Nuclear Town USA

by David Nell

  Methuselah was the army's quest for the super soldier. I guess after years of War Game scenarios and figuring an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union would be a disaster on both fronts, somebody thought to start looking into every kind of advancement that would give our boy's an edge on the battlefield.

  Technology would not be enough, as you would have to retrain each soldier as they were enrolled. But what if you had soldiers that were veterans in combat; years of knowledge with all the equipment yet maintain the strength and stamina of a man in his early 20s?

  The goal of Project Methuselah was to slow down the aging process. Knowing we could not stop it all together, we tried to retard the genes or trick them into believing that they were aging in months, not years. Making a 40-year-old man feel and look like he was 21 years old. Having all the benefits of youth, yet wisdom, intelligence and experience of a seasoned veteran.

  The Germans got greedy; really, I mean who could blame them? They had most of the world beating on their doorstep and needed results quickly. What they got in return was a lot of disfigured patients, and not one superman to show for it. The research was sound, the hypothesis was solid. They simply did not have the time to invest in developing their serum due to the desperate measures taken to speed up the process, as they were getting their asses handed to them.

  When we got our hands on the initial data right after the war, it was deemed not cost-effective, and the return on investment looked slim. It was all about the atom and rockets. We needed bigger bombs and missiles capable of carrying these destructive payloads to the front door of the Kremlin. But we all knew the arms race would keep building up, each side would be adding more atomic weapons, and it became clear to many that we were never going to win the war on Communism this way.

  Then, just after Thanksgiving weekend in 1955 – which was not long after the Soviets tested their first Hydrogen bomb – my commander Major Charles Neville approached certain unnamed officials from the Department of Defense, telling them of his vision for a stronger, smarter army. Major Neville, like myself, was an educated man; he was a biologist from Harvard whom the Army approached right before the Korean War in '49, as they saw potential in some of his work. Basically, the man was a bookworm with no active field duty under his belt. It was his job to research and prepare solutions for environmental problems that can arise when soldiers are deployed in unknown combat regions. Things like fallout radiation.

  By chance, he came across the Nazi super soldier files one day. Reading them he was not only fascinated by what he read, but energized at the potential of what this meant: A super soldier. He was able to see the holes in the German's research and concluded he could make it all work with the right funding, equipment and staff.

  Surprisingly, a few people thought he was right and gave him the funds and a team headed by the doctor who performed the initial set of Nazi experiments. I was assigned to him shortly thereafter.

  Jimmy, looking tired, asked if he could have a minute, and if I wouldn't mind going and getting him a cup of coffee and a cigarette. I tried to remind him that we were in a hospital and public smoking was no longer allowed, but it had little effect and I was persuaded otherwise.

  I gave him about an hour to rest and time for me to think about his story. Nazi doctors and super soldiers, wondering where in the hell does Elvis fit in to all this? As I was picking up his coffee and an electronic cigarette (as I did not want to get thrown out of the hospital), I thought that regardless of the validity of his story, my sense of curiosity and love for a good yarn wanted to see where this was all going.

  I returned to the room and indulged the sick old man. Handed him a couple of legal stimulants and sat back for the rest of his tale.

  PS: So Jimmy, you had just been assigned to the Alpha Research Division. What year was that?

  Jimmy: It was late October 1956. I had just got out of basic training. I was sent immediately to Ray Barracks, Germany and reported directly to Major Neville. He and Doc had been picking up where the Nazis left off, but with much more speed and progress. By the time I had arrived, the experiments were up and testing had already begun with chimpanzees. But before I go into the details on what I saw and where Elvis fits in, I feel I must give you some kind of warning. As you can see from my current physical state, my own conscience could not bear the guilt and responsibility of what I had taken part in. Please don't think I am being overly dramatic, but the crap I am about to share with you...there can be no going back to the same old, same old.

  I thanked him for his concern, but I reminded him that in the current state of the world, nothing can really surprise me anymore. Clearly what he wanted me to hear was very personal and had weighed heavily upon his soul, as his eyes glassed over and a single tear trickled down his wrinkled face.

  Jimmy: When I arrived in Germany, Methuselah was in full swing. Experiments were up and running, and each day brought what we all thought were solid prospects of slowing down the body's aging system. Dr. Häussermann and Major Neville had successfully developed a gene therapy that was derived from tortoise cells. They were able to isolate the chemical the average tortoise brain produced that allowed these creatures to live longer than 200 years. The initial testing was done on a group of chimpanzees. We had eight chimps all together. All were screened and of various ages, we injected series of doses of the serum over the matter of a few weeks. Then we sat back and watched. The first month, we noticed nothing unusual; they acted the same, slept the same, and ate the same, no changes whatsoever. The same for the second month, although we did notice that they seemed a little more agitated than they were the month before. We all came to the same conclusion, due to the confined space and limited stimuli, they were acting out. It wasn't until the third month we saw something.

  PS: What did you see?

  Jimmy: One morning, I went to do my routine checks on them, when one the apes appeared to be eating something. The smell was something awful in there. I am afraid to say their living conditions were not up to zoo standards. It could get quite foul in their living areas, as there was shit everywhere. But nothing seemed too unusual, as it had been a slow few months. Yet as I got closer, I noticed that the son of a bitch was eating one of the other apes. He had split the poor fella's head wide open and was eating his brains. The other apes weren't even phased – they were just watching with a quiet curiosity. He had taken part of the skull and was using it as a tool and scooping out chunks of grey matter.

  As soon as I saw this, I got sick. I had never seen anything like it. My retching snapped the chimp out of his food daze and he looked over at me. He didn't make a move right away, just stared at me, trying to figure out what I was going to do. All I had with me was a pen and a clipboard, nothing that could be used to subdue an adult chimpanzee. Then in one quick motion, he ripped an arm off of the dead ape, lifted it high above his head and let the blood shower into his open mouth.

  After getting his drink, he started toward me still clutching the severed arm. I froze, not wanting to make any motion that would be viewed as aggressive as he got face to face with me. I could feel the heat from his mouth and smelled the iron from the fluid all over his muzzle. Then, he very slowly took his finger and dipped it into the recess of the arm, and then took his bloodied digit and drew a single line down my face. After which, he walked back over to the body of the dead chimp and continued to eat on the mutilated carcass.

  PS: What happened next? Did you end up putting the chimp down?

  Jimmy: We couldn't put him down, he was important to the program. We were all upset and disgusted by what had happened, but we needed the bastard to see how the experiment was doing. After the episode, we started isolating each chimp in a separate cell. But not before we did a thorough examination of the cannibal chimp to make sure he had not been contagious and infected any other apes. It was here, where we had our first major victory for Methuselah.

  We completed the exam on the cannibal chimp, which we had started calling Donner. His
blood work showed nothing out of the ordinary as far as a rabies-like virus, and that made us all a little less anxious. Although what we did find was truly amazing. What his tests did indicate was early stages of what appeared to be abnormal cells stunting the death rate of Donner's older cells. An unexpected result – the gene therapy was behaving more like a parasite that was a keeping its host cells alive as long as possible to extract every ounce of nutrients without killing them and maximizing their potential intake by expanding the cell's life span. This action was forcing a mutation in the stem cells of the chimp, and in doing so, appeared to be slowing down the aging process. At the rate Major Neville and Dr. Häussermann projected from this most recent blood work, Donner may have just doubled his life span.

  PS: What about his attack on the other ape?

  Jimmy: That was a little trickier to figure out. I suppose that we were all so transfixed on the mutated stem cells, that we hoped that the incident was all a misunderstanding, so to speak. An outburst that would have been a result of the species' nature. Chimpanzees in captivity had been known for brutal attacks on humans as well as other apes. Dr. Häussermann suggested that his behavior was a demonstration to the other chimps, letting them know he was the alpha male. The marking my face with the dead ape's blood, was his way of showing both the apes and myself, I was his subject. None of us stopped to think that the cell changes might have affected other parts of the brain as well.

  Major Neville was so damn eager to get moving forward on human testing, he bought that bullshit: hook, line and sinker. He had Häussermann type up the diagnosis for his report, and went back to DC with the latest test results proving that his work was a success. The bastard was so intent on making the history books, he started taking shortcuts, and making moves that would eventually lead to the SOB's own demise.

  PS: What year was that?

  Jimmy: When Neville died?

  PS: No, the year in which Major Neville submitted his request for a human candidate?

  Jimmy: Spring of '57. He got the green light a couple months later for the opportunity to take Methuselah to the next level. He was only given two stipulations, the first being: the human subject must be a volunteer; no soldier was to be experimented upon that was not asked. The second: one soldier at a time. In case anything went wrong, we would not be affecting the lives of multiple men at once. This way, we could learn from each mistake and apply it to the next candidate.

  PS: You mentioned shortcuts were taken, what did you mean by that?

  Jimmy: Normal testing like this would run years on chimps and animals in any other lab. Proper scientists would monitor the injected animals for longer than just a few months before making the move to human subjects. The Major was able to persuade his superiors by telling them that the original testing and research done by the Germans should be considered as part of this work. And that really, instead of a project that had its initial testing for only three months, it was more like three years.

  Besides being a gifted scientist, Major Neville would have made a hell of a politician. He called in favors, exchanged promises and knew all the right players to talk with and all the right things to say in order to get what he wanted. He was a real smooth talker and for what many would consider an egghead, he had a cool charm about him that made him easy to like.

  Some people wanted to beat the Russians so badly they did not realize that we were making the same mistakes as the Nazis in rushing what should have been a decade-long development. But then again, I was right there pushing just as hard. We all wanted to be part of history.

  PS: So how long did it take to get your first volunteer?

  Jimmy: One week, and how it happened is just as crazy as the project itself. You see, the whole time all of this was going on; teenage hearts across America were breaking. Elvis had been drafted. We didn't just get a candidate, we got THE candidate. We asked for a man, we got a king.

  In 1956, Elvis had just turned twenty-one and just like most men in this country at the time, he was eligible for the draft. Shit, the poor guy was on top of the world, had everything he could ever want, and what the fuck happens? He gets picked to serve his country. The messed up part is he didn't have to if he hadn't had such a greedy-ass manager. Colonel Tom Parker was a lot of things to the world. But to those of us who worked really close with him, we would swear that his momma had been humpin' Satan himself, as he had inherited all the traits of a bona fide devil.

  See, Elvis told me later on that the Colonel had been telling him all along that he needn't worry – that he wasn't going to have to serve even one day in the military. E believed that Parker could do anything. That he was smart enough and connected enough to get stuff done. That is why he was his manager. He was right to think that. The problem was that Parker could do almost anything, except that it had to benefit him first and foremost.

  All of '56, Elvis thought that Parker was visiting with Pentagon brass to get him out of serving, when all along, he was taking in offers from the various branches. At first, he tried getting Elvis into special services, but that meant Uncle Sam would be making money off of his boy and he wasn't about to let that happen. When word got around up in DC that Elvis had been drafted, every branch wanted to be able to say Elvis Presley was one of them. One offer from the Navy was to put him up in Vegas and have his own show to entertain the troops. I'm guessing Parker liked the idea, but scoffed at the deal because we all know Elvis would eventually end up in Vegas performing regularly.

  When it came down to it, Tom Parker wanted to line his pockets and protect his investment. What worried him the most was that Elvis would be out of the limelight for nearly three years and aging to a point where his younger audience could lose interest. Having made this known to the right people, it was here that Major Neville had approached Colonel Parker on what would be an agreement that both men found truly benefiting.

  PS: Hold on, you're telling me that Elvis Presley was your candidate?

  Jimmy: Yes, but not by his own choice. He had empowered Parker as his manager. Elvis was a hell of a nice guy, but he was too damn trusting and a bit naïve. The Major had managed to make a dinner date with the Colonel to propose a way that would address his concerns – and enlarge his bank account – in exchange for a patient who would be able to keep his mouth shut and never be wiser to what was going on with his body.

  PS: Okay, why would Colonel Parker agree to let his client, one of the most famous people in the world, take part in a high-risk government experiment?

  Jimmy: He didn't at first. He scoffed the whole damn thing. He thought the Pentagon was playing him for a fool and questioning his intelligence by fabricating some science-fiction hooey and seeing if he was the rube most people took him for.

  He wasn't stupid, he knew he was fighting a system, and as a man who was used to finding a way for the system to work in his favor. He simply accepted that most people thought of him as a little more than a barker at the circus. What people took for weakness was actually the genius part of his business style. He always seemed to have the upper hand; he just let his opponent think otherwise.

  What made this business deal different was that he thought the military was trying to make him look like a fool and embarrass him, on the account of his going AWOL after he enlisted a second time and was stationed in Florida back in '32. He knew they had all his service records, his official discharge due to poor mental health. Parker was sure they were trying to make him look crazy and discredit him.

  PS: But he was wrong, I mean, if what you have said so far is true, he ended up believing someone.

  Jimmy: That was Neville. Like I said, that man had the gift of gab. He took in all Parker's complaints, fears and anxiety about losing Elvis and not only got him to agree to the experiment, but damn if he had the man believing it was his own idea all along.

  It was at this point in the conversation when I spied a little bit of a smile out of James. Coughing and chuckling a bit, he reached over and took a sip of water. Taking
a small moment, then getting back to the story.

  Jimmy: It took a couple of swanky dinners and a whole lot of talking, but what the Major did was convince Colonel Parker that Elvis was really the only candidate that made sense. He explained that with the photographic history of the man, visually tracking his age would be easier. He played on the man's fears by reminding him that the entertainment industry is fickle – as stars grow older, their lights grow dimmer. That after a few years in the service, young people would forget about Elvis, and they would find a new face to identify with. After the dinners, the talks, explanations of the process in lay terms, all with the intent of persuading the Colonel, Neville pulled the move that I feel sealed the deal.

  He told Parker that he had to call it an early night, as he had a flight first thing in the morning to meet with another candidate on the West Coast. Thanked him for his time, and then asked if he had any good recommendations for restaurants in Hollywood? The Major shook the man's meaty paw and asked me to get the car. As we were leaving, I could see the look on Parker's face. It was like he was getting the best hand job of his life, only to have it end before he could finish. Major Neville, however, was all smiles.

  As we were driving away, the Major simply said, "Done deal." I remember asking him how he knew. He went on to explain his reasoning, but to make a long story short, it was because he knew that Colonel Parker was above all else an opportunist. That a man with a little more than circus promoting experience does not get to the position he now has simply because he was lucky. He get's there by taking chances and looking for the diamonds in the rough, that and you wave a $750,000 signing fee and a 2 million dollar insurance clause deposited into a secret bank account...he's probably already picked the pen he'll sign with.