2024
Melinda awoke to the sound of someone humming a familiar melody. Groggy and disoriented, it took her a moment to place the tune.
“Forever Young.”
Wilder! she realized with a start. She tried to sit up, only to find herself strapped inside what appeared to be a translucent, torpedo-shaped capsule resting perhaps a yard above the floor of a well-lit laboratory equipped with plenty of sophisticated-looking medical technology. The sleek, curved lid of the capsule was only partly closed, covering most of her body but leaving her head and shoulders open to the air. Unknown machinery buzzed and chirped beneath her, in whatever apparatus was supporting the capsule. Foam padding within the capsule further restricted her movement as she struggled fruitlessly to free herself. That her prison was roughly the size of a coffin did not escape her.
“What the—? Get me out of here!”
“Ah, you’re awake. Right on schedule.”
She could just rotate her head enough to see Wilder turn away from a sterile black epoxy workbench a few paces away. A smooth, hairless scalp suggested that he had indeed been wearing a wig before, perhaps to distinguish himself from Wilmer Offutt. He had traded his blazer for a clean white lab coat. Enkidu perched on his shoulder as he calmly approached her.
“Please refrain from testing your restraints; I assure you they’re quite secure. We can’t have you dislodging any of the IV connections, which are already in place.”
IVs, as in hooked up to her bloodstream? A jolt of terror dispelled any last trace of fogginess from her brain. What had Wilder done to her, and what else was he planning to do? Some kind of ghastly science experiment?
“Let me out of this casket-sized test tube! Unhook me right now!”
“My apologies if you suffer from claustrophobia. I took the liberty of dosing you with a mild tranquilizer just in case, as well as to help you cope in general.” He gazed down at her like a physician checking on a patient, applying his most comforting bedside manner to soothe any anxieties she might be experiencing. “It seemed best in light of recent events.”
Abruptly, cruelly, it all came back to her: Dennis freaking out and clobbering Vasily with the wine bottle, then going at Wilder with the broken bottle, her frantic attempt to stop him from hurting anyone else, and…
“Dennis?”
“Gone, I’m afraid, although I’m happy to say that Vasily received only a minor concussion. He’s recuperating upstairs as we speak, after helping me transport you down here to my private lab and workspace.”
Not Amaranth then, she registered. A private basement lab—for secret projects best conducted away from his corporate facilities? Like disposing of nosy podcasters who wouldn’t leave him alone?
“For what it’s worth,” he continued, “I’m genuinely sorry about the loss of your partner, even if he brought about his own demise through his unreasoning paranoia. Believe me when I say that I value life above all things. Death is abhorrent to me.”
That Dennis was truly gone hit Melinda like a whaler’s harpoon, piercing her heart. It didn’t feel real, like this was just another of his far-out conspiracy theories and alternate realities. She felt numb, as though she was the one who had died instead. Her throat tightened. Tears blurred her vision. Guilt made her grief even more agonizing. It was her obsession, and stubbornness, that had driven Dennis over the edge. How had she not seen just how great a toll it had been taking on him?
I’m sorry, dude. I swear, I was going to make it up to you.
Now she’d never get the chance.
“If it’s any consolation, you saved my life, Melinda. Don’t forget that. I certainly won’t.”
Wilder’s words brought her back to her own dire situation. For all she knew, she would be joining Dennis soon enough.
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” she said bitterly. “What kind of mad-scientist shit is this?”
“A drastic measure, I admit, but you and the late Mister Berry have forced my hand. You’ve already learned too much about me and shown no inclination to keep it to yourself. Nor can I tolerate the increased scrutiny of a criminal investigation into the circumstances of your partner’s death.” He shook his head forlornly. “You should have accepted my job offer.”
“I’m guessing that’s off the table now?”
A pained smile answered her. “I think we’re well beyond that.”
He placed a finger against her throat, checking her pulse. She would have slapped or bitten it if she could.
“So what now? You’re just going to make me—make all of this—disappear?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He withdrew his hand. “As far as the rest of the world will be concerned, you and Mister Berry never arrived here today. At this very moment, Iduna is using cleaning bots to remove every last drop of blood, every stray fingerprint or trace of DNA, from the premises. Vasily is sworn to silence, the limo driver already paid off. My best private operatives are carefully culling any incriminating evidence from your home and devices. Trust me, we’re being very thorough.”
Melinda could just imagine.
“It’s not going to work. We told friends and family we were coming here today,” she lied. “People will come looking for us. We can’t just disappear without anyone noticing!”
“True, but even if you did inform people of your plans, I’ll simply claim you never showed up… and there will be no evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, Cetacean has already conveniently laid the groundwork for your ever-so-puzzling disappearances, with its compelling insinuations of government conspiracies, international espionage, and even extraterrestrial encounters. You’ve provided no shortage of likely culprits who might want to silence you. Ultimately, you’ll be just another unsolved missing-persons case, vanishing into thin air like Gillian Taylor. Who knows? Maybe someone will produce a podcast about you.”
She glared at him. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t find that funny.”
“Perhaps in time. A very long time, probably.”
She guessed she was missing a private joke. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She glanced around as much as she was able, taking in the impressive array of high-tech gear, which implied something more elaborate than simply dumping her body in the Bay. “What exactly are you up to?”
Wilder lifted Enkidu from his shoulder and cradled the rat against his chest.
“You present me with a problem, Melinda, ethically as well as practically. You saved my life… at great personal cost. I owe you for that, more than you may realize, for far more than an ordinary lifetime was nearly lost there.”
“Wait.” Her reporter’s instincts kicked in despite her desperate circumstances. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
He nodded.
“After what you’ve sacrificed for my sake, the least I can do is provide you with some of the answers you crave. Your Mister Berry was quite right. The Chrysalis Project, and like endeavors, are no mere urban legends. I’m indeed the genetically engineered progeny of an equally covert splinter program devoted to extending human life-spans. Conceived in a test tube, I was born in 1967, nearly sixty years ago. My original birth name is not your concern, but yes, I was Wilmer Offutt before I became Orlando Wilder, and will doubtless acquire many other names and identities over what promises to be a very long existence, albeit still a finite one… for now.”
He glanced down at the rat resting in the crook of his arm. “Would you believe Enkidu is pushing ten years old? That’s several times longer than the average lab rat. Credit his distinguished heritage. He’s cloned from one of the first successful test subjects of the experiment that led to my own conception.” He stroked the supposedly long-lived rodent. “As I told you before, we go way back, genetically speaking, that is. This is Enkidu number six, to be precise.”
“So he’s not literally immortal?” she asked, fascinated; as ever, her curiosity demanded answers, regardless of any other pressing concerns. “And neither are you?”
“Not yet. I am aging, although far more slowly than the average human specimen.” His expression darkened, deeper, more intense emotions burning through his genial bedside manner. “But here’s the paradox, Melinda. Knowing that, barring accidents and broken bottles wielded by insecure people, I can expect to live an almost impossibly long time only makes it all the more galling that even my extraordinary life-span has an expiration date, that I’m ultimately doomed to gutter out like any other mortal. What is the point, I ask you, of acquiring all that knowledge and experience, all those memories, just to lose them in the end?”
His deep voice thrummed with emotion, betraying the depth of his obsession.
“None! None at all. But I refuse to accept that death is inevitable. You saved my life, granting me countless decades to come, but even that bounty will all go to waste unless I use those many added years to find a way to become truly immortal.” He peered down at her, driven eyes blazing beneath bushy brows. “And you, Melinda, may have finally pointed me in the right direction.”
He pointed upward.
“My mistake, it seems, was looking for the secret here on Earth when I should have been aiming at the stars. If Milly’s miracle pill indeed came to Earth via a UFO, then perhaps the answer lies on an alien world far beyond ours?”
Was he serious? He sounded insane, but if he was really almost sixty years old, thanks to some long-ago genetic engineering, Melinda wasn’t sure what the difference between sanity and insanity was anymore. Hadn’t she just spent the last several weeks documenting allegedly true accounts of a medical miracle, invisible aircraft, and now a man who never seemed to age? Who was to say what crazy really meant these days? Dennis would absolutely be on the same page as Wilder here, and it turned out he’d been right about a lot of things.
But still… was Wilder actually planning a trip to outer space?
“Good luck getting there,” she said skeptically.
“Easier said than done, I agree. After all, I can hardly count on a friendly UFO to swing by to offer me a ride. No, I’m simply going to have to stay alive long enough for humanity to make its own way out into the cosmos.”
“Assuming we last that long,” she said. “You looked at the headlines lately?”
“Call me an optimist. I’d have to be, wouldn’t I, to aspire to living forever?”
Or deranged, she thought. “You may have to wait a very long time, even for a potential Methuselah like you. I’m no space buff, but even I know that we haven’t even set foot on Mars yet, let alone figured out any sort of faster-than-light drive that would allow us to travel beyond our own little solar system. In fact, according to Einstein, isn’t that supposed to be completely impossible outside of science fiction?”
Her cogent argument failed to discourage him.
“You forget that I’m living proof that science can achieve the impossible. Unlike you, I have faith that human ingenuity will crack the FTL problem eventually. Just wait and see.”
She considered her own rapidly shrinking life expectancy. “Somehow I doubt I’ll be around to find out, one way or another.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Putting down Enkidu, he patted the sci-fi sarcophagus holding her prisoner. “Did Mister Berry ever mention that Amaranth has made great strides in cryogenics?”
As a matter of fact, he had.
“Hang on!” she objected, alarmed by the obvious implication. “You’re not planning to freeze me alive, are you?” Her blood went cold, maybe only slightly ahead of schedule. “What about all that noble talk before about meaning us no harm? Now you’re going to use me as a guinea pig to test out some sort of refrigerated coffin, turn me into a human Popsicle? This is premeditated murder and you know it, you hypocritical phony!”
“Murder?” He looked positively wounded by the accusation. “I wasn’t lying, Melinda. Your life is safe in my hands.” He smiled down at her. “Indeed, you’re going to live longer than you ever dreamed of.”
He reached out and flicked a switch on the apparatus beneath the capsule. An icy sensation began flowing through her veins, along with a sudden lassitude. Her trapped body felt unbearably heavy all of a sudden. Her eyelids drooped, even as the lid of the capsule slid upward toward her head and shoulders, moving automatically to seal her in completely. A flash of panic at the prospect was swiftly muted by whatever drugs were already coursing through her system. She couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.
“Sweet dreams, Melinda. I’ll see you in the future, somewhere in the universe.”