“Our thoughts go also to the fifty-five thousand individuals who perished in the fall of the cable. A staggering number, if we consider that most of the structure fell into open sea, and a testament of what could have happened if the terrorists had managed to succeed in their evil conspiracy.”
Eliezer paused, making sure the audience appreciated the value of the sacrifice. He then concluded.
“It is thanks to Yaakov, Helena and Tarek that we can enjoy this sunny and unusually warm, late February day. We will now finish by observing three minutes of silence for our friends, allowing each one of us to pray in his or her own preferred way.”
Three shots from a rifle marked the end of the prayer period, and the people started standing up and leaving. The second wife and the five sons of Tarek were the first to leave, immediately followed by the family of Aurora Rodrigo Fatima. Louis stayed silent in his seat, rocking Hannah in his arms now, while three rows behind him Erika, Camilla Picard and her sons along with the Swedish ambassador were observing the scene.
Eli Mahlab stepped down from the podium and was joined again by the man he had come with, as they went to shake hands with Louis.
“Dr. Picard, let me introduce you to Mr. Avi Eitan. He has recently been named director of the Gilot site. I appointed him just last month. You can refer to him if you find anything dissatisfying in the memorial. Obviously, you can refer to me if you have a problem with him.”
Louis ignored Avi, and asked Eli,
“You mean, that Avi Eitan?” he did not bother hiding his incredulity, “The one Yaakov was talking to?”
“Yes, Louis, that Avi,” Eli answered indifferently, “I made the decision that going forward, this was the best place for him to be, taking care every day of the place where Yaakov, Helena and Tarek will be remembered.”
He turned to Avi, who did not look up from the ground once.
“There have been way too many victims,” Eli continued, turning back to Louis, “At some point in time, you have to start forgiving mistakes, if the atonement is sincere.”
Erika was watching and listening from a distance, when a voice whispered behind her.
“Eli Mahlab is a real devil,” Erika slowly turned to meet the stare of two deep blue eyes, standing out from a dark Middle Eastern face. “He has demoted Avi from second-only-to-God head of Mossad, to museum-keeper. And what’s worse is he makes sure everybody knows it, at the damn service where we are celebrating the last victims of Avi’s last botched plots.”
“You must be Moussa,” Erika replied, unphased, “Yaakov talked to me quite a lot about your last mission in Jericho.”
“Yaakov talked to you? About me?” Moussa kept his self-confidence, flashing a quick smile, while Erika kept her seriousness.
“You do not have to worry about your secrets,” Erika moved her eyes to Camilla and her kids, who were walking toward Louis. “The case of the death of Dorian Picard is closed. We are waiting for the West African Union to arrest and hand over Farlimas to us. It seems it won’t be the case though, as the man still has huge influence despite the foiling and uncovering of his evil plots.”
“You know, I am actually changing jobs,” Moussa whispered, “the Elevator conspiracy, as it is called now, allowed the Arabian Union and the JRC to start a new conversation on new ground. I will try to help out since I knew Tarek well - I am sure he would approve. I hope you understand why I can’t elaborate more on my future role.”
“I see,” Erika said, leaving her row and moving towards Louis, followed by the Swedish ambassador. “Well let me wish you good luck once more.” Moussa made a slight gesture of salute and turned to the corner where the Tantawys had gathered.
When Erika joined Louis, he was speaking to Camilla, who was in the middle of inviting him to visit her family in Sweden.
“Don’t you think it would be better for you to join me for a while in Sicily instead?” Louis objected, “It’s too cold up there right now.” He then stopped, thinking back at the last walk he had in the open the year before, in the gardens of the Drottningholm Palace. He was about to say something, then looked at Erika and addressed her in the most formal way he could manage.
“Police Chief,” he said, “Would you please tell my daughter-in-law that I am no longer subject to the regime of house arrest and my decision to stay on my island is now a conscious one?”
Right in the middle of his sentence, Hannah woke up and started crying, showing she wanted to leave the stroller to stumble around.
“Lastly,” Louis continued, holding the toddler with his right hand as Hannah tried to take some steps, “this Navibahai affair is far from over. Farlimas is entrenched in his African enclave, surrounded by tens of thousands of strong believers. He lost hundreds of thousands after the failed attacks, but he still wields a considerable amount of power.”
“Actually, this might no longer be a problem,” the Swedish ambassador said, entering the conversation, “I was waiting for the service to end to tell you that the Euro-Russian Union has obtained permission from the World Federation to launch an operation in Yamassoukro in order to capture Farlimas. They would be using for the first time lethal automatic robots, or LARs, on a large scale.”
Louis looked at the ambassador with a surprised expression, who interpreted the look on his face as curiosity to get more details.
“This way, the number of victims will be low, and mainly lost on to the side of the bad guys,” the ambassador said, genuinely excited, “The software of the LARs has been programmed in such a way that…”
“I think that’s quite enough, Mr. Ambassador,” Erika said, cutting him short. “I think Louis needs more time and peace with his loved ones now. Au revoir, Dr. Picard.”
She pulled the ambassador away with her left arm and headed to the exit of the stonewall section. She had barely walked three steps, when Louis called her.
“Police Chief Erika Fryjansdottir,” he said, keeping a low tone. Erika turned her head toward Louis, Hannah and Camilla. Louis raised his left arm, as he still held Hannah with the right one.
“Merci, Police Chief.”
The Police Chief Erika Fryjansdottir smiled, waved back, and then continued walking to the exit, obediently followed by the Swedish ambassador.
Chapter 29
As Louis finished recalling the loss of Helena, his eyes turned to the terrace, where Hannah was sketching the scene of the interview on a canvas.
“Was it difficult for you and Hannah to cope with the loss of Helena, Dr. Picard?”
“I think it was much more difficult for her than for me. She had to go through all these years with a series of nannies - all very nice and professional, but not ‘mom’. As for me, it took me more than seven years to be willing to start a new relationship, and I have not yet found the right partner. Luckily, the local community here in Salina took good care of us, so she grew up with lots of aunts and grandparents, and I limited my trips only to the strictly necessary, bringing her with me whenever possible. Before you ask, I won’t comment about my current emotional stability. This is for your colleagues of the gossip media to find out, if they can manage.”
“Absolutely, no questions about that, Dr. Picard. We are a serious newspaper, or at least we pretend to be. Let me ask you instead a rather trivial question; in retrospect, what would you have done differently?”
“If you look back, a lot of problems - if not all - arose out of secrecy. When we were detected for the first time, people didn’t quite grasp what we were after, and this triggered several reactions that were based off partial and often misled information on the situation and the goals of the would-be enemies. So, to cut it short, I think I should have published the full truth as soon as I got Telomerax up and running, at the beginning of the Eighties of the last century.”
“Yet your fears of social upheaval were not misplaced at all, if we look at what happened when things went public. What makes you think things would have gone better?”
“How could things have
gone worse than a full scale world war and another one avoided at the eleventh hour?” Dr. Picard snapped back immediately. “In any case, the reality is that we keep inventing things every hour that to a big or small extent change the way we interact with reality and with ourselves. It’s better to bring new things in the open as soon as possible, after a good amount of experimentation, of course.”
“Alright, Dr. Picard, but one thing is inventing the Internet and another is Telomerax.”
“Do you really think Telomerax has radically changed our human condition? You know, fifty years ago, I would agree with you. Now, I definitely don’t.”
“Come on, stopping the aging process is not a trivial change in the history of mankind.”
“Nor were the invention of vaccines and antibiotics, just talk about medicine.” Dr. Picard retorted, “Eventually, if you look at it from a pure physiological perspective, Telomerax did much of the same, enabling more people to live longer and healthier than before. This, in turn, allowed us to learn more, and undertake things that previously were not possible. Think of travel. Vaccines and antibiotics allowed us to build societies able to put a few people in rockets to go to the Moon. Telomerax is allowing us solar system travel, and the next wave of deep space missions beyond it. In either case, we have not fundamentally changed our condition, aspirations and attitude. We cannot teleport ourselves to every corner of the Universe instantly, but we have gone a step further. You can easily find examples in every field by yourself. Telomerax just allows you to do more than before, and this is precisely what we have done since we left caves. Knowing this, we might well have avoided all the self-inflicted tragedies we went through.”
“I do not fully buy into that, Dr. Picard. Vaccines and antibiotics did not set off a world war like Telomerax did.”
“Yet the great wars of the last century all happened at the height of a tumultuous period. Just think of the advances in physics and the discovery of nuclear force between the two wars. This helped trigger and build up the chain of envy, fear, resentment and economic turmoil that eventually sparked the war. So, again, nothing new. I hold to my point that Telomerax is not a major deviation. However important, it is just another step in the drive to overcome our limits. Just like in the past. We are awful at managing this process. That did not change, either.”
“Let’s please stay on topic, Dr. Picard. What do you think is the worst, permanent side effect that Telomerax has brought us? I mean, for example, oil increased pollution, and nuclear energy gave us the bomb and radiations. In the early days, Telomerax variants boosted the rate of tumors, the wars have been a horrible learning experience, but how about the long-term risks of Telomerax?”
“Again, Telomerax just exacerbated a trend that was already well underway before I invented the drug, which is the removal of the experience of death.”
“It is?”
“Today people experience only sudden deaths, and relatively few ones at that, because of the current 300 years or so average lifespan. In my opinion, this is bad for two reasons, at least. First, it hides away a crucial piece of human experience, and without experience it is very difficult to build informed views, no matter how much you study. I remember, when I was living in Brazil, how much the local tradition valued a good ending to life. It was so high that there was a specific word, the bomfim, that was recalled in the name of many saints and churches. Sudden death was never a bonfim, which instead contemplated a decent agony, for the better good of both the dying and the relatives. Telomerax has wiped this away, but again, the trend was already in place well before I invented the drug. Yet, removing a problem is not the same as solving it. It just leaves space for all kinds of alternative solutions, like Farlimas’, for instance. No wonder that his sect, albeit greatly reduced in strength, is still present ten years after he died under the siege of the robots of the World Federation.”
“At the time, you claimed it was a mistake to kill him, despite all he did against you and your loved ones. Do you still think so? His sect might be even stronger, if he were alive.”
“Now, instead, we have given him the image of a martyr, and we can be sure the remaining survivors won’t fade away and pass on their faith, until maybe favorable conditions arise in the future for the sect to spread again. You had to spare him and expose all his lies, starting from his abject cult of death. Again, I blame Telomerax, and myself, for making it way too easy for us to take our eyes off our archenemy, while failing to recognize the fact that we could simply eradicate death, like we did with polio.”
“Eradicate death? Aren’t you going a bit too far?”
“Not at all. Two days ago, I looked again at the statistics that I had explained more than twenty years ago in Vienna, at the representatives of the World Federation. Then I compared them to today’s figures. Guess what? The vast majority of death cases is now almost exclusively linked to negligence or some form of crime, as accidents have been greatly reduced thanks to the pervasiveness of artificial intelligence. We have no more excuses, the blame is squarely on us, and we ignore it.”
“So, what do we need in order to win it, eventually?”
“Look, even though I am not a Christian, I think St. Paul got it right, in his first letter to the Corinthians. In his vision of the last days, death is the last enemy to be defeated, after the fall of all worldly powers - that is, the end of envy and prosecutions, both illegal and legal ones. I wonder if I will be able to see that day. I really hope to.”
“Dr. Picard, what do you see in your near future?”
“In my next ten years, my number one priority is the upbringing of Hannah, while keeping my heart open to new love. Then, I will keep studying, mostly helping out Dinesh in the fight against the remaining tumors that we have not yet understood, and his research about the neural mappings of aggressiveness. This is getting more complex by the increase of neural interconnections caused by Telomerax. We have superintelligence, yet the problem got even more complex.”
“Dr. Picard, again, thank you very much for your time.”
Louis Picard stood up from his chair, his hologram almost tried to shake our hands, then quickly transitioned into to a wave. He looked briefly at Hannah, who was putting the final touches onto her sketch on the canvas, and then he turned back to us. A faint smile appeared on his face, with a concentrated expression. It seemed as if he was looking for the right words to say goodbye. He looked at us one last time and warmly said,
“You’re welcome.”
Cast of Main Characters
In order of appearance:
Louis Picard: French-born scientist, inventor of Telomerax. Studied biology at Sorbonne and Cambridge in the 1960s, then moved on to work in the cosmetic industry.
Xavier Langlois: the first boss of Louis Picard at L’Oreal in the 1970s, and the first to grasp the significance of Louis’ invention.
Dora Bershidsky: Second wife of Louis Picard, and first person chosen by Louis Picard to become immortal by means of to the drug.
Tarek Tantawy: Retired Egyptian Air Force officer, met Louis Picard in the 1980s and became the first member of his inner circle whose goal was to keep the drug secret.
Valerio Orsini: Italian spy to the Vatican and then media entrepreneur, he was accepted into Louis Picard’s circle in the early 1990s.
George McKilroy: American venture capitalist and member of the circle, he was the first one to change identity while alive to become Sean Ewals.
Helena Rodrigo Fatima: Mexican girl who lost her family in the drug cartel wars, eventually moved up the ranks of the narcos to become a money laundering expert and eventually a respected international banker. The last member to join the circle in the 1990s.
Avi Eitan: Security system specialist at Ben Gurion International airport in Tel Aviv, was the first to detect George McKilroy under the cover of Sean Ewals during one of his trips to Israel.
Eyal Podhoretz: head of the Shin Bet (the counterespionage service of Israel) at the time of the detection of Se
an Ewals.
Yaakov Mayer: head of the foreign operations of the Mossad (the secret service of Israel) cooperated with Eyal Podhoretz to uncover the organization of Louis Picard.
Skip Ross: A high-ranking officer of US Homeland Security, discovered the Israeli hunt for the circle of Louis Picard and used it to build his political ascent.
Greg Russo: Assistant to the Deputy Director of Operations of the CIA, was responsible for the Mediterranean and the Middle East at the time the Mossad stumbled upon the team of Louis Picard.
Rasim Al-Manna: Head of the Arab Emirates’ secret service and friend of Tarek Tantawy, initially helped Picard and his circle to defend themselves against the Isreali investigation.
Lee Shing Chen or Mr. Lee: Chinese tycoon and mafia leader, helped George and Helena to find new covers in exchange for access to Telomerax insight.
Irina Kanchelskaya: Russian secret agent in the Arab Emirates and mistress of Rasim Al-Manna, involved Russia in the Telomerax game and later became a top army officer.
Charles Daniels: head of Research and Development at Pfizer, received sensitive information about Telomerax from Skip Ross and started developing derivatives of the drug.
Sally Goldberg: executive assistant and then girlfriend to Charles Daniels, also was informant of the Mossad.
Dinesh Kheradpir: chief biochemist at Pfizer reporting to Charles Daniels, led the initial research on Telomerax and then left the company and returned to his motherland India to start his own biotechnology company.
The Last Enemy - A history of the present future - 1934-2084 Page 51
