36 Arguments for the Existence of God - [37]

“Contemplation of one’s mortality can addle even the clearest of thinkers. It’s a bit like religion in that way. In fact, it is religion.”

When Cass had dared to suggest something along similar lines to Nanovitch, the man had serenely smiled and said, “It’s not religion. It’s molecular biology.”

“By which you mean,” said Roz now, “that fear of death gives a lot of wishful oomph to the God hypothesis.”

“Exactly.”

“All the more reason to try and cure our mortality with scientific advances. If we succeed, we’ll deprive the heaven-mongers of their cruel false promises.”

“The afterlife of the skeptics,” Cass said, smiling.

“Which is all the afterlife that we need! This!” And she threw her glass of Rioja back like a pro, taking the opportunity to remind Cass, after she swallowed, to “drink plenty of red wine. The resveratrol promotes longevity. Which reminds me.”

She reached into her purse and pulled out a baggy bursting with pills and capsules: gelatin globules filled with yellow viscous fluid or reddish oils, shiny black pellets and lozenges of mahogany brown, and then some homemade-looking capsules with powders ranging from white to sandy tan to mocha brown. There must have been twenty-five in all.

“You swallow all that?”

She answered by getting them all down with amazing dispatch, using her water, and then taking a long swig of resveratrol as a chaser.

“This is nothing! You should see what I swallow in the morning!”

“Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Do any of us?”

“But you’re doing something extreme here. You could be doing yourself more harm than good.”

“Look, we all know what’s going to happen if nature is allowed to take its course. This is what strong intervention looks like. That’s what I’m interested in. Strong intervention.”

“You take even more than that in the morning?”

“I take vitamins, antioxidants, and hormones three times a day. The biggest dose is in the morning. The smallest dose is what you just saw.”

“What are you trying to do to yourself, Roz?”

“Live a very long time.”

“You could be killing yourself.”

“Have a little faith. I’m not doing this blindly. I consult with molecular biologists and gerontologists.”

“Do they know what they’re doing? How much real science is this based on?”

“The science is incomplete, sure. It always is. If we wait around to get it, we’ll never live to see it gotten. The best we can do is experiment with ourselves.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Life isn’t a randomized, double-blind, peer-reviewed clinical trial. Big gains require big risks, and we’re after the biggest gain of all.”

Cass decided to say no more about Roz’s experiments on her body. She always was a risk-taker and she always will be one.

“Have you thought about the other high-tech way to cheat death?” Cass was thinking of the position advocated by another participant at Auerbach’s Rialto dinner, a philosopher named Nicholas Duffy. Duffy had been the only one to challenge Nanovitch at all, though he was more or less on the same wavelength. “If you could reverse-engineer the neural program that constitutes a person’s mind, you could upload it to a less-vulnerable physical medium,” Cass said to Roz. “There could even be multiple backups, in case of a power failure or a nuclear attack.”

“You mean just backing up our software, and throwing away this beautiful hardware platform we call my body? Are you kidding, Cass? I don’t want to look into the mirror and see a rectangular screen! I don’t want to run my virtual fingers across your shivering keyboard or have you uploading into me for a virtual roll in the hay! Give me my body or give me death!”

This was turning into one of the conversations with Roz when Cass wasn’t sure whether she wanted him to be laughing quite as much as he was. Meanwhile, the tapas had started to arrive, with their waiter theatrically reciting the names of the nine dishes as he balanced them expertly around the candlelit table.

“This question of preserving our software or our hardware reminds me of those ancient Judeo-Christian debates on whether an immaterial soul survives the death of the body, or the body itself is resurrected when the Messiah comes,” Cass said, watching Roz tuck into the tapas as if there were no tomorrow, even though she was betting on several centuries’ worth of them.

“What did the ancient rabbis say?”

“They’re pretty much on your side on this one. They choose the body over the disembodied soul.”

“Glad to hear it. Anyway, Cass,” she continued, washing down a green-lipped mussel with some more Rioja, “the sooner you get me in touch with Nanovitch while I’m here in Cambridge, the better. And what about that agent of yours?”

“Sy Auerbach? What do you want with Sy Auerbach?” It occurred to Cass that maybe Roz had a book she had written or was planning to write. Everybody has written or is planning to write a book.

“Auerbach strikes me as the kind who’d want in on immortality. I read that blog of his. He’s our kind of guy!”

“Okay, I’ll give you his coordinates. He’s in New York, of course.”

“I’m on my way to New York! Maybe he’d want to meet me personally! I’d love to be one of the regulars on his blog.”