James Halperin - The First Immortal

Ben just didn’t understand.

“Can’t you see it?” I asked.

He smiled and offered a nonchalant shrug. Neither his expression nor his gestures held any trace of commiseration. “I understand it’s more real for you than for me,” he said. “Sure, the world may be due or even overdue for a cosmic event. But Jesus, Trip, how can you expect me, a man reborn into a world free of want or pain, to dwell on—”

“Hold it!” On my wallscreen a simulated onslaught of comets had appeared, while the primary-secondary window showed the strained face of an overanimated human announcer. I punched up the volume.

“…AIs running continuous forecast scenarios have reached a shocking conclusion: The Nemesis Singularity appears to be much more massive than initially thought, and is heading in Earth’s general direction! With a 96.4 percent probability, this planet can expect Nemesis, along with its next swarm of comets, to arrive in the range of 98 to 604 years. The calculations have been substantiated through carbon dating of iridium samples from the comet impacts in the Chad Basin and Antarctica, and comparing their ages to the 64,977,551-year-old Yucatan crater. More definitive calculations should be forthcoming over the next few days.

“While it is scientifically possible, theoretically, to deflect or destroy a collision-course comet of limited size, there is no assurance of success in such a problematic endeavor. In the face of multiple strikes, chances of such a success become remote indeed. And the singularity itself might prove impossible to defeat.

“We’ve all seen the spectacular pictures of comet fragments smashing earth-sized holes in Jupiter’s atmosphere in August of 1994. Imagine such an incident…”

“I told you!” I wasn’t even aware that I was screaming. “I told you, Ben! Maybe it’s all been for nothing! All the advances, all the science, and for what? To be wiped out in less than a hundred years?”

Ben exploded into laughter.

It was awful. My great-grandfather didn’t comprehend; didn’t even seem to want to comprehend the nature of the problem. He only laughed and laughed, tears quickly streaming down his cheeks.

“Have you gone crazy?” I demanded. “Is everyone from yesterworld nuts?” Maybe there was something fundamentally wrong with our revivtech. Maybe people came back missing some component we’d never properly understood. “What the hell are you laughing at?”

One of the Wendys was at my feet now, her hackles raised, her rump bunched against my shins. I knew if I didn’t calm down, there was a very real chance she might bite Ben, so I decided to humor him. “Ben, I think this has been a bigger shock than you’re ready to admit to yourself. Having come back not all that long ago, the prospect of environmental catastrophe is just too much for you. Let me get you a sedative.”

He raised his head, looked at my face with an expression that almost seemed like one of relief, then burst into laughter again. It wasn’t until both Wendys actually growled that he stopped.

“Look,” he finally said through tittering hiccups, “I’m sorry, Trip. I really may not be the right person to talk to you about this. Even if I knew for an absolute fact that this planet would be destroyed in a hundred years—and I think nothing of the sort—I might not be as upset as you are now. I can see your perspective, sort of, but I think you’ll do better talking to Gary. He knows more about this stuff than I do. Mind if I call him?”

“Go ahead,” I said, thinking, What difference would another yesterworlder make? Still, a few minutes ago I’d assumed theirs was the perspective I wanted. Perhaps from the right yesterworlder, it still was.

When Gary arrived, the old guys looked at each other warily. I knew there had been, probably still was, a major rift between them, although at the time I had no idea what. Another component exemplified our strange new age: By the most objective standard, Ben’s son was older than he was; had thirteen years more experience in the world than his dad.

“Trip’s got a problem,” Ben said. “I thought you could help.”

The strain on my great-uncle’s face vanished when great-grandfather told him that. Gary said to him: “Oh… so this isn’t about you.”

I didn’t much care for the way Gary had said you ; I looked into Ben’s face, finding a hurt grimace. I intervened: “So, uh, thank you for coming over.”

“No problem, Trip. What’s on your mind?” When he looked at me instead of his father, there was only kindness in Gary’s eyes.

“Ben says you have a big-picture understanding of cosmology. I guess you know about Nemesis… and the coming disaster.”

“Yeah, I’ve been having a hard time tearing myself away from the viewscreens.”

I felt better already. Gary would understand. “You know what it means, then?” I asked. “Here we’ve achieved near-immortality, only to find out there’s a swarm of comets coming and that there are almost certainly uncountable baby black holes swallowing up the universe. It steals the meaning out of everything!”

Gary began to smile. At first I thought he was about to let loose with some horsecrap bromides about how I was being a pessimist. I looked at Ben, but he didn’t return my gaze. He had locked-on, fascinated eyes only for his son. Then, damn, if Gary didn’t explode into laughter.

I wanted to kick him. “What are you gonna do? Tell me this isn’t real? That it doesn’t affect me? That I shouldn’t worry about something so far away?”

“Nope.”

“Wrong.”

I couldn’t tell which had said what. “Then why is it so funny?”

“It’s not funny, exactly,” Ben said, though I could see from his face that he was searching his head for a real explanation. “More of an exhilarating release, like that moment when you first figure out the solution to a puzzle you’ve been struggling over.”

“Exactly!” Gary took a forward step, then not so lightly cuffed my shoulder. My Wendys didn’t even growl. The traitors. “Trip, you gotta understand, when Dad and I were young—and that’s what matters from our standpoint—we grew up knowing that everyone would die. No exceptions. Then we wake up to all this.”

“To what ?” I demanded. “You don’t think this is better than what you had before?”

“Of course it is, but I knew there was something missing, too. And today’s discovery helped clarify it in my mind.”

“Maybe you’d better explain.”

Gary’s face reflected the patient love of a parent, which I suppose in some ways he still was to me. “Trip, you’re worried about a catastrophe that might or might not happen, that humankind might or might not know how to prevent, but will certainly figure out how to mitigate, one to six hundred years from now. What troubles you today would have seemed absurd to us. Kinda the same thing as a guy in 2000, terrified of being late with a mortgage payment, might seem to a feudal serf in eighteenth century Russia. You get the idea?”

Grudgingly, I did, so I nodded. But understanding the analogy did nothing to address the problem. “It still means immortality may be unattainable. And missing a mortgage payment isn’t quite the same thing as having all life on Earth obliterated.”

Gary didn’t even hesitate. “No, it’s not,” he admitted. “And I’ll tell you something. Given enough time, if we don’t do anything about it, I think the Earth will eventually be hit by a giant comet or an asteroid, or maybe even ripped out of its orbit by the tidal influence of a black hole.”

“But so what?” Ben said.

“Yeah. So what?” Gary continued. “We will do something about it. We have at least a hundred years of life; at least a hundred years to get ready for this thing, whatever it is, even if it means the end for some of us. And if we beat this problem, as I’m sure we will, more problems will come. In life, there can be no permanent security Trip, no ultimate safety except in here.” He touched my forehead. “Cults, druggies, and mass media addicts are all symptoms of empty lives, of fear that there’s no ultimate meaning. We had them when I grew up, and we still have them today. So let me tell you something, Trip: Security isn’t the goal. Striving for it is. Having something to struggle for keeps us motivated. And it’s only in the action and passion that we find the joy.”