“Soyoung,” agrees Taylor. She is overdoing it.
“He was in perfect health,” says Honey. She wants to tell the girl that sixty might have been Barney’s chronological age, but his latest epigenetic clock test gave him a biological age of thirty-two! Only four years older than Honey. He was aiming for a biological age that matched her chronological age. He nearly got there.
“I read that profile of him just recently. The one with the picture of him on the trampoline?”
Barney had been pleased with the profile. She remembers the opening paragraph.
Barney’s personal and professional interest in exploring the new frontiers of longevity science and technology is paying personal dividends. He has the physique of a man half his age. When I arrived for our interview, I found Barney on a trampoline, wearing snow skis, practicing jumps in anticipation of his upcoming ski trip to an exclusive French ski resort. The expression on his face? Pure joy. This is a man who loves his life, and according to him, he’s “only just begun!”
Barney and Mac were obsessed withhacking death. They took advantage of all the latest cutting-edge cellular rejuvenation techniques. They rigorously monitored their bodies: daily blood tests, weekly scans, ECGs, body composition analysis. Mac restricted his diet, but Barney never did. He was interested in the philosophy oflongevity without sacrifice. He was a hedonist and foodie. He wanted to live forever while still eating and drinking the best the world had to offer.
“It was a heart attack, right?” says Taylor. “Because of all the cold therapies?” She shivers extravagantly. “I don’t like the cold.” Everyone knows that Barney liked to take meetings in his cryotherapy machine, and younger staff members came out of meetings hypothermic, brushing away frozen teardrops.
“It was a pulmonary embolism,” says Honey. “It wasn’t caused by the cold therapies. Not like people are saying. That had nothing to do with it.”
Barney died in an ice bath in Spain. It was a private home in the Guadalest Valley. Barney and Mac were there for an important meeting with a money guy. Or maybe it was a tech guy, or a science guy. They were working on something “huge,” “radical,” “life-changing,” but those were the words always used to describe each new “innovation.”
“Do you think it was the stress?” Honey had asked Mac. “About that new project?”
He said no, he didn’t think it was that, but he sounded extremely stressed.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know how close I can get you to the cathedral. The road is barricaded.” Taylor glances over her shoulder at Honey’s shoes: simple, classic Prada black pumps.
“How far can you walk in those?”
“A long way.”
Honey looks out the window of the car. Her Uber is caught in a snarl of traffic. She can hear horns tooting. A helicopter overhead. A police siren. The by now familiar sounds of a planned protest.
Honey takes her phone out of her bag and reads the most recent message from Luisa Long:
Tell your driver to stop at the barricade at the end of College Street.
Of course Luisa Long has been tracking her journey this whole time.
“Oh ... I see, wow,” says Taylor as they approach the barricade and it is magically moved aside and a police officer waves her through.
Another car follows behind and pulls up beside them. A man with an earpiece jumps out and comes to her car door. Honey hasn’t “made her own way” here at all. She’s been followed by her private security detail. “You won’t even know they’re there,” Barney always said.
“Take the mints! My condolences!” cries Taylor as the man with the earpiece opens the door.
“Thank you,” says Honey. She’s about to be photographed. Knees together. Swivel the hips. Dip the head.
“If you get a chance to rate—”
But the door is slammed behind her and the Uber is being waved on and away, gone forever, and Honey weirdly misses her. Taylor will tell peopleI drove Honey Beckett to Barney’s funeral.Honey will have to remember to tip her or she might appear in an article about augmented celebrities who don’t tip.
The cameras flash, but the photographers stand respectfully behind a barrier manned by police officers and don’t shout her name. As she turns to give them a good shot, Luisa Long materializes in a black sleeveless dress, cold eyes behind rimless glasses, arm circling but not touching Honey, shepherding her along. “This way. You’re in the front row next to his mother.”
Soft words flutter around her like moth wings as Luisa Long escorts her up the stairs.
“Honey, I’m so sorry.”
“What a shock.”
“A remarkable man.”
“Extraordinary.”
