Elemental (26 page)

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Authors: Steven Savile

BOOK: Elemental
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It's good. But not good enough. The relative proportion between the two flowers is a hair off, and the light angle isn't quite right. If you had centuries, you could perfect it. But you don't. You save the image, freezing it and all its flaws for eternity.
You have to move on. No matter how hard you push yourself, there isn't time to do a tenth of the things you imagine.
You head to the kitchen. There's pizza in the fridge from last night. Or was it the night before? When you're close to finishing a piece, you lose track of time.
Your foot catches on something as you pass the front door. Your assistant has delivered more packages. The address on a gold mailing label on one catches your eye: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This must be the statuette you won for your actress-design work on the digital film,
Mesopotamia
. You place the box, unopened, in the coat closet, with half a dozen others.
In the kitchen, you eat cold pizza and stare at the recorded messages on your video phone. The Guggenheim has acquired your
Maria in Absentia
triptych. The ad agency that bought your
The Time Is Now
series needs the new routing numbers to deposit your latest royalty checks. Interspersed
among the business messages, like background noise, are pleas of reporters for interviews, and the adoration of fans.
It's been like that since the story of your refusal to convert—and the reason—became public knowledge. You've become a tragic romantic figure.
Women hound you with offers of love, to help you “get over” Maria. Men too, though less persistently.
They miss the point.
You don't want to forget Maria. It'd be like forgetting air. Impossible.
 
HB: Hugh Billingsworth at Cedars-Sinai, reporting on Lysander Sterling's condition for KUKWY news. With me via Gaia-Net is Dante Aldo, director of the Museum of Modern Art.
HB: Mr. Aldo, Lysander Sterling is an icon in the art and entertainment industries. What is it about his work that makes it so compelling?
DA: What resonates most for me in Lysander's work is the passion; each of his pieces
vibrates
energy. The technical flaws he deliberately leaves in give each piece a tension rarely found in the work of modern artists. They're like the skewed proportions of Michelangelo's sculptures, lifting the work beyond the representational, into the sublime.
HB: What's your position on today's dilemma? Should he accept conversion?
DA: As an art aficionado, of course I want Lysander to continue his marvelous work. But I have to wonder, if he changed his core beliefs—accepted the conversion he's rejected all these years—wouldn't his work change as well?
HB: But surely, having centuries to work on his craft, to explore every nuance, would make Lysander's video paintings even better.
DA: I don't know … It's been said that Michelangelo's genius was the ability to pull images out of stone, an unforgiving, limiting media. Perhaps the vitality of Lysander's work comes from a similar source: He pulls his art out of time.
 
You're used to the stares when you go out in public. With your thin, white hair, and soft wrinkled skin, you're an oddity. You pass people on the street whose bodies have been modified into fanciful shapes: swirling pigmentation, knees that bend backwards, scaled torsos in colorful patterns, claws, wings, nictating eyelids.
But it's you everyone stares at; they've never seen anyone old. You, the last human in Faerie.
The youngest sometimes congratulate you on your radical mods. Others puzzle out who you are and follow you with wide, amazed eyes.
You balance the silver-wrapped gift on your lap as the sub-Pacific bullet train accelerates. Lucius Sterling has commanded—by purchasing your studio's building and threatening eviction—that you attend his two hundredth birthday party. You hate the outrageous opulence and endless guest list of these events, but after two decades you owe him a visit. It was Lucius, after all, who funded the trust fund that kept you afloat in your early years. Ironic, that all your life you've benefited from the profits of the very technology you refuse.
You look out the porthole at the denizens of the deep. Glittering stars of bioluminescent plankton twinkle in the distance, broken only by the occasional spotlights of angler fish or the glowing bellies of eel-like snake dragonfish.
Your reflection stares back at you from the glass. It's no one you recognize. Every year it ages, but—aside from a growing of twinges and aches—you're still the man who courted Maria Ables on the college green.
The pressure creeps on you slowly. At first you think it's the deep, but the train compartment is kept at sea-level pressure. Numbness runs down your left arm, leaving your fingers weak and tingling. It's hard to draw breath. You gape like a fish, panicking.
You claw your chest, moan, and pitch forward. Facedown on the metal flooring, you fight for breath. Someone will notice you. Someone will help.
But it's been decades since anyone was ill. And social mores of accepted behavior have expanded.
No one comes.
Perhaps the other passengers think you're counting the rippled patterns on the floor. More likely they're all engrossed in Gaia-Net, passively entertained, or exploring endless fields of information.
It feels like a hand is crushing your chest. Each heartbeat hurts.
Right now, you'd give anything to be saved. Forget Maria, forget the promises. In this moment, isolated in pain, you want only to live.
You'd become a poster child for conversion if it would save you.
You don't want to die.
“Live.” The word eases out of your lips on a sigh.
The pressure eases. You pull yourself back into your seat, sweating and weak. The present is still on the floor. It might as well be on the moon. Leave it there. You suck in breath after breath. Your chest feels as if it'd been kicked by a mule.
Relief floods you. Gratitude the attack is over. And shame.
You don't know if you'll be strong enough to keep your promise, when the time comes.
 
HB: KUKWY news, Hugh Billingsworth reporting on the unfolding drama at Cedars-Sinai. Only KUKWY brings you exclusive brain-captures of Lysander Sterling's memories. Only here can you
experience
his extraordinary life. We bring you the inside story no one else knows. Speaking of insiders, I'm outside Lysander's hospital room with Melissa Davies, Lysander's personal assistant for the past twenty years.
HB: Melissa, you've worked alongside Lysander for decades. You know him better than anyone. In these, his final moments, will he choose life?
MD: I don't know. I don't even know if I should be talking to you. Mr. Sterling insists on his privacy. So many people want things from him.
HB: I know this must be difficult. But remember, Lysander granted us license to broadcast his memories. He wants his story told.
MD: Mr. Sterling isn't like other people. He's known all his life that he was going to die. It gave him so much depth, perspective, you know? There's a wisdom in him. We never talked much, but sometimes we'd sit together. He'd drink coffee and I'd sort through his e-mail. Then he'd look up and say something like “Make the most of this moment, Melissa. It will never come again.” Things like that. It really makes you think.
HB: Lysander Sterling lies dying inside the next room. In a tank next to him is the nanology that could save his life, make him immortal. He only has to say the word to be saved. The question on all our minds: Will he say it?
MD: I don't know. He always said he meant to go through it. But there were times—days he was really hurting and could barely get out of bed—and I'd see his face before he knew I'd entered the room. Oh jeez, I shouldn't be telling you this. But … he's afraid to die.
MD: Lysander! Don't die. Ask for help. Please! I can't live if you die. Please! Maria's been dead longer than she's been alive. It's stupid to die for an ideal!
HB: As you can see, passions are running high here at Cedars-Sinai. Lysander's long-time assistant Melissa Davies has just been escorted off the premises by hospital security.
HB: What's that? The doctors have just updated Lysander Sterling's status. His blood gases are falling. He has only a handful of minutes left to live—unless he chooses otherwise.
HB: Follow us inside Lysander's private hospital room for what may very well be his final moments. Those of you with immersion units, prepare for the experience of a lifetime, as we take you inside Lysander's current thoughts-live, from Cedars-Sinai.
 
You lie on the bed, an IV of saline dripping into your arm. It's the only measure you'd allow, and that only after they showed you the label.
The reporter comes in, camera gleaming like a diamond embedded in his right eye. He's got a too-hearty smile plastered to his face, and you take a petty pleasure knowing that, via live brain-capture, the whole world knows you think him a idiot. Vulture. He's come to feed on your impending death. They all have. The whole world crowds into your skull so they can know what it's like to grow old, to take that last step into death.
There would be reporters no matter what you did. By choosing one jackal, the others lost their meal. By dictating the terms of your cooperation, you can tell your story—not theirs.
The world will finally understand.
“Lysander,” the reporter whispers, leaning close enough that you can smell the whiskey sour he had at lunch. He's either not getting the brain-capture feed, or he ignores your distaste. “Lysander Sterling, how does it feel to know your death is minutes away?”
It feels like hell—but you suppress that thought. It's too big a betrayal.
You try to answer, to ask if Melissa's safe, but the words won't bubble past your lips. It's too much effort. Why bother? It'll all be over soon.
You're too weak now to ask for help—even if you wanted to. And some part of you—some traitorous animal part of you—wishes to be saved.
Each breath feels like you're lifting the entire hospital with your ribs. There's not enough oxygen in the whole room to satisfy you. Your heart beats faintly, dispiritedly, in your chest. Eighty-six years of continual service, without maintenance. Not bad for unadulterated muscle.
“You could still choose,” the reporter says. “Think the words and they'll be picked up on the brain-capture. The doctors could still save you.” A bead of saliva hovers from his fleshy lower lip. He's drooling over the drama. You see ratings figures dance behind his eyes.
The door behind him bangs open. She stands there, hand still cupping the door, fallen angel in a black nano-fiber bodysuit. Five-foot-seven,
slender build, heart-shaped face and pert nose. The most feared Deathless on the planet. Alexa DuBois: Lucius Sterling's enforcer.
She crosses the room with blinding speed, grabs the reporter and slams his face against the bedrail. Before he can recover, she tosses him out the door.
“I'm sorry, Ly,” she says, withdrawing the IV from your arm. The tender look in her eyes holds centuries of regret. “Lucius never let a little thing like the law keep him from what he considers his. You're going to be converted.” She lifts you from the bed as gently as a baby. “Whether you want it or not.” Her small frame is deceptively strong.
Her lips are centimeters from your ear. “It's not so bad,” she whispers.
She's so intent on being gentle with your delicate body, Alexa doesn't notice your fumbling fingers locate the brain-capture transmitter at the base of your skull. The producer carefully calibrated the setting for your failing body, and warned you that upping the gain would produce seizures.
The convulsions alone won't kill you—it wouldn't be suicide—tapping the control would only buy enough time to die naturally.
Alexa is a weapon of destruction, built in a time when it was still possible to kill. She doesn't have the skill to stop a fit. The doctors who could save you are too far away to intervene.
Be passive and live forever young and healthy. Or act now, and die as nature intended.
Your mind races. Alexa lowers you into the conversion tank beside the bed. You have only seconds to choose.
Seconds that might mean permanent obliteration of all thought and consciousness, the end to the unique point of view that was Lysander Sterling. Death eternal.
Maria would have chided you for your pride.
People died for eons. It's the natural order of things. It used to happen to everyone. One more death: no big deal.
What if Maria's religion is right, that something exists after death—what
if Maria is there now, hovering near, waiting to claim you? After a lifetime of living for her—without her. You might be reunited. Could you risk losing that?

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