The First Immortal

by James L. Halperin

  “Hell, it took almost fifty years for cryonics to gain general acceptance. And today, though actuarial tables suggest the average person should have a brain-eradicating accident every 11.3 centuries, people refuse to think it can happen to them. At least not until the comets arrive. I wonder how long before Caches become the norm? Probably ten years or more. You realize how many lives it could save just in those ten years? Almost 120 million worldwide, not counting suicides.”

  Gary stared back at Ben’s image on the screen and said nothing.

  “Of course, back in the 1980s when I was frozen, few people were confident cryonics would work. Even I harbored doubts. Herd mentality, I guess. But now if I’m ever killed, I know they can restore me. I’ll lose whatever occurred since my last upload, of course, but I should even recover most of those memories from the archives. It really is de facto immortality, and well worth the price of admission.”

  “Pretty convincing.” While Gary agreed with the concept, his father’s verbal style assaulted his ears and nerves like chalk on a blackboard. Why did the man have to put everything in terms of himself? Would it have killed him to say that he’d feel better if Gary got it done because he actually cared whether his only son lived or died? “Okay, Dad. I’ll arrange it.”

  “For Kimber and Margaret, too?”

  “Of course.” Jesus. What did he think I meant? Gary thought.

  “Good.”

  Without saying goodbye, Gary pressed the off-button of his two-way imager; Ben’s face disappeared from the screen like a wayward intruder falling through a remote-controlled trapdoor.

  A tad impolite of me, Gary thought, but better than letting him see my face right now. “Shit. The guy’s fucking insufferable!” he muttered.

  “Ben is?” Kimber said. “You’re the one who hung up on him!”

  “Huh? You overheard us?”

  “I was standing right here, honey, in case you didn’t realize…”

  “Sorry,” Gary said. “Guess I’m not myself where he’s involved.”

  “I noticed.”

  “He’s just the most egocentric, selfish man, Kimber. He mostly ignored me throughout my childhood, and when he didn’t, it was usually to harp at me about something. What that’s done is to turn his voice into an instrument of torture. Now he’s become my tormentor. It’s bad enough he’s my father; if he has his way, he’ll soon be my fucking son-in-law!”

  Kimber massaged Gary’s shoulders. “He’s trying, Gary.”

  “I know. Very trying.”

  Kimber swiveled Gary’s chair around until they faced each other. “I’ve watched you two go at it for fifteen years, sweetheart.” Her voice still carried its usual affection, but Gary detected a new resolve in her eyes. “I’m on your side. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this time you’re wrong about your father. Stone cold wrong.”

  He looked back at her in bewildered silence.

  “I understand your resentment. I do. You’ve explained how he treated you, and it must’ve hurt you terribly. But that was more than a century ago in real-time, when he was recovering from injuries of his own. You’ve never been to war. Neither have I. But I’ve heard plenty of family stories about my great-grandfather. He died in Tokyo ten years before I was born. World War Two must have been appalling; worse, I’m sure, than anything your father and my great-grandfather could even describe.”

  “I know that,” Gary cried. “But he injured me, Kimber. He doted on my sisters and spurned me, which killed my self-esteem; he left me defenseless! Maybe even crippled me, literally. He’s probably the reason I couldn’t stop drinking when my mother died; why I got hooked on VR gambling when Toby left. He cost me decades of my life.”

  “He also gave you your life. Twice! Things were different back then. You know that. Death was inevitable and life finite. Now you have time—all the time you need! Plenty of time to do whatever you want, to make the most of all your potential. And plenty of time to let your injuries heal. He’s your father. He’s changed, you’ve changed…” She paused and smiled. “…and you’re both going to be around for a very long time; possibly even forever. It’s time to let the hostility go.”

  “I don’t know,” Gary growled, his body quivering with tension and anger. “I’ve bottled this resentment inside so long; how can the mere fact that I came from his sperm ever inspire that kind of forgiveness?”

  “Then do it for Margaret. She loves Ben and she loves you. So did your mother; she never stopped trying to bring you two back together.” Kimber kissed Gary’s lower lip. “And if that’s not enough, do it for me. For the sake of my love for both of you, and more significantly, my… well, sanity!”

  Gary fought the impulse, but soon heard his own quiet laughter. “A powerful incentive, indeed. Especially when my own mental health is so intertwined with yours.”

  She scowled. “A couple years ago, after you and Ben talked Trip down from his comet-silly attack, you spoke of your father in almost glowing terms. At least for a few months. You were happy, Gary. At peace. Have you forgotten?”

  “No,” he conceded. “And I want to let this go. I really do. But how?”

  “Talk to him. Face-to-face. Today. Tell him how you feel, and why you think you feel that way. Then listen calmly, openly; give him an opportunity to express himself. And remember, he’s not the Ben Smith who mistreated you. You’re blind to who he’s become. And you’re not the same, either. You no longer have to prove yourself like some adolescent. So stop acting like his hurt little boy. Every living person changes. Every wound heals, given time, and life. And don’t forget who gave you yours.”

  “C’mon in, son,” an obviously startled Ben Smith said, welcoming him at the door. “I must say, you just showing up like this is something of a surprise, a pleasant surprise…”

  “Got time for a private talk?”

  “Always.” Repressing a swell of anxiety, Ben escorted his son into the study and activated its soundshield. “What’s up?”

  “I know I owe you my existence twice-over—” Gary began, reciting his rehearsed speech.

  “I might owe you mine, too.” I’m gushing, Ben thought. Gotta stop.

  “Please. Just let me finish.”

  “Of course.”

  “I also know you’ve never been a malicious person. I realize you did the best you could at the time, and how hard you’ve tried to atone for ignoring me during those first thirty-five years.” My thirty-five most formative years, Gary did not say. “I understand you were suffering from a trauma that took decades to heal, maybe still hasn’t healed completely, and that your attitude erupted from an ordeal you had no control over.”

  “All true.” Ben braced himself. “I assume there’s more.”

  “There is. For the past few hours I’ve been thinking about that court battle after you were frozen. If I hadn’t been there myself, it would be impossible to imagine how skeptical everyone was about cryonics. And in hindsight, we still remain blind to our own ignorance, even if we never forget it. My sisters gave you up for dead, which was a rational view of things at the time. But I couldn’t. You know why?”

  “I figured it was because there’s so much of Alice in you—in us. You’re more of a scientist than most, including your sisters, I guess. You were always a thinker rather than a follower.”

  “I agree, and I’d like to believe it was logic that put me on Toby’s side of the court battle. But today I started reexamining my motivations. My career was soaring. I was on the way to becoming one of the most famous artists in the world. And you know what the key to achieving great success in any field is?”

  “Talent? Intelligence?”

  Gary shook his head. “Perseverance; the ability to stay motivated, and the inability to satisfy an unquenchable obsession. That was always my secret, Dad, and it came from you.”

  “It did?” Ben asked, daring to believe that his son might indeed have come to make up with him. “How?”
r />   Gary deflated these hopes like a laser spear puncturing a beach ball. “I fought side by side with Toby for only one reason: the chance to someday show you I wasn’t the boy you thought I was, not some carbon copy of you, but my own person with aptitudes that did not spring from you. I wanted to prove you had nothing to do with my success; that my success came not because of you, but in spite of you. And I could never have done that if you were irrevocably dead. I wanted to save your life, Dad, to make sure you finally knew I didn’t need you.”

  For a moment Ben could only stare. “I get it,” he said finally. Something inside him was falling away, but he refused to let go. “That was over a century ago, Gary. What about today?”

  “I need it to heal.” Gary paused. “But I don’t see how that can happen. Frankly, I’m scared to death there’s going to be this wall between us forever.”

  “I see.”

  “I see? That’s all you have to say about it?”

  “Hell no, Gary, I wanted to make sure you were finished. Are you?”

  “For now.”

  “Okay, then I’ll start by thanking you for finally telling me how you feel, for not faking.”

  Gary said nothing.

  “I know I haven’t been open with you, but I didn’t want to seem cloying; didn’t want to rush you, or make you more nervous. But you should know that we have something in common. You’ve just described the greatest terror of my life: the fear that I’ve irreconcilably lost you.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that?”

  “You’re my only son.”

  “Big fucking deal. I was your only son from the day I was born,” Gary fumed, again turning away from Ben. “You never appreciated anything I did. Nothing was ever good enough.”

  “I know.” Ben strained to fight back his panic. “I was unhealthy; damaged. Hell, I couldn’t even look at you back then, the same way you can’t seem to look at me today. It’s almost as if what I had was contagious, and you caught it.” Ben instantly knew: the wrong words.

  Gary’s body twitched. “It was, and I did,” he said. “That’s how it works with parenthood, you know. Your children might not do what you tell them, but they always do what you do.” He slammed a balled fist into an open hand. “Christ. And now you want to infect Margaret. Well, I won’t let that happen!”

  Ben kept silent, but his hands shook. Gary saw it.

  They avoided each other’s eyes, sweating and stewing, both men wanting to speak. But both also understood that without a time-out, words would be spoken in haste, more hurtful words that could never be withdrawn.

  So they sat together in silence.

  Several times Gary looked toward Ben, and invariably caught him staring back, but, as always, he could not discern the feeling behind his father’s eyes.

  Calculation or self-examination? Gary wondered.

  Ben considered his future with Margaret, a future he’d counted on for some fifteen years. In his mind’s eye he saw, God help him, her ripening fourteen-year-old body, almost identical to the one that had driven him crazy in their—their?—first spring together in 1940. He imagined her without clothes, imagined holding her naked in his arms, feeling her perfect skin against his.

  He hadn’t even kissed Margaret, not that way, but the idea of never caressing her, never making love to her, seemed too much for his mind to integrate.

  He would sooner die.

  Then he considered Gary, his own flesh and blood, and tried to re-create within himself the ambiguity of his feelings over the six decades when both were conscious: six decades that had brought them to the present. An image flashed through Ben’s mind of a proud antelope, temporarily distracted, suddenly forced to watch his own fawn being carried off by a jaguar, a beast he knows he is too slow to catch and too weak to stop.

  But still, he would have to try!

  Both men continued to stew.

  Your children may not do what you tell them, Ben recited to himself, but they will always do what you do. Well, I forgave Jan, he thought, and Gary should forgive me.

  Now Ben’s eyes avoided his son’s. He looked at the floor, the ceiling, his own hands; then realized that he hadn’t quite forgiven everyone, had he?

  Ben finally broke the silence. “Gary, I’d never marry Margaret without your blessing. Don’t misunderstand: I’d want to. But I wouldn’t, because I could never live with that much conflict in my life. Not happily—”

  “Isn’t my decision.” Gary interrupted, “It’s for her to decide, and you. I’m sorry I said that, Dad, truly. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “I’m glad you did.” The words seemed dredged from the pit of his stomach. “This may have been the most honest conversation we’ve ever had. I only wish we’d had it about fourteen decades ago.”

  Gary just stared at him.

  “Like it or not, Gary, we’re family. Granted you hate me, maybe forever, and that hurts like hell. But you’re still blood from my blood, bone from my bone, mind from my mind. I have a stake in your happiness and your success.

  “You and Kimber chose to love each other. I have no choice. I’ll love you and pray for only good things to happen to you for all the centuries of my life, whether you return the feeling or not.

  And in that instant, Ben Smith realized he would somehow have to make himself absolve a man he thought he could never forgive: the now-frozen father of three of his grandchildren.

  At the very moment Ben revoked his own burden of anger toward Noah Banks, Gary gazed at his father’s young face and felt a similar transformation within himself. He’s right, Gary decided: It’s family! It’s not about me submitting to him, or who owes what to whom. It’s beyond that. He can’t shake me, and he never will.

  He suddenly saw his father now not as his tormentor, but as his ally. An annoying ally, but someone who had no choice but to be on his side. Ben was like any highly evolved animal, driven by instinct to protect its young, its love overpowering, even mindless.

  But he knew Ben was human, too, and unlike other animals, compelled to examine and identify his own feelings. What a wonderful, terrible thing! He also knew that, other than with each other, their perspectives and emotional responses to outside forces tended to be identical. The tragic silliness of the comet-crazies had made that all too clear.

  For some reason, Gary now remembered something that happened to him in high school in 1962 during a science lab. He’d extinguished his Bunsen burner, but neglected to turn off the gas jet. Before rekindling it, he’d turned the jet off briefly. Too briefly. To his horror, a giant arc of fire had appeared in front of him. Then, just as suddenly, the fire was gone. Gone!

  The gas had simply burned off and disappeared.

  That had been exactly like this moment, seconds ago, when his anger and pain over his father’s treatment of him, during another lifetime, vanished in a flash of brilliant heat, leaving only the memory of itself behind.

  September 30, 2103

  —The World Government sets a population target of 26 billion humans living throughout the solar system by the middle of this century. President Sims declares, “With death all but defeated, at least for now, population is expanding much more slowly than even our most conservative projections. Ironically, a large, intelligent, and highly motivated population improves our chances of surviving external threats like the early 24th century Oort/Nemesis assaults, the very reason fewer of our citizens are now choosing to raise children.”—The Dian Fosse University in Kigali, Rwanda, reports on its successful implantation of a larynx, tongue, and nanosynthesized speech patterning of the left medulla oblongata into Boku, a mountain gorilla. While some public disapproval has dogged the project, researchers suspect that a previously untapped well of understanding and shared insights between species can be opened. Boku’s first spoken word is “doughnut.”—The World Health Department issues a recommendation that any citizens who have not already done so, receive permanent ocular implants at once. All implants adjust upon cerebral command to render tel
escopic and microscopic vision, infrared and ultraviolet detection, and off-site digital documentation, as well as the standard media-screen reception, but the newest versions also self-repair and therefore never wear out. Nearly 75 million citizens worldwide still maintain temporary implants, some of which may expire before the end of the decade.

  He felt her neck against his mouth, and inhaled her perfume. Margaret moaned and Ben’s pulse quickened. Her voice, features, and scent exploded inside his head; her touch was becoming more skillful every day. They’d nearly reached the point of no return; he was getting close, and could tell that she was, too.

  Then she stopped.

  Why?

  “Make love to me, Ben,” she demanded.

  “I thought we were going to wait,” Ben said, chest heaving, heart pounding.

  “Please. I can’t wait any longer.”

  “You might regret it.”

  “I’m not a child,” she said, her face flushed as though painted in red shades of resolve. “I’m nineteen years old. I love you, you love me.”

  “We’ll be married in six weeks. Just six more weeks.”

  “I don’t want to wait six weeks, or six minutes. I want you now.”

  “What about our appointment this afternoon?”

  “Because of that.”

  Now Ben understood.

  He kissed her and she kissed back with such urgency, such passion, it almost felt like the other Marge was kissing him—the real Marge. But only for a moment.

  “Oh, my darling,” he said. “If that’s what you want…”

  Part of him felt relieved to have it over with. Margaret had saved herself for him all those years, just as she’d always promised, just as he’d been waiting for her. Sure, they’d each found release by the other’s touch, and in the VR and other sensual devices they’d shared. But nineteen was too old to remain a virgin in today’s world, so the tension had finally been lifted. Real sex felt wonderful, too; more tangible than what they’d been doing, and not nearly as uncomfortable as he’d dreaded it might be.