Contents
Introduction1
Eternal Love 2
Introduction
My Dear Reader,
The story I am about to tell you is my first literary work. It came into existence in a rather unusual way.
One day, I had a very strange feeling of a terrible loss. It was as if somebody I loved gradually disappeared from my life. I was in a good mood that day, and I was not sure what could cause that emotion.
Soon afterwards, two people appeared in my consciousness, he and she. His name was Peter; she went without a name. They gradually became my very close friends, and I thought about them all the time. They were very ordinary people living very ordinary lives. They would be very surprised if they learned that I decided to write about them. “Hey Lev”, they would probably tell me, “You might as well write about your neighbors across the street. Chances are their lives are more interesting and eventful than ours”. Yet there was something a little off about them, some minor strangeness, as if a suburban soccer mum gave her daughter as a birthday present a little pet unicorn. As it transpired, he was immortal.
The consequences of this little oddity were horrible. You will learn about them from my story. I could not bring myself however to write about the worst of them. Most unfortunately,
“These people do not exist!”
There is an ironclad logic in this world, a strict set of requirements that determine who can and who cannot exist. All people who exist must be mortal. Peter is immortal, therefore he doesn’t exist. But she? Why did such a sorry fate befall her? She is just another woman, a face in the crowd. And she is definitely mortal. But I played a nasty trick with her. She appears in my story when she meets Peter at a bus stop. In this cruel world, people who exist can meet only people who also exist. And as soon as one meets a person who doesn’t exist, they lose their right to exist as well.
When I realized all this, I was close to desperation. I felt that I failed them, in a worse possible way. The only place where they existed was my head. If I moved to different projects or simply got distracted with a flow of life, I could forget about them and they would cease to exist, at least until I would remember about them again. And just like her, I am mortal, and when I am gone, so will they, and this time forever.
So I decided to write down their story and try to publish it. I wanted as many people as possible to get to know them and think about them at least once in a while. I hope that this will make the night of nonexistence a little less dark for them, and maybe, just maybe they will come into existence, just a little bit, in some very figurative way.
Eternal Love
What if some day or night a demon were to creep after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Friedrich Nietzsche
~~~
His name was Peter; he grew up in New York City. His parents divorced when he was very young, and he was brought up by his mother who worked as a pharmacist. When the time came for him to select a college major, he chose biochemistry, mostly because it sounded more exciting and interesting than other disciplines. He studied at CUNY; his grades were unremarkable, but he liked school, all the bright kids immersed into their studies, and most of all its stable routine of taking classes, doing homework and preparing for exams.
When he graduated, the prospective employers were not impressed with what he had to offer, and he decided to go for a PhD. The only program he was accepted to was at a university in a small town somewhere in the Midwest.
His years in a graduate school were quite miserable. He was used to a constant flow of energy of a big city and felt bored and lonely without it. His academic advisor had to drag him through the entire thesis writing process, and by the defense time they were barely on speaking terms.
He then spent some time in the private industry and became fully aware that having a boss that gives him orders was not for him. As luck would have it, he found a teaching position, also in the Midwest but in a much bigger city. His new employer apparently wanted to bring in instructors with a “real world experience”. He liked to teach, and the students enjoyed his classes. He didn’t publish much however, and in several years his employment contract ended and was not renewed. He sent out some resumes, they all were met with a polite standard reply. Already in his 30s, disappointed and depressed, he returned to New York, where someone important hired him as a lab technician. That someone received a government grant for longevity studies, and Peter would help his team with routine portions of their work.
Peter befriended at his lab a Chinese graduate student who was obviously a genius. They would spend hours together discussing their experiments on mice, and Peter could barely keep up with the rapidity of his thought. The student proposed a rather elaborate cocktail of chemicals and genetically modified viruses that in his view could dramatically expand the animal’s lifespan. After much effort and frustration, they prepared that cocktail and inoculated a middle-aged pair of mice with it. The Chinese wizard soon transferred to a better school, but Peter continued to monitor the inoculated mice and record their behavior in a lab journal.
In about a year, the grant money ran out and Peter was given a termination notice. He was told there would be no further longevity research done at the lab, and was instructed to clean his work area and discard all the notes they made. The mice were still alive, but they would be given to another research group and at some point end up dissected. Peter thought about his own future, and it didn’t appear very promising either.
Then, he had a light bulb moment. He would take all the remaining cocktail and inject it into himself. In a few years, he would publish an article about this experiment and its preliminary results. Such an article would likely be met with considerable interest. When it came to longevity, mice were very different than humans, and what worked for them didn’t necessarily work for us. Years before, there was a lot of hype and excitement about a calorie restricted diet. Mice on such diet lived considerably longer than the control mice on an ordinary diet. A number of people tried it, but their aging processes went as usual, and their ultimate life spans were unremarkable. If he could make a name for himself, hopefully he would find a job as a longevity researcher.
The injection was just an ordinary pin-prick. For a few days, he tried to pay attention to how he felt, but everything was as usual. He cleaned his desk, gave away the mice and returned his badge.
~~~
Peter decided to consult a professor he had worked for on what to do next. It was a humiliating conversation for him, but he no longer cared. The professor was frank and candid. He thought Peter’s chances of finding a teaching position were very slim. “If you put your last position on your resume,” he told Peter, “they’ll just toss it into a trashcan. If you don’t put it, they will start asking questions about what you did all that time after you left your teaching job, and I am afraid they won’t like your answers”. Another more permanent job as a lab technician could be a possibility, but most likely not in New York City. “You got lucky that my administrator had to find somebody right away. The hiring process for such positions is typically quite completive. Here in New York, many people find them very appealing, and to be honest with you, one doesn’t need a PhD to do such a job.” He thought for a minute and then said: “You know what?
Try a few big universities in the South. They are fairly generously funded these days, and you would probably be in a better position there as an applicant. Just write them and state that you are looking for a position of a lab technician. Maybe somebody will reply. Only don’t tell them you are out of state, and don’t put your New York address on the envelope. I guarantee you they won’t consider a candidate who isn’t local. Rent some post office boxes near these universities and use them as your local addresses. You can do this over the phone. Just instruct the post offices to forward your incoming mail to your real address.”
Peter did what he was told to, and in a few months found himself working as a lab technician in North Carolina. His new assignment was much simpler, and he sometimes wondered: “For what I do, one doesn’t even need an undergraduate degree”. This aspect of his work didn’t bother him. He had always been oblivious to the concept of value creation. His lifestyle was modest and local rents very reasonable. The bright southern sky lifted his mood, and he felt content and happy.
~~~
Five years flew by; Peter was now in his 40s. Somebody from his lab acted as an in-house photographer and webmaster. The lab had been established relatively recently, and every anniversary they had an all-hands meeting with a subsequent gathering in front of a camera. The photos were posted on the lab’s intranet in a special “Photo Album” area.
After one of those anniversaries Peter got nostalgic and found the photo from the year when he had just joined the lab. He noticed how much older the lab’s director now looked. Peter didn’t get to see him all that often; they were at the opposite ends of the lab’s pecking order. The director’s hair was now all gray, and the wrinkles on his face became much deeper. Peter opened the old and the new photos side by side and saw that time had taken its toll on every of his colleagues. Wrinkles were now deeper and more numerous, eye bags more prominent, and new strands of gray hair appeared here and there.
Then he compared his face on two photos. Try as he might, he couldn’t find any difference. He blew up both images until he saw only his two faces, old and new. They might as well have been copies of each other.
It was at that moment that it dawned on Peter that the Chinese student’s cocktail worked. He stopped aging soon after the injection, as if he got to wear an old photo of himself on his face.
It was a slow day at the lab, and he had some time to collect his thoughts. He was really baffled and a little scared. He realized with dismay how naïve he had been when he hoped to publish an article about the experiment. What was he going to write there? He had no idea about what went into the cocktail and long since forgot the name of the Chinese student who created it. To write a one-sentence article “I injected something into myself and stopped aging”? That would be preposterous. At best he would become a scientific curiosity, and such a perspective was not at all appealing to him.
“I’d better keep my mouth shot,” Peter said to himself, “But – wait a minute… I live in the world where everyone ages, and everyone is expected to age. In another 10-15 years, things will get ridiculous. Nobody will believe me that I am in my 50s. And, oh my god, my coworkers! It won’t take them 15 years to out me. I guess I will have to be very careful and change jobs every so often so that nobody would notice my agelessness. I simply need to remember to deduct 38 from the current year and give the result as the birth year. Now what about government records? They keep my birth date in a few places. I will have to file some correction forms every once in a while, to change the birth year. Hopefully nobody will notice anything unusual. So, this means I am forever destined to be 38? No retirement? A fate of Sisyphus?”
The birth date correction forms turned out to be a yet another fantasy of his. The government agencies had correction forms for peoples’ names and addresses. They didn’t and couldn’t have forms to correct a birth date, because this would amount to changing the past, and the past was immutable. He could claim that his birth certificate had a wrong birth date, but for this he would need a solid proof, and he didn’t have such proof.
He continued to live as he always had. He was frugal in his habits and had everything he needed: an apartment, a stable job and good health. Every several years he would find a new position of a lab technician. Bioresearch was a rapidly growing field, and lab technicians were in demand. At every new job he would give the HR a new birth date, and thankfully they never asked for any documents to prove it. He became an avid sports fan, because just like him, athletes didn’t seem to age. They were always young and full of energy. After a while they disappeared from their teams and got replaced by other athletes who were even younger, and nobody seemed to notice. On weekends, he sometimes treated himself to a nice dinner at a restaurant at the mall not far from where he lived. After that he usually went to a fancy boutique at the same mall, just because they always had a fashion show running on a huge screen. The runway models also never aged …
Another 15 years passed. He was already in his late 50s, but still looked the same, a healthy, vigorous man in his late 30s. And then, one morning at a bus stop, he met Her.
~~~
She was a real beauty, long black hair, intense blue eyes, a friendly smile and a waist of a dancer. He didn’t know how to start a conversation, so he just approached her and said: “You are beautiful”. She smiled and said: “Thank you”.
She was a graduate student majoring in English, writing her master’s thesis about some obscure poet that Peter never heard of. She was on her way to the classes, and luckily for Peter, they would have to get off the bus at the same stop. Peter told her he used to be a biochemist, but now was looking for a new direction in life. She said she had always been interested in science people, but could not imagine to be a scientist herself. “It must be so boring to have to deal with pages of formulas or try to figure out why the experiment didn’t work.” He assured her that there was much more to science than that and suggested to exchange phone numbers, to continue the conversation.
They started seeing each other on weekends, usually at some student diner. Peter shared with her his thoughts about science and told stories about scientists. She talked about her studies and about her friends; she was obviously popular and had a lot of them. After their dates, she often pondered upon what he had said. She was impressed that such a relatively young man worked on so many projects and with so many people. That was something unusual, and she found unusual attractive. There was some strange mixture of wisdom and humility in him.
Sometimes when the weather was good, they went to play tennis. She was very athletic and quick on her feet. He was no match for her, but she was amused by his clumsy efforts.
Once he saw her to the house where she lived, and she got close to him and said: “Have a wonderful week honey”. He understood her hint, said “You too” and kissed her.
~~~
Their romance blossomed. Next year, she defended her master’s thesis and entered the department’s PhD program. She never told Peter, but for her family and friends, this was a major surprise. They all thought she would do a PhD at Harvard or Stanford. She told them that she was sure she would be able to write a very good PhD thesis where she was, but she was not at all certain she would be able to convince Peter to move with her. This explanation also came as a surprise; no one suspected their relationship went this far.
She was out of town for a few weeks, staying at her father’s house and catching up with high school friends.
The same year, his father passes away, and Peter inherited a portion of some sort of manufacturing business where he had been a silent partner. The business paid steady dividends, and Peter was now able to retire from his work at the lab. Unbeknown to her, Peter was ecstatic: “No more frequent job changes! No more misleading about my birth date!”
She often complained to him about her living conditions. She rented a furnished house together with several other students and didn’t appreciate their partying habits. The PhD program would be
far more demanding, and she was concerned that to escape the noise and distractions, she would have to, as she put it, “live in a library”.
A great idea came into his head. At one of their dates, he suggested to her: “Why don’t we buy a house? It could be a fixer-upper, I am handy and have a lot of free time…” She thought about it for several days and agreed. Next week, she called her father and told him: “My boyfriend and I decided to buy a house. Can you please help us with the down payment?” Her father was caught off guard and after a brief pause asked her: “Are you sure that this relationship is serious?” She answered: “As sure as I can be for any relationship. Plus, if we decide to break up, we can always sell it.”. Her father was not convinced but decided that to say no would be a worse choice than to say yes.
The house they bought was indeed a true fixer-upper. The house inspector found a whole list of problems with it. Luckily for them, their bank didn’t see any deal breakers on that list, and they got the keys.
~~~
Their joint dwelling was a ranch, with a large kitchen/dining/living room area and a master suite. She decided to use as an office a small bedroom facing the street, with a full bathroom next to it. “That will be my side of the house!” she told him laughing, “As a PhD student, I am entitled to my own private bathroom!” They bought some draperies, and she happily ran around the house barefoot hanging them. Her movements were quick and effortless. “She is still such a child”, he thought. It was then that he realized how truly in love he was.
Their routine was rather conventional. She got up at 6 and went for a run as he had his last morning dreams. She then took a shower, woke him up and fixed some breakfast. They ate, and she was off to school. He put the dirty dishes into a dishwasher and returned to his monumental home improvement project. All appliances needed to be replaced, plumbing was in a sorry shape, and some windows were quite drafty. She usually returned around 6, they had a dinner together and watched some TV shows or movies. She often had to prepare for her TA office hours; he then watched TV alone. On weekends, she sometimes invited her girlfriends to come over. If they were new to the house, she told them:” This is Peter, and let me show you our mansion!”. They seemed to be impressed with both, although a little surprised that such a young man had chosen to retire. They sensed that she wasn’t keen on discussing Peter’s past and didn’t bother her with questions about him. The girls would then sit around the dining room table, chit-chatting, gossiping, laughing…
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