The Live-Forever Machine

by Kenneth Oppel

  The lights went out with an electric snap, plunging the corridor into darkness. A second later came a ghostly fluorescent flicker that lasted long enough for Eric to make out the stricken look on Alexander’s face. Then blackness again.

  “ ‘The day is done, and the darkness / Falls from the wings of Night, …’ “ Alexander’s voice was a hoarse, croaking whisper in the dark. For the first time Eric felt afraid.

  The lights flared on. Alexander’s face was tight and pale. A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. His fingers tightened around the locket.

  “This heatwave,” Eric said, watching Alexander nervously. “It’s really messing up the city.”

  “No. It’s not the heatwave.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s him,” Alexander said, looking at Eric.

  “Him? Who, the guy in black?”

  At that moment, a small man in a pale blue suit walked around the corner and headed towards them. Alexander flinched and quickly closed the locket. He lifted it as if to pocket it in his coveralls, but then hurriedly pressed it into Eric’s hands instead.

  Eric instinctively slid it into his jeans.

  “Here you are,” said the small man, a note of disapproval in his voice. “There’s a job on the main floor. One of the air-conditioning vents is clogged. It’s all these damn power outages. You weren’t at your work station.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” said Alexander. “I’ll tend to it now.” His stoop was more pronounced now, his voice suddenly deferential.

  “Right now,” said the supervisor. “It’s an emergency. And who’s this?” His eyes flicked over Eric.

  “My grandson,” Alexander mumbled.

  The supervisor scowled, and did not look entirely convinced. “Next time, make sure he wears a security pass.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “I’ll show him out.”

  Alexander turned to go, but his green eyes met Eric’s for a split second. Eric shivered and looked away. His hand brushed the concealed locket. He’d taken the bait again.

  6

  Tower of Babel

  “He’s been watching me.”

  “This guy’s scary,” said Chris. “Intensely scary. If I thought some dusty sixty-year-old was spying on me, I’d leave town! Why’d you let him hand you the locket like that? That was dumb.”

  “I know, I know,” Eric sighed. He’d eagerly taken it, though, happy to have it for a little while longer, to touch the smooth old wood, to look at the miniature inside. But he knew it was only being used as the bait on a hook.

  He shifted uncomfortably in the skeletal chrome armchair. He’d never liked Chris’s apartment. The vast living room reminded him of a very expensive furniture store, sparse and cold. The walls were a blinding white, without paintings or prints, and the furniture was carefully arranged in small clumps, as if on display: two spindly metallic armchairs, a black leather sofa, a white leather sofa, a set of gleaming glass-and-steel shelves that held a stack of matte-black stereo equipment and a huge television, a coffee table made of a slab of ebony balanced on ivory obelisks. A few Japanese vases with dried flowers were placed discreetly around the room. The only things out of place were Chris’s designer sneakers, kicked off onto the shining checkerboard-tile floor.

  On television, a man was gobbling burning cigarettes, spitting them out, lighting more, then gobbling them up too, until he had twelve smouldering in his mouth at once. Eric felt a sick stirring in his stomach.

  “Amazing!” Chris said. “I’ve never seen anyone do that.”

  “How can you watch this crap?” Eric said impatiently.

  “It’s good,” Chris protested. “You try smoking twelve cigarettes at the same time.”

  Eric took a deep breath.

  “All right, okay,” Chris said, touching the remote-control. The volume faded to a distant roar. “So what’re you going to do? I wouldn’t go back.”

  “Why do you think he’s been watching me?” Eric said. He twisted in the armchair, trying to find a comfortable position. There wasn’t one.

  Chris shrugged. “Maybe he’s crazy. Maybe he’s some kind of pervert who likes little boys. You shouldn’t have told him so much about yourself. You told him where you live!”

  “He knew anyway,” Eric said. “I’m sure of it. A lot of the time it was as if he knew the answers to all his own questions, and was just making me talk.”

  “He’s a psycho.”

  “No.” Eric shook his head. There was something almost familiar about Alexander, something Eric understood. Alexander was like Eric’s father in some ways: the old-fashioned words, the snatches of poetry, the things he said about the city.

  “Saying love poetry to a picture in a locket!” Chris scoffed. “Sounds pretty crazy to me.”

  Eric sagged in the armchair. He remembered Alexander snatching the locket from his hands, desperate to have it back. But was that so hard to understand? He hadn’t wanted to part with it himself. Maybe Alexander just felt the same attraction, only much stronger.

  “It was like it belonged to him,” Eric said. “Like he owned it.”

  “I thought you said it came from the museum.”

  “But the way he held it and looked at the picture—” Eric hesitated as the thought slithered into his head, almost didn’t say it. “It was as if he knew her.”

  “Right,” Chris said jeeringly. “Like those old guys who look at skin magazines at the back of the corner store.”

  “That’s not the way he was looking at it, you moron.” Eric could feel his face go red. He, too, had spent a lot of time looking at the portrait. Nothing abnormal about that, right? There was just something about her, something mysterious. He wondered if his father ever looked at his old pictures the same way.

  “Me a moron?” Chris exclaimed. “You’re the moron. The woman in the portrait’s been dead five hundred years or something and you say that this guy knew her. Right!”

  “It was just the way he looked, that’s all,” Eric said sharply.

  “Yeah, because he’s crazy. He probably ripped this thing off. Why else would he hide it when his boss showed up?”

  “Maybe, maybe.” Eric said. He felt suddenly deflated. The same question had stalked through his head. He supposed it was possible for Alexander to have stolen the locket, but Eric just couldn’t see him doing it. He’d worked at the museum for years, and obviously loved it. He seemed about as likely a criminal as Eric’s father. But it was impossible to know what people were really like. Everyone hid things.

  “Well,” said Chris, “if you ask me, this thing has ILLEGAL written all over it in big red letters.”

  “He wants me to go back,” said Eric. “That’s the only reason he gave me the locket. He could’ve hidden it himself just as easily.”

  “Just ditch it,” Chris advised, stretching his muscular arms above his head. “He’s crazy.”

  “But why’s he been watching me?” Eric exclaimed. “There’s got to be a reason! Why does he want me to go back to see him?”

  Chris shrugged, and his eyes strayed to the television.

  “Hang on a second.”

  He touched the remote-control unit and the volume soared.

  A curvaceous young woman in a bikini was modelling a new wristwatch TV, whispering guarantees with her wide, crayon-red mouth. All her beautiful friends wore wristwatch televisions, too. They were stretched out on the sand behind her, eyes glued to the miniature screens. They managed to tear themselves away long enough to smile at the camera before the commercial ended.

  “Wouldn’t one of those be amazing?” Chris said.

  “Great,” Eric said curtly. Chris was getting as bad as his father, always distracted. No onepaid attention anymore. At least Alexander had listened.

  “The screen on those things is incredibly thin,” Chris was saying.

  “A real breakthrough,” Eric said.

  “Sorry, I forgot I was talking to a techno-peasant.”

 
“Fortunately I can think without the television on.”

  “Isn’t there an encyclopedia you should be reading?”

  “Old joke, Chris. And you probably don’t even know what an encyclopedia looks like.”

  “Yeah, well, we can’t all be skinny geek geniuses like you, Mr. Superior Intellect,” Chris said, cuttingly.

  Eric felt a hot flush of guilt. It was true, he liked to feel smarter than Chris. He wondered if Chris knew how jealous he really was—of Chris’s popularity, his muscles. Eric could hardly admit it to himself.

  “Forget it,” he mumbled, wrenching himself out of the armchair. The gleaming white room suddenly made him feel claustrophobic, and he moved to open the glass balcony doors. Hot air crashed into the chill of the air-conditioned apartment. He gazed out over the vast, hazy city. From this height, it looked strange and unfamiliar to him, as though everything were on an angle, crazily tilted.

  Chris stepped out to join him and they stood in silence for a few minutes.

  “He’s not a repairman,” Eric said. “I mean, he works as one, but it’s like some kind of act.”

  “So who is he then?” Chris asked doubtfully.

  “I don’t know. He’s terrified of something though. When the lights went out the second time he looked really horrible; he was shaking. And he said it was the guy in black.”

  “He never said that,” Chris corrected him. “You said he didn’t have time to answer.”

  “But I’m sure that’s who he meant,” Eric said impatiently. The heat pounded against face, seemed to steal away his breath.

  “How could this other guy control the electricity?” replied Chris. “Doesn’t make sense. Your buddy’s intensely crazy.”

  “What’s Alexander hiding from him?” Eric said distractedly. He pushed his hair away from his damp forehead. “If I went back, I could maybe find out.”

  “Oh, geez,” muttered Chris. “Listen, why don’t you tell your Dad? See what he says.”

  Eric snorted. “Dad’s been too tired lately,” he said unhappily. “He sleeps most of the time he’s not on shift.”

  “Hey, that reminds me; there was something I was going to show you. This’ll cheer you up.”

  Eric squinted into the sky. “Is this thing ever going to break?”

  “It’s the blueprints for the new mall,” Chris explained. “Mom left on her latest business trip without the diskette.”

  A detailed technical diagram glowed on the computer screen: a tight, geometrical weave of green lines and symbols.

  “Hmmm,” Eric said. Why was Chris showing him this? Eric wasn’t interested in the new mall, and Chris knew that.

  “This is the good part,” Chris said.

  He touched the keyboard and a section of the diagram enlarged to fill the screen.

  “This is where we were the other day. When we went down that manhole.”

  “Really?” Eric leaned in closer to the screen, trying to decipher the electronic maze. Chris manoeuvred a blinking red triangle to a spot on the blueprint.

  “That’s the manhole, and this is the tunnel, and this must be the platform thing we got to.”

  “This is really neat,” Eric said, and then curbed the enthusiasm in his voice. He didn’t want Chris to know he was impressed. But he admired the way his friend’s broad fingers travelled deftly over the keyboard while his eyes remained fixed on the monitor.

  “Intense, huh?” Chris said.

  “Does it show what’s down there?” Eric wanted to know.

  “Not on this one. But maybe …”

  Chris flashed a series of maps onto the screen until he found the one he was looking for.

  “I think this is as deep as it goes. Hang on.” He punched a couple of keys and the first diagram they’d looked at reappeared in red, superimposed over the second.

  Eric peered into the screen. “So we were standing here, right? Where’s the subway tunnel?”

  “Can’t see it on this map. It runs almost underneath the mall. I was looking at it earlier. It’s not far down. Only a couple of storeys: three, maybe four. Amazing thing is, everything’s connected down there—the subway tunnels, the manhole shafts, the storm drains, the sewers.”

  Eric’s eyes moved carefully over the map.

  “That must be the foundation of the museum, over there,” he said, pointing.

  “Uh-huh. It’s deep as hell,” Chris muttered.

  “That’s what Alexander said. Can you make that part bigger?”

  Chris’s fingers flew over the keys and the map re-drew itself on the screen.

  “Goes down twenty storeys,” Chris said.

  “He wasn’t lying, then,” Eric said. “Remember, he was telling me about the storage rooms, and the two empty floors at the very bottom.”

  “The main storm drain is down there,” Chris said, peering at the monitor. “It runs right alongside the base of the museum wall.”

  “So we were standing right over that,” said Eric.

  “Yep. It’s like a big canyon. A concrete canyon with a river running through it.”

  “A dried-up river,” Eric corrected him. He thought of Jonah, yelling down the grate, throwing his fishing rod to the ground. Clank, clank, clank. He’d heard it, too, the grinding of machinery, seen the spark of light, smelled the dense smoke. Whatever it was down there, it had to be right on the shore of the storm drain. He imagined a monstrous engine, spewing out flames like a dragon, burning away all the water.

  “What do you think it was we heard down there?”

  “You mean smelled down there,” Chris snorted. “My nose is still recovering. I don’t know what it was. Don’t really care. And no, I don’t want to go down and have another look.” He smiled. “Strung up that little idea, didn’t I?”

  “Why not?” Eric said.

  Chris flicked a switch on the computer and the diagrams disappeared from the screen.

  “Well, one very good reason is that it’s sealed up. I was by there today, and they’ve closed it.”

  “Jonah didn’t think it was normal.”

  “The guy who fishes through the grate?” Chris said with a smirk. “You’ve been listening to crazy people too much lately. It’ll get you into trouble.”

  Eric followed Chris back to the living room. They were greeted by a barrage of commercials on the television. People jumped out of airplanes holding bottles of beer, a Greek statue came to life to use a razor, the new mall glittered in artificial sunlight, and the Sphinx stood after thousands of years and ate a superior brand of cat food from an enormous bowl.

  “How do they make it look so good?” Chris asked, mystified. “I’d eat it, it looks so good!”

  Eric shook his head in revulsion. But his thoughts were circling back to his meeting with Alexander. Everything had seemed so predetermined—every question, every comment. Why?

  “It was as if Alexander was studying me.”

  But Chris was gone. “Know what I really want?” he said, watching another ad. “A micro cell phone. One of those miniature ones you just clip to your ear.”

  It was as if he were speaking another language. And Eric felt a strange twinge of loneliness, as if he and Chris had nothing in common. With Alexander, weird as he was, there seemed to be some reassuring link between them, as if they had things to talk about, things they both understood.

  He watched Chris watching the television. The wooden locket was still in his pocket. He could feel it against his leg. He knew he’d go back.

  7

  Necropolis

  Eric leaned over the typewriter and read the last sentence his father had written, almost a week ago: She did not say goodbye, but it seemed obvious—to both of us—that we would not see each other again.

  Eric looked around the humid living room, taking in the sagging bookshelves, the framed prints on the peeling plaster walls, the two sofas with their faded floral pattern, the dilapidated armchairs, the leaning radiator. She used to sit in this room, he thought. He tried to imagine
her, lowering herself into one of the chairs, picking up a book from the coffee table.

  For a fleeting moment, the whole house seemed to shudder with her presence. She’d lived here. The books: how many of those were hers? And the vase with the dried flowers in front of the bricked-in fireplace—had that been hers, too? The bursting cushions on the sofa? The rug in the corner? Was every room filled with memories of her?

  He wondered what she’d looked like and instinctively felt for the locket. His hand froze. He suddenly understood, as if he’d swiftly pushed through a revolving door in his mind. It wasn’t Gabriella della Signatura he’d been interested in. It was his mother.

  He vaulted up the stairs two at a time, hesitating a moment in the doorway of his father’s room.

  Go on, he told himself. She’s your mother.

  He started with the bookcases, feeling behind each row with his hand, searching for the photo album he had seen only once, years ago. Nothing. He burrowed through the desk drawers, like a thief searching for valuables. He rifled through the night table. Nothing. He opened the huge clothes trunk. Just looking at the wool sweaters made him hot, and when he turned through them, his skin crawled. He pulled up a chair to inspect the highest shelves of the closet. Nothing. Sweat dampened his back. He scuttled on his belly underneath the bed, like a giant beetle, pushing through stray books and dust-clotted debris.

  It wasn’t here. Where, then?

  He stepped out into the hallway and jumped for the cord handle that hung down from the ceiling. The trap door swung out. He eased the wooden ladder all the way to the floor, latched it, and climbed up.

  It was exquisitely hot under the pitched roof. The air burned in his nostrils. A tiny dirt-streaked window in the ceiling let in some light, enough for him to see the cardboard boxes and plastic garbage bags piled up on all sides of the trap door. The boxes were all labelled in neat writing, like museum display cases: Linens, Winter Clothing, LPs, Christmas Decorations. Many were simply labelled with his mother’s name, and Eric guessed they held her clothing, jewellery—things his father couldn’t bear to get rid of.

  Most of the larger boxes were sealed with masking tape. Crouching over, Eric shifted them out of the way to see farther back into the attic. And there, pressed against the eaves, was a smaller box, folded closed, marked Photographs. He dragged it towards the ladder and pulled out the cardboard flaps.