The Long Road (Tall Tales)

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=Story By JA Baker=
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You know, it's kind of funny, in a "I laugh so I don't have to cry", how everyone seems to look back upon the Star League as some kind of Golden Age for humanity, like it was all unicorns and rainbows.
Well, trust me, because I was actually there: it was nothing of the sort.
How old am I? Well, I was born in 2717, and convicted of "treason" in 2745. But, back then, they had a much broader sense of what constituted treason than we do today. And, in my defense, I didn't know she was married at the time, and certainly not to who she was married to. But yeah, I was thrown in prison; life without parole, all for giving some stuff-shirt's wife a bit of what she wasn't getting at home. Which apparently got his blue blood so boiling mad that he got me thrown in a cell on trumped-up charges.
Like I said: Far from a Golden Age.
2751, I'm informed that I'd "volunteered" for some kind of medical experiment that, if successful, and I survived, might actually make me eligible for parole. At some unspecified point in the future. Maybe. If I played nice. So I get shunted around between about six different prisons on four different worlds, before I eventually find myself on a transport heading out the the very definition of the middle of nowhere. And I'm not joking about that: we found ourselves on a space station that had been constructed in the interstellar void, hidden so that nobody might accidentally stumble upon it trying to take a shortcut between arsecrack and nowhere. And it was a big station, easily on a par with any of the old O'Neill Cylinders they built in orbit of places like Terra or Mars. Huge place, with hundreds of prisoners like myself, about twice as many guards, and a couple of dozen mad scientists.
First... year or so, I was there, it was very much like being in regular prison. I slept in my cell, ate in the cafeteria, did whatever work they gave me, and tried not to drop my soap in the shower. Every so often, someone would be called away, and that was the last we saw of them. New prisoners would be brought in to replace the old, but you soon learned not to make any close friends. Not when we were all living on borrowed time. They didn't exactly tell us what they were researching at the time, and we represented a pretty broad cross-section of humanity. So we were left pretty much in the dark. But, whatever it was, they had apparently gotten the support of some very senior people, people with very deep pockets, given how much it must have all cost to set up, let alone run.
My number came up some time around June 2752. They didn't exactly give us calendars, so keeping an exact track of the date was more guesswork than anything. Two of the guards led me into a part of the station I'd never seen before, an area no prisoners had ever come back from. A tall, grey haired woman in a lab coat welcomed me to Project Methuselah, although I didn't get the reference at the time. I was strapped down on an examination table, and a pair of lab techs started running pretty standard tests on me, while the doctor went about preparing something that I couldn't see. As she worked, the doctor started to explain how they'd had some promising results, and that I was to be the control test, to see if they'd made a genuine breakthrough, or if there was some as yet unidentified x-factor in the original test subject.
She then pressed an inoculation gun to my arm and warned me that it was really going to hurt.
Well, she undersold it. I don't have the words to describe the pain I went through. I mean, I should have passed out at some point, but... I don't know if it was just too intense or if there was something in the injections they gave me. But no, I was awake and in undesirable agony while every strand of DNA in every cell in my body was ripped apart and rewritten. I learned, much later, that several of the earlier test subjects died from the pain, either their hearts giving out of their brains suffering multiple strokes at once. Others... well, the word "liquefied" was used more than once. Every nerve, every cell, every fiber of my being, burned for two weeks while they continued to run their tests.
Oddly, coming down from the pain was almost worse. They had flushed my body. Replacing every drop of blood with synthetics a wonderful piece of LosTech. Imagine the worst hangover you've ever had, and then forget about it, because it was absolutely nothing like that. I came back to what was left of my sense maybe a month after it all started, having lost close to 15kg in weight, my hair having gone permanently stark white.
Yes, I dye my hair. Get over it.
The doctor came back in all smiles, and explained that the procedure had been an apparent success. In that I had survived, but only time would tell if it had truly worked. She started to run a fresh battery of tests on me. Checking things like reflexes, memory, and countless other things. And, in-between drawing blood and listening to my breathing, she started to explain to me exactly what I had gotten myself into and what Project Methuselah, actually was nothing short of the search for human immortality.
Yes, I probably had a very similar reaction at the time, but history has proven her right.
She explained that the pain I had experienced had been the result of targeted retrovirus rewriting my DNA. Preventing my telomeres from degrade when my cells reproduced. This was, they hoped, the key to biological immortality for humans or, at least, those with the money and connections to get the treatment. Eternity was going to be a First Class ticket, the likes of you and I need not apply. Least, those of us who didn't find themselves her unsuspecting Guinea pigs. They were using prisoners, especially those unlikely to be missed by anyone, because, well, the tests had a dangerously high mortality rate. With the side effects of some of the experiments... I guess there were things even the Star League balked at.
At least, in public that is.
I let her talk, because it wasn't like I had much choice, and I was eager to find out exactly what I had been subjected to. She explained how I was part of a sub-project named Hydra. One of half a dozen different ways they were looking to tackle the problem, and that, if my tests came back clean, I would be released into the medical wing of the station with the other test subjects. Sounded nice, until I got there and discovered exactly why nobody ever returned from the experiments.
Turned out, having my hair turn white was one of the milder side effects of the various experiments they were performing. They had people whose bodies had turned into one, giant cancerous tumor, people who'd had their brains cut into to see if they could have their minds uploaded into a computer. Some people who'd had parts of their bodies cut off and replaced with vat-grown clones, or cybernetics. It was a horror show, but all the scientists seemed strangely distant. As if they'd had their empathy removed, leaving only their fascination with the results. I had to watch as people were dragged off, screaming, only to come back... different. I don't know who approved the experiments, but they should have been thrown out of an airlock.
One of the... the only bright point was Penny. She was young, far too young to have been through all she had. Certainly not what had been done to her even before she arrived. But, like the rest of us there, she was selected because she was easily disappeared. Not some crazy lunatic who'd be an endless problem if they did end up immortal. Penny had caught the eye of some rich and powerful scumbags son, who didn't even pretend to care that she was uninterested in his advances. After he'd... indulged himself, at the cost of her innocence. She'd tried to go to the authorities. Unfortunately for her, the police of her homeworld were firmly in the pocket of the father of her attacker. So instead of finding justice, she was handed over to him. He'd offered her money, more money than she'd ever make in her lifetime, and a fresh start somewhere else, but she'd stood her ground, demanded that his son face the consequences of his actions.
They say that Lady Justice is blind, but the truth is, she's paid to look the other way.
Penny didn't even get a show-trial, but instead was simply thrown into the deepest, darkness hole her attackers father could find and left to rot. I have no idea if he'd had a hand in her being selected for the experiments, but it certainly made sure she was permanently removed from the equation. It turned out that she was the other survivor of the Hydra experiments, and like me she only had minimal side effects, so she'd dedicated herself to trying to make some of the others more comfortable. There we were, in a man made hell, breathing recycled air and drinking our own, all be it recycled, piss, and Penny was still finding ways to look on the bright side. I did my best to help, but the truth is I was far more caught up in a whole "woe is me" cycle to be of any real good to anyone. I'd made peace with spending the rest of my life in prison, but the thought of ending up like some of the other people there, it broke me.
Two months after my treatment ended, Penny and I were called in to see the doctor responsible, who seemed positively giddy with excitement: it seemed our regular blood and tissue samples showed signs of having accepted the treatment, and now only time would tell.
Ten years. Ten ****** years, we spent in that place, being poked and prodded on a daily basis. The only way we were even able to keep track of the passage of time was because they were repetitive and predictable when it came to what they fed us. It was on an unending seven day cycle, so it was just a case of tracking how many times they'd given us egg noodles in tomato sauce and called it spaghetti bolognese. Well, five hundred and twenty scratches on the wall of my cell told us ten years had passed. In that time, dozens more prisoners had been subjected to variants of the Hydra treatment, some more "successful" than others, as the scientists sort to refine the treatment into something their masters would actually agree to undergo.
And no, neither Penny or I seemed to age a day in that time, something that only encouraged our captors.
The two of us had grown close during the years of our imprisonment, and I don't mean in a physical or romantic way. Penny was more like the kid sister I never had: I taught her to play Pai Sho, she tried to teach me to draw, and we did our best to make some of the other test subjects comfortable in their last days. It soon became clear that most of the other projects had been discontinued, with more and more people being subject to some variation or another of Hydra. Some were... there was a kid, Ian, said he was seven years old. He'd lost his parents in a house fire. Leaving him with no known family, and he'd entered the foster system. Well, I guess some thing calling itself human wanted to know just how young someone could be and still have Hydra work, because they arranged for Ian to be transferred to the station, and had the doctors perform the procedure on him.
It apparently worked, because they seemed convinced that he'd never physically age past seven.
That broke something inside Penny, something that the rape and everything that had happened since hadn't been able to touch. Her eyes lost that spark that tells you someone is alive and not just living, and she became more and more withdrawn, hiding away inside herself. I tried my best to reach her, to bring her back, but I couldn't breach the emotional walls she'd put up.
Shortly there after, they started Phase Two: We no longer aged, something they seemed to be close to perfecting, but could we still die?
Well, the medical staff, with their district lack of empathy, decided that the best way to find out was to test it on us, and that's where it all ended. Penny and I were called in to see the chief medical officer, a woman who had visibly aged, having decided against undergoing Hydra herself. She sat across a table from us and thanked us for all our help over the years, then drew a Needler Pistol and fired it point-blank into Penny's chest.
I screamed in pain, almost as if I had been the one to be shot, as Penny slumped to the floor, a bloody mess where most of her torso had been. In an instant, I was at her side, trying to figure out how to help her, but she just looked up at me, and for the briefest of moments, the light returned to her eyes, and then she was gone.
"Pity." the doctor looked down at the remains of what had been the only thing keeping me sane, "But what's the point of never ageing, if you can still die?"
I don't remember what happened next. One of the other test subjects told me later that I killed the doctor and two guards, starting a general riot. Years of anger, pain and torment bubbled up to the surface, and everyone just went crazy, breaking everything they could get their hands on. None of us had been violent prisoners, so they hadn't felt the need to arm the guards beyond clubs and stunners, but it's amazing what a human is capable of when they're backed into a corner. The riot spread, prisoners improvising weapons, raiding the kitchen and medical wing for anything sharp. There had been a small Jumpships docked at the station, delivering supplies, and we managed to force our way on board, "convincing" the crew to take us... somewhere, a system one of the other test subjects knew, where there was a Rockjack community we could vanish into.
Oh, the authorities were looking for us, but we'd been unpersoned, all our records removed, so it wasn't like they could put up wanted posters with our names and faces on. And space is big, full of people who are, for one reason or another, looking to escape their past. So we scattered, knowing that staying together was far more of a risk. It is far easier to vanish into a crowd when you're alone, and after so many years together, I think we all wanted some fresh faces to look at.
I can't speak for any of the others, but I certainly never thought about trying to go public: I'd lost any and all faith I may have had in the system, so I kept my head down and kept moving. The chaos of the civil war that erupted not long after helped, as there was a sea of humanity trying to find a new, safer place to live, and it wasn't like anyone was really able to keep an acute record of names and faces. I never settled, not for long: people eventually notice that you're not looking any older after a few years, a decade at most, and I didn't want to risk ending up in another science lab.
And that's pretty much how I've spent the last few centuries. I find a world, find a job, earn some money, and be ready to walk away from it all in a heartbeat. I've had a few relationships, but never married, and a side effect of Hydra has left me sterile, so no kids. That's probably a blessing, as I have no idea if what they did to me would be passed on or not, and I'd rather not take the chance, either way. No parent should have to burry their own children. I've come to see my apparent immortality as a curse, not a blessing. And I have never told anyone the truth, not until today.
Why am I here, telling you all this?
Well, when you're completely truly outside of the system, you often hear things. Things like, someone uncovered some files concerning Project Methuselah. Ah yes, I did notice your reaction when I mentioned that name. You must really suck at cards with a poker face like that. So I hear that someone is digging into things best left buried, may even try to restart the experiments, and, well, that's not something I can allow.
I know, I know. You're only doing it with the very best of intentions. I guess Stone is starting to show his age, cryogenics or not, but trust me, nothing you can learn from those files can save him, or the Republic. Maybe you should have done a better job building a nation that could survive losing its charismatic leader. Oh, and don't bother with the panic button: your guards are... otherwise detained. I've had almost four centuries of practice, so I know how to get into and out of places. I also know exactly what you can find on the Black Market if you know the right questions to ask. As such the explosives I've placed are Terran by manufacturer, so people will suspect an internal power-play.
You should thank me really, humanity isn't ready for immortality.
The End
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The Long Road
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The Long Road