This can’t be right. Eternal life?
The grizzled scientist leaned back in his wicker chair in the unkempt offices of the international study group in El Mansheya, the old town center of Alexandria, Egypt. Outside the darkened windows, he heard the familiar evening sounds of souk merchants closing up shop mixing with the distant strains of the day’s last call to prayer.
He took a deep breath to settle his nerves. The aroma of sumac and saffron drifted in from the nearby spice market. He leaned forward and pulled the keyboard closer to his ample belly. He couldn’t believe the findings.
If the readout is correct, why, this upends centuries of scholarship. It changes … everything.
He adjusted his black-frame glasses, popped out of his chair, and ambled to the instrumentation panels. Could there be anything he’d missed?
Last week, just one kilometer from the lab’s front door, his team had painstakingly recovered a set of papyrus scrolls they had dated to the time of Alexander the Great’s rule. He smoothed his fingers over the computer tomography micro-scanner that created 3D digital models of the scrolls’ contents.
He stepped to the next machine, a large slate-gray hyperspectral imaging unit that revealed hidden texts, faded writing, and subtle differences in ink and parchment composition used in the scrolls. He stroked the smooth metal surface as he liked to pat the head of his sweet Baladi street dog, Momo.
Next he moved to the lab’s newest addition, the synchrotron radiation detector. Over the past forty-eight hours, its ultra-bright X-rays enabled his team to examine the scrolls’ composition and structure at a microscopic level.
Shake ingredients, stir, and run it through the AI analysis software the center used.
His phone rang. Time for his weekly check-in with Hannah, his research assistant in Princeton. Often he would decline the video mode and switch to audio only, but today he wanted to see if Hannah could detect the excitement in his voice.
“Dr. Fayek, are we really video chatting? What’s the occasion?” Hannah’s voice always made his heart glow. Even though she was forty years his junior—young enough to be his granddaughter!—they shared a scientist’s love of unwinding the secrets of the universe. Today, her bright smile was like adding honey to a kunafa pastry.
“It is good to see you, Hannah.” He held his phone’s camera at arm’s length to show off his toothy smile and, behind him, Synchro, as the lab rats liked to call the synchrotron reader. “We are putting our new toy to good use.”
“So I hear. What other secrets have you been keeping from me?” She pouted playfully, jutting out her lower lip.
Fayek slunk back into his sturdy wicker chair. “Now, now. We do have a process in place. I need to conduct a final run-through tomorrow to authenticate our work. But the early findings are … intriguing.”
He tapped an icon on his phone and switched the video chat to his large computer monitor … where Hannah was squinting at him.
“You’ll have to do better than that, doctor. You’ve been running the hieroglyphs and hieratic scripts from the scrolls through the lab and using the latest AI models for translations—that much I know.”
“Yes, yes. It’s all very exciting!”
“Argh!” She let out a little grunt. “Bottom line it for me.”
He wasn’t ready to give her the full picture. He himself couldn’t quite believe it. The big picture would have to be filled in with little pieces first.
“Let’s just say the ancient Egyptians appear to have had a much more sophisticated understanding of biochemistry than anyone could have imagined.”
Hannah’s eyes flew wide. “That’s quite a statement. What branch of biochemistry?”
He wondered how much to reveal. It was all still … speculative.
“Are you familiar with the Hayflick Limit?”
She nodded. Of course she was. He remembered her CV—she held a minor in the biological sciences at Penn.
He lowered his voice to conspirator level. “I can’t say too much over an unencrypted connection.”
“Oh, the Russians are spying on us now, doctor?”
He ignored the taunt and turned his attention from the videoconference screen to his second monitor, scrolling through the AI’s translation of the ancient texts for the twentieth time today. “My dear one. This turns the entire field of Egyptology on its head. It puts mummification in a whole new light. Not only did the ancient Egyptians know about our built-in biological limits. They say they found a way to bypass those limits.”
Hannah said nothing for a moment, taking it in. Finally, she squinted and furrowed her brow. “Dr. F., that’s impossible.”
Fayek nodded. “It is impossible. And yet, it is what it is.”
Hannah blew out a breath to consider this. “When can you send over the findings?”
The old scientist straightened his sore back. He had barely slept the past two nights after spending eighteen hours a day in the lab. But he knew he needed to rest so that he would have a fresh set of eyes to pore over the data again in the morning. To see what he’d missed and confirm the findings.
“You’ll have the preliminaries by end of day tomorrow. The secret has been buried for millennia. What’s another day?”
Hannah’s radiant smile returned. “Sounds reasonable. Good night, Dr. F.”
“Good afternoon, Hannah.” He ended the chat.
Fayek turned off his computer. He gathered his things and began the six-block walk to his apartment. El Mansheya was putting on its evening attire, the spice dukkans and craft shops closed while the decades-old bars and restaurants with intricate designs buzzed with activity, much of it from visitors to this historic hub of Egyptian culture. As usual, there were still hundreds of people milling about in the dim light in search of entertainment or culture or love or whatever they came to almarkaz for.
He knew his mind would be returning to the lab discovery all night long. So his thoughts drifted to koshari, the comfort dish of rice, lentils, onions, pasta, and a special sauce his wife promised to make tonight.
At the main intersection, Fayek felt a sting in the back of his neck. He turned to see if he was being attacked by a large wasp, renowned in this area for their sharp stingers. But he only saw men and women hurriedly brush past. A few slowed down as he grabbed the back of his neck and fell to his knees.
“Somebody get a doctor!” someone shouted in English.
Quizzical looks and murmurs of concern.
“Hal anta bikhayr?” a young woman asked. Are you all right?
These were the last words Dr. Ahmed Omar Fayek would ever hear.
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