The Immortal Harvest (21 page)

After the death of the last remaining alien, and even as a young child, Michael became the Scientists primary font of knowledge.

The powerful provided the resources necessary for research, and were particularly interested in genetic research.

After several years, and with Michaels help, the Scientists had successfully cracked the complete code for human DNA.

This opened the floodgates for the eradication of a multitude of diseases and genetic abnormalities. The most critical discovery however, was the identification of the particular genes that controlled longevity and hence immortality.

Michael voiced concerns about the consequences of gene alteration purely to extend human life spans. Unfortunately he was ignored by geneticists who went forward and developed the JPDL vaccine.

Deemed the miracle vaccine, it was named after the mythical Fountain of Youth reportedly discovered by the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce De Leon in the early sixteenth century.

The vaccine contained a genetically modified virus that was supposed to continually replenish the length of the telomeres, which is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromosome.

As human telomeres shorten, eventually cells reach their replication limit and progress into senescence or old age.

The miracle vaccine was theoretically supposed to give everyone immortality and was rushed through with insufficient human testing.

However, the United Government only provided enough resources to produce sufficient vaccine to immunise those that they considered important enough. This caused a global uproar and triggered the Great War.

However, just as the legendary Fountain of Youth was cursed, so too was the vaccine, as the geneticists soon discovered that they had made a fatal error in developing the vaccine. Michael had been proven correct. Luckily for Michael, he had refused the vaccine.

Within ten years, thousands of people who had received the JPDL vaccine began to die excruciating deaths. Their entire genetic structure had been affected by a deadly mutation that caused sterility and total organ failure.

The only way to stave off death was to totally replace the every major organ; heart, liver, lungs, pancreas and kidneys with new ones. Luckily, due to the brain’s special protective properties it was unaffected.

The vaccine recipients had to undergo a major organ rejuvenation process approximately every ten years if they were to continue to live a healthy life. Within weeks the main organ repository was depleted.

During a United Government summit, it was decided that to save those remaining affected, a committee would be formed with the sole purpose of setting up an organisation to harvest the organs from those who had not been immunized.

The United Government tasked Mundus Nova with carrying out the gruesome task of saving the privileged from extinction.

Code named,
Operation Immortal Harvest
, and under the anonymity of the Great War, the organisation was able to harvest the major organs of millions of victims. However, within twenty years, the surviving population had diminished by ninety percent.

With no more unvaccinated victims, it was soon determined that the supply of new organs had run out.

To compound the problem, they had also irreversibly polluted their gene pool; they could not grow new organs and the ones that were transplanted were instantly tainted in the process.

Terrified that the entire population of the planet would be eliminated within another decade, Mundus Nova poured everything into finding a solution.

They had to find an alternate source of unpolluted human organs. To their knowledge, there were no other humans within their Universe.

The Scientists realised that the aliens had possessed the knowledge to travel to alternate Universes.

Surely there would be another Earth with other humans
.

They had to further develop the research into Inter–Universal or Trans-Dimensional travel.

Lorentzian traversable wormholes would allow travel in both directions from one part of the Universe to another part of that same Universe very quickly or would allow travel from one Universe to another.

Once again, Michael Jacobs was to be their saviour.

He alone possessed the knowledge to create a Lorentzian wormhole. Initially, completely unaware of the purpose of the wormhole, Michael agreed to help.

He was however, quick to inform the Scientists, that massive quantities of energy would be required to open a stable wormhole to another dimension large enough to allow a person to travel through.

Using the Large Tachyon Collider or LTC, the Scientists raced against time to produce enough quantities of exotic matter to enable an Inter-Universal Traverser to be powered.

When sufficient quantities were obtained, the Traverser was constructed. It was then that Michael realised the magnitude of the curse that he had unleashed upon an unsuspecting alternate Universe.

When he discovered the true purpose of the device he created, he was so distraught that he actually considered killing himself. But then he met the man who had changed his life. He was the founding member of the Right-To-Die movement – Doctor Tod Becker.

Dr Becker was tall thin man with a dark complexion and grey wispy hair. His face was gentle, his eyes had a sparkle whenever he smiled and his skin had small blemishes like freckles. Michael could tell that the Doctor had never subjected himself to rejuvenation and he admired him for that.

As the Doctor’s organisation’s name suggested, they were totally against Mundus Nova and the Immortal Harvest.

They had unsuccessfully appealed to the United Government to explore other options. They had been dismissed and called traitors to humankind. They were earmarked for elimination and the entire movement was driven underground.

Michael recalled the fateful day when he met Doctor Becker and was asked to help them in their fight against Mundus Nova. They had to be stopped to bring an end to the senseless waste of human lives caused by their mandate to ‘carry out the Immortal Harvest at all cost’.

It was explained to him that the small group of renegades lead by Doctor Becker had exhausted their avenues for attempting to subvert the Mundus Nova cause and so decided that their only hope would be to create their own Traverser and take the fight to the alternate Universe.

He agreed to help them so that they could travel to the other Universe and infiltrate the Mundus Nova operation.

Of course for Michael, it was a way that he could see Sylvan and his son again.

After several months, with the help of the Doctor, they had built their own LTC and had managed to gather enough exotic matter to create a small worm hole that could be used to provide glimpses of the other world.

He needed a much larger quantity of the exotic matter to create a worm hole of sufficient size to allow a person to travel through.

He was so close
.

Michael rolled onto his side and watched his external monitor displaying what was happening top side.

He watched as a Zero Gravity Auto Vehicle glided by on its way to join the masses as the operators of the vehicles all rushed to their places of employment.

Of course the Z-GAV was just another of the technological advances made possible by the alien technology.

The burning of fossil fuels had been made redundant several decades ago when the Zero Point Energy storage device had been created to provide an endless supply of power. Such a pure power source, made such things as anti gravity, commonplace.

Michael had long since solved most of the Universes mysteries.

He had identified Gluon pairs as being responsible for gravity. He also explained to the Scientists and Physicists, how an abundance of uncoupled anti matter particles made up the so called dark matter, which was responsible for the separation of galaxies throughout the Universe.

As a consequence of this revelation, he had helped the Physicists identify the appropriate anti gravity particles, in other words, the ‘anti Gluon pairs’.

Unfortunately, by helping the scientists discover and produce anti matter, he had unwittingly helped them to develop devastating weapons.

What have I done?
, he thought as he closed his eyes and thought of more pleasant things, like his time on the other world with Sylvan.

He had been intrigued by the differences in the Universes. Her Universe appeared to be ruled by irrational fears, greed and superstitions.

The majority of the population deferred every aspect of their life to an unseen higher authority that had several different names of the one name, ‘God’. This unseen singular authority was an intrinsic part of nearly every culture.

This was a strange concept for Michael.

In his Universe, everyone was responsible for their own life. The population of his world did not waste time talking to an invisible entity and they certainly did not give up all personal accountability simply because it was the will of a non-existent entity.

He often wondered how an entire civilisation could believe that the concepts of good and evil should be interpreted from books written by anonymous men thousands of years ago.

Isn’t good and evil in everyone and it is up to each person to decide who they want to be?

Besides
, he thought,
if a singular ‘God’ had supposedly created humans in his/her image, who had created the aliens and therefore, his own existence?

Michael often pondered this strange philosophy and wondered whether this unseen God person was also an alien species that, over a vast time period, had somehow imprinted itself on that world’s collective conscience.

He also considered that maybe this organised religion was yet another way for those in power to keep the lesser minions under control.

It had certainly slowed down the world’s technological and scientific progress. Their world was primitive compared to his.

Michael also had a hard time understanding the almost fanatical preoccupation with pieces of coloured paper called
money
.

It seemed to him that this was also a way of controlling the masses, as only a small percentage of powerful people possessed most of this money, which seemed to equate to power. He was not used to this concept called ‘greed’.

Another obvious way that the Governments of Sylvan’s world were controlling the masses was by the use of televised sport, another type of religion where fanatics were so caught up in worshipping over-paid athletes that they were ignorant of the corrupt acts of Governments, Corporations and the environmental destruction of their own planet.

Of course he was cognizant of the fact that his world was far from perfect. He was also very aware, that there was always one universal constant; the almost unlimited potential for humanity to bring about their own destruction.

He doubted that in any Universe, mankind would need assistance in bringing evil and destruction upon itself.

Such was the nature of humanity.

He yawned, stretched and then sighed deeply as he realised yet another sleepless night had gone by.

How many nights had it been since he had been able to sleep?

The answer eluded him, as he sat up and prepared to dress and face the day.

The modular accommodation he inhabited was sparse but practical. It was essentially just one room; however, it was designed to serve its purpose.

Having to remain under the Mundus Nova and The United Government’s radar meant that his module was hidden.

The Doctor had managed to procure several derelict buildings, under which he had created living quarters which were protected from scrutiny by an elaborate array of frequency jammers.

The fact that they were so deep underground rendered The United Government satellite surveillance systems useless.

As it turned out, the location of the building which contained his module in his world was very close to where he first met Sylvan in her world.

As he stood, the large round bed which he had just been lying on sensed that there was no weight on it, so it sank and was promptly covered by the semi organic floor.

The floor was quite a technological marvel. It was covered in an array of sensors that detected everything. It controlled the climate within the module. It also monitored Michael’s vital statistics and was programmed to notify emergency response teams if required. The wall and floors of the module were programmed with an artificial intelligence that responded to Michael’s voice.

“Lights please,” Michael said as he tip toed across the room to the kitchen and proceeded to open the cold food storage container or FSC.

He pulled out a carton of fresh orange juice and gulped the contents, enjoying the sweet cool sensation as it flowed down his throat.

He finished the juice and tossed the carton into the garbage receptacle.

He wiped his mouth as he bent down to take a good look at the contents of the FSC as he decided what he was going to eat for breakfast. The sensuous voice of the module spoke as if it had sensed his hesitancy.

“Would you like an omelette or perhaps eggs Benedict for breakfast Michael?”

“Mmm I think I might like to have fresh fruit today thanks,” he said as he waited beside the food dispenser.

He placed his hand in the dispenser and waited for the gluten pellets, which were four pea sized pellets of differing colours. They promptly landed in the palm of his hand.

“Michael, as you requested, and as per your personal preferences, I have produced banana, apple, orange and watermelon. I have also infused the bioflavonoid pellets with your recommended daily allowance of vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants.

After you consume your pellets I will analyse your organic waste products and provide you with your daily health report.”

Michael placed the first pellet on his tongue and let it dissolve. The effect was instant. His taste buds detected the definite citrus tang as the orange pellet released its flavour causing him to salivate.

He swallowed and felt the dissolved pellet tingle as it proceeded down his throat. The sensation was pleasant.