"Yes," Nathan said. "Yes, yes, yes. If it gave me even one extra day with you, I'd set my conscience on fire."
He held out his arms to gather Greg into an embrace, but Greg backed away, saying, "You're seriously skewed, you know that?"
"Me? I'm skewed? I'm not the one thinking about snuffing it over something that's years away."
"Name one person who would do it differently. Besides yourself."
Nathan couldn't, of course, but he didn't let that derail him. "People used to put up with stuff like that all the time," he said.
Greg snorted. "Sure they did. And they lived in misery and died in pain. No thanks."
Nathan held up his hands. "I'm not asking you to live to sixty. I'm just asking you to wait a while. Tough it out for a little bit to see if things improve."
"What do you call the last forty-five years?"
Nathan didn't know how to take that. Had Greg's life really been so bad? Was Nathan part of his torment? Maybe it was Nathan who should snuff it. Put himself out of other people's misery, as the saying went. But Greg stepped forward and gave him the hug he had tried to give Greg a minute ago, and said, "Lighten up, lover. It was a joke. I've had a great life. It's just time to go."
"But... but I love you. How can I go on without you?"
Greg patted him gently on the back. "Maybe you can't. Maybe you'll decide you've had enough, too. But don't check out right away. Tough it out for a little bit to see if things improve."
Nathan laughed, but his laughter quickly turned to tears. Greg held him, saying, "There, there, everything will be all right," until he got himself under control again.
But things weren't all right. Not the rest of that day, which Greg spent inviting all his friends to the wake and saying goodbye to the ones who couldn't make it, nor the next, during which he filled out the paperwork, nor the following one when he actually did it. Nathan hosted the wake, of course, and he smiled bravely throughout, but he couldn't take his eyes off Greg, who flitted from guest to guest like a butterfly sipping nectar from a field of wildflowers. Greg even laughed with the people from the census bureau who were waiting to take away his body. Couldn't people see how wrong this was? There was Greg's sister, for crying out loud, a woman who had known him her entire life, laughing at his jokes as if he would always be there to tell more. And her son, Greg's nephew, asking if he could have Greg's model starship collection. Former lovers, both male and female, copping one last feel. Nathan couldn't bear to watch, but he couldn't bear to look away, either.
And all too soon, it was time for the final event. Greg stood up, someone rapped a glass for attention, and Greg said, "I've got to go." He paused for effect, then added, "No, I mean it; this damned enlarged prostate pushes on my bladder, and I've really got to go."
Everyone but Nathan laughed.
"It's time anyway. I'm keeping everybody up late, and some of you have kids."
"That's all right, Uncle Greg," said his nephew. "I'll go short on sleep for you."
Greg shook his head. "That's very sweet, but I don't want to be the kind to put anybody out. Besides, what's another hour? I've had forty-five good years; if a person can't fulfill himself in that amount of time, another hour isn't going to do it." He looked right at Nathan. "But I am fulfilled. I've had a wonderful life, filled with wonderful friends and a wonderful husband." Greg's sister snickered, and Greg said, "Get your mind out of the gutter Sarah. But yes, Nathan has fulfilled my life in every way. So it's without regret, by my own free choice, and in perfect understanding of the consequences, that I take this fatal dose of Enditol." And as he spoke the formal words that absolved anyone in the room of liability, he held up the bright orange pill so the census bureau witnesses could record that, too.
Then he popped it in his mouth, said, "Mmm, cinnamon," and swallowed.
The scream escaped Nathan's mouth in the same instant. He stumbled over someone—he didn't even see who—as he rushed toward Greg and shouted, "Spit it out, spit it out!"
Hands grabbed him, but Greg said, "Let him go," and he fell into Greg's arms, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Don't go," Nathan gasped.
"We're all just candles in the wind," Greg said. He gave Nathan a squeeze, and added, "Eat the middle of the watermelon first." Then he grew heavy, and Nathan had to lower him to the floor.
Nathan couldn't stop wailing. He howled while the guests picked up their things and let themselves out, and he howled while the census bureau people carried away the body, and he wailed into the night until his neighbors called the police and they took him to a correction center and let him cry himself out in a padded room.
Something happened to him during the night. He couldn't say what, exactly, but when the police took him home in the morning, he threw out his usual eggs and sausage and made himself a bowl of fruit salad for breakfast instead. He exercised until he ached physically as much as he did emotionally. Then he went next door and apologized to his neighbors, who laughed it off, saying that he had been the very picture of the devoted spouse, and they were glad that Greg had meant so much to him.
He agreed that Greg had indeed been his life, but over the next few days he found himself growing angry at him, and then denying that he had ever loved him, then bargaining with a God he didn't even believe in to bring him back, then falling into blackest depression over his loss, then finally, surprisingly, giving up and moving on. When Greg's sister and nephew showed up for his model spaceships, Nathan told them to take everything that had belonged to him.
"You don't mean that," Sarah said.
"I do. Greg abandoned me. I don't want his things here to remind me of him."
"You should get help," she said. "Grief counseling, or something. Or..."
"Or what? Snuff myself, too?"
"Well, if you're really that distraught, maybe so."
"That's everyone's answer to adversity nowadays, isn't it? At the first sign of trouble, just check out! What about the virtue of struggling to succeed? What about developing character? What about perseverance?" There must have been better words than he had chosen to describe the concept, but if so, he didn't know them.
Greg's sister didn't even know the concept. "Get help," she said again, and she fled with her son without even gathering up the models.
Nathan followed her advice, but not in the way she meant. It took some digging, but he finally found other people who felt the way he did. They were reluctant to talk about it at first, but he persisted. They were a mixed lot, with really only the one interest in common. Some had lost loved ones too soon, as Nathan had. Others had begun projects that were bigger than they had anticipated. Some were simply unwilling to cease existing, or were afraid that the old religions might be right and were scared of what might lie beyond death. One of them was fifty-seven years old.
"It ain't for sissies," the patriarch told Nathan. "I've got pain in muscles and joints you don't even know you have. But you'll learn about 'em. Oh, yes you will." He grinned in horrific glee, revealing a gap where he'd lost one of his teeth.
The group had a doctor who claimed he was doing it for research. That might have been the truth, because he certainly wasn't in it for longevity. He seemed a bit stunned by the things his patients asked of him, and he spent days reading up on old procedures before attempting them, often with limited success. Nathan gained a bit of sympathy for Greg's decision when he watched another cancer patient lose fifty pounds and eventually her life after surgery to remove a lump from her breast.
But he didn't let that deter him. With the doctor's help, he concocted a diet that would lower his weight into the optimum range for longevity, and he followed it religiously, counting the calories he ate and balancing it with the energy he burned in exercise until he looked like Greg had at the peak of his health. The exercise hurt like fire, but the afterglow was worth it. It was as good as sex, he told himself. Maybe better.
Then he hurt his back lifting weights. The doctor told him he'd crushed one of the little cartil
age disks between vertebrae. In the old days that could be fixed—at great expense, of course—but now the procedure was beyond the capability of any doctor anywhere. The best Nathan's doctor could do was to fuse together the vertebrae on either side of the disk. Nathan would lose some mobility, but he wouldn't be in constant pain anymore.
Nathan didn't see that he had a choice. The pain was worse than exercise, and there was no afterglow. There was no after; just constant agony, with spikes whenever he moved.
The operation was a success, as far as it went. The pain didn't go away, but it lessened to a tolerable level. Nathan couldn't touch his toes anymore, but he could still bend over. It was an acceptable tradeoff.
A year passed. Toward the end of it, Nathan noticed that his right knee would hurt for an hour or so after he got out of bed. Not a lot, not enough to keep him from his normal morning routine, but enough to get his attention. The doctor told him it was either an injury or arthritis, both of which would respond to anti-inflammatory drugs. It was treating the symptoms, not the disease, but that was the best they could do even in the old days.
It went like that for nearly a decade, with new surprises showing up like unwanted relatives every few months, and like relatives, sometimes staying for good. Nathan faced them all stoically, even proudly, until the doctor pointed out that he was spending all his time surviving, and none of it living.
Most of his old friends were dead by then, and those who weren't had drifted—or run— away when Nathan had gone strange on them. He contacted a couple of them, but they acted as if he had a communicable disease, and they made it clear that they didn't want anything more to do with him.
A few years later he actually had a communicable disease. He hadn't realized that chickenpox still existed, nor that it struck old people with such force, but it played havoc with his immune system, leaving him an itching mass of sores and flaky skin that the doctor—a new one, the old one having snuffed it the previous winter—said would probably continue bothering him off and on for the rest of his life.
He almost snuffed it himself when he heard that news, but the former patriarch of the senior society had checked out at sixty after learning that his chest pains meant that his heart was dying, and the next person in line was a little old lady with an aortic aneurysm that was due to blow at any moment. If Nathan hung on for a few more months, he could take the dubious honor of being the oldest person alive. The oldest person in the group, anyway. There were undoubtedly older people elsewhere, people on the lucky end of the bell curve who simply hadn't gotten sick or injured or bored enough to snuff themselves yet, but they didn't count. Nathan's longevity wasn't luck; it was the result of hard labor.
Why that mattered, he couldn't say. There was no virtue in labor for labor's sake. That attitude had died along with the rest of the old ways, and not even Nathan wanted to revive it. Yet working for something was different. He felt a sense of accomplishment that he couldn't explain, but he knew it was real. Or would be in a few months.
Or not, as it turned out. The woman with the aneurysm persisted for five more years, years in which Nathan discovered the true meaning of... something. Most days he couldn't quite remember what he had discovered, but he kept to his routine and managed to keep himself fed and reasonably clean. Reporters came and went, but he stopped talking to them when he realized that their articles invariably made him out to be an eccentric throwback to the bad old days, and an example of why society should never go there again.
They just didn't see it. People aged for a reason. With age came wisdom, or at least experience, which certainly counted for something. And he still enjoyed his life. Parts of it, anyway. He could still read well enough, if he boosted a book's font size and screen intensity to maximum, and he could still appreciate a good meal, although he couldn't seem to cook one as easily as he used to. And in the evenings, if his back didn't hurt too much, he would go outside and sit in his patio chair and watch the orange sunset spread across the sky. That had become his favorite pastime of all, because it provided daily proof that there was always something worth waiting for.
He was watching a particularly brilliant one when Greg came up the walk and stopped with one foot on the porch step.
"My god, it's true," said his former husband. "You're still here."
Nathan's heart lurched to a pace it hadn't reached in years. "I might not be for much longer," he gasped, thumping himself on the chest to see if he could jolt it into slowing down again.
"No, no, don't die on me now!" said Greg.
"Then don't surprise me like that," said Nathan. He took a couple of deep breaths, then added, "I thought you were dead."
"Not yet," said Greg. "Soon, maybe, but not yet. I... I have a question for you." He leaned forward, his face blocking out the sun.
"How about answering one first?" Nathan said. "Like why you let me think you were gone all this time."
Greg shrugged. His muscled shoulders rippled just like Nathan remembered from so many years ago. "At first, Mom wouldn't let me go visit you," he said. "And then I guess I just sort of... forgot about you until Karen died."
"Karen?" Nathan said. His brain felt thick.
"My wife. We were married almost as long as you and Uncle Greg."
"Uncle Greg." Nathan sat back in his chair. His heart rate started to slow, and the fuzzy blanket around his brain fell away. "You're Sarah's boy."
"That's right. Rudy."
"Rudy." Nathan squinted to see his face against the bright orange sky. "You're the spit-tin' image of your uncle."
"I think I take after you more," said Rudy.
"Oh?"
"I'm so mad at Karen I could burn her in effigy," said Rudy. "All my friends say I should snuff myself, but I'm too mad to do that, either. I want to live forever just to spite her."
"Ah." Nathan coughed for a minute, then when he was pretty sure he was done, he said, "It's not for sissies."
"I can see that."
"It's not for the poor, either."
"No?"
"No. You wouldn't believe how much a colostomy costs."
The boy sat down on the top step and leaned back against the porch rail.
"So ask your question before I forget who you are."
"I think maybe you already answered it," said Rudy.
"You think so, do you?" Nathan leaned forward and pointed at the sunset. "Look out there." He kept pointing until Greg's nephew scooted around and looked to the west. "You watch that until I get back."
He levered himself up out of his chair, suppressing the grunt that usually accompanied a change of position, and went inside, lifting his feet high so he wouldn't shuffle like an old man. He could barely see in the dim interior, but he felt his way into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. Half a lifetime of habit had served him well; the shelves were full of fruits and vegetables and bottles of juice.
He found the watermelon behind a sack of prunes. It was a few days old, but what was left was still firm. He cut off two thick wedges, then carried them back to the front porch, heedless of the drip trail they left on the carpet.
Rudy kept watching the sunset, as if afraid to defy Nathan's orders for even a second.
"Here," Nathan said, handing him a slice of watermelon.
"What's this for?"
"To eat, of course." Nathan sat down heavily in his chair, then leaned forward and took a big bite out of the center of his slice. The sweet juice ran down his chin and dripped into his lap. Rudy looked dubious, but he took a bite out of the center of his, too.
They chewed for a moment, savoring the watermelon and the sunset.
"Okay, now throw the rest away," said Nathan.
Rudy's eyes scrunched up. Nathan realized his heart was pounding even harder than before.
"Why?" asked Rudy.
"Why indeed?" said Nathan. And he took another bite.
* * *
The Teacher's Gamble
Stephen L. Burns | 2432 words
Comi
ng out of fugue is a slow, sweeping explosion of sensation, the me I am and have been, and the simulated me created to greet me, coming together in a flood of the new and strange.
I could count the times I have passed through this stage of my mission, but am rarely inclined to do so because such looking backward can, in moments of weakness, make me feel weary, even hopeless.
Besides, the moment of release from fugue is too demanding, too charged with possibility for such thoughts to gain much traction. Arrivals are freighted with considerable expectation—but tarnished by a faint touch of dread. I have in these moments experienced delight, despair, and even horror, finding what awaits me fascinating and appealing, or so repellent it leaves me sick at heart.
The encoding of the simulated me is strong, and easily assimilated. The feel and flavor of it is not so inimical to my own ethos that I reflexively recoil from it, holding it at arm's length. In fact, the simulation fits well enough that I am already thinking in these new alien terms. Sick at heart and at arm's length could never directly apply to me and my kind, yet their meaning resonates clearly and easily, even pleasantly.
Living worlds are something of a miracle, a small, precious subset of all possible worlds. I am a collector of such wonders, and experience has made me something of a judge of them. In most cases my first sight of one is a moment to be savored.
Such is the case this time. The world I have been drawn to is distant still, but my sensors are powerful and subtle. It is exquisite: blue and white with expanses of brown and green; a water-rich world teeming with life on land, in the waters, and in the air. A place with frozen polar caps and relatively stable landmasses. Watching over it is a barren companion moon, close enough to exert tidal forces. Third out from the central star, it is heated by that star's energies, but not burned by them.
The language of the predominant technological subdivision calls this world Earth.
The dominant life form, humans, are in the early stages of technological discovery. They are just beginning to develop vehicles powered by fuel and machinery, rather than pulled by other living things. More importantly, they are beginning to experiment with the primitive manipulation of the forces they call electromagnetic, and the transformation of information. A method of communication combining both is practiced with zeal: coded impulses are carried by a growing skein of conductors wrapping their world, and even weakly and tentatively broadcasting them into the air. I can hear their clicking murmur, taste their stiff formality, even in the brevity the state of their technology imposes upon them.
Analog Science Fiction And Fact - May 2014 Page 14
