"Wow," Stone said. "There are no secrets left from these guys, whoever they are. They are wired." Then a message appeared: The minimum net worth required to be a member is 500 Million Dollars. The fee for membership is 100 Million Dollars. A 10-Million-Dollar retainer is required while your application is being processed. Please be prepared to designate the ages you and your companion wish to remain. "My God," she said, "that's him. He's done it. Winston Bartlett is alive and well, and selling immortality, real or not." Then another message came up: Welcome, Alexa. Please be advised you are already a member. But you have not yet selected a companion. * * * Afterword How much of the foregoing is true or even plausible? In late 2002, medical researchers in Dusseldorf announced they had successfully treated heart-attack victims using stem cells harvested from the patients' own bone marrow. The stem cells were delivered to damaged heart muscle via angioplasty catheters, a minimally invasive procedure. Subsequent monitoring indicated that the stem cells had reduced the damage to heart-muscle tissue and had improved their heart function when compared to similar patients in a control group who had declined the procedure. It's already happening. The miraculous stem cell cures in this story are essentially an extrapolation of research well underway that has been the subject of magazine covers and is possibly the most promising and, yes, problematic field of medical research. The clocks at the Dorian Institute ran faster than ordinary timepieces, and research areas and cures that currently are only speculation were made real there. But that's why it's called fiction. As with the example cited above, many stem cell miracles conjured here may be just over the horizon. As for Kristen and the Methuselah Society, they are a fictional embodiment of misgivings given voice by many, including no less an authority than Professor Leonard Hayflick, whose Hayflick limit, defining the process of how cells grow old could be said to be the underpinning of modern stem cell research. He is now a leading bioethicist who is sufficiently convinced of our potential to use stem cells to arrest the actual aging process that he has worried about its ramifications in print. He makes no claim that such a thing is imminent, but he doesn't dismiss its possibility either. He has far- reaching societal concerns about this, and he also raises biological issues such as, if you've treated your brain malady by using stem cells to grow new neural tissue, have you altered your mind? Are you still you? It's called Regenerative Medicine. Watch for it. BOOKS BY THOMAS HOOVER Nonfiction Zen Culture The Zen Experience Fiction The Moghul Caribbee Wall Street _Samurai_ (The _Samurai_ Strategy) Project Daedalus Project Cyclops Life Blood