Immortality Experiment

by Vic Connor

  “Every man should know how to cook,” Yuri used to say, “so he won’t have to depend on his wife.” He grinned as he said it.

  “And so he can feed himself if she kicks him out for being a fool,” Anna responded with an answering grin.

  “But he can impress her by cooking for her in the first place, proving he’s not a fool.”

  “Except most men make sure to cook badly when they do that, so she’ll take pity on him and do the cooking anyway.”

  “Which is clever, proving he’s not a fool.”

  “Unless she sees through him, which proves that he is.”

  It was an old, comfortable routine they tended to repeat like vaudeville actors as they worked together in the kitchen on Saturdays, and it was why from the start they’d taught Niko to help with some simple tasks. He loved being allowed to knead the pirozhki dough. And he felt very grownup the day his parents started letting him fry his own grenki in the morning, taking the slices of stale bread and dipping them in the egg-and-sugar mixture before turning on the gas stove all by himself, almost unaware of the cautious eye one or the other of his parents kept on him as he did so. He’d stare delightedly at the ring of small blue flames he’d just awakened before putting a frying pan on top, adding a bit of butter, and then frying the egg-covered bread until it was just as crisp as he liked it. On weekends, as a special treat, Anna would cut the bread slices in half and let him add jam to them, making a sort of jam sandwich before he rolled them in the beaten egg and fried them. Anna had promised him that when he turned seven, she’d let him cut the bread himself. Until then, though, she prepared everything for him, and then went to his room to wake him.

  He’d already be half-awake, roused by the smell of his father’s frying eggs, but he hid his face in his pillows so that Anna would have to go through the whole routine. Perfectly aware he wasn’t sleeping, she would come in on exaggerated tiptoes, stage-whispering, “Nikolai… Oooh, Niiiii-ko-laaaiii…” Then she’d draw the curtains for the morning light to fall onto the back of his tousled head, at which point he would usually giggle.

  “Wake up, sleepy-toes,” she’d say. “The White Knight has passed by and the Red Knight is well on his way.” She was referring to one of Niko’s favorite fairy tales about a girl who had to visit the witch Baba Yaga in the forest and on her way passed three knights, one in white, one in red, and one in black, who turned out to be Bright Day, Red Sun, and Black Night.

  And then if Niko still didn’t admit he was awake, she’d pull up the sheet at the bottom of his bed and grab one of his toes, and then another, and another, sometimes putting on her raspy Baba Yaga voice and saying, “Mmm, young boys’ toes, those will make wonderful dumplings!” By which point Niko would be so convulsed with laughter there was no hiding the fact he wasn’t sleeping any longer.

  But that morning, there had been no smell of eggs to wake him. Nor the sound of showers, or even the subtle warmth that comes with a kitchen being used down the corridor. He woke up on his own when the sun poured through a crack in the curtains and hit his eyes, and felt confused because the Red Knight was far higher in the sky than he ought to be. Even on weekends he never slept this late, and it wasn’t a weekend.

  The silence felt eerily complete. And despite the sunlight, he felt cold.

  “Mama?” he called out. But there was no answer.

  He clambered out of bed and put on his slippers, which were getting ragged: His habit of just shoving his feet into them was ruining their heel guards, and the left one always threatened to fall off as he walked. He took two or three tentative steps toward the door before suddenly turning back and grabbing his stuffed hare, Zaika, and holding him close as he left his room.

  His left slipper slapped against the floor as he hesitantly walked down the cold, empty corridor.

  He pressed Zaika to his cheek. “It’s okay, Zaika,” he said. “Everything’s fine.” But he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice, and he knew that the fact he’d said anything meant that things weren’t fine.

  As he went by the bathroom door, he suddenly realized that he really, really needed to pee. In fact, it was probably the pressure in his bladder that woke him up.

  But before anything else, he needed to find his parents.

  He kept going.

  They weren’t in their room.

  He even checked the walk-in closet just in case they were playing hide-and-seek and had forgotten to tell him. But they weren’t there. All of his mother’s clothes were, though.

  They weren’t in the living room either. The curtains weren’t open there. Conscientiously, Niko pulled them apart; Mama was always concerned that her plants should get enough sunlight.

  It was a lovely, sunny day outside. But somehow it didn’t seem to penetrate into the apartment.

  There was only the kitchen left now.

  Niko started trembling. For a moment, he couldn’t even walk.

  He heard his teeth chattering against one another.

  He buried his face in Zaika’s softness.

  Everything would be okay. He just had to be strong. That’s what his father had always told him. Just like his mother would tell him when he woke from a nightmare, “Remember, nothing can truly hurt you if you’ve done nothing wrong. You can never be weak unless you’re at fault.”

  “Everything will be all right, Zaika,” he whispered. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  He started to shuffle toward the kitchen. Something wasn’t right with his breathing: He couldn’t seem to draw enough air into his lungs. He leaned against the flowery wallpaper, letting the wall help him stay upright while he kept creeping toward the sliding door at the end of the corridor.

  The kitchen is the heart of the home, his mother always said. A kitchen should be warm, full of light and laughter.

  He loved the door to the kitchen. Not just because it slid into the wall, while most doors were boring and just swung on hinges, but because of the brightly colored pane of glass in its center which featured a coffee pot, a fresh loaf of bread, a large emerald-green salad, a big cooked turkey that even had steam rising off of it. Usually the picture glowed from the kitchen lights.

  That morning it looked dim and dismal.

  He must have already known what he would find. But he still paused to nuzzle the stuffed hare and say, “You’ll see, Zaika. They’ll be in there.”

  They weren’t.

  The kitchen stood gray and cold. Even though it was spotless, as always, it gave the impression of being covered in dust.

  There was only one small window here, set high in the wall and pointing north, and it let in hardly any light at all.

  There was no sliced bread on the counter, no bowl of mixed eggs and sugar, no plates or napkins laid out, no jug of milk.

  No pan on the stove. No trace of any cooking having ever been done here.

  Niko inched in. Something was rising in his chest toward his throat, his face, his eyes. Nothing physical, not vomit or tears, but something like a fever, something he’d never felt before and instinctively knew he couldn’t control. He gulped.

  His mind still refused to say the words, “They’re not here.” But any moment now, the realization would burst in on him.

  He crept up to the far counter, where the samovar his mother was so proud of stood, and reached out a hand.

  It was over two hundred years old, she had told him once, and had belonged to one of the richest families in Russia.

  Anna’s many-times great-grandmother was one of their favored servants, and when she married, her masters had given her the samovar as a wedding gift. It was a tall copper contraption that Anna always kept well-burnished, elegantly engraved all over with fantastic birds from Russian folklore and embossed with the family’s crest. It was the most precious thing she owned, and they still used it every day, morning and night, so that it never completely cooled down. Anna sometimes claimed it had been in continual use since her ancestress’ time, and therefore some of its heat was st
ill the same as that which had warmed the first glass of tea her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother had made the morning after her wedding.

  But today, even the samovar was cold.

  For a few moments, Niko simply stood there.

  Many years later, he read in the local news archives that two apartments down, Eileen Merrill was refilling her pug’s bowl. The vet had recently insisted the dog be put on a diet, and so she was carefully measuring out kibble when Niko’s screams started, sudden and startling enough that she dropped both the bowl and the bag.

  She had never heard such raw anguish in her life, she told the news reporters.

  “Mama! Papa! Gde vy? Gde vy??? Gde ty, Mama? Papa? Mama! MAMA!!!”

  Then the sounds cut off as sharply and shockingly as they had begun.

  Mrs. Merrill did not speak a word of Russian. Nor was she by nature a nosy person. But Mama and Papa are universal sounds, and no one could ignore a child screaming like that. So she hurried from her apartment still in housecoat and slippers, completely oblivious to Princess’s ravenous feasting on the unexpected bounty that had spilled all over the floor.

  Only the Somovs had a child in this high-end building, she knew, so she hastened to their door and knocked. There was no answer. She hesitated, then pressed her ear to the door. She thought she could hear someone whimpering inside.

  That was when she called the police, the article said.

  They found Niko on the kitchen floor, curled in a fetal position, teeth chattering uncontrollably, his stuffed hare gripped to his chest, lying in a slowly spreading, dark yellow puddle of pee. But what truly disturbed those who found him, the article concluded, what none of them ever forgot, was that though his eyes were wide and staring, they remained completely dry.

  He never shed a single tear.

  Oxana pointed with one hand and switched on an array of equipment with the other. “Just there, on the hook to your left.”

  Shaken by the onslaught of memories, Niko stood rigid and frozen, continuing to think. Oxana spoke Russian—one of very few things Niko had left over from his parents. He didn’t remember Russia; he’d been too young when they’d all come to America. But though they made sure their son learned English, the Somovs had always spoken Russian at home. That was the language in which they’d said good night to him as they tucked him in, consoled him when he scraped his knee, whispered to each other one night as they danced together in the living room, thinking he was asleep.

  And so, he now remembered, when they’d vanished he’d clung to it. Stubbornly. For weeks, he refused to speak English to his first foster family. That was the first time he’d been sent back to the system. His foster parents had been good people, but they couldn’t deal with his insistence on either speaking Russian or nothing at all. Eventually, he’d given in a little, though he’d been kicked out of two schools first. But he’d still never forgotten.

  One night, he’d heard his second set of foster parents talking about how little English he was willing to speak. “It’s just a phase,” Reggie had said. “At this age, they learn quickly, he’ll get so used to speaking English he won’t even realize he’s stopped using his mother tongue.” After that, Niko had got into the habit of reciting the events of each day to himself in Russian as he waited to go to sleep, as though he were writing a diary.

  But he hadn’t had a chance to practice in a long time. Or even to just listen to a Russian voice, and eventually, without quite knowing how, he forgot it. He forgot even the fact of ever speaking it.

  Maybe this was why he now looked at Oksana with new eyes, finding her much more intriguing. He had always been rootless in America. But the Russian language—it was home.

  Niko became aware of Clark clearing his throat, then leaving Niko’s side to grab the suit. It looked something like a wetsuit with toe-shoes and gloves. Wait, so Clark understood Russian?

  Before Niko could ask him a question, Clark said, “Now then, eschew that county orange and…put this on, my boy. Skin to skin, in total, mind, or the receptors…won’t work.”

  Niko blanched, slowly unbuttoning his prison jumpsuit and peering over at Oxana. After a few very uncomfortable minutes, he was dressed in the wetsuit and clambering into the tank.

  “Lay down and relax, my boy,” Clark said, that rotten breath wafting in Niko’s face. The water displaced up to his temples, cold and viscous, and the last thing he felt was relaxed.

  “All right, Mr. Somov,” Oxana chirped in Russian without glancing at him. She pulled out what looked to be an oxygen mask, except there was a long tube coming out where a mouth would go, like a proboscis. “I’m going to put in your feeding tube. Then you’ll be all set.”

  “Hold on.” Niko sat up on his elbows, making the water slosh. It felt odd, speaking his native tongue with these people, so he switched back to English. Questions swarmed his mind. “Feeding tube? When do I, I mean, when will I get to leave?”

  Clark emitted a disbelieving little laugh, showing his rotten teeth. “Niko, my boy,” he said in heavily accented Russian. “Territoria is a…fully immersive power fantasy. Why in heaven would you ever want to…leave?”

  Oxana pulled open his jaw and shoved the feeding tube down his throat. Niko gagged, tried to speak, but soon the oxygen mask vacuumed over his nose and mouth. He felt like he couldn’t catch his breath. With a loud clunk and mechanical gurgle, the water started to rise. Oxana watched the monitors, and just when Niko realized the closest thing he’d ever seen to the Vat was a coffin, she reached across his vision and brushed a lock of blonde hair from her forehead. “Ready, Niko?”

  He wanted to ask how he was supposed to stay in touch with Clark. But he couldn’t speak around the tubes. So he just nodded, wondering if Oxana would have been the one to administer his lethal injection if he had refused the Territoria contract. And if yes, if she would have been just as business-like. Just doing her job—that’s probably all she thought about this.

  Clark’s voice came from afar again. “Enjoy the Hunt!” He made the word sound capitalized, like it was a major event.

  The what?

  Oxana shut the lid.

  Blue light illuminated the inside of the Vat. The rising liquid crept up the edge of Niko’s vision, until he felt it at the corner of his eyes, like tears, and he shut them. The waterline covered his forehead. As the tank filled, it lifted his back off the bottom of the tube so he was free-floating inside, touching nothing.

  Finally, the dull, gushing roar of water stopped, and Niko dared to open his eyes. The tank glowed an eerie blue. On the inside of the lid, black, block letters read “SOMOV 000003.”

  “Earth to Nikolai Somov,” Oxana’s voice sounded inside Niko’s capsule. “Doing good inside there? Tap the lid if you hear me.’”

  Niko complied.

  “Launch,” Oxana said, and gave him a quiet laugh. “Say hello to your little friends. Breathe deep, sweetheart.”

  Cold air puffed from somewhere into Niko’s mask, and when he slanted his eyes down, he saw it fill with odorless, gray smoke. Intuitively, Niko held his breath.

  “Breathe!” the woman’s voice rang in his ears. “Breathe deep!”

  If there ever was a moment to panic, it was now. Locked inside a metal-and-glass coffin, buried under a layer of heavy liquid, and now being gassed to death.

  “Breathe! You fool, come on. The nanos… They don’t live long out in the air!” Oxana’s voice has taken an urgent undertone.

  Niko held his breath for as long as he could. When he felt his eyes bulge out and his pulse roar like war drums in his ears, he gasped.

  Nothing happened for another minute. Niko waited, his mind frozen, listening to every tiny change of sensation inside his body.

  Sharp pain exploded in Niko’s head, and hot lava began to spread through his hands and arms, numbing them.

  Oh, boy. The pain! Niko tried to sit up to open the lid of the capsule, but his body didn’t move. His arms and legs just floated there like chunks of dead mea
t, while the heat spread itself into Niko’s chest and abdomen. The nanos he had breathed in must have started to work their way through his body, integrating with his nerves and muscles.

  “Hey!” he managed to croak as another wave of horror washed over him. It felt like they were executing him after all. In his panicked confusion, Niko thought they were supposed to give him sodium thiopental to put him to sleep first. He wasn’t supposed to experience every moment of his death.

  The lava reached his throat, and Niko groaned, losing the ability to control his breathing. A weight materialized on his chest—like a scorching-hot, seventy-ton tank had rolled onto it.

  He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t even scream.

  Liars, Niko thought as his mind dimmed into nothingness. He remembered reading somewhere that getting a lethal injection was like going to sleep. This isn’t like going to sleep at all.

  Then, with a loud clunk, the blue lights shut off, and Niko plunged into blackness.

  8

  Choices

  When the tank rolled off Niko’s chest, the first thing he noticed was that he wasn’t dead.

  And he could breathe again.

  It was like no silence Niko had ever experienced. A sensory deprivation tank, Clark had called it. Black as pitch with his eyes open. No scent coming through the breathing mask, not even Clark’s foul breath. Niko couldn’t even feel where the metal tank began. He reached his arms out with no real reference for where he was reaching except his own body. Before his hands found the edge of the tank, however, something flashed in front of his eyes.

  It was a two-dimensional graphic of the Territoria logo, with a tiny loading bar beneath it, creeping up to full. The graphic remained flat no matter where Niko looked, like it was attached to his head. The loading bar filled, and a woman’s voice said, “Please create your avatar.” It sounded like it’d come from all around him. His vision flashed, then lit up. In front of his face he saw…himself.