An Emissary from the Death Café

The Methuselah microbes buried in the Russian permafrost broke through the thawing soil like zombies rising from the dead. Only rather than arms reaching from earthen tombs and stretching bony fingers in a horrific gesture, they simply floated up into the dry Eurasian air off the shores of Lake Baikal on the Continental Ridge that divides Russia and Mongolia.

And for the first time in a hundred thousand years, these apex predators were carried over the frozen plains to enjoy dominion over their world. The Baikal seals and the Mongolian gulls were the first victims. And we were not far behind them.

Ignoring the doorbell a moment longer, I stared down into the microscope, revealing the inner workings of the nearly translucent pink and gray brain tissue on the slide. When magnified by a factor of more than 400 times, cells emerged like little cities and outposts dotting a landscape that was in the throes of a colossal war.

The viruses sieged the cell walls—trying an array of tactics: from battering rams to ladders, to projectile launchers, to full-on siege towers—anything to breach the walls, while other viruses ripped the road base from the axon thruways, preventing supplies and information from reaching the home base. A war of attrition. Cutting off supply routes. A vicious and effective strategy.

I finally tore away to the door at the far end of the laboratory and faced the woman, who stood before me in a black trench coat that framed her petite figure like a cape.

“I am here to offer you a commission,” the woman said. At first, I was intrigued. She was not a functionary from the grant committee steeped in protocol. Not an alluring smile before an expensive sales pitch. Not here for amusement. Intriguing as she was, the urgency of the project was my singular focus. I shook my head as if to dispel the mystery of her visit.

“I’m not interested. Now off with you,” I said.

“But you haven’t even heard my proposal,” she said slowly, staring me directly in the eyes. “Please let me state my business. It won’t take long.”

"In my experience, people who steal time often start by asking a small favor. It is astounding how fast a few minutes spills over into an hour. But once it's gone you can't get it back. I assure you, I am terribly busy at the moment."

"Do I look like a time bandit to you?"

“I suppose not," I said. "I'm not sure what exactly you look like. Oh, come in. Come in, then,” I said and led her into the bowels of my subterranean Battery Park laboratory, where I had been inspecting specimens that were about to be treated with another potential vaccine.

“Mr. Aspen,” she began, “let us not waste time.”

I always understood I would die one day, but I spent most of my life tricking my brain into thinking that I’d live forever. Seeming to be aware of this, Dr. Tanek had used the words “incurable” and “terminal,” one right after the other.

The zombie contagion had lodged in my lungs. That much was not shocking; the cough and painful chest rattling had hinted at this result. The decampment to the brain was the bombshell. The brain MRI film was freckled with small white spots—pesky pixelized static. Dr. Tanek had said they were “brain mets.” There were a lot of the little fuckers.

Like bright-eyed speculators from the Gold Rush heading west after the Mother Lode, these squatters raised impromptu frontier towns from white-canvased wagon trains. They swarmed every tributary, panning the rich dust of streams, infected with gold fever. While finding little actual gold, they succeeded in mercilessly ravishing the landscape of my vulnerable mind—laying waste to the very thing that made me who I am.

“There is little time to waste,” I said.

“Then let me be direct. Ernest Harbinger sent me. He told me about your work.”

“And what concern is my work to you?”

“It is of utmost importance to me, Mr. Aspen. Please, do not be alarmed. I am here to offer you the most precious resource you require to complete your work.”

“And what would that be?” I asked.

“Time.”

Her eyes betrayed a preternatural intelligence. Looking directly into the eyes, at the yellow irises, and behind them, I discerned a vibrating energy. The yellow brightened and sharpened to gold. The pupil quaked with the activity bubbling beneath, like the eye of a volcano about to explode. This was a woman whose intellect was vast. Equal to my own. Dare I say, greater. This thought arrived as if by telepathy.

The woman opened her double-breasted London Fog trench coat and produced three items: a fat cloth satchel overflowing with unmarked bills, a watch that looked like a Cartier Tank watch cut entirely from green emeralds—a strange glowing pearl at the center of the dial, and a steel-encased durable storage box containing 50 samples in a secure housing. She also had a briefcase which she stowed on my laboratory table.

“So that you know I am for real, I want you to have these as a down payment for our business,” she calmly offered.

“And what is this?” I asked.

“A half million dollars, a fresh supply of the most highly virulent samples, and all the time in the world.” She looked up matter-of-factly. “You see, Dr. Pando Aspen, you are uniquely positioned to solve the riddle of this plague—and we are prepared to place our trust in your capable hands.”

“All the time in the world?” I asked. “I don’t follow.”

“Place the watch on your wrist, Mr. Pando,” she directed.

I did as she said, doubting the significance of this ostentatious object. As I tightened the clasp, I felt a warm tingle in my wrist and up my arm.

“You see, Mr. Aspen, this is a Dilater. So long as you are wearing it, while only a second passes outside, a full year will pass inside this room.”

“That is absurd,” I said while inspecting the vials of the fresh specimen.

Then I looked up at her, the realization of the futility of our bargain coming into sharp focus.

“Miss—whoever you are—I am afraid you have made a grave error.”

“And what is that?” she asked. I tilted the vial and held it up to the light, while I thought how to explain my predicament.

“Even if this device of yours actually slows down the accrual of relative time, giving me a leg up on the spread of the virus—it will still do no good.”

“And why is that?” she asked.

“I am dying,” I said. “Even if you gave me a thousand years to do my work, I have but days. Weeks if I am lucky.”

“We shall come to that presently,” she assured me, producing a pink vial and a portable CRIPSR Cas-9 synthesizer, the likes of which I had never seen before. She pulled back the plunger of a giant metal syringe and filled the barrel with the amaranthine pink liquid. I was distracted by the vibrating energy of the eyes.

Then, without warning, she suddenly plunged the needle into my arm.

* * *

It had only been a few weeks earlier when I first met Ernest Harbinger.

Café Mortel did not pop up on a “Best of” or “Don’t miss” list on Trip Advisor. It was invitation only and was hosted at the meeting room of the Floating Lotus Wellness Center. I must say, as a choice of venues goes, it was among the most fascinating places in all of Manhattan.

The Midtown Penthouse was repurposed as a wellness center. It featured a sensory deprivation heavy water “floating lotus” aqua-therapy suite, an infrared sauna, and Halo therapy in a salt cave.

Ernest Harbinger greeted all of us with warm smiles, long handshakes, pats on the arm or shoulder, and an insistence we make ourselves at home. His cheerful disposition clashed with the dreary nature of the meeting. He wore a bushy mustache. His rounded cheeks were naturally tinted with a tinge of rouge. And his spectacled eyes were large, round, and owl-like.

He made all of us uncomfortable. I, myself, was near to crawling out of my own skin. The fact I was looking forward to an icebreaker was evidence enough that despite Ernest’s best efforts, none of us was happy to be here.

We met in the Great Room. The A-frame ceiling was made entirely of glass and formed one spectacular open skylight, through which the monocled-eye of the full moon peered in—eavesdropping on our macabre gathering. The moon was amused by our poor attempts to lock shut the amaranthine curtains to the everlasting, which blew open and ruffled in the abiding winds, chilling our bones, and mocking our petty efforts.

A mosaic wall of cut fieldstone in oval and polygonal slabs covered the far wall, where a fireplace once had been. It was now the stage for our host—Ernest Archibald Harbinger. And a woman was there sitting at his side—the same woman who had come to visit me now.

Against the nearest wall was a sidebar with various beverages and edibles. There were cannabis-infused sparkling beverages, plain old coffee (Death Wish Coffee Brand, of course), Dead Guy single malt whiskey, and a plethora of other themed libations. I went for the whiskey, pouring a healthy nip into my metal pocket flask. As I took a healthy swig, Dr. Ernest Archibald Harbinger dove into his opening remarks.

As he spoke, Ernest Harbinger’s hands rose and fell and jutted as if to speak in emphasis and subtext that which words failed to adequately communicate. He explained how he had spent a lifetime searching for kindred spirits, like himself. “We assemble here to help one another with what I believe to be the most exciting and significant journey any of us will ever take, and also make the journey more agreeable in the process,” he said. This must be the part where we engage in a group hug or unburden ourselves in embarrassing confessionals.

But then I saw it. Just perceptible. Harbinger’s yellow irises caught the moonlight. There it was. The same energetic vibration. A brightening of and sharpening of the yellow to gold.

I thought of the endemic contagion. An invasive predator with the power to strip the world of all life like an insatiable hoard of locusts, which left unchecked, will cut the landscape to a barren wasteland.

I felt the wind of the gathering storm. The wind of their beating wings.

All around us.

* * *

As my drifting thoughts returned, I looked into her eyes and said, “Ernest Harbinger had that same look in his eye.”

“Very astute, Mr. Aspen.” An upturned smile creased her lips. “Let me ask you, have you noticed anything different while we’ve been talking?”

“Aside from the fact you just jabbed me?”

“It was quite necessary, Mr. Aspen, I assure you.”

“I haven’t noticed anything else.”

“Have you noticed that it is exceptionally quiet?”

It was always quiet in the basement. But you could usually hear the chorus of droning airplanes leaving La Guardia, helicopters buzzing noisily like flies over the Hudson River, mixed with the groan of large eighteen-wheelers dipping down into the South Ferry tunnel and rumbling their way toward the FDR. The distinctive motions of the bustling city vibrating with energy above. And tonight, I didn’t hear a thing. Not a single car horn or police siren.

“You are right. It is very quiet,” I said.

“It is the Dilator, Mr. Aspen. Time stands still all around us.” She ushered me to my door camera, through which I saw the image of a passing puppy being walked down the sidewalk on Park Row. All four of its legs were impossibly frozen mid-leap so that the puppy seemed to hover above the ground. A realization came over me like a sudden chill that made the hair on my arms stand on end.

“You are not from our world, are you?” I asked.

“It is true, Mr. Aspen. But you could scarcely be expected to understand what I am. I am of a race that does not age,” she said. She placed her hand briefly on my shaking elbow, steadying the jitters. “It is normal after the shot. It takes a moment for the nervous system to adjust.”

“There is no living thing that does not age,” I said. My brain scrambled to find a firm footing and guess the stranger’s designs before she revealed anything further.

“Not true, Mr. Aspen,” she said in an even tone. “All living things die. But all do not age.”

“Nonsense,” I said.

“It is conspicuous. Even in your world. Despite how little you have explored its mysteries.”

“How so?”

“Negligible senescence. I know you, of all people, are familiar with the concept, Mr. Aspen. Indeed, you have studied it all your life. Think of the rich variety of examples in your simple world: the Quahog clam, deep sea lobsters, and biologically immortal jellyfish. And those are just in the seas. As for the land, there are Mycelium fungus boring living highways under the forest floors that date back nearly ten thousand years. And let’s not forget fields of Aspens in Utah thriving for an impressive eighty thousand years without tasting death. Old enough to remember the last time the virus raged. All share one elixir—endless telomerase. So endowed, none of them ages, as your kind understands aging.”

“What does the fate of mankind matter to you?” I asked.

“I could tell you, Mr. Aspen. But I do not know that you would thank me if I did.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Your kind have bear hunts and lion hunts and wolf hunts when predators’ numbers proliferate. To cull their numbers. Do you not think that nature does the same?”

“I don’t understand.”

“The virus, Mr. Aspen—which we affectionately call—the Reaper’s Scythe. Only, nature doesn’t take half-measures. I believe the saying is ‘God doesn’t play dice.’”

“What does that mean?”

“The virus doesn’t stop when it reaches equilibrium. It doesn’t stop until it has devoured all life—until it has sterilized the Earth.”

“But if that is the case, why didn’t it prevail last time?”

“Nature is patient, Mr. Aspen. After all, it has all the time in the world. The virus never petered off. Never failed. It merely slumbered. When the last ice age plunged its deadly sentinels deep into the permafrost, it lay in wait, like an undead zombie, for the thaw.”

“But you only come now, when there is so little time? When you knew about this all along?”

“I am sorry, Mr. Aspen. Though we span the cosmos, a sufficient biosignature must accumulate before we detect the signal—and by that time—the virus has already got its claws in deep. I am so sorry, Mr. Aspen. I do wonder what you all might have made of yourselves.”

“Very convenient. Perhaps you have only come to ensure our demise. Maybe you even seeded this germ of death.”

“You humans think yourselves unique. Every world where intelligence exists faces the same test. We have seen it countless times on countless worlds. And now you will see it as we do, Mr. Aspen.”

“And why is that?” I asked.

“The shot I gave you, Mr. Aspen, will alter your DNA, making you, effectively, immortal. But it will also make you sterile. If you do not cure the virus, you will be doomed to live out the rest of your days alone, while the whole world withers and dies around you. You will be the last observer on a lifeless rock.”

“If you can do this—why can’t you inoculate the whole human race?”

“You haven’t thought this through. We can doom the dying to an unbearably long life. Nothing more. But without the ability to reproduce, all those years would only be kindling for despair. We have tried it, elsewhere. But eventually, they all kill one another off or take their own lives in despair. No. For your kind, without proper evolution into such a condition to permit reproduction, this gift is just a curse—a prolonged hospice stay masquerading as a gift.”

“Then why can’t you cure the plague? If you are so advanced.”

“I’m afraid, Mr. Aspen, the virus is particular to its host planet. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Nature builds its locks with unique keys. Only one with particularized knowledge of your world’s virology has the necessary body of knowledge and experiences. It is a puzzle for your kind alone to solve. A puzzle for you, Mr. Aspen. For you alone.”

“And if I fail?” I asked.

“Well, Mr. Aspen. You would not be alone. I have visited countless worlds, but I have never encountered another who successfully overcame the virus. To my knowledge, we are the only species who has ever survived, in all of the universe, in all of known time.”

My heart rate pulsed in my ears. I was having difficulty breathing. I felt as if the room was closing in around me.

“All of mankind is going to perish,” I yelled. “I will never be able to find a cure. I’ll never discover a vaccine.”

“Oh, Mr. Aspen. Do not lose heart. After all, we have all the time in the world.”

And then her eyes blinked closed. She was nothing more than a robotic vessel providing a host from another world the means to communicate. There was no way of knowing if and when she would return.

I was utterly alone.

And suddenly, the abundance of time seemed like a prison, rather than the liberation I had once dreamt it would be.

The echo of her last words haunted me, “We have all the time in the world.”