Elemental

by Steven Savile

  “Nature is nanoscale machines: proteins, ribosomes, viruses. Slightly different chemistry; a few less nucleotides, but it’s all the same thing.”

  “No.” Her lower lip trembles. “It’s not. People change.”

  She’s talking about Louis again. You want to search him out and beat him to death—now an impossible exercise—with your fists. Stupid, idiotic, thoughtless man. Maria’s first love, converted the year before you met her. He’d had her for ten, illness-free years, and squandered every second.

  Maria squirms her hands free—she has to talk with her hands—has to—holding them still is almost as effective as gagging her. “If it were just my heart, or my lungs, that would be one thing.” She encircles the top of her head with her fingers. “But this is me. The seat of all I am. If this changes—I change.” A tear breaks free from her lower eyelashes and rolls down her cheek. “I don’t want to stop loving you.”

  You rise up from the hammock and cradle her against your chest, as hard as you dare. “You won’t, love. You won’t.”

  “Promise me,” she snuffles against your chest. “Promise me you’ll never be converted. I don’t want you to stop loving me.”

  Her tearful voice is a lance through your soul. Right then, you’d promise her anything, even your life. “Never,” you agree, raining kisses to blot out her tears. “I’ll never convert.”

  HB: What a touching scene. There you have it. The moment that put Lysander on his life’s path to become the last mortal man. It made him unique, it made him a living legend, and tonight it just might kill him. This is Hugh Billingsworth of KUKWY news, at Cedars-Sinai, standing deathwatch for Lysander Sterling. All night long, we’ll intersperse never-before-recorded memories from Lysander himself with interviews from family, friends, and nanology specialists. With us now is Lucius Sterling, Lysander’s great-great-grandfather and the pioneering venture capitalist whose company, Sterling Nanology, brought immortality to the world. He joins us via Gaia-Net, from his family compound in Maui.

  HB: Mr. Sterling, as one of the founders of modern nanology, it’s ironic that one of your descendents should become an icon because he refuses conversion. What do you think about Lysander’s anti-nanology stance?

  LS: The boy’s an idiot. Nanology is, was, and always will be safe. Maria Ables died forty years ago. Ly should be converted, and get on with life.

  HB: Lysander’s fans would certainly agree with you, but there are those who say his amazing productivity, the depth of emotion in his work—that those are products of Lysander’s knowing his life was finite. Without which, his life’s work would have lacked focus.

  LS: Fine. So his morbid fascination gave him focus in the past. That’s no reason to prevent him from converting now. He’s not going to be very productive dead, is he?

  HB: It must be frustrating for a man of your position—used to being able to make things happen—to be so utterly helpless now. What was your reaction to the court’s injunction against your having Lysander forcibly converted?

  LS: The judge made a bad call. The Body-modification-freedom Act was intended to stop prejudice against nonhumanoid mods. It was never intended to make medical decisions. I’ve got a team in Washington. We’ll get the law clarified on appeal, but …

  HB: Too late to help Lysander.

  LS: Yeah.

  Maria’s breath is so slight, the sheet covering her barely moves. You hold your breath each time—until her chest rises. Her hand lies limp in yours. It won’t be long now.

  Please convert, you want to whisper. Even now, it might save her. But that would be a betrayal of the last few weeks. She’s been so happy since you promised to refuse the change.

  “I can go to heaven now,” she’d whispered minutes ago, before her eyes fluttered closed in what would probably be her final sleep, “knowing that the man I love will go on. We’ll meet again. Up there.”

  It finally clicks for you, sitting by her hospital bed, watching her chest rise and fall. She is Catholic. If she truly believes that conversion kills the original person—then choosing to become Deathless would be suicide, a mortal sin.

  “Maria,” you whisper and lift her hand to your lips. The skin on the back of her hand is so dry, so hot. She’s burning up from the inside out, like a votive candle.

  Could her unreasoning faith in an antique religion be classified as mental illness? The thought fills you with a short-lived hope … then shame. You won’t betray her—not even to save her life.

  To die naturally is Maria’s decision.

  It guts you. You will lose her.

  Her chest falls. And for all your willing it, does not rise again.

  The machines monitoring Maria flat-line and play a plaintive tone.

  You sob and pull Maria’s palm to your forehead. You rock with grief, knowing your life is over.

  You will keep your promise, because you can’t imagine eternity without her.

  HB: Hugh Billingsworth of KUKWY news, with exclusive coverage of the ongoing Lysander Sterling drama. With us here at Cedars-Sinai is the genius who invented the nanology that keeps us all going: Dr. Leonardo Fontesca. He’s standing by to perform the process personally, should Lysander change his mind.

  HB: Dr. Fontesca, what’s your take on all this? Should Lysander accept conversion?

  LF: The point of nanology is to make the impossible possible. Not to impose an ideology. If Mr. Sterling wants the change, he should have it. But it should not be imposed on him against his will.

  HB: So you disagree with Lucius Sterling?

  LF: Lucius and I start from different places on this issue; it is to be expected we would reach different conclusions.

  HB: But you, yourself, are converted. Surely you must feel it’s safe. That Lysander’s claim it represents a death of the original person is unfounded.

  LF: The truth is, we don’t know. Science does not concern itself with metaphysics. We know that we can take a person and, cell-by-cell, re-create them into a nearly indestructible form, with the same memories. Is that the same person? Or only a clever copy?

  HB: That’s a very scary thought, Dr. Fontesca. Are you saying each of us that’s been converted might not be the same person we were?

  LF: The same thing happens in biology, at a slower pace. Cells die and are replaced. A continual process of mitosis and apotheosis. Whether we are converted or remain natural humans, none of us are who we were born.

  You work at your computer until your eyes dry and your hands cramp around the digital paintbrush.

  The video walls of your studio flicker with previous work. The left wall displays your early images. Maria before her illness: porcelain skin, sparkling eyes, a full, teasing mouth. The right wall shows Maria as she might have been: glowing in her second trimester, smiling with crow’s feet bracketing her mouth and eyes, a cascade of silver hair flowing over age-spotted shoulders.

  These days, your work is more symbolic. You put the paintbrush in its cradle and flex your hands. The screen in front of you displays two dandelions: one yellow and bursting with captured sunshine, the other gone to seed—seconds away from dissolution, but all the more beautiful for its frailty.

  It’s good. But not good enough. The relative proportion between the two flowers is a hair off, and the light angle isn’t quite right. If you had centuries, you could perfect it. But you don’t. You save the image, freezing it and all its flaws for eternity.

  You have to move on. No matter how hard you push yourself, there isn’t time to do a tenth of the things you imagine.

  You head to the kitchen. There’s pizza in the fridge from last night. Or was it the night before? When you’re close to finishing a piece, you lose track of time.

  Your foot catches on something as you pass the front door. Your assistant has delivered more packages. The address on a gold mailing label on one catches your eye: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This must be the statuette you won for your actress-design work on the digital film, Mesopotamia
. You place the box, unopened, in the coat closet, with half a dozen others.

  In the kitchen, you eat cold pizza and stare at the recorded messages on your video phone. The Guggenheim has acquired your Maria in Absentia triptych. The ad agency that bought your The Time Is Now series needs the new routing numbers to deposit your latest royalty checks. Interspersed among the business messages, like background noise, are pleas of reporters for interviews, and the adoration of fans.

  It’s been like that since the story of your refusal to convert—and the reason—became public knowledge. You’ve become a tragic romantic figure.

  Women hound you with offers of love, to help you “get over” Maria. Men too, though less persistently.

  They miss the point.

  You don’t want to forget Maria. It’d be like forgetting air. Impossible.

  HB: Hugh Billingsworth at Cedars-Sinai, reporting on Lysander Sterling’s condition for KUKWY news. With me via Gaia-Net is Dante Aldo, director of the Museum of Modern Art.

  HB: Mr. Aldo, Lysander Sterling is an icon in the art and entertainment industries. What is it about his work that makes it so compelling?

  DA: What resonates most for me in Lysander’s work is the passion; each of his pieces vibrates energy. The technical flaws he deliberately leaves in give each piece a tension rarely found in the work of modern artists. They’re like the skewed proportions of Michelangelo’s sculptures, lifting the work beyond the representational, into the sublime.

  HB: What’s your position on today’s dilemma? Should he accept conversion?

  DA: As an art aficionado, of course I want Lysander to continue his marvelous work. But I have to wonder, if he changed his core beliefs—accepted the conversion he’s rejected all these years—wouldn’t his work change as well?

  HB: But surely, having centuries to work on his craft, to explore every nuance, would make Lysander’s video paintings even better.

  DA: I don’t know … It’s been said that Michelangelo’s genius was the ability to pull images out of stone, an unforgiving, limiting media. Perhaps the vitality of Lysander’s work comes from a similar source: He pulls his art out of time.

  You’re used to the stares when you go out in public. With your thin, white hair, and soft wrinkled skin, you’re an oddity. You pass people on the street whose bodies have been modified into fanciful shapes: swirling pigmentation, knees that bend backwards, scaled torsos in colorful patterns, claws, wings, nictating eyelids.

  But it’s you everyone stares at; they’ve never seen anyone old. You, the last human in Faerie.

  The youngest sometimes congratulate you on your radical mods. Others puzzle out who you are and follow you with wide, amazed eyes.

  You balance the silver-wrapped gift on your lap as the sub-Pacific bullet train accelerates. Lucius Sterling has commanded—by purchasing your studio’s building and threatening eviction—that you attend his two hundredth birthday party. You hate the outrageous opulence and endless guest list of these events, but after two decades you owe him a visit. It was Lucius, after all, who funded the trust fund that kept you afloat in your early years. Ironic, that all your life you’ve benefited from the profits of the very technology you refuse.

  You look out the porthole at the denizens of the deep. Glittering stars of bioluminescent plankton twinkle in the distance, broken only by the occasional spotlights of angler fish or the glowing bellies of eel-like snake dragonfish.

  Your reflection stares back at you from the glass. It’s no one you recognize. Every year it ages, but—aside from a growing of twinges and aches—you’re still the man who courted Maria Ables on the college green.

  The pressure creeps on you slowly. At first you think it’s the deep, but the train compartment is kept at sea-level pressure. Numbness runs down your left arm, leaving your fingers weak and tingling. It’s hard to draw breath. You gape like a fish, panicking.

  You claw your chest, moan, and pitch forward. Facedown on the metal flooring, you fight for breath. Someone will notice you. Someone will help.

  But it’s been decades since anyone was ill. And social mores of accepted behavior have expanded.

  No one comes.

  Perhaps the other passengers think you’re counting the rippled patterns on the floor. More likely they’re all engrossed in Gaia-Net, passively entertained, or exploring endless fields of information.

  It feels like a hand is crushing your chest. Each heartbeat hurts.

  Right now, you’d give anything to be saved. Forget Maria, forget the promises. In this moment, isolated in pain, you want only to live.

  You’d become a poster child for conversion if it would save you.

  You don’t want to die.

  “Live.” The word eases out of your lips on a sigh.

  The pressure eases. You pull yourself back into your seat, sweating and weak. The present is still on the floor. It might as well be on the moon. Leave it there. You suck in breath after breath. Your chest feels as if it’d been kicked by a mule.

  Relief floods you. Gratitude the attack is over. And shame.

  You don’t know if you’ll be strong enough to keep your promise, when the time comes.

  HB: KUKWY news, Hugh Billingsworth reporting on the unfolding drama at Cedars-Sinai. Only KUKWY brings you exclusive brain-captures of Lysander Sterling’s memories. Only here can you experience his extraordinary life. We bring you the inside story no one else knows. Speaking of insiders, I’m outside Lysander’s hospital room with Melissa Davies, Lysander’s personal assistant for the past twenty years.

  HB: Melissa, you’ve worked alongside Lysander for decades. You know him better than anyone. In these, his final moments, will he choose life?

  MD: I don’t know. I don’t even know if I should be talking to you. Mr. Sterling insists on his privacy. So many people want things from him.

  HB: I know this must be difficult. But remember, Lysander granted us license to broadcast his memories. He wants his story told.

  MD: Mr. Sterling isn’t like other people. He’s known all his life that he was going to die. It gave him so much depth, perspective, you know? There’s a wisdom in him. We never talked much, but sometimes we’d sit together. He’d drink coffee and I’d sort through his e-mail. Then he’d look up and say something like “Make the most of this moment, Melissa. It will never come again.” Things like that. It really makes you think.

  HB: Lysander Sterling lies dying inside the next room. In a tank next to him is the nanology that could save his life, make him immortal. He only has to say the word to be saved. The question on all our minds: Will he say it?

  MD: I don’t know. He always said he meant to go through it. But there were times—days he was really hurting and could barely get out of bed—and I’d see his face before he knew I’d entered the room. Oh jeez, I shouldn’t be telling you this. But … he’s afraid to die.

  MD: Lysander! Don’t die. Ask for help. Please! I can’t live if you die. Please! Maria’s been dead longer than she’s been alive. It’s stupid to die for an ideal!

  HB: As you can see, passions are running high here at Cedars-Sinai. Lysander’s long-time assistant Melissa Davies has just been escorted off the premises by hospital security.

  HB: What’s that? The doctors have just updated Lysander Sterling’s status. His blood gases are falling. He has only a handful of minutes left to live—unless he chooses otherwise.

  HB: Follow us inside Lysander’s private hospital room for what may very well be his final moments. Those of you with immersion units, prepare for the experience of a lifetime, as we take you inside Lysander’s current thoughts-live, from Cedars-Sinai.

  You lie on the bed, an IV of saline dripping into your arm. It’s the only measure you’d allow, and that only after they showed you the label.

  The reporter comes in, camera gleaming like a diamond embedded in his right eye. He’s got a too-hearty smile plastered to his face, and you take a petty pleasure knowing th
at, via live brain-capture, the whole world knows you think him a idiot. Vulture. He’s come to feed on your impending death. They all have. The whole world crowds into your skull so they can know what it’s like to grow old, to take that last step into death.

  There would be reporters no matter what you did. By choosing one jackal, the others lost their meal. By dictating the terms of your cooperation, you can tell your story—not theirs.

  The world will finally understand.

  “Lysander,” the reporter whispers, leaning close enough that you can smell the whiskey sour he had at lunch. He’s either not getting the brain-capture feed, or he ignores your distaste. “Lysander Sterling, how does it feel to know your death is minutes away?”

  It feels like hell—but you suppress that thought. It’s too big a betrayal.

  You try to answer, to ask if Melissa’s safe, but the words won’t bubble past your lips. It’s too much effort. Why bother? It’ll all be over soon.

  You’re too weak now to ask for help—even if you wanted to. And some part of you—some traitorous animal part of you—wishes to be saved.

  Each breath feels like you’re lifting the entire hospital with your ribs. There’s not enough oxygen in the whole room to satisfy you. Your heart beats faintly, dispiritedly, in your chest. Eighty-six years of continual service, without maintenance. Not bad for unadulterated muscle.

  “You could still choose,” the reporter says. “Think the words and they’ll be picked up on the brain-capture. The doctors could still save you.” A bead of saliva hovers from his fleshy lower lip. He’s drooling over the drama. You see ratings figures dance behind his eyes.

  The door behind him bangs open. She stands there, hand still cupping the door, fallen angel in a black nano-fiber bodysuit. Five-foot-seven, slender build, heart-shaped face and pert nose. The most feared Deathless on the planet. Alexa DuBois: Lucius Sterling’s enforcer.

  She crosses the room with blinding speed, grabs the reporter and slams his face against the bedrail. Before he can recover, she tosses him out the door.