Immortal

77

Gregory Hampton III sat in the plush surroundings of his penthouse suite and looked out of the window at the sumptuous grounds of Veluwe Park. A fine early morning mist had enveloped the park, street lights glowing like candle flames amongst the trees, and at this early hour there were no pedestrians. He stood and walked to the door of the suite, opening it at 8.10 am (European Time) and moving into the corridor outside.

Hampton was not a man who was used to being recognized, but he saw clear recognition in the smartly dressed person striding confidently toward him, precisely on time.

Gregory Hampton had been born in Hampshire, England, in 1936, just before the world collapsed into the chaos and destruction of World War Two. Sent away from his family to live in the West Country away from the Blitzkrieg blasting England’s major cities, he returned home an orphan and determined that he would never be subject to the whims of others again. Within fifteen years he was a millionaire magnate presiding over a booming property portfolio in London, profiting from a rebuilding frenzy in the aftermath of the war’s destruction. Twenty years later, he was a billionaire. Another decade after that, he stopped even trying to count his fortune. He owned islands in the Pacific, a significant proportion of Dubai and Manhattan and several cruise liners, but prided himself on the fact that nobody would have known him if they passed him on the street.

The person who recognized him stopped at the entrance to his suite, their dark gray suit immaculate, shoes highly polished, hand extended.

‘Thank you for agreeing to see me.’

Hampton shook the proffered hand.

‘I must ask: how did you know where to find me?’

His visitor smiled.

‘I’ve watched you for many years, Mister Hampton, long before you chose to recede into anonymity. I suspected that if it was not you that I needed to see, then you would at least know where to send me.’

Hampton’s eyes narrowed.

‘And you are approaching me now, after all that has happened to you. Why?’

Again, the calm smile.

‘Can we speak inside?’

Hampton nodded and gestured into the suite, following his guest in and closing the door. Inside the suite, four more men waited patiently, each wearing suits that cost as much as some cars and cautious expressions as they surveyed their visitor.

‘I hope,’ one of them said to Hampton, ‘that this is worthwhile. We’re taking an awful risk here.’

‘As am I,’ the visitor said, ‘after what happened to Donald Wolfe.’

Gregory Hampton gestured to their guest.

‘Gentlemen, please do me the courtesy of listening to what our new associate has to say. I feel certain that you will appreciate it.’

‘Who are you?’ one of the men asked the guest.

The guest sat down, crossing one long leg over the other.

‘My name is Lillian Cruz,’ she said, ‘and I was born in Montrose, Colorado, in the year 1824.’

A silence descended upon the men in the suite as they looked at her.

‘Go on,’ Gregory Hampton prompted her. ‘My associates here are familiar with the basic potential of human longevity.’

Lillian Cruz regarded the men for a long moment before speaking.

‘I am the last survivor of eight soldiers of the Union army who took sanctuary in a place called Misery Hole in New Mexico in 1862, just after the Battle of Glorietta Pass.’

‘What on earth were you doing in an army?’ one of the younger men asked.

‘I was one of many women who served alongside their countrymen in the Civil War,’ Lillian said hotly. ‘In my case, I met my husband within the ranks, an officer named Ellison Thorne. He died recently after being pursued for years by a man named Jeb Oppenheimer, so that I might still live today.’

Lillian took a moment before continuing.

‘I have been alive for a hundred eighty-seven years, and in that time I have seen this country, and this planet, gradually destroyed by the parasite that we call humanity. We are the only species that consumes without replenishing, that takes more than our fair share without giving anything back. For over one hundred forty years, five of the seven men who had sheltered with me in Misery Hole lived in a small area of the New Mexico desert with barely anybody knowing they were even there. They took only what they needed, and in doing so were a part of their environment, not a predator upon it.’

Lillian reached into the pocket of her jacket and produced a small vial filled with a clear liquid that caught the light streaming in through the suite’s broad windows. She held it up to the men demonstratively.

‘I have tested this serum,’ she said, ‘because we were dying of old age. The bacteria that infected us when we were in the caves began dying because they were unable to sustain themselves indefinitely on the iron we consumed in our food, perhaps because of our physical size compared to other, smaller mammals such as bats who I believe may have originally harbored them. I myself have not yet suffered any symptoms, possibly because females tend to live longer than males in many mammalian species. This serum has corrected the deficiency in the bacteria Bacillus permians, allowing them to sustain cellular senescence indefinitely within the bodies of large mammals such as ourselves.’

‘How?’ one of the younger men demanded. ‘How can you be sure that the bacteria will work this time?’

‘The degradation of our bodies was being caused by a hemoglobin deficiency,’ Lillian said, ‘itself caused by the bacteria’s demands for iron, effectively making us permanently anemic. Hemoglobin deficiency decreases blood-oxygen carrying capacity, causing loss of blood, nutritional deficiencies, bone-marrow problems and kidney failure — the red blood cells in iron deficiency anemia become hypochromic and microcytic. Hemolysis, the accelerated breakdown of red blood cells, follows and jaundice is caused by the hemoglobin metabolite bilirubin, which can cause renal failure. The increased levels of bilirubin improperly degraded the hemoglobin and clogged small blood vessels, especially in the kidneys, causing kidney damage and muscular breakdown. We were essentially falling apart. The same quorom sensing that caused the infection to extend telomere life in us eventually also caused us to become anemic and then began to break down our bodies at the cellular level. The reason for all of this was that our immune systems were finally overpowering the bacteria as they gradually died off over the years due to lack of iron. The bacterial population reduced sufficiently that quorom sensing ceased, and we aged rapidly. The bacteria within us simply had not evolved enough to exist in symbiotic harmony with human beings.’

‘I take it,’ one of the men asked, ‘that you have overcome this unfortunate flaw?’

She shook the vial in her hand.

‘This serum is the result of my work since: it is still not perfect, but it’s already more effective than the naturally occurring bacteria. It no longer causes anemia and, as you know, lasts for at least a hundred fifty years. By that time, we’ll have worked out how to make it last a lot longer, producing a bacterium that exists in perfect harmony with our own bodies.’

Gregory Hampton looked at her for a long moment.

‘Your colleagues died to protect that,’ he said. ‘Why would you now betray their memory?’

Lillian sighed.

‘Because they had not really lived in the modern world,’ she said. ‘They hadn’t seen what it has become. And because you are all already wealthy beyond avarice and I suspect your interest in this is not financial. I take it that you wish for there to be a world for humans to live in in a hundred years’ time, a thousand?’

The men regarded her with respect for the first time. Hampton spoke softly for them.

‘The Bilderberg Group has a greater cause than merely acting as an annual reservoir for political discourse,’ he said solemnly. ‘Unless there are major technological breakthroughs in the fields of energy generation, farming and pharmaceuticals in the next ten years, it is highly likely that civilization as we know it will collapse, the burden of our population too great for even human ingenuity to support it. It has already begun, as fossil fuels are now running out and fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce. We exist as a think tank dedicated to preserving human endeavor after the coming apocalypse, and rebuilding it in the future.’

Lillian nodded in understanding.

‘Then this serum could help extend your leadership, should the need arise.’

‘How much do you want for it?’ one of them asked.

Lillian shook her head.

‘I don’t want money,’ she said. ‘What I want is to be protected, so that I don’t have to spend my life hiding from people like Jeb Oppenheimer. I want this serum to be used only by those who earn it, and I want the reduction of the population of this planet to be achieved humanely over time. If there’s one thing that we absolutely agree on, it’s that if either our population or our rate of consumption is not reduced then humanity is ultimately doomed. Any species that becomes too numerous eventually suffers a collapse, and I fear that ours is well and truly overdue. In that, at least, Jeb Oppenheimer was right.’

Hampton looked at his accomplices, and they all nodded together.

‘Security is the one thing that we absolutely can guarantee,’ he said to her finally. ‘You will be safe amongst us, I can assure you.’

Lillian stood and handed the vial to Hampton. She fixed her gaze onto his.

‘This serum can be cultured and grown. As a bacterium, it will by its very nature divide and propagate without limitation. You have in your hands the fountain of youth,’ she said, ‘the elixir. Use it wisely.’