Lightship

by Stephan Besik

  Surprised, Bob asked, “A farewell party? Have you got another project with the Corps?”

  His friend smiled sadly. “No, it’s not for the Corps.” He hesitated again. “I’ve decided to leave.”

  Bob wondered if he was still right in the head. “Yeah, I got that. That’s what a farewell party is for. So where are you going?”

  Gary searched for the right words and decided to come straight out with it. “I’m not going anywhere, Bob. I mean I can’t stay in this life anymore.”

  Bob stared at his friend. “You mean…you can’t mean you’re going to suicide.”

  The nod seemed a little shaky to Bob. Maybe there was a way to talk him out of it.

  “Are you sure, Gary? What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

  Gary took a drink before he answered. “A little of everything, I guess. Frankly I’m surprised I’ve been able to hold out this long. Maybe it would be all right if we were like the young ones. The ones who got the treatment at the right age. I’m lonely, Bob, and I can’t fix that. We’re freaks, old people living among the forever young.

  “I don’t regret having done it. The country needed us and the world needed us. But now we’re paying the price for the decision. Some of the young ones are sympathetic, but most don’t care. For some we’re just reminders of the bad people who wrecked the planet, whether or not we helped put it back together again.

  He took another sip, then set his glass down. “Man, this beer is good. The Corps hasn’t called me for a couple of years now. They don’t need us anymore. My first kids, the ones who made it, have been adults for a hundred years. Even the second bunch are in their sixties. They talk to me now and then but it’s been years since I was a real part of their lives. Alia divorced me decades ago. She’s still around, I hear, but trying to bring that back would be like trying to raise the dead. Once in a while I run into some young thing that decides it will do her soul good to fuck an old man, but they’re kidding themselves and they can’t kid me.

  “It’s not a life anymore, Bob. The world is telling me I’m obsolete. I’m no longer needed, even by my family. It feels like it’s time to call it quits.”

  “What about space? It’s wide open out there and completely different from what we’ve got here. I can’t imagine the Exploration Agency would turn you down. After all the things you did for the world? How could they? Even with your age issues, maybe even because of your age, they’ll take you. They need all the technical people they can find. I think they’d take you as soon as you walked through the door.”

  Gary shook his head. “You’re probably right, but I think going back to the job would be a temporary fix. Besides, I’m not interested in living in one of those glorified boxes out there. They make it look pretty but the reality is you’re living in a big tube under tons of rock just about anywhere you go. Not my cup of tea. I spent too much time fixing things so we could have a beautiful outside again.

  “Moving out wouldn’t change my situation. My problem is that I’m lonely. Most of the ones who were like us are gone and the young ones don’t need us.

  “Not the way I need to be needed anyhow. Alia divorced me after the second family was grown up. We hoped that the new kids would help us stay together. It didn’t work. She said she didn’t want to do it again and we’d been together so long it was boring. When I see my kids, you can tell they’re struggling too. Everyone’s been divorced, looking for a new playmate. Of course, they don’t look a day over twenty-five.

  “You know what really gets me now, Bob? There are no kids around anymore. I see a little one maybe once a month now. Sometimes it’s longer than that.

  “My girl’s sixty-one. The girl from the second bunch, I mean. When she applied for motherhood twenty years ago, they gave her one kid. One. That one’s grown up now, if twenty is grown up anymore, and just started to think about applying. She’s saying she might not have one until she’s sixty. Forty more years before there’s another little one in the family. And again, Family Planning will give her one. Maybe not even one, you know? Even now the number of people leaving the planet isn’t keeping up with population growth. If none of us are going, is there room for more kids? Maybe in the future the only new ones will be born off Earth.”

  Bob tried to be sympathetic. “You know the rules, man. A lot of the problem, maybe most, was overpopulation. It could get even worse with all of us living forever.”

  Gary smiled ironically. “Doesn’t really help me. Knowing why doesn’t change things.” Bob thought that sounded pretty familiar. “And even if Family Planning wasn’t a problem, who would I have a kid with? You and I are the last of the old codgers, ugly old farts in the land of the beautiful. Raising a kid means someone would have to look at this face for at least a few years. Who would want to do that?

  “I’d like to stay with someone for a while. I’m not interested in a two-week pity fuck, although frankly I’d take even that now. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone sharing a bed with me.”

  That struck a chord with Bob. No one would ever replace Meg, but after so many years it got lonely. Really lonely.

  Gary sighed a long sigh. “It’s not one thing. It’s all of it put together. Not really anywhere to go. What’s worse, there’s no one to go there with. I’ve decided I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  Bob hesitated, then gave it another try. “Are you really sure about this? Death is pretty permanent. No one’s going to bring you back once you’re gone.”

  Gary stared at his drink for a long time. “Do you believe in God, Bob? Could it be there is an afterlife?”

  Bob shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure. I see where you’re going with this. Do you really want to gamble that there is something after we pass away?”

  He grimaced. “When times get hard we start to look at our options.” His face softened. “Do you ever think about Meg?”

  Thinking about Meg as part of this conversation was something Bob had hoped to avoid, but here it was. He took another sip of beer. “I do. I do a lot, actually. In a way she hasn’t really left me. I miss her. I’d like to think she’s out there, somewhere, and that someday we can be together again.” This time he took a solid gulp and emptied his glass. He caught Grem’s eye and pointed to his glass. Grem nodded. “Do you want another one?”

  Gary finished off the little bit he had left in his glass. “Sure. Sounds good.” Bob waved his hand again, held up two fingers and Grem acknowledged.

  Bob looked down at his empty glass. “You know, in my heart I want to believe that there’s something more, that maybe we get to retry life and not make the mistakes we made the first time around. Then my head kicks in. What are we up to now, two hundred orders of magnitude between the smallest and the largest things in the universe? That doesn’t even count the possibility that there might be an infinite number of alternate universes out there, a lot or maybe all of them as big as ours.

  “I think about ants and how close they are in size to us on the scale of the universe. On the grand scale we’re just a tiny bit bigger than them, and maybe on that grand scale we’re also just a tiny bit smarter. Do you think God cares a heck of a lot more about us than he does ants? Maybe he or she cares about all life, but that doesn’t mean he’s so committed to life that he’s got us and all the other intelligent beasts on an infinite loop, letting us all have a multitude of shots at things we haven’t done right in our prior lives. Maybe God and the universe are actually limited in some way and there just aren’t any options for him or for us. Who knows? I don’t want to think about Meg being gone forever, but it’s hard to have much hope. Too many paths to oblivion and too few to paradise.”

  Their conversation stopped for a minute as Grem brought fresh beers and took away the old glasses. “Thanks, Grem,” responded Bob.

  “I’m not betting on an afterlife,” said Gary. “It’s just…I’m getting tired of being alone. I wonder if I’m taking up space that should be going to new life. I just don’t know i
f I can do it much longer.”

  “You know what I think? I think you’ve been on the sidelines too long. I think we’re back to doing things like going out to space. Maybe that applies to me, too. We can’t just sit around watching the world go by. We’re slowly going stir crazy in the life we’ve got now. As bad as the bad old days were, things were always happening that got your blood up. Time to get off our butts and try new things. And there are new things to do. We should be out there trying to do them.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I haven’t tried hard enough. I know it’s the final alternative. Maybe I should give more things a try before I decide I’ve had enough.”

  Things still felt delicate and Bob wasn’t sure the next question was timely. But he gave it a try.

  “So, do you think you can put off this farewell party for a while longer?”

  Gary nodded slowly. “Maybe. You’re the first one I’ve told. I didn’t want to get the kids all wound up until I could talk to someone in the same position. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  Bob smiled. “I’m glad you did. We should try to stay in touch more. We’ve let things slide. It’s so easy to put things off now. So much we’ve been through. Just getting together more often would be a good thing. Especially since we’ve got a long way to go yet.”

  “You know, I hadn’t thought much about what we’ve got left. Sounds like you’ve been keeping up with the news more than I have. What’s the word? Have you spoken to any of the doctors about how long we’ve got? I stopped being concerned about medical stuff years ago. How about a fix to our peculiar problem? Any word on that?”

  Bob looked at his glass. “I still have connections with a small research project at the University. They try to follow us old guys. There are a couple people who did a full physical workup on me with the idea that they might be able to tell how long we’ve got. They said at the rate we’re going, we’ll probably make 500 years. They said it was more likely we’d die of an accident or some other unnatural cause than we would from any kind of disease or aging. The bad news is that our particular problem isn’t any closer to being solved. I’m not sure anyone’s even working on it anymore.”

  Gary shook his head. “Wow. Two hundred fifty behind us and another two hundred fifty to go. And for a while there it looked like Mother Nature’s global retribution would take us out before we hit a hundred. Another two fifty living as an old man, though. Not exactly the best of all possible worlds.”

  Bob sighed. “No, not the best of all worlds.” He smiled ironically. “I heard a long time ago that the Chinese had a special curse- ‘May you live in interesting times.’ I guess someone’s cursed us. Not only have we lived in interesting times, we’ve lived a long time in them and as old men. I think we should update the curse somehow.” He took another sip of beer. “Maybe the next two fifty won’t be quite as bad. Hope springs eternal. I think hope will be around even longer than us.”

  Gary looked at his watch and took a long drink of his second beer. “I’ve got to get going. This was a good talk. I’ll think about what you’ve said. Maybe you’re right. Maybe what I need is a challenge. New horizons, that sort of thing. Maybe the party will just be a party instead of a farewell. What do you think we owe?”

  Bob waved it off. “Forget it. I’ll take care of it. Just remember to invite me to the party, farewell or no. Okay?”

  “Yeah. We should get together more often no matter what. And…thanks for everything.”

  **

  It was rather ironic that he was leaving almost two years to the day since he and Gary had their first talk. There had been a number of other conversations over the next six months. It turned out that their first conversation had been good for Bob. It had started him thinking, and then he had started to do some research.

  The thinking brought him to the conclusion that he didn’t want to be like Gary, seriously considering ending it all. He didn’t feel that his options were really exhausted. There were things he still wanted to do, things he still wanted to see.

  He didn’t have Gary’s people problem. He had always been a bit of a loner. Meg had been his one true friend and love. Even Gary was peripheral to his needs; that had been pretty clear when he had gone eight years without even getting in touch. And Gary had called him. Having survived this long without Meg, Bob figured he could keep it up a while longer.

  He thought about Gary. He couldn’t really tell whether their talks were good or bad for him. It didn’t matter any longer; Gary finally had his party, and it was a farewell. Bob got to meet both generations of his kids. Even Gary’s ex-wife was there. There had been a few tears; perhaps fewer than Bob had expected. At the end, Gary had given him a big hug and thanked him for all the good times. He thanked him again for the last few months as well.

  Bob wasn’t sure he deserved that. Nothing he said when they got back together, or anything he said afterward, had changed Gary’s mind. It had just taken a little longer for Gary to go. Maybe that was really all that could have been expected.

  It was a little silly that Bob had to hold back tears that wanted to come as he thought about Gary. He had made it out the door at the farewell party but then he hadn’t been able to stop them for a while. It was easier now; the deed was done and the pain had faded. All he could hope for was that sometime in the distant future he could join up with Meg and Gary again when his own time was up. The doctors had said five hundred years, assuming his luck held out. Not really likely considering he was almost certainly raising the odds against himself. Of course it wouldn’t matter much if the afterlife didn’t exist. Bob wouldn’t be around, either.

  He would never have given Gary’s particular way of leaving a second thought if Meg was still around, or if the planet still needed him. When Gary came to see him he actually considered the idea for a while. Gary’s argument never really stuck, though. It didn’t take long for Bob to come to the conclusion that it didn’t make sense for him personally. Gary’s way out seemed all too permanent and pretty scary unless you believed in some kind of afterlife. Bob wasn’t religious; he’d seen too many bad things during the bad years. If there was a God, he was perfectly happy to let humans go to hell in their own way. Not likely there was help from that direction.

  He hadn’t really spent any time thinking about space travel. Oh, he had kept up with headlines and such, but really understanding hadn’t been a priority. His years on Earth had been filled with the struggle to get the planet back on course, and with his days with his wife. Now those things were memories, some good and some bad. It had been an exciting life in that first hundred years.

  After a fair amount of consideration he realized that he needed some kind of change. If nothing else, it was clear that he was bored. After decades of excitement, and decades of love, things had certainly gotten dull. In that first conversation with Gary, the subject of space travel had been as much about pulling Gary out of his funk as it was a real thought.

  The idea of space travel had arisen almost as soon as Bob realized he needed a change. The idea turned into a dream, and then into an objective. He had seen much of the Earth, and with the possible exception of the oceans there weren’t any frontiers left. In space, however, there didn’t seem to be any limits. In the Solar System alone a man could spend centuries and never see it all. According to the docs, he had centuries to burn.

  His interest in space travel had been pretty superficial when the thought arose. He really knew almost nothing about it, except that for a while humanity had almost lost it. During the worst of the climate crisis, all the resources went to saving planet Earth and its people.

  He had always been a quick study, though, and space turned about to be a very interesting subject. It took him a year, but at the end of the year he was a bit of an expert on space and space travel.

  Once the planet had breathing room again, a lot of the best minds began to refocus on space travel. There was the feeling that a backup plan was needed, not only to have a way out in case of an
other major climate shift but in case any of a number of possible catastrophes occurred, natural or manmade. There was also the human itch to see what was out there. The unmanned probes of the old days had found all sorts of unexpected oddities on the satellites of the outer planets. Relatively little was known about the big planets and things beyond. Maybe it was time for mankind to go and see for itself.

  Space travel had survived, and while it hadn’t moved quickly during the bad years it still progressed. The solar sail ships had supplied small permanent colonies on the Moon during the early years of the global crisis, and research stations above the atmosphere of Venus were established. More sunlight at the distance from the sun of Venus meant twice as much power as sunlight around Earth orbit, making the trip easier than the relatively long haul to Mars. All that power made building easier. There were also some commercial possibilities in the atmosphere of the second planet that made the investment worth the risk.

  Things stayed that way, with a few colonies on the Moon and research stations just outside the atmosphere of Venus for some years. As things got easier on Earth and the challenges were met, there were explorers who turned their eyes back toward Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and the outer planets.

  That was when the next big leap occurred- the lightways. It started with a massive station following Earth at the next Lagrange point in its orbit around the Sun. For the most part it was a huge array of solar panels and a big set of lasers. The panels provided power to the lasers, which pushed gigawatts of power into the distant reaches of the solar system in a tight beam of monochromatic light. A solar ship caught the light in its sails, converted it back into electricity and created a big plasma push through its electric engines. The first lightway did dramatic things to the cost of travel to Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and even the moons of Jupiter, reducing fuel costs in the same way that the solar sail ships on the Luna run cut costs to the Moon.