19. Ageless
Strangely it hadn’t been easy to locate her, reflected Trent again, as he exited the transport shuttle. True, nearly a century had passed since they parted, but that shouldn’t have been an impediment; Augmenter records went back many thousands of years.
At least that’s what the Augmenter Network said. Personally he rarely had any reason to access records that went back more than a few decades, and had therefore never consciously tested the limits of Net data availability. There had been no incentive to. Everything within reason that he wanted to know had simply always appeared quickly in his mind when he willed it. In this instance however, it took numerous requests made over several weeks to retrieve Ann’s location.
She must have withdrawn her location from public inquiry for a time. That was unusual, but legal. When he finally did get answers, they were shocking ones. Ann was alive, as expected. In recent centuries people vary rarely died, though accidents and so-called acts of God still happened. But her location and its classification surprised him. Anna was reportedly here, somewhere in this primitive retro-enclave of short-lived so-called naturalists. Why? Was she studying them?
With both biological sight and cyborg multi-frequency receptors he scanned the area where the ground-transport shuttle had deposited him, and shuttered. He hadn’t slummed a retro enclave for centuries and from what he sensed now they hadn’t progressed at all, at least not this one. Aside from what was incorporated into his own body and the several transport shuttles nearby, he sensed that there were no sentient Augmenters of any type in the vicinity: none incorporated within the dozens of humans, and none incorporated within any of the very primitive looking ground vehicles that sat to one side of the station. The vehicles all actually used wheels, he noted. How quaint.
The walkway he stepped onto was teaming with hundreds of disturbingly odd looking people that moved packages and containers of various sizes and shapes between the shuttles and the primitive ground transport vehicles. The larger containers were moved using primitive machines. He gained conformation through the transport Net-link that this one station was the sole interface between the enclave and what they called the Outside world, and that despite their aversion to modern technology many of enclave inhabitants worked on the Outside or traded material goods with the Outside. That made sense; the colony size was only about seven thousand square kilometers and couldn’t possibly be fully self-sustaining.
The motley looking people here were wearing clothing that must have been based on historic accounts: woven fabric of a poorer era instead of molded plastics that reflected the greater affluence gained through centuries of performance useful to society. They were of different ages and sizes, and wore no distinguishing insignias to convey status or function. Imbedded in a society teeming with abundance, where poverty was a distant memory, these people were actually poor. Inexplicably, they chose to be poor!
These were obviously symptoms of abhorrent behavior. They had chosen to be poor and therefore jeopardized their own corporal existence. Worse, they rejected both genetic molding and computer and nanite Augmenter implants, and had therefore chosen to be stupid and ignorant, crippling their own mental existence. These people were both stupid and irresponsible. A standard distribution curve came to mind, depicting the likely abysmal range of intelligences of the people that he walked amongst. Almost all of them likely had IQs well under the normal minimum of 130. Their apparent ages appeared to also follow a wide distribution. At least half of them appeared to be immature teenagers or younger, so they also lacked experience. In normal society, less than one percent of individuals were juveniles under the age of fifty Earth years. More shocking still, many individuals at the station appeared to be old; disgustingly old and infirm. In most of society, it was rare to see anyone that appeared to be older than thirty or younger than twenty.
Just as shocking, around the transport station green trees and grass extended to the limits of his vision: acre after acre of unmanaged chaotic plant growth, without any sign of food-plants or other species usefully engineered to meet human needs, and without tending robotic Augmenters to counter pathogens or to measure out or conserve water. He had never been to Earth, but this must have been what it was like on the home planet, countless thousands of years ago. Perhaps this chaotic arrangement of plant-life had a certain primitive, aesthetic appeal to it for some individuals.
In accordance with the pre-arranged agreement, Trent walked further away from the transports and to the other side of the terminal. Soon his Augmentation lost link with all Net signals. The silence that met his broadcasted unanswered inquiries was defining. Trent had not lost link with the Net for centuries. What was it like to live alone like this? How did these people maintain sufficient sanity to function at all?
“Trent, is it really you?” asked a female voice, Anna’s voice, from behind him. He turned, fully expecting to see Anna as he remembered her, young and vibrant and in her prime. Instead he was confronted by a small wrinkled being that stepped up to him and gave him a quick hug before releasing him and stepping back to better appraise him with blue, inquisitive eyes. “Of course it’s you!” she said. “You haven’t changed a bit!”
It had happened so quickly and unexpectedly that he hadn’t been able to avoid this shocking affront to his person, but now he could sense his Life-Suit generate extra nanites, biotic antibodies, and microscopic symbioteic life-forms. Unsanctioned physical interaction was illegal and abhorrent, but he managed to verbalize an answer to the creature. “I reassembled my form to what it was several life-cycles before.” It was a female that had assaulted him, he concluded, and like the other abhorrent individuals here, she was completely devoid of any augmentation whatsoever. Without use of augmentation, how had he been reliably recognized?
“It’s been a very long time,” the old creature said, disturbingly using Anna’s voice.
“Not so long at all. Only about a century, since last I used this look,” Trent noted. Trent was referring to the arrangement of his hair and clothing, since otherwise he of course always consistently maintained the appearance of a twenty-five year old human male.
She laughed like Anna. “It’s obviously been a very long time for me, Trent. Long, difficult years.”
Trent still wasn’t convinced this was Anna. None of this made sense. “If you indeed are Anna, why would you let yourself become this way?”
“Excellent question,” she replied, as she shockingly took Trent by the hand and led him to sit with her on a nearby bench. “That’s why I finally responded to your inquiries about me. Aside from my current husband, you were my greatest love.”
“How did you escape the accounting of the Augmentation Network? Transfering from normal society to primitive enclaves such as this is strictly forbidden.”
“A difficult problem to be sure, but I managed. It would be foolish of me to tell you how.”
Trent sat mutely staring into her eyes, Anna’s eyes, trying to make sense of it all. He was by now convinced that this was indeed Anna. But she was so old! “You still haven’t answered my question as to why you have done this.”
“I got greedy, Trent, I wanted it all. I fell in love with a man that felt the same way and we had our Augmenters removed and we moved here together as husband and wife. We had children and grand-children and great-grand-children and raised them and grew old together. It’s as simple and as complex as that.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” Women giving birth to children was almost unheard of, as was raising them in family setting.
“It makes wonderful sense. Despite hardships and loss, the rewards have more than compensated for the fact that within a decade or two I expect to expire.”
Trent was taken aback. She was actually smiling as she spouted her nonsense. “If you are sick you should obviously seek Augmentation.”
She shook her head. “I’m simply old, Mark. Death is as natural as life.”
“Human death due to old age has not been natural for cent
uries.”
“What about death due to boredom or loneliness or lack of accomplishment? Is that better?”
“I suffer from none of those things.”
“So you tell yourself. Your society is static. Your life is static. Each year is similar to the one before it, and the one before that. Your one driving compulsion is to avid risk and maintain your individual immortality. Meanwhile you slowly rot from the inside without even knowing what life should be about.”
“Ann, you are delusional. Can you be so blind that you do not see the squalor that you live in? The filth? The chaos? Come with me now. It’s not too late for Augmentation and rejuvenation.”
“And leave my husband and family? No. I decided long ago what my path would be. Seeing you has only confirmed my decision. Are you truly content with your own existence?”
“Me? I remain forever in my prime. I am ageless. I regularly perform physical exercise including sex. I travel among the inhabited planets enjoying food variety and art and science unending. I avail myself of everything available from our civilization. Of course I am content.”
“Really? Then why did you seek me?”
Trent had no answer. Why had he sought her? They had lived together for several years; what more was there to gain from each other? There was no rational reason for him to again seek her out. No rational reason at all that he could think of. Yet he had sought her.
Ann smiled her unique smile. “I’ll tell you why. Because there is a spark of humanity left in you that wanted still more humanity. That’s why we paired for so long in the first place, defying conventional behavior. You got a taste of something that you still want more of. Am I right?”
Trent’s thoughts were spinning chaotically, humanly. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. Inexplicably, as there were no air contaminants or overly bright lights, he felt tears form in his augmented eyes. He felt empty.
Ann wrapped him gently in her arms and held him, and he made no move to escape her. “It’s alright, Mark; it’s what the ancients called love. We discovered love together long ago, Mark. Our love prompted me to leave the Collective to find more of it, and I did find it, in great abundance. I’ve had a wonderful life here, full of love. I have no regrets. I am happy.”
He felt strangely cheered by what she said. Love? Happiness? His augmented thoughts could do nothing with such concepts, but that didn’t seem to matter. Ann was happy, and somehow that meant something to him, something that to some degree satisfied him. “I should leave now. I have been out of the Augmentation Net for too long.”
Ann released him and looked into his eyes. “Yes Mark, you need to return to your world, and I to mine. I’m glad you came to see me. Will you betray my presence here to the Collective?”
Mark shook his head. “In truth, you are no longer the Ann that I knew long ago. I met someone similar to you, that is what my Augmentation will broadcast to the Net if asked. I doubt the Collective will ever bother you. Goodbye, Ann.” A deep part of him wanted to say much more, but couldn’t. It was years too late.
“Goodbye, Mark,” she said, as she favored him with one last parting smile.
Mark Trent turned from her and walked stiffly to the waiting transporter, stepped inside, and rejoined the Collective via the Augmentation Net. As the transporter silently lifted away with him, he responded to inquiries and took in the news. He had been off the Net for several long minutes and there was much to catch up with. A few enclave onlookers watched and pointed at the transport shuttle as it flew away, for vehicles from the Outside were rarely seen here.
A wrinkled old man approached Ann. The original Ann and the original Mark Trent embraced warmly. “Well? How am I doing, in the Outside world?” he asked.
“Your clone is doing well, old man. Good genes, I suspect.”
“You took a chance, letting my clone know of your presence here. Do you think we’ll still be safe?”
“I think so. Even if the Collective does look for me here, we’ll be a continent away by then, back in our own enclave with our children and grand-children and great-grand-children. But I doubt they’ll bother; after all, my own clone is firmly established in the Collective on a different planet. Why should they look for someone that isn’t even missing?”
Mark shrugged. “True. Our strategy has worked well for us so far. Tell me now about my other self, Ann. Am I happy? What am I like?”
“Not as happy and likable as you are, old man, but your clone seems to be getting on well enough. He suffered from a bit of yearning for a younger Ann, but I think that seeing the actual old Ann got him over that. He should be fine. Not as happy as us of course, but he’ll be out there getting along alright for many centuries to come. We however, have limited time and need to get back to our lives.” Hand-in hand, they walked off together.
On the transport, Trent’s thoughts gradually normalized, as lingering fond thoughts of Ann were comfortably overwhelmed by the trivia of the Net. Why should he feel any regret? He was alive and essentially ageless and immortal; what more could anyone want? One last inexplicable tear dried on his cheek and was gone.
****
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