The author would like to thank Louise for her support.
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Elixir of Life
I’m a forty-one year old man who has achieved nothing of note. Brunel’s only thirty-two and his Great Western has just completed the first transatlantic crossing, while I sit in a dark dingy laboratory surrounded by useless piles of research notes. Even my research funding is at risk.
I sit back in my chair. What have I got to show for fifteen years work? I’m a world expert at analysing blood and tissue samples, isolating enzymes, hormones and other organic materials from blood and human organs. But my research simply proves certain elements within the body decrease with age. I’ve developed no method, not even a plausible idea, of how to stop the aging process. My backers have given me a month to show a cure for the curse of aging; otherwise my funding will stop. What can I do?
Disheartened I head to the research library. As I cross the courtyard I hear a newspaper seller shouting about the war in Spain, will man ever learn to live in peace? I enter the stuffy old library and begin to browse through ancient journals. Despondently I admit there is nothing new to guide my research. As I return the scientific journals to the shelves I notice a small green book with ‘Elixir of Life’, written in gold leaf lettering on its spine. Strange, I’ve never noticed it before.
Out of desperation I take the book and blow dust off the cover. It looks at least a hundred years old. I flick through the pages. It’s full of delusional ideas of extending life and rejuvenating the body through the use of strange herbs and chemicals. I read the details of the potions. I smile to myself. At least I am not the only one who searched in vain for the elixir of life. Then I read a few lines that lodge themselves in my mind, the potion cannot be drunk directly, it must be mixed with the user's blood and a bonding agent, then it can be injected back into the patient. If the potion is drunk or administered directly into the blood stream of the patient, then nothing but harm will come to the subject.
I replace the book on the shelf and return to my apartment.
That night the words keep swirling around in my mind. My dreams are filled with images of death and aging. An old man sits in my laboratory mixing extracts of enzymes, hormones and other organic materials with a sample of his own blood in a small dish. Then he takes hold of a small bottle of cloudy liquid and carefully adds a few drops to the dish. He injects the mixture into his vein and is magically transformed into a young man. He mouths the words, ‘Bonding agent.’
I wake, heart thumping.
I dress quickly and return to the library, I snatch the book off the shelf and flick through the pages. I must find the details of the bonding agent. Finally I read the words; the bonding agent is the magical oxidized water.
A scientific elixir of life – could it be real? Could this chance reading be my saviour?
A quick discussion with some chemistry research fellows and I have secured a sample of the magical oxidized water, they’ve known and used it for many years. Back in my laboratory I draw a quarter of a pint of my own blood and mix it with a combination of the extracted elements and a single drop of the bonding agent. I carefully inject the mixture into my vein. I wait with heart thumping.
The minutes pass and nothing happens.
Sixty minutes later I am kicking myself for being so foolish. How could I base my work on the words in some ancient text?
As I recline in my chair the words bonding agent keep swirling through my mind. Maybe I have used the wrong one? The mixture had no adverse effects on me. I could keep trying different ones. But which and how much should I use? I will have to conduct extensive systematic experiments.
Three weeks have passed since reading the Elixir of Life. I am convinced the secret of eternal youth is to replenish the enzymes, hormones and other organic materials of my body. I simply need to find the magical bonding agent that will allow the life giving extracts to mix with my own blood and be accepted by my body.
I’ve tried every mixture of known bonding agent and have worked through my supply of cadavers and extracts. I return to the medical dissection rooms to see if any more specimens have become available.
A fresh corpse lies on the dissection table. I pull back the sheet. It’s a young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen at most. Her skin is still warm to the touch. The notes states she has been left to medical science, some poor unfortunate wretch whose body can be used for medical research in return for a free burial of the remains. I hesitate for a moment and then proceed. Within thirty minutes I have removed the organs and carried them back to my laboratory. Sixty minutes later the mixture has been made and injected. I sit at my desk ready to record any results. A spasm runs through my body, every muscle tightens and twists. Images of childhood pump through my mind.
When I awake, I am lying prostrate on the laboratory floor in pitch darkness. My body feels strong and rejuvenated. I jump to my feet. There’s a light in the corridor. I head towards it and the hallway mirror. I can’t believe what I see. I touch the glass to make sure I’m seeing a reflection and not someone else. I am at least twenty years younger. I feel young and free. I move swiftly back to my desk and prepare to write, but animal desires course through my veins. I can’t control my urges. I look at my research notes. I should complete them, but my sense of duty is dwarfed by the desires that well up within me. I bound for the door to take my fill of the world’s pleasures.
I wake in a strange room. My mind is full of weird and wonderful memories of physical desires and pleasurable satisfaction, of spending everything on all the physical gratifications money can buy.
My body is stiff and aching. I fall out of bed and crawl to the mirror on the dressing table. The reflection is of a middle-aged man, in fact my face looks worse than I recall.
I see a newspaper on the floor. It is over ten weeks since my experiment.
I dress and hurry out into the street. I am in the working class section of the city, the stench and filth revolts me.
I rush back to my apartment.
I quickly discover my bank account is empty; my apartment has been the site of riotous parties and is full of expensive new clothes. But worst of all my research funding has been stopped; my failure to report at the allocated time made the backers withdraw their support.
As I wash I survey my ravaged body, it has aged at least ten years in the last ten weeks. I look more like a man of fifty than forty.
I lay down to rest and a young version of myself comes to me in my dreams. ‘Do you want to be an old failure or to be young? You can enjoy every pleasure imaginable; don’t let your old body stop you. Simply make another potion.’
I want to be young!
I sit despondent in a hospital mortuary. Months have passed since I reverted to my middle-aged form. My work as a hospital attendant has allowed me access to basic medical supplies and use of laboratory equipment after hours. But no matter how many times I make up the potion nothing works in the same way. My heart grows dark. I need to be young again.
The bell rings; a body to be removed.
I trudge to the ward. Distraught parents cry over the body of a young girl. She reminds me of the first child. The parents are ushered away and I remove her.
As I wheel the corpse to the mortuary my mind is clear. The body is still warm. I hesitate for a moment, thinking of the grieving parents, then a little voice whispers t
o me, ‘Get on with it.’
Three hour later I am young man of twenty with a firm strong body and a wicked smile on my lips. It’s my time again.
I sit in the Port Call pub, downing a bottle of the best port available. The past few weeks have been a haze of physical pleasure. But what am I to do for money? My credit is all used up. A man sits down heavily next to me, forcing me along the bench. Then another man sits on the other side of me, I feel crushed between them. There is no chance for me to protest.
‘Well. Well. If it isn’t the young Doctor?’ The voice is familiar; Spike, the money lender. His weasel eyes stare out from his gaunt face. He has a certain charm about him, with his mop of blond hair, but his demeanour leaves no doubt that he is a charming psychopath.
‘Have a drink Spike?’ I offer trying hard not to sound