The Live-Forever Machine

by Kenneth Oppel

  “This isn’t part of the museum’s collection, is it?” Eric said.

  “Oh no,” said Alexander, shaking his head. “No, this is mine. My private collection, things I have gathered through time. No one sees these but me. And now you.”

  Eric no longer noticed the rank smell of the cellars. He felt suddenly like a child again, going through the museum for the first time. There was so much to see here, so many wonderful things. His eyes slipped over the vast array: tapered storage jars, an ivory horn, a jewel-encrusted clock, dagger blades, a silver ladle with a dolphin handle, a stone oil lamp. He wanted to hold them all. He paused at an ornate mechanical hen with a wind-up key in its side, reached out to touch it.

  “No!” Alexander shouted, and Eric snatched back his hand.

  “Sorry,” he replied automatically.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Alexander said, and there was a fanatical glint in his eyes. “Please don’t touch anything here.”

  Eric rammed his hands into his pockets. These things were centuries old. Alexander didn’t want them hurt. Made perfect sense.

  But as he moved through the subterranean museum, looking more closely, he began to notice the decay. Ancient cobwebs trailed from the damp walls. A ghostly film of dust had settled over everything. Tarnish had coated pieces of metalwork. Some of the books scattered across the floor were wet, and the bindings looked as if they’d been gnawed at.

  He heard a rustling sound, and turned quickly to see a rat’s tail disappearing into one of the mounds of artifacts.

  Eric looked to see if Alexander had noticed.

  He was gently brushing dust from a Greek statuette, mumbling to himself.

  “Pro memoria,” he said.

  Eric silently watched Alexander, surrounded by his Aladdin’s treasure. He wondered if the man was a little crazy. What would it be like to live that long. It was almost impossible to imagine. What would it do to you, knowing that you would never die? You wouldn’t think the same way as regular people. It would change the whole way you thought, wouldn’t it?

  Alexander seemed to have forgotten there was anyone else in the room. He turned to an oil painting of a man in a brilliant red turban.

  “In perpetuum.”

  Alexander was letting his bony fingers trail across the heavy parchment of an open book.

  “Semper idem,” he intoned.

  Eric suddenly thought of their own living room, unchanged for thirteen years. Always the same. Anger flickered inside him. Dad kept everything the same so he’d never forget her.

  Alexander stooped to pick up a brass medallion from the floor and polished it against his coveralls.

  “You’re right on the main storm drain,” Eric told him. “That’s why it’s so wet here.”

  Alexander started at the sound of Eric’s voice.

  “Yes, yes, I realize that,” he said, turning. “It’s not an ideal location—no, by no means ideal—but it’s the safest I could find, and these things must stay hidden.” He cast a possessive eye around the chamber. “No one must see them. And he musn’t find it.”

  There was something almost grotesque about this massive hoard. Why wouldn’t someone like Alexander take better care of these things? He loved these things. Why would he put them in a damp cellar? It was crazy.

  “Now,” said Alexander. “Let me show you.”

  He made his way back towards a far corner of the room, where there was a huge wooden bureau covered with elaborate carvings and more drawers and cupboards than Eric had ever seen. He watched as Alexander selected a key from his ring, unlocked a narrow set of doors and reached deep inside the bureau. He could hear the sounds of latches being released, unoiled hinges faintly squeaking.

  When Alexander drew back his arm, he held a long white canister with a leather handle at one end.

  “It has never been opened,” he said. “It was sealed without air, to keep the parchment from disintegrating. It’s as immortal as the secret it holds. Our lunar cycle is fast approaching,” he went on, and there was a hint of hysteria in his hoarse voice. “If he steals the machine, he will discover the secret of unmaking, and it will be the perfect time. I am at my most vulnerable. Take it.”

  “I don’t get it,” Eric said. “You can unmak him then, too.”

  Alexander turned away and was silent for a long time.

  “You can’t imagine the loneliness of centuries,” he said, dusting his fingertips over a marble bust.

  “For more than sixteen hundred years I’ve watched those around me fall under Time’s scythe while I remain unchanged. I made a promise never to reveal my secret, and I learned to distance myself from people, not to draw too near, not to rely on them. Only once did I lapse.”

  “Gabriella della Signatura,” Eric said, almost without thinking. “She knew.”

  “Yes. I was foolish enough to fall in love with her. It’s ridiculous, is it not—a man of a thousand, falling in love with a girl who had barely reached her twentieth year?”

  Alexander’s voice had a bitter sting to it. Eric took a few awkward steps around the huge chamber, waiting for him to go on. He felt a tightening in his stomach, and had a sudden mental flash of his father sitting slouched on the sofa at home, brooding about her.

  “Did you know that I even offered her immortality? Doubly foolish was I. I’m not sure if she ever believed my story, but she refused. The arrogance of her! She allowed me only to have her painted in miniature. That, she said, would have to suffice for eternity.”

  Eric thought of the explosive defiance in her eyes, and understood now. It was as if she’d been saying, Look! Look at me! How can you not believe I’ll be beautiful and young forever!

  “She could have had true immortality,” Alexander said. “But she spurned it. She succumbed to fever. I will never forgive her.”

  Eric winced. His father’s words.

  “All are snatched away,” Alexander said. “Coyle is the only one keeping pace with me through time, my only companion. Sometimes … sometimes I think I must be mad or that I’m dreaming it all—he is my only proof that I’m sane, do you see? I couldn’t unmake him.”

  “But he’d unmake you!”

  “Oh, yes, he would, but I cannot do the same to him. I will not. It would be unforgivable. He is as venerable as these things around us. Coyle is like me, a living artifact.”

  Eric looked away in confusion and disgust. How could Alexander feel any kind of kinship with Coyle—someone who would eagerly kill him? Like Dad, he thought, you’ll cling and cling until it destroys you. Pathetic.

  “Will you take it, Eric?”

  “You should ask my father. He’d do it.” Flinging out the words.

  “No, no, it’s you. You’re the one. I’ve watched you.”

  “You made a mistake.”

  “If Coyle takes the scroll, I’ll be cast into the abyss of time, and you will watch all this burn. All these things that have given you so much pleasure. What will you be left with?” he scoffed. “Outside these walls, what is there? Flickering televisions with their promises of happiness and wealth, new malls with everything useless under the heavens, towers of steel and glass that blot out the sun. Here, Eric, here there’s a whole world. But once Coyle’s found the scroll, he’ll raze it to the ground.” His voice had become frantic, pleading. “The precious past will disintegrate before your eyes.”

  The precious past, Eric thought acidly. All he could see was his father being pulled down by the past, being suffocated by it: the photographs and the tombstone and the perfect, videotape memories. What good was it when you wasted away in unhappiness, always lonely and dissatisfied and restless, ignoring and hurting the people around you, who might help if only you’d let them? What good was the past?

  “You can do it yourself,” Eric told him fiercely. “Why should I take it? You’ve been watching me, studying me like I’m some kind of guinea pig, lying to me. I don’t even think you wanted to tell me who you really were. You just wanted to unload this thing
on me. Just as long as I’d bring it back. That’s all that mattered. You’re just using me. And you don’t even care, do you? Coyle would kill me for this, wouldn’t he? Well, wouldn’t he, if he wants it so badly? Maybe it’s almost impossible for you to be killed, but it isn’t for me. Forget it. You could do it if you wanted.”

  “I can’t,” the ancient librarian said. “It’s not possible.”

  Eric snorted. The anger burned inside him, in his stomach and chest, encircling his heart. He felt suddenly caged in by a decaying junk heap, sickened by the stink of the cellars.

  “Look at all this stuff!” he raged. “You’re just letting it rot. My father takes better care of his paperbacks! This is just greed! Things that only you’re allowed to touch! To hell with it.”

  “Take it,” Alexander said, holding out the canister. “Help me.”

  Eric felt an unwanted stab of pity. Don’t buckle, he cautioned himself.

  “Take care of it yourself.” He moved towards the doorway. “He’d never find it down here anyway.”

  10

  The City Rises

  “No proof,” Chris said again.

  “You’re right,” Eric agreed, a little too eagerly. Come on, he thought, convince me, make me believe it was all lies, all made up.

  It was already starting to fade a little in his mind. Once he’d left the darkness of the cellars and reached the busy city street, it had all become vaguely unreal, like some prolonged and particularly vivid dream. Alexander, whispering, whispering; the gargantuan, rotting treasure in the damp cellar; the live-forever machine gleaming in its white canister. How could any of that be true once he’d stepped out onto the street? The cars, the people, the noise, the heat. Concentrate on that.

  When Chris had dropped by, Eric was glad. He needed to talk it out with someone. Chris had listened, squinting, shaking his head in disbelief. Eric encouraged him, trying to make it all seem as outrageous as possible.

  “I mean, he says he’s sixteen—almost seventeen hundred years old or whatever it is,” Chris said. “But so what? Nice story! What’s to stop me from telling you I’ve been alive for five hundred years?”

  “You’re right,” Eric said again. “It’s ridiculous. None of it can be proven.”

  Chris shifted in the dilapidated armchair. He wasn’t used to having Eric agree with him so easily. It made him nervous. He tried again.

  “So he’s good at history and can list off all these dates. So what? Show me a photo of him in 1905, looking exactly the same. Then maybe I’d think about it.”

  Eric just nodded, hungrily storing Chris’s arguments. Keep going. Don’t stop now.

  “And this live-forever machine; don’t make me laugh! What is it—just some old paper! You didn’t even really see it, did you? Hocus-pocus crap!”

  “I know, I know,” Eric said. “The way he described it, it was like some kind of magic spell.” But once again he remembered Alexander’s description of breathing water into his lungs, the icy chill deep inside his body, devouring him. No, no, it couldn’t be true, Eric told himself fiercely. Things like that just weren’t possible.

  “It’s like I said yesterday,” Chris told him. “This thing sounds like a big con job. I bet all that stuff in the cellar is utterly stolen. He’s probably been swiping it from the museum for years.”

  “Probably,” Eric said. “He was just making everything up.”

  But why, then, couldn’t Eric stop believing it? He wanted to believe Chris, but he just couldn’t. Alexander’s ancient smell, his creviced face, all the dates, events and names he had effortlessly recited: all that, Eric supposed, and maybe even the massive hoard in the cellar could be explained away. But his guts wouldn’t let him do that. There was a part of him that knew with unshakable certainty that Alexander was telling him the truth. And he’d been trying to shove it out of his mind so he wouldn’t have to feel bad about not taking the scroll. And why the hell should he feel bad anyway?

  He began walking around the living room, picking up books from the coffee table and sofas, slamming them back onto the shelves. The heat was like a hard-knuckled fist pushing insistently into the centre of his chest.

  “What are you doing?” Chris said.

  “Cleaning up. This place is a mess.” He scowled at the dust that had collected around the legs of the furniture and was suddenly reminded of the cellar, the cobwebs, the clinging moisture, the neglect.

  “He just wanted to use me,” he said angrily. “He just wanted me to keep the scroll away from Coyle.” He shot another paperback into the bookcase. “He didn’t even care about how dangerous it might be for me.” He saw th Museums of the World book on the floor and kicked it contemptuously under the sofa. “All he cares about is himself and his dusty old things—” He cut himself short. He’d forgotten who he was talking about, his father or Alexander.

  “Well, forget it,” Chris said, watching Eric a little uneasily. “It’s finished. You got rid of the locket, so that’s it.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “Yeah.” He slumped into one of the sofas, looked restlessly around the room, and suddenly wanted to be somewhere else. “Why don’t we go back to your place?” he suggested. “It’s cooler there.”

  “Sure. What d’you want to do?”

  “Maybe we could play computer games or something.”

  “You hate computer games.”

  “You could show me that new graphics program your Dad sent you. Or maybe there’s something good on TV. This one’s too small.”

  “All right, yeah,” Chris said.

  “Good.” Eric heaved himself up. Maybe he could shut his mind off and refuse to follow through with any of the thoughts. After a while it would dissolve completely, wouldn’t it? If he fooled Chris, maybe he could even fool himself.

  Someone was yelling on the street outside the house. Eric walked over and pushed aside the blind. On the steps of the museum, a street vendor had drawn a large crowd and was demonstrating a new ice-making machine.

  But it wasn’t his voice that Eric was hearing.

  It was Jonah’s. He’d shambled out onto the street and was standing on the fringes of the crowd, pointing and hollering.

  “He’s the one, him, there!” he proclaimed. “That’s him, sure as I’m me.”

  Eric followed the line of Jonah’s outstretched arm and index finger. His eyes passed over the people on the museum steps, some looking at Jonah in bewilderment, others turning away, indifferent and impatient. Then Eric’s eyes settled on a man in black jeans and a matching T-shirt at the back of the crowd.

  “There, there, there!” Jonah wailed, hurtling his arm forward.

  “What’s going on?” Chris asked, coming over to the window.

  “Jonah’s yelling,” Eric said softly.

  “The crazy guy who fishes? Who’s he screaming at?”

  Eric pointed across the road. “Chris, that’s him. Coyle.”

  “Him? Really?”

  Eric nodded. “I wonder why Jonah’s shouting at him like that.”

  “And he’s supposed to be as old as Alexander, huh?” said Chris scathingly. “He only looks about thirty.”

  “Doesn’t mean a thing,” Eric said. “That’s not the way it works. You’re just frozen at the same age—”

  “I thought you said you didn’t believe any of this!” Chris said.

  “I don’t know anymore,” Eric said impatiently, looking out the window.

  Jonah was still raising hell on the sidewalk, and the crowd was getting nervous, breaking up. The ice-cube salesman tried to shoo him away, but Jonah held fast. No one appeared to care about Coyle; no one was looking at him. All eyes were on Jonah. They knew he was crazy. People were laughing at him now. Coyle left the museum steps and started down the street.

  “Why’d you keep on agreeing with me?” Chris demanded. “If you believed it all along?”

  “Let’s follow him,” Eric said, letting the blind swing back into place.

  “Eric, he’s not immortal
—”

  “Well, maybe we can find out who he really is, then.” Eric walked out into the hall, towards the front door. “You don’t have to come.” Knowing that Chris would, though. He always did.

  “Utterly stupid,” Chris muttered.

  Dazed by the late-afternoon heat, Eric paused outside the house, shielding his eyes.

  “Let’s stay on this side at least,” Chris said, as Eric made to cross the busy road.

  They kept well back, following Coyle down the scalding street. From across the road, Eric watched as Coyle gazed intently all around—at the cars and trucks that growled past, the streetlights, the billboards flanking the street. He tilted his head back to look up at the peaks of the skyscrapers. He paused to press all the crosswalk buttons, examine the instant-banking machines. He paused in front of a computer shop, looking at the machinery on display, then went inside.

  The street noise swirled in vicious eddies around Eric’s ears. For the first time he could remember, he felt overwhelmed by the frenzied movement and colour of the city. It didn’t make any sense to him, the billboard signs flashing the latest news, the lurid window displays. And where did all these people come from, hurtling down the sidewalks with their briefcases?

  What on earth did they do?

  Coyle had reappeared, holding a plastic bag. Further up the street he stopped to peer at a new highrise through the sidewalk hoardings around the construction site. He watched, fascinated, as the huge crane swung round and round, lifting girders and concrete blocks. His hands, Eric noticed, were twitching by his sides. Then he raised his arms and, like the conductor of a symphony, seemed to be urging the construction onwards, hastening the building’s rise.

  “He’s crazy,” Chris mumbled. “He’s a freaking maniac!”