The Last Enemy: A history of the present future - 1934-2084

By Luca Luchesini

“The last enemy to be destroyed shall be death”, wrote St. Paul in his letters. But what if someone has already managed to defeat it? Thirty-four years have gone by since an ingenious biochemist, named Louis Picard, invented the ultimate anti-aging drug in 1981, that is known as Telomerax. Louis was obliged to form a selected group of technology entrepreneurs, finance mavens, and secret service professionals to help strategically spread knowledge of the drug. The discovery of Telomerax carried obvious dangers with it, eventually leading to the collapse of society and the near-extinction of mankind, in the ruthless war that broke out. Survivors set out to design a new society, specially designed for the half-gods that individuals were becoming. An action-packed and thrilling apocalyptic novel, “The Last Enemy”, brings to light many issues that we face today, from the clash between the power of the state and the right of citizens, to respecting our limits and controlling the human drive to push ourselves beyond those very limits.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luca Luchesini
• Release date: Dec 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370913084

Luca Luchesini

I graduated in Telecom Networks Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 1994 and have been working in multinational companies ever since. I started self-learning Mimetic theory in 2007 by reading all major works of Rene Girard. In 2011, I published a paper about West and Middle East relationship at the annual Girardian COV&R conference 2011 dedicated to “Order/Disorder in History and Politics”. You can reach me here: [e-mail]

Book preview

Introduction

London - July 27, 2084

This eBook celebrates the 150th birthday of Louis Picard, the man who freed mankind from mortality with the anti-aging drug that he invented in 1981, called Telomerax. While we, the average individuals, remain subject to illnesses, accidents and, more than ever, our own violence, we have painfully discovered along the way that revealed Telomerax as the hidden secret of the happy few in this world.

As Louis Picard and Telomerax are inevitably associated to each other, we have decided to celebrate his birthday with a feature story that is at the same time both a biographical interview and a brief history of the world during the last half a century. We, the chief editors of the New Times, ask in advance for the forgiveness of our readers if at times the biography turns into a historical novel. We also would like to thank Louis for the time he spent with us in holoconference from his private mansion on the Aeolian island of Salina. We have structured the story of his life among four sections:

Part 1: Discovery - Beginning from the birth of Louis in 1934 and ending in 2010, when the drug was developed in secret and a circle of guardians established to protect the secret. That is, until its members were detected by security agencies, at the end of 2010.

Part 2: Detection and Awareness - 2011 to 2023, when knowledge and use of the drug started to circulate.

Part 3: Prohibition and War - 2024 to 2054, when most governments banned the drug and how this led to the breakup of worldly order and the elimination of three fourths of mankind.

Part 4: The New Order - 2054 to present day, when mankind was rearranged along completely new geographic and political lines, with new states, ways of life and the emergence of the new international order.

Thirty years after the end of the war, the controversial question of whether the discovery of Telomerax has been more beneficial or not to mankind, still sparks a heated debate. Therefore as chief editors of the New Times, we want to take the occasion of Louis’ birthday to try and build a new, fairer view while the suffering and hatred of the wars is subsiding and slowly becoming a part of history. We hope that you enjoy this journey, and we encourage you to contribute to the discussion and share any relevant opinions or thoughts on our website http://lastenemythebook.blogspot.com.

Part One

Discovery

Chapter 1

Louis Picard was born on July 27, 1934 in the city of Lille, located in northern France. Being the son of a pharmacist and a mathematics teacher at the local high school, Louis enjoyed a comfortable and happy childhood in a respectable family of the French bourgeoisie. Since his infancy, he showed a brilliant mind which his mother nourished with private lessons.

At the age of five, Louis could already read and write fluently. His parents were thinking about sending him to Paris in a special college for gifted students, when the Nazi’s invasion of France brought those plans to an end.

We begin the interview by asking him to recall that period.

Mr. Picard, what was your experience of World War II like?

The hologram of Louis appears. He is a handsome man in his early forties with dark hair and a bronzed complexion, dressed in a casual white shirt. He responds calmly and sincerely,

"I have to say, my parents did the utmost to shield me from the duress that war brings. Luckily Lille was never the site of a major battle, neither during the Nazi invasion nor during the liberation by the Allied forces in 1944. But you could however experience the poverty, the cold winters and the general sense of uneasiness while living in a place where Gestapo, the powerful and secretive Nazi police force, always had the last word.

Due to its proximity to the British Channel, Lille was under authority of the German military and a few wrong words could have you arrested and detained by the secret police. As a result, my parents tried to keep me at home as much as possible. They, themselves, only went out to work or run errands.

We lived in Rue de Valmy, in a three story building, that housed the pharmacy shop of my father on the ground floor and our apartment on the floors above."

Do you recall any specific event that helped to shape your life?

"Well, you have to know that between 1940 and 1941, many houses had been confiscated by the Nazis to accommodate soldiers and officers. Living in our town, one of those officers had fallen to the temptations of the beautiful French women and had contracted Syphilis. He visited my father’s shop regularly, for this, as he was the only German-speaking pharmacist in town. Apparently the treatment was successful enough for the high-ranking officer, that my father was able to keep the house.

At the time, I did not understand anything about sexual diseases, however I had the very clear perception that we were better off than the others because my father was good with chemistry, and eventually that would contribute to my own destiny. During those years, the bond with my mother became stronger than ever before, as she spent almost all afternoon with me, reviewing my lessons. At the time when the Allied forces freed us from the grasp of Nazi Germany, I remember the joy, but also the suffering that rang out through the city. Suffering that was caused by the prosecutions which began erupting against the French collaborationists.

Among many shameful events, the women who had any relations with German soldiers or officers, were exposed in public squares and had their hair shaved off. I still remember the face of my mother; the disgust she held in her eyes. And I immediately was moved to disgust along with her. So somehow the victory came with mixed feelings."

Was your family also affected by the collaborationist prosecutions? And how did that help to shape your mind?

"We were not affected directly, however my father got some threats for his alleged service to German occupation troops. Those rumors all came from some envious neighbors that could not cope with the fact that he had kept house and shop, while they had been forced to relocate.

He was spared the worst. In the end he always made sure to take care of his fellow compatriots without any preferences over the occupying troops. The public humiliation of those women served as a scapegoat to discharge all community tensions, and we did benefit from it in that way. But my father no longer felt safe in Lille and in the spring of 1945, he decided to move to Paris.

So for me the end of the war was a mixed experience, joyful for the end of the occupation, combined with the feeling that people had not learned alot from it."

The Picards moved to Paris and took residence in a comfortable apartment in Boulevard Raspail, on the Rive Gauche. Louis went to high school and later enrolled in Medicine at Sorbonne University. He was still an undergraduate student, when in 1954, he stumbled on the legendary article of Watson and Crick that described the structure of DNA.

For Louis it was the equivalent of a religious revelation, and although he could not comprehend all of the details, he understood that this discovery was about to change his future and the future of the entire world. He started taking courses in biology and managed to get acquainted with the head group leading researches in biochemistry.

How would you describe those years? When did you decide to major in biochemistry?

"It was absolutely insane. I was trying to get two degrees at once, spending more than sixteen hours every day between books, laboratories and in libraries. To better understand the research documents, I also had to teach myself English. Things improved a bit when I eventually graduated in Medicine in 1957, but this led to a clash in my family. I made it very clear that I did not want to continue in the medical field and instead focus on the new frontier of biology and genetics.

But this was purely an intellectual drive. I was still lacking the compelling event that would push me to devote my life to the quest of immortality - if you allow me this hefty expression."

And the compelling event came with the illness and death of your mother.

"Yes, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1956 and after a struggle that lasted two years, she passed away in 1958. During that time my father and I used all the connections we had to try to save her, but it was clear from the very beginning that it was a lost battle. And even as a young undergraduate, I could see that doctors - a kin to which I am now a part of - were not able to properly define the problem. There were too many missing pieces and a certain reluctance to apply the latest findings of biology and genetics to experiments.

I felt like we were in the times where medicine was being tested to fight off infections, before Pasteur discovered bacteria.

As for me, in the words of Elias Canetti, I felt like death was physically our only worst enemy. I decided I wanted to figure out a way to conquer it. With a good amount of the arrogance any young man has, I came to the conclusion that Medicine was just a pure waste of my time. So I switched my focus onto biochemistry and the study of genetics because I knew that it was the most promising, and probably only way, to defeat death in my lifespan."

I see that neither religion nor spirituality were of any comfort to you. Were you already an atheist before you started your research?

Louis pauses for a few seconds to ponder an answer, and then his blue eyes flash as he continues.

"I would not describe myself as an atheist, neither in those times nor the present. It is true that I was raised in an environment that was quite indifferent to religion and against some of its most dogmatic forms, as my father declared himself a liberal follower of Voltaire, and my mother came from a socialist radical family that backed the French Third Republic.

However, it would be unfair to say that they were completely hostile to religion. They realized that atheism could become a faith in itself, and a very damaging one at that. They were indeed interested in the genesis of religious beliefs and at some time my father also engaged in a letter exchange with Emile Durkheim, the sociologist that studied the phenomena linked to the collective psychology of religion and its influence on society.

The fact is, religion for me always remained one of the many, often contradictory, expressions of my mind that somehow got demoted to a lower priority when other very cogent experiences like love, sorrow, professional achievement, and death came into play. And over the last several years we have all witnessed where having a certain interpretation of religion can lead us.

So you might be better off calling me an agnostic with genuine envy towards those that have true and peaceful faith, and at the same time fear to engage with them. I cannot exactly explain why. Fear of losing control, maybe.

Anyway, back to 1958. Immediately after we had the burial ceremony for my mother in the Montparnasse cemetery, I left France and applied to study Biology at the University of Cambridge, that at the time was home to one of the team of researchers from the so-called Phage group, and where James Watson and Francis Crick had perfected their research of the DNA structure at the beginning of the 1950s. The environment was fantastic, and by the time I finished my PhD thesis in 1962, I had come to meet all the major researchers active in the field. Among other events, I also met my first wife there, Alicia Paulson. She was working as a research associate in quantum physics at the Cavendish Lab, where a number of Nobel Prize winners had worked. We got married in 1961. We shared the same deep passion for science but for reasons I never quite understood, I never talked openly to her about my actual goals."

Was this because you did not feel she would approve of your intentions?

Well, maybe. Or maybe it was my fault. I was not able to assert and defend my intentions yet, even with the person whom I loved. For sure it did not help the relationship in the long run and eventually we divorced in 1967, as my focus on research started to absorb all my time and energy. Fortunately, both Alicia and I realized we were simply not on the same page. She wanted a child, while I was working on a project in which children would be a big problem - although at that time I did not know it.

Louis stops in the middle of the sentence, and turns his head towards the large glass window in the polished living room of his villa. He seems to hesitate for a moment, looking beyond the blossoming Hibiscus flowers in his Mediterranean garden, and focusing on a point somewhere in the middle of the sea.

Yet there was still something wrong. What was it?

How can I explain…after a few semesters at Cambridge I was already regarded as a sort of young prodige" of genetics and biochemistry. Before I completed my dissertation, I had multiple offers to join the best universities to continue my research. However there were a few factors which I was not expecting, that threatened to jeopardize my mission.

First of all, I did not have the freedom to lead my research in the direction that I wanted. There seemed to be a certain academic mainstream to follow, and this came with guardrails on the resources you could have at your disposal, and a boss to whom you were required to report your findings. No matter if you were the brightest scholar in centuries.

Second, while my fellow researchers were certainly driven by the desire of knowledge, they had more mundane objectives; such as their academic career, longing for public recognition, and even rivalry against other research groups. Very few, if any at all, shared my total commitment. From this point of view, I was more of a priest or a missionary, than a scientist.

Lastly, my colleagues quickly sensed this division and over the following years I found myself more and more disengaged. So it was clear that, once again, I had to drastically change my approach if I wanted to continue my quest. But unlike my previous change of switching colleges, it was more about how to do it rather than what to do."

The opportunity presented itself on the train that was taking me and Alicia back to Paris during the summer of 1962."

Chapter 2

On the train you found a copy of Paris Match, the most popular magazine at the time, where L’Oreal had posted research and development jobs available for their soon-to-be-launched skin products division.

"Yes. At first glance, however, I ignored it. I was far too advanced for the positions they were offering and the only thing my research and the job had in common was that there were cells involved. But by the time the train entered the Gare du Nord in Paris, I had come to the conclusion that it was the perfect opportunity and I sent my resume directly from the post office that was inside the station.

A few days later I received a telegram at my father’s house that invited me for an interview at their headquarters in Clichy, located in the outskirts of Paris. It was there where I met Xavier Langlois, the director of the hair products department, at that time.

He was a very tall man, dressed in an impeccable suit. He showed me into his spacious office, furnished with antique chairs and a huge round table that served as his desk. He greeted me by asking why a brilliant scientist like myself would ever consider joining a cosmetics company and added that he would not hire me in any case, as I must have some kind of mental problem.

Tough start. One hundred and twenty-two years have passed and I still vividly remember every moment of that interview. He had been brutally honest. After having said that, he leaned back into his chair and stared at me, waiting for my explanation. It was time to make my move.

Monsieur, I replied, I read in the job posting that you are looking for a qualified biochemist to run an ambitious project in cosmetic research. After reading my resume, you cannot question my expertise. On the contrary, you have not yet demonstrated to me that your project is ambitious enough for me to consider it.

Xavier’s face transformed. He cleared his throat, as an attempt to compensate for his rude introduction and spoke simply.

"Indeed, this project is too intricate to describe in an ad. As you well know, we produce top-selling products, and we want to set up a lab to better investigate the function of cells and apply this knowledge to create rennovated products.

Your education as a physician and your recent experience in cell research obviously qualifies you for the job, but I doubt that you would appreciate our environment. I hope to bring new ground-breaking products to the market."

"Monsieur, then I think we share the same ideas. One of the main problems I am having now at the university, is that we are not focused enough on improving the common good of society.

We have studied the code that rules cell replication, but do not want to seriously commit our efforts to how, for example, this could be applied to aging. Therefore I think that I would be able to contribute more at L’Oreal than at Cavendish Lab in Cambridge.

That is why I am here."

Xavier expression, attentive up until now, opened into a broad smile.

Are you telling me that you plan to use L’Oreal labs and resources to turn them into a sorcerer’s cave to try to produce the eternal life potion?

Well, that would definitely be the main goal. Unfortunately, I have to be realistic and admit that most likely I will only end up designing lots of tremendously successful skin cosmetics that will provide L’Oreal with stacks of money and a decent career for myself.

Xavier burst into laughter and ringed the bell on his desk to call in his assistant. A few seconds later, a young woman opened the door and before she could even step in the office, Mr. Langlois told her to prepare the paperwork. I was expected to start working the next day.

Louis, in retrospect, do you think Mr. Langlois believed your true goals?

"Not for the first few years. He kept up with my work and he clearly saw that I was also doing a lot of studies and experiments not directly correlated to product research. On the other side, he was also seeing that this side research sometimes contributed to the main product development, almost always with excellent results. So I believe he just figured that that was just my way of working.

He would give me the objectives and ask me how much I needed to achieve them, without further questioning. By 1965, I had already developed a drug able to improve the replication efficiency of a set of skin and hair cells, and this was channeled into extremely popular products. My career took off and by 1968, Xavier was seriously thinking about handing me the responsibility of the whole product development of L’Oreal. I balked at the idea. I needed to focus on research, not to be a company executive.

He was puzzled at my response, so in the early weeks of the summer of 1968, he called me into his office and asked me why I was refusing a promotion. Was I under the influence of all those communists that were rocking the streets of Paris and of half of Europe?

I stuck to the truth and updated him on everything I was finding in my free time, among which, the discovery of telomeres in skin cells.

Telomeres are the structures that allow DNA to replicate and form an exact copy of the original cell, except over time they get shorter, until the cell is no longer able to replicate correctly and eventually dies. I had sent some previous results to my old classmates at Cambridge for some additional review and I could simply not leave the job half done.

Xavier stood up from his desk, and stared at me with a frown. Turns out that I had indeed created my own sorcerer’s cave in search of the eternal life potion. Just like in my first interview, I used the interest of the company to defend my point.

I was just a few months away from a major breakthrough in the study of the cell aging process and he would risk spoiling this over a promotion? He eventually gave in, and I could keep running my lab under one condition; I update him regularly on my side research."

How did this second phase of your research at L’Oreal go?

"Well, there were three major breakthroughs. First, I was able to produce telomerase, the enzyme that preserves telomeres, therefore guaranteeing perfect cell duplication. This happened in the fall of 1970. Second, I was able to design a drug that transferred telomerase into human skin cells to make them effectively immortal. This was the first prototype of Telomerax.

And third, we started experimenting on human patients. Xavier knew a Swiss doctor named Hans Klettendorf, who was the owner of a fancy beauty clinic called Le Jardin de Venus in the Perroy village, off the coast of the lake of Geneva.

There was an agreement that allowed L’Oreal to use the rich and famous customers of this beauty farm to test its new products. Obviously with their consent, and under the full control of an experienced staff. To my surprise, I saw that these special kind of guinea pigs were very eager to undergo risky experiments in exchange for the privilege of accessing the latest rennovations in aesthetic care.

No one except Xavier and I knew that the skin cream was also the first Telomerax prototype and since the clinic customers knew they were using experimental cosmetics, they did not mind if from time to time an expert would come for a few checkups.

The results were absolutely amazing. The skin of the patients treated with the prototype clearly showed a sudden stop in the aging process, to the extent that they were considering reducing the frequency of their other cosmetic treatments. Of course, all the rest of their body was still subject to aging but the results were simply shocking. So I pushed myself to work harder, and Xavier became more and more intrusive on my research, making me feel as if I was suffocating under pressure.

Then I discovered the reason behind his intrusion. L’Oreal was planning to buy Synthelabo, a French pharmaceutical company that was renowned for its research in dermatology. That was why Xavier needed to know all the points he could bank on before heading into the acquisition. In addition, my research would have had to be combined into the one of Synthelabo. The message was very clear, freedom to complete my research in private was diminishing."

How did you manage to defend your independence?

"L’Oreal acquired Synthelabo in 1973, and then all of the usual company integration problems surfaced; redundant research projects, competition among different teams and the like. On my end, more and more time wasted on company turf wars. And then came the death of my father, which reopened my eyes to focus on my actual goal. If you believe in fate, that was a sign. So I made up my mind, and I decided it was high time to switch up my career again.

I went to Xavier’s office and asked to leave the company. It was time for me to setup my own shop and, with the respectable amount of money I had earned so far, I would ask Hans Klettendorf to become his partner at Le Jardin de Venus.

The explanation I gave Hans for the abrupt change, was that it was time for me to fulfill my entrepreneurial dream. I emphasized the fact that I was bringing a good amount of capital, knowledge, and experience to increase the clinic business and set up its own exclusive cosmetic lab.

The key advantage of teaming up with me, for Hans, was that he would secure a solid future for his business, at seventy-two years old. This implied that his two sons - neither showing interest to follow in their father’s footsteps - could continue to benefit from the profits, while devoting themselves to their favorite hobbies. Only Xavier knew the real reason for my leave, and kept this as the focus during our last meeting.

Louis, he said, I admire your commitment but have you ever considered all the consequences? I mean, it could go wrong.

You mean, what if I do not end up with solid results? Well, you know, people will move on from where I left…

"No, Louis, what if you succeed and you find your potion of eternal life? You are either ignoring the implications, or simply pretending there are none.

Do you think you can sort it out by publishing an article in Nature magazine, like your heroes Francis and Crick did, and then wait for the Nobel Prize and that’s it?"

Of course not, Xavier. It will be incomparably larger than Penicillin; a revolution.

Far more than a revolution. Think about it. Everything is based on this very simple and undeniable truth, that we are mortals. Life is just a brief journey, then you go to Hell, or Heaven, or nowhere, but you make room for somebody else. Everything is programmed around this. And if you succeed, the whole system collapses. There is maybe far more to lose than to gain, from a human standpoint, of course.

Well, I agree it won’t be easy to adapt to, but this is the ultimate goal for me and I believe for all of us. Plus, we are almost there. I feel it. The criminal act, or rather the inhumane one, would be to give up for fear, Xavier. And honestly, I am quite surprised that this objection comes from an enlightened and rational person like yourself.

I know I can’t stop you, Louis. This is your passion. But please think. And watch out. It could become very dangerous for you, and those around you. And do not hesitate to come back if you need help.

We never got in touch again. The next time I would see Xavier, would be at his funeral in 1985. He died in a car crash, and by that time I had already been testing the first versions of Telomerax on myself for a few years.

I find it quite ironic how I arrived at the ceremony as the first immortal being on Earth, being proven against by the unpreventable death of my friend. Yet Xavier had made a good point. From that moment on, I was no longer under the protection of a company. I was at high seas, with a powerful treasure that had to be defended from a multitude of threats, by any means necessary. The first mission was to keep it a secret.

Chapter 3

The Swiss period, if we can call it that, started in 1973 with your arrival at the Klettendorf clinic and lasted more than forty years until you were forced to leave the country in 2017. How would you describe it, looking back?

"We can roughly divide it into three main parts. In the first fifteen years, I was mainly focused on completing the development of Telomerax and consolidating the clinic research activity.

Then, from the late eighties to around 2010, most of my attention went into creating the network that was necessary to protect the Telomerax secret. The last years were all about fighting off the effects of information leakage that made me, my family, and my friends, subjective to of all kinds of attention from big governments, big corporations, and big crime from all over the world. This eventually endangered our security and survival.

It was a period of increasing anxiety and fear. Without a doubt, the first ten years were the best ones. The clinic had a very competent staff, and performing my duties as lab director was a satisfying job that left me plenty of time to experiment.

I had brought along with me a lot of machinery from L’Oreal and I purposely organized the research activity in a way that doctors and technicians working with me, could not get the full picture. At times, I was sending some of the experiment results to Rodney Gilmore, a research associate who I had met in Cambridge back in the sixties and who had become a professor of biochemistry.

By 1977, I had modified the Telomerax prototype so that it was now possible to employ telomerase not only in skin cells but in a number of other tissues like muscles, kidneys, the nervous system, and liver. But at the same time this information was becoming more and more public. In 1978, Elizabeth Blackburn and her Yale colleagues published the analysis about telomeres that would win them the Nobel Prize in 2009.

After reading the article I immediately called Rodney and asked him if my correspondence with him had any part of this. He thought I was angry because my work was not mentioned at all in the bibliography and that I was looking to get part of the credit, so he immediately became defensive.

Well, Louis, you know, I did not quite understand what you were saying in your correspondence and this Australian girl we have here, at Darwin College, is really bright. I just thought she might have a look at it. She could get some insight for her own research, too. You know, I am a professor. You have your clinic, I did not think it would be a big issue if your name did not appear in the bibliography. And anyway, it was private correspondence…

I am not looking for any damn glory, Rodney! If I had been, I would not have left Cavendish lab back in 1962. The fact is, I am working for Dr. Klettendorf and I have sworn to secrecy since this is part of our cosmetic research. This article could end my career. Just please do me a favor and keep my name out of the references and please trash all of our correspondence. I cannot afford to put my job at risk. Is that clear, Rodney?

I am sorry, I did not mean to put you in trouble. Elizabeth has been working here at Cambridge since 1975. I have never seen someone as gifted as her in biochemistry so when I went through your last letter I asked her to go over your key points, especially in those paragraphs where you describe the way to synthesize the new enzyme. I simply had no idea how to build the verification experiment, so I just asked for a little advice.

Did you give her a copy of my paper, Rodney? This could cost me my position and more. I do not want to restart at age forty-four.

What the hell, Louis, of course not. I understand the difference between private letters and open research.

All right, then. Let’s close it here. But please tell me before sharing anything next time. I need to know what’s going on.

Apparently I was convincing enough, because no reference to my name or research ever appeared in any official scientific journal. But just as a precaution, I stopped all scientific exchanges with Rodney and other scholars and over time, even the personal ones, slowly but surely severing all ties with my past.

In 1980, I reached the final breakthrough. The drug could now cover all human tissue and my cooperative guinea pigs would take it by applying the occasional skin cream treatment commonly used at every beauty clinic. Once Telomerax was absorbed into the skin, it slowly diffused into the rest of the body, effectively stopping the aging process.

The next step was to run extensive clinical experiments to test if there were side effects after applying the cream. This took place between 1980 and 1984. I would start taking Telomerax myself, toward the end of 1983. Only after the first round of experiments showed no major drawbacks."

Yet in your research journal you describe some nasty collateral effects, like the results that confirmed existing tumors develop much faster after treatment with Telomerax.

"Indeed. Tumors are to some extent the precursors of immortality. They are made up of cells that keep replicating uncontrollably fast, without aging, making them unstoppable. In addition, they have much higher levels of telomerase. Eleven of my patients, which is roughly two percent of everyone involved in the clinical trials, already had some form of cancer which they were unaware of before being exposed to the treatment.

After leaving the clinic, their tumors developed much faster than expected, establishing a strong connection between Telomerax and cancer progress. As a result, I modified the drug so that you were required to take it regularly in small doses and then eventually I transformed it into a pill. This made it so much easier to use, without the extensive process of bathing in a tub full of cream.

Finally, allow me to comment on the expenses. My initial Telomerax prototypes costed me about $1500 per treatment, for every one of my patients. This was equivalent to what we charged for a day at the clinic, including accommodation. By 1990, I had been able to slash that cost by fifty percent. Immortality was getting cheap."

Don’t you feel guilty for those eleven people whose lives were actually shortened by the Telomerax experimentation?

"Not really, honestly. There are many other things I feel more guilty about, looking at how the story unfolded. Remember, these people were all aware we were testing experimental cosmetics on them. It is true they did not know my true intentions, but it may as well have been a simple skin care treatment that could have increased their likelihood to get cancer.

On top of that, the precautions I took in developing Telomerax were much more serious than those I used for ordinary products. Of course, I do regret not having understood the connection between Telomerax and cancer before, so that I could have saved some of them….but I did not give up on my main goal, to give my patients an extended lifetime in exchange for some unpredictable and unavoidable experimental risks."

Then with new discoveries, came the need for further discretion.

"Secrecy meant many things. First, I had to protect the work from my partner, Mr. Klettendorf, which was easy. He could not understand the work behind my research, and because of my responsibility, it was relatively easy to bury the costs of the Telomerax development into the overall cosmetics lab costs. Things became a bit more complicated during the clinic test phase, when Telomerax production required almost three million dollars over four years and accounted for nearly ten percent of the overall clinic costs.

Fortunately Hans was well into his eighties and his sons did not get involved with the clinic, so with just minor tweaks, I was able to keep it under the surface. Then Hans passed away in 1988 and I took over all executive and financial responsibility of the business. This basically secured me from any inside risk, because it would be impossible for anyone to spot what was really going on by just looking at the records.

The real issue was protecting the secret of the formula. On the day of the burial of Xavier, I thought about how he was right to have feared my success.

Luckily, I was living in a country that has made protecting secrets and their bearers, a national mission. My private banker came up with a strategic plan. I stored all of my key research documents and synthesis process in an armored safe with a coded lock. I then let my bank pick a notary, whose name they did not disclose to me, to keep the safe in custody. I then brought the code and a sealed envelope, enclosing the name of the notary to a different bank. That bank chose another notary, also unknown to me, to guard the code.

If I did not check back with the banks, by phone, on a monthly basis and in person at least twice a year, they would tell their respective notaries to recover the safe and have the codes sent in to open it. Together with the scientific documentation, there were clear instructions to send copies to all the major European newspapers and research institutions. Repeat that process ten times, and by 1987 I had ten copies of my research under the custody of ten notaries, that had the content but no easy way to access it and another ten who had the codes but no easy access to the content.

If anything bad happened to me, the result was that Telomerax would become public domain. As I did not know who the notaries were, there was no danger of anyone threatening or torturing me to reveal my secret."

And how about the manufacturing facility at the clinic? Could anyone interested in the secret just break into the lab, steal the pills, and find the drug formula?

"After more than twenty years of work I knew the production process by heart and I did not need anything unordinary to run it. All that the occasional men in black might have found, would be just basic components common at any pharmaceutical lab.

Obviously, I would not have done any of this without an agreement. I was basically banking on the assumption that any organization interested in Telomerax would also have had a clear interest in keeping it a secret. So no matter how evil their intention may have seemed, we would have had this crucial goal in common. Removing me from the equation against my will meant immediate public availability to the formula.

At the time, I could only come up with a few ways how the drug could have gone public. The first, being my sudden death in a totally unexpected catastrophe like an accident, or natural disaster. Otherwise, through a failed negotiation with an unreasonable party. Or, perhaps, the chance of someone actually wanting to take it public.

In the first case scenario, I told myself it would have been fate’s desire to let all mankind share my legacy. As for the other two, I figured that this would show the presence of such extreme corruption and ignorance that mankind would desperately need this gift.

However, I did not consider the fact that showed up later on, that I would become the prime target of hatred for years after my discovery went public. Then, there was also the time factor. This secret had to be kept over a long period of time, for as long as I would live. Hanging around your neighborhood at age ninety, running a clinic looking barely forty, could get suspicious. Even if people know you are a genius in the business of cosmetics.

Because of this, I knew I had to figure out a way that allowed me to completely change identity and start a new life somewhere else, every thirty or forty years. I immediately realized that the tricky part was not so much transferring the assets and the money, but rather creating a believable story around it, to give the new Louis a real past. I would need assistance from people knowledgeable in the functions of secret services, security agencies, and organized crime. Basically, I could not do this alone. I needed to build a small and extremely trustworthy network of…let’s say, ‘immortal guardians’, whose one mission was to keep Telomerax hidden.

But, unlike biochemistry, this area was unfamiliar to me and maybe it is no surprise that despite the caution I took, and the initial success, this is the part that did not go as smoothly as I had hoped."

Chapter 4

Was your second wife, Dora, aware of the nature and extent of your work?

"She was not aware of all the details until 1995, which means thirteen years after our marriage, eleven years after Telomerax was stable, and ten years since I started giving it to her without her knowing. It is worth explaining how I organized this phenomenon, because it marked the beginning of the immortal generation.

I met her in the summer of 1980. She came to the clinic as the rich, young, and somehow bored wife of Johann Feldstein, a respected lawyer and professor at the University of Basel.

She was the daughter of Jacob Bershidsky, a German-speaking Sudeten Jew, who was freed by Allied troops in Dachau. He came back to his Sudeten homeland just to, then, be driven out by the Czechs. He eventually moved to Freiburg, where he worked as a shoemaker. He opted for his German side, decided to forget his past, by declaring no religious affiliation, and eventually became a West German citizen and married Elke Freising. She was a widow who had lost her husband on the Eastern front and now had to settle for a second marriage with a renegade Jew, because she badly needed help to raise her small child, Helmut.

Dora was born in 1953 and lived an uneventful childhood in the German province of the Wirtschaftswunder, the post-war economic miracle. Her parents decided to keep their former lives hidden and Dora sensed a clear preference her mother had for her elder brother, Helmut. She went to college, where she met her first husband, who was a brilliant professor in commercial law and was ten years older than her. Shortly after they married in 1976, her father called her aside and told her the truth about himself and her mother. He could no longer bear keeping the facts hidden, as his wife was slowly being killed by the Alzheimer’s disease and he was afraid Dora would find out the wrong way, if he was not the one to tell her.

She was shocked by the news and almost broke off her relationship with her father. Even worse, she was not able to tell her husband. She felt he was continuously absorbed by his career and their relationship was quietly cooling down after the first months full of passion.

When she entered the clinic, her soul was a complete existential wreck but she was still a very attractive woman; tall, voluptuous and elegant. Her head was crowned by a forest of long, curly brown hair that reminded me of a Greek goddess, but her face was veiled in sadness that emanated from her icy eyes. Even though I was more committed than ever to my research, I could not resist the temptation to invite her to the ‘terrace dinner’.

This was a huge celebration held by the clinic that had been started by Dr. Klettendorf and consisted of a lavish meal, taking place every Wednesday evening.

The event was held for the clinic’s most valuable customers, on the beautiful terrace on the top floor, overlooking the Lake of Geneva.

We had on average fifty to sixty guests who would spend one or two weeks at Le Jardin, and we would personally choose who would attend the dinner. There were two main purposes.

First, we wanted to create a deeper sense of exclusivity among the already exclusive clients that chose to stay at the beauty farm. Second, we carefully selected the guests to create a network of connections which we could count on, in the future.

Of course there were some golden rules in the selection process. First, newcomers would typically not be allowed to the dinner. You needed to be a regular customer. Next, invitees had to bring something interesting to the table. We were not interested in the simply rich. They needed to have stories, or skills, or personalities that made them unique. Lastly, all the previous rules notwithstanding, everyone at the dinner had to be liked by myself and Dr. Klettendorf.

Hans started to spend less and less time at the clinic, leaving me in charge of the terrace dinner. So I broke the rule and invited Dora to the terrace after her first visit. Let me cut it short and keep a bit of privacy here. What matters for the rest of the story is that the next year she divorced her first husband, and we married in 1983.

Beyond physical attraction, we shared a deep dissatisfaction on the way life was organized, and also a resolve to change it.

While I was engaged in my personal struggle against the deaths among my loved ones, Dora held a grudge against the lies humans constantly tell each other which, in turn, make our lives miserable. Knowing this about her, I had to tell her something about my work, yet I could not risk a full disclosure.

On the eve of our marriage, I took her to the lab and explained that I was doing more than simple cosmetics and I was actually involved in a secret research about aging. I could not tell her more, but I would in due time. She had either to trust me, or leave me. After hearing these words she froze, and for a long minute I thought she was gone. The Dr. Picard she loved had a secret he was not yet prepared to tell the world, not even his future wife.

Then she asked me, Ok, tell me just two things. Can you promise me that you are not hurting anyone and that when the day comes I will be the first to know?

I responded happily, Yes! No lies.

And I have a further request. I would appreciate you to finance my degree in psychology and my psychoanalysis, so that I can set up my psychoanalyst practice in a private studio here at the clinic. I have a simpler goal than you, just to help people get out of their own lies.

That is a done deal. Frankly, your mission looks more impossible than mine.

She kissed me, and we happily married the following day.

Chapter 5

Yet this was just the revelation that you had work in progress. How did you manage the full disclosure?

"She would ask me every few months how my research was going. I would give vague answers about some progress.

In 1985, once I was sure there would be no negative outcomes, I asked her if she would like to join the experiment. She accepted, so I took a close-up picture of her sitting on the terrace, flooded with the spring sun, and we continued our lives. From time to time I would ask her to take a beauty cream bath and then the pills. During the occasional request for an update, she would add a comment that she was not feeling any different.

Then on April 25, 1995, I took another close-up picture of her and put it next to the one taken ten years before. She stared in silence. After a while she whispered, Wow, Louis, well you are certainly on to something. What’s next?

I guess we need to keep quiet and wait for a while. A very long while, in all likeliness. Do you think people are ready for this to go public?

She immediately responded, Not if I recall our conversations with the terrace guests, nor if I look at my patients. But we risk waiting forever.

True. We might have a difficult quest in front of us. Even if during the last few years, things in the world have improved a lot. We might still need to wait several years before we bring this to light. And the two of us cannot do it alone. We need to build a bigger team.

Build a team…with some of our friends? How would you pick them?

"Let’s profile them first. We need to like and trust them. And they have to contribute the skills and connections we do not have, in case we have to disappear and reappear under new identities. But by this alone, the list would contain many names.

Next, they have to be absolutely committed to keeping the secret. We do not need the idealists or believers in the progression of mankind, nor those who could try to use the discovery just for their own benefit. You know that among our guests, the opportunistic crooks far outnumber the naive philanthropists."

I continued, having this checklist memorized by heart,

We must search for disenchanted people, yet with a very strong sense of their value so that given the right challenge they will fully commit themselves.

Yes, I agree. You are asking these people to form the first generation of a new mankind - if we can still even call it that. They must stay quiet until the time is right. This is the biggest secret, with the biggest reward, and the biggest risks.

At the end of the day, the deal is very simple. I give them immortality in exchange for their service to the organization and they are free to do whatever they want with their Telomerax, without telling anyone about the discovery.

But they will still depend on you to get the drug. How do you know this won’t provoke rivalry or resentment?

"That’s