SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

But, after a moment, she let herself smile. She’d still dealt with Hwarl, who was an enemy and needed to be taken out. She had proof of the conspiracy which she could show her superiors back in Westwick. She’d successfully robbed several wealthy nobles and merchants, justifying her position as a member of the Thieves Guild. And, thanks to her wagering in the Coliseum, she’d made a lot of money, enough that she couldn’t help but beam when she thought of all those gold coins clinking in her pack. On the balance, things had worked out quite well.

Plus, if she played her cards right, her superiors might assign her the task of rooting out the rest of the conspiracy. After all, she’d already cleaned up one end of it, and had a pretty good idea of where to look for the other traitors. Taking them down would help fulfill Westwick’s deal with Victor Raleigh—and it would be fun besides. One brilliant thief against the evil forces that would topple her nation if they could. Now that was an adventure.

Jadie stuffed the letters into her pack and left Hwarl’s apartment, unable to stop herself from whistling. It had been a successful mission, and she was hopeful that she’d have many more. After all, she was Jadie “Thorn” Rivers, who would be known one day as one of the greatest thieves ever. Whatever obstacles came her way, she knew she could handle them.

Originally published by Windrift Bay Limited, in The Immortality Chronicles, Created by Samuel Peralta, Edited by Carol Davis.

At forty-two minutes past midnight, Greenwich Mean Time, on April 15, 2154, The Event happened.

There was no pulse of light, no explosion, no cause anyone could name. But at that moment, immortality became a reality.

From that point on, no one aged. Growth ceased. Human cells froze in time.

The clocks kept running…but time stood still.

Dr. Vivian Toujours opened the door to her lab with an ancient brass key. She wasn’t aware of anyone else using such anachronistic technology, but it gave her pleasure to hear the key scraping in the keyhole. The distinctive click as she turned the lock. She’d replaced the retina reader decades ago by reworking the security system to accept her preferred method of opening the lab door.

The lights came on automatically as she walked over to the coffee machine. Not a fan of solitude, she’d programmed the machine to respond to the user via voice prompts.

“Coffee with cream this morning, Keri.”

The tall silver machine lit up. “Good morning, Vivian. What size do you require?”

“Large, extra strong. How was your weekend, Keri?”

“Large, extra strong, with cream. Producing your order. My weekend was uneventful. No new developments to report.”

I need to add more personality to this machine. Maybe someone in the A.I. Department can give me some advice. Then again, it was just a coffee machine.

“I’m about to find out if my latest trial is successful. What do you think of that?”

“I remain ever hopeful for you, Vivian. Your coffee is ready as ordered.”

Reaching for the floating screen, she swiped her hand in front of the transparent monitor to open her files. Drug trial number 1440 appeared as a beaker icon. Another quirk of hers. She liked using interesting icons instead of the standard ones installed in the software. When she pointed at the beaker and swiped in a clockwise arc, the latest test results appeared.

“All indications point toward a negative result. Advise further testing on the mortality serum.”

Feeling defeated, but not admitting it to herself, she opened the file containing her ideas for further testing. There were still two hundred experiments to run, which was a comfort to her. Until she’d gone through each of them, Vivian could pretend to be on the verge of a solution. Immortals had long ago mastered the skill of avoiding reality.

Sitting at her desk, Vivian swiped through medical journals on her tablet. Although she wanted to be the first to discover a mortality serum, she knew she had to accept that she wasn’t the only scientist working on a cure. Reading the work of her competition helped her gain insights on their methods of solving the problem.

Dr. Vivian Toujours had been working on a cure for the disaster for eighty-five years. Her focus was to solve the puzzle of non-growth and sterility. She wanted her daughter to have the chance to experience a full life. Tenacity was her mantra. Science, her mentor. Jenna, her raison d’être.

“Shit,” she muttered in frustration. If she didn’t get some positive results soon, someone else would beat her to it. Then her ass would be out the door.

Jenna Toujours was staring at her favorite game, Picture You , the progressive aging software her mother designed for her seventy-five years ago. Thrilled it still worked, she pulled up an estimate of her appearance at twenty-eight. Then thirty-eight. Then sixty-eight.

Her changing face fascinated Jenna. She stared at herself at the current pre-Event age of her mother, then her grandmother. She looked like them, but she wasn’t sure if she was happy about that. Tired of the game already, she shut it down.

She bent down to pet her dog, Tujin, a Model 2442. He licked her fingers. His synthetic fur, curly and golden, felt soft to Jenna. He barked when she stopped scratching his head, and she reached down again to continue scratching. After five minutes, Tujin walked away and settled into his bed.

Debating whether the comfort feature on Tujin should be set for fewer minutes, Jenna watched her dog settle into sleep mode. She let herself believe this was her treasured pet from before The Event. Thoughts of her current reality were suppressed by years of practice.

Jenna looked through the thousands of books in her eReader, trying to choose one to fit her mood. The classics, those written before The Event, she’d already memorized. That wasn’t intentional, but after reading something several hundred times it was unavoidable. Books that held her attention before now seemed too childish. Her tastes matured over the years.

Deleting her childhood books seemed like a good idea. She’d have no children of her own to read to, and her favorite fairy tales would always remain in her memory. Jenna selected the treasures of literature from prior decades and pressed the delete button. But instead of feeling relief, sadness flooded her.

She turned to the mirror next to her computer, gazing mournfully at the eight-year-old face staring back.

A few months after the clocks stopped, people began to notice there were no births. Not a single one. When they were questioned about this, scientists around the world had no explanation.

Pundits proclaimed that zero population growth was a good outcome of the mysterious immortality plague. If no one ever died, the Earth would run out of room and resources in just a few generations.

Ten years after The Event, world leaders stopped trying to figure out what had happened. Theories ranged from an electromagnetic pulse from the sun to a stealth alien attack to germ warfare to an act of God. The only consensus was the need to find a cure.

Think tanks on every continent raced to be the one to cure the curse of immortality. Of agelessness. There hadn’t been a competition this intense since the space race of the twentieth century. National pride swelled.

Every country wanted to be the one to create a mortality serum. They wanted to be the first to figure out why aging and growth stopped. Why had the population become sterile?

If they couldn’t determine the cause of this plague, they wanted to end the side effects. Funding no longer needed for other projects was redirected to research. Leaders around the world could finally agree on something, but no one noticed that.