The Immortal Harvest

by L. J. Wallace

  She felt crestfallen; she knew that she did not have the right answer and that her life was now over.

  She prepared herself for the inevitable pain of the blade slicing open her throat. She thought of her Mother and a feeling of calm descended over her as she realised that she would soon be seeing her. She closed her eyes and held her breath.

  The extreme violence of the blow to the back of her head was unexpected. The inevitable descent into blackness was also unexpected.

  * * *

  Stringer sat back down on the stained sheets of the bed that he had hidden in when the crack whore had shown up.

  He was disappointed. He was hoping that either the kid or the girl Sylvan would have shown up.

  He sat quietly as he stared at the glint of light that played along the blade of his knife and stared at the slumped form of the pathetic creature on the floor.

  He pondered about her responses. She had unwittingly uncovered an unexpected scenario.

  Stringer did not expect that the two separate aspects of Mundus Nova would suddenly overlap.

  If the kid and his Mother had been taken by one of the Immortal Harvesters, then his hunt was over.

  He could be assured that the operatives at the organ harvest would take care of silencing anyone who entered that facility.

  His mind went over his journey from the girl’s parent’s house. He accessed his neural net and replayed the journey. He froze the replay when he noticed in his extreme periphery the image of the black van.

  He zoomed in on the number plate of the van. He instantly recognised it as the Mundus Nova retrieval van.

  He focussed on the image of the unconscious body at the bus shelter. He had a partial of the face and quickly ran a face recognition scan. The scan revealed a seventy five percent match. Not good enough. He needed certainty.

  He also realised of course, that he still needed to find the boy. He wondered whether the kid may have also been taken by the harvesters.

  He decided that the only way to know for sure would be to go the facility and check it out.

  He could get lucky and find both of them.

  Unfortunately he was forbidden to contact the Harvesters in case he was captured and questioned.

  He was reluctant to contact the Boss, he didn’t need the aggravation. He knew however, that eventually he would have to if he was going to find the new location of the Traverser and have his freqlock reversed. But that could only occur after he had finished tying up all of the loose ends.

  This of course would include removing any traces of his existence here in this world.

  He had to ensure that there was nothing to link his actions to those of Mundus Nova.

  He would either have to eliminate the nosy Feds or get inside the FBI.

  He smiled at that idea. He loved a challenge.

  He rose from the bed and surveyed the room.

  He took a quick look at the contents of the hooker’s handbag. He saw the drug paraphernalia and chuckled at the primitive methods that the drug users of this world were forced to use to get a fix. He cringed at the thought of having to puncture his body with those crude delivery methods.

  They did not have the luxury of direct neural stimulation.

  All of the high without damaging the body, he thought as he threw the handbag onto the couch.

  He decided against rummaging through drawers and cupboards. There was nothing more of use here.

  He looked at the hooker’s body again. He wondered why he had only knocked her out. A swift slash would have silenced her forever.

  He was however, cognizant of the fact, that there were rampant bodily fluid-borne diseases on this world and he knew that this hooker would definitely be a candidate for something really nasty. He did not want to risk an infection.

  He tossed around the idea of letting her live. He doubted that she would present any danger and besides, he thought, her miserable existence was punishment enough.

  However, he decided that he would keep with his credo of ‘no loose ends’.

  She served no further purpose.

  He retrieved the handbag and pulled out four hypodermics and plunged them one after another into the hooker’s neck.

  He watched as the deadly overdose took effect and the hooker’s body convulsed violently, spittle and foam seeped from between her nicotine stained teeth.

  After the convulsions subsided, he checked her carotid pulse and smiled.

  Thanks for the info bitch – sleep tight.

  He pulled a small metallic object from his pocket, flipped off the lid and then dropped it on the dead hooker’s body. He then quickly made his way out of the apartment.

  As he strode through the darkened corridor he accessed his neural net and scanned for the address of the organ harvesting facility. Once it had been downloaded, he exited the building and jumped into the Camaro.

  Wisps of blue smoke streamed from the car’s tyres as he sped off towards his target as yet another building vanished in an instant.

  Twenty Three

  Every night Michael Jacobs tossed and turned in his bed as a blizzard of thoughts raced unrelentingly through his mind.

  He would lie awake for hours as he processed every waking moment of his day, his week and even processed thoughts that he had had when he was a child.

  His life was a perpetual torment.

  Of course for the most part, the reason for his torment was that he was consumed with guilt and the knowledge that he had unleashed a terrible curse on mankind.

  For most of his life, Michael Jacobs was considered to be a freak of nature. He possessed an IQ so far beyond the normal, that for the first twenty years of his life he had been a “guest” of the United Government.

  He had been earmarked as a gifted child from the age of two, having developed rudimentary telekinetic ability and displayed an advanced knowledge of physics.

  Of course it helped that he was created by the most powerful scientific minds using both human and alien DNA only to be kept locked in a Laboratory like some intelligent rat in a cage.

  It took fifteen years of pushing and prodding before Michael finally snapped.

  The secure laboratory run by Mundus Nova which contained his bedroom, his world, was totally destroyed in the carnage that he created to hide his spectacular escape.

  All he wanted to do was to live a normal life.

  He had given them what they wanted. He had provided them with the blueprints to a device that was capable of spanning the gap between alternate Universes. He had even volunteered to be the first to test the device.

  To everyone’s utter amazement the device worked.

  The astounding thing about Michael’s amazing device was the fact that he intuitively knew that without a stabiliser, organic matter could not withstand the forces within the Laurentian wormhole that the device created.

  He helped the Scientists of Mundus Nova create the Trans-dimensional Interface device that provided the molecular cohesion for organic matter to travel through the wormhole. He was also the first to volunteer to be implanted with the prototype TDI.

  However, he soon realised that the TDI was not necessary for him. He could use his mind to control his own molecular cohesion.

  He kept this ability to himself and suppressed it so that the TDI could be properly tested and then used by other ordinary humans.

  The Scientists were astounded that anyone would volunteer to test such a device. They would have to be either incredibly brave or incredibly foolish.

  To Michael it was neither, he just wanted to get the hell out of there. At least if he travelled through the worm hole he would have a normal life – at least for a brief period.

  His journey to the other Universe had changed his life. It was in the other Universe, on the other Earth where he had found the love of his life, Sylvan Peters.

  His mind retraced every moment that he had spent with Sylvan. He could still smell her fragrance; he could still feel her soft lips as she kissed him. H
e could still recall her radiance.

  He squeezed his eyes closed and felt the heartache of loss.

  After he had betrayed Mundus Nova, he had lost the access to the Traverser so that he could no longer go back and see her, to touch her, to make love to her.

  Only the thought that Sylvan had fallen pregnant kept pushing him on.

  Sylvan and their son Justen were the driving force behind his desire to help the ‘Right-to-Die’ movement.

  As he sat up and turned his pillow over for the fourth time he started to relive the events which that led up to the development of wormhole technology and the supposed humanitarian imperative that justified its use.

  The Great War had been the result of a huge disparity in the sharing of knowledge and technological advancements between those who possessed power and those who did not.

  Those who possessed power were able to reap the rewards of technological breakthroughs.

  They could live longer, healthier lives than those who could not take advantage of the technology, a technology that had been stolen.

  Assisted by two alien beings that had crashed their spaceship in a place called Roseville New Texas in the early part of the Twentieth century, some of the humans of his Earth took a leap forward in evolution.

  Using their minds, the aliens were able to communicate at length with the Scientists.

  It was determined that the aliens were Scientists themselves and had come to grief when testing their theories on the existence of the Multi-verse.

  They had created a stable wormhole and travelled through it in an attempt to discover other intelligent life in other Universes.

  Purely by chance, the aliens had found themselves in an alternate solar system, within an alternate galaxy, of which was part of an alternate Universe.

  Even more miraculous, was the chance discovery by the aliens, of a probe that had been launched from the Earth decades ago. The probe contained a gold plated disc that was embedded with vast quantities of data about humankind.

  One particular part of data actually provided the galactic co-ordinates of Earth.

  After decoding this information the aliens found Earth, but unfortunately lost control of their spaceship upon entering The Earth’s oxygen rich atmosphere.

  The aliens were very close to death when they were found within the wreckage. They were taken immediately to a secure location for study.

  From the onset, it was apparent that the aliens could not tolerate the high level of atmospheric oxygen and hence were kept within a special enclosure.

  Fortunately, the badly injured aliens were saved from being subjected to experimentation and dissection by a last minute reprieve from the President of the United Government.

  He convinced the Scientists that the aliens would be more valuable if they were cared for and kept alive. As a gesture of gratitude for their care, the aliens passed on vast quantities of information.

  They provided information on everything from the mundane, such as micro electronics, to the exotic such as space travel, inter-universal travel and genetic manipulation.

  It was long suspected however that the aliens held back a lot of information which was the main reason that Michael was created.

  With DNA extracted from the aliens, the Scientists created Michael and therefore could access all the information they needed without the necessity of working with the aliens.

  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 en
ough 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.