The Zeta Factor

By Jack Broccoli

Over lunch, Dr Jack Broccoli learns from Dr Larry Faber, a friend from medical school, about an amazing drug he has developed called Ambrotine. It seems that it reverses aging and cures almost any disease. Larry needs experimental subjects, so Jack volunteers some of his own nursing home patients and the results are positive beyond all expectations. There are however, a few unexpected side effects.

Jack finds himself in trouble with his licensing authority and on the run from Pharmex, a ruthless drug company interested in the enormous financial promise of the drug. He also has problems caused by his generous desire to be of service to womankind. He falls in love with Karen but has to flee with her to an undisclosed location as a craze for Ambrotine sweeps the world…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781647501143

Jack Broccoli

Jack Broccoli is a retired physician residing in a city on the west coast of Canada. About to retire from active practice, he meets up with a medical school colleague who has discovered a drug that cures almost everything, including old age. Jack is convinced that Ambrotine might just be a cure for his own poverty and starts to test it on his patients, with surprising results.

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About the Author

Jack Broccoli is a retired physician residing in a city on the west coast of Canada. About to retire from active practice, he meets up with a medical school colleague who has discovered a drug that cures almost everything, including old age. Jack is convinced that Ambrotine might just be a cure for his own poverty and starts to test it on his patients, with surprising results.

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Jack Broccoli 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Broccoli, Jack

The Zeta Factor

ISBN 9781647501129 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781647501136 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781647501143 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021918936

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

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Prologue

Once a week, a dusty black Mercedes comes from the capital to collect 28 capsules of Ambrotine. It is escorted by a jeep with two youths in scruffy uniforms with new looking submachine guns. The driver of the Mercedes gives me back the empty plastic bottle from the last delivery. He takes my order for supplies. Then the Mercedes and the jeep depart in a cloud of dust. The driver of the Mercedes is about twenty. He is a nephew of the President For Life. He has a shiny, oily face and wears an ill-fitting uniform of the Storm Guard, the President’s bodyguard. He drives very carefully. The President For Life would find it much easier to replace a nephew than a Mercedes.

When the Mercedes has gone, the locals come out of hiding and allow their children and the chickens back into the street. When I lament their poverty, or how thin everyone is, children, chickens, prematurely aged adults, and even ourselves, Karen reminds me that things are not so bad. At least we have chickens.

Chapter One

I guess the whole zeta thing started when Larry Faber called and suggested lunch on Thursday. I was kind of surprised he was calling me, but it’s not like a shiver of anticipation went up my spine. My ex-brother‑in‑law was not my idea of promising lunch companionship any day, and definitely not on a Thursday.

For the Jack Broccoli of that distant time, the ideal Thursday afternoon started with an unhurried lunch, with a conversation gradually deepening into a sense of affinity, of oneness with the universe as the lazy hours of a free afternoon slid pleasantly by. With a nice lunch, a good horoscope, and a liter or two of Bulgarian red, I counted on going home with a warm and sensitive human being, a fellow student of destiny. Like Sherri. A seeker of the truth.

With seekers, I usually got into my yearning for the Zen, the nothingness of the end of all desire. I planned to go to Tibet and sit in the lotus position for days at a time, neither eating nor drinking, and when I had reached the Seventh of the Seven Circles of Wisdom, I would beg the Lord Buddha to snip my earthly bonds, lose the shackles of yet another pointless incarnation, and allow me to be as whole as a grain of sand.

In the meantime, I wanted Sherri to know that mastery of being required that one completely inhabit the body, before presuming to cast it aside.

In the previous week, we had done some evening sessions and agreed that we should continue serious work on the finer points of the Kundalini. We had planned for Thursday lunch, but she called off at the last moment to do a working lunch with her boss. I had this small, unworthy suspicion that her boss might be capable of appreciating some of the features of Sherri’s physical and spiritual being I was myself finding irresistible right then.

No matter, I still had a few names to call, good prospects for understudies.

But, lunch with Larry? Not if I could help it.

Larry, I think I’m all booked up tomorrow, I’ve got my astrologer penciled in.

Jack. Please. It’s important. I’ve got to talk to you.

What about? You’re not going to give me some sob story about Marianne, are you?

Not on the phone, Jack. It’s personal. Please. Do I have to beg?

But tomorrow’s Thursday.

So?

It’s the day I catch up on my journal reading. I haven’t even glanced at this month’s New England Journal yet.

The New England Journal is weekly.

That’s what I mean. I haven’t read last week’s yet.

Silence.

Oh, Fuckit.

Anyway, after Sherri bailed, I didn’t have anything firm lined up. And Larry was Marianne’s brother. There was a kind of desperation in his voice.

What the Hell. I agreed to meet him at the sushi place below my office.

The downstairs restaurant was under new ownership (again). It had begun as a sushi place back when I was starting out, folded after six months, to become La Forestière, a fancy French place that wilted and died after eighteen months, then it went through Greek, Indonesian and Italian before the current reincarnation as Asahi Sushi. I hadn’t even had time to try it out yet, and when I introduced myself as the doctor from upstairs there was a gratifying increase in the fervor of Mr. Watanabe’s bows, and the simpering’s of his wife, who as Mr. Watanabe explained, was Mrs. Watanabe. She looked either 28 or 48 or anything in between, depending on the lighting.

Mr. Watanabe bowed me over to a table by the window and picked up the little jar of irreproachably fresh flowers and handed them to Mrs. Watanabe with a look that suggested she replace them with fresh flowers, and then commit seppuku. With a cry of stifled anguish, she hurried off and reappeared smiling, with what appeared to be the same vase of flowers, and the inevitable warm towel. Mr. Watanabe nodded gravely as I ordered sake, and again, it was Mrs. Watanabe who scurried off to get it. Mr. Watanabe gave me the menu, which was the size of a billboard, a bad sign. The bigger the menu, the smaller the portions, and the bigger the bill is a pretty reliable rule. Mr. Watanabe bowed again, and I tried to gauge how much of a tab he might let me run.

There was a rush of street noise as Larry arrived.

I did a double-take. It was like they’d played him in with some of that loud German stuff, like Wagner or whoever—that stuff from Apocalypse Now.

I got up to pump his hand. Jesus, Larry. Whatever it is, I want it. Million dollars a pop, you got it. You look terrific! I stared at him, eventually realizing my mouth was still open.

Larry had a fixed grin on his face and I could hear him saying, without moving his lips, like some cheap spy thriller, Let’s get away from the window. A bit more private.

Sure, Larry. No sweat. In the corner here?

Yes. That’s fine.

Wow. Larry must have caught the old working-out bug in a big way. Last time I’d seen him, maybe two years ago, he was just another slob like me, with a color of skin you can only get from years of abstinence from fresh air and direct sunlight. Our bellies strained at the buttons, and guys like us didn’t jog because after the first few steps you thought your navel and your nipples were going to rip from their moorings. Well, I exaggerate, but I’d agree I was a little overweight, and would probably get winded after running a block. Sure, I could do with a tune-up. Hey, who couldn’t? One day, when they stopped bugging me about child support and mortgage and stuff, I’d be able to stop working and have time for all that Nordic-Track shit.

Larry flashed me a hesitant smile So, Jack. Hey, I saw Marianne the other day. She sends her best.

Yeah. Right. Last week she got another fucking court order. How would you feel if someone was into your wallet for eighteen-fifty a month?

Larry loosened his collar. Anyway, Jack, great to see you. I’m sure it’s nothing personal. She still likes you, buddy. And she needs money for Tony. Teenagers’ threads cost a fortune these days.

Buddy? Threads? Since when did Larry start using words like ‘buddy’ and ‘threads?’

Anyway, what’s up, Larry?

Larry smiled again. But he seemed edgy. His voice was loud and breezy, his grin like a three-dollar bill. How’s it going? Still raking in the green?

Oh. I guess, Larry. You know how it is.

Hey, didn’t I see you on CBC, oh, a couple of months ago?

For someone who presumably wanted something from me, Larry was a real dud in the diplomacy line.

I said casually, "Oh, that. Media hype. I was the injured party. One of many, I might add. How was I to know my business associate was into some kind of Ponzi thing?"

I guess he took in a lot of people.

I fixed Larry with my best fuck you glare. I’m not going there, Larry. You are my brother in law. Ex. Period. There’s stuff I could say but won’t. Is that why you invited me for lunch? So you could slap me in the face with a bunch of tired, false rumors and innuendos?

Hey! Woah, Jack. Not! And it is my dime, guy.

Right. And don’t you forget that.

I guess Larry was realizing his pitch was not exactly charming me into his camp, whatever that was.

Jack, he was saying, I know you’re on the up and up. Of course. Sorry if I was tactless.

"So, having softened me up with positive karma, bro, tell me what I can do for you."

I mean it. I’m sorry. Let’s start over. I sincerely—

Right. Done and dusted. What’s the agenda here? I hope you’re not carrying some kind of sneaky surface-to-air from Marianne.

Hey, no way!

And this isn’t going to cost me anything, like you’re not canvassing for the foundation?

Absolutely not.

"But your pic is on that glossy that came through the mail last week. ’Dr. Laurence Faber, at the cutting edge of physiological research’ yada yada. Good pic, by the way. I guess the Foundation is funding you to be at the cutting edge?"

Yes. As a matter of fact, they are.

And you’re not going to hit me up for a coupla thousand clams?

I swear. Look, even if you offer a donation, I’ll refuse it. How’s that?

Great. And I won’t tell them you said that. Anyway, I’m just making it clear. I’m broke. Don’t waste your time pitching the Foundation.

I said— Larry was starting to look a little annoyed himself.

OK, OK! I put up my hands as if to shield myself from the irresistible temptation to throw money his way.

The sushi arrived. Plus another sake for me.

Now we’d cleared up that this was on Larry’s dime, and that he wasn’t doing a dog and pony show for the St Phil’s Hospital Foundation, and with me into my third sake. I began to relax.

Larry seemed in no immediate hurry to get to the point, and in fact, seemed pretty focused on eating. He’d ordered three times the amount of sushi I had and was shoveling it down like a human back-hoe. He was muttering, as he was inhaling the stuff, Man I’m hungry!

Me, I was having the proverbial free lunch. He could take all the time he wanted, so I coasted while the tendrils of a very fine sake penetrated every cell of my slightly overweight frame. I did notice that Larry was continuing to make notes of some kind in a tiny notebook between large mouthfuls of sushi. After a couple of decades of experience sitting across a desk from deans and department heads, I had gotten pretty good at reading upside down and wondered why he was listing the ingredients of his meal. I wondered if he thought he was going to be poisoned:

Tekka maki—

tuna

seaweed?

soy-sauce

ginger

Calif roll

avocado

WASABI!!

Hey, Larry? What’s up? Doing undercover for the Public Health Department? I joshed. But as soon as Larry realized I was looking, he snapped the notebook shut and slipped it into his shirt pocket, giving it a little tap, as if to confirm it was safe.

When Mrs. W brought me another sake I was surprised when Larry spoke to her with convincing authority, in Japanese. She responded with a flood of excited chatter, clearly surprised and praising his command of the language. She scurried off.

I said, Wow. I didn’t know you spoke Japanese, Larry.

He shrugged. I was with Ken for two years, remember? Kenzaburo?

So that’s history now?

Yeah. He split last year, for some muscle-bound Australian movie extra.

Ah, yes, Kenzaburo. Nice guy, I seem to remember.

Nice buns.

Right. So what—?

Boy, I’d love to see Kenny’s face if he saw me now! Larry’s tone had that edge of viciousness gay guys have when they talk of faded love.

Mr. W. came back with a double-down of the original sake order and went into a long hymn of praise for Larry’s language skills. Parts of the speech were evidently aimed at Doctor Brocorri, but the details are sketchy, given I have no language skills at all, apart from my phrasebook of Russian pillow-talk.

Which I’ll explain later.

Larry bowed to Mr. W, words and smiles exchanged, and he murmured, Watanabe-San would be honored if we would accept to be his guests for this most auspicious meal, however, it may be unworthy and lacking in culinary skills, yada.

Tell him, Doctor Brocorri-San would be honored. Yada.

I was thinking, Rats. Wishing it had been my dime. As if reading my mind, Mrs. W suddenly appeared at my elbow with a large, fresh sake, piping hot.

That’s what I call service!

Larry was certainly behaving strangely: First the all-fired up insistence on having lunch with me, now the ostentatious mystery of the notebook. I began to wonder if I was looking at a major problem of some kind. If it was, it was a problem I hadn’t had yet, and there couldn’t be too many of those left, believe me.

But then, after finishing the sake, and with more ordered to come with the tempura, the world was looking more reassuring. Jesus, he looked good.

When Larry was twenty-two, he was this lanky, intense youth with glasses like fish-bowls, and hair that stuck out every which way from his ten-cent haircut. As I looked at him now, the change was just that he looked more muscular. I’d have given him twenty-four, tops. He could have been a young man out with his father. And no glasses.

You been working out, Larry? Hell, you look good. I just can’t believe it. It’s criminal how good you look.

Shhh! Keep your voice down, Jack.

Larry’s expression seemed to have been triggered by the word criminal. Alert, a mite suspicious. Was this guy paranoid? Right, paranoid.

Whoa, Jack, I was thinking, don’t confront him. Just play along. The pink forms are in the top right-hand drawer. Keep up the flow of easy talk.

The trouble was the sake; thoughts originating any higher up than the brainstem were hard to latch onto. I was having a little trouble ar-tic-u-la-ting.

I said, How’s the sushi, Larry?

Great. Well, not great, but not bad. The tuna is nice and fresh. Mind if I—? he grabbed another bit of my tekka maki.

Go right ahead, I said.

You know alcohol’s bad for the system.

Prissy, too. Maybe I should just agree. But then Mister Brainstem cut in: "Lissen, I waved a chopstick belligerently. Cut the Sally-Ann crap, Larry. I don’t need it."

Larry laughed, kind of. Jack, hey! No offense. I guess all us health freaks get pretty sanctimonious. It’s a failing we have. But, you know, Jack, he looked at me kindly, it’s never too late to shape up.

Shaping up is no problem. It’s the shaping down that scares me.

He still seemed to be totally focused on eating so I thought I’d let him come to the point, whatever that was. Anyway, it was hard to think of any way it could turn out to be good news for Jack Broccoli.

So, Larry. I hear you’re doing all sorts of fantastic stuff in the Physiology Department. Heck. You could be Head by now, for all I know.

Larry shrugged. They wanted to make me Head, but I didn’t like the committee work. All our Head seems to do is run around pissing himself if somebody overruns his photocopier allowance. I like to spend all my time on the bench. Research, research, then, for a change of pace—

Research?

You said it.

No administration, huh? Interesting. Didn’t sound like he’d been suckered into joining those air brain leeches who’ve got nothing better to do than run around canvassing for more oak paneling in the President’s office.

Jack, Larry murmured, gazing at the fifth sake as it arrived steaming at my elbow. Don’t you think—

Aren’t they the pits, though? Admin, huh? I made nervously sympathetic noises. I know what you mean. But right from the start, it was obvious you were born for academia. So what is it now? Frog hearts pumping away for weeks in glass tanks? Dog pancreases—or is that pancre-aye?

I’m doing human work actually, Jack.

Uh-Oh! My ticker did a double flip. Larry seemed to be looking at me the way Dr. Frankenstein might have looked at a particularly promising torso, while it was still attached to stuff and moving around.

Really? I laughed nervously.

Yes. I’m working on mitochondria.

I was puzzled. Mitochondria?

So, I said slowly, You’re in Psychiatry now?

Larry paused, puzzled. Psychiatry? I don’t follow you, Jack.

Well, no offense, Larry, but I kind of thought mitochondria was something you had when you were obsessed with bugs.

Well. OK, so I was wrong. Larry smiled. It looked like he was startled and might even laugh, then he cut it off with a big grin. One of those Jack Nicholson grins. The Shining. Right where he has the ax and he—

Jack! Jack Broccoli! How could I have forgotten that sense of humor you have? I love it. I must remember that one. Mitochondria. The guys in the department will crease themselves sick. You mind if I use it?

We straightened out that mitochondria are little gizmos you find in cells. I knew that.

Larry suggested Starbucks for a nice espresso. You look like you need the coffee, Jack, Larry was looking at me like Marianne’s mother used to, when I’d cut a swath through a couple of bottles of wine at Thanksgiving. When she was still inviting the father of her grand-daughter for Thanksgiving.

Now I won’t swear that I have video quality recording of all the stuff Larry poured out, while I downed a few espressos and he sipped fresh-squeezed OJ, but he sure as hell got excited. He was tugging my sleeve every few seconds, staring into my face as he came to some dramatic point in his tale: And you know what I found in the supernatant, Jack?

No, Larry. But let me guess. Mitochondria?

His eyes sparkled with simple joy. Yes, Jack, yes! You bet your boots, Jack. I found mitos.

That’s great, Larry. I was nursing a major headache. Sakes can do that to you when they attack in groups of five. But Larry paid no never-mind, he just went on…and on, like he was giving his Nobel acceptance speech:

And it only took a couple more months to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they were—guess?

I dunno, Larry. Gay?

Larry laughed reproachfully. Jack, you hang onto that sense of fun. I like that. Wish I’d had time to develop one myself. I like it. Gay mitos—hey, who knows?

He grinned, then he said, in a low, urgent voice: No, Jack. They weren’t gay. They were… then he almost shouted: type zeta, Jack! Oh, God, they were only a pure layer of zeta mitochondria. I almost wept when I came in and saw those final, beautiful, electrophoresis gels.

It was at that point, I think, that I had to rush for the john, with my lunch thrusting at my tonsils. I just made it, and Larry had to hurry me out of Starbucks, and the few yards back to my office.

After a bit of a spruce up and a glass of water, I felt almost normal. Angela wasn’t back from lunch yet.

Unfortunately, Larry was still in the middle of a blow by blow account of his last four years of research into the intimate life of the mitochondrion. He inhaled from a glass of water like it was about to be declared illegal. So. Where was I? Oh, yes. That morning I came in and looked at the gels and knew I’d nailed it. I’d solved the Ambrotine problem and found a route to its extraction and purification. He pounded his powerful fist into his palm. I winced.

And? I said.

Larry looked at me, amazed. You…Jack, are you telling me…you have no idea? No idea at all? What I’m talking about?

Well… I hate it when people corner me like that.

My God. You really thought mitochondria was some kind of psychiatric thing. You’ve never heard of the transverse constrictase enzyme, or PCR or ATP, have you? He laughed shortly, shaking his head. Well. I guess we researchers get a bit isolated. Tell me, Kreb’s cycle?

Kreb’s cycle, I repeated dumbly. Jesus. This was like some fucking oral exam. Is—

Larry held up his hand, with a grin. "Jack. Don’t tell me. See if I can guess. Now, I’m new to this so be patient. I’ve got to develop some of that talent you have. Let me see. Kreb’s cycle is—I know—the ultimate in mountain biking!"

Yeah. Not bad, Larry. Give it the weekend. I’ll have my machines talk to your machines. Hang onto your day job.

Trouble was, I still had no idea what the fuck he wanted from me. With all this build-up, there had to be more than his desire to pour out his lonely heart to me. I was beginning to think it was Marianne after all. She’d sent him over to work me over on the support payments. If so, that was a lost cause.

Larry, I said slowly, Was there any particular reason you came to see me? Me, Jack Broccoli, MD, your ex-brother-in-law, a second-hand GP, hanging onto sanity and the occasional oasis of sobriety by my fingernails?

Larry looked at me gently.

Jack. Look at me. Take a good look. If you didn’t know me, how old would you say I was?

Jeez, Larry. I dunno. Thirty. Nah. 20-something. Tops. Your skin’s smoother than Madonna’s. But I know you’re 44, like me. Unless in all that research you cloned yourself or something…

Wow! Maybe the real Larry was frozen in dry ice up at St Phil’s and this was just a collection of his cells, walking around, looking for another hapless, drunk human to infect.

Jack. Watch this— Larry reached into his pocket and removed a folded tissue. He opened it out so that two beige gelatin capsules rested in his cupped hand. Then suddenly, he tossed them back into his mouth and reached for some water to swill them down. He smiled smugly.

Jack, what you just saw me ingest, is Ambrotine, a pure extract of the active principle of the zeta mitochondrion.

And?

Larry sighed. Then he leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. Jack. Think about it. It’s right in front of you. Remember? You offered me a million bucks?

Maybe ten seconds passed. Maybe a minute. I heard Angela’s key in the lock and the sound of her voice: Come right in, Mrs. Sanderson. Your appointment’s at two.

My face in the doorway of the consulting room must have looked kind of wild.

Anyway, I saw both their faces staring at me as I said thickly, "I’m afraid he won’t, Mrs. Sanderson.