James Halperin - The First Immortal

The day after the Vatican’s announcement, Edward Zambetti’s body was found hung by the neck in his cell at Tucson Penitentiary, where he was serving a thirty-nine-year sentence for 509 counts of biostasis interruption. AudioVid records subsequently confirmed Zambetti’s death as a suicide.

January 1, 2025

—President-elect Matthew Emery announces that he has negotiated arrangements with Armstrong Technologies, Inc., subject to congressional approval, to have an ACIP (truth machine) in every courtroom in America by year-end. The lie-detector device, which analyzes blood flow and electrical activity in the brain, was officially tested and certified as foolproof last August, and immediately approved for judicial system usage.—Jean-Luc Christon is executed by lethal injection in Paris, France. The “Serial Hacker” admitted to murdering 7,412 hospital patients throughout France, Switzerland, and Canada by altering their medical records.—In an unprecedented display of international cooperation, emergency response teams from the U.S., Japan, U.K., France, Russia, Italy, and Kazakhstan converge on Chernobyl, Ukraine, after recent movement in the core of the ill-fated Reactor IV indicated high probability of massive leakage in the sarcophagus. Eleven days of around-the-clock assembly are anticipated to install a recently developed Sino-Japanese shielding tile on all sides, including above and below the collapsing core. As a precaution, further plans are approved to construct shielding-tile encasements around the entire complex, including the three reactors shut down in early 2012.

The wheel bucked in his hands as if one of the tires were out of alignment. Damn! He’d thought this portion of the run would be easier, less challenging. Jesus.

Gary Franklin Smith glanced toward the two hands that held fast to the archaic steering wheel. In these he was less disappointed; only one or two distinctive brown spots tattled his age. Not bad, for seventy-seven years.

Still, he wished he possessed his driving skills of even five years ago. Might make all the difference now. Sure, it was possible to reach his goal regardless of performance, but less likely. There were times, of course, when luck would take you home, and others when the best wheel man just couldn’t buy a break. And for Gary, the money was becoming more and more, well, real.

“Whoa!”

Gary whipped the wheel of the old contraption in a frantic attempt to avoid collision with the faded ‘08 Infiniti. Inside the heap’s now-sagging doors hunkered four, no, five of the bastards.

Git dat soam-bitch! he saw the other driver pantomime. Gary’s mind painted in the sounds of the sociopath’s words, though he could not hear them.

The vehicles passed within inches of each other, their tormented power plants both screaming as if in farewell salute to the age of the internal combustion engine. Gary’s eyes flashed to the heads-up: 123,500. Too bad. He had to play for the stalemate now.

His foot found the brake pedal. The ‘97 Bronco might have been all manual, but its weight would carry the day. He rammed the shift lever to reverse, simultaneously applying the accelerator. The steel horse reared in a pall of tire smoke, Gary slapped the shift lever into D, and now she was floored. The Infiniti of rednecks had executed a similar maneuver. A shotgun protruded from the rear passenger window, and behind the weapon a face leered in depraved anticipation.

Heads-up read: 128, 250. Awright! Going in the right direction, anyway.

The shotgun blast took the Bronco full in the radiator. Not enough time for that to matter.

Gary aimed and ducked his head. Though its response was ponderous, the ancient Ford cargo wagon was now doing 85. The second blast imploded the windshield, and a gummy safety-glass rain showered down on him.

Perfect. They couldn’t possibly know what was coming.

Had he cared to watch, Gary would have seen a dawning realization appear on their vacuous faces. But 65 plus 85 equaled an unforgiving closing speed, and understanding offered no salvation.

Smash!

The Infiniti spattered against the old leviathan’s wounded grill.

“What time’s it?” Gary mumbled.

No answer. Where the hell was he??

Soft leather, faint yellowish-green lights. The VR module! And he’d forgotten to wear his audio PC again. Hell, second time he’d fallen asleep in here that week. Anxiously, his eyes focused on the at-home virtual reality pod’s running total: $1,455,456,766, in glowing red figures.

Oh, great!

He had been in there for twenty-six hours, including the eleven hours of accidental sleep, and had won $1,204. That and a nice smile might make an appropriate tip for a maitre d’, but it sure wouldn’t do much for him.

Four weeks ago Gary had received the results of his latest genetic scan. While his family predisposition to heart disease and pancreatic cancer loomed, both diseases were now curable at only slight inconvenience even to those who’d refused immunization. At age seventy-seven Gary retained the expectation of at least twenty-one more years of relative good health before biostasis could be considered reasonable, much less desirable. Suddenly he remembered first reading these test results on his screen and feeling, what? Frustration? Yes. Frustration, and dread.

Only eighteen years earlier, Gary’s career had been at its peak, but since then, as the machines had become more accomplished and a new generation of younger artists more proficient at their use, demand for his work had plummeted. At least that’s what he now told himself, ignoring the fact that eighteen years ago he’d simply stopped working as hard or with as much focus. Ignoring, also, that eighteen years was the same length of time that Tobias Fiske had been on ice and therefore absent from his life.

I still wonder whether I had played some part in my great-uncle’s problems. When my parents were killed nine years before, Gary had offered me unrelenting support. For two years I’d seen him every day, often for hours at a time. He’d even tried to entice me into his artistic pursuits, but my interests rested elsewhere. Also, VR addiction has never been a problem for me. Since that day when I’d hacked into the archives to watch my parents die, I could never comfortably sit inside a VR module. So, although my withdrawal into scientific work and study had mirrored Gary’s reaction to his own childhood miseries, we’d nonetheless drifted apart, become somehow less relevant to each other.

Soon thereafter, loneliness had darkened his spirit and depression began to permeate his art, even as it poisoned his personal relationships.

Since then, he’d gambled away most of his fortune, and perhaps even more alarmingly, spent nearly all of his time sleeping, or escaping into on-line VR gambling (and decreasingly often, sex) games. I would later learn that when he allowed himself to think about it, he experienced a sensation of déjà vu, as if transported back forty-five years, when his mother died and he’d temporarily lost himself in booze and white powder. Only this time, his self-destructive behavior was legal, and had lasted a decade.

Gary briefly contemplated suicide, as he often did, and rejected it, as he always had, but with an ever-weakening resolve. Maybe the freezer…

Man, I’ve gotta get some help, he thought. This needed to stop.

Father Steven Jones seemed surprised at seeing him on the visitor’s screen. But Gary had nowhere else to turn.

Father Steve had been the only member of the clergy who supported Toby Fiske’s great debunking crusade. Gary knew him as a compassionate man, a genuinely inspired and inspiring servant of God.

Gary remembered the day he and Toby first met Father Steve. The two friends had been visiting Kingston, Jamaica, in early November 2002, their journey as much vacation as mission. Toby had spent several months convincing Gary that he needed a respite from work, so off they’d gone, hot on the trail of Rodney Probber, the Virgin Mary Restorer.