I swallow hard. This can’t be how it goes. I pluck up my courage and tell him, “no.”
He seems confused. “No?”
This feels like my last chance to explain, so I’m firm about what I say next. “Myles, it is not okay for either of us to base a decision about our mortality on the other.”
He frowns, and I see that he’s going to make some statement about how love is the only good reason to do anything, but I have a clencher. I lean upon my elbow so I can face him head-on, too.
“It’s like you just said about your mom. Love is not about control. It’s about freedom. If you love me, you should want me to make this decision for myself, and not for you. And because I love you, I want you to make your decision for you, and not for me, okay? Promise me.”
He is skeptical. I can see wheels spinning in his head while he taps his heel against one of the bedposts. Would he make a choice to be immortal just for himself? Is that what he really really wants?
“Promise me, Myles,” I say again. “If you love me, you won’t choose immortality just for me. Because I’m never going to be able to forgive you if you do that.”
He finally laughs and falls onto his back. “I guess I always thought I was the one who loved you more,” he says. “You must love me at least as much as I love you to be this worried about my autonomy.”
I touch that rose gold petal hanging from my neck. “I do.”
He turns again and hovers over me so that I can’t see that empty upper bunk anymore. “Then I promise, Stella. I will spend all six weeks of the isolation thinking about myself and what I want for me over the next thousand years, and I will decide whether to pull the trigger based on what I want.” He puts his forehead against mine. “But Stella Rose, this is your eternity we’re talking about, too. So, you have to make the same promise. You choose the path that is best for you.”
“I promise,” I say.
I turn in my papers the next day. I’m doing this the same time he’s doing it. That’s the only way to make sure we both keep our promises.
14.
MYLES
Stella is right about all of this. I am, too, though. If there’s one choice in life I would like to make, it’s her. I would move worlds to keep her. I’ll never love anyone else the same way I love her.
But love isn’t the kind of thing you use to force someone to do what you want them to do. I know that courtesy of my parents. It’s not love when you push someone you care about into a decision. That’s fear.
I love Stella way too much to want her to do anything just on my behalf. She has to choose immortality, obviously, but not because I do. Her choice has to be based on rational factors. Risk calculations and the knowledge that if she doesn’t become immortal, her life as she knows it is going to be over in about thirty years. I wish she didn’t have to make such a crappy call, but she does.
And now, because I love that girl and she asked me to do it this way, I need to make my own choice.
I’m expecting some kind of space age isolation chamber thing, but instead, I get sent to a crappy hotel in Rhode Island for my six weeks of isolation, and for the first few days, I hardly sleep. I fight every instinct I have that tells me the obvious decision here is the one that allows me to keep Stella. It is difficult. But it isn’t fair to put the burden of my immortality on her shoulders.
So, after a few bad nights, I’m finally where I need to be. I’m going to decide whether I want to be immortal based on what I would choose if she disappeared from my life for good. I have a little less than six weeks to figure it out, so I start making lists and charts. I think it over in the shower, while I run, and when I eat meals. I meditate on it. I ask myself over and over: do I want to be immortal?
And here’s the crazy thing: the answer is yes.
At the end of every list I make, every conversation I have with myself, every dream, I always come to the same conclusion. I want immortality. I want it for myself.
It isn’t because of Stella Rose. It’s because immortality removes the greatest obstacle to my own happiness. If I stay mortal, I’ll spend the next hundred years trying to figure out what the “best” use of myself is for humanity. After all, I was born privileged, and privilege means you don’t get to be happy wherever you end up. It means you have to live up to the unfair circumstance of your own privilege. For me, that’s a million tons of pressure. I have the Kayes legacy to live up to. I will never get it right in a single mortal lifetime.
As an immortal, all the pressure will disappear. Yes, I will still be privileged with money, status, and a family name, but suddenly, I will also have the privilege of time to decide what to do with all that. If I make mistakes in the first hundred years or so, I’ll have millennia to make up for it. I mean … all I need to do is hire a few solid financial advisers to help make sure the trust can support me while I figure stuff out, and I’ll have eternity to figure out what to do with all my privilege. I’ll get to spend eons finding ways to shape the universe into something better.
By the second week of my six-week isolation, I’m sure I’m making the right decision, and I start getting excited thinking about what I’ll do first as an immortal. I suddenly understand how Foster’s been feeling because the next ten years sound like a decade I can just play with.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to convince Stella—probably not in the first hundred years while her family is still alive—but I realize pretty quickly that I want to see things. And I don’t just mean Earth things. Immortality opens everything up for all of us, doesn’t it? If she wants to stay on Earth for a while, though, no problem. We can spend a mortal’s lifetime knocking stuff off the bucket list, checking out all the most amazing things here at home on Earth. Then, when her last living relative dies, we can go to another planet, meet another intelligent form of life, maybe see what humans can do with a blank slate.
I’m stuck on the idea of space travel even if it can’t happen for a while. I spend the whole rest of my isolation learning everything I can about our existing space programs. I read, listen to, and watch anything I can get my hands on about the immortal ships that are already out there and a project that’s being organized to correct the screwup. I’m totally sure of myself. I never need to speak to any of the confidential counselors. I never have second thoughts. I know what I want for my life.
When my isolation is over, I get into this van that takes me from the hotel to the hospital for my injection. They check me into a room and tell me to get comfortable. It’s the best hospital room I’ve ever been in (not that I’ve been in many), and right now most of the machines are turned off. They say it’s less stressful this way—that the body takes the virus better if it doesn’t know it’s about to get incredibly sick. Once the sickness starts to take over, I’ll get a saline drip for hydration, and they’ll pump pain meds and anti-inflammatories into me to help ensure I survive.
I don’t have to change into a hospital robe yet, though. Just sit down, stick out my arm for a nurse who comes into the room with a syringe, and tell him I’m ready.
“You don’t have any hesitation, do you?” he says. “Good for you. That’s exactly what we want.” The needle digs down into my vein, and the Immortality Virus enters my system. It takes about fifteen seconds.
“Is that it?” I say as the nurse removes the needle, presses a little wad of cotton over that teeny tiny hole for thirty seconds, then paints a small liquid bandage over it.
“That’s it,” he says. “Welcome to immortality, Myles Alexander Kayes. The next ten days are going to be miserable, but after that, you’ll never be the same again.”
I relax in an easy chair, turn on the hospital television, and realize this is the perfect time to get into Star Trek. The most stressful thing about the day of my injection is choosing whether to start with the oldest episodes or go right to Star Trek: The Immortal Journey.
I hope Stella’s room is as nice as mine. I can’t wait to see her again.
15.
STELLA
My dad drives me to the Detroit Airport right before my six-week isolation period starts. I’m heading to some inn in Omaha. I’m going alone, obviously, but I don’t have to be alone after the injection. Families and friends who want to be supportive can arrange to visit you in the hospital starting the day after your injection. That way, if you don’t do well with the virus, everyone gets a final chance to say goodbye before you lose consciousness. Otherwise, you have people who care about you around to help make you feel better during the most miserable sickness of your life.
Myles doesn’t have anyone who will be there for him, but my family is all going to be there in Omaha for me after the injection.
“We already have our tickets,” Dad says before he hugs me goodbye at the airport. “Whatever you do, we’ll be there for you. It’ll be okay.”
Why don’t I feel the same?
The six-week isolation is torture for me. I’ve spent months learning about immortality. I know all the risks. I know all the benefits. I’ve practically memorized stories new immortals tell us about what the injection is like, what the sickness is like, what it feels like when you’re finally better.
“Like you can breathe more air than you’ve ever breathed before,” is one of the lines that sticks in my head.
But I feel like I can barely breathe at all, and I don’t know what I’m going to do. The only comfort I have is that at least I finally think Myles understands my concerns for him. I think he took what I said seriously. He’s going to decide to say yes to immortality or no to it, but it’s not going to be about me. It’s going to be about him.
The problem is that this leaves me to wonder obsessively what he’ll do, and every time I imagine the outcome, Myles decides not to go through with it. I don’t know why I can’t picture it any other way. I start having dreams about this every night. I’m always happy for him in the dream because he’s with his family and they’re so glad he decided to stay mortal. But I’m always so sad for me, because I’m immortal, and I don’t know what that means without Myles.
He says different things to me in my dreams, depending on the night. Sometimes it’s, “I thought I knew you, Stella.” Sometimes it’s, “I knew you could go through with it.” Sometimes it’s, “We’ll both be better this way.” Sometimes it’s, “I hate you. How could you?” But no matter what he says, I know we need to break up. Obviously. It’s funny and terrible that my thought process about that in the dream always goes, “Myles’s mortal family is never going to let an immortal come to a holiday dinner with them.”
I ruminate over all of this when I’m awake, too. What happens if we make different decisions? As an immortal, I’ll never be welcome in the Kayes house again. If we tried to get married, the Kayes probably wouldn’t show up at the wedding.
And why should they? It isn’t fair not to give Myles a chance at a normal life. We really are young. Me especially if I become immortal. But even with a mortal lifespan, Myles will have plenty of time to get over me. He’s a romantic, right? He throws his heart into the people he cares about. I know there’s a girl out there somewhere he can give his heart to who will hang onto it for their entire mortal lives.
I guess I’ll have eternity to fall in love again, too, if this all turns out the way I think it’s going to. But how long will it take me to get over him? Will I ever get over him? At what point will I stop thinking about the way he believes in me and all my flaws? The way he looks at me? Like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, even when I smile with my teeth.
After a week of waking up from bad dreams about what my life will be like if I become immortal and Myles stays mortal, I know I need help. I start going to see the confidential immortality counselors. I sit in this little gray booth, and I ask someone who is sitting across from me behind a screen if I can really tell him or her anything I want.
“This is the most important decision of your life,” my counselor says in a weird, gravelly voice that I think is being piped into my side of the booth with some kind of noise overlay. “What you say here is never recorded, and unless you say something that leads me to believe that you or another person is at imminent risk of serious harm or death, I am sworn to keep what you say confidential. What do you want to talk about? What’s weighing on your mind?”
The whole Myles story comes pouring out, and the counselor listens to everything I have to say for two hours straight before I think there’s nothing else to say. Then I’m tired, and I want to leave.
“Come back for another session,” the counselor advises, “And we can try to unpack all that.”
I do. I come back later that day and the day after that, but my conversations just keep going around in circles. The counselors—I’m not sure if it’s the same one each time or not—keep trying to bring me back to a question I don’t know how to answer:
“If Myles Kayes weren’t a part of this equation, what would you do?”
“I don’t know!” I scream one day. “I don’t know. And I don’t think I’ll ever know!”
“Are you sure?” the counselor says calmly. “Most people have a gut instinct one way or the other. What is your gut telling you?”
“I have no idea,” I say.
“Why don’t you spend the weekend meditating on it,” the counselor says. “If you have doubts, we always advise against immortality, but you won’t have another chance. If you reject immortality at the end of these six weeks, you reject it forever.”
I go back to the little room I’m staying in alone. I think and think and think, and I start having a new dream. In this one, I’m immortal, Foster is immortal, and Grazie is immortal, and we’re all happy. Then I remember that Myles is not, and I’m going to have to see him as a mortal, but I don’t want to. I wake up right before Myles appears. Immortality is just fine for me as long as I don’t have to see Myles as a mortal.
“Why do you think that is?” the counselor today asks me when I tell her. “Why are you fine with immortality until your mortal boyfriend appears?”
I’m afraid of the answer to that. I confess that I don’t know how I feel. Maybe I don’t love Myles enough after all. I know all the numbers on all of this, of course. I’m a little afraid of the needle and a little afraid of being one of the 2%, but I’m a lot more fearful of losing my mind at fifty. Immortality is the best choice for me. There’s really no other good choice to make. Unless Myles stays mortal.
“Why don’t we talk about your red flag?” the counselor says, and we do, and all this stuff I didn’t even know was there comes out about how I don’t want to be crazy and I’m already worried that my brain is different and who will I even be if I lose my mind? I also talk about Alzheimer’s research and the possibility of a cure.
“Do you believe it’s worth staying mortal and risking that?” the counselor asks.
“No!” I shout. “It’s not! And at the end of the day, it doesn’t make sense to make this decision on emotions. Emotions change. Numbers don’t! The likeliness that there’s a cure before I’m in a nursing complex, wandering around lost, is much much smaller than the likeliness that I die of the Immortality Virus in a few weeks. And I have an awesome family, and no one in my family is going to disown me or hate me for becoming immortal. Grazie loves immortality! Foster’s so excited, and if Myles weren’t a part of my life, I would choose immortality without another thought. He just makes it so difficult.”
“Love makes life complicated,” the counselor says. “Does that mean it is a bad thing?”
“Of course not,” I say. “It means that even though you want to be able to make decisions without involving emotions like love, you can’t. You can’t live your life in a vacuum. Reality isn’t six weeks of isolation. Reality is whatever happens when I get back out there and have to face Myles.”
“You have to make the decision you can live with,” the counselor says.
“The decision I can live with is more complicated than what I want for just myself,” I say.
When my isolation is over, I get into the car that takes me to the hospital for the injection, and I feel like I still don’t know what I want to do. They check me into a room and tell me to get comfortable, but how can I get comfortable when all I can think about is how this is it? After this, I’ll get sick. I might die. If I don’t, I’ll wake up immortal, and everything that matters in my life will have changed.
How am I going to live with myself if I become immortal and Myles doesn’t? That’s the worst thing I can imagine happening. If that happens, then I’ll be the one who made the choice that shuts him out of my life.
Still, what happens if I choose mortality, but he chose immortality? That’s the second-worst thing that I can imagine happening. Because if that happens, at least Myles made the decision to break away from his parents and do this on his own.
And I know I promised I would make this decision without involving him, but I can’t. I just can’t. This is literally life or death, so as the nurse comes in with that syringe, and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach rises up, I realize I’m going to break the promise I made him.
It happens in slow motion. The nurse asks me to sit. She prepares the syringe. I lower my arm. Did Myles choose immortality, or did he choose mortality?
The nurse ties something rubbery above my elbow, taps my skin to get a vein. I wince. Immortality makes sense for me, but there’s no going back after this. Mortality makes sense for Myles, and there’s no going back after this.
Me as an immortal and him as a mortal is the worst-case scenario, and there’s no going back after this.
The nurse lowers the needle. “Are you okay?” she says.
I’m done. I yank my arm away from her. “I don’t want to do it,” I say. “I changed my mind. I want to stay mortal.”
Stella Rose Gold for Eternity Page 7