Free The Hunger by Whitley Strieber

entered from another personality, not his own. He found that he wanted very badly for her to succeed.
    He went about his shower in a sort of fury, lathering himself, rinsing, drying, all the while wretched for her and angry that he must suffer on her behalf.
    When he opened the door the smell of breakfast drifted faintly in. None of the usual singing, however, arrived with it. She was not such a cheerful riser today. He wished that he didn’t feel so sorry for her; it reduced her, enlisted a kind of professional distance. A doctor’s habit to withdraw one’s emotions from the reality of pain.
    “Happy meltdown,” she said when he arrived in the kitchen.
    “Meltdown?”
    “What’s happening to my lab is the equivalent of a reactor meltdown. Reaches critical mass and sinks to the center of the earth. Buried. Gone.”
    There were a hundred encouraging lies he could not tell. “I’ll call you as soon as the meeting’s over,” was all that came out.
    Once again he was cheating her. Why not simply let her know how he felt? Why was that such a frightening thought? Emotions confirm things, that was the trouble. Death, for example, always seems like a lie, a game of disappearance, until one’s grief makes it true.
    The phone rang. Tom blinked at the intrusion, snatched up the handset. A strange, whispering voice asked for Sarah. Her face puckered with details of concern; she was obviously hoping that some miracle had happened at the lab. “Luck,” Tom said as he handed her the receiver.
    She grabbed it, her expression now avid. After a long pause she murmured an assent and hung up. Swallowing the last of her coffee, she ran into the bedroom. “More trouble with Methuselah,” she said as she pulled a raincoat from the closet. Her eyes were cold, bright.
    “He’s not dead?”
    She glanced away. “No,” she said with unnatural loudness, “something else.”
    “Who was that on the phone?”
    “Phyllis.”
    “She sounded like a zombie.”
    “Thirty hours on the job. I don’t have a very clear idea what’s going on over there, but —”
    “Maybe there’s some hope. A last-minute breakthrough. Am I right?”
    She laughed, a sniff, a toss of the head, and then strode past him without a further word. The front door slammed. He located his own raincoat, crumpled amid jeans and coat hangers on the closet floor. By the time he reached the elevator bank she had gone.
    Alice was listening less than carefully as Miriam read to her from Sleep and Age . That didn’t matter, the girl’s mind was wonderfully absorptive. Miriam glanced at her, full of the pleasure of being near her. Miriam loved her sullen intelligence, her youth and haunting beauty. “ ‘The key to the relationship between sleep and age appears to lie in the production of the transient protein group associated with inhibition of lipofuscins. At the molecular level the buildup of lipofuscin is responsible for the loss of internal circulation that leads to cellular morbidity. Thus, it is the prime factor in the overall process called “aging,” being responsible for effects as subtle as the reduction in the responsiveness of organs to hormonal demands and as gross as senile dementia.’
    “Why do you think I read you this material, Alice?”
    “You want to test my boredom threshold?”
    “What if I told you it might mean you would never get old. Never get gray hair. Stay young forever.”
    “Not thirteen!”
    “No. It wouldn’t interrupt the process of maturing, only getting old. Would you like that — staying twenty-five or so forever?”
    “For my life? Sure.”
    “And your life would be forever. You should thank Doctor Sarah Roberts. She’s discovered a great secret.” It was extremely tempting to go on, to tell Alice the truth: that she could choose immortality right now, that Miriam could confer it.
    If Dr. Roberts’ data were correct, she might even be able to make it a lasting gift.
    Alice sighed. “I’m not sure I’d want to live