EPILOGUE I often wondered why authors included epilogues at the end of their books. I know that at one time I had a tendency to ignore them! After all, the story, to all intents and purposes is finished then suddenly you discover and extra page or two tacked onto the end! At a somewhat later period, I eventually realized that the epilogue was there because the author has something left to say, something that perhaps would not fit in with the main body of the book. This epilogue is no exception. There are one or two points that did not fit sequentially with the remainder of the work, yet, since they tend to raise some important points for consideration at a later date, they deserve at least an honorable mention! Chronologically the book itself covers an awful long period of time. Several billions of years in fact, and although during this journey we encountered some unusual beings and situations, covering this length of time generally tends to make the work read just a little choppy! I hope I avoided this, but if I did not, then I can only plead that I felt it was necessary to propound the immortality precept against the full backdrop of our species and their forebears. When you are contemplating immortality, you must needs take the larger view! Starting with a visit from an extra terrestrial space vehicle on a seeding project we met a couple of friendly bacteria before skipping a couple of billion years of evolution. It is difficult to believe that any long term program such as our seeding program would have been left to its own devices for this length of time, so one imagines that at least several other space vehicles visited the planet for one reason or another during this period. After the big jump, we took up the threads of our story at a period when the prehistoric world was not only choc-a-bloc with both flora and fauna, but it had also developed a dominant human species - Homo Neanderthals! Neanderthal man (or woman) was actually the end result of a dozen or more early hominid types - Ramapithecus, Australeopithecus, Homo Erectus, and probably a dozen others such as Java Man, Peking Man and so on. Homo Neanderthal was only the final developmental stage before Cro-Magnon Man. Cro-Magnon is Homo Sapiens . . . Us! Somewhere between the forced evolution from Neanderthal into Cro-Magnon and the emergence of the ancient Egyptian and surrounding civilizations, someone discovered the secret of immortality. By accident, I think they tumbled across some odd technique that was originally used by the biological engineers who designed us. A one in million raised to the umpteenth power payoff! I don't think we were intended to discover this technique it's something like winning the national lotto with bigger odds. I think it was an accident. But, it doesn't matter! We have the technique and although I am sure that many of the worlds governments would like to sequester it for their own uses, I believe it's too late! What am I leading up to? Well, the book implies that the immortality process was developed a very long time ago. Maybe as long as forty thousand or so years back along the time stream. So, if the technique has been available for that long, where are all the immortals? Why do we not have not incontrovertible proof of their existence? Why have they seldom made their presence know to the rest of us, poor mortal creatures that we are? The answer is simple. We do not know were the immortals are because they do not wish us to know! We have no direct knowledge of them for the simple reason that they do not wish to have their presence made public and the reason for this is that they are a long, long way from being stupid! In our society, an admission of immortality would result in either legal or illegal seizure of the person who made the admission, they would then be subject to anything from the most brutal interrogation, brainwashing, torture and even dissection in order to extract the secret of immortality from him or her! Think about that one for a moment! The chances of actually locating an immortal? Practically zero. About the only way a mortal person will ever interact directly and knowingly with an immortal is if the immortal so wishes. Do I believe in my own story? Darned right I do! I believe that there are those amongst us who have attained immortality and that they still have an occasional need to re-assert their own humanity. This is about all we have to offer them! Pauweils and Bergier wrote of a meeting with St. Germain. There is no doubt in my mind that St. Germain wished it so. Maybe he was just touching bases. Perhaps, after the centuries, he felt that whatever remained of his own humanity was threatened and he needed human contact with someone who was aware of what he was just for the re assurance that he was still human! There are so many things we don't yet know! So much speculation, deduction and second guessing! That's were we stand on the matter, but, since we are dealing with people who were, or who may still be human, we can do some pretty accurate deducting and some excellent second guessing! After all, we are the originals! All we have to do is to extrapolate from that base and chances are we'll be pretty close to the bulls-eye! One thing to bear in mind. Don't look for some fantastic organization of immortals waiting for you to apply for membership. Such an organization does not exist, at least in that form! No Great White Brotherhood, no Illuminati! Just scattered individuals who, while they posses the greatest secret in the world, may not be the worlds happiest people! You'll probably never know what they have to contend with until you become one of them!