Chapter 1: 23 Years Later

The year is 2029.

President Dwayne Johnson has brought the United States into a new era of unity and prosperity.

The COVID-19 pandemic fades into the annals of history as new science develops at a rapid pace, preventing new disasters and curing several diseases like AIDS, breast cancer, and MS.

The invention of the low yield solar car replaces both gas powered engines and rare earth metal powered batteries results in a cleaner environment all over the globe.

The Red Sox have won an additional 5 World Series. The Yankees haven’t won in years.

All seems to be right with the world.

Not Jenna Franklin’s world though. That world is a disaster.

She rushed across the courtyard of Columbia University in a blind panic, trucking along with several schematics, her notes, a laptop, and a rapidly spilling cup of coffee under her arm.

“Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit!” She cursed under her breath as she yanked open the science building’s doorway with her right foot and bolted down the hallway. Of all days for her alarms to reset it had to be today. Only the most important day of her collegiate career!

Jenna had been working on this project since she set foot in the place with an accelerated education. All those years of avoiding a social life, putting her nose to the grindstone, graduating with a bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorates in biological science and engineered in four years were leading up to this point. AND SHE WAS LATE!

She kicked down the door of the biology wing conference to meet the stern face of Dean Richard Patterson, a hard-nosed man with an even harder expression.

“Ah, Ms. Franklin? So nice of you to finally join us.” He coldly dead-panned to her in his forever judging way.

“I am so sorry for making you wait ladies and gentlemen.” She wheezed as she met the also cold stairs of every single department head she had studied under at Columbia, “It appears that I am the unfortunate victim of Murphy’s Law today.”

The joke landed with the grace of a dead cat. Strike One.

“Ms. Franklin, if you wouldn’t mind, you are already behind and we don’t want to hold up our other scheduled applicants.” Richard flatly replied.

“Right, sorry, let me just set up my notes.” Jenna began to lay out her schematics on several white boards at the head of the conference room. They showed a mechanical design for a medical recovery chamber and the data collected from four years of studies on Rats. She also pulled up her prototype chamber, also Rat sized, that she used for all of her experiments

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am here to propose to you a project that will not only put Columbia at the forefront of medical science, but at the very cutting edge of science itself. For the past four years I have been using studies on rats to create a hyper resonance chamber. Using a combination of high frequency sound waves, non-embryonic stem cells, and osmotic nanites this chamber could be the solution to a multitude of scientific mysteries. We called it Fountain of Youth XP.”

The joke landed like a duck shot out of the air. Strike Two.

“After several studies on different Rats with a multitude of ailments, we used the chamber to effectively lessen or outright cure these ailments, for example…” She then went through her case files on different subjects. One rat with debilitating muscular damage seemingly recovered and could move with a one-day dip in the fluid. Another rat was missing an eye, a trip to the chamber had him coming out with a brand new one. A third had several tumors growing throughout it’s body, the chamber’s effects had them gone in a fortnight. Not to mention, all subjects seemed to regain stamina and liveliness after a trial in the tank, as if their age regressed as well as their ailments.

“Therefore, I propose that we begin designs for a human trial of the chamber. Imagine a world where an amputee could grow a limb in one night or be rid of skin cancer in one treatment? And this secondary effect could even add years onto a patient’s life, maybe better years! I hope you enjoyed my presentation, and I hope you will take it into consideration.”

She aced it. Her research was sound, her results were genuine, there is no way that they could turn her down. Then, after an extremely healthy and uneasy pause, Patterson spoke up.

“The university will never spend time and money on this.”

Strike Three.

“Sir, I don’t know what you mean, you can clearly see that my results are sound.”

“Oh, I can see they are, for rats, and while I applaud your contributions to the advancement of rodent-kind, this will never fly.”

She staired at the Dean with a bewildered expression as he stood up from his end of the table.

“Look Ms. Franklin, your ideas are sound, your project has merit. I am just giving you the cold hard truth. We get major contributions from many corporations that will directly be affected by this project. Every major science program does. The minute we announce we are working on something that could eliminate cyber prosthetics or cancer nano treatments, our donors would bring the hammer down on us.”

Of course, Money. It is always money.

“You will always have a place here at Columbia, you are one of our best students. I happily put you on any project you want, Simon Croaker mentioned you by name, your expertise would lend greatly to his rover project.”

Jenna recoiled at the mere mention of that toady, his idea of experimentation was how to get into his interns’ panties, a practice he no doubt wanted to try on her.

“Sir, with all due respect, we could help millions with this, to merely toss it over something as frivolous as money…”

“You have no human trials. You need to build a container suitable for a human, and the necessary materials to activate the process. That costs money. Where do we get money Ms. Franklin?”

She stared back at him, stunned at his treatment of her like a naive freshman.

“So, unless you have more to go on, this will be labeled as science fiction and never allowed to leave the file archives downstairs. Your request for funding is denied.”

Bottom of the Ninth, Out Number 3, Game Over.

Jenna took in the colorful changing trees of the Adirondacks as she drove down the two-lane highway. It had been six months since she left Columbia in a fit, and in that time, she went to NYU, Empire State College, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. All the same result. All denied her funding.

She could not stand being in the City for a moment longer, and frankly she needed a break. The toll of her senior year and the application process did a toll on her body and mind, even more so on her social life. She did not even remember the last time she spoke to a guy let alone wen on a date and the constant din and chaos of the city streets only made her more and more depressed.

She told Misty and Tso, her two roommates and best friends, that she was going to leave the city for a few weeks and packed up to head north to visit her parent’s lakeside estate, her childhood home. She had not seen Mom and Dad since Easter, so she decided not to call ahead and surprise them. Nothing would recharge her batteries more than a little R&R, and maybe it would let her see what her next step was going to be.

After about six hours of driving, she finally reached the massive iron gate that marked the entrance to Lustmoore. She flashed her old key card and the gates shuddered open, leading to a long straight driveway surrounded with low hanging willow trees. The house looked as resplendent as ever, a Italian villa transported to the idyllic scenery of upstate New York. The flourishing inner courtyard garden full of flowers and trees encased the entire area in a seemingly ancient charm. Jenna sighed as she pulled around the outside driveway. This place almost seemed ethereal to her, like it was held together by magic. Well, it was honestly her mother’s insanely specific taste, but regardless, it is beautiful.

She pulled around to the garage, where she saw a Rolls Royce Phantom special parked outside.

“Wow, that is insane, I didn’t know Dad bought another car?” She pondered to herself as she opened the third bay, where she always parked her car when she visited.

“I guess Mom got him another present, she is always spoiling him. Rolls Royce though? He hates British cars?” She said quizzically as she walked from the garage into the huge kitchen. The inside of the house was just as magnificent as the outside. Almost entirely open concept, the left side of the house was a giant window that faced the lake and was centered around a massive fireplace. The kitchen was stainless steel and full of state-of-the-art equipment. Below was a massive entertainment room and a fully stocked gym. The highlighting feature was a gaudy family portrait that hung above the massive stone fireplace. She stared at the portrait for a second, finding that familiar feeling entering her mind. The feeling of wishing her mother would take this thing down.

It was painted when she was 13 years old, and it could not have been at a more awkward time. She was in the middle of puberty, just the textbook image of somebody who did not want this moment in her life immortalized on canvas. That of course was magnified by the fact her parents were also on the same painting, and that always made for any guest who viewed this to think the same question…

‘Did they adopt?’

Jenna loved her parents; they were the greatest mother and father anybody could ask for. They were nothing but loving for her entire childhood, made sure that she wanted for nothing, and gave her a quality education. Top that off with paying her way through Columbia and refusing to let her pay them back and the fact they landed her and her two friends a three-bedroom apartment in Manhattan of all places for FREE, and Mr. and Mrs. Franklin would seem like nothing short of saints.

Yet sometimes, she wished, they were more…ordinary. First, the obvious, her parents were fucking gorgeous human beings. Her father, a free trade investor who had a talent for landing massive money stock options, was a tall and muscular man with a commanding stature and the body of an underwear model. Her mother, a television executive in the city, was a curvy and fit dynamo with a body so tight that she would snap necks constantly wherever she went. It was almost a scientific anomaly, one that needed to be studied if she was honest with herself. Bob and Marsha Franklin were in their early 60’s when this portrait was commissioned, yet the two romance novel cover models present here did not look a day older than 30. They were in their mid 70’s now, and they STILL looked the same. It was like time did not touch them. Compare that to the scrawny child that stood between them. She knew she was their daughter; she even got a DNA test just to prove her own doubts.

Jenna was no slouch now. She grew out of her awkward years and became a modern young woman. She stood at around 5’10” and maintained a level of fitness where she wasn’t out of shape. Her sandy blond hair hung to her shoulders and her slim body looked great in a dress. Yet, compared to her mother, it was like they were from different planets. All that she studied and absorbed about Biology did not explain how two Demi-Gods ended up producing her.

Secondly, Her parents were always incredibly open when it came to intimacy. Too open. Many a potential boyfriend was chased away after her mother plainly asked them what their preferences on blowjobs were. They sat her down for the birds and the bees real early, like at 9. When she turned 18, they talked about sex and they way THEY had sex as openly and as in detail as the news. They were always asking her about how she viewed intimacy, which Jenna would always try to direct into something less awkward. Nothing made her want to wash out her eyes with soap more then rationalizing that her 70-year-old parents had the sex lives porn stars pray for.

As she continue to stare at the painting, she heard a faint noise from up the stairs.

“Mom? Dad?” she said as she turned and climbed the huge staircase that led to the upper floors, “Hello, you guys home?”

As she climbed the stairs, the faint noises started to reach her ears more and more. It sounded muffled, but she could swear she was hearing grunting and the sound of something hitting against something. At the end of the hallway her parent’s bedroom door was open just a crack, letting a single beam of light shine out. The sounds were more definable, she heard moaning, and panting breathing.

“Really? Now?” she thought with horror as she realized she should have just called, then at least she wouldn’t have to hide in the garage for the next two hours while her parents were…busy.

“Goddamn Marsha, this pussy is tight as hell!”

Jenna stopped in her tracks. That was not her father. She knew her father’s voice and that was too deep to be his. She suddenly remembered the Rolls Royce in the driveway. Of course it couldn’t have been her father’s car, her father was a strict American muscle kind of guy. That meant that that car wasn’t his, it was whoever was in the bedroom right now. She could not believe that Mom would cheat on Dad, it just didn’t make sense, they practically fawned all over each other every moment she saw them together.

“Carla is just as tight Will, you are a lucky man.”

Speak of the devil. She recognized her father’s smooth voice anywhere. Wait, he was in the room too? Instead of doing the reasonable thing and walking away to wait in another corner of the house, Jenna felt some deep seeded curiosity drag her closer and closer to the door. She made sure she wasn’t noticeable and peaked inside.

Little did Jenna know, what she saw unfold before her was just the beginning of her own journey.