The Immortality Project

By Derek Emerson-Elliott and M. Elizabeth Fini

The Immortality Project explores the scientific theme of immortality in the context of a thriller, set in the fast-paced, international world of the wealthy and powerful. While they are not everyday people, the characters come alive for the reader as they experience romance and betrayal, forgiveness and loss. Intriguing discussions on the technology of immortality are interspersed throughout, providing a scientific framework, delivered at the everyday level of the layman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796008784

Book preview

PROLOGUE

F lying at 10,000 meters above the Atlantic Ocean in his private plane, Murdoch McLaughlin picked up the copy of Time magazine and looked at his image on its cover. He recognized the photograph. It had been taken on his wedding day just over a year ago, and it had been carefully airbrushed to show a man radiating health, power, and confidence. The Most Powerful Man in the World, the caption read, and Murdoch pursed his lips thoughtfully. With assets totalling over a hundred billion dollars and with the largest media empire ever assembled under his personal control, the statement was probably true.

But what did being the most powerful man in the world actually mean? He looked at his reflection in the darkened window of his Boeing 737 and grimaced. A truly old man looked back at him. An old man with a deeply wrinkled face and thin dyed-brown hair. A man who, statistically, should be dead and who would be dead within the next few years despite the availability of the world’s best doctors. You simply can’t beat Anno Domini, his personal physician had said at his last check-up, and the casual statement had sent a chill down his spine.

It was not because he was frightened of death itself. Death was going to sleep, with the promise of dreams at best and the peace of eternity at worst. No, he was not frightened of death.

But he hated—hated with a passion—what death would bring: separation too soon from his young wife and his baby daughter. He loved Anna more than he had loved anything in his life, and he loved their child as a growing talisman of that love. He looked across the luxurious compartment at the two of them, Anna’s face tilted down as she breastfed her daughter, her golden hair haloed by the wall lamp behind her. She felt his gaze and lifted her eyes to his, slowly and with a soft, sleepy smile that tore at his heart.

Murdoch smiled back, but the thoughts that had invaded his mind made the smile painful to hold. He quickly looked away.

Yesterday he had become ninety years old, a man in the departure lounge of life. In his eighties, he had been able to tell himself that there were still the nineties to come. But now in the nineties, there was nothing to come. To reach a hundred would be an aberration—almost an indecency. Nobody reached a hundred unless you were a freak of nature.

And the last thing Murdoch McLaughlin wanted to be was a freak. A joke. A dribbling, creaking appendage to his lovely Anna. He looked again at his lined face reflected in the aircraft window, and then across to Anna and the soft-cheeked child. The contrast was stark. Terrifyingly stark.

It was already too late. He was far too old to be part of their fresh young world.

He was already a joke.

CHAPTER ONE

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

T he idea came to Jonathon Lord when he was under the shower.

He had just spent a thoroughly unpleasant afternoon being interviewed about his latest book, The Crystal Codex. He had been interviewed by a clear-minded young reporter whose pretty blue eyes had seen straight through him.

And made him sweat despite the air-conditioning.

As soon as she had gone, he had stripped off his clothes and headed for the en suite bathroom. On the way across the cool travertine tiles, he had paused to stare at himself in the mirror—a tall, slim man with a five-o’clock shadow and uncertain eyes.

At first, the hot water of the shower had failed to assuage the mixture of anger and frustration in his breast. He had been made to feel like a fraud. A fraud holed up in an air-conditioned five-star hotel, but a fraud all the same. A fraud skulking away in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while the world was waking up to the fact that he had conned it once again.

At first, The Crystal Codex had been a bombshell, and a very lucrative bombshell too. Half brilliantly speculative science, half humbug, it had been his fifth book and his most successful to date. In essence, it had postulated that the atomic structure of each type of crystal encoded a special message for mankind. The alternative-knowledge people had loved it because it confirmed their belief that crystals possessed special and magic powers. The media had loved it because it was sensational. Even some quite respectable scientists had given it their endorsement because Jonathon had done what he always did and made flawed research sound like serious science. There were pages of barely intelligible maths, pages of references to published scientific papers, and half a dozen peer review assessments by scientists who had been on Jonathon’s payroll.

And just a few intuitive and breathtaking leaps of understanding.

But as the pretty reporter had just said, it was all beginning to fall apart, like a paper hat in a hailstorm. The crystal-lovers were beginning to say that the messages Jonathon had decoded were empty and contradictory. The media were beginning to yawn. And now the scientists were questioning the maths and the dodgy references and the validity of the so-called peer review papers.

The hot water had splashed down and the dewberry shower gel had worked hard at its magic, but still Jonathon tasted ashes in his mouth. Then the idea came along, and it wiped the slate clean.

It came to him complete and sparkling, as his ideas always did. It came and took away his breath, his tiredness, and the pain that the reporter’s pretty blue eyes had engendered. He turned the hot tap off and the cold tap on full, and he danced for a moment in the bracing stream, his body and his mind transformed.

Then he towelled himself vigorously in front of the mirror, enjoying the fluffiness of the towel, the tingling of his skin, and the feeling of being on the brink of a fantastic triumph.

A triumph that might—no, would—change the world!

Jonathon Lord Foundation, New York City

In the head office of the Jonathon Lord Foundation, Peter Stone sat at his huge CEO’s desk overlooking Fifth Avenue and picked up the report in front of him. He knew precisely what would be in it. Declining book sales all over the world. An increase in the number of books returned. A steady reduction in the number of invitations to TV shows, to public talks, and even to radio and newspaper interviews. Because The Crystal Codex had reached Phase Three.

Phase One was when Dr Jonathon Lord was so much in demand that he could ration his exposure, sit tight in New York and make pronouncements from on high, and condescend to appear in person only when and where it suited him. Phase Two was when he toured the major capitals of the world, making himself available only to major media outlets. Phase Three was when Jonathon Lord toured the regional centres, heavily promoted and giving interviews to thirsty, uncritical local media.

Regional centres like Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Baton Rouge definitely meant Phase Three.

But though Pete knew what would be in the report, he read it with due solemnity. Turning over each page as he read it and placing it facedown on his desk. Holding up the graphs as if there was something important in the dipping red lines. He went through the charade because he was a courteous man, and he wanted to be courteous to Gabrielle Salmon. Gabrielle didn’t yet know the cyclical nature of the snake-oil business and had spent days putting the assessment together.

Thank you for all this, he said finally, taking off his glasses and tapping the papers before him. A very fine summary. He paused, trying to think how best to sweeten the dose of reality he was about to administer. "We are nearing the end with The Crystal Codex, Gabrielle. I am afraid it will be history by Christmas. But we can milk it until then. That’s why Jonathon is down South."

I am not sure what you mean, Gabrielle said, leaning forward in her chair earnestly. "The Crystal Codex is still number 4 on the Best Selling list. It should be doing much better than that."

The Best Selling list is all about yesterday, Pete said gently. Sales figures are about today. And the decline in speaking engagements—that talks volumes. If people don’t want to hear Jonathon talk about his crystals, they are hardly going to want to buy a book about them.

Gabrielle still looked unconvinced. Dr Lord’s work is still talked about a very great deal. His crystal theory was a central topic on Discovery Science this very afternoon. There was a vigorous debate, and many people will surely want to see what the debate is all about.

Jonathon was debunked on Discovery Science, Pete said baldly. We knew it was coming, Gabrielle. In fact, Jonathon had been invited to speak himself, to defend his theory. That’s another reason he was down in Louisiana. He shook his head. No, Gabrielle, there will be no increase in book sales from Discovery Science. On the contrary, I suspect we will have a lot of returns. Booksellers can be very sensitive at times like this. They don’t want to be seen holding a debunked book. It puts their customers off. Nobody likes to be seen shopping in a junk store.

Gabrielle still looked unconvinced. She shook her rich, dark hair and opened her mouth to argue, but Pete cut her off with a sharp gesture. He was a courteous man, but he was also a busy man; he had a million-dollar corporation to run. He flung Gabrielle’s paper into his Out tray and pulled another file toward him—the signal that the meeting was over.

Gabrielle rose reluctantly to her feet, a flicker of resentment in her wide-set eyes. She had come to the Jonathon Lord Foundation straight from Harvard, a brand-new doctorate in science in her briefcase and a naive, idealistic view of the world in her heart. Precisely the sort of person, Pete felt, that the foundation needed on their books, which is why he had employed her.

Pete made a quick decision and pushed the new file away from him. It’s the nature of our business, he said confidentially, beckoning her back to the chair. Our products don’t have a long shelf life, I’m afraid, Gabrielle. Scientists—and those who follow science on its journey into the unknown—are fickle creatures. So we have to know when to cut a product loose and move on to the next … project.

The next scam had almost come out of his mouth. But it was still far too early for that level of the truth.

What exactly is our next project? Gabrielle asked.

At that moment, Pete’s telephone jangled softly. Pete looked at the display window on the phone and saw that it was a call from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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Gabrielle carried her armful of books and documents back into her office and bumped the door shut behind her. In the privacy of the room, a small smile touched her lips. Clearly, Peter Stone considered her naive. Well, wasn’t that part of the plan? She wanted to be considered naive; it gave her room to manoeuvre.

She sat at her beautiful glass desk and contemplated the room around her. It seemed grotesquely large to her, but she understood perfectly why: the Jonathon Lord Foundation was a grand gesture, a flourish, aimed at impressing. It was not about function; it was all about form.

Necessary. She said the word aloud to remind herself.

Gabrielle was on a mission, and her current job was merely a step along the way. At its heart, the truth was very, very simple. Gabrielle intended to marry Jonathon Lord, and every action she took—had taken since that extraordinary day when she had fallen in love—was directed toward that end. But not just to have him. She wanted to use him.

The extraordinary day had been a brief six months ago. She had just obtained her doctorate in molecular medicine at Harvard, and she had decided to attend the university’s much-promoted Jonathon Lord debate to laugh at a man she had decided was a fraud. Many of her colleagues—the illuminati of Harvard University—had had the same intention, and they filled the 1,000 seats of the Sanders Theatre in the university’s Memorial Hall. This promised to be an evening of blood sport—a debate between the vacuous poseur Jonathon Lord, then riding high on his bizarre best seller about how God had coded messages to mankind into the atomic structure of crystals (!), and a real scientist, the dour reductionist Professor Edwin Dole. The illuminati had come to gloat.

The evening had not gone as expected. The debate had been won—inconceivably but comprehensively—by Jonathon Lord. Exactly how was to be debated within the ivy-clad walls of Harvard for months to come. Some said that Jonathon Lord had simply been too quick and confident for the sixty-eight-year-old professor. Others said that he had won by sleight of hand, by a conjuring trick using fake figures, specious authorities, and an accomplished salesman’s charm to sell his bogus fare.

The reality, as Gabrielle had quietly decided, was that Jonathon was simply in a different league than Professor Dole. He was far too clever, far too quick, and far too charismatic for the pedantic academic. Dole thought like a computer, but Jonathon’s mind was like quicksilver; he ran rings around his opponent with sudden intuitive leaps, sudden flashes of insight. It was like a contest between a dogged bull and a dancing matador; the bull drove forward furiously, but his very strength was his undoing. Before he could occupy the ground he had won, it had already been turned against him by his opponent.

A little dazed and sleepless in her bed that night, Gabrielle had stared into the darkness around her and sighed. If only Jonathon’s brilliance could be harnessed to something worthwhile!

It was probably at that moment that she fell in love.

Gabrielle had chosen the subject of her doctoral thesis with care. It had involved research into epigenetics, training her in the application of new genomics and bioinformatics approaches, as well as innovative imaging technologies. All with one purpose in mind: to equip her to conquer—or at least to try and conquer—cancer, the scourge of mankind which had killed her identical twin sister just at the time they had both discovered what an exciting adventure life could be.

Why had cancer killed Collette and spared Gabrielle, two beings made by essentially identical DNA? It did not make sense to the suddenly serious young teenager, and at Collette’s funeral, Gabrielle had decided to spend her life finding out why Collette had died, while she had been allowed to live.

Fortunately, her brain was first-class. More than first-class—she was almost a prodigy. She obtained her undergraduate degree in molecular genetics with high honours, and it was taken for granted that she would go on to do a doctorate. Predictions were already being made on how high she would rise in academia. But that was before the Lord/ Dole debate. From that time forward, she had set for herself one goal: to win Jonathon and work beside him fighting real challenges.

Naive? Gabrielle had the honesty to see the irony in the situation, and her lips twisted into a wry, self-deprecating grin. Perhaps Pete Stone was right after all, and she was naive. Just not naive in the way he imagined!

But before she had begun Project Jonathon, Gabrielle had, of course, done her homework. She had researched Jonathon Lord with every bit of the thoroughness and detachment with which had researched her thesis.

Jonathon Lord had not been born with that name. He had been born Jonathon Louis Benjamin de Mandeville, the eldest son of an English peer, the Earl of Dorset. Something had happened between Jonathon and his father when he was fourteen, and he had been sent to Boston to grow up with distant relatives, the Lord family of Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. Whatever had happened to cause the separation between Jonathon and his father must have been serious, because the rift seemed permanent. Jonathon had legally changed his name to Lord when he turned twenty-one, and he had also become an American citizen.

Jonathon’s academic record was wildly inconsistent. He had won a scholarship to Yale but had been expelled for cheating in his first year. He redeemed himself by doing an internship in a well-regarded lab and had then been accepted by the University of Southern California. There he obtained a degree in neuroscience, with early acceptance into the graduate program, but then he was refused his doctorate amid a swirl of accusations and counteraccusations. He had finally achieved his doctorate, but from an offshore medical school in the Caribbean, provoking a further welter of accusations and innuendos, including one often-cited story that he had bought his doctorate for the price of a medical clinic for the poor.

Jonathon had published his first book at the age of twenty-six. In essence, he took Plato’s idea that every worldly object, from a flower to an individual human being, was merely the shadow of a real object that existed on a deeper plane of existence. In Jonathon’s theory, Plato’s real objects existed in the quantum world, and their existence in our imperfect world was Plato’s shadow. The implication was, of course, that on that deeper plane of existence, everything—including individual human consciousness—existed forever, so that when we died in the imperfect temporal world, our real self lived on in a perfect quantum world.

Jonathon’s intuitive leap had been to link Plato’s theory with the work of the respected physicist Dr David Bohm, who had challenged science with a brilliant theory that objects existing in the real world (the explicate order) were derived from templates that existed in the quantum world (the implicate order). The link Jonathon established between his theory and controversial but real science stunned the scientific world (at least for a while), and the book earned Jonathon—and then his foundation when it was established—well over fifty million dollars. Four more books followed, the latest being The Crystal Codex. It had been estimated that Jonathon Lord was now among the top 100 of America’s wealthiest men.

But Gabrielle’s determination to win Jonathon had had nothing to do with the results of her research. She had not fallen in love with Jonathon’s story but with the man himself. He had reminded her of her favorite interpretation of Dr Who, the one by the Scottish actor David Tennant . Jonathon looked like Tennant, and he had Tennant’s bubbling enthusiasm and irrepressible effervescence. His constant movement during the debate with Dole—sometimes running, sometimes almost dancing on the spot—had the same manic quality. The way his voice rose and fell, his sudden pauses, gave Gabrielle goose bumps. Of course, she was fascinated by the scintillating enigma which her research had uncovered, but her real fascination with Jonathon was with the man himself. It was visceral.

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Gabrielle had plotted her way into the Jonathon Lord Foundation with a cunning that had surprised and astounded her. Firstly, she had written an article for the Harvard Crimson supporting Jonathon Lord in his debate against Professor Dole, arguing against the narrow-minded bigots who are too frightened to embrace anything controversial in case it spoiled their chances in the Corridors of Power. Then she had ensured that her article was talked about by goading her colleagues into a heated exchange on the Crimson’s opinion pages. The criticism of her in the Crimson was savage enough to justify seeking support from the Jonathon Lord Foundation. That support had been forthcoming—nothing less than a letter of support signed by Jonathon himself.

A subsequent letter from the foundation politely drawing attention to employment opportunities for academics within the foundation had been appreciated but also completely expected. Four months later, she was officially one of the foundation’s well-paid academic fellows.

Gabrielle began to slip the research papers she had gathered for the conference with Peter Stone back into their folders. She sighed. It had been a long day, and she was human. On top of which—she admitted it to herself—she was disappointed that she had not been able to discuss her first written work as a fellow with Jonathon himself. He had been in stupid, stupid Baton Rouge.

She had absolutely no idea that today was to be the most important day of her life.

Jonathon Lord’s Apartment, Forty-

Fourth Street, New York City

Jonathon Lord leaned back in his armchair and smiled. It’s not going to be a book, he said. This is much too big for a book, Peter. It is something truly fantastic. It is a simple concept, but it will change … everything.

You are being very mysterious, Jonathon. Peter Stone shook his head sadly. However epoch-making the idea may be, if we don’t have a book to sell, how the hell are we going to make any money?

Forget about money. This time, money is only a means to an end. Jonathon smiled suddenly. "But I don’t think there is any risk we will go broke. The prize we seek is so valuable that our quest for it will bring in astounding amounts of money. And I’m not talking about mere millions."

Peter moved restlessly in his chair. He had heard Jonathon exaggerate in the past. It was part and parcel of the man’s makeup. Part of his enthusiasm. Part of his charisma. But tonight, the man was glowing. Peter had never seen him quite so incandescent.

Then you had better tell me exactly what this is all about, he said seriously. Because you are beginning to scare me!

Jonathon sprung from his chair and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the lights of New York City. Immortality, he said. We are going to offer mankind what it has always dreamed of, what it has until now only prescribed for the gods —the capacity to live forever. And not as senile, creeping struldbrugs, but as men and women in the prime of their lives.

Peter laughed. What the hell is a struldbrug?

Jonathon turned and wagged a finger. "You are forgetting your Jonathan Swift, Peter. Struldbrugs were the immortal but incredibly decrepit—and legally dead—citizens of Luggnagg in Gulliver’s Travels. I’m surprised that a man of letters doesn’t remember that!"

Peter Stone also rose from his chair and joined Jonathon at the window. Both men stared out at the panoply of lights. "Now I am scared, Peter said quietly. There has been a lot of work done recently on aging. Way back, I even had some shares in the Geron Corporation, and I enjoyed a minor bubble in the nineties when their research on age reversal looked promising. But it was just a bubble, and of course, it burst. I think it’s pretty much agreed by the best of biotechnologists that while we have some leads, nobody is going to reverse aging. At least, not for centuries."

Jonathon led Peter back to their comfortable leather armchairs. He turned his chair a little more toward Peter’s and settled himself comfortably. "I’m going to tell you a story, Pete. An allegory, I suppose. It began thousands of years ago, when wild men living in the forests discovered by accident that if you boiled bark from a wattle tree and drank the concoction, your headache and your fever would disappear. Shamans used the knowledge for thousands of years, curing pain and reducing fever with wattle leaves and bark stilled in water. They were worshipped as minor gods for their knowledge.

"Much later, it was discovered that it wasn’t the wattle that did the trick. It was one of the constituents of the wattle—salicylic acid. The discoverers were scientists, and they preened themselves for their discovery and sneered at the ignorance of their predecessors, who had only thought they knew how to treat pain and fever.

Nowadays, of course, modern scientists have worked out exactly how salicylic acid works. They pontificate about salicylic acid reducing pain by sticking to the COX-2 enzymes, preventing them from making prostaglandins and thus lowering the volume of the pain signals that travel to your brain—

I think I know where you’re going with this, Peter interrupted. You’re saying that at each level of understanding, we think we know why wattle takes away a headache, but there is always a deeper level of understanding still to be discovered.

"I am saying all that, but I’m also saying something a lot more useful. If cavemen knew that wattle reduced fever and lessened pain, did they need to know anything more? I don’t think they did."

So? Peter prompted. What exactly is your point? If there is a point.

Jonathon leaped to his feet and stood in front of Peter, his face inches away from Peter’s. "Of course, there is a point! Don’t you realize that we already know how to make human cells stay young forever—in fact, become immortal? It will probably take generations to understand why, but do we really need to know why? Why don’t we just do what our ancestors did with their knowledge about wattle and use our knowledge of how to make cells immortal to give humankind immortality right now?"

Peter was shaking his head. Now I really am lost. What do you mean when you say we already know how to make human cells immortal? Since when have we known that?

Jonathon answered immediately. Since 1996. That was the year Dr Jerry Shay and Dr Woodring Wright exposed telomeres to an enzyme called telomerase. They found that it caused the telomeres to stay long, so that when the cell replicated, it replicated as a ‘young’ cell. Cells so treated were in fact immortal.. It’s in the literature, Pete.

Peter struggled not to look surprised. You are serious, of course?

I’m perfectly serious, Peter. Shay and Wright were professors of cell biology and neuroscience at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. They knew precisely the value of their work. That must have caused the ‘bubble’ you talk about. People believed that we were on the brink of human immortality.

There was a long silence, and then Peter suddenly laughed. You might be able to lengthen telomeres in a handful of human cells in a petri dish. These cells are easily accessible, and the altered cells can be selected and isolated away from any unaltered cells. But there is no way you can do this in every one of the trillions of cells that make up the human body!

There is a new tool available to geneticists. It is called CRISPR/Cas9, and it has given us the ability to edit DNA sequences with unbelievable precision. If we can change DNA so that each of our cells replicates with a long telomere, we can achieve human immortality!

That’s a mighty big ‘if,’ Jonathon. How exactly do we ‘change the DNA’ so that each cell replicates with a long telomere?

That is where the huge amount of money I was talking about comes in. Bringing it in will be your job. I reckon that once it is known what we intend to do, the whole world will be clamouring to come aboard. With billions of dollars at our disposal, we could recruit the very best scientists available, set up a lab with everything they could possibly need, and watch them change the world!

Peter had been listening intently. Now he sat up straighter in his chair. Oh, if this project goes ahead, it will make the Manhattan Project look like a game of tiddlywinks. The Manhattan Project showed us how we could kill millions of people in an afternoon. Your project will show us how we, the human race, can live forever.

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Later that night, the two men sat on either side of Jonathon’s vast walnut desk, papers strewn across its surface. I take it that you will lead the project, and I will run your secretariat, look after the nuts and bolts, and count the dollars and cents, Peter stated. Thus it had always been. But Jonathon hesitated.

Of course, you run the business side. Jonathon searched for the right words. But I don’t want to be the only front man on this one, Pete. I want Gabrielle Salmon to run the project with me. I’ve been reading her file, and I think she has exactly the right qualifications. I also think she’s made of the right stuff. Some of the media—and a few scientists—are starting to look at me a bit askance. It’s the price of being a visionary and a pioneer. Having Gabrielle involved will give us a clean start. So we’ll put this out in a joint paper, and then the foundation will come out and back the project.

Peter looked at Jonathon closely. You know Gabrielle is a bit sweet on you, don’t you?

Jonathon looked uncomfortable. This is not a soap opera, Pete. So please, old friend, don’t talk such tommyrot.

Toward midnight, they had a rough schedule mapped out. Jonathon had already drafted a scientific paper, Toward Immortality? The Proposed Use of a Recombinant Retrovirus as a Vector in Lengthening Telomeres in Human Cells by Drs G. Salmon and J. Lord, which would be published as an e-paper in the Jonathon Lord Foundation’s Alternative Science Journal, hopefully by the end of the week. A sensational summary of the paper by another of the foundation’s fellows would be submitted to the New York Times the same day. Follow-up stories with eye-catching titles would be churned out and strategically placed in the . The foundation’s well-oiled PR team would make sure that the catchy story Immortality is here now! would be worldwide within days, if not hours.

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It was very late when Peter asked a question that had been bothering him for most of the evening. You do seem very driven on this project, Jonathon. What exactly is driving you? The two men were sitting comfortably in their armchairs, tiny glasses of Benedictine Dom in their hands.

I had an epiphany, Peter, Jonathon said quietly. For half a second, I saw humanity through the eyes of a god. I was able to see the joke. We humans have virtually all the attributes of gods. We know the past. We can imagine the future and plan for it. The universe around us is as familiar as our own backyards. We are coming close to understanding the meaning of reality. But we still live with fear and the certain knowledge that, like the most primitive of God’s creatures, we will all one day blink out of existence. Death is an absurdity, Peter!

The White House, Washington, DC

The president of the United States opened an eye and promptly shut it. His four-year-old son, Louis, was creeping up on him with mischief in his vivid-blue eyes.

Gotcha, Dad! Louis whooped as he sprung onto the bed and buried his plastic pistol in the president’s neck. "Agent Ambrose can’t help you now! I’m going to blow your head off in ten seconds unless you let me come with you to your office today!"

The First Lady groaned. Louis, Louis! Please, baby, put that gun away and remember what we talked about yesterday. We can’t settle anything with violence, which is why you promised never to play with your gun again.

"It’s not a gun, Mummy! It’s a toy gun! It’s not even a toy gun, it’s a toy pistol! And it will settle something, because Daddy will have to take me to his office today, or he’ll have no head!"

Jenny Devereaux raised her tousled blond head above the covers and stared at her son. You are being a very cheeky and disrespectful little boy, Louis. I don’t want to have to get up and spank you.

Louis thought this over. You just said that you can’t settle anything with violence. So you can’t stop me being cheeky by spanking me, can you?

Jenny groaned and pulled the pillows over her head. I just can’t cope this early in the morning, Jack. Please help me make our son understand.

Jack Devereaux erupted suddenly from the bed, a startled Louis in his arms, and headed for the doorway. If reasoned debate doesn’t work, you do sometimes have to resort to direct action! So I’m just going to have to put this wriggling bundle of naughtiness down the garbage chute.

Please, Daddy! Take me to your office with you! I promise I won’t hide behind the curtain again. I just love playing snowmobiles on the soft Chinese carpet! And Miss Amelia gives me toffee …

Louis, I’ll do a deal with you. I have to see people all morning, but after lunch, I’ll come up and get you, and you can play on that lovely pink carpet all you like until teatime. But we’ll have to see about the toffee. You don’t want your teeth all rotten before you’re five, do you?

Jenny extracted her head from the mound of pillows. That’s my husband! The dealmaker.

The dealmaker . Shaving in his crisp black-and-white bathroom, Jack pondered the expression. All in all, it was probably an apt description. He was currently negotiating with the Republican leader in the Senate, and the New York Times was lauding his ability to squeeze concessions from a recalcitrant Senate even though the polls were currently against him. He splashed hot water over his face and stared at himself in the mirror. The man who had been elected for his promise never to compromise (Never again will we let exigency rule this nation of ours!) could now be accurately described as a dealmaker!

A sign of weakness? Or a sign of growing maturity?

Jonathon Lord Foundation, New York City

Gabrielle Salmon looked up at Jonathon and frowned. You have given me barely a morning to look at this. If I’m going to be of any real help, I’d prefer a few days. Is there any need for such haste?

The two of them were sitting in Gabrielle’s office. It was just after twelve, and Gabrielle had been given the draft of the joint article to read and approve barely three hours before.

"I am hoping to publish the paper on Friday in the electronic version of our Alternative Science Journal, Jonathon said. All I’m asking you to do is agree to have your name attached as a co-author. He smiled disarmingly. I can assure you that being a co-author with me won’t make a fool of you. I know the paper advances a pretty revolutionary hypothesis, but the background science is pretty straightforward. And if there is going to be any backlash on the hypothesis, it’s going to be me that they will attack!"

Gabrielle gave an exasperated sigh. Really, Jonathon! The background science is not straightforward! She paused, gathering her thoughts. Even the most objective microbiologist reading the paper will get the shivers—and in a bad way—if we put the idea forward so baldly. They will have been programmed by their experience to immediately think ‘Cancer!’ A cell suddenly given immortality is a pretty good description of a cancer cell! In fact, that was my own first reaction. So we need to introduce the concept cautiously if we’re going to get scientists to treat the idea at all seriously.

Jonathon frowned. He was not used to foundation fellows hesitating to be named as co-authors of his papers. But then his features softened. He had told Peter Stone the previous night that Gabrielle had the right stuff, and here she was, demonstrating the quality.

You say we should introduce the concept cautiously, he said. Have you any ideas how we might do that?

Gabrielle was thoughtful for a moment, then gave an irritated shrug. I suppose my real objection is much more fundamental. Why are we doing this research at all? There are so many more important issues we could be addressing, like trying to understand what cancer is all about. I think that if you really wanted to make a difference in the world, you’d want to research something real, something achievable. Charlatans have been looking for the Fountain of Youth since the time of Ponce de Leon. The whole idea of searching for a cure to old age is just a pipe dream. It’s even worse than that—it’s a confidence trick. Suddenly, she was frightened that she had gone too far, and she looked at Jonathon with searching eyes.

At first, he was angry. His eyes narrowed, and his lips tightened into a flat, straight line. But then she saw him consciously try to relax. He pushed his chair back from her desk.

I can understand your reaction, he said. I do have something of a track record for pushing vacuous causes. But this is different.

It was suddenly important for Jonathon that this girl should understand exactly the nature of their quest. He marshalled his thoughts, then raised his hands almost in supplication. I had the thought that we might go on this quest only the other day, when I was down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But I have been living with the thought for nearly a year. I had what might be described as an epiphany. Can I tell you the story?

Of course.

It was at Brickell Key, an artificial island off Miami in Florida. I have a condo there. I’d flown down to attend a Gordon Research Conference on the topic of aging. It was a good conference. I didn’t contribute much, but I listened well and was impressed by the science that has been developing concerning what we call aging. Aging is a disease, as you know. Every cell in your body could theoretically live forever. Germ cells already do. And however old you are, when your cells replicate, they have the capacity to rejuvenate, to become exactly the same as they were when you were a baby, if need be. Dolly the cloned sheep proved that.

Gabrielle nodded unsympathetically. I know the theory, Jonathon. But there is a huge leap from understanding how we age to actually doing something to reverse it.

Jonathon ignored the comment. When I flew into Miami for the conference, I had seen puffy pink clouds forming because of the humidity. The night after the conference, I was standing in my condo, and I saw them again, this time painted vermilion by the setting sun. I dreamed about those confounded clouds! In my dream, I was a god, living within their filmy realm and looking down at humanity. Poor humanity, ordained by nature to live its puny threescore years and ten. I felt sorry for them. The rich, who wallow in their wealth only to see it slip away from enfeebled fingertips. The poor, who fight tirelessly just to exist, and then end up in a pauper’s grave. Particularly for those poor souls who should succeed, but for whom fate has decreed will take one false path, fail one small test, and never find redemption, because life is far too short for second chances.

Gabrielle was now listening. This was the Jonathon she wanted him to be. A man of compassion. A man who thought about—and cared for—others.

"The next morning, I was standing in my condo. It was dawn. My bedroom had floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and I was looking out over Biscayne Bay. I felt I was the god I had been in my dream, and I decided that I could do something for humanity."

You said that was a year ago, Gabrielle said. Yet you only started this project a few days ago. Why the delay?

Jonathon shrugged. "Real life got in the way. The science is hard, immensely hard. I’m not a molecular biologist. Anyway, I was about to launch The Crystal Codex. Time passed."

Then what happened in Baton Rouge? she persisted.

I became sick of being who I am, Jonathon almost snarled. He banged his fist down softly on Gabrielle’s desk. I’d been interviewed by a reporter who saw straight through me.

He smiled suddenly, disarmingly. I wanted redemption for myself, Gabrielle.

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There was silence in the room. Gabrielle was moved, but she refused to let her feelings show. If anything, it was now even more important that she hid her feelings for this man. She looked at her watch to suggest that this was all very well but that she had work to do.

You asked me earlier what we might do to disarm the molecular biologists who would read the paper and immediately think about us turning healthy aging cells into cancer cells. Why don’t we use a few well-chosen phrases that suggest we are well aware of the traps? Perhaps something about using libraries of tailored self-replicating retroviruses to deliver suites of self-correcting and evolved CRISPR genome-editing tools to manipulate telomeres in their expression of changes to the senescent program? Self-evolving ‘smart’ CRISPRs may well be capable of damping down senescence every time it activates, and so enable a stable form of cellular immortality that doesn’t lead to cancer.

CRISPRs—clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. CRISPRs were the latest tool in gene editing technology. What Gabrielle had just suggested was more than a few well-chosen phrases. In fact, it opened up a rather attractive alternative—or perhaps complementary—way forward. Jonathon’s mind began to play with the idea, and it was with difficulty that he brought his attention back to the present.

If you really think that a few more days would give you a chance to improve the article, I think you should have them, he said.

I do think that, Gabrielle said simply. Isn’t that the benefit of e-publication? That you are not driven by deadlines? Can we aim to publish over next weekend?

Let’s make it next Monday, Jonathon decided. He got up from his chair, but he paused. I take it that you don’t think too much of my idea that telomeres are not junk DNA but are in fact key regulators of gene expression programs that code for senescence?

Gabrielle shook her head decisively. "The truth is that nobody knows what triggers the senescence process. But most scientists in the field concede that there is a connection between telomeres and the aging process.

She escorted Jonathon to her door and returned his dazzling farewell smile with a cool nod. Then she carefully shut the door and lifted her fists in a silent version of a boxer’s salute.

Dr Who had just invited her into his TARDIS !

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There was one more matter that had to be settled before D-Day, the day of the launch of the Immortality Project, which is what the project had been named. This was the little issue of how exactly the foundation was to profit from the idea if it didn’t have a book to sell. It was an issue which, strangely, did not seem to concern Jonathon in the slightest. Whenever Peter raised the matter, even in a casual way when the two men met in passing, Jonathon would shrug his shoulders and change the subject. But it was a matter that certainly weighed on Peter’s mind. He was, after all, the man responsible for the profitability of the foundation, and he took this particular responsibility very seriously indeed.

Finally, in the afternoon before the launch, Peter confronted Jonathon, and the matter was listed for discussion and decision at a