The Methuselarity Transformation by Rick Moskovitz

deeply ingrained in his way of life and was not about to dissipate just becausethe stakes had changed. Peace eluded him. His life remained dismal and filled with dread.
    For Lena, the earthquake had been a godsend. She could finally awaken to a sunrise across a magnificent vista and gaze at the moon and stars at night. Ray still closely monitored her comings and goings, but he never again asked where she’d been the day of the quake.

7
    MARCUS WALKED THROUGH the greenhouse past tray after identical tray of HibernaTurf, looking for evidence that any of the samples was responding to his treatments. He shook his head. It was a sea of uniformity. In his months of study so far, none of his interventions had made any difference in growth rate. Even when he fed the results of the trials back into his scientific database, the algorithms failed to improve enough to yield a solution.
    As his frustration grew, he worked more and more hours until he was spending all but a few hours of each day in the laboratory and the greenhouse, sleeping in catnaps and eating while he worked. Corinne watched from the sidelines with increasing alarm. While his body showed no visible signs of fatigue even on just a few hours of sleep a day, the stress was telling in his mood and behavior. In their brief moments together during those months, he was preoccupied and emotionally distant. Even lovemaking seemed incapable of distracting him from his work.
    “You’ve got to take a break,” she insisted one day. “Let’s go away for a while. We desperately need some time together. The project will still be there when we get back.”
    Marcus grudgingly agreed to a vacation. His efforts were producing diminishing returns and he acknowledged that some time away might help him get a fresh perspective when he returned. It would be a mental reboot. They settled on a week in Hawaii and left the following weekend.
    The moment they entered the tube transport to Los Angeles, he began to relax. By the time they boarded the plane to Honolulu, all he could think about was the enchanting woman beside him, the way her eyes shone in the moonlight, and what it would feel like to make love to her on the beach. But his fantasies paused as they circled Honolulu and he saw the monotonous swaths of HibernaTurf blanketing the city and radiating into the countryside in all directions. He flashed momentarily back to the relentless march of HibernaTurf that marked the kiss of death for his parents’ farm and livestock. His right hand moved unconsciously to his chest, his index finger tracing an invisible outline. By the time they landed, he was back in the present and Corinne was all that mattered.
    They spent their first night on Waikiki Beach and flew to Maui the next day. As the plane approached the airport in Kahului, Marcus was again struck by the expanses of HibernaTurf covering the landscape even in what had once been a tropical paradise. But when they got closer, he studied the pattern on the ground and noticed it petering out at the edges in a single direction. He made a mental note to explore that area during their stay. He didn’t dare, however, give Corinne any inkling that he was thinking about work.
    Maui was like a glimpse into the past. Except for the invasion of HibernaTurf, the island looked much like it had around the turn of the century. Roads of asphalt were populated by antique vehicles that rode on wheels. Hovercars were absent. The roads were not adapted for them and the distances were short enough that they wouldn’t have provided muchadvantage anyway. Away from the towns, the roads narrowed and branched into tributaries of dirt.
    Marcus relished the sensation of tires bumping along an uneven road. What he’d loved most about riding his motorcycle in the days before Terra had altered the course of his life was the feeling of intimate connection with the earth that he’d enjoyed as a child on the family farm. He smiled as the electric jeep moved over