Dear Ezra Hayes,
At its meeting on March 12th, 2021, the Board of Trustees of The Pacific Marine Life Foundation considered your request for $125,000 for the study of the Turritopsis Dohrnii in order to learn the viability of cell transdifferentiation in humans. However, the proposal was not funded.
PMLF receives many more requests for funding endeavors than our limited resources will permit. This leads to difficult decisions in creating priorities and means that a number of important research projects cannot be supported by the foundation.
We are appreciative of the time and effort you put forth in preparing the application. Although the PMLF cannot be of assistance, we wish you success in acquiring the funds from other sources.
Sincerely,
Dr. Elizabeth J. Castenada
On a personal note, Ezra, please call me. This needs to stop.
* * *
Ezra watches dorsal fins bob in the distance, gliding over then below the surface of the choppy waves. The orange and yellow polygons of the sun reflect on the crests, seeming to whisk the pod of dolphins towards the horizon. The roaring light of the sun falls behind the waves at an indistinguishable pace, but the promise of night is imminent.
Jean would have waxed poetic about the beauty of the ocean. How it’s our duty to learn as much as we can about it, that only twenty percent has been seen with human eyes. The thought sours his mood. Jean hadn’t been on a trip with him in months. It was the whole reason he was here. No breathtaking sunset in the middle of the Pacific Ocean would distract him.
He moves about the boat with the grace of someone who finds more comfort in the constantly moving footing of the sea than the sturdiness of soil. He resumes getting his equipment together, his mission at the forefront of his mind.
Getting a sample of tissue from a Turritopsis Dohrnii is proving to be an arduous, despair-inducing task. The thrill of achieving scientific success is usually enough to keep him focused and patient with the necessary amount of failed attempts to secure samples of even one of his toughest prey--jellyfish. Today, his fingers shake as his mind stutters on memories of antiseptic and beeping monitors.
I can’t afford another wasted trip. Every time I go back to shore empty-handed may be the last.
It takes longer than he likes to ready the metal and glass pods used to capture specimens along with the equipment he needs to process and preserve samples. The sun has already set by the time he’s ready. The boat’s floodlights make the ocean seem like a dark abyss just past his reach, beyond recognition from the crisp blue waves and marshmallow clouds from the afternoon.
Solo trips this far into the Pacific were a suicide mission, one he’d successfully completed several times on his own. So much could go wrong. It didn’t help that Ezra purposely neglected to inform the U.S. Coast Guard or any of his colleagues of his whereabouts. No one even knows he left.
Not that I have anyone who’d risk their lives or equipment to help me at this point. I’m lucky to even still have this boat.
Eleven trips and no success. In the early days of his research, he’d barely made two trips before he had enough samples of jellyfish gastrodermis to not have to go out again for weeks. Now that he’s so close to the culmination of his research, the sparseness of sightings and empty pods are wearing him down.
He pushes the thoughts away, attempting to focus on forcing his shaking hands to place the bait in one of the pods. He then lowers it over the edge of the boat. The chain cranks out at a measured pace to ensure proper depth. When fully lowered, he connects the buoy before he moves on to the next spot.
Each buoy seems to disappear behind the boat into complete blackness as if swallowed, and Ezra silently thanks Jean for installing a more updated GPS for charting coordinates before… well. Before.
After six more pods are placed, Ezra moves the boat further away from the last buoy, not wanting to risk the proximity to the final pod affecting his results.
He sets out the anchor and cuts the engine. He shuts off the floodlights, keeping a small clamp light near the main console. Work complete, he retreats towards the back of the boat where a chair and a woolen blanket is set up.
All that’s left to do is wait. Wait, and hope, I guess.
Knowing sleep would elude him, Ezra wraps himself in the threadbare blanket and lets his head fall back on the chair. His eyes swim through the stars, his view slowly rocking in the dizzying sway of the ocean’s surface as he tries to name the constellations Jean had taught him.
* * *
A successful trip and several priceless samples locked away in temperature and moisture regulated containers are enough to lift Ezra’s spirits into some semblance of awareness. It had been weeks of fitful nights and an unhealthy amount of black coffee.
The mood doesn’t last.
The hospital had called as soon as he’d set his equipment inside his home. He assumes they were going to discuss Jean’s recent test results, and he feels the fear like swallowed nails in his gut.
He makes it to the hospital within the hour, bringing with him another book of crosswords for Jean and a book for himself. That Jean didn’t look any worse than the last time he’d been there gave him a bit of hope, but by the time the doctor makes it to Jean’s room he’s had enough hours to gnaw down his thumbnails.
The news is grim.
“I’m sorry, but the latest scan indicates that surgery is no longer a viable solution. The chemo and radiation therapy did buy us more time, however, the cancer has progressed further than we had hoped at this point. We cannot remove the tumors without causing irreversible brain damage. I would recommend continued chemotherapy to prolong for a few weeks, but there is nothing more we can do.”
Jean watches the doctor explain with hooded eyes. The acceptance and apathy in them make Ezra want to vomit, throw something, rage at the doctor, and demand more testing.
Say something, do something, there has to be a solution. Please, don’t just give up.
Seemingly unaware of Ezra’s internal struggle, Jean nods, tight-lipped but clearly not at all angry at either the doctor or the news.
“I see,” Jean comments calmly as if viewing unfavorable results from an exploratory study. “I… thought as much, to be honest. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
And Jean, sweet naive Jean, holds his hand towards the doctor as if he was just receiving a rejection on a funding proposal instead of a death sentence. His once firm handshake seems frail and jerky as he shakes the doctor’s hand, inclining his head slightly.
Dismissed, the doctor stands from his seat, gathers his clipboard and folder, and makes his way towards the door in his pristine white coat and black leather dress shoes.
Don’t just shake his hand, Ezra implores Jean with his gaze. Don’t just give up. You can’t. This can’t be it. I need more time.
He stands sharply but is startled as Jean’s right-hand grabs at his forearm, his grip stronger than the handshake he’d witnessed.
“Stop,” Jean says, tone unflinching, “Stop, Ezra. Don’t make things worse.”
Ezra stares at Jean’s pale, gaunt face. Jean’s eyes, once sharp and analyzing, are now murky and dull from the chemotherapy. They stare forward as if the walls of the hospital room are the only thing in the world worth studying anymore. Even though Ezra is certain he knows the sight well enough to draw a diagram without looking.
“Make things worse?“ Ezra says, barely processing Jean’s words. “How can things be worse? Jean, he just told you he’s giving up on you. They’re not even going to try anymore. They’re just going to let you die. How can I make that worse than what it is?”
Jean closes his glacier-colored eyes, and Ezra pushes down his feeling of relief at not having to see them so lifeless. He doesn’t want to remember Jean’s eyes any other way than the ones he’d stared into during their wedding vows.
He was determined to see them like that again.
“It can’t be a surprise to you, Ezra. We’re both scientists. We knew it was a long shot the moment I was diagnosed. What was it Maddie always said? Numbers don’t lie, don’t be mad at their honesty. They really don’t give a fuck.”
Ezra shakes his head fitfully. Maddie had said that on many occasions. None of those occasions had meant the death of the love of his life, though.
“So that’s it? You’re just going to give up, let cancer win?”
Jean opens his eyes, turning towards Ezra. His gaze is cold, purple rings like permanent bruises below his bottom lids. Ezra had never seen Jean so tired in his life. Not even when they’d both suffered through grad school and doctorate courses while working two jobs.
“Is that what you think? That this is some life-threatening game that I’m choosing to give up on because I just don’t have the will to make it to the finish line? Don’t be stupid, Ezra. This isn’t a problem you can solve or a test you can just study for or retake. We tried, we failed, it’s done. I don’t want to spend what time I have moaning about what little there is of it left.”
Ezra feels like all his bones have been removed at once, yet still hears his knees cracking at the suddenness of him sitting in the creaky folding chair.
“Jean, please,” is all he can manage to say, voice weak as if his vocal cords were locked tight.
Jean shakily grasps Ezra’s hand, pulls it onto the edge of the bed over the covers to save energy. Ezra stares at their clasped hands, wondering when his husband’s bones had become visible on the surface.
“Ezra,” Jean starts. He pauses. He inhales slowly, and Ezra can hear the shakiness of his lungs in that breath. “There are some things we need to talk about beforehand. I know you’re upset, I know you’re angry. You can’t think I’m not too.”
Ezra can’t lift his gaze. Can’t watch that mouth he’d kissed so often form these words. He watches as Jean gives his little remaining energy to trace circles on the back of Ezra’s hand.
“But if we don’t talk about it, it will make later on so much harder for you. Please, I can’t be the cause of that. I love you. You know I do. I will fight to stay with you as long as I can, I promise. But you need to fight too. You need to fight to stay with me too.”
Ezra lifts his chin slightly, eyes searching for Jean’s.
“Doing this to you is my biggest regret. We said till death do us part, and I guess I never thought of the parting portion of that. That one of us would be left behind. For that, I’m sorry. I don’t regret marrying you, never, but I’m so, so sorry Ezra. I wanted to see you finish your research, see you bald and get laugh lines and wrinkles.”
Jean pauses with a wet inhale. His hand squeezes Ezra’s briefly, clearly holding back emotion and fear.
“I wanted to grow old with you.”
I’m making this harder on him. I can’t let him despair. I can’t break him more before I fix him.
“Okay,” Ezra finally says. “Okay. I guess we have some plans to make.”
* * *
The syringe is surprisingly unremarkable and easy to sneak through hospital security.
It contains a world-changing concoction of genetically modified cells that would render humanity biologically immortal, packed away with care in the inner pocket of his jacket.
It isn’t until he is yards away from Jean’s hospital room door that his excitement gives way to an unfortunate flaw in his plan.
Getting the injection to Jean isn’t the issue. Human trials are inherently different from animal trials, and as confident as Ezra is in his serum, testing his first formula on the love of his life was out of the question.
But so are human trials. He no longer has the funding or reputation to even approach a research team. His obsession with finding a cure for Jean’s cancer had led to cutting ties with all relationships, even the ones he most cherished.
At first it had been arguments and petty disagreements. Ostentatious ridicule of his theories and well-meaning interventions to keep him focused on his real work, to keep living even though his partner was dying. As if the rest of the world simply kept rotating on its axis, but Ezra’s was tilted towards ruin.
He couldn’t deny that the final cuts had been all him. There had been anger after he’d been forced to scavenge much-needed supplies from laboratories of colleagues. It was only the last vestiges of their friendship that stopped Liz and so many others from pressing charges.
On top of that, none of his research had been sanctioned, so it would have to be redone. The ethics committee would never even let him go near a trial for the lack of ethical considerations from the start. Even if they were able to find the funding or resources, it would take a monumental amount of time--far more than the days or weeks. The actual trials would take time. Going from rat to human would take years, plus the difference in mass alone… there were so many variables and so many ways it could veer off-course.
He didn’t have that time.
It didn’t take long after Jean’s devastating test results for his condition to decline. Despite Ezra’s protests, he was refusing further treatment, wanting to spend the rest of his time with Ezra free from the effects of chemotherapy.
The first week had been manageable, spending time holding each other, Ezra reading aloud to Jean--who could no longer focus on the printed word--and listening to albums from their youth on Ezra’s phone.
After nine days, Jean hadn’t recognized him. While that first episode hadn’t lasted, they became more frequent.
He is out of time.
Out of time and out of options, Ezra fingers rub the bridge of his nose habitually. But I can’t just inject Jean with an untested formula. I can put my ethics aside, but my heart just can’t do it. It could kill him quicker than the cancer.
He leans against the wall across from Jean’s doorway, eyes unfocused and half-lidded, something he did when he wanted to absorb himself in his thoughts without too much visual stimulation. His “problem-solving face”, Jean had called it.
He is running through the composition of the formula and effects on the rats he’d tested on in his head when he faintly hears the voice of Jean’s doctor. Looking around, he realizes the door for the room across the hallway from Jean’s is half-open. Inside he can hear Jean’s doctor speaking to another patient.
“We’ll continue with chemotherapy and radiation. The tumors have progressed quite quickly, but we’ll be doing everything we can to prevent it from metastasizing so we can perform the surgery.”
Ezra strains to hear the doctor’s words even as his chest constricts, hands trembling at the plan forming in the back of his mind.
* * *
The child is no more than eight. The monitors beep like a metronome, a steady rhythm that belies the sight of the weak and broken boy lying in the rough sheets of the hospital bed. His face is pale, lips ghostly, bruised eyes the only contrast to the white of the pillowcase.
It figures it would be a child. Ezra knows that even if the child recovers from the cancer because of his formula, following through with this plan will break something in him that can never be repaired.
No matter what happens moving forward, he could never breathe a word to Jean for fear of the horror in his face.
This is crazy. He clenches his teeth, hoping to squeeze the thoughts of terror and self-loathing out of his head. This can’t possibly work. This formula is for a body twice this kid’s size, to begin with, ignoring all the other uncountable factors I haven’t calculated for.
He isn’t going to do it.
He isn’t going to.
He won’t.
He remembers Jean’s eyes, the bottomless pools of their wedding day. The murky, infected, frothy waters they are today.
I have no other choice. Sorry, kid. Either you become a part of history today or your story ends here.
In retrospect, it is far too easy. He silently makes his way towards the IV drip, uncapping the syringe with minimal noise. He gently picks up the medical tubing between his thumb and forefinger, setting the needle next to the plastic tubing and bracing himself for whatever comes.
The needle pierces the tube in a short, fluid motion. He presses the plunger down slowly, allowing the clear formula to slowly mix with the saline a bit at a time, hoping the slow injection will allow the boy’s body time to adjust.
As the dosage tapers off, Ezra’s gaze flickers towards where the boy lies still. He pulls his eyes back quickly, not able to handle watching the face of the boy he may be poisoning. He removes the needle and carefully places the syringe into a small acrylic tube.
Better to not leave this here as evidence. I’ll keep it on me until I get back to the lab.
He carefully releases the medical tubing, shuffling back away from the IV and the hospital bed, careful not to rustle any of the other equipment as he retreats.
I should know within minutes, Ezra considers. The process of reverting the cells back to their initial stage will take time, but whether his body is able to absorb it--that won’t take long.
The previously continuous rhythm of the heart rate monitor suddenly staggers, then starts to flutter quickly, warning beeps sounding. Ezra has no time to process his mistake.
Keeping his pace steady and purposeful, gaze at his feet, he leaves.
* * *
He failed. He failed, and someone — no, not just someone, a child — died because of it.
Ezra’s mind spirals. There is no time to create a new formula. The only possibility he can actually take action on is that the dosage was too strong for the small, frail body.
It’s something. Hope is fading, but some part of Ezra still clings to it. I have one more dose left.
The call from earlier had been grim. There was a very real possibility that this trip will be the last he’ll see Jean alive.
Ezra grabs an overstuffed duffel bag, fills it with anything he thinks he could possibly need for the last night with his husband. He wedges the syringe in an inconspicuous side pocket.
Even if I don’t go through with it, well, better to have it just in case.
* * *
Ezra swears he can smell the life dripping out of Jean’s pores in his cold sweat. It permeated the air, seemed to lay thick like an invisible toxic gas in the room, odorless and yet ripe like crumbling bones to the touch. As if even his senses are confused and backward with the impossibility of what is happening.
They played whatever simple card game they could that requires little movement or sight on Jean’s part--which turns out to be a somewhat stilted yet intimate game of Go Fish. Ezra carefully ignores when Jean mistakes one card for another even as he holds it inches from his face.
Little white lies.
When that becomes too much, Ezra makes up stories about the progress of his research. Faces they have in common come and go as he spins his tales, even making up new characters that flit in and out of the stories. Jean smiles softly, chuckles lightly even in his weak state, makes the appropriate frowns, and slight shakes of his head where appropriate.
More lies, but not the worst he’d perpetrated in recent months.
When Jean starts to have trouble following the stories, Ezra pulls out the portable turntable and sets it up to play softly near Jean’s bedside. Pulling out an LP of The Clash from Jean’s teenage years, he drops the needle onto the record and settles his chair close enough to Jean to hold his hand as Jean’s head lies back, eyes closed.
Ezra studies Jean’s face as he dozes. His Jean. Nothing at all like the quietly confident man with a slightly hunched posture and day-old stubble he’d loved for so many years. The bulky glasses were gone, his barely-there eyebrows the only hair that had managed any sort of regrowth after stopping chemo.
This is not the Jean he married. This Jean is his husband, the one he would sacrifice all he had earned and everything he hadn’t in order to save.
“I talked to Liz, you know. And Ivan.”
The words are slow, stuttered. They catch Ezra by surprise, his brain momentarily disconnecting from his mouth long enough for Jean to continue.
“Ivan said you haven’t been focusing on your research for months. Since I was admitted. That you lost your funding and your license and are in danger of losing your boat too. And our home.”
Ezra’s blood seems to become sludge, hypothermic before like a jetstream it starts to flow quickly through his heart.
“Liz said you stole from her. And Michael, too.”
Jean’s eyes are still closed. He seems even paler than before like his skin can go translucent at any moment.
“Ezra. I don’t. You have to tell me. Explain it to me.”
Suddenly the toxicity in the air seems to burn down his throat, the thoughts of I can’t let him die like this and now he knows what a monster I am, please not now filling his skull.
“I can’t let you die.” The words are out of his mouth before he can pull them back. They’re like a lighter in a room of noxious fumes.
Jeans’ eyes open. They are murky with pain. Ezra can see the sadness and bone-deep acceptance in them. He hadn’t seen that same pain since Jean’s sister cut herself out of his life — when she finally understood that Ezra wasn’t going anywhere.
Jean turns his head slightly towards him, and Ezra inches off the chair to lean over Jean’s form so he can stay put.
“It isn’t up to you, Ezra. It’s not up to me either.”
A pause, Jean inhaling slowly. His eyes are wet, but his body can’t do more than that in this state. The cancer won’t even let him cry.
“Let me go, Ezra. Please. Don’t make me the reason you fail what we tried so hard to complete. I’ve fought so hard. Please. I need you to let me go. I need you to fight too. Don’t let me die thinking I’ve destroyed you too.”
When Ezra’s fingers trace Jean’s cheek, locking eyes with his husband, he sheds tears for both of them.
“Okay,” Ezra says. “Okay. I’ll finish what we started Jean. I won’t stop fighting.”
Ezra crawls onto the flimsy hospital mattress and holds his husband in his arms for two more hours. At 2:51 am, the last coherent words Ezra ever hears from his husband is asking him to turn off the monitors.
The nurse stops in to check on them, and Ezra quietly informs her that they would just like some peace for the last bit of his husband’s life.
At 4:47 am, Ezra stops his slow stroking of Jean’s hand lying between them.
Carefully removing himself from the grasp of his husband, he quietly walks over to the duffel bag. The syringe makes no noise as he pulls it from the hidden pocket.
* * *
James bangs his hand one more time against the clear acrylic of the vending machine before his forehead follows suit with a slightly gentler thud.
That was my last dollar bill. Fuck. This.
“You might as well try the slots instead,” Miranda snickers. “You’d have just about the same amount of luck.”
James peels himself off the machine in defeat. He pads over to the table, his muscles and bones drain into the creaky plastic chair next to her like molasses. He lets his head hit the table--gently this time--and pulls his arms up to rest over the back of his head.
“I’d probably have better luck with the slots, but I’m pretty fucking sure they aren’t allowed in hospitals so I’m really shit out of luck.”
Miranda pats his shoulder lightly. Hearing a crinkling, James looked up to see her sliding a bag of baked potato chips his way.
He knew she was his favorite resident for a reason.
“So what’s it this time?” Her question is to the point, and he puzzles on the best way to respond as he tries to open the metallic bag without the blessed food flying everywhere.
“There’s an investigation, actually. Both the hospital, and the police. All asking the same goddamn questions.”
Miranda’s doesn’t seem to be able to decide whether he was being facetious, but soldiers on anyway. “About what? You work with the almost-always-terminal cancer patients, right? Who’s gonna murder them or whatever?”
James shrugs, finally getting the bag open. “It’s kind of the opposite, actually. Some really freaky things going on at our floor.”
Miranda grabs the bag out of James’ hands, holding it up and to her other side. “How can you do the opposite of murder? That makes no sense. And this is a bribe, not a free lunch. Welcome to America.”
James rolls his eyes, halfheartedly swiping for the bag just out of his reach. He’s secretly glad to relay what little he’d gleaned from the chaos sweeping through his ward. “You know, I was born and raised in America. You came from London or whatever. I’m pretty sure that should be the other way around, but fine.”
James leans back in his chair, valiantly trying to rearrange his spine back to its original, healthy position, but giving up as he always does after a few loud creaks.
“First it was this kid. The fairly typical case--diagnosed stage four, goes through chemo and radiation, is looking like he’ll be a good candidate for surgery, but then he suddenly flat lines one night. They pronounce him dead, the parents see him, they send for the coroner.”
Miranda pulls a single chip out of the bag now, waving it near his nose, like the aroma would entice him more. As if a small bag of stale chips smelled like anything but mothballs.
“And?” She sounds impatient, yet still curious.
“When the coroner comes up to take him to the morgue, the kid’s sitting up and asking about his Nintendo DS. Thinks he’s had his tonsils removed or something. Scared the shit out of her.”
The chip pauses mid-flight, Miranda temporarily stunned enough for him to grab at it. He only manages to crack it apart, crumbs hitting the table. “Wait. He survived? How the fuck did they think he was dead?”
James waves his hand in dismissal. “Dunno. They just thought they’d made a mistake. Damn, were his parents pissed. Started suing the hospital, wanted the doctor’s medical license taken away, the works.”
Miranda leans back, still facing James. She sets the bag of chips on the table, uninterested in teasing anymore. “Well, that’s unusual and pretty fucked up, but not unheard of.”
James snatches the bag before Miranda can change her mind.
“That’s not the craziest part, though. They move him to a different hospital right after that. Start him back on chemo and radiation. He seemed to be improving, super fast too. But when they did a CAT scan to evaluate him for surgery, there’s nothing. The tumors, cancer, everything is just gone.”
Miranda stares at him. He had her hooked. “Gone. As in… what?”
James slowly opens his mouth, placing a chip on his tongue before chewing slowly. Payback.
“G-O-N-E. Like he hadn’t had cancer at all. All the cancerous cells were gone, and there were new, absolutely normal brain cells in their place. Took part of his memory though, he didn’t remember the past few years at all.”
Miranda shakes her head slightly, clearly trying to find a reason behind what sounded like an urban legend. “Wait, so, did he never have it then? They’re suing the hospital, so was it malpractice?”
James shrugs, stuffing another few chips into his mouth before continuing.
“Nope. The hospital he’d transferred to scanned him when he first came, just to be sure. It was there when he got there. Then gone in a few weeks. The hospital tried to claim it was their doing, but, well, then something similar happened to another patient here.”
James pauses to shake the crumbs from the mostly empty bag into his mouth, then starts speaking again while he searches the table for his bottle of water.
“This patient — some sort of scientist or something — he was pretty much on his last few hours. Terminal, nothing we could do. The nurse said his husband was staying with him that last night, so they left them alone. In the morning when they switched shifts, the nurse hadn’t realized why the room was shut off so she checked in on them. The husband was gone, but the patient was sitting up in bed, not at all dead and hardly dying either.”
Miranda continues shaking her head. James doesn’t blame her, shaking a new world view into place seemed just as good a technique as any. “And the husband? Did he come back? When was this? Why the police?”
“The husband is why the police are here, actually. It seems either he or someone who wanted him dead torched his house, his boat, his car, everything. No one’s seen him since that night.”
Miranda rubs at her eyes. “That’s horrible, honestly. You cheat death and wake up to your husband dead, or at least missing.”
James shrugs. “Can’t be too upset about it. He remembers absolutely nothing. He’s basically a blank slate, complete amnesia. They’re even working on helping him remember to read and write. He somehow remembers random shit like the family and classes of random sea life, but not the alphabet. You know how the brain is--however the new cells got there, they destroyed the old. Brain’s are strange things sometimes.”
Miranda attempts to hide a small smile. Completely inappropriate, but you didn’t get far in the medical field without a slightly macabre sense of humor.
“Alright, you got me beat. That is officially the weirdest hospital war story I’ve heard so far. Go ahead, keep wasting your bottom dollar in the vending machines as you wish. I won’t stop ya. Luck seems just about as good a thing to put your faith in as anything at this point.”
James pauses after standing, a thought flitting in the periphery of his skull. “It’s just a habit at this point. Deal with shit the same way long enough, it doesn’t even occur to you to try something else until it’s too late.”
He grabs the empty chip bag, throwing it towards the trash bin, winces as it missed.
Sighing, he takes the seven steps towards the failed attempt at a free throw, bends down to grab the bag, and throws it into the trash can properly.
“Guess there’s always tomorrow.”
* * *
Transdifferentiation, also known as lineage reprogramming, is a process in which one mature somatic cell transforms into another mature somatic cell… There are no known instances where adult cells change directly from one lineage to another except Turritopsis dohrnii and in the Turritopsis Nutricula, a jellyfish that is theoretically immortal.
-Wikipedia
Rue Sparks (they/them). Artist, animator, writer, designer, professor—Rue has worn a lot of labels, but the one thing they've always aspired to be is simply, a storyteller. They cross genres and formats, mixing together metaphor and expressive characters to teach the viewer something they didn’t know they already knew.