Bloodline

live to see those accomplishments come to fruition. They will take advantage of them during their lifetimes, becoming immortal. So in that regard, they are immortal already. Or at least something quite close to it. Their lifetimes could be easily doubled or tripled.”

She imagined what he envisioned, how some children born today will live forever. They were the immortals walking among us already.

Still, such a claim seemed impossible. She voiced it aloud. “You truly expect we can attain immortality in such a short time frame?”

“Or something very close to it. And it’s not just me making that claim. It comes from hundreds of scientists, researchers, and visionaries across a gamut of professions-from medicine, genomics, and gerontology to pharmaceuticals, nanotech, and robotics. What we’re doing in our labs here, financed by our benefactor, is taking the first tentative steps into eternity.”

Lisa pictured the man orchestrating this work.

Our benefactor…

Robert Gant.

It was beyond comprehension. All this horror perpetrated in an attempt to live forever. Still, Lisa sensed something more was going on, another agenda still being kept secret-but what?

She knew any true answers lay in keeping Edward talking.

He obliged, waxing proudly on where the world was heading. “There are two general schools of thought in regards to expanding man’s lifetimes. The first is moving machines into man. The other is moving man into machines.”

She shook her head, not appreciating the distinction.

“A thousand years ago the average life expectancy of mankind was only twenty-five years. It took another nine hundred years to extend that to thirty-seven. Today the average is seventy-eight. So, in the past hundred years, we more than doubled life expectancy. That amazing spurt of growth happened because of science and technology. And it will only grow faster from here. Estimates say we will soon be adding a year to our lives with every passing year. Just think about that. For every year you grow older, life expectancy will extend a year in front of you.”

“But what will drive that growth?”

“What has always driven it: the furnace of technology. In that forge, machine and man will melt together into one.”

He must have read her skepticism and smiled, ready to deflect it.

“Already people have artificial pancreases inside them,” he continued. “Currently thirty thousand Parkinson patients have neural implants. And as technology grows smaller, it will invade us even more. Advancements in nanotechnology-which is manufacturing at the atomic level-hold the promise of replacing vital organs in fifteen years, our blood cells in twenty years, and in twenty-five years, nanotechnology will reprogram our biological software to reverse aging.”

Lisa understood. “Moving machines into man… into our bodies.”

“That’s one path to immortality. But the reverse holds even greater promise. As computing power explodes exponentially, a term was coined-singularity-marking that moment when artificial intelligence will surpass mankind. Various futurists expect this to occur somewhere in the middle of this century.”

“So soon?” Lisa asked.

Edward nodded with a small smile of satisfaction. “By 2030, estimates say computing power will be a million times what it is today. Anything is possible with that much power. In the meantime, scientists from around the globe are searching for methods to merge that growing computing power to our own. In Switzerland, researchers are reverse-engineering the human brain, creating a neuron-by-neuron simulation, with the intent to have a complete virtual brain in ten years. Here in the States, a group of MIT researchers are building a map of all the brain’s synapses, those trillions of connections between neurons, all in a search for the seat of human consciousness.”

Lisa sighed. “And I assume that the ultimate goal is to fill that empty seat, to scan our consciousness into computers.”

“Exactly. Moving man into machines. The second path to immortality.” Edward glanced over to the incubator. “But I’m searching for a third path.”

“Which is what?”

“A new science. Cybergenetics. The merging of technology into our genetic code.”

“The PNA strand,” Lisa said, understanding, growing both awed and horrified, picturing that piece of engineered protein snaking into human DNA and regulating it.

“DNA is really just a set of information processes for building our bodies. But that software is old, millions of years old. PNA holds the potential for overhauling that system. Rebooting mankind forever.”

Lisa tried to draw him down from the lofty heights of theory to the reality of his lab. “But back to your own research. What does your PNA do, the one inside the boy?”

“It basically addresses the deleterious effects that come with growing old. The field of gerontology-the study of aging-has discovered that there are only seven basic ways a body damages itself as it ages. Reverse those seven deadly ways and immortality is within reach.”

Edward looked significantly toward her, lifting an eyebrow.

“You did it,” she said in a hushed voice. “Your PNA manipulates and regulates the DNA to offset those damages.”

“It does, but not perfectly. We concentrated most of our efforts on one of them. The death of cells. Are you familiar with the Hayflick limit?”

She shook her head, finding it harder and harder to speak.

“Back in 1961, Dr. Leonard Hayflick estimated that the maximum natural age for a human being is about 120 years. He based that on the number of times a cell will divide before it stops. The number of these divisions is determined by the length of some repeated DNA at the end of each cell’s chromosomes. These repeated sequences are called telomeres. They basically act like the aglets at the end of shoelaces, keeping the laces from fraying. But after a certain number of divisions, the telomeres wear off, and the chromosome frays itself to death.”

“What does this have to do with your PNA?”

“We engineered the PNA to function as permanent telomeres, in order to create undying cells, and thus allow us to shatter through the Hayflick limit.”

“Creating a path to immortality.”

He nodded. “We are at the very threshold to eternity.”

“But why do this? There are so many negative effects if man could live forever. Overpopulation, starvation, stagnation. There’s a reason we are meant to die, to step aside for the next generation.”

“True, but those dangers only exist if the technology is available to all. In the hands of an elite-a chosen people-there would be no such risks.”

Shocked, she pictured Robert Gant’s face. Was that his plan? To keep his bloodline alive forever, to create an undying dynasty?

“Why are you helping them?” she finally eked out.

“Because I must. Mankind has always chafed against restraints and limitations. We left our homelands to cross uncharted seas. We broke the bounds of gravity to fly. We even left our planet. Here is merely the next step toward freedom, the ultimate freedom, to break the chains of mortality and free us from our very graves.”

Lisa found herself aghast. She had warmed to the man over the past day, working alongside him, but now she saw the chinks in his armor, allowing the madness inside to shine forth.

“The visionary Raymond Kurzweil once posed the question, Does God exist?” Edward turned to stare at the boy in the incubator. “His answer was only two words: Not