Free Eternal Life Inc. by James Burkard

head. “So much cynicism in one so young.”
    “Come on, Roger, let’s talk straight for once. Five years ago, you were just another Hollywood hustler, a wheeler-dealer with a knack for bringing money, talent and know-how together to produce second-rate box office successes. Then, you ran into Doc…I have to give you credit, you recognized a winner when no one else did. You saw that this could put you into the big leagues. The only problem was they played hardball up there. I don’t think you realized just how hard.”
    Roger looked down at him with a smile like a razor slash. “I was raised playing hardball,” he growled. “I don’t think you or they realized just how hard the game can be played.”
    For an instant, Harry seemed to look straight through Roger’s sagging, dissipated features to a younger, harder Roger, all sharp angles and harsh planes. There was the smell of spilled blood and sudden violence in the air, and Roger’s tired, bloodshot eyes were cold and clear and without mercy. Roger chuckled and shook his head. “Babes in the woods, Harry, you’re all nothing but babes in the woods.” And once again he was the overweight, self-indulgent CEO of Eternal Life.
    Harry felt as if he’d just stepped off the end of the continental shelf into very deep water. Stuff like this was happening to him more and more frequently lately. Reality was becoming a very tenuous affair. He remembered Roger’s face turning into the snout of one of those things that had chased him down the resurrection trail. How real was that? How real was any of that? Heshifted uncomfortably in the bed and felt the welts on his back rasp painfully against the sheets. At any rate, those were real enough. So where did that leave him?
    Roger took out his gold cigarette case and lighter. He slid out a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep drag. He tilted his head and blew a couple of perfect smoke rings at the ceiling. “When Jericho came to me with his invention, I knew he had something so revolutionary that it was going to shake the social structure to its foundations,” he said. “I also knew that a lot of very rich, powerful people had a very big stake in maintaining the status quo that kept them rich and powerful. They didn’t want anyone rocking the boat. They weren’t necessarily against the technology; they just wanted to control it themselves. They saw me and my company as upstarts, loose cannons and they wanted us out of the picture. Only, I wasn’t about to leave. This was my ticket to ride, and I intended to ride it all the way to the top.”
    Roger began pacing back and forth as he talked and smoked. “I knew I had a war on my hands, not the shooting kind, but it could have come to that. If it did, I knew they had me outgunned. So instead, I turned it into my kind of war, a media war, a public opinion war, a war for hearts and minds. And I won it!” he said and slammed his fist into the palm of his hand.
    “I used every trick in the book, every New Hollywood connection. I twisted arms, bribed, blackmailed, and called in every marker I had. I knew I could sell Eternal Life to the public. Hell, hadn’t I sold them some of the biggest turkeys New Hollywood ever made? I’d sell Eternal Life the same way!”
    “But no matter how good you were, you couldn’t have done it without me,” Harry said with undisguised self-contempt. “The perfect poster-boy front man, someone with New Hollywood star quality to lead the campaign, someone people would recognize and trust, someone they could identify with, someone who would reassure them, and someone who would be willing to die for them again and again, just to show them that, yes, thisworked, there’s nothing to be afraid of, just trust me and we’ll all have ETERNAL LIFE! You needed someone like good ol’ Harry Neuman, that honest, clean-cut hero of a dozen blockbusters.”
    Harry shook his head wearily. “But most of all, you wanted me because you knew that I couldn’t