years? I’m an expert at targeted cancer therapy, love. I can choose which cancers to treat. I never said I would let myself die… I’ve found a way maintain cell stability despite the length of my telomeres years ago, that was the point of all my subsequent treatments, among other things.” An evil glint appeared in Lisa’s perfect blue eyes. “And no, the rest of the the program subscribers will die at the end of their clocks as scheduled. But for a select few… the ones I’ve selected, the ones brave enough to part with the wasteful parts of their humanity… well, we can decide for ourselves when our utility is over.”

Like a switch, Lisa’s smile suddenly disappeared and her face became cold, expressionless, alien. With no wasted movements and inhuman grace, she then stood and left Jackie speechless at the table.

End

—