Berättelsen berättas från en av forskarnas synvinkel. Han möter ämnena i experimentet när de spelar i labbet innan de sätts in i höljet som blir deras värld / hem. De ges injektioner som får dem att åldras snabbt, men i sin falska "värld" går de i skolan, daterar, gifter sig, har en familj och blir gammal utan att veta att det är allt tillverkat och inte riktigt. Deras kroppar åldras i åldern 100, 120, 140 + ... Experimentet är att se vad som kommer att hända med människor när de lever förbi vad de för närvarande kan (105 eller 110). Det är ett slags strävan efter ungdomens källa, gudomlig kunskap och / eller odödlighet.
Barnen växer till minst 160 eller 180 år gammal ... deras huvuden och kroppar förändras drastiskt, eftersom de fortsätter åldrandet. Den sista scenen är av de två kopplingarna, så verkar flickan titta direkt på forskaren när hon stirrar in i kameran och dör. Skräcken av vad forskarna har gjort för att förstöra två helt goda liv chockar dem och de tystnadslösar experimentet.
Det här låter som "The Time Beyond Age" från novellinsamlingen The Bone Forest , av Robert Holdstock.
The day before the experiment was scheduled to commence, Martin and Yvonne, our two MAA-grown subjects, were allowed into the observation laboratory for the last time.
[...]
The first stages, of course, were the familiarization procedures, and our two subjects were introduced to the closed environment that was to be their home for the rest of their natural and unnatural lives. There was something almost depressing in watching the children, conceived, grown and matured to the age of six in a Morris Artificial Amnion, now facing an incarceration in a second womb, this time for good.*
[...]
A breakthrough into what was difficult to say. The kudos for the original discovery of Chronon was not ours. The chemical of age, the simple protein that accumulates in body cells at a steady rate and dictates the phenomenon of aging, was the discovery of a Swedish biochemist seven years before. The acceleration of development, and of aging, under the influence of artificially high concentrations of synthetic Chronon, was the contribution of a Scottish behaviorist at the University of Edinburgh, four years later.
[...]
The excitement of year one hundred passed into our distant past, and over the course of weeks, then months, the enormous ages reached by the subjects failed to arouse even the slightest whimper of joy. We worked virtually full-time countering the efforts of each of their bodies to shift into a disease condition.
[...]
One corner of the laboratory was filled with neatly stacked printouts representing the last fifty years of the subjects' lives, and staring at that pile of information I realized that nowhere in its bulk could I put my finger on a single statement of feeling, of awareness. Even the sheets on which were recorded the last living moments of Martin and Yvonne were bare, sterile accounts of failing physiology and murmurings and alpha waves; there would be no account of what they thought, what they felt as death unfurled its protective wings about them.
Enligt Wikipedia-artikeln publicerades den ursprungligen i Supernova 1976.
Från Wikipedia-artikeln:
This is a science fiction short story describing a scientific experiment in which two subjects’ rate of aging is increased in an environment that is devoid of all disease. The subjects live for the equivalent of centuries and evolve into exaggerated archetypes of male and female. Eventually they die, but not before the perpetrator of the experiment self-administers the life-altering treatment.
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