Book Description

What it takes to save the world from extinction. 200 years from now, the world, in the grip of global warming, is eerily like ours, only much worse. The ultra-rich, a.k.a. the One Percenters, live in protected areas while the rest of humanity faces pollution, plagues and early death. The One Percenters are the only ones who can afford all the advances of technology, in particular the exclusive Age Prevention Program (APP) that lets them live their whole life span looking "forever young" till the day they drop dead. Three friends struggling for survival, Lizzie, a young California golf champion, Jamie, an investigative journalist for the World and US Post and Alice, a lovely Swiss nurse, try to enter the APP. Meanwhile Lizzie's uncle, a determined and ruthless 99 Percenter retired from the military, lurks around, hell-bent on carving a place for himself in the APP. Only two options are open to escape extinction: one, fly to another planet a thousand light years away, pristine and green much like Earth before industrialization - but the so-called “Immortality Trip” is reserved to One Percenters; the other, retreat to Antarctica, the last virgin continent - but it is in the hands of Gary Trude XIII, a Hitlerian-style autocrat. Can Lizzie, Jamie and Alice escape from Gary Trude and join the Immortality Trip? NOTE TO THE READER: This book follows the model of serialized novels and is digitally published in four separate parts, each self-standing. It is however preferable to read them in order and the present book is an omnibus edition that includes all four parts. PART ONE, "Gateway to Forever", explores the costly APP and what it means to belong to it...or remain outside. PART TWO, "The Immortality Trip"is the name given to the project to transport a contingent of One Percenters to the nearest liveable exoplanet and settle it. Will Jamie, Lizzie and Alice be able to board that trip?