“You’ll find a cure,” Spartacus predicted. “With all that medical and scientific equipment Blade and Geranimo brought back from Kalispell, and the help you’re getting from Gremlin, you should find a cure real soon.”
“Those four hardbound notebooks Yama found at the Citadel are proving to be of more help than the scientific instruments,” Plato noted.
He had sent Yama, one of the Warriors from Beta Triad, on a spying mission to the Cheyenne Citadel. While there, Yama had managed to steal four notebooks belonging to the Doktor. He’d also rescued one of the Doktor’s genetically engineered creations, Lynx, from certain death. Before they had fled the Citadel, Yama and Lynx had destroyed the Doktor’s headquarters.
“What did you find in those notebooks?” Spartacus asked.
“Much of it is over our heads,” Plato replied, “but we are still in the process of examining them. They’re written in the Doktor’s own longhand, and he doesn’t have the most legible writing in the world. A lot of the contents concern highly technical medical and scientific experiments and data.”
“Are the rumors I hear true?” Spartacus inquired. “About the Doktor being so old?”
Plato’s brow furrowed and he scratched his neck. “If the dates in the notebooks are correct,” he said slowly, “then the Doktor is one hundred and twenty-seven years old.”
“Is it possible? How could he be that old? He would have been alive before World War Three started.”
“The Elders have researched the matter thoroughly,” Plato detailed.
“We’ve consulted pertinent books in the library.” One of the concrete blocks was devoted entirely to housing the library Kurt Carpenter had amassed for his followers, hundreds of thousands of books on every conceivable subject. “We discovered references to a number of individuals who lived beyond the century mark before World War Three. True, they were the exception rather than the rule. But the records conclusively prove that living to a hundred, or beyond, is possible. The Doktor seems to have devoted considerable energy and his brilliant mind to discovering a viable way of achieving that goal. Apparently, before the war, some scientists had discovered biochemical causes for aging. They had identified two substances in particular, oxyradicals and peroxide, as crucial to the aging process. These substances are formed from oxygen. They’re emitted by the red blood cells in the body as the cells carry oxygen through our system.
Nature requires us to use oxygen for energy, but it turns against us in our later years. When we’re young and healthy, like you, the body is able to resist the onslaught of the oxyradicals and the peroxide. But when we’re older, the oxyradicals and peroxide gain the upper hand by causing the destruction of our red blood cells. Are you following me on this?”
“Uhhhh, not really,” Spartacus confessed.
“Well, suffice it to say the Doktor hit upon a technique to inhibit the development of the oxyradicals and the peroxide, thereby drastically reducing the rate of which he aged.”
“What kind of technique?” Spartacus asked, his curiosity aroused.
“Transfusions,” Plato answered, “in conjunction with a unique chemical he synthesized.”
“Transfusions?” Spartacus repeated. “Isn’t that where you take the blood from one person and give it to another?”
“Precisely. And in the Doktor’s case, he uses the blood of infants.”
Spartacus grimaced in revulsion. “Babies? You mean he uses blood from babies?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Plato confirmed. “His notebooks indicate he has used the blood of thousands of babies over the decades.”
“Dear Spirit! Why?”
“By having regular transfusions, and using only the blood from healthy, compatible infants, the Doktor is able to prevent the oxyradicals and peroxide from increasing in his own system and triggering the aging process. The longer he lives, the more frequently he must have the transfusions. The notebooks reveal he starts to age if he neglects the transfusions, although the process is partially reversible if caught in time.”
Plato paused. “So, to answer your earlier questions, yes, I do believe it is possible for the Doktor to be one hundred and twenty-seven years old.”
Spartacus patted the hilt of his broadsword. “I wish I was with Blade and the others!” he declared. “I’d like to find this Doktor on the business end of my sword.”
“The use of the infants is not the only horror we’ve discovered,” Plato commented.
“There’s more?”
“We’re working on one notebook in particular, striving to decipher the writing,” Plato said. “But if the information we’ve found so far holds up, there is a definite link between the Doktor and the mutates. Probably the green clouds as well.”
The mutates were pus-covered, perpetually ravenous mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. They infested the countryside, stalking and slaying any living thing they encountered. No one knew what caused their condition, nor did anyone know the origin of the green chemical clouds.
The clouds appeared out of nowhere, drifting over the landscape, and any person unfortunate enough to be covered by a cloud, to be caught by its eerie, opaque fog, was never seen again.
“Is there anything the Doktor isn’t involved with?” Spartacus asked.
“We’ll know more after we have finished analyzing the four notebooks,” Plato said. “We’ve gleaned considerable knowledge concerning the Doktor’s research and work with genetics. In the realm of genetic engineering, he’s phenomenal. Before World War Three, scientists were able to produce babies from a test-tube. They even designated them test-tube babies, and would implant them in a female’s womb—”
“Really?” Spartacus marveled.
“Really. The Doktor has refined their technique.
He is capable of tampering with a human embryo in a test-tube, of somehow altering the genetic code and creating mutants like Lynx and Gremlin, and the monstrosities in the Doktor’s own Genetic Research Division.” Plato shook his head. “If the Doktor weren’t so unspeakably wicked, I could readily admire the man and his sensational accomplishments.’’
“No one should be allowed to fiddle with nature,” Spartacus opined.
“The Spirit designed us a certain way, and we should leave well enough alone.”
“We in the Family may believe that,” Plato stated, “but the Doktor obviously doesn’t, nor did many in the scientific community before the war. Some of them would perform any type of research for money. Money talked.”
“Talked?” Spartacus appeared puzzled. “I thought their money was made from paper and metal?”
“Just a quaint colloquialism from prewar times,” Plato explained. “A figure of speech, they called it.”
“Women have figures,” Spartacus retorted playfully. “Speech has style.”
“Why, Spartacus!” Plato said, genuinely impressed. “Such eloquence! I’d hardly expect it from you.”
“I guess some of my schoolteachers must have rubbed off on me.”
Spartacus grinned. “At least, one of my teachers.”
Seven of the Family Elders shared in the responsibility of training the young children, each Elder instructing in areas in which he or she enjoyed expertise. Plato was one of those teachers.
“I wonder what it was like,” Spartacus continued thoughtfully.
“What what was like?” Plato asked.
“Living in a world where they used money. From what I’ve read, money was responsible for a lot of greed and sorrow and even war.’’