Forever Mother

FOREVER MOTHER

At first it was elixirs; mixtures ingested, injected, inhaled. These were facilitated by a home chemistry kit, access to a botanical garden and most importantly, a DIY biology lab.

It was morning and she lay in bed trying to recall those early days, when she only wanted her son to be happy; only wanted him to find his place in the world. Then, someone Henry met in the lab gave him $20,000. For a teenager who knew he was only meant to do one thing in life, it was an opened door. That amount led to more wealthy, idiosyncratic individuals willing to bankroll a teenage genius.

A voice intruded on her thoughts. It was a new voice, slightly accented. A Mid-Atlantic accent she guessed. Why were they always fussing with the voice? It discombobulated her. She would have to mention it to Henry.

“Good morning. You slept 8 hours and 15 minutes. The time is 7:30 a.m., the outside temperature is 75 degrees. Air quality is poor. Please remain indoors and re–“

“OK. I get it.” The screen by her bed began flashing. “Put the incoming call through.”

Henry appeared on the screen. “Happy Birthday Mother,” he said.

“Is it?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I wonder if it matters any longer.” She said.

“It always matters Mother. The probability of you not being born was always greater than the probability of you being born.”

“You are always arguing for God.” She teased him.

“You know what I think.”

“Of course. So, tell me. What year is this? I want to hear you say it.”

He smiled. “My mother is 133 years old and looks not a day older than 45.”

“Because of you.” She replied. “Will you be coming to see me?”

“I have a lovely dinner planned.” He looked down. She knew he was looking at her data.

“You know, of course, that I have had a problem tasting things.” She thought she saw a flicker in his eyes. He was worried.

“I have seen the logs…we are looking into it. In the meantime, I’ve had your refrigerator stocked with a nutritional drink.”

“Ah. See, all your handiwork and you couldn’t prevent me from having to drink Ensure!”

“Ensure?” he asked.

“It’s what old people drank way back when…”

“This will be fixed. I promise.” He seemed confident. “I love you Mother.”

“I love you too, son.” Henry’s image faded out as her words were completed. She perceived the sing-song rhythm of their I-love-you, said repeatedly over the many years, as hanging in the air, echoing and losing their meaning, a pattern overlaid on other patterns. As if all the details of life had become a real-time collage.

“Please prepare for a VR run –– Paris, along the Seine, towards Notre Dame. 6 miles.”

Her request was acknowledged and she got out of bed. In the bathroom she turned on the water faucet and let it run while she went and lifted out a large tile square on the floor. She had removed the tile little by little over time and now stored a small black notebook underneath. It was silly to keep it from Henry, she knew. He would eventually find out. But until then, the notebook was her refuge. It was where she bore witness. No one beside Henry and those who worked in the lab knew about her existence. Over the years she had managed to befriend the children and grandchildren of her friends. Friends now long dead, whose faces and voices she saw in fleeting moments, in laughter and cadence she would catch them, then, like slippery minnows, they would escape. She had produced many notebooks over the years. Each one was given to one of these descendants. Each was numbered in sequence and her hope was that someone would figure out they belonged together. There was no point in being deliberate beside that, because randomness, loss, destruction, would certainly occur over time. Perhaps one day, someone would find one or two together. That is all. Someone would read them, and they would know, they would see the trajectory of her long life from the shore of their present. She was so very alone, and mostly that is what those notebooks contained. A distillation of her loneliness; every notebook akin to a ring on a tree. The notebooks placed her in time in a way she no longer could feel or increasingly, even mentally comprehend. She was drifting, with only Henry and the changing cast of people in the lab who studied her, holding her fast.

“She’s requested a VR run, do you know how to upload that?” Paul asked Louis, the newest member of the team. The lab was adjacent to the living quarters, there the team monitored, discussed, and ran tests on whom they referred to as “the creature”. Louis found it distasteful, disrespectful, but he was well aware of the small expediencies one created in science in order to do the things some of them did. They had passed the point of no return. A nihilism had set in, in science, in the world. How had she borne seeing all this? He wanted to ask her so many things.

“After her run, we’ll run some tests.” Paul briefly glanced at the screen as she came out and was dressing, Louis followed his eyes.

“Yes, no modesty here. Hard to believe, isn’t it? I do wonder what her skin feels like. It’s nanomaterial, something Henry figured out. Her body doesn’t reject it, which has been the biggest problem in trials. I still think both she and Henry are weird outliers. All this time and still no answers.”

Louis responded casually, “Still no others?” He glanced at Paul to make sure it came off as he intended. Paul didn’t look from his work – “Henry has other places, he’s doing other things. We are kept in the dark for the most part.” He looked up and considered the new recruit. He had been vetted. They all had. “She’s our focus.”

“Of course.” Louis said “I’ll run the program, what did she ask for? Paris? What year?”

***

After a few weeks Louis was absorbed into the rhythms of the lab and of the person around which everything revolved. It was as if he’d never been anywhere else, never thought of anyone else. “I find her fascinating,” he would say to Paul. Paul would reply, a little weary, “It’s better than studying a Greenland Shark.”

“I doubt there are any alive any longer.” Louis replied. When he was young and he’d read about the shark it held a mystery and an allure that never let go. A life underneath the heavy weight of ice. Swimming slowly in the cold dark water as the planet heated up in the light, as nations were at war and peace, as technology moved swiftly and irrevocably towards – what? It didn’t know what it was living through, had lived through, but the idea of that long life was fantastic; an endless reel of days and nights – to watch and witness. And now she was doing just that.

“I am alone on the viewing stand, though.” She would say this to him, late at night, when she couldn’t sleep and he was the only one in the lab. They would go on long walks together. Henry knew of course, they all did. But her loss of taste and smell had persisted. Increasingly there were other signs that something was wrong. Henry was working furiously, they all were. The problem of dealing with her feelings about these troubling signals, had fallen to Louis. He gladly accepted the time he could spend with her.

As the weeks went by, she began to realize what was happening and that there might not be a solution. “I want you to take me from here.” She told Louis. “I can’t die here, in this place. Please.”

“What about Henry?”

“He will understand. Give him this.” She handed him one of the black notebooks.

He knew where to take her. A cabin, a box really, comfortable, warm enough with a fire. An elaborate filtration system for the water they had to bring from the well was the only sign of modernity. They took great measures to not be traced. She had placed herself in the hands of this stranger for her ending, because she knew that her son would not accept an ending. Wasn’t that the whole point?

When they had been there a few days Louis told her, “I have something to show you. Here, give me your arm. This will keep you strong for the hike.” She raised her sleeve and the needle went in deep, almost to the bone. She winced a little. A rush of adrenaline followed. She stood up suddenly and with a smile said, “ ‘If thought is life, then think I will, that youth and I are housemates still.’ ”

He smiled back at her, “Coleridge?”

“Yes, he took his mum with him to college you know. Henry and I used to joke about that.” She looked and felt vibrant. She knew the drug was burning her up inside but she didn’t care.

***

The path seemed to be there and not there. There were markers only Louis knew to look for. He occasionally stopped and picked up something. After walking the entire morning the forest began to thin out. Louis carried oxygen boosting tablets for them, which they stopped to take.

“Can I see what you have been collecting? She pointed to his pocket. Louis reached inside and hesitated slightly. She caught this but only because her senses, which had been faltering and thus limiting her engagement with the world, were now keener because of the cocktail Louis had injected. She perceived more now. Oh to have lived even a shorter life in this way!

From his pocket Louis took out a coin. “A penny!” she cried. “They stopped making these long ago.” She reached out and took it from him. As her hand brushed his she felt the sweat beneath. She felt a momentary alarm, but the novelty of the coin, the profile of the great man now dead hundreds of years, moved her to tears. “Lincoln. I used to have a book that contained every known photograph of him… It’s as if his destiny was written on his face. He could never have looked any different than he did.”

She looked at Louis and his eyes were also filled with tears. She reached for him but he turned away. At that moment she realized why she had suddenly declined, why her long life was coming to an end. It was planned.

“Henry?” she asked.

“Gone.”

“How?” She felt faint.

“Peacefully. I’m so sorry. I didn’t think it would be like this. You must understand.”

“It doesn’t matter. You think you are saving the world. Show me what you want to show me.”

He nodded and led the way.

The forest had opened up and now they stood in a clearing. The land sloped upwards. A few yards off and there, tilted away from her, gnarled and hard looking, the oldest living tree stood. She drew closer. She was a secret gazing upon a secret. They were temporal figures simultaneously weighed down and free from the plague of daily life. Time had stretched unnaturally for her. A son’s devotion, a quirk of genome. She was an anomaly and anomalies must be destroyed. For in the years she’d been alive society lost its curiosity, it’s ability for communion. A tree they could let live; they could keep its location hidden. But her, she was just a freak.

She felt a wave of nausea and began to vomit. Louis caught her as she fell back. She looked up. She looked into his eyes and the woman who had known more days and nights than any other human on earth asked him, “Where did the time go?”