Marvin was ushered through the tightly guarded military base. His heart was pounding in his chest with anxiety and anticipation.
There were only two guards walking with him through the brightly lit hallways, but each step he took was trailed by sentry guns mounted every 3 meters on both sides of the hallway.
Each action he made was recorded and tracked by the AI controlling the cameras and other tools in the surveillance system. His posture, face, and habits were being constantly analyzed to ensure he was who he claimed to be.
Every breath he exhaled was collected and analyzed for information about the current state of his body. Unfortunately, the only oddity they will find in his breath is the cancer working its way through his lungs.
When they reached the end of the hallway, he had to go through another series of security checks before the sealed doors were opened for him to pass through.
They took his blood, scanned his eyes, and scanned his fingerprint. It was after they were sure that he hadn't been replaced somehow during the recent 100 meters that they allowed him to continue.
On the other side of the door were two different guards. The ones that were following him before stayed back. They didn't cross the door. It was the two new guards' job to accompany for the next 100 meters of this new hallway.
If he hasn't reached his destination by the end of this short hallway, he would have to go through another security check and replace his guards.
The security was tight indeed. He has been to see the president in his seat of power, yet he hadn't encountered this much security.
Nothing was being left to chance. Not that he minded.
He is a rich and powerful man. People bend over themselves to ingratiate themselves to him and do whatever he wants. But this time, he is desperate.
It is a kind of desperation that only death can bring.
No matter how powerful or how rich someone is, death has a way to humble them. As a great man once said, "God made all men; Colt made them equal."
Death makes everyone equal. Or at least, it used to do.
Death has made him humble and desperate enough to be treated like a criminal whose every step has to be watched. But once he reaches his destination, the grip of death will lose its hold on him. At least for another 20 years.
So he was right to be anxious and excited. This is, after all, the only chance he has to change his fate and cheat death. If it fails, he will die; his massive wealth will become useless to him, and his great, notorious name will become history.
Eventually he reached his destination. He opened one final sealed door and came face to face with the object of his desire.
It was the object that the military base was built to protect. It is probably the most valuable object in the world.
It was a rock. To be exact, it was a large black rock with a material that is volcanic in nature.
It was an unassuming rock that he would have ignored if he had seen it somewhere else. This one was largely ignored for most of human history too. That was until someone realized that the rock couldn't be lifted.
The rock looks like the tip of a mountain. But that is all there is to it. It doesn't have a much larger part entrenched within the earth.
According to every means of observation known to man, the rock is just five meters tall and should weigh less than one ton.
There hasn't been an accurate measurement for its weight and density because the rock can't be lifted off the ground, and no tool can scratch it.
So it is a rock that breaks several rules of physics just by existing. It was until later that they found that it also has healing properties.
Apparently, anyone who touches it will experience varying degrees of healing and an increase to their life span.
It is clearly a very valuable rock. Wars were fought for it. Nations fell, and many more went bankrupt trying to gain control of it. Many humans died just for a rock with a meager chance of increasing one's lifespan.
The fact that the rock couldn't be moved complicated matters. It couldn't be hidden, so anyone in control of it had to stand their ground while the whole world attempted to destroy them.
Eventually, the world's most secure military base was built around it. Now, only the richest and the most powerful people like him can access it.
He began to approach the rock with trepidation.
He thought to himself, "I don't want a life span. Just heal me and make my body whole."
He paid a flat sum of 1 billion dollars to gain access to this rock. He doesn't want to live forever yet. All he wants is a cure for his stage 4 cancer. If he can get that, he will be able to live longer and work towards gaining access to the rock in the future for lifespan.
Soon he reached the rock.
His heart had almost jumped out of his chest at this point. He felt like swooning and fainting. But he held on and stretched his hand to touch the rock.
Again he prayed silently, "Just heal me. It is the least you can do. It is the least you're capable of."
His hand touched the rock. Then the rock disappeared.
It was an understatement to say he was shocked. He couldn't even begin to fathom what had gone wrong. All he knew was that his 1 billion dollars was likely gone. It hurt more than the fact that without healing, his cancer would kill him.
He began to panic. It didn't help that the military base had raised the alarms. A loud siren was blaring somewhere, and the guns mounted on the walls of the sealed room had begun moving and were pointing at him.
All of this was too much for him to bear. He clutched his chest and fainted.
His eyes were open and filled with anger and bitterness as he died. He was angry that his mostly hard earned money would go to waste and he was bitter that It won't be the cancer that he came to cure that will kill him.
Soon after, it became popular information that at age 43,the rich and powerful Marvin Foster stole something of great importance and was killed by a heart attack in the process.