PROMPT: Science actually discovered immortality years ago. It turned out it was a profoundly bad idea, so they destroyed the knowledge instead of publishing it.
Before getting down to business, you must bear with me while I give you some of the history of our little organization, its purpose and its membership.
It didn’t start as a cult. Just the opposite, in fact: At the beginning, it had been a publishing tree, sort of a predecessor to the modern journal system. Someone who had produced results might send it to a circle of their friends, and if that circle found the results notable, they might pass it on to another circle of interested persons. The repetition of the experiment and the publication of results happened in the same manner, bouncing from one end of the small, scattered circle of interested parties to another.
The initial publication of Jacobsen’s findings had been met with a sort of fascinated skepticism; previous claims about life extension had been made, of course, and always turned out to be either grossly overstated or complete balderdash; and besides, results themselves were very difficult to confirm, requiring, as it were, a lifetime of study. Jacobsen’s results, however, were different.
First, he included a genuinely reproducible experiment, involving mice and mayflies; the mayfly experiment was widely performed, the mouse experiment less so; and second, he also included a proposed method of action that didn’t sound like lunacy.
Well, not total lunacy.
The formula was simple; it required a number of moderately exotic ingredients, but nothing that wasn’t available on the wharves of a moderately-sized trading town. There was a tricky bit of rubric involving an exact number of seconds at a specific temperature, the range of which couldn’t be more than three degrees Centigrade either way; but all in all, it was a magnificently simple protocol.
And with stunning results, of course. A dropper of the solution in an aerosolized form, sprayed onto a cloud of adult mayflies, resulted in a complete change of lifecycle: Their lifespans increased from hours to days, with a corresponding additional increase associated with additional treatments.
Adult mayflies, of course, do not eat; their mouths are vestigial, their digestive tracts nonfunctional, so eventually they did die, but not before living for weeks or even months longer than their natural span.
The mouse experiment achieved identical results: a short-lived species of mouse was given the compound with its food, and lo, did not die, but lived as long as it was fed this mixture of Indonesian spices and North American nettle and... well.
It was a slow method of dissemination, to be sure, especially compared with modern communication systems; it was a little over a year before the wave of this new knowledge had hit the edge of the pond, so to speak, and begun to reflect back toward the center. The reflection consisted of reports of mostly-successful reproduction of results, of refinements of the process, some of which worked and some of which did not (and one of which caused an explosion); and accolades from far and wide, praising Jacobsen’s formula as a revolutionary step towards the glorious future of humanity, et cetera, et cetera.
Smith’s paper came as a very late part of this initial reflection; it was short and to the point. It began with a brief account of Smith’s reproduction of the mouse experiment, and some notes on a subsequent observation: That the mice, now immortal, so long as they were fed the Jacobsen formula on a regular basis, were by no means infertile; and that the baby mice’ growth and development were halted by the administration of the the Jacobsen formula. A baby mouse given the formula remained a baby mouse; and adolescent remained adolescent; and so on.
The final bit of Smith’s paper consisted of a page of simple math, describing the consequences of the unchecked growth of an immortal population, with reference to the total available yield of crop lands in various countries, et cetera, et cetera.
The practical upshot, of course, was disaster: a world quickly overrun with people who would not die as scheduled; a world without death’s cleansing renewal.
By the time Smith’s paper was disseminated, of course, many members of the extended circle had already chosen to take the Jacobsen formula themselves; several had dosed their families, not yet realizing the consequences of the formula for children. There was a general flurry of letter-writing, meetings in pubs, declarations of this or that intention or course of action. And one simple response.
McCutcheon ran a branch of the Armory at the time. A notable chemist, he wasn’t responsible for powder production or anything sensible; he was responsible for the procurement and maintenance of pistol- and sword- belts. A scientific and military man placed in such a position naturally longs for action and stimulation; so it is no wonder that, primed as he was, coiled with potential energy, that he struck quickly and decisively.
The very night he read the Smith letter, McCutcheon traveled across the city and met with Silvers, a man whose nebulous position as half-pay Naval officer doing unspecified political work for various bureaus and cabinets would eventually be transformed, by time and succession, into that of head of one of the various branches of the Secret Service.
McCutcheon explained the entire situation and between them, he and Silvers sketched out the rough beginning of what would become one of the oldest and strangest of conspiracies; and over the next few days they put this plan into action.
The first principle of the McCutcheon-Silvers plan was containment: There would never be more than N people in the conspiracy, and those people would be sworn to secrecy, on pain of death at the hands of Silver’s, and later McCutcheon’s own, agents. One by one, the City cognoscenti who were aware of the Jacobsen experiment were brought around to Silver’s apartments and the new lay of the land was explained to them.
A tour was made of the countryside, McCutcheon and Silvers and a small band of plain but dangerous men calling upon each of those to whom Jacobsen’s and Smith’s letters had found their way.
N, the number of people inside the conspiracy, was initially conceived to be five hundred; in the wake of the interviews, N was increased to one thousand, and then to twelve hundred; when it became clear to members of the Conspiracy that N was elastic, it was treated with less seriousness, which resulted in, first, a series of increasingly angry and threatening letters, and then by a sudden precipitous reduction of value of N, back to one thousand.
Methods of enforcement were conceived: None of the members were to have unmonitored correspondence; none of them to have unfettered, unsurveiled communication. The formula for Jacobsen’s discovery would be proscribed, never to be published, not to be written down entirely in one place; and in fact the import of the spice from Indonesia and the nettle from Canada were stopped, quietly but firmly.
It may surprise you to learn that this all happened almost five hundred years ago. That the discovery of Jacobsen’s formula and the subsequent Circumscribement and censorship of the correspondence of a large majority of the chemical and natural-philosophical community set back the general pace of scientific development by maybe a hundred years.
However, having digested these facts, you will not be surprised when I tell you that you must not, under any circumstances, think yourself free of scrutiny, and that your obtainment of a fragment of the Jacobsen formula has not been noticed. You are, in fact, under observation at this very moment, and the not-inconsiderable power of the N has been placed in a position to make sure that you do the right thing.
Think, then, about the consequences: If you publish, you will certainly be killed, and your publication -- your “blog” -- swept away in scandal and opprobrium. If you refrain, immortality for yourself and one other of your chosing!
And if you succeed... if you succeed, and the formula and its power is made public, it is the beginning of Armageddon.
The choice, as they say, is yours; but do not long delay, for our agents certainly will not.
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