The Eden Prophecy

CHAPTER 20

As Hawker watched, a pair of huge plasma screens descended slowly from the ceiling at each end of the ballroom. All eyes turned toward one or the other, causing the crowd to part in the middle like the Red Sea. He could see one screen from where he was, so he held his ground and kept his back to the wall.

“Welcome to the city of the future,” a voice said, mixing with the music. “Here you will see your future, a future without sickness, a future without infirmity, a future without dying.”

He leaned forward to get a better view of the screen. It showed a man stepping off a yacht with a beautiful young woman on his arm. He was silver-haired and obviously in his midsixties; the woman — of course — might have been twenty-five. But as they walked toward the camera, the image changed. The gray in his hair disappeared, the lines on his face faded and vanished, his shoulders straightened, his chest filled, his gut shrank to nothing.

“With Paradox you will see yourselves at age one hundred, living more vitally than you do today at forty, fifty, or sixty,” the voice promised.

By the time the yachtsman passed the camera, he looked to be thirty-five or so, a paragon of health and virility. The woman on his arm no longer looked out of place.

“Aging is nothing more than the dying of cells. But reversing this process at the cellular level will reverse the effects that you feel.”

On the screen a CGI animation showed cells dividing; it zoomed in on the DNA strand as the double helix split and reconnected. Tiny links at the end of the chain fell off, drifting from the screen. Those were the telomeres, as Danielle had explained it to him. Like the tips on your shoelaces. When the telomeres were gone the rest of the lace began to fray.

“This is not a resurfacing project designed to hide the damage of age. Nor is it an attempt to make you look younger, or even feel younger — this is a revolution. When you join us you will be remade, younger, stronger, more virile. Youth will no longer be wasted on the young.”

A cheer went up from the audience and Hawker stood amazed. Not because a raft of the wealthy were interested in turning back the hands of time, but because the graphics on the screen showed cellular activity, with labels and subtitles.

These were the very subjects of Ranga’s notes, according to Danielle. More shocking to Hawker was a graphic in the lower corner. It indicated a trial number: Series 951. It might have meant nothing to the others, but Danielle had recalled the lists of experiments ending with Series 951.

The same number Danielle had recounted as the last entry in the notes. Sonia’s presentation was promising to extend life, using the very same data and a virus with the very same trial number that Ranga’s notes had indicated would destroy life.

A seed of anger returned to Hawker’s heart.

The best-case scenario had Sonia as just another snake-oil salesman, promising the rich what they wanted to hear, but Hawker didn’t believe in the best-case scenario.

And the worst: that Sonia’s company and all of this were part of Ranga’s plan, part of the cult’s plan. What better or more ironic way could there be to spread a disease than to get rich people to pay millions for the privilege of being infected. Come here for the serum of life, only don’t expect to live much after you take it.

And if that was the case, it meant something far more sinister was going on.