Conclusion

by Peter Robertson

  There was more silence. Then Colin did something he had never done before. He placed five hundred dollars on the table, then waited. It was a short wait. The money was rapidly removed.

  “Which night was this?”

  Colin told him. He was, he sadly noted, no longer a sir.

  “Her name is Linda Jackson.”

  Colin wanted to be sure.

  “Does she wear a Celtic cross around her neck?”

  There was an almost imperceptible nod.

  He was out his dignity and five hundred bucks. Colin decided to push his luck. He pulled out a printout of Elliot Devine’s likeness from the obituary notices.

  “Have you ever seen this man here?”

  The young man glanced at the piece of paper very quickly.

  When he spoke, it was in a neutral tone. “No.”

  “Would you tell me if you had?”

  There was a suggestion of a pause. “Perhaps.”

  “I have more money.”

  If he had wanted to ask any more questions, he was too late. The young man walked away.

  Colin quickly finished his coffee and got up to leave.

  As he left the rewards suite, he contemplated how much damage he’d done to his newfound status as a rewards member.

  He decided probably not that much. He’d revealed himself as a minor creep, given a bribe for a woman’s name, and inquired after another rewards member who had been in the suite at the same time as he had. Showing the picture might be a tad odd, but his behavior was hardly cause for blackballing or loss of member privileges. And his gauche money had been accepted.

  But, as he rode the elevator downward, Colin Tugdale felt unusually sleazy. The sensation lasted a while.

  When the doors opened, he exited into the parking garage.

  Colin called Angie. He had a name: Linda Jackson. She listened to him, and when he had finished speaking, she asked the obvious question.

  “And now what will you do?”

  He had blustered his response, “I’ll find her. We’ll find her,” he quickly amended. “She’ll confirm it. That he’s still alive. That I saw him. That he’s not dead.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do,” she said. “We should track him down.”

  “How will we do that?”

  “I don’t know.” She pretended to hesitate. “What do we know about him?”

  “We know he’s not dead.”

  He heard her sigh. “That’s true. What else?”

  “He smokes cigars. He tried to buy Trench Warfare from Tony. He failed. He likes to go camping.”

  “Good boy. And where does he like to camp?”

  Colin wasn’t sure how he felt about being patronized. But he played along.

  “In the Frontier Waters.”

  “And where is that?” she wondered.

  “It’s way up north. Near Duluth.”

  “I believe you own property up that way,” she mused.

  “Why are we doing this?”

  “Because we’re nosy and we both think the answer is going to be interesting?”

  “Why else?”

  “You know why else. The scan and the weld,” she began.

  “What about them?”

  “I want you to tell me the truth. Do you trust them?”

  He wanted to ask what she meant. But he didn’t. Because he knew exactly what she meant. Angie Rennie had cheated the weld and lived. Elliot Devine had probably done the same thing.

  But first he had to find Linda Jackson.

  JUSTIN

  The walk through the city from the local bus stop to the interstate bus station took Justin ten minutes. He passed a bike shop and a craft brewery.

  The interstate bus would leave in twenty-five minutes, heading north and terminating near the border. At the ticket office, Justin paid for his one-way ticket with the outer layers of his cash wad. He sat down inside the refurbished interior of the station. The waiting room was cold. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head. His hair was cut very short, and he had shaved his face slowly and carefully that morning.

  Justin planned to take the bus as far as Duluth and walk the rest of the way.

  He had begun to follow the rules of his destination, to leave no trace.

  A number of seats inside the bus station were occupied by homeless men charging their phones and dozing. One gentleman compulsively packed and unpacked three bags filled with his possessions. When he was finished he started over.

  Justin watched him carefully. If there was a method, he was unable to identify it.

  The other station users were young people, hipsters of both sexes, drinking large coffees purchased at the terminal coffee bar. Mostly the men talked, and the women worked on their laptops.

  The hip young never stayed long. Bus numbers and routes were announced and they would get up and leave and be quickly replaced. The homeless men sat slumped motionless in their seats, occasionally checking the status of their phones as if they had a place they had to get to with some urgency.

  An older policeman walked through the terminal, on his beat, his pace slowing as he came closer to the homeless people. But he didn’t stop, and he spoke to no one.

  Justin wondered if he swung back later in the day? And what would he do if the same homeless men were still there?

  But by then Justin would be long gone.

  COLIN

  In the airport cell phone parking lot, Colin turned off the engine and left the key in the ignition.

  On the tastefully muted airwaves of public radio, a frequent refrain aired, and Colin only half paid attention.

  One of the hosts phrased the question: Has the Weld Really Made Us Well?

  Most days, the wording got scrambled, even if the narrative tended to repeatedly loop back on itself. The perennial scab that the earnestly whispering cathode hosts never tired of picking was a compare/contrast lamentation on the nature of two societies: the worlds of pre- and post-Geneweld.

  There was no question that, for better or worse, the post-weld planet was a changed place.

  Patently self-evident, the following themes never ceased to draw professional pundits into earnestly revolving debate.

  Very few old people were around.

  The scan/weld technology was discovered during wartime, an apparently accidental stumble into genetic modification, as governments tinkered with ways to eradicate their enemies without resorting to traditional weaponry. The first generation of welds had all concluded at the turn of the new century, forever altering the world’s demographic composition.

  There were fewer doctors and nurses, medical schools and hospitals, and almost no hospices. No retirement communities nor nursing homes. Few companies made adult diapers or Viagra or motorized chairs that climbed up and down steep house stairs anymore.

  Every one of these professions and products still existed, but in much smaller numbers.

  Theoretically, the weld had been made available to every healthy person in every country in the world for the last forty years.

  There were outlying religious/philosophical objections from people from all social strata, and there were people, more often wealthy people, who simply chose to opt out. Sometimes this went well; lives were lived both long and healthy, all the rigors of old age were relished, and a death long delayed came quickly and largely free of pain. But too often this choice went badly; when illness arrived, it was chronic and prolonged and financially devastating.

  Most governments offered subsidized health care for those who failed the scan.

  Occasionally the reverential voices at NPR waxed nostalgic for the rosy cheeked old-timers and the pearls of hard-earned wisdom passed lovingly down through the generations. But adult-onset dementia was virtually eradicated, sales of walkers plummeted, and the notion of retirement living was radically redefined.

  People often chose to work on now, no longer slowing down mentally or becoming baffled into obsoles
cence by the demands of ever-changing technology. Those who did choose to retire, did so with a vengeance, scaling steep mountain faces, running competitively in marathons, staying up late, and never once playing bingo.

  Scientifically, the weld remained something of a mystery. Julian Brand had been the scientist in charge of the original weld/scan research team. Brand, the “Weld Wizard,” had been in his early thirties when the first apes were tested. He had famously chosen not to weld and had drowned at the disappointing age of fifty-eight on a remote camping trip. All the other original developers from the university in southern England were now concluded (they had unanimously opted to weld along with the first of the human volunteers, and they had all died at varying ages, all perfectly preserved, all almost exactly twenty years later).

  The nature of conclusion was another area rife with mystery. What was understood was that, on a certain day, the heart simply stopped. Examples were studied, some were even documented, filmed, recorded, and poignantly preserved in real time.

  For this seemingly peace-filled resolution, many let the concluding moment occur (as it were) naturally while others, anxious not to relinquish control, picked a moment and method of their own, before the reimagined and reformatted nature took its course.

  But what to make of someone like Angie Rennie?

  The history of the weld makes no mention of curative powers. But then, why should it? If scientists know anything about the weld, it is that the weld isn’t about cure. The weld is about stasis. And for it to work it has to begin with a relatively clean medical slate.

  As a research variable, several people with life-threatening diseases had been given the weld, very specifically, people with potent forms of terminal cancer. All had died well within the twenty years, all visibly aged, and most died from the cancer they originally had. A few did not. One pitiable young woman, having developed one type of cancer, rolled the dice and lost bigger, as a more virulent form seized her already-ravaged body, and propelled her faster to her end.

  By this point Colin had listened to enough.

  His laptop spat out a short list of all the Linda Jacksons, or rather, all the Linda Jacksons who lived within a reasonable commuting distance from the city airport.

  He could resume sleuthing.

  It turned out that Linda Jackson had once been a very popular name.

  That was the bad news.

  But there were avenues of hope. As Colin discovered, most of the Linda Jacksons were post-weld older ones. A clearly pre-weld Linda Jackson had served him his first coffee and shortbread at the airport. Some of the Lindas lived several states away. Two Lindas lived in the city. They were both young; one was only ten years old.

  Colin’s search was made easier because the name Linda was a relic from another era. It would take a teen rock star or a royal baby named Linda to relaunch the brand.

  Plus, the other city Linda looked initially promising. An address in an ambiguously gritty neighborhood on the lower west side of the city. A forty-minute drive to the airport if she used the expressway.

  The only suburban age-appropriate Linda lived near the lake, in the near northern suburbs, only a half hour to and from the airport.

  City Linda was ubiquitous on social media. She had a website filled with pictures of pastries and was wearing a white jacket and a chef’s hat in most of her pictures. Her numerous friends were mostly women, and they all loved her confections, and Colin couldn’t help but be a little surprised at how thin they all looked. They all praised a particular restaurant located two blocks from her apartment, where this Linda Jackson was listed as both a part owner and the pastry chef.

  Colin was left with suburban Linda Jackson.

  While the drive south from the airport would have been painless, the passage east across the suburbs toward the lake proved slower going. Colin drove aggressively and made it in just over an hour, stopping for gas, where he called Angie.

  After he provided a progress report, Angie praised his detective work. She offered help. Then she had hung up on him.

  Colin couldn’t help but notice that Angie sounded distracted. But she promised she would call him back later.

  Colin parked his car half a block east of the intersection where Linda Jackson’s apartment building was located and awaited instructions.

  As promised, Angie called back. She spoke quickly, “You’re outside a store called Transmission.”

  “I am,” he agreed. “They’re having a shoe sale.”

  “That’s very nice. They probably carry pumps in your size. You need to walk a block east. Go under the train tracks. On the left, there will be a coffee shop. Go there. You like coffee. Apparently, the cheesecake is wonderful. You should probably have some. Everyone loves the chocolate chip the best. They will put whipped cream on top if you ask nicely. Wait for her there.”

  “Can I have the cream on top?”

  “It’ll go straight to your hips.”

  “I’ve got less than two years to live.”

  “Have the cream.”

  He walked the block east, passing a secondhand record store, passing a hot dog stand with a laboriously cute name, passing a vegetarian restaurant discreetly accessed from an alleyway. A northbound commuter train rattled and sparked overhead.

  The coffee shop was small, with machines hissing steam behind a counter and a mini labyrinth of whitewashed pine tables. Both the free weekly newspapers were available in vending machines chained up outside the front door. He carefully extracted a copy of each.

  Colin balanced on a wobbly chair by the window. When he was relatively secure, he began to read.

  The mayor of the big city was far from popular. The sanitation department leased a truck parking area on the north side that was going to be developed. More people were biking the city streets, and more bicyclists were getting killed in traffic accidents. Cyclists blamed drivers. Drivers blamed cyclists. The newspaper blamed the mayor. A cross-dressing man had his wife’s permission to date other people. He wanted to know if he could also cross-dress on these dates. He was advised not to push his luck.

  He had been sitting only five minutes before his coffee and cheesecake arrived. He had forgotten to ask for the cream, but there it was, squatting on top anyway. Apparently Angie didn’t know everything.

  Half an hour later, the young woman who had served his coffee and shortbread at the airport walked into the coffee shop.

  She was dressed in gym shoes and baggy sweatpants and a loose, faded T-shirt. She sat down beside him.

  They shook hands. Her handshake was firm.

  “I’m Linda Jackson. And you’re Colin. Your friend Angie contacted me. She told me what you’re doing.” She nodded slowly to herself. “I was wondering if I would remember you.”

  “And do you?” he asked her.

  “I do.” Linda Jackson seemed pleased. “It was quiet. You were the only upgrade there. Not a full member. You had that conflicted look the upgrades always have. Like you are ridiculously happy to be there, and you expect to be thrown out at any moment.”

  He laughed, “Was that really what I looked like?”

  Her smile was mostly sympathetic. “I’m afraid so. Show me your picture.”

  He did, but she barely glanced at it. “Angie sent it to me already. I just wanted to make sure. She sent me the same picture. It’s a little clearer on paper. I also wanted to be sure you are both who you say you are. That you are working together.” She seemed convinced on all counts.

  Colin asked, “Would you like something? It would be my pleasure.”

  She replied, “Did you have their cheesecake?”

  He nodded ruefully toward his well-scraped plate.

  She placed her finger on the picture of Elliot Devine on the table. She looked again at it quickly, and she nodded her head slowly.

  “It’s definitely him. He was there. The same night that you were. Sitting close to where you were sitting. He drank a single malt whisky. An Islay. A large one. He left a big tip.�
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  Colin couldn’t help but look bashful. Linda Jackson smiled at him. “No worries. Yours was just fine.” Something in her choice of words convinced him that Devine’s had been a whole lot bigger.

  A coffee was placed in front of her. There had been no visible means of communication.

  She hastened to explain, “They know me here. This is my laundry night. The machines are in the basement of our apartment building. The wash takes half an hour. I get myself a coffee. I go back. I put the clothes in the dryer. Another half hour. I come back here. I finish my coffee. I’m living the dream.” She pointed to the picture. “Angie told me he’s supposed to be dead.”

  “He is.”

  “Are you curious about why I’m meeting you.”

  “I just assumed that Angie was very persuasive?”

  She gave a short laugh. “Oh, she is. I’ll give you that. No. What you’re doing here—what you two are both wondering—you see, I’ve had the same experience before. With another customer at work. At the airport one night. He looked so much like someone. Like someone I was certain was dead. I never figured out who he was. Or who he had been, I should say. But it was someone. I was sure of it then. I still am.” There was a slight hesitation. “Oh, maybe not so much now. It’s been a while. But I still think about it sometimes.” She looked defiantly at Colin. “And you are sure about this one?”

  “I am,” he said. Colin pointed to the picture. “Do you remember his name?”

  She shook her head sadly. “It doesn’t work that way. You get in with your number. Sometimes people bring guests in. We don’t bother to bill you for what you order. You pay your dues every month. As you know, it’s a fortune. You can’t possibly order enough stuff from us to come close to the amount you pay. You can tip us. With your credit card if you like. Or you can do it with cash.” She paused, and she shook her head. “And I know just what you’re going to ask next.”

  “He tipped you with cash.”

  Her shake became a wistful nod. “He did. Just like you did. And the truth is that most of our customers do. I suspect that wealth and the desire for anonymity often go hand in hand.”