James Halperin - The First Immortal

Roswell’s first-term vice-president, Henry Rearden, transmitted the deciding ballot, and by a margin of 55 to 54, our side lost.

I was disappointed, but already viewed this political process as a marathon, not a sprint. That had been just the first leg of this race, I thought, love and pride for my father, and a sense of my own destiny, perhaps someday my place in history, holding sway over any other passion. This very close race.

September 7, 2015

—A woman in Montreal, Canada, gives birth to healthy octuplets, two girls and six boys. The mother had been taking fertility drugs when she became pregnant. The smallest of the infants weighs 11 ounces, and may require incubation for up to a year. All eight are expected to survive, and if they do, will become the second set of living octuplets in Canada.—Shakespeare2, the Intel and Oracle joint venture, launches its literary career today. The giant computer system accurately mimics the human brain, but is tens of thousands of times faster, with flawless memory and calculation abilities. In two weeks, Shakespeare2 has written 1,702 novels, 5,240 screenplays, and over 10,000 essays. Today, at the firm’s first sealed-bid auction, 13 of the novels were purchased by publishing houses, and 21 screenplays optioned by studios. New York Times critic Lynde Tversky predicts, “Based on the Shakespeare2 oeuvres I’ve had time to read so far, these should not be expected to become blockbusters.”—The United States Congress repeals the Silver Standard Act of 2014, which has for nearly three years backed each dollar with 1/117th of an ounce of silver. Although the move was expected, Hong Kong silver prices nevertheless climb $4 to $129.40 per ounce in heavy trading.

During the three weeks following the deaths of my parents, I’d never been alone for more than a few minutes at a time, even at nighttime. My aunts, uncles, and grandmother rarely left whichever room I happened to occupy. Each night, my great-uncle Gary slept on the floor of my bedroom, and often I would catch him staring at me as if he feared I might stop breathing. In retrospect, I think it was a spontaneous form of suicide watch, the entire Smith clan instinctively closing ranks around their most vulnerable member.

But in my mind, that hadn’t seemed necessary. It was as if by refusing to acknowledge the calamity, I could somehow make it less real.

I’d never cried.

Because I hadn’t embraced the reality of my loss, I could not register the need for self-cleansing despair. This process might have required years, had I not taken action.

For four solid days I’d begged Gary to let me view the archives. “ You saw it,” I reminded him.

He patted my hand, then answered patiently, “Yes, and I told you everything your parents said. But I’m sixty-eight years old; You’re not even ten.”

“I can handle it,” I insisted.

When he looked back, his eyes suggested two broken eggs, liquid, spilling not just water but also themselves. “ I couldn’t.”

“Well, at least let me sleep alone tonight,” I said. “I’ll be fine. It’s been twenty-one days.”

Gary considered this for a few minutes before answering. “Okay. I’ll be right outside your door if you need me.”

The moment I was alone, I shut off the lights and put on a headset and VR goggles. Then I inserted the code I had secretly copied several months earlier from my mother’s wrist PC, whispered the date and time the crime had occurred, saw and heard everything for myself.

The Aerospeciale Concorde II was half empty; my mother watched most of the 918 passengers board: families with small children, couples of various ages, businessmen and -women traveling alone or in small groups, a party of perhaps two dozen American junior high school students apparently on an overnight field trip.

Mostly day-trippers and one-night tourists, she must have assumed, since Majorca was such a convenient destination from Boston; the plane could accelerate through the sound barrier even at low altitude, because ninety-eight percent of the journey passed over water, and thus the entire flight required barely ninety minutes.

Mom stared out the window. The Spanish coast, with its glorious beaches of pure white sand, whizzed past; horizon transformed into unbroken pelagic blue. She turned to my father and kissed his right temple. “Thank you, George,” she said. “It was lovely.”

Dad gazed at her face—her still beautiful face—and grinned. It had been their first real vacation alone together since his reelection to the Senate in 2006, the same year I was born. There’d always been a bill to promote, or a campaign to wage. Even during the rare lulls, they’d never been able to tear themselves away from me, their only child. “Firstborn syndrome,” Grandmother had pronounced. Since my parents had determined there would be no others, the syndrome would probably have been permanent.

They’d selected their destination based on convenience, wanting to waste as little of their time as possible. Besides, if there were any kind of emergency at home, they knew they were only two hours away.

Everything had gone fine and I was old enough to understand that, whether I liked it or not, two weeks was not abandonment. I’d immersed myself in political studies, scientific experiments, summer school projects, and field trips with other advanced students from the Feynman Program. There had been no midnight calls from me; no tearful entreaties for their early return.

They had done some sightseeing, dined with friends, lounged on those gorgeous beaches. Apparently, they’d also spent a great deal of time in their suite. At least I hope so. Dad gently kissed Mom. “Awesome two weeks, huh?”

“Not bad for an old married couple.” She placed her hand on his. “I did miss Trip something awful, though.”

“Me, too,” Dad said.

“On the other hand, there’s a new Hilton near Logan Airport, and I doubt anyone’d notice if we were an hour or two late getting home…”

“Hmm.” Dad was massaging Mom’s upper thigh, “I’d been meaning to check that place out anyway.”

Then they felt and heard it.

The first thought to occur to Dad was probably that they’d broken the sound barrier too close to the ground. But any such self-deception would have been momentary. Even as their plane lurched from the impact of the heat-seeking missile slamming into its left rear engine, a tumultuous explosion had shattered the eardrums of every passenger aboard. (That much I already knew from the newsservice reports.) Now they would have seen the screaming faces of the other passengers within a soundless maelstrom.

The temperature gauges on Mom’s PC sensors showed the heat behind them intensifying, in contrast to iceberg-cold frost ahead.

My parents mouthed goodbyes and declarations of love to each other. Then Mother said, out loud, “We will always love you, Trip. We’ll be fine wherever we’re going, and so will you.”

Just before burning rivulets of aviation fuel ignited the wing tanks, Father had said, “And we’ll both live on through you, son. Remember, you can do anything you set your mind to. Decide carefully, Trip. Don’t waste any of it.”

Then came the half-second flash.

I cried nonstop for a week, to everyone’s great relief. But I never told anyone why.

December 28, 2017

—United States Secretary of Health Jasmine Lester lauds the astounding successes of the Human Genome Project and Dr. Sharon Rosenfield’s MediFact, in which nearly a third of all Americans allow wristband computers to monitor and compile all their medical data including diet, exercise, pulse, blood chemistry, symptoms, and medical treatments. “Within three years,” Lester predicts, “we’ll be able to anticipate every disease as easily and accurately as we now forecast tectonic-plate earthquakes.”—In spite of a key injury, the Kansas City Rams defeat the Havana Oilers 21-17 to win the American Football Conference title. The Rams, without Donald Jefferson, their 6’8” 366-pound quarterback, must now lock horns in Superbowl 52 against the 2013-through-2016 world champion Dallas Cowboys.—Analysts expect Century 21 to broker a record $9.4 trillion in real estate transactions next year, largely due to its dominance in virtual reality walkthrough tours and architectural remodeling technology. Separately, the firm announces it will cut its standard commission rate again, from 1.5% to 1.25%.