"Ahem? Am I interrupting anything?" said a voice.

We both turned to look and see who the idiot who had interrupted. Well, the word "idiot" is a dead giveaway of who it was. None other than Larry himself. I stood up and wiped the grass and dirt off my jeans. Then I grabbed Lilia's hands and helped her stand up.

"What are you doing?" Larry said.

I crossed my arms and stared at the dunce in front of us. "We were making origami."

"Really? Where's the paper? Because what I saw was passionate making-out."

"LARRY!"

"Well, that's what I saw. It's not my fault that you're so mushy like everyone else who's unfortunate enough to be paired off."

That really got Lilia mad. "What did you say?"

"Um…um…I meant, like everyone else who's stupid enough to be…"

"What was that?" she said.

"Um…um…there's a word for it, but I can't quite place it."

Lilia walked up to Larry, meeting him with a glare. "The word is 'smart.'"

"Um, okay? Like everyone else who's smart enough to be paired off. There, did I say it right?"

"Well, I'd say you passed the test of Not Getting Killed by Best Friend's Girlfriend," I said.

"I didn't even know you could pass."

"All right, Larry, what's the punch line?"

"Punch line? I didn't come to tell jokes. I'm here on important and serious business."

"Okay, then. Tell me."

He fidgeted. "Um, it's also highly classified information which can be only viewed by certain people."

Oh. I looked at Lilia. "Well, uh, I gotta go. You know, duty calls."

She nodded. "Sure I get it." She put her arms around my neck and kissed me. "I'll see you later?"

"Sure." I kissed he back. "Love you."

"Love you, too. Bye." She turned around and went into her house.

"Well," I said to Larry. "What's this highly classified matter that no one can know about?"

"Shh!" He looked around us. Then he whispered to me," Not here. Someone could be watching. Let's go down to the lab."

Oh. When Larry tells you that he wants to say something to you in the lab, it's because it is important. And really secret. Confidential.

I followed him back to the Palace. We slipped through the secret entrance and down to the Secret Lab. There were a few government guys and scientists working. They were all running around like crazy like they'd discovered something fascinating.

"What's with everyone?" I said.

"Well, that's I wanted to talk to you about," Larry said.

"What is it?"

I followed him to the office room, which was only accessible by an electronic lock a thick, steel door. Inside, there were normal items found in any office.

"Sit down," he said to me.

Okay, now I was getting scared. When someone tells you so sit down, it's usually going to be shocking news and you'll be likely to faint. And shocking news is usually bad news. The only good news I could imagine that he had is that all of our enemies had been defeated. But I knew that was highly unlikely.

"We've made an astounding discovery. It's the discovery to end all discoveries. It's the discovery of the entire millennium. Of the whole history of the world. It will alter history and change the world in dozens of ways."

"Well, what is it?" I said, now getting anxious.

He looked around again to see if anybody was watching. Then he leaned closer, "We've found a cure for cancer."

I cannot possibly describe in words, in speaking, or even in poetry how I felt in that moment. Just try to imagine what would happen if a doctor or scientist told you that there was a cure for cancer. Or if you saw it on the news.

How would you feel? I know it's hard to imagine such a feeling, but just try to imagine it, and you'll understand why it's so hard to tell you how I reacted at that moment. It's just impossible. It's literally impossible for me to say here and now how I felt at that moment.

All I could say was, "WOW!"

He smiled. "That's right. We've done it. We've finally done it. We made the impossible."

"What…what exactly is it?"

"Well, it, uh, it doesn't really consist of just one plant or just one chemical. It's made up of several chemicals and plants and some artificial additives."

He stood up and started pacing. "Those are actually meant to destroy the tumors. Now, with things like leukemia where there's no specific tumor, we had to do some GMO. You know, Genetic Modified Organism."

That kind of hit me. I've always been against GMO. Larry could tell that. So he said, "Not on humans, more like on the genetic make-up of the plants. You see, we're trying to see if we can do without GMO."

"But it's pretty much impossible, right?" I said.

"It's pretty much impossible, and why wait five more years and thirty-eight million deaths? I mean, cancer causes too much suffering and it's not worth waiting."

I nodded. "True, very true."

"Besides we have a little of the stuff. Do you know how much we have right now?"

I started thinking on that. "Hmm. Two milligrams?"

"One gallon."

"One gallon?! That's it? Why so little?"

"Well, it's not that the plant is rare. And it's not that the plant grows only in Amarkia."

"Well then, why? Why so little?"

He was about to say something, but he looked at me sternly. "Hey! When scientists first made the atomic bomb, they didn't have a huge arsenal the next day. Even though we'd invented it 13,000 years before they did. But you see my point?"

"Yeah, I get it."

"At the moment, we're just purchasing the seeds. As you know, plants take time to grown."

"Oh, yeah. I know that."

"Yeah, and with the amount of seeds we have we could have for about 10 million people. So if the entire population of Amarkia were to have cancer, half of them could be cured."

"Really? Wow."

"But, like I said, we're still in the making process. We don't have nearly enough. But with time and effort, we could. And this is the one that stops tumors from growing, or stops the spread of them. The one that actually destroys tumors is the one that requires GMO."

I stood up. "How long do you think you'll take in making enough?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. But I do know one thing. This is not something that I think we should let the world know about right away."

I quickly agreed with him. "Yeah, definitely not! I mean, think about it. The pharmaceutical companies will lose a lot of money. They're not going to be happy about it."

"And, and it's not just that. It's going to be chaos. It's going to turn into a question of who gets it first. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah."

"And then people will say, 'Okay, let's horde the plants and not give them to anyone.'" That was sure to happen. "And that's why we've spent $50 million in acquiring as many of those seeds as possible from all parts of the world."

"Fifty-million? Wow!"

"Yeah, and once we get them, we lock them up in a secret facility which we have near Sky City." (Check the map.) "It's not underground or anything, but it's in a fairly isolated region, and we have our best system of guards there and metal boxes to store them in."

He stood up and started showing me several government documents in. "Now, the facility has its own research hospital and that's where we're planning to make more production of the stuff."

I started paging through the whole thing. "Um, how long did it take to make the gallon of medicine you have now?"

"Uh, about three days."

Another surprise! "Just three days?! I thought it'd taken weeks or months."

He laughed. "No, just three days. Now, I don't think you want to know how long it took to plant the, well, plant, because if I tell you how long it took, you're going to flip."

I knew Larry had said some shocking things to me which nearly made me get a heart-attack before, but this was something I had to know. I mean, this wasn't exactly the best secret in the world to keep. "Go ahead, tell me."

He looked very uncomfortable. "Um…well…basically, ever since cancer was identified."

"WHAT?! You mean, since ancient times?!" I might add here that cancer was first identified as early as 2500 years before our common era. In ancient Egypt.

I started feeling dizzy and fell back on the chair. "Water, give me water. I need water!"

Larry ran to the fountain and filled a cup with cool water. Then he brought it to me and said, "Come on, man, calm down."

I drank the water and said, "You mean…it takes 3,000 years for the plants to grow?"

"What? No, no! You misunderstood me. I mean, that's long we took I research and investigation. That's what I meant. The words didn't come out right. It's just that I'm too excited."

"Oh." Phew. That was a relief.

"We actually spent $2 trillion on all that."

I spit the water. "Two trillion dollars?!"

"Uh, not all at once, obviously. It's over the whole period of time we were researching the plant that could make this medicine. That's why we've had to raise taxes these past thousand years or so."

"Wow. That's a lot of money, even for a good cause."

He nodded. "Yeah, even for a good cause."

"How does it work, exactly?"

"What does?"

"The medicine? The one that stops the spread of tumors."

"Oh. Well, it sort of infiltrates itself into the tumors or the cancerous cells, and it reaches deep into the nucleus of the cells. Right into the genes. And it sort of neutralizes it. It repairs it or corrects the genetic malfunction that caused the cells to become cancerous."

"Oh. Sort of like an inside repair job?"

He nodded. "Inside repair job, or if it can't correct it, it just kills the cancerous cells."

"Oh, I see."

"Yeah, and the GMO is supposed to be designed to be able to specially target the cancerous cells which we call tumors. That's what it is for. To kill only the bad cells. It's not like chemotherapy, which kills friend and foe."

"Yeah, besides chemotherapy has unpleasant side effects. Loss of hair, nausea, vomiting…"

"Yeah, and we're working on so that we'll have no side effects at all."

He closed the files of documents and put them back in the safe box. "With what we have now, that is the one gallon, we could cure two people."

I still had a motherlode of questions, obviously. "And, um, is that a universal rule?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, does the amount of medicine required have to do with factors like age, gender, weight, body type, cancer type, and stage of the cancer?"

"Oh, yes, definitely."

"So it's not like, one gallon for every two people no matter what?"

He shook his head. "No, actually we need to make corrections on that. Right now, we can't rescue those with highly advanced cancer. So for the moment, if you have advanced cancer, you're pretty much dead and there's no point in you getting the medicine. If you have large tumors all over your body, which is basically what advanced cancer is. But, we're working on that."

"So you think that later, even those people will be able to be cured or treated?"

"We're hoping, yes. But it is highly likely we will have that ability. But for now, it's not possible."

I nodded. I had to sit down. It was hard for me to wrap my head around. I shook my head and smiled. "Wow, this is a huge development."

Larry nodded. "A historic development. We could end so much suffering with this. So many lives and families wouldn't be ruined."

"Yeah."

There was a knock on the door. "What is it?" Larry yelled.

"We're ready to start, sir," said the voice.

Larry stood up. "Here. I'll show you how we do it."

I followed him out the office back to the lab.