The First Immortal

by James L. Halperin

“It wasn’t like that,” Toby said. “He was the man assigned to put me away, so I hated him, too, of course. But after it was over, I started thinking about it, and he was a real stand-up fellow.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “Well, I figure Noah must’ve been hounding him to accuse me of murdering you for the $200,000 you left me. Or maybe Banks just coerced Jan into suggesting it. I’m sure he knew the accusation wasn’t true, but that wouldn’t’ve stopped most assistant D.A.’s from making it, or at least using it as leverage. Career first, justice if convenient. And if Butters had made that argument, the judge would’ve had no choice; he’d have been required to uphold the autopsy writ.”

  “Really? I had no idea!”

  “Good thing Butters was such an even-handed prosecutor, or you’d be worm food right now. He enforced, or attempted to enforce, the law, but he did not make sport of it.”

  “Luck enhanced by honor,” Ben confirmed. “Today I feel damned lucky. Let’s just hope our good fortune holds up for one more reviv.” Wishful thinking, he feared, after those two hours Gary spent underwater.

  Tabula rasa.

  Ben fumed at himself for even thinking the words, but couldn’t help it. Wasn’t a “clean slate” between them exactly what he’d been hoping for since 1982? It was a dark thought which Ben knew had no place in his rational self; a gremlin, burrowed into the soft pulp of his cerebrum.

  Lord, no! He did not wish his son ever to forget what he’d done, he just needed Gary to reconcile with him for it. To make it clear and open again. In other words, they both needed a miracle.

  Ben’s three daughters and his granddaughter Katie entered my office.

  Toby smiled at all four women. Only Jan had any difficulty mustering a sincere return greeting. There was no enmity in her now, only chagrin. Toby’s expression assured her that nine decades was far too long for either of them to bear a grudge.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered to Toby.

  He responded with a grin. “No harm done.”

  “Thank you for saving my father,” she said, “…from my ignorance.” She’d spent the better part of a month composing those words in her mind.

  Toby reflected for a moment. “Whatever happens today, Gary’s gonna need us, and we’re all gonna need each other.”

  I maintained some measure of hope. Granted, Gary had been submerged nearly two hours, while Alice’s memories had been lost after just twenty minutes of disruption. But the water temperature in Boston Harbor that morning had been only 37 degrees, and perhaps Gary did not drown right away. Every 18 degree drop (10 degrees Celsius) slowed ischemic brain damage by half. Gary’s neurons should have deteriorated about one-twelfth as quickly as Alice’s had, not even taking the microwave thawing devices into account. Furthermore, Gary was younger. So his two hours may have been less dangerous than Alice’s twenty minutes. Theoretically.

  Thus when Virginia’s call came, I was pleased but not amazed. I told the six awaiting news in my office, “The early reports are encouraging.”

  The group was ushered to Gary’s recovery room; the updates had been consistently positive. All damage and trauma had been repairable; his long-term memory was intact. Still, even with the latest mood-boosting medications, nobody expected this reviv to be easy.

  Gary opened his eyes and looked at our very young, otherwise-familiar faces. “Where’s Father Steve?”

  “Don’t you recognize any of us?” Toby asked.

  “No. Who are you?”

  “Listen to my voice, Gary.”

  Gary’s head tilted forward as if staring at an oasis in the desert; making sure it was no mirage. “Toby? Toby Fiske? But you’re a child!”

  “So are you. Now. Young and good as new. Even your leg is perfect.”

  Gary felt his left shin and knee. No pain at all.

  “Perfectly healed,” Ben announced. “You can run marathons on that leg if you want.”

  Gary stared at his own young, smooth, strong hands. “Where am I?”

  “You’re almost home,” Ben said. “Here in Boston, with your family. Welcome back.”

  Gary pounded his fist against the wall behind him.” No. This can’t be right. Father Steve and I were supposed to watch the sunrise in Boston Harbor. I have to finish The Dawn of Life. My painting. Six and a half years of my life, for chrissake. Where’s my equipment?”

  Katie stepped to the side of his bed. “Gary,” she said, hugging him, “the important thing is that you’re alive, with your memories intact. You have a thousand years to finish your painting if you need it. You’re alive, Gary! Thank God.”

  “Katie? You’re back!” He finally began to understand. “When?”

  “About three months ago.”

  “Everyone made it? Alice, too? Where’s Grandma Alice?”

  “At home,” Ben explained. “But her memories didn’t survive that terrorist attack. She’s young and healthy and smart. But she won’t know you right away, son.”

  “Is she still… Alice?”

  Ben considered the question. “To me she is.”

  “I see. What year is this?”

  “It’s 2081. November third.”

  “Lord. And Father Steve? Is he okay?”

  “We don’t know,” I said. “He’s frozen. At a facility in Wellesley. But you’re fine, so there’s a good chance he is, too.”

  “So what happened to me, Trip?”

  “Boating accident on Boston Harbor.”

  “I don’t even remember going out there.”

  “Short-term memory loss,” Virginia Gonzalez explained. She was now the only person in the room whom Gary did not recognize. “But otherwise, you’re completely sound. A miracle. You were underwater for two hours.”

  “Two hours? I thought brain damage was irrevocable after fifteen minutes.”

  “That was because passages in the brain begin to clog as soon as blood flow ceases. Blood coagulates in the vascular system, and medical science couldn’t reverse that. Not true anymore. Nanomachines can clear all the plaque even before we restore blood flow. And information in human neurons usually lasts at least an hour even at room temperature. But the water that morning was much colder than that. You were lucky.”

  “I don’t remember the water,” Gary said. “We were just walking toward the harbor. Talking. Looking at the buildings and the stars. Then nothing. Then, what? Forty-eight years? Simply vanished. God. It all happened without me. Just like that.”

  “You have forever, Gary,” Maxine said. “What’s forty-eight years compared with a thousand?”

  “I’m not sure I want a thousand.” He stared at Ben, his father, his suddenly young father, whose previous age and infirmity had for so long seemed his only vulnerability; Gary’s advantage over him, his only revenge. And now the man was young again. Young and strong and healthy.

  As was he.

  Gary began to tremble and sob, and hard as he tried, he couldn’t stop the tears. He cried for nearly an hour, not knowing whether he should feel joyous or miserable, grateful or angry, proud or ashamed.

  February 28, 2083

  —In the worst single irrevocable loss of human life on Earth in nearly two decades, an antiquated Energia lifting platform explodes at the WASA research facility in Salisbury, Zimbabwe, incinerating 342 workers. A freak, clear-skies lightning strike is blamed for the accident. Zimbabwe is one of only seven states that have yet to accept the installation of weather-control throughout populated regions. AIs predict that today’s accident will bolster weather-control’s acceptance there enough to sway next month’s referendum.—Zeppelins supplant ocean liners as the most popular sightseeing vacation option after Carnival offers a three-week around-the-world cruise aboard Aircity 50s, their 6,600-passenger luxury dirigibles, at half the price of comparable seafaring accommodations. Aircity 50s have recently been WAA-cleared for overland flights, now that the great airships automatically become sufficiently transparent over populated areas not to eclipse sunlight.—To foster specie
s diversity and add fresh perspective to civilization, World President Montag Smits endorses World Referendum 62, which would allow several dozen Neanderthals to be cloned from reconstructed trace DNA found in 40,000-year-old fossilized bone. The vote will take place next month.

  It was early evening. Father and daughter sat alone in a booth at Marci’s, a quiet restaurant on the 312th floor of their residential building. The room was empty of other patrons, but Ben activated their soundshield just in case.

  “Jan, I know this conversation won’t be easy. There are things I simply have to know.”

  “About the court case, right?”

  “Yes, honey. About the court case.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  “Don’t be. I’m just trying to figure out something important.”

  “What, Dad?”

  “Whether I owe my life to your friend, Brandon Butters. How well do you remember your conversations with him?”

  “Too well. Nearly verbatim, in fact. Sometimes Mnemex can be a curse, you know. I’m not proud of those conversations at all.”

  “Jan, you’re my daughter. I don’t condone or condemn you for any of it. It’s a thing apart from blood. I’ll always love you no matter what. You do know that, don’t you?”

  Jan noted the solid green Truth Machine light on her contact lens before she answered. She felt contrite for that, too, but had to be sure he really meant it before she could tell him what she’d done. “Yes. I do.” Now, she did.

  “Honey, did you ever suggest to Brandon that Toby Fiske might have murdered me just to get the money I left him?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Did you really believe that? About Toby?”

  “Dad, I don’t know. Probably not. But Noah seemed so sure of it, and I wanted to believe it.” She began to weep. Ben forced himself to sit still. “We thought we needed the money, and Noah told me that once they autopsied your body, it’d be much easier to challenge the Trust. You were dead. We were positive cryonics was a crock. But we were wrong. So wrong. Oh my God, we almost made them thaw you, kill you, over money.”

  “But they didn’t, sweetheart.”

  “Only because Brandon didn’t believe Toby had really murdered you. If he had, they would’ve performed that autopsy. And you’d be gone forever, because of me. And maybe I’d be gone forever, too.”

  “Weren’t you surprised he never filed the first degree murder accusation?”

  “Shocked.”

  “Why?”

  Jan said nothing.

  “Please tell me,” Ben said evenly. “I have to know. It’s important.”

  She began to tremble. “Because I knew Brandon was still in love with me. He never said it, but I always knew. So I tried to manipulate him. I was using his feelings for me as a way to get at that money. Your money. I knew exactly what I was doing. But he was too principled to fall for it.”

  Ben looked into his daughter’s eyes and thought about how he’d survived in the freezer for nearly ninety years. Ninety years! He marveled that he was still alive and safe. An absolute miracle. The science had been the easy part. Of course it would be! It should have been obvious all along that they’d eventually learn how to reconstruct human cells. Only a matter of time. The hard part had been…

  He pictured his frozen body, easy prey for predators like Noah Banks, or the three terrorists who’d destroyed the Phoenix suspendees. Those bastards had killed 508 people. Only luck and the family name had spared him. Luck and the family name. It didn’t seem like much, arrayed against the forces of greed and ignorance. He shook his head, flooded with gratitude and something very much like wonder.

  Then he stood and reached over to hug the child who had almost destroyed him.

  In July 2029 Brandon Butters had taken early retirement from government service at age seventy-five. Within a few years after the Truth Machine’s introduction in 2024, there’d been precious little for prosecutors to do anyway. But at least he’d retired with a clear conscience; he’d always done his best, clinging to his own idea of justice, no matter the temptation.

  His one regret was that he’d never had children. He rued this lack from multiple perspectives: the love and meaning children would have brought to his life, the satisfaction of leaving a genetic legacy, the fulfillment of a biological imperative. And certainly not least: that only one’s family would likely have reason to revive a person from biostasis.

  But he’d never even been married. He’d been involved with different women, and had tried to make things work with each of them. Yet he just couldn’t. After all those years, he was still in love with his high school sweetheart, his marred high school sweetheart, whom he knew he could never have. He realized the obsession was foolish, and maybe even a little sick, but if this was illness, the primary symptom was poignancy. And in poignant memory lived everlasting romance.

  A hopeless romantic, he thought. That’s what I am.

  When he retired, his medical AI had assured him of at least another twenty years of decent health. But he had no family, few friends, no career, very little money, nothing much left to live for. He’d disdained the notion of continuing his present lonely existence imprisoned in a rapidly decaying body. So he’d had himself frozen that same year.

  He didn’t believe in suicide, nor had he particularly wished to die, yet his rational side realized that without family to revive him, biostasis might well amount to the same thing.

  Therefore Brandon was surprised when he regained consciousness, and shocked to see a familiar face staring back at him. He couldn’t place who that young man was, but realized he knew him from somewhere.

  The young man spoke: “I’m Benjamin Smith, Jan’s father. I’m also your sponsor. Welcome back, son.”

  Brandon stared at Ben. “Jan’s father?”

  “Everyone’s just a wee bit more youthful these days. Including you.”

  Brandon realized that he did feel vibrant and healthy; better than he ever had, even back in law school. “What year is this?”

  “It’s 2083.”

  Amazing. He didn’t even feel stiff—after fifty-four years! “Why would you reanimate me? I’m the guy who tried to have you thawed for autopsy.”

  “Because you also saved my life.”

  “Huh?”

  “By refusing to accuse Toby Fiske of first degree murder. Because most prosecutors in your position would’ve filed that charge just to try to work out a plea bargain. Because even though the twentieth century legal system was based mostly on leverage, you never ran your cases that way.”

  “I couldn’t,” Brandon said. “No justice in it that way.”

  “Same reason I decided to sponsor your reviv, Brandon. Because I, too, believe in justice.”

  June 1, 2083

  —Canadian sport-fisher Frank Trilby announces the capture of a 186-pound lobster, exceeding by 11 pounds the specimen washed ashore off Bar Harbor, Maine, six years ago. In the four decades since commercial fishing was replaced by cell culturing (then micro and nano food assemblers), many marine creatures have been found to grow to heretofore unknown size. Upon returning the lobster to the Atlantic Ocean, Trilby quips to news cameras: “‘Eah, in a few years I expect t’catch me a hot-danged ichthyosaur, eh?”—In an action termed by several newscasters as “curiously anachronistic,” the World Tribunal declares all substance abuse laws in violation of the World Constitution. The Tribunal’s declaration concludes: “The concept of substance abuse has no meaning in light of pharmacological advances over the past half century, and involves no appreciable physiological or ethical distinction from VR overuse, which is rampant and completely legal.” There hasn’t been a single conviction over violations of the laws since the founding of World Government in 2045, and the only two arrests occurred prior to 2050.

  Brandon chose a seat at the breakfast table, across from Jan. Again. He’d lived with them for twelve weeks now, and had never sat down beside her at a meal.

  Was he afraid o
f her? she wondered.

  He always seemed friendly and sweet and solicitous, like a protective big brother. Maybe he was over her.

  She would have thought that was just great several months ago, but living under the same roof, he seemed to be getting more attractive by the day. And when he sat across from her, she was forced to look at him, which was becoming quite a problem. Because now, whenever she saw him, she would get incredibly, well, aroused.

  “‘I can’t define it, but I’ll know it when I see it,’” Gary Franklin Smith quoted to the class: forty-six students attending in person at Leslie Williams Auditorium on the Tufts University campus, and nearly three hundred seated elsewhere in real-time VR pods. “A United States jurist once made that remark about pornography. But it might apply equally well to artistic greatness in dance, sculpture, poetry, fiction, theater, painting—any form of aesthetic achievement. Sometimes you simply cannot define, except in vague generalities, what makes art pleasing, instructive, thought-provoking, memorable, compelling. Yet you know. You just know.

  “Of course, some poor fools still depend upon that philosophy for their scientific worldview. And God help them.”

  The students laughed.

  “But I do think subjective analysis might actually apply to art. At least the AIs aren’t sophisticated enough to assimilate certain multidimensional art forms in objective terms, and thereby become better at it than humans. Not yet, anyway…”

  After the lecture, Gary returned to his residence for a nap. He had a momentous afternoon planned, a duty he’d been anticipating and in some ways dreading. To handle the delicate task properly, he would need to be alert, well-rested.

  Yet moments after climbing into bed next to his sleeping girlfriend, he suffered a change of heart.

  Kimber Chevalier stirred gently, opened her dark eyes and gazed at him. “Come here, my sweet man.”

  About a year earlier, Gary had managed to strike out on his own despite having arrived at the era of nanorejuvenation without money. By the time he got his own place, he’d already spent seven comfortless months living in his father’s dwelling, as if a still-dependent child. The tension between them, never inconsequential, had built upon itself. It had helped that Toby was there, and had Alice remembered who she was, the situation might have been almost bearable. But she didn’t, and it wasn’t.