As she watched them, she remembered the trip to the clinic, a week past and five centuries ago, on her way to take the tests to determine compatibility with the antiagathic treatment. Lora had walked through a thin line of protestors. None of them had spoken to her. They only watched her, milling uncertainly with a few signs declaring the new process an abomination, contrary to God’s law, a disaster waiting to happen—vague imprecations, some of which nevertheless had disturbed Lora.
There had been pirate clinics for years. The number of celebrities receiving the treatment kept rising, the numbers of ordinary people petitioning Congress and the president to legalize immortality swelling finally to the point a year later when a bill passed both houses and the president signed it, and legitimate clinics could open. Arguments in opposition had always seemed either too shrill or too arcane to matter as much as some people thought they did, so fell silent. For a time. The gathering of disenchanted had surprised her. Now she wondered how many of them had been denied the treatment, like her.
Why am I thinking about this now? She wondered. Because I’m still mortal came the answer. Five centuries had passed here while she had traveled at relativistic speeds. For her it had only been a few years, but she did still stare mortality in the face.
She stretched her legs out and leaned back against the tree. There had been dozens of studies done on the process, many of which contradicted each other. Everyone agreed that not all people could take it, but no one knew how many. Certain gene markers eliminated candidates for a variety of reasons, but since even in families among close relatives those markers were not predictable, reliable statistics proved impossible. The guesses ranged from ten percent to sixty. The news feeds were choked with debates about what this would mean, but the clinics were open and people were getting the treatment.
But not she. The tests disqualified her. The treatment would produce unacceptable, adverse, or fatal results. Lora was not destined to be immortal.
After a time, she returned to the house and waited for Jeff and Audry to come home. But they didn’t come home that day or the next or the one after that, until finally the time came for her next mission. Another two years exchanged for another four centuries of “immortality.”
Audry entered the room wearing feathers of some kind. Lora recognized them as modeled on an avian species that lived in a system ninety-two light years distant.
“Hey,” Audry said, waving at her. She went to the wall, touched it, and the entire room disappeared, replaced by an outdoor vista, pine forest to one side, desert to the other, a lake in between, and a mountain in the distance. Lora watched Audry spin around in the center of the new landscape, smiling brightly. She stopped, facing Lora, hands out as if offering the scene to her. “What do you think?”
“Lovely.”
“Thought you’d like it.” Audry’s eyes shifted. “Jeff!” She waved.
Jeff came from between two trees. Lora stared, startled at the muscle he now carried. He advanced on them, long strides, arms swinging, and came alongside Audry. He surveyed the scene, nodded, then headed toward the desert.
“Hi, Lora.” Jeff waved as he passed.
Audry followed him. Lora watched as they walked toward the horizon. They did not really seem to be together or aware of each other. Both were just walking their own path until they shimmered beneath the illusion of sunlight and disappeared.
The front door clicked on closing, and Lora listened to the tread of footsteps through the house. It was Jeff. The glass of wine she had been sipping was nearly empty, and she felt slightly buzzed. She remained sitting and silent, listening as he explored the house, finally coming through the garden doors.
“Hey,” he said in greeting.
“Come on out,” Lora said. She raised her glass. “The water’s fine.”
Jeff laughed and took the chair opposite her. “Where’s Audry?”
“I thought she was with you.”
“No. She left right after you did.”
“Which time?”
He looked puzzled for a moment, then shook his head dismissing his confusion the way he always did, but his eyes continued roving over the garden and patio.
The muscle was gone. He was back to the way Lora remembered him from long ago. Wiry. It had been almost twenty-five years subjective, and she had seen so many Jeffs over the past five thousand years that she could not be sure which one was the original.
“No,” he said. “I went—somewhere else.” He pointed at the glass. “First?”
“First. If you’re fast, you can catch up.”
He seemed to consider it, then shook his head. “Maybe one of us should stay sober.”
“How do you know I’m not?” Lora leaned forward. “Are you still in love with Audry?”
“Sure.”
“No, no. Not ‘sure.’ Are you in love with me?”
He frowned. “I don’t—how long will you be back this time?”
She regarded him for a few seconds and decided to ignore his question. “Four years. That’s how long we were a unit before the treatments. Four. Six months before then, building up to me moving in with you two. Eventually, I got used to certain aspects of our relationship that bothered me originally. I convinced myself that what I took to be signs of trouble between you two were just the stress marks of a longer relationship. Was I wrong?”
“I don’t know. When was this?”
“About—oh, I think you two had passed the two-millennium mark.” She watched him closely to see if he had caught that the timeframe was completely inaccurate. He did not.
“It doesn’t seem that long.” He looked over the garden.
“You know,” Lora said, “neither one of you have ever asked me about the missions. I’ve been back—”
“What missions? Oh, that’s right. You do that space thing. How’s that working out?”
“How’s this working out?”
Confusion again.
“Jeff?”
“Hmm?”
“Should we have sex?”
“Why?”
“I’m trying to make a decision. I’ve made three or four of them today so far. It’s a cliché people use when talking about being in love: that it’s forever. It’s supposed to mean until death, but usually it means until one or both change enough that they either have to renegotiate the relationship or leave. Even when it works out, it’s not remotely forever. I’ve been sitting here trying to imagine spending the next couple of hundred years with you both. I could do that now, you know. The treatments you two took still won’t work for me, but there are other therapies. I could retire, stay here, live another two or three centuries. Maybe more.”
Jeff was silent for a long time. Then: “You’re leaving.”
“I think so.”
“Even though you can get treatments?”
“I think especially because I can.”
“Why?”
“Because—because it might be a lie not to.”
“I remember—” He shook his head. “Where’s Audry?”
“She left a message about two years ago, said she was going for a walk.”
He nodded as if that made perfect sense. He looked at her. “Were you lying when you said you wanted to join us?”
“No. But it’s not that simple. We make choices among limited options, always. If it were possible to do something else at the time, would you? And if the situation changes in mid-promise, would you still keep it?”
“That sounds really cynical.”
“Yeah. It does.”
“If you go away for a while, will you come back?”
“I don’t know. Let me ask you something. If I leave, will you and Audry stay together?”
Jeff shrugged.
Lora got to her feet. “Thought so. Look, this next mission is a really big deal. I might be gone another thousand years, objective.”
“Are you having fun?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
Jeff looked relieved. �
�I love you.”
“I know.”
She walked into the kitchen. She changed her mind about the second drink and went to her room to pack a small bag.
Lora came into the clinic room and found Jeff and Audry sitting side by side in cocoon chairs. They were not thin so much as insubstantial. Lora walked back and forth before them, but their eyes did not track her.
The doctor stood in the doorway, “They know you’re here,” he said. “It just takes them a while to react.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Nothing, clinically. They’re just—slow.” He grunted. “Terminations leveled off about three hundred years ago. Those who still had the will to act ended their lives. Others have left Earth, flying on ships like you do.”
“I know. I’ve been encountering more and more of them.”
“How do they manage?”
“After a few decades,” Lora said, “they get better. More—more present.” She walked closer to Jeff and Audry. “What about them?”
“They lived past the point of will.” The doctor shrugged. “Metaphysics. It didn’t seem worthwhile to terminate. So they just persist.”
“Persist?”
“There’s brain activity. Something of a dream-state takes up most of their day, but—look. As part of their unit you can sign off on termination.”
“I know. But they aren’t really not there, are they?”
“No.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
“You know, they were among the earliest. They’re pushing six thousand.”
“They didn’t upload back when that was all the rage?”
“No. They said at the time that they couldn’t do that without you.”
Lora was surprised. She looked at the doctor. Not human, but then no one was really sure what that meant these days. “Thank you. I’d like to be alone with them now.”
He nodded and left. The door closed.
Lora pulled a chair over by them and sat down.
About an hour later, both of them focused on her. They smiled.
“Lora.”
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Lora said.
“You’re here,” Audry said.
“Are you staying?” Jeff asked.
“I don’t know. I feel so full of what I’ve seen I’m not sure I could add anything more without busting.”
“Seen—?” Audry said.
“A lot.” Jeff said. “I bet.”
“All the universe, it seems.”
A few minutes passed, creamy and bittersweet.
Then Jeff said, “What’s it like?”
Lora felt a mild shock. “You’re asking?”
Audry nodded. “Yes.”
“You’ve been away too long,” Jeff said. “Tell us.”
“Well if you really want to know—”
Lora began telling them. As she spoke and recounted what she had seen, their eyes widened, a shimmer passed through them, and their color seemed to deepen. After a few hours, Lora realized that she would not be leaving on the next mission.
They had the time all saved up, and she had the substance to fill it.
She told stories. They listened.
They had all the time in the world.
Gravity Box
Jen Cable awoke before the alarm sounded. She switched it off and sat on the edge of her bed for a few minutes, listening carefully to the apartment. No one else seemed to be up. No sounds of her father rattling about in the kitchen or her mother shuffling around, making the motions of straightening up as she always did in the morning.
Jen switched on her computer. She downloaded the work she had done the previous night for Eric, a fellow student and one of her “clients”—students who paid her for help with their work. A solid little business, but it took time away from her own studies and required long hours.
She glanced at the text she had tried to read last night—Principles of Zero-G Construction—and scanned a few pages till the download finished. She pulled out the chip and placed it inside the book, then shut off the machine. She folded the screen down and locked the computer into her desk drawer. The book and chip went into her backpack.
She dressed as quietly and quickly as possible. The thing she needed to do before class would have to wait. Her bladder ached, but that too would have to wait. Jen drew a tight breath, pulled on her jacket, and looked hard at the bolted door. The apartment was still quiet. She undid the bolt—she could not leave her door locked from the inside if she was gone—and went to her window. With practiced sureness, Jen slipped behind the blinds, opened the window, and swung her legs out over the sill. Balancing precariously on the edge of the chipped wooden frame, backpack on her lap, Jen slid the window shut behind her, then jumped the six feet down. Too late she saw someone squatting against the wall below.
“Hey!” he yelled as she landed. He was tall and gaunt and glared at her suspiciously.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a loud whisper, patting the air with one hand and backing away.
“Yes, well, try to remember that gravity works next time.”
Jen snapped her mouth closed, shouldered her pack, hurried up the alley, and out onto the street. When she got to the front of the apartment building, she broke into a run. It was fifteen blocks to the polyversity.
The sun had made a brief, promissory appearance earlier but was gone now behind walls of iron-gray clouds. The flat, torpid light did nothing to soften the slowly crumbling façades of row houses. Thunder cracked. Jen looked up to see a shuttle spearing heavenward. Her pulse quickened as she watched it heave up from the Earth, escaping the grasp of gravity. It passed through the cloud cover and the sound faded. Jen lowered her gaze and continued on to school.
The sprawling school complex dominated the center of her district. Jen made her way to the entrance for A Level students. Although A Levels shared many classes with Regular Track, they had exclusive access to their own recreation halls, showers, and library facilities. Jen inserted her ID and punched in her code. The screen at the entrance flashed green. She retrieved her card and entered.
Jen went directly to the rest room. There, she threw her pack in a locker and relieved her overfull bladder. Then she went into the shower area and stripped down. Jen turned up the hot water. She wanted to feel clean to the deepest layers of skin, clean to the bone. She let the water pour down her, soaking it in. Then she washed and washed once more until her skin was red. She dried herself with ritualistic care and checked herself in the mirror.
The lack of sleep was beginning to show. She had bags under her eyes: too much work, too much stress. Her face was a bit thin. Her high cheekbones gave her an almost Asian appearance. Her eyes were large and light brown, eyebrows slightly thicker than was stylish; dark brown hair rippled down to her shoulders. She had been told that she exhibited an intensity that disturbed people, a singular obsessiveness that seemed unnatural in someone so young. Jen did not see it herself. All she saw was a barely concealed fear of failure. She didn’t linger at the mirror. Instead, she finished her morning routine quickly and stepped out into hallway.
At this early hour the school halls were still mostly empty. Some of the student residents were up cleaning or running errands for teachers or tending to the dozens of necessities of daily school function. A lot of the students lived in the residential dorms. Jen watched them and wondered again, for perhaps the millionth time, what it would cost her to move into the school. For the millionth time she dismissed the idea. She could never make that much money and wouldn’t take the welfare. Besides, her parents—at least her father—would never allow it.
She cleared her mind. Listening to her footsteps, she followed the turns of the hallways until she got to her home room. Too late to think of withdrawal now, too late to do anything other than go through with it. Jen went to her desk, sat down in the otherwise empty room and tried not to think by filling her mind with white noise.
Soon other students drifted in, talki
ng and laughing. Jen watched them, smiling to herself, but feeling very isolated. They were aliens to her. She had never found it easy to talk with others. What they did and why made little sense to her—their lives seemed small and trite—though she ached to be a part of it all.
“Hi, Jen.”
She turned and found Eric sitting behind her. He wore the perpetual knowing smirk she disliked.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, fishing in her backpack. “This isn’t your home room.”
“I’m a little more pressed for time than usual,” he said. “You have it?”
She pulled out the download. He reached for it, but she held it away. “Two hundred,” she said.
He scowled, but pulled a sheaf of bills from his pocket. With one hand she counted it, then slid it into her backpack. She gave him the essay she had written for him last night.
“You’re gonna get caught someday,” he said, voice mock-ominous.
“I get caught; you’ll flunk,” she said.
He grabbed her left breast and squeezed before she could slap his hand away. He laughed, pulled back his hand, and swaggered out of the room.
The attendance tone sounded. Jen looked to the front of the room. Sheila Goddard stood there, scrolling through something on her terminal. Talk faded out. She waited a minute more. Then she looked up.
“Good morning,” Ms. Goddard said. A smattering of good mornings responded. “This is a special day for several students. The examination committee from the Space Technologies Institute is here today and, as some of you are aware, two of our own will be examined by the committee to see if they qualify for study grants.”
Jen lowered her gaze. She felt herself blushing.
“Jennifer Cable and Lewis Bender,” Sheila went on. “Let’s send them with our best wishes. Hope you make it, Jen—Lew.”
Jen heard the applause, felt the warmth, but it made her all the more anxious. She wished it were already over and she could go home with her failure and stop worrying about it. Then she could get on with what she had to. She did not hear the rest of the announcements.
Gravity Box and Other Spaces Page 27