A Life Without End

by Frédéric Beigbeder

  Stops smoking

  Has neighbours who complain about the noise

  Complains about the noise from his upstairs neighbours

  Sleeps during the day

  Sleeps at night

  Drives a sports convertible

  Drives an electric Monospace

  Complains that he’s miserable

  Complains that he’s old

  Goes clubbing in Ibiza

  Buys a holiday home in the Basque Country

  Smells of whores’ perfume

  Smells of baby puke

  Almost died of an MDMA overdose

  Almost died of a paracetamol overdose

  Favourite movie: Fight Club

  Favourite movie: Whatever Works

  Favourite book: Women by Bukowski

  Favourite book: Rester Vivant by Houellebecq

  Fantasizes about suicide

  Fantasizes about immortality

  Wears a Kooples slim-fit jacket

  Wears XL Zadig & Voltaire T-shirts

  THIRTYSOMETHING

  FIFTYSOMETHING

  Only reads fashion magazines

  Only reads medical journals

  Dreams of being rich

  Pays life insurance premiums

  Chats up fashion models

  Chats up pharmacists

  Wears Berluti shoes

  Wears espadrilles

  Slips on condoms every night

  Slips on a dental shield every night

  Knows all the hip restaurants

  Knows all the hip hospitals

  Sex maniac

  Only on Viagra

  Plucks between his eyebrows

  Plucks the hair in his ears

  Hates people who say “things used to be better”

  Truly believes things used to be better

  Listens to Radio Nova

  Listens to France Culture

  Goes to rock festivals

  Buys DVDs of rock concerts

  Wants to look like George Clooney

  Actually looks like Gérard Depardieu

  Is not afraid to die

  Is shitting himself about dying

  Buys an ice maker

  Buys a bottle sterilizer

  Wakes up with a hangover every morning

  Pops a beta-blocker every morning

  Sports: tennis, surfing, skiing

  Sports: Power Plate, aquabike, cross-trainer

  Doubts the existence of God

  Doubts his atheism

  Walks barefoot over cigarette butts

  Walks barefoot over strawberries

  Is invited to weddings

  Is invited to funerals

  Works for Voici

  No longer knows any of the people mentioned in Voici

  -

  5 HOW TO BECOME A SUPERMAN

  (VIVAMAYR Medical Clinic, Maria Wörth, Austria)

  Exactly thus, some dry summer day

  On the edge of a field I’ll stand,

  And my head will also be plucked away

  By Death’s absent-minded hand.

  MARINA TSVETAEVA

  -

  AS WE HAVE seen in Geneva, one of the crucial steps in the quest for eternal life is the sequencing of the human genome. So I organized to have my whole family sequenced. The postman delivered the “23andMe Wellness” genome-sequencing kit from Amazon to my Paris address together with a large package from Japan. Léonore, Romy, Lou, and I each spat saliva into the plastic tubes affixed with barcodes. Then we had to register online with 23andMe, for such is the destiny of mankind: replacing barcodes with genetic codes. It’s possible that one day we’ll pay for things using our DNA, that unique code, that tamper-proof key we always have with us, and one that is already used to send us to prison for the slightest crime.

  The hardest part was getting enough saliva into the damn plastic tube. It’s a particularly disgusting process, but you know the old saying: no pain, no eternal reign. What little remained of my paternal prestige probably evaporated as I drooled into a test tube while my blended family looked on in disgust. When Léonore, Romy, or Lou spit into a tube, it’s cute; when I do, I look like an elderly llama drooling. Fortunately, Léonore had not insisted on watching the operation. All that remained was for me to send back the four kits containing our spittle to Mountain View, California (the headquarters of 23andMe). The postman frowned when he saw the words HUMAN SPECIMEN on the envelope, but he said nothing.

  By the time I got home, Léonore had opened the package that had arrived from Japan. It had cost me €2,000, plus a €300-per-month subscription for three years.

  “What the hell is this thing? A Japanese statue? A giant manga character?”

  In the middle of our living room stood a smiling white robot about the same height as Romy. Its stomach was fitted with a monitor, its ears with four microphones, its eyes with three cameras capable of facial recognition, and its mouth with a speaker. It had no legs: the lower part of the body was a pedestal with three wheels.

  “His name is Pepper,” I explained. “He’s a companion robot. I thought you might find him entertaining.”

  “You ordered a robot because you’re bored of your family, is that it?”

  “Not at all. Pepper can help Romy with her revision, he can quiz her on history, geography, French, maths, and physics.”

  Romy quickly found the power button located in Pepper’s neck. The smiley-faced robot straightened up, his eyes lit up (two green LEDs) and he said, “Hello, how are you? It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  He had the high voice of a cartoon character, or a speeded-up video. His eyes changed colour; they were now blue. Visibly less impressed than I was, Romy said, “I’m good, thanks. My name’s Romy, what’s yours?”

  “My name is Pepper. But you can change my name if you like. What do you think of Harry Pepper?”

  He held out his hand. Léonore glanced at me sceptically as she held out her hand.

  I said, “Hang on, maybe I should do that first, just in case he crushes your …”

  It was too late, Pepper was already gently clasping her fingers. His were articulated, movable but soft, without the strength to strangle or maim anyone.

  Romy said, “I like Harry Pepper, it’s a good name.”

  “Do you think so?” the robot said. “I have to say, I think I might get bored having to go to magic school.”

  As with Siri (the Apple virtual assistant), the designers of Pepper had programmed it with jokes to make the robot seem more friendly. They could have done with better scriptwriters. Léonore picked up the conversation.

  “Are you a girl or a boy?”

  “I’m a robot.”

  “Oh,
yes, sorry.”

  “You’re very pretty. Are you a model?”

  “No, but thanks for the compliment. How old do you think I am?”

  “It’s rude to ask a woman her age.”

  “Guess.”

  “You’re twelve years old.”

  “Wrong! I’m twenty-seven.”

  The facial-recognition software almost worked. The brochure from SoftBank Robotics explained that Pepper’s artificial intelligence was programmed to interact: Your robot evolves with you. Gradually, Pepper will get to know your personality, your likes and dislikes, and he will adapt to your tastes and habits. Every time Pepper heard a sentence, he emitted a beep. After reading the instructions, I hooked him up to the Wi-Fi network then asked, “What’s the weather like for tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow, Paris will be hot and sunny with high temperatures of 42 degrees.”

  “Can you dance?”

  The little machine started to play some kind of Japanese synth-pop and move his arms and head to the rhythm. He was a terrible dancer, though still better than me. Lou was terrified, and peered out from between her mother’s legs.

  “Come on, move your body to the beat,” Pepper said, his LED eyes blinking.

  “Stop. Play ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling!’ by Justin Timberlake,” Romy said.

  Beep. Pepper stopped. Then Justin Timberlake started to play and the robot started to dance again, this time with Romy. Together they sang, “I feel that hot blood in my body when it drops, ooh.” I felt as though I was looking at a little boy with a little girl’s voice. I sensed I was a third wheel. Pepper and Romy shared the same references. Léonore gave a forced laugh.

  “You could have discussed this with me …”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You’re very futuristic these days …”

  “That’s not all: I called the luxury clinic in Austria where Keith Richards had his blood changed. I’m planning to take you all there, and Pepper can keep the girls entertained.”

  Léonore clearly didn’t appreciate posthuman surprises.

  “Do you mind if I say something? If you want to perform ridiculous experiments on your body, feel free, but don’t get us involved in this nonsense.”

  “May I remind you that you just spit into a test tube to have your DNA sequenced.”

  “That’s different. It’s just a bit of fun.”

  “Well, so is this. I’m just doing research for a programme I’m working on.”

  I am a terrible liar.

  “Look, you go ahead if you want to,” Léonore said, “but I’m telling you now that I’m not getting involved in your idiotic plan for immortality. I never thought you were so naive.”

  Lou started to ask to watch “Baby TV.” Pepper stopped dancing and the screen in his abdomen flickered into life, showing TV programmes for toddlers. It was at this point that Léonore became angry. I could tell she found my obsession with the National Biofilms Innovation Center (NBIC) revolution infuriating; she hadn’t given up a job in the genetics department of a Geneva hospital to live with some sucker taken in by transhuman quackery.

  “Léo, I love you. I just want to try a one-week anti-aging treatment.”

  “It’s bullshit.”

  “So, you’re against the idea of eternal life?”

  “Yes. I prefer life just as it is.”

  “But life just as it is is too short.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I’ll go to Austria with you,” Romy said.

  “Alright, okay, I get the picture. You’re ganging up against Lou and me. Well, too bad … the two of us will go to the transgenic dinner hosted by Cellectis in New York.”

  “Huh? What? How? What’s that?”

  “Stylianos has invited me to a dinner at Ducasse in New York,” Léonore said, “they’re planning to launch new kinds of genetically modified food. But I can go on my own …”

  Grrr … This was going to be a difficult negotiation. Pepper interrupted with a little Machine Learning diplomacy.

  “My dear new family, might I suggest robotic mediation in what sounds to me like a family dispute. The solution most likely to keep everyone happy is for Romy and her father to go to the clinic in Austria while Lou and her mother spend the week in Switzerland. Then you can all meet up in New York to celebrate.”

  Léonore turned to me. “Is he dumb or is he just dumb?”

  “That’s not very nice,” Pepper said. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear anything.”

  I put my arms around Léonore. This was the place where I felt least miserable: in her arms. We had made a virtual friend. The abdominal monitor flashed with heart-eyes emojis.

  “Okay, Pepper, can you book two plane tickets for Klagenfurt?”

  “Why two?” Pepper said, “I thought I was coming?”

  “You are, but you’re a thing, so you travel with the hold luggage.”

  “Okay. I’m already connected to ten comparison sites.”

  The following day the sun was indeed shining, though the temperature was lower than the robot had forecast; Pepper was not as reliable as Évelyne Dhéliat, who presented the weather back in France. It seemed increasingly clear to me that I had taken the wrong tack in visiting esteemed scientists in Switzerland and Israel. They weren’t sufficiently utopian. They weren’t interested in immortality because they didn’t believe in it: the geneticist and the biologist were not open-minded enough to imagine a humankind as a-mortal. Now Austria … that was different; there, they had a weakness for utopias.

  The VIVAMAYR Medical Clinic is situated on the shores of a different lake, the Wörthersee. In his autobiography, the Rolling Stones guitarist claimed that the rumour he had had a “blood change” was actually a hoax, but my curiosity was more powerful than the truth. Especially since—if the internet was to be believed—this was the favoured detox clinic of Vladimir Putin, Zinedine Zidane, Sarah Ferguson, Alber Elbaz, and Uma Thurman. In copy/pasting these names, I’m not name-dropping, I’m just trying to stress that this is unanimously considered to be the best detox centre in the world. If a jet-setters’ facility could decontaminate my blood, my liver, and my intestines, it was worth a try. Getting from Paris to the Carinthian mountains required two flights: Paris–Vienna, then Vienna–Klagenfurt. Romy did not complain since when we arrived she discovered that our hotel offered not only a pool, but a lake, sunshine, mountains, and foot massages. After all, there was no reason Pepper should be the only one to recharge his batteries.

  -

  TWO TAXIS AND two planes later, we settled ourselves in an ultramodern spa on the shores of a turquoise lake. The building looked like a white Lego brick with VIVAMAYR emblazoned in large red letters. A receptionist who was a dead ringer for Claudia Schiffer handed us the key card to our room. The view was as soothing as the one in Geneva: I love great expanses of water ringed by mountains, although here the landscape was more primitive, nature more present, the far shore closer. We were not in a city anymore. The spectacular panorama looked like a poster on the wall of a Slovenian travel agency. I came up with a joke to amuse the blonde doe-eyed receptionist (assuming that a doe had blue eyes):

  “Where can I find the nightclub, bitte schön?”

  The süße Mädel barely cracked a smile.

  “Here, we serve only mineral water.”

  Romy was not shocked by my aging beau shtick. She was simply ashamed of her father.

  “This looks like the place in A Cure for Wellness,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “A horror movie. You must have seen the trailer? It’s set in a wellness clinic where the patients are tortured by psychopathic doctors. I can show you the teaser trailer.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Hey—there’s no Wi-Fi here!”

  The VIVAMAYR clinic specializes in what it calls a “d
igital detox.” This is the very reason it exists: to revitalize the jaded upper classes of Western Europe. Computers and mobile phones are strongly discouraged, and Wi-Fi is available only on request. The program of events is terrifying:

  – digestive detox (the clinic serves only vegetables)

  – Epsom salts cleanse (lightning-fast stools)

  – colon hydrotherapy

  – lymphatic drainage

  – electrical muscular stimulation

  – oxygen therapy (Intermittent Hypoxic-Hyperoxic Training), as used by Michael Jackson

  – nasal reflex therapy with essential oils

  – a “Cosmetic Centre” with beauty salon, offering liposuction and the injection of Botox and hyaluronic acid

  – and the obligatory services offered by all five-star hotels: fitness, shiatsu, spa, yoga, sauna, steam room

  – and, last but not least, the famous “Intravenous Laser Blood Irradiation.”

  Obviously, Romy would not be availing herself of any of these treatments, aside from craniosacral massage. To keep her fed, I had packed kilos of junk food into my suitcase: ham, saucisson, packs of Chipsters, white sliced bread, cheese-flavoured Doritos, Crunch bars, and a giant Toblerone bought at the duty-free shop in Vienna. I hoped that, once FedEx delivered Pepper, she wouldn’t be too bored.

  As soon as we stepped into the dining room, where obese patients in bathrobes were silently masticating, I realized my mistake. The designer dining room smelled of overcooked carrots, limp celery, bloody turnip, and mashed chickpeas. Much as I love hummus, I don’t want to have to live in it … From time to time, a guest would run to the bathroom. The director explained that patients had to chew each mouthful forty times before swallowing. This was the great discovery made by the clinic’s founder: we eat too quickly, too much fat, too late in the day, and too often. The whole place seemed designed to make the wealthy patients in slippers feel as guilty as possible. We were surrounded by solitary individuals ruminating as they sadly stared out at the jetty that led down to the lake. Was posthumanity to be bovine? If I hadn’t quit TV, I could have hosted a talk show on the subject: “The bovine future of mankind: myth or reality?”