Perpetual Society

Book One: Dawn of the Perpetual Society

Arriving within minutes of a bloody, swift, and
puzzling massacre of four hundred South Korean soldiers in 1951 Korea, a U.S.
Army platoon is mystified with finding only thirty-eight Chinese soldiers'
uniforms filled with gray ash.  There is
no other sign of the enemy, alive, wounded, or dead.  Ordered to follow the trail of the fleeing
enemy, the platoon makes its way to Manchuria and stumbles upon an underground
laboratory where they discover two dozen comatose Chinese soldiers who appear
near death but survive by intravenous injections from vessels of abnormal
blood.  When a few are accidently reawakened,
these Chinese soldiers prove to have superhuman strength and mobility. 

After a successful but bloody confrontation with
the awakened Chinese soldiers, Headquarters orders the platoon to destroy all
but two of these soldiers and seize as much of the mysterious blood as possible.
 With their two captives secured and
blood stored, the platoon boards a C119 Flying Boxcar that transports them to a
secret underground base on U.S. soil where two scientists await them.  The scientists seek to uncover the mystery of
the Chinese soldiers' extraordinary characteristics and the substance in the
blood that may be behind it.  Experimentations prove that a virus in the
blood has caused a biological change in the Chinese soldiers, turning them in an
aberrant species of human.  More
importantly, they find that the virus also has a strange ability to heal and
induce longevity.

With these findings, the Headquarters halts
further experiments and orders the platoon to evacuate the secret facility.  However, upon departure, a medic pilfers a
small amount of viral blood with the intent of cultivating it.  After his discharge from the Army, the medic reunites
his former platoon members to establish the Perpetual Society, a clandestine
organization that, for profit, can stop the aging process, heal the terminally
ill, and assure immortality with this confidential treatment.

 

Book Two: Dead of Winter

A chance
encounter introduces a young man to a nocturnal, sheltered world of
extraordinary looking individuals once diagnosed as terminally ill but now
cured.  With his own wife comatose and on
life support, the young man learns that this cure has the capacity to restore
her to life.  He now struggles with the
decision of ending her life by removing her from life support or providing her
with eternal life, albeit in a world apart from the one she once knew, and
doing so without her knowledge or consent.


Encouraged
by his extended family to come to a decision regarding when and if to remove
his wife from life support, the young man retreats to a secluded summer
mountain resort closed for the long winter.
In a nearby cabin are wards of a mysterious doctor.  The young man soon learns that these wards,
men, women, and children have undergone a miraculous but guarded cure, rescuing
them from terminal illnesses.  However,
the cure comes with astonishing and irreversible consequences.  His wards must live a life of seclusion,
protected from the deadly rays of the sun.
Rising only at night and retiring before dawn, they are dependent on a
recurrent transfusion of blood as their sole nourishment. 

As the young
man develops a personal relationship with one of the wards, an exotically
beautiful young woman, he comes to understand and appreciate her condition and
that of the others, as strange as it is.
Offered this cure, the young man begins the restoration of his wife's
health but, as the process nears completion, doubts seep in.  Would his wife accept the life he has chosen
for her?  It would be a life separated
from family and friends, barred from interacting with the world she once
cherished.  In the end, he makes a heart
wrenching decision.