Victoria and Elizabeth woke up in a gleaming white room, each on a soft bed with a white pillow and a white duvet.
“Where are we?” Elizabeth said.
Ferrol had been watching from his office on closed-circuit cameras.
“Celeste,” he said through an intercom. “Suit up. They’re awake.”
They had drilled for this moment, but now they were faced with last-minute linguistic changes. They had planned on Italian-speaking kids and Celeste had spent a year learning Italian to the point where she was semi-fluent. Gressani, of course, would have had no issues. With two so-called American kids with an Italian mother, they didn’t know what language or languages they spoke and Gressani’s English was basic, at best.
While Celeste got prepared, Ferrol thought back to the day he introduced her and Gressani to this small part of his larger plan.
*
He opened the box and said to them, “When you work with the children, this is what you’ll wear.”
They took it as a joke, something to lighten the mood, but he was serious. The full-head latex masks were in the plastic bags of a high-end Hollywood prosthetics company. The labels described them as: Alien Latex Mask, UFO, Extra-Terrestrial, Grays. They were gray, hairless, and skeletal, with huge black eyes, small black mouths and tiny black nostrils. There were matching latex gloves in another bag.
“Try them on,” Ferrol said. “You remember when I took measurements of your heads? Now you know why.”
“Is this a prank on us, Dr. G?” Gressani said.
“It’s not a prank.”
Celeste pinned her hair into a bun and stretched the mask over her head.
“Voila,” she said, her voice muffled. “Would you like me to wear this in bed tonight?”
Gressani cracked up, but he stopped at Ferrol’s dirty look.
“You’ll be wearing disposable white jumpsuits over your clothes and white shoe covers, so all they’ll see is your heads and hands.
Celeste peeled her mask off and told him it was hot inside.
“You’ll get used to it,” Ferrol said.
“Tell me why we’re doing this?” she asked. “I understand the need to protect ourselves from identification, but there are more comfortable ways to shield our faces.”
“You know how careful I am. I’ve thought through all of this,” Ferrol said. “We can’t predict everything. Chaos theory tells us that the unexpected can and will happen. In the event that we decide the children must be released, there can’t be any way for the police to make a connection to people or places. These will be young, impressionable children. They will be asleep when they are taken. They will be drugged in transit. They will awaken in a windowless, white room. They will be greeted and subsequently cared for by the two of you who will appear as alien beings. They will be told they have been taken to a spaceship for study. If and when they are released, they will tell the police what they experienced. From what I’ve read about alien abductions, a great many people will believe them. It’s incredible how gullible people are. Forty percent of people believe in aliens. Twenty percent say they’ve seen a UFO. People who claim they’ve been abducted become celebrities. What the children describe will confound any investigations.”
He leaned back in his reclining desk chair with a look of self-satisfaction.
“Isn’t there a problem with your plan, Dr. G?” Gressani said. “I’m going to sound like an ordinary Italian boy and Celeste with her French-Italian accent—well, you know how she sounds. Even children will recognize our voices as coming from regular people.”
Ferrol’s answer came in the form of a bag he retrieved from a desk drawer. He opened it and gave each of his compatriots a small black box and a headset.
“Electronic voice changers,” he said. “You’ll clip the boxes inside your white suits and wear the headsets under the masks. I’ve adjusted the faders to give a distortion level that I would describe as a huskier version of the creature in E.T.”
Gressani wanted to try his out, but Celeste appeared distracted.
“I’m troubled by something you said.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
She unpinned her bun, let her red hair fall down her back, and said, “You said, if and when they are released. This shocks me. We can’t hold them forever. They’ll need to be returned to their families. I know that kidnapping innocent children is quite barbaric. All of us accept it’s the only way to advance something that will benefit mankind, but these aren’t laboratory animals to be sacrificed at the end of an experiment. They are children.”
While she spoke, Ferrol nodded professorially and replied, “I couldn’t agree with you more. I misspoke. When they’re released, I meant to say. I don’t know how long the work will last, but when we’ve reached a clear, definable endpoint, we will return them to Italy. Understood?”
She was about to say something when Gressani began jabbering in a distorted, robotic voice.
*
Celeste was ready.
It took a loose, shapeless suit to obscure her curves and a rubber creature mask to hide her beauty.
“You look perfect,” Ferrol said. “I know you’re nervous. We’re all nervous, but we’ve rehearsed this countless times. We’re ready. Be a good nurse. Make them comfortable. Do what you do.”
She started to talk, but she had already activated her voice distortion. Annoyed, she reached through her suit for the off button.
“What should I say about their parents? Were the parents asleep when they were taken?”
Ferrol remained impassive. He knew Celeste would discover the lie soon enough—he had already seen early news reports from Italy about an entire family who had gone missing. Later, when she and Gressani saw the news themselves, he would blame the kidnappers for lying to him and express great remorse for their terrible and brutal actions. He would tell them he made sure that Gunar made the thugs pay. For now, he needed her to be reassuring and reduce the girls’ stress as much as possible.
He said, “I was told their mother and father are fine. Make sure you tell them that. The men who took the girls from their beds were very quiet. They told me the parents didn’t wake up.”
She nodded her gray, alien head, and activated her voice changer.
Ferrol watched through his monitor and only when he began gasping for air, did he realize he’d been holding his breath.
Victoria let out a high-pitched scream and scuttled over to Elizabeth’s bed when Celeste entered. The two girls held each other and cried.
“Don’t be afraid,” the mechanical voice said. “You are safe. I won’t harm you. Please tell me if you understand me.”
Both girls had their eyes closed. It was Elizabeth who opened hers first and said, “You sound funny.”
“To me, you sound funny.”
“Where are we?” Elizabeth asked.
“On a spaceship.”
“Where are Mommy and Daddy?”
“They are asleep in their beds.”
“When they wake up and we’re gone, they’ll be upset.”
“We whispered in their ears not to be worried. They know you’re safe.”
Victoria’s eyes popped open. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“We don’t have names.”
“Then what shall I call you?”
“You may call me your friend.”
“Why are we here?” Elizabeth demanded, suddenly feisty.
“We wish to learn about human children. You can teach us many things.”
“But I want to go back home!” Victoria shouted. “I don’t like it here. I want my mommy.”
“You will be happy here. My job is to make you happy.”
“How?” Victoria demanded.
“We have all the Earth games and toys and videos and books. We can make all your favorite Earth foods. I will sing songs and play games with you. I learned English, your language, so I can be a good companion. You were in the country of Italy. Do you speak Italian too?”
“A few words,” Elizabeth said, “Ciao. Mangia. Ti amo.”
“Very well, we will speak in English. You must be very hungry after your long journey. What would you like to eat?”
“I want macaroni and cheese and an ice cream sundae,” Victoria said.
“I’m not hungry,” Elizabeth said.
“You must eat.”
“I said, I’m not hungry!”
“I will bring you food anyway. Through that door is a bathroom. It is just like your bathrooms on Earth. That chest is filled with clothes. Later, I will show you all the toys and games. You will love it here. I will love you and soon, you will love me.”
Celeste returned to Ferrol’s office and before she could do or say anything, he told her that he had called up the meal request to the upstairs kitchen.
Her knees buckled as she removed her mask and Ferrol had to spring up to stop her from falling. She began to sob.
“No, no,” he said, “you did perfectly. It’s okay. They’re okay and you’re okay.”
“We’ve done something terrible,” she said. “I knew, in my head, that this was wrong, but you’re so fucking persuasive, I went along with it. Ferruccio and I have become members of your cult. That’s what this is—a cult. Seeing those precious little girls—I don’t know what to do now. Oh, God.”
He tightened his embrace and kissed her sweaty ear. “Listen,” he said, “this is a completely normal reaction. The shock will wear off soon and you and Ferruccio will be all right. You’ll see how happy the girls will be. They won’t have a care in the world. They’re young. They’ll miss their parents for a while, but that will fade. Believe me. I went through this myself. We’ll all keep our eyes on the ultimate prize. We are going to change what it means to be human. We are going to remove humanity’s greatest fear. Goddamn it, Celeste, we are going to conquer death.”
*
Ferrol waited a week for the girls to acclimatize. During that time, he dealt with the inevitable internal crisis when Celeste and Ferruccio saw the news that Elena and Jesper Andreason were also kidnapping victims. He felt like a firefighter, putting out flames that kept flaring from smoldering hotspots. The irony of the analogy did not go unnoticed, for it was in this very castle where his journey began, that night long ago when a twelve-year-old lost his parents and nearly lost his own life to fire.
When his fractious colleagues settled down, he decided it was time for the first blood-draw.
“I don’t want them to become scared of me,” Celeste said. “They’re just building up a rapport with Gray Woman. That’s what they call me. I think Ferruccio should do the first draws.”
“But you’re better at it than me,” Gressani argued.
“There are going to be a lot of blood tests,” Ferrol said. “They won’t get a complex about them if the first ones go smoothly. Celeste, you go first. When the time comes for infusions, we’ll put them to sleep with barbiturates. But I don’t want to have to do that every time we draw blood.”
*
In a month, Ferrol was ready.
Gressani had been working in Ferrol’s skunkworks lab, so he was well versed in the objectives and techniques. When Celeste became part of the team, Ferrol had to initiate her. One night, he brought her to his study off the castle library and wrote a word on a whiteboard.
Telomeres.
“Do you know what they are?” he asked like a stern professor.
She said she didn’t with the look of a girl who hadn’t done her homework.
He noticed and softened his style. “There’s no reason you should. Don’t worry. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know.”
He bent over her chair and kissed her forehead, and if some might have seen this as patronizing, she didn’t. She smiled gratefully and reached for his hand.
He returned to the board and began drawing illustrations. “Telomeres are the pieces of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes. They prevent damage to the chromosomes that naturally occur with aging. However, these telomeres are also susceptible to damage, and as the cells in our organs divide, the telomeres get shorter and shorter. Every time they divide, the telomeres shorten, until the cells cannot divide any longer and they die. Think of telomeres as the clocks inside of cells, ticking down to cell death. Now, here’s the important observation: some people have a genetic tendency toward longer telomeres and they live longer. Let me repeat—they live longer. People who live to a hundred or more have markedly longer telomeres than everyone else.”
His passion began to crest. “Celeste, listen, the holy grail is finding a way to lengthen the telomeres inside our cells and to defeat aging. Telomere scientists have been working on anti-aging approaches for years and some have shown modest success in extending lifespan of mice by twenty percent, thirty percent. But here’s where it gets interesting. I’ve developed a radically different approach to everyone else in the field that stops aging in its tracks! Fruit flies live no more than fifty days. My fruit flies are still alive and buzzing about their jars five years after treatment. Mice live for two years. My mice are as sleek and healthy as adolescents eight years after treatment. I’ve cracked the code, Celeste. I can stop aging. I can defeat death.”
His excitement was infectious. “Who else knows about this?” she asked. “Surely, you’ve published your results.”
“Only Ferruccio knows. I’ve told no one. I’ve published nothing. I’ve funded all this work from my own pocket. I’ve needed to keep it a secret because I knew where this was heading.”
“To humans,” she whispered.
“Yes, of course. I didn’t want to draw any attention. I’m not boasting, but if I were a conventional scientist, there’d be a Nobel Prize for my work. I console myself in the knowledge that what I want to achieve is far more important than a trip to Stockholm. The chance of ever getting scientific and ethical review boards to agree to human experiments is zero. It will never happen in our lifetimes.”
“What are the risks?” she asked.
“I think they’re small, but people will worry about unintended consequences like cancers. Proving the negative would be impossible. My research would be blocked. The only way to do human studies is to do them myself. Here. With you and Ferruccio.”
“But who would volunteer to be your guinea pigs? Are you going to entice people by paying them a lot?”
“Here is the dilemma, Celeste. You can measure the length of telomeres, but that’s only a surrogate observation for the true measures of anti-aging. The best, of course, is the extension of lifespan. That’s impractical. It takes too long in humans. The second-best measure is to see if a person stops aging. This is more practical than looking to lifespan, but determining if, say a forty-year-old man has stopped aging, might take a decade or more to be sure. No, the only realistic way of knowing if my techniques work within a reasonable length of time is to do the experiments on young children. In a few years, one can know.”
“Children,” she gasped. “Holy mother of Christ. You can’t be serious?”
“I’m very serious.”
“How will you get children?”
“We’ll talk about that later.” His voice rose like a Shakespearean actor. “First, let’s talk about what it will mean for mankind to defeat that which all of us fear—decrepitude, degenerative diseases, and death. Let’s talk about that.”
Ferrol asked Gressani to tutor Celeste on the experimental techniques. One day when Ferrol was in Madrid, they took a walk through the orchards and fields, and the young man explained how the work was done.
“Everything begins with blood,” he said. “We draw blood and in the lab, I isolate the immune cells, the T cells. Using a cocktail of growth factors and chemicals that Dr. G perfected, I turn the T cells into cells called pluripotent stem cells. These are immature cells that can mature into all the cell types in our bodies. Then I insert a gene into them that Dr. G discovered, that prevents telomeres from getting shorter. It’s actually better than that. It makes telomeres get longer. Dr. G calls it his Methuselah gene. So, now we’ve got the stem cells with the Methuselah genes and we’re ready to use it as a therapy. You can’t just inject it back into the animal or a patient or whatever. You’ve got to wipe out the bone marrow first, so all the old stem cells don’t counteract what the new ones are supposed to do. We pre-treat with chemotherapy to destroy the old stem cells, then infuse the new ones. Then, all the stem cells and eventually, most of the cells in the body will have the Methuselah gene and super-long telomeres. And there you have it—maybe not immortality, but maybe you’ll live for two hundred, three hundred years if you don’t get hit by a car.”
Celeste kicked at some rusting iron sticking out of the plowed field. It was an old horseshoe. Who knew how long it had been there?
“Have you wrapped your head around what we’re going to be doing, Ferruccio?”
“You mean using children?”
“Yes, children.”
“Dr. G has done all the animal experiments. This is ready for humans. He’s explained it to you. Children are the only fast way to see if it works. I mean, it stinks and I’ll probably have nightmares, but maybe in the future we’ll be seen as pioneers. Maybe even heroes. In the meantime, he’s paying us a lot of money. I wonder, is he paying you more than me? I mean, you have to sleep with him. I don’t.”
“Go fuck yourself, Ferruccio,” she said, and she headed back to the castle on her own.