Of all the things people thought would bring the world to an end — incurable diseases, unstoppable weapons, total environmental catastrophe — no one imagined that our sheer will to keep on living was what would do us in.
The immortality gene had been discovered. At least that’s what the buzz was for a while, even though, of course, it turned out not to be entirely true. What was true was that a handful of people — nearly a hundred, all women — were discovered to be aging so slowly that their projected lifespan was somewhere around 250 years, a good three times longer than normal. The women were in their 40s now. Some of them hadn’t even gotten their first periods yet. They still had the awkwardness, the dewy freshness, of adolescence. They had been born in a lab in China in the mid-1980s. Now they were out in the world, and though at first no one knew about their past, one by one they were being discovered.
And one by one they were disappearing.
Meanwhile, the world was coming to an end. That’s how it seemed to many people, certainly. There were, in fact, diseases and weapons and catastrophes of air, water, and land. Far worse than all of that, though, was the rumor — which, when more and more evidence seemed to support it, became a solid theory — that these things were allowed to happen unchecked. It sounded like crazed conspiracy theory: the rich and powerful wanted the masses to die off so that the population of the world would shrink drastically. This, after all, was the only way the earth could possibly sustain greatly prolonged human life. There had to be fewer of us.
The masses, believing the rich and powerful were hoarding this “fountain of youth,” used the only resource left for those with nothing to lose: violence. Every day, a new riot, a new insurgency, every day a greater death toll.
And the biggest irony of all is that nobody actually had this fountain of youth, other than that small group of women — a group whose members lived in terror of being discovered.
I know this because I’m one of them. My name — for today — is Jane. I’m one of the Lao Babies. “Lao” means old. Old babies. It’s a very apt name.
What people know is sketchy. They know about the covert joint operative in China. The funds turned out to be European and American; the scientists and the subjects, Chinese; the location, a few extremely remote villages where the women had an unusually great life expectancy, remaining neotenous from puberty through menopause, each stage stretched out longer than normal. The women were studied, examined, and ultimately persuaded to give up their newborn daughters. The women were all poor, many unmarried, and most of them wanted sons. It didn’t take much persuasion — a little hush money, an implied threat, and the promise that no one would ever know. And, of course, that the girls would be more than adequately cared for.
I remember a sound, not a room. As though we were contained by the sound. The sound was us. When we were crying, when we were silent, always the same sound. That sound was fear.
Then the experiments: genetic mutation, gene splicing, untested drug combinations, all investigating the possibility of cells regenerating without becoming cancerous. They had to stop the project, though, soon after Tiananmen Square — too much foreign scrutiny. The files were destroyed, and the organization had to play along with its cover — that it was taking these babies to be adopted overseas. Each one was placed with an unsuspecting family in the U.S.
I remember us disappearing and reappearing. Some not reappearing. The sound remained, though, until one day we all disappeared. Sometimes I hear it as a memory. Sometimes I still hear it like a room around me, keeping me in.
Of course, not everything was swept clean. After a few years, a couple of the relocated lower-level scientists began to talk. They didn’t say much, but generated enough rumors to make up for it. Was it true that less than half the babies survived? That some of them were exposed to high levels of radiation to see if they would get cancer? That all sorts of other unspeakable horrors occurred (unspeakable except to the press, that is)? Eventually the story was uncovered, the babies tracked down. Still, because of the potential impact on international relations, not many details were revealed about this “Shanghai Shangrila,” as it was sometimes called, never mind that the research was done nowhere near Shanghai. It was simply referred to as “controversial experiments that began in the 1980s.” So far no one had come close to reproducing the Lao experiments, mostly because the Lao scientists had bypassed usual procedures and went right to human subjects.
A human subject. Me, in a room full of fear.
Far more attention was paid to the scramble of newly formed companies to get in on the “Asian fountain of youth,” their stocks skyrocketing with every new hint of a possible development that might be down the road, some day, in the near to distant future. And while a lot of people were suckered in at first by pills, treatments, and procedures all claiming to prolong life Lao Baby style, soon they demanded proof. Longevity was the latest weight-loss craze, but unlike the pills, treatments and procedures aimed at slimming, which at least provided quick if temporary (and nasty side-effect heavy) results, there was no immediate way of telling whether one’s life really would extend to three centuries. People were angry. Worse than that: desperate.
They were afraid. We were afraid. This is what it’s like to be human today, regardless of how long or short the life.
No one really knows with any accuracy how long the Lao Babies will live, of course. They appear to have universal immunity against disease as well as astounding regenerative and recuperative powers, though of course car accidents and earthquakes can still be unavoidably fatal if decapitation or burial under a ton of rubble is involved.
Or a grenade. Of all things, that was what made Maggie disappear. I know because I saw her go. Unfortunately for me, Maggie’s killer also saw me.
Someone out there does not want us to live our slow, strange lives.
It started as an urban legend when some of the known Lao Babies started disappearing — a serial killer. Just like the conspiracy rumors that gained frightening validity, the urban legend was proved correct. I saw the man who killed Maggie. Now he’s after me.
+
The first problem had been finding them. Many of them had gone into hiding once the relentless intrusion of the public into their lives became unbearable. Yet a great many of them had been identified, and articles written about them; it wouldn’t take much effort to find those articles, and with them names and faces. Certainly some of them would have changed their names and even their appearances by now. But not all of them. Not yet, anyway.
The second problem was how to follow through. As his research showed, this wasn’t easy or obvious. There were plenty of methods that were sure to work but impossible to use. He couldn’t exactly go around carrying a machete with him, after all, and ask each of them to oblige him by laying their necks on a chopping block. Guns were the most obvious answer; even though he’d never held one before in his life, they were easy to obtain and easy to use. Anyone could fire a handgun, and even someone with no prior interest in weaponry at all knew where to get one. His next-door neighbor was a gun-nut hunter who also collected military memorabilia just for fun, and once in a while the hunter’s ghastly catalogues would be delivered to his own mailbox by mistake. One visit to a catalogue company’s website and he, too, could be a proud bearer of armament.
At the same time, he’d heard plenty of stories of people — ordinary people, not just them — surviving gunshot wounds to the head, neck, and chest. It would have to be done just right. He couldn’t trust his aim, so there would need to be multiple shots at close range. He shuddered at the idea. He was driven to succeed in his mission, but even the thought of blood and guts and bone fragments, especially when it came from them, was enough to make him feel sick. And even worse was having to look at them when it happened.
No, he would need to find a method that was certain but less…personal. After all, he would not consider one of them a person. He wanted them gone, and he wanted to see them go, but from a distance, to emphasize that this was not murder but justice, that he was not criminal but judge.
As he sat staring out his apartment window, he watched a young Asian girl crossing the street clutching a bookbag close to her body. She could be one of them, though it was highly unlikely, and he always wanted to be sure. He wanted no harm done to anyone but them. He was fighting for humanity, after all. He would take his time and make certain he got it right. He had time; they only thought they did.