Central Station

by Lavie Tidhar

  For hours, days, he sat in the rocking chair, examining memories like globes of light. Disconnected, he did not know how one related to the other, or whose the memory had been, his own or someone else’s. For hours and days, alone, in the silence like dust.

  Lucidity came and went without a pattern. Once he opened his eyes and breathed in and saw Boris crouching beside him, an older, thinner version of the boy who held his hand and looked up at the sky and asked awkward questions.

  “Boris?” he said, surprise catching at the words. His mouth felt raw with disuse.

  “Dad.”

  “What . . . are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been back a month, Dad.”

  “A month?” Pride, and hurt, made his throat constrict. “And you only now come to visit me?”

  “I’ve been here,” Boris said, gently. “With you. Dad—”

  But Vlad stopped him. “Why are you back?” he said. “You should have stayed in the Up and Out. There is nothing for you, now. Boris. You were always too big for your boots.”

  “Dad—”

  “Go away!” He almost shouted. Felt himself pleading. His fingers gripped the side arms of the ancient rocking chair. “Go, Boris. You don’t belong here anymore.”

  “I came back because of you!” His son was shouting at him. “Look at you! Look at—”

  Then that, too, became just another memory, detached, floating out of his reach. The next time he broke through the water Boris was gone and Vlad went downstairs and sat in the café with Ibrahim, the alte-zachen man, and played backgammon and drank coffee in the sun, and for a while everything was as it should be.

  The next time he saw Boris he was not alone, but with Miriam, who Vlad saw, from time to time, outside.

  “Boris!” he said, tears, unbidden, coming to his eyes. He hugged his boy, there, in the middle of the street.

  “Dad . . .” Boris was taller than him now, he realised with a start. “You’re feeling better?”

  “I feel fine!” He held on to him tight, then released him. “You’ve grown,” he said.

  “I’ve been away a long time,” Boris said.

  “You’re thin. You should eat more.”

  “Dad . . .”

  “Miriam,” Vlad said. Giddy.

  “Vlad,” she said. She put her hand, lightly, on his shoulder. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You found him again,” he said.

  “He . . .” she hesitated. “We ran into each other,” she said.

  “That’s good. That is good,” Vlad said. “Come. Let me buy you a drink. To celebrate.”

  “Dad, I don’t think—”

  “No one asks you to think!” Vlad snapped. “Come,” he said, more gently. “Come.”

  They sat in the coffee shop. Vlad ordered a half-bottle of arak. He poured. Hands steady. Central Station rising before them like a signpost for the future. For Vlad it was pointing the wrong way, it was a part of his past. “L’chaim,” he said. They raised their glasses and drank.

  A moment of dislocation. Then he was in the flat again and the old robot, R. Patch-It, was standing there.

  “What are you doing here?” Vlad snapped. He remembered remembering; moving memories like cubes between his hands, hanging them in the air before him. Trying to make sense of how they fit each other, which came before which.

  “I was looking after you,” the robot said. Vlad remembered the robot, through his own memories and through Weiwei’s. R. Patch-it, who had circumcised Vlad as a baby, had performed the same service for Boris, when his time came. Old even before Weiwei came to this land as a young, poor migrant worker, all those years before.

  “Leave me be,” Vlad said. Resented suddenly the interference. “Boris sent you,” he said. Not a question.

  “He is worried,” the robot said. “I am too, Vlad.”

  “What makes you so much better?” Vlad said. “A robot. You’re an object. A piece of metal with an I-loop soldered in. What do you know of being alive?”

  The robot didn’t answer. Later, Vlad realised he was not there, that the flat was empty, and had been empty for some time.

  None of it would have bothered him so much if only he could remember her name.

  “Post-mortal options?” he said, echoing the doctor.

  “Yes, yes,” the doctor said. “There are several standard possibilities we really must discuss before we—”

  “Such as?”

  He could feel time slipping away. Urgency gripped him. A man should be allowed to determine the time of his going. To go in dignity. Even to make it this far in life was an achievement, something to celebrate.

  “We could freeze you,” the doctor said.

  “Freeze me.”

  He felt robbed of willpower. Fought the memories crowding in on him. No one in the family had ever been frozen before.

  “Freeze you until such time as you wish to be awakened,” Dr. Graff said. “A century or two?”

  “I assume the costs are considerable.”

  “It’s a standard contract,” Dr. Graff said. “Estate plus—”

  “Yes, yes,” Vlad said. “That is to say, no. What do you think will happen in one, or two, or five hundred years from now?”

  “Often, patients are sick with incurable illnesses,” Dr. Graff said. “They hope for a cure. Others are time tourists, disillusioned with our era, wishing to seek out the new, the strange.”

  “The future.”

  “The future,” Dr. Graff agreed.

  “I’ve seen the future,” Vlad said. “It’s the past I can’t get back to, Dr. Graff. There is too much of it and it’s broken and it exists only in my head. I don’t want to travel to the future.”

  “There is also the possibility of freezing on board an Exodus ship,” the doctor said. “To travel beyond the Up and Out. You could be awakened on a new planet, a new world.”

  Vlad smiled. “My boy,” he said, softly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “My boy, Boris. He’s a doctor too, you know.”

  “Boris Chong? I remember him. We were colleagues together,” Dr. Graff said. “In the birthing clinics. A long time ago. He left for Mars, didn’t he?”

  “He’s back,” Vlad said. “He was always a good boy.”

  “I’ll be sure to look him up,” Dr. Graff said.

  “I don’t want to go to the stars,” Vlad said. “Going away seldom changes what we are.”

  “Indeed,” the doctor said. “Well, there is also of course the possibility of upload?”

  “Existing as an I-loop simulation while the old body and mind die anyway?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doctor, I will live on as memory,” Vlad said. “That is something I cannot change. Every bit of me, everything that makes me what I am will survive so my grandchildren and my nephews’ children and all the ones born in Central Station and beyond, now and in the future, can recall through me all I have seen, if they so wish.” He smiled again. “Do you think they will be smarter? Do you think they will learn from my mistakes and not make their own?”

  “No,” the doctor said.

  “I am Weiwei’s son, and have Weiwei’s Folly in my mind and in my node. I am, already, memory, Dr. Graff. But memory is not me. Are we done with the preliminaries?”

  “You could be cyborged.”

  “My sister is over eighty percent cyborged now, Doctor,” Vlad said. “Missus Chong the Elder, they call her now. She belongs to the Church of Robot. One day she will be Translated, no doubt. But her path is not mine.”

  “Then you are determined.”

  “Yes.”

  The doctor sighed, leaned back in his chair. “In that case,” he said, “we have a catalogue.” He rummaged in a desk drawer and returned with a printed book. A book! Vlad was delighted. He touched the paper, smelled it, and for a moment felt like a child again.

  He leafed through it with inexpert fingers, savouring the tactile sensation. Page after page of cool, calm alternatives. “Wh
at’s this?” he said.

  “Ah, yes. A popular choice,” Dr. Graff said. “Blood loss in a warm, scented bath. Soft music, candles. A bottle of wine. A pill beforehand to ensure there is no pain. A traditional choice.”

  “Tradition is important,” Vlad said.

  “Yes. Yes.”

  But Vlad was leafing ahead. “This?” he said, with slight revulsion.

  “Faux-murder, yes,” the doctor said. “Simulated. We cannot sanction humans for the purpose, of course. Nor a digital intelligence, obviously. But we have very lifelike simulacra with a basic operating brain, nothing with consciousness, of course, of course. Some of our patients like the idea of a violent death. It is more . . . theatrical.”

  “I notice one can sign off the recording rights?”

  “Some people like to . . . watch. Yes. And some patients appreciate an audience. There is some financial compensation paid to one’s heirs in those circumstances—”

  “Garish,” Vlad said.

  “Quite, quite,” the doctor said.

  “Vulgar.”

  “That is, certainly, a valid view point, yes, y—”

  Vlad was leafing further. “I never thought there were so many ways—” he said.

  “ So many,” the doctor said. “We, humans, are remarkably good at devising new ways to die.”

  The doctor sat still as Vlad leafed through the rest of the catalogue. “You do not need to decide right away, of course,” the doctor said. “We do, in fact, advise a period of consideration before—”

  “What if I wanted to do it immediately?” Vlad said.

  “There is, of course, paperwork, a process—” the doctor said.

  “But it is possible?”

  “Of course. We have many of the basic options available right here, in the mortality rooms, complete with full post-mortal service including incineration or burial or—”

  “I’d like this,” Vlad said, tapping the page with his finger. The doctor leaned over. “This—oh,” he said. “Yes. Surprisingly popular. But not, of course, available, as it were—” he spread his arms in what might have been a shrug—“here. As it were.”

  “Of course,” Vlad said.

  “But we can arrange the travel, in full comfort, and accommodation beforehand—”

  “Let’s do that.”

  The doctor nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Let me call up the forms.”

  When he next surfaced from that great glittery sea he saw faces, close by. Boris looked angry. Miriam, concerned.

  “God damn it, Dad.”

  “Don’t swear at me, boy.”

  “You went to a fucking suicide clinic?”

  “I go where I want!”

  They glared at each other. Miriam laid a hand on Boris’s shoulder. Vlad looked at her. Looked at Boris. For a moment Boris’s face was that of the boy he had been. Hurt in his eyes. Incomprehension. Like when something bad happens. “Boris—”

  “Dad—”

  Vlad stood up. Stuck his face close to his boy’s. “Go away,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Boris, I’m your father and I’m telling you to—”

  Boris pushed him. Vlad, shocked, fell back. Tottered. Held on to the chair and just stopped himself from falling on the floor. Heard Miriam’s sharp intake of breath.

  Miriam, horrified: “Boris, what did you—”

  “Dad? Dad!”

  “I’m fine,” Vlad said. Righted himself. Almost smiled. “Silly boy,” he said.

  Boris, breathing hard. Vlad saw his hands, they were closed into fists. All that anger. Never helped anyone. Couldn’t help but feel for the boy.

  “Look,” he said. “Just—”

  When he surfaced again Miriam was gone and Boris was sitting in a chair in the corner. The boy was asleep.

  A good boy, Vlad thought. Came back. Worried for his old dad. Made him proud, really. A doctor. No children though. He would have liked grandchildren. A knock on the door. Boris blinking. The aug pulsing on his neck. Disgusting thing.

  “I’ll get that,” Vlad said. Went to the door.

  The robot again. R. Patch-It. With Vlad’s sister in tow. He should have known. “Vladimir Mordechai Chong,” she said. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Hello, Tamara.”

  “Don’t hello me, Vlad.” She stepped inside and the robot followed. “Now what is this nonsense about you killing yourself?”

  “For crying out loud, Tamara! Look at you.” Vlad felt some of his anger gathering. It had been a long time coming. He had had a long moment of emerging from the sea, the memories falling away like water. Enough time to go to the clinic and make the arrangements. Not enough time, it had turned out, to execute them before another relapse. It was becoming harder to break the surface. Soon, he knew, he would remain submerged underwater for good. “You’re almost entirely a machine.”

  “We’re all machines,” his sister said. “Are you proud because the parts that make you are biological? Soft, fallible, weak? You may as well be proud of learning to clean your bottom or tying your shoelaces, Vlad. You’re a machine, I’m a machine, and R. Brother Patch-It over there is a machine. When you’re gone, you’re gone. There’s no afterlife but the one we build ourselves.”

  “The fabled robot heaven,” Vlad said. He felt tired. “Enough!” he said. “I appreciate what you are trying to do. All of you. Boris.”

  “Yes, Dad?”

  “Come here.” It was strange, to see his boy and see this man, this almost stranger, that he had become. Something of Weiwei in him, though. Something of Vlad, too. “I can no longer remember your mother’s name,” he told him.

  “What?”

  “Boris, I spoke to the doctors. Weiwei’s Folly has spread through me. Nodal filaments filling up every available space. Invading my body. I am drowning under the weight of memories. They make no sense anymore. I don’t know who I am because I can’t make them behave. Boris . . .”

  “Dad,” Boris said. Vlad raised his hand and touched the boy’s cheek. It was wet. He stroked it, gently. “I’m old, Boris. I’m old and I’m tired. I want to rest. I want to choose how I go, and I want to go with dignity, and with my mind intact. Is that so wrong?”

  “No, Dad. No, it’s not.”

  “Don’t cry, Boris.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  “Good.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m all right. You can let go, now.”

  Vlad released him. Remembered the boy who asked him to walk with him, “Just to the next lamppost, Dad.” They’d go in the dark towards that pool of light and, on reaching it, stop. Then the boy would say, “Just to the next lamppost, Dad. I can go the rest on my own. Honest.”

  On and on they went, following the trail of lights. On and on they went until they made it safely home.

  One’s death should be a memorable occasion and, on this occasion, Vlad felt, at the very last, everything really did go swimmingly.

  They had departed by minibus from Central Station. Vlad sat in the front, next to the driver, enjoying the warmth of the sun. A small delegation sat in the back: Boris, and Miriam, Vlad’s sister Tamara, R. Patch-It, Ibrahim the alte-zachen man and Eliezer, the god artist. Relatives came to say their goodbyes, and the atmosphere was one almost of a party. Vlad hugged young Yan Chong, who was soon to marry his boyfriend, Youssou, got a kiss on the cheek from his sister’s friend Esther, who he had, once, almost had an affair with but, in the end, didn’t. He remembered it well, and it was strange to see her so old. In his mind she was still the beautiful young woman he once got drunk with at a shebeen, when his wife was away, somewhere, and they had come close to it but, in the end, they couldn’t do it. He remembered walking back home, alone, and the sense of relief he’d felt when he came in through the door. Boris was a boy then. He was asleep and Vlad came and sat by his side and stroked his hair. Then he went and made himself a cup of tea.

  The minibus spread out s
olar wings and began to glide almost soundlessly down the old tarmac road. Neighbours, friends and relatives waved and shouted goodbyes. The bus turned left on Mount Zion and suddenly the old neighbourhood disappeared from view. It felt like leaving home, for that is what it was. It felt sad: but it also felt like freedom.

  They turned on Salame and soon came to the interchange and onto the old highway to Jerusalem. The rest of the journey went smoothly, in quiet, the coastal plain giving way gradually to hills. Then they came to the Bab-el-Wad and rose sharply along the mountain road to Jerusalem.

  The journey felt like a rollercoaster along the mountain road, with sharp inclines giving way to sudden drops. They circled the city without going in and drove along the circle road, between a Palestine on one side and an Israel on the other, though the two were often mixed up in such a way only the invisible digitals could keep them apart. The torn remnants of an old wall lay peacefully in the sunlight.

  The change in geography was startling. Suddenly the mountains ended and they were dropping, and the desert began without warning. It was the strange thing about this country that had become Weiwei’s home, Vlad thought—how quickly and startlingly the landscape changed in so small a place. It was no wonder the Jews and the Arabs had fought over it for so long.

  Dunes appeared, the land became a yellow place and camels rested by the side of the old road. Down, down, down they went, until they passed the sign for sea level and kept going, following the road to the lowest place on Earth.

  Soon they were travelling past the Dead Sea and the blue, calm water reflected the sky. Bromine released from the sea filled the air, causing a soothing, calming effect on the human psyche.

  Just beyond the Dead Sea the desert opened up and here, at last, some two hours after setting off from Central Station, they arrived at their destination.

  The Euthanasia Park sat on its own in a green oasis of calm. They drew up to the gates and parked in the almost empty car park. Boris helped Vlad down from his seat. Outside it was hot, a dry warmth that soothed and comforted. Water sprinklers made their whoosh-whoosh-whoosh sound as they irrigated the manicured lawns.