It was magic when we met—pure, electrifying magic.
I had just started a new job in a non-scientific role at a global biomedical research firm. I had been surprised that biomedical research firms also need marketing experts (ok, “expert” is a stretch), yet that was the first company I sent my resumé to. And the first job I landed after graduating. As a marketing major with a minor in biology, I was excited to land a job in a field I had a lifelong interest in. I felt confident. I felt invincible. I felt that my luck was only just beginning.
The campus where I work was established in 1994, and the town was practically built with it. Before my interview, I did a deep dive into the organization and learned that the corporation hadn’t just bought the land on which the offices and laboratories were housed; they had purchased and developed the entire town. It was a woodsy suburb of Boston, and if you didn’t work for the firm, you lived with someone who did. Everything in this town existed because of the company.
A year of rent was included as a sign-on bonus, and I moved in quickly. By design, new hires without a live-in partner or kids were assigned upscale townhouses in a trendy, well-attended neighborhood. Every front lawn was the same brilliant shade of green, and lush native plants bordered the wrought iron fences and sidewalks. The streets were immaculate, and the brick sidewalks were so level, even, and perfect that the lines almost looked painted on. Each townhouse-lined street ran perpendicular to a thriving downtown area.
Upon my first visit, I was pleasantly surprised to find a delectable selection of global cuisine and plenty of opportunities to mingle with my new neighbors and colleagues. There were singles nights, pickleball clubs, trivia nights, and open mics. And while none of the events or clubs ever mentioned the company being a sponsor, it didn’t take me long to realize my new employer influenced everything that happened in this town. I soaked it all up and quickly found a core group of close friends I felt I’d known my entire life.
I was halfway through a two-week onboarding program to familiarize myself with the company culture when I saw her for the first time during a tour of the restricted-access laboratory and research floor. The glorified chaperone from Human Resources, John, led us new hires down a long white, sterile corridor towards a reinforced steel door. The door had a small, circular window with a thick glass pane. It reminded me of a submarine, and I shuddered, wondering if anyone had ever been accidentally locked inside.
John swiped a card over a key reader mounted on the wall next to the door handle and ushered us into a large white waiting room—just as clean and cold as the hallway. One wall was covered in black-framed photos, achievements, articles, and awards. There was another locked glass door on the opposite side from where we had entered, along with a fully windowed wall that looked into the lab and research center beyond.
She stood in the middle of the room, waiting to greet our group. Copper red hair pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck. Her skin was lightly tanned and freckled. She had large, round, coffee-brown eyes that sparkled. Her slight smile was bordered with full, somewhat glossy lips. She was wearing a white lab coat and holding a clipboard as our group approached. I was breathless. She was stunning.
Our chaperone introduced her, “This is Dr. Sonia Venturi. She’s the head of our special research department. Don’t get too comfortable here; it’s not generally open for visitors.” He winked at us.
I barely heard another word after he said her name. My eyes were locked on her. The chaperone continued chattering away, and I stared in the creepiest way possible, she told me later. My tongue practically wagging. Until she caught my eye, then the universe stopped. She smiled at me, her eyes warm, almost like she was happy to see me, and my knees nearly gave out beneath me. I’d never felt love at first sight, but this had to be it. After returning a small smile, I broke eye contact first and pretended to listen again. And then she spoke.
“Thanks, John,” her voice was music. Luscious and rich. And again, I tuned out everything else. I was enthralled as she spoke. Articulate just as you’d expect the head of a super top-secret lab at a biomedical research firm, but she was also cheerful and inviting. Intoxicating. And I knew at that moment I’d have to find a way to meet with her again.
And oh, I did.
It took a few months, but I finally got my chance at the company holiday party. For a corporate party, the setting was incredibly romantic. The company had rented out the entire top floor and rooftop restaurant at one of the fanciest hotels within an hour of campus. Every table featured gorgeous pine boughs, poinsettias, and oranges stacked like Christmas trees. There were candles, two roaring fireplaces, and low lights. Jazzy instrumental music wafted through from another area of the restaurant. Snow gently fell outside on the roof deck, but the floors were heated, and every seat was within sweat distance of a gas fire pit or a heating lamp. The alcohol flowed freely, and there was a block of rooms reserved for anyone who might not be able to get home.
After explaining the deal, my manager had said the Friday before, sensing my trepidation, “They want us to have fun.”
I was two drinks in and chatting with several colleagues when Sonia walked in. She was wearing a shimmering, lilac-colored slip dress. Her coppery hair cascaded in waves down her back, landing at the middle of her shoulder blades. She walked right to the bar, so I shot back the rest of my beer, excused myself, and walked up to her as coolly and casually as possible.
“Dr. Venturi, right?” I said as I stood beside her, holding out my hand. Close enough to smell her citrusy perfume but not actually touching.
She turned slightly to look up at me. Her eyes trailed from my chest to my eyes, lingering for an extra moment on my mouth. She returned my handshake and sounded slightly surprised, saying, “Yes. Oh, it’s you.”
“It’s me?” I asked, not really understanding what she meant. I panicked as if I shouldn’t be here, and she didn’t want me here.
Looking down at her hands on the bar, she demurred, “It’s you, yes. I remember you from your tour with the new hires a few months ago.”
I was elated. She remembers me. “I’m Charlie. Can I buy you a drink?”
“It’s an open bar,” she said flatly, one brow furrowed. She looked at me like I was a moron because, compared to her, I am, and my heart dipped into my gut, but then she started to giggle. I smiled at her, and the next second, we were both full-on laughing and smiling at each other. It wasn’t even funny, but I felt like I won the lottery. If I thought her voice was music, her laugh was the song of angels, of a goddess. A siren luring awake something I didn’t even know slept within me.
The rest of that night was a blur that started with nonstop conversation, learning about each other, and ended with us wrapped up under a luxuriously soft duvet in a bed on the floor below the restaurant. With our common interests, I was stunned we hadn’t run into each other sooner. Of everything I learned about her that night, I was most surprised that she was several years older than me. Although her position in the lab should have been a significant indication, she looked so young that when I first met her, I assumed she’d been one of those genius kids who got their doctorate at 17.
I was in love immediately. And Sonia will tell you herself, she was, too. In a year, we were married. It’s been seven years of bliss since that day, and if I could go back in time, I’d do it again and again. I can proudly say that our love, desire, and devotion to each other have only continued to grow. My luck really did just start to blossom with that new career.
But today? Today is my 30th birthday. And my intelligent, kind, perfect, beautiful, sexy wife and I are celebrating at our favorite restaurant.
“I’d marry you again,” Sonia coos at me over dinner.
This was our favorite phrase, and my heart warmed every time it passed her lips. I would echo it back to her until our last day. One hand clasped gently across the table. We stared intensely at each other. I was excited about the food but even more excited about the dessert I’d get at home later.
“You look absolutely stunning tonight, darling,” I say with a devilish smile.
She ran a finger lightly along the center of my palm, reading my mind. Her face fell slightly as she said, “I have a small favor to ask. Could we swing by the lab on the way home after dinner?”
“Of course, honey. Is everything alright at work?” My eyebrows drew inwards with concern.
“Yes, yes. I just forgot something.” She looks at me sweetly. “You can even come in with me if you’d like.”
“A visit to the top secret lab?” My mouth opens a bit in surprise. “Is this my birthday gift?”
She laughs fully and replies, “Something like that.”
Her face was positively fox-like, eyes a little wild, as if she’d been planning something delicious for me. I couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of surprise she would cook up for me at work, but I let my creative juices flow and my mind wanders, my eyebrows dancing at her in response. I knew full well that nothing exciting would happen beyond waiting in the same room I met her in.
—
“It’s kind of spooky to be here after dark,” I admitted, following Sonia through the facade to the locked glass doors. She waved her keycard, and the doors began to open. I reached around her to assist it the rest of the way, uninterested in waiting for the machine to finish. It was painfully slow, and I didn’t want to be here any longer than we had to, sexy surprise or not.
“Is anyone else in the building?” I whispered. It felt like coming into a library. Or hospital. I was here for 40 or more hours every week, but the emptiness was haunting.
“Just us,” Sonia said at full volume. Her milk and honey voice echoed across the oversized entryway. She grimaced, leaned into me, and in a lower voice, said, “ok, I see why you whispered.”
We stifled our giggles all the way to the elevator. Once again, Sonia waved her key card, and the doors swished open. We began our journey down into the lab- her lab. We were silent for the entire long ride. I leaned in the corner, watching her. Even under these horrendous fluorescent lights, she looked perfect- just as she did the day I met her right here.
She turned to me, her face serious, and asked, her voice barely above a whisper, “Do you want to see what I do here?”
My mouth swung open. I was positively shocked. In the eight years I’d known Sonia, I never asked what she did; she never once hinted at it. I had been thoroughly indoctrinated at the orientation about the work’s mission. They were changing and saving lives. What Sonia and her team did was so sensitive and proprietary that not even their spouses could know what precisely they were working on. There were contracts, NDAs, and a giant multinational biomedical company that held enough weight to stop us from risking our jobs and possible litigation. Or maybe worse.
I have a leg up on other spouses because I work here, too. But still, I know only enough to know that my incredible wife was working at the bleeding edge of science, technology, and medical research– and she was saving lives.
Sonia led me towards the locked glass laboratory door on the other side of the waiting room.
“Well? Do you?” she asked expectantly, taking my hand.
I just nodded, stunned at the proposition, following her through the locked glass door. I’d never even seen her workspace before. It was such an odd experience, following her through these halls that I had only imagined over all these years. The lab was actually many labs. Divided by white walls. Every door had the same key card access system. Many of the labs had large floor-to-ceiling observation windows. Some did not. And despite never being this far into the lab before, something felt strangely familiar.
“What happens in the rooms without windows?” I asked.
She looked back at me, ignoring the question, “Almost there.” Of course, she couldn’t tell me.
We turn down a dead-end corridor and head towards a door at the other end. It’s another sturdy steel door. Unlike the one that brings you to the lab entryway, this one does not have a thick paned round window. Sonia’s lab seemingly has no windows from the hallway, making me inordinately uncomfortable.
She senses my hesitation and turns her pretty face back at me again. Smiling lovingly, one hand hovered over the door handle, the other with the key card halted just far enough away from the reader that the door remained locked.
“Relax, babe, it’s basically just an office. An immaculate, top-secret office,” she winked at me and then pressed on. She forcefully yanked the door open as soon as the heavy-duty deadbolt audibly slid back into the door with a hiss and metal scraping on metal. The door pulled shut automatically behind us, and the lock clicked back into place. Instantly, my shoulders crept towards my ears, and my chest muscles tensed. I pushed out a breath and took another step inside, past Sonia, finally taking in my surroundings.
For the third time tonight, I was shocked. However, this time, I was also horrified. Glass-doored stainless steel cabinets were stacked along every long wall of the room- dozens of them. I realized in disgust that each had its own human body part- legs, arms, feet, hands, torsos, heads- wriggling and writhing- alive. I barely took them all in before I fainted, my head cracking on the linoleum, and everything went black.
—
“Oh honey, you won’t remember or feel any of this, don’t worry.”
Sonia looked down at me, smiling. Her hand was gently stroking my bare chest. I opened my mouth to ask why I was shirtless, why I was lying on a cold, rigid table, but no sound came out. I was too shocked. My face contorted in confusion and fear, searching hers for answers. I tried to sit up and get off the table, but my body was unresponsive. I couldn’t move. I was stuck there. I couldn’t speak.
“Are you ready to hear what I’ve been up to all these years, darling?” She stepped back from me and began pacing around the table.
I tried pleading with her with my eyes. Widening them at her in horror.
Her mouth pulled to one side, and her eyebrows drew in, shaking her head.
“I’m sorry, I can’t let you go,” she had read my silent plea. “But just let me explain. While the primary goal with the work has been longevity, maybe even immortality, about 30 years ago, research diverged into other… tangents.” She began ticking the items off her fingers, “Regeneration and cloning, namely, and also, resurrection, rebirth, regrowth.”
She paused and stared at me from the other side of the table now, “Maybe I should take a different approach. Do you want to hear the story of how we met?”
Silently, I begged my limbs to move. To strain. To do anything. My face scrunched at Sonia’s face in confusion, shaking slightly from side to side.
“You know how we met this time. You don’t remember the first time.”
My heart pounded so hard I thought my ribs might crack. None of it made sense. The first time?
“As I said, the main focus of my research is longevity,” she said, taking small, slow steps around the table once more. I followed her with the only part I could move: my eyes. It seemed like she was circling me like prey, and fear rose in me ferociously.
This can’t be my wife, I thought.
“My team has been working on extending youth and preserving the living human body for decades. But we needed volunteers,” Sonia gestured to herself and her body and then around to the cabinets. Now that there was nothing to do but look, something was recognizable about some disembodied parts. As if I knew the people they had come from, I wanted to vomit. “The first time we met was not long after this town was established.”
My mouth popped open as I tried to understand what she was saying. Decades? I wasn’t even born when this town was established.
“I know, honey, you’re confused.”
My heart almost softened at how she knew my expressions, at the tenderness of her voice as she continued, “We met at the holiday party, just as you remember, only we didn’t spend that first night together. It was certainly a different time back then. But we did continue to see each other socially. The way they set up this town…” Gesturing around her again as she trailed off. I understood that much. This town was made to socialize with our colleagues to deepen the indoctrination into the mission and the culture, whether or not the company admitted it.
“Well, it was hard to avoid each other once we met. We had the same interests and hobbies. Overlapping friend groups… At the time, you were in a very different position within the company, giving you more knowledge of my work than you’ve been allowed this time… other times. Once we were official, I let you in on the research more than maybe I should have.”
She looked pained as she told me, “You wanted to be a part of it. You volunteered. You knew that it could be an endless cycle of fresh starts. But I promised you I would marry you again and again. Every cycle, we’ve gotten closer and closer, Charlie. This is the oldest you’ve ever been. It’s incredible.”
It was then that I noticed, just past her shoulder on the opposite wall, a head shaking back and forth violently, eyes open in a wide panic, mouth gaping open and shut, as if to say, “no,” from behind the glass. It was my head. My eyes shot to Sonia in a panic.
“These,” she continued, now beaming, “are all you.” She was proud. “You have made all of this possible. You are giving the gift of life to millions of humans through your continued sacrifice. This body will die today, and tomorrow, you’ll be a blank slate, but I promise that you’ll live forever through our work. And we are so close to the finish line, my love. So very close. Just one or maybe two more cycles. And then we will both live and be young forever. We can finally start a family.”
My breath reached a frantic pace as I took in my reality. I will die tonight. My wife is going to kill me. And she’s going to keep killing me.
“You wanted this. You begged for this,” Sonia said calmly before gently kissing my cheek. She whispered directly in my ear, sending shivers through me, “It’s going to be ok, Charlie. It’s not the end. I will marry you again, you know.”
If I could have thrown up then, I would have.
—
I cannot believe how lucky I am. Three weeks ago, I graduated from college and landed an incredible job at a biomedical research firm in the marketing department. I start today, and I am buzzing with excitement and anticipation.
This is the first day of the rest of my life.