With the help of Henry's perpetually healthy donated kidney, he lived to the astoundingly old age of 123 - even though by all accounts, he didn't look a day over 100 - and was heralded as the world's oldest living man. Of course, he and his perpetually-youthful looking donor, Henry Morgan, knew better. But they also knew that they could/should never reveal that truth to the world. And when his other organs began to fail, the doctors had no explanation for the pristine condition of his kidney, donated to him over 110 years earlier. He died in his sleep after having made provisions for the kidney to be donated.

The grateful recipient, also one of the last persons to have a transplant in the usual manner, was a 32-year-old mother of two from Zimbabwe. She had journeyed to New York in order to take advantage of the much-needed treatment. Thankfully, sweeping advances in regenerative medicine, the human body's ability to heal and restore the normal function of damaged tissues and organs, had fast rendered the usual transplant method obsolete.

His memorial service, attended by thousands had not only been broadcast worldwide but to the astronauts in the ISS and to the internationally-occupied outposts on both Mars and the Moon. Henry wondered if these new advances in medicine would allow mortals to manufacture longer life spans for themselves, rendering Adam, him, and a handful of other "regular" Immortals obsolete, as well? But, Henry wondered, would someone like Adam be willing to share their heretofore less-trodden path of a long life? Henry was certain that he, himself, would welcome others to his "side" of life especially if it meant more time having friends and loved ones around. He recalled something that his dearly-departed son, Abraham, had told him once; something about evolving.

"We'll just have to learn to evolve, Adam," he had recently told the older Immortal, who had shaken off his locked-in syndrome only 50 years earlier. For the first time in his long life, Henry looked forward to evolving in this new future.

Notes:

Added as a promise to Ken H.

Information about stem cells and Regenerative Medicine found on anova website.