I wrap her in my arms again and pull her as tight to me as I can and say, “Stella Rose, nothing about you will ever be a burden. I love you. I am never going to know how not to love you. And if you think I’m going to risk losing you to eternity, you’re crazy. If you join the Immortality Program, I join with you. There is no other option.”
She is sobbing now. “You don’t need to do this. Your life was good before me. Your life will be good without me in it.”
My life was never right until her. I push her back just enough so she can see my face, and I wipe some tears away from her cheeks. I want her to know the truth. She has to believe me. Nothing will ever be the same if I lose her.
“Stella,” I tell her. “You do believe I love you, right?”
She nods through all those tears.
“And love is the most powerful force in the whole universe, isn’t it?”
She cracks a smile. “You’re being corny.”
I tip up her chin and kiss her again. “Corny is what guys do when they’re trying to get their girlfriends to have sex with them. This is me being truthful.”
“And stupid, then,” she says.
Another kiss. “I’m doing the only thing that makes sense for any guy in love with a girl to do. I’m telling you that I will do anything to keep you. I will stand by you no matter what. I’m yours. Whether we’re mortal or immortal together. Got that?”
She starts laughing and wiping her eyes. “You’re not going to let me break up with you, are you?”
“Well, you were being honest when you said you still love me, right?”
Her eyes soften. “I was being honest.”
I’m happy with that. I pull the necklace I got for her out of my pocket. “Then, no. You don’t get to break up with me. And I have a gift for you.”
She smiles as I hand her the little box the necklace is in. “You were going to take this back if we broke up?”
That never even crossed my mind. “We weren’t going to break up,” I tell her as she opens the box and pulls out that pretty little petal.
She holds it up in the light of the streetlamp, letting it glisten there.
“It reminded me of your petal. Do you like it?”
“I love it. It’s beautiful.”
This makes me feel giddy. I help her put on the necklace, and that gives me a chance to sweep my fingers along her neck, which basically compels me to press my lips there. Then to kiss near her ear, along her jaw, by that star-shaped birthmark. Soon we are making out in the streetlight, and I am really damn happy. It’s not until she begins to shiver from the cold that I realize we probably need to go back inside.
I walk her to her apartment building.
“I know you’re nervous,” I tell her at the door. “So, we’ll start researching the Immortality Program tomorrow together. Probably with Foster. We’ll make huge lists of all the pros and cons, and no one will make any rash decisions. Just promise me you’ll let me do this with you, okay? As long as you love me, and I love you, we’re in this together.”
She hugs me and says, “I’ll do my best.”
Everything is going to be okay.
6.
STELLA
A week after the SGTS results come in, there’s an all-day Immortality Program Informational Conference. The nineteen students who got red flags this year, plus Grazie with her black flag, all get free passes to attend. Anyone else has to pay fifty dollars for a pass.
Myles says this is discrimination, but the fifty-dollar fee he pays means nothing to him. Actually, I wish the fee were higher. You should have to think hard about immortality if it’s not necessary for you to live a long, healthy life, and I don’t see Myles doing that.
In any case, Myles, Foster, and I board a bus together before dawn and ride from the high school to Michigan’s Immortality Center, which is located in Lansing.
The bus ride is quiet, but today it’s not because it’s too early for any of us to really be awake. Grazie Patel-Compton is by herself, so I sit by her on the bus.
“Thanks, Stella,” she says when I plunk down next to her. “I was afraid no one would want to come anywhere near me today.”
We’re not really friends, but that’s mostly just because we don’t have many classes together. She’s always been nice to me in passing, and I’ve noticed people treating her like a leper the last week. It sucks. Her DNA isn’t contagious.
I kind of want to hug her, because she looks that forlorn, but since we aren’t close, I just say, “I think it’s better if we have people we trust that we can talk to about all this. I’m scared.”
She smiles at me, and I know she understands what I just did there. I told her she’s someone I trust. Which means she can trust me, too.
“I’m terrified,” she tells me. “And my flag was for something that could hit any day. I’m barely going to have time to make a decision.”
“I’ll take a lot of notes today,” I promise her. “We can compare later and make sure there’s nothing either of us missed.”
The Immortality Center in Lansing feels like a bizarre cross between a high-security prison and one of those domes people live in on the moon. There are over five-hundred immortals living inside, including over three hundred who are participating in the ten-year training the Immortality Program makes you go through after you transition to become immortal.
Although, I figure out right away that “transition” isn’t the right way to put it here. You don’t “transition” to immortality. You’re injected with it. The welcome seminar is a film all about immortality and how it is only possible because of the Immortality Virus. The first strain was engineered back in 2022 by some cancer researchers, and it was initially tested on pigs and rats (some of whom are apparently still around and quite the celebrities in the immortal community).
But the Immortality Virus has a bad reputation for turning people into monsters because that first strain had unexpected adverse side effects. Some, like perpetually red eyes, were obvious from the beginning. But some, like a total loss of empathy and impulse control, didn’t come to light for a hundred years or so after the first humans became immortal. So basically, the first immortals on Earth became tyrants with terrible attitudes.
We are told we’ll “explore” that later in the day, but for now, the important thing is that it is impolite to say someone “transitioned” to immortality since it implies some kind of mystical vampire or zombie transition. You don’t “transition” or “turn” immortal. You “become” immortal. Discourse is everything.
Anyway, today’s immortals are much more stable. They get a strain of the virus referred to as IV-1052. It’s a hybrid virus that combines elements of human immunodeficiency virus with influenza. It can be transmitted sexually and via blood, but it’s not very common for it to be passed sexually because the concentrations of IV-1052 found in vaginal fluid and semen are only high enough for transmission during the first ten days after you contract the virus.
“And most humans who contract IV-1052 spend their first ten days with it in bed,” our presenter tells us. She’s a short woman wearing tinted glasses, and I would have had no idea she was immortal except that she told us so at the start.
“The Immortality Virus will be the worst flu of your life,” she goes on. “You will start off congested and develop a slight cough. Then your body will weaken, your joints and muscles will ache, and you will feel too fatigued to get out of bed. By the third day, you’ll be so nauseated you’ll barely be able to roll over in bed. You’ll feel confused, you may hallucinate, and some of you will have difficulty breathing. You will feel like you are going to die. A small percentage of you will die. But if you survive, your physiology will be forever changed.”
“Tell us the good news first,” Myles says under his breath.
The presenter goes on to explain that assuming you survive the Immortality Virus, the result will be such a dramatic decline in the natural aging process and such a dramatic increase in cellula
r reproduction in your body that you’ll be “effectively” immortal. Researchers think immortals might still age, but if they do, it happens so slowly that it is barely detectable. Some doctors believe the aging process is so reduced in immortals that it would be nearly impossible for an immortal to die of old age.
“Statistically speaking, there’s simply no way old age will get you,” the presenter says. “You’ll die of something more instantaneous eons before then. But I’m hoping to make it to the apocalypse for my instantaneous death.”
That’s supposed to be a joke. Myles and Foster both laugh, but Grazie and I don’t. I don’t know why, but it’s not funny to me.
Anyway, I’m concerned about the other negative sides to the Immortality Virus as well, like itchy eyes that will turn red when you’re especially stressed, major mood swings, decreased ability to regulate blood pressure, and high sensitivity to emotions. The presenter tells us that these “minimal” negative side effects can be “easily managed with simple stress reduction therapy, learned during our ten-year training period.” But I feel like we might be missing out on the fine print.
“Did she say it would take ten years to learn simple stress reduction therapies?” I whisper to Grazie.
“Does that say weakened bladder control?” Grazie whispers back, pointing to the very bottom of the presentation screen.
I don’t even want to think about that.
“Now, I cannot stress enough that the Immortality Virus is not foolproof,” the presenter says. “You cannot simply ask your primary care physician for it, and there are reasons it is such a highly regulated substance. Besides the obvious risk of simply expiring as a result of contracting the virus, immortality is a life-altering experience. To be accepted into our program, you must prove that you have the maturity and resilience necessary to live as an immortal. You must be confident in your decision. Even if you are accepted into the program, you will be encouraged to quit if you have any doubts. But if you leave, your participation will be foreclosed forever.”
She laughs, and I realize I do not like her laugh. It is too tinny. It doesn’t sound real.
She ends on a weird line, “But what’s forever to a mortal, eh?”
I do not feel better about immortality yet.
7.
MYLES
After Ms. Doom and Gloom does her best to scare us away from the Immortality Virus, we get a walking tour of the Immortality Center. Anyone who gets in and successfully becomes immortal lives at an Immortality Center for the ten-year training program. They don’t cut off your contact with the outside world while you’re in training, but young immortals are kept on a pretty short leash. As in, no sleepovers with mortals. GPS tracking at all times. And a strict training schedule designed to teach you how to manage all those nasty side effects they keep warning us about.
It’s like you’ve joined the military for ten years, but no one’s going to ask you to go out and fight in any war.
That doesn’t sound awful to me, and as we make our way around the Immortality Center with two young immortal guides, things keep looking up. The Immortality Center has a million amenities. Upgraded living quarters, beautiful green space, a commissary stocked like a Retro Super Meijer, and even a quaint downtown. It takes us two hours to walk the whole place.
While we walk, our guides answer all our questions and tell us all the perks of being immortal. Foster gets focused on a particular perk: school. Tons of school.
Since immortals have a significantly longer time to do things like go to college, get graduate degrees, build careers, etc., everyone in the Immortality Program is taken out of high school and enrolled into an exclusive academy designed to provide immortals with top-notch education choices customized to your individual career needs. Want to take a class offered at a university in Paris? The academy will find a way to get it live-streamed for you. Thinking that a career in marine biology might be your first jam? The academy will arrange for you to go swimming with some dolphins and the top researchers in marine biology. Maybe space exploration is more your thing? No problem. You can be transferred to the Lunar Immortality Center for a few months to test it out.
Foster has died and gone to nerd heaven. “So, we become immortal, and all the academic institutions around the globe are up for grabs?” he asks the guides. “If I want to become a doctor, I can take premed classes anywhere I want? If I want to get a Ph.D., I just say so?”
“Yep,” the female guide says. “Every opportunity opens up to you. The world is your oyster. We either bring it here to you, or we find a way to bring you to it. Because the Immortality Program recognizes that your contribution will be thousands of times greater than a normal doctor’s, and it is in the interest of the immortal community to foster that on your behalf.”
I think his ego is a thousand times bigger than a normal doctor’s already, but I’m happy that Foster is so excited about everything. By lunch, he’s talking non-stop about how awesome this is going to be and all the places he’s going to go.
“So, you’re definitely going to apply?” Stella asks.
“It’s a no-brainer, Stell,” Foster says. “I can choose heart disease and sudden death in my forties, or I can choose to be treated like a god my entire immortal life.”
“But one day, you could die of something even worse than heart disease,” she says. She is picking at her food. “Weren’t you paying attention to that part? Immortals still die. They just have tragic, terrible deaths.”
“Who cares?” Foster says. “No one lives forever. But the Immortality Virus means we get hundreds of lifetimes before we have to die that tragic, terrible death. As an immortal, you might make it until the world implodes on itself in a total nuclear meltdown. Who would pass that up?”
“The total nuclear meltdown?” Stella says. She is sitting by Grazie Patel-Compton, which I think is really nice because Grazie looked awfully lost on the bus when we saw her this morning. Now, Grazie looks as horrified by the option of death-by-nuclear meltdown as Stella seems.
“Ladies!” Foster says. “If you are that concerned about tragic death, you are talking to the right man. Maybe I’ll make my first lifetime achievement creating a painless death pill for immortals. An easy euthanasia option for just in case you happen to be around when some hostile alien civilization finally decides to go to war with Earth.”
“Isn’t that called cyanide?” I ask.
“Cyanide is not painless,” Foster says.
“And you know this because …?”
Foster makes a face. “Do you have to keep raining on my parade, Myles?”
He’s really on today. Foster is tall, has big ears, and grows hair that springs out of his head like coils. When he is off, this mostly makes him look like a loser geek or sometimes a scary clown. Today it’s mad-cool scientist. I can tell my assessment is correct because Grazie is actually smiling at him.
I catch Stella’s eye and tilt my head just slightly toward our new friend. Stella gives me a small return smile, and I know she gets it. If Foster makes Grazie feel better about her black flag, then awesome. That’s the whole point of the Immortality Program, right? Hope? I think this is going swimmingly.
After lunch, we go back to another doom-and-gloom presentation about the history of the Immortality Program. Mostly, the immortals we’ve met today are pretty young. That’s because the Immortality Program was halted for a hundred and fifty years thanks to all the screw-ups the first strain of the virus created, and it only came back at the turn of the century. But history is vital to give humans a fleeting chance at not continually repeating their mistakes, so part of the information the Immortality Program wants us to have is information about what they got wrong.
This presentation is dour. I mean … I already know a little more about the original immortals because of what I know about my great great great grandfather or whatever. But watching video clips of these enthusiastic, young immortals from the middle of the 21st century is tragic.
Apparen
tly, the strain of the Immortality Virus they got was called IV-933, and scientists actually believed that the consequences were limited to permanently red eyes. This afternoon’s presenter is a skinny guy with a nasal voice who laughs and says, “But please do not perpetuate the rumor that the IV-933 immortals had eyes that glowed red in the dark. Their eyes were a far more natural red, caused by broken blood vessels, eye itching, sensitivity to light, and massive hormonal changes that caused drastic changes in eye pigmentation. It is not dissimilar to what you will go through if you become an immortal whenever you become extremely stressed.”
Anyway, since the red eyes were the only thing that seemed bad about IV-933, those immortals got all excited about their immortality, and all this technological development sprang to life. Architects planned immortal cities, new education programs were designed to accommodate forever-lifespans, people gave their dogs a version of the Immortality Virus, all these social media apps, like Facebook and Twitter, suddenly had to deal with storing data for eternity.
But the most important advancement was the interplanetary exploration program, which was only possible thanks to immortality. After all, a mortal human would never make it from Earth to a planet in another solar system. An immortal human can explore space until their ship breaks down.
What fascinates me the most are the fleets of spaceships that got sent out to other planets with IV-933 immortals on them. Those voyages take so long that those spaceships are still out there.
“Whoa, can you imagine what it must be like on those ships?” Foster says to me. “Do you think it’s like being on a pirate ship or something, but in space?”
Stella Rose Gold for Eternity (The Immortal Mistakes Book 1) Page 3
