Writing Shift

The Magazine of Speculative Fiction

"I pity you. I see the news. I know what the world has turned into. A world of children."

Very few people had visited the old man before now. It was a simple fact. Nobody wanted to acknowledge that there had been a time when human beings were as susceptible to old age as any other animal. Now, people lived as long as they chose to. Breeding was restricted, of course, even with the lunar colonies and the beginnings of terraforming on Mars. But the word 'old' no longer had a meaning.

And in the room the last mortal human being was dying. It was the end of an era. It marked their final conquest of death, and a man born bare days too soon paid the price. The treatment had to be given within hours of birth. Nobody had ever found a way to change that. If she was right, interest had vanished once most of the scientists were immortals. Who cared about those who missed the boat?

Parker had been doing so for ten years. When Mark Bridges died, she would need a new job. Or no job. She could simply become, like most people, a consumer who floated through life.

Now she watched Mark berate the journalist. At least she had called ahead...

The call had, in fact, interrupted her lunch break.

"Karen Parker," she answered.

The voice was unfamiliar and female. "I'm Alex Pole. I want to interview your patient, if his physical condition allows and he is willing."

"Hold on," Parker said. She stepped into the room and, wonder of wonders, Mark's eyes opened. "Hello, Mark. How are you feeling?"

"Very tired," he admitted. "Very tired, indeed."

She turned the phone on speaker, held it out. "Ms. Pole, what magazine are you writing for?"

"I'm a freelancer. I'm hoping to sell it to Modern History." The response was given evenly.

And whoever else would take it. It was possible, these days, to sell the same story a hundred or so times to a hundred or so niche markets and then put it up for download yourself. Of course, payments were not what they had apparently once been. Nothing was a limited edition any more. "Mark, the lady wants to interview you. Do you feel up to it?"

He laughed an old man's brittle laugh. "Better make it soon, don't you think?"

Parker agreed, but her nurse's training made her say, "Not that soon."

"Tell her to come over now," Mark said with a little bit more strength.

"I can hear you, Mark. I'll be there in thirty minutes." Alex sounded calm. Parker wondered how she would do with the reality.

She wondered, once more, what she would do when Mark finally died. Of course, she had plenty of time to think of a new career. She had all the time in the world.

Now Alex was there, talking to Mark. She was a prim, businesslike woman who wore her dark hair in, of all things, a bun. Parker had never met a real woman who actually wore a bun.

Alex frowned. "I'm not a child."

"No? Do you have children? Are you married?" Mark asked. "How old are you?"

She flinched at the questions. "Nobody gets married any more."

"Or has children without written permission. Or admits to an age," Mark said, softly. "Or takes responsibility for their own actions. After all, marriage would bind you to someone for, theoretically, centuries."

"That's not true," Alex said, but she was wavering a little.

Parker said to Mark, "I take responsibility for you.”

"And when I'm gone? You'll become just another of them, you'll have no choice. Changing careers, homes, lovers, just because you're bored. Commitment— that's what you all lack."

Throughout human history the old had bemoaned the choices of the young. Who would do that when there were no more old? Parker shook her head. It was hardly important. She didn't need anyone to criticize and nag her. True, she'd miss Mark, and he spent a lot of time doing that. But it was hardly a loss to human society. Parker said, "Everyone's happy now."

"Including the few hundred suicides last year?" Mark kept up with things.

"Mentally unstable," Parker pronounced. "We can still treat brain imbalances only so far."

”Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'll be glad to be out of this...but believe me, the world's heading for disaster. Who do you guys respect?"

Alex considered that. "Each other. The world."

That was what they taught these days. Mark coughed. "Honor thy father and mother?"

Alex shrugged. "I'm good friends with my parents."

"See? Everything's broken down." The twinkle in Mark's eye told Parker he was enjoying the debate.

"You've yet to convince me that's a bad thing," Alex said, simply.

"Yeah. Well, I'm a dinosaur," Mark admitted. "Eh. I'm just an old man wishing the world hadn't changed."

Parker considered that. "For the better," she supplied.

He fell silent. Alex glanced at Parker, and then to Mark she said, "This is interesting...but let's move on to something else. How many children do you have?"

"Three," he said, simply.

"Have any of them visited you?" Alex asked.

Mark made a slight face. "No. Ungrateful, they are."

Parker had heard this diatribe before. But Mark apparently decided to spare Alex and her readers the full length of it. Alex glanced at Parker. "Would you say that was typical?"

Parker sighed. "Yes. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess."

Not that she was happy about it. She was not. Yet, once Mark died, it would no longer be an issue. She would do exactly as he said. With nobody to care for and, yes, respect, she would be just another drifter.

She would be free. Now, she discovered she did not want to be. Alex nodded. "So, you would say people want to forget?"

"Of course they do," Mark said. "They want to forget they ever had to worry about ending up like this...and they want to forget they messed everything up. I bet you call your parents by their names, too."

Alex flushed.

"Exactly. And how much respect do the kids out there show? Didn't one of them find a grav belt and graffitti the Washington Monument."

Alex laughed.

"See. No respect," Mark said. "No adult laughs at something like that."

Parker wanted to disagree with him. She found she couldn't. She put it down to spending so much time with him. Coming to care for him as a person, as well as a patient. "I suppose it depends on how you define adult."

"What would happen if you didn't work?" Mark asked.

"I'd be broke," Alex said. "Sometimes I am anyway."

Mark coughed again. "I remember when 'broke' meant eating ramen noodles if you were lucky, not unable to buy the latest game."

That was unimaginable to Parker. "But you were alive before nanotechnology guaranteed everyone food and shelter."

"Right. Things mean more if you work for them," he said, then fell back onto the bed. "Nothing means anything now."

Alex shook her head. "We have more art, more music..."

He whispered. "And how many new scientific developments?"

"We don't need any. We're masters of the world," Alex said, but was there a chink in her voice? "I think...I got what I needed."

Parker wanted to follow her as she left. Masters of the world? She was right, though.

They had defeated environmental degradation. They had beaten hunger, poverty, aging. There really was no more need for science, and with the exception of the astronomers, they had given up on it.

There was no more war. The world was perfect, and when that old man died its last imperfection would have passed. Parker looked at Mark again and then slipped from his room as he fell asleep.

She was six months younger than he was, but the face reflected in the glass looked no more than twenty. She was perfect. The world was perfect. She would live forever. There was no reason why she couldn't.