‘Where Immortality Becomes Reality’ the holographic cube spelled as it danced in front of Mary’s eyes. She shifted in her seat and tried to read the pamphlet she took from the table in the waiting room. It covered the basics of the procedure, but lacked any reassurance for her anxious mind.
Johnathan noticed and blinked off his social media outlet, Wal. “It’s going to be okay.”
She smiled, creasing every wrinkle on her face. Johnathan returned the same smile, as he grabbed on to her sweat-coated hand. Her head fell into its usual resting place on his shoulder.
A nurse walked through double doors on the other side of the room. Her gaze was blank as her Itacts fed her information directly into her eyes. “Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins.”
Johnathan raised his hand. “Doctor Hader will see you now.” The nurse smiled in a way that was as much a part of the advertising as the cube was.
Both Johnathan and Mary stood up with their hands still clasped together. They followed the young nurse down the hallway. Her eyes continued to glow as she typed various messages on her Itacts. At the end of the hallway she opened the door and nodded to them before she turned and left without saying a word.
On the right side was a large bookshelf. Various neutral-colored books filled the wall. They reminded Johnathan of the way his students used to bring pristine books to class while swearing they read them. Pictures of children and vast cities lined the other wall. Mary recognized those as the pictures that came with the frames. The far wall was a large window peering out into the vast city outside. Dark towers were illuminated by thousands of stars contained within them. Buildings outlined by the tangerine glow of the setting sun.
In the center of the large room was a white desk with two matching chairs in front. At the desk sat a young man in a black uniform, scrolling through his Wal messages on his Itacts. When they sat down he blinked off his glowing display.
“So, you folks are here to secure your new life, right?” Doctor Hader said, as he leaned forward on his desk.
“Yes,” Johnathan nodded.
“Well, I’m not so sure,” Mary began, cutting off Johnathan. “Can I ask a few questions?”
The doctor’s eyes flashed green, indicating he got a message on the Wal. His grin faded. “Of course.”
“I have read a lot about this, Transcendence you are calling it, but I still don’t understand exactly how the transfer works.”
“Well, I won’t bore you with the technical details. What happens is we plug you into our computers which will replicate your mental processes into your new electroplastic brain. Then we will provide you with a new body to house it.”
“I know,” Mary stated. Johnathan could tell she was fighting off annoyance by tone of her voice.
“Honey,” Johnathan interrupted with a polite smile.
“Now,” Mary continued ignoring her husband, “I’ve followed the news stories about the banning of cloning human tissue because of the Genetics War in China.” Johnathan stiffened and dropped the smile on his face. “How does the lack of natural human parts affect people?”
“We replicate the human body with as close to perfection as humanly possible. We use a Silicon mesh with leather exterior. It forms calluses and transmits sensory detail exactly like human tissue.”
“How does that substitute real human tissue?”
“It is the best we can do under the law of the Nora Agreement. Until the Neorepublicans repeal that law we have to make synthetic human bodies for the Transcendent population. But surveys have said that 89% of people have been fine with the new skin type. 34% of people even prefer it.”
“People today,” Mary whispered under her breath.
“I’m sorry?” Hader said. His eyes had flashed indicating a notification.
“Nothing,” Johnathan said, preventing his wife from speaking.
“So, are we in agreement to proceed?” Hader asked in the most chipper tone he has had since they had come into the office.
Mary frowned. “Can I think about it?”
“Of course, honey,” Johnathan said. He stood up.
“Are you sure? This is a great opportunity! Immortality has finally been achieved. Why would you deny this? This is the closest we have ever gotten to achieving Godhood!”
“Maybe we aren’t ready to be Gods,” Mary said walking out of the office with Johnathan.
They walked to their Transit a gray, oval, pod. It drifted off the balcony of the hundred and thirtieth story. They sat down in the pale interior at a small table with two chairs facing each other. There were large oval windows on both sides and enough space to move around the cabin.
“Car, Home please,” Johnathan commanded.
“Of course sir,” the car’s friendly female voice responded. The vehicle lifted away from the balcony and drifted into traffic.
Johnathan looked at his wife and reached out for her hand. She withdrew and narrowed her eyes.
“I don’t want to do this.” Mary stated.
“Why not? Our life could continue, forever.” he cleared his throat. “Together.”
“But it won’t be us.”
“Why do you think that? Of course it will be us.”
“Trapped. Stuck in some unnatural body.” Her face twists in repulsion. “Humans were meant to die, it is the natural order of things.”
“But you don’t understand, you have never seen someone die! I have! I watched men, my men, die in the Genetics War. I watched the light leave their eyes. I saw the hollowness that was left. I know my days are numbered after all the gene splicing they did…” He paused, his throat throbbed on his vocal cords.
Mary’s eyes had darted away from him but she did interject anything.
Johnathan choked back the pain. “I talked to men who died and came back. There isn’t anything else after this and I am scared of the void, the emptiness consuming everything I was. I don’t sleep anymore. It’s all I think about!” Anger seeped into his indigo eyes. He stood up and walked over to the window. The city was a blur of black and amber as their Transit darted past miles of city in seconds.
Mary could see the pain he carried but hated being talked down to like this. “So the answer is to give up what made us human become a Syn?”
“A Syn?” Johnathan snapped, “Now you are starting to sound like that zealot Father Marius. Preaching about the natural order and that we should die so that we can meet God or worse. That we are cowards because we refuse to accept our sins and go to hell like decent monsters used to. Well I did dark things in the war, alright? I killed children. I killed defenseless men and women. I watched people fighting for their families. For their basic human rights, be defiled and murdered. After that I thought life was pointless.” He paused letting the anger go before he concluded with, “But you gave me purpose.”
Mary’s gaze snapped back to him, her glare grew sharp. “And you think my purpose is to exist for you despite my beliefs? As if the only thing I do is live so that your world works. Well maybe our love won’t last forever.”
“We have arrived at our destination sir,” the Transit said as it opened the door to their apartment balcony.
Mary walked out onto the balcony in silence and began tending to her garden. She snipped tomatoes, looked at the pineapple bush for a ripe one, found two and put them in a basket. She carried them inside to cut them.
Johnathan stood on the balcony to let his heart rate slow down. He surveyed her garden. The balcony had become a tropical forest. Pineapple bushes, tomato plants, any fruit that didn’t grow on trees had a place somewhere in his wife’s oasis. She had grown a fully organic garden in this sterile environment. Creating an island of nature in a desert of concrete and metal. He took one last breath and walked inside.
In the kitchen, Mary was at the counter trying to reach the top cabinet. “Always had trouble with that cabinet,” he muttered to himself. He reached up and grabbed the wash rag from the top shelf and said, “I’m sorry honey.”
“Go through with it,” she said. “You don’t have much time left I understand that. It must be difficult. But I can’t do it. It’s not natural.”
He touched her arm and she spun around and embraced him. He felt her warm tears on his shirt as he returned the hug. She looked up at his face, a whole half foot above hers and stood up on her toes and gave him a gentle kiss. “I love you and don’t want to stand in the way of you doing what you want, just as you can’t stand in the way of what I want.”
“But I’m happiest when I’m with you. Please come with me, we can continue our life together.”
Her lips recoiled with hesitation. “Listen, you are the love of my life. But that life needs to end.”
“But, what about our love?” Johnathan asked.
“That will be up to you.”
#
Johnathan and Mary arrived at the hospital a week later for the operation. Doctor Hader briefed them before the procedure, “Once your consciousness is fully integrated we will wake you up and you will be a new man. Have you given any thought to what you want your new face to look like? If you would like to return to a point in your life, we just need a picture to base the face off of. Otherwise you can design it now or let it be random.”
“Why would someone pick random?” Mary asked.
“Some people like the idea of getting a fresh start and mimic the birthing process as much as possible. Don’t worry, the face retains the basic structure it just might not turn out… attractive. Or if you’d prefer, there is a catalog of facial parts for you to choose from if you’d like to look through it. We have over 250 ears, 300 mouths and a startling 400 noses.” A holographic catalog appeared in the room between them and displayed various body parts.
“Also,” Hader continued, “if you’d like to alter the purple eye thing I understand. Some ignorant people will already have prejudices against you when you become a Transcendent. Perhaps, it would be better to not be an augmented that those Liberals are always protesting.” Johnathan frowned.
“That’s alright, I have a picture for you,” Johnathan said. He activated his Itact. An image of his face from forty years ago when he was thirty-eight appeared in the room.
The doctor’s eyes widen and said, “Can I ask why then? When most people want to return to an age they normally want their twenties.”
“It was the last time I found a new life,” he said turning and smiled at Mary. She returned the gesture.
“Okay, well I copied the image and they will begin constructing the face. I will leave you two alone while you prepare. Whenever you are ready just go through these doors,” Doctor Hader said. He got up and left through the sliding double doors behind him into a dark surgical room.
Johnathan turned to his wife. Tears were flowing down her face as she stared at him. He stood up and helped her to embrace him as she broke down into sobs. They held each other for a long moment. She lifted her head up and crushed her lips against his with more force than his lips had felt in years. He returned the force for a few seconds and then pulled away; parting with his lips for the final time. He said, “You are the love of my whole life.”
“And you are the love of my life too,” she said, letting him out of her arms. She watched in silence as he walked around the desk and disappeared into the dark room.
Two hours later Mary stood up when Doctor Hader came through the big white doors from the inner hospital. Behind him followed the exact same man she fell in love with the first time she had ever laid eyes on him. Everything was there, the dark hair, the strong jaw line, the stout nose, even the tender indigo eyes. But his smile was the same as it was hours before. Loving and full of joy but it was off-putting without the wrinkles that used to crease his cheeks.
Her eyes filled with tears as she rushed into his embrace. He returned in a strength she hadn’t felt in years but something was off. The skin was of a leather texture and if felt strange to her. She looked up to him, then to the doctor with a frown.
Doctor Hader said. “You grow used to it as time goes on. Most people…”
Mary stopped listening as he trailed off to talk about studies about this effect.
Johnathan said, “It’ll be okay sweetheart,” and leaned down to kiss her with his soft, strong lips.
#####
Later that night, when they were climbing into bed together Johnathan began to kiss Mary’s wrinkled neck. Mary froze for a second letting the soft tingle of heat and moisture fill her neck. It had been some time. “We should make sure everything in this new body works,” he said as he moved closer.
Mary rolled into him pushing her body against his which felt like falling onto a leather couch that had baked in the sun too long. She pulled away after a few seconds and pushed him so fast he almost fell off the bed.
“What?”
“I can’t. It-it, just feels too weird. You look young enough to be our son and you feel more like the car seats than like you.” Her eyes had shrunk as if she had just rolled into a stranger.
“It is okay honey. I understand it will be an adjustment. That is fine. We can wait,” Johnathan said with very little emotion as he climbed back onto his side of the bed and turned the light off. “You will get used to it, soon.”
“I hope so.” Her voice still held the edge of anxiety.
Mary didn’t sleep that night. She tossed and turned, like the wind on a rainy night. Every time she brushed up against his artificial skin she was reminded of his new deformity. She tried sleeping far away from him but she could still see his face in the pale moonlight. The face she had only seen in pictures for years. The face she married but had long since faded. The face of a familiar stranger sharing her bed. Finally, she got up and went to sleep on the couch. Not the leather one but the soft polyester one where there were no reminders of him.
In the morning Johnathan noticed her absence and found her on the couch, asleep. As he approached, her head stirred and she looked up at him.
Her eyes flashed with confusion and fear for a moment before she recognized him. She sighed at the thought and sat up and spoke in a tired whisper, “I’m sorry. I thought I could handle this but I can’t. Not yet. I’m going to continue to sleep on this couch for the time being until I can get used to your… new body.”
“That is fine, sweetie,” Johnathan said with a smile.
After weeks past were every brush sent a look of disgust. Where every other time he would walk into a room it would take her a heart beat to reconfigure he he was. Weeks of long silences and sharp looks.
One day when Johnathan handed her a coffee cup in the morning her fingers brushed his. She gasped and let the cup drop to the ground, shattering on the tile of the kitchen. Johnathan did move to clean it up, instead he asked in neutral tone, “Are you ever going to be able to touch me?”
“Honestly,” Mary said letting the irritation mount in her voice, “no. I hate your body. It feels wrong, it feels more like furniture than skin. The heat it gives off is uneven, your arms are freezing at night and you look too young. You like our wedding photo and I can’t stand it. Here I am, old and decrepit and there you sit with your youth, and your fake body.”
“Well, you would not be so old if you had done the procedure,” Johnathan said an edge cutting into his even tone.
“And what? Become an armchair? Feel forty years older than I look? Live with the contradiction of age with youth? And what to walk down the street and have people look at me like a robot. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed the way people look at you!”
“I think you are jealous that women are looking at me now,” Johnathan the tone of his voice continued to rise but stopped short of a yell. His face shifted from anger to regret the instance he said it.
“Well, if you want to be with those women maybe you should leave me. I’m too old for you. I’m too slow and unattractive. You deserve, better don’t you?” Mary asked with a glare harder than the steel alloy that made up Johnathan’s new bones.
Johnathan’s voice a tint of desperation in it. “That is not what I meant.”
“No. It’s exactly what you have been thinking. I see it in your eyes. You are becoming like every other Syn aren’t you? Abandoning your old life and commitments. Taking up a life of partying because what consequences do you have to live with? You have a perfect metabolism and eternal youth!”
“You have been watching that Father Marius, again.”
“I follow him on the Wal. Yes.” Her chin pointed up towards him.
“Maybe you are right. I should not live in a house with one of the ‘Flock,’” Johnathan sneered at the phrase.
“Oh, now I am in the ‘Flock’ because I subscribe to his Wal?”
“You believe his racist propaganda. It’s turning you against me.”
“I have to be on your side all the time? Beside who are you to call me a bigot? You hate the Chinese more than any-”
Johnathan slammed his fist down on the wooden kitchen table so hard that ended with a crack. A tense silence engulfed the room. When he spoke his voice sounded like dull thunder but felt more subdued that it had in the past, “You were the only person in the world who understood what I went through there. The hell that I went through. The things they did to their own people. The New Yin Revs committed horrible atrocities and it had to stop!”
“They were simply trying to get rights for the working class. The cloning was immoral, and then they were being worked to death—”
“Forty years of marriage,” Johnathan glowered, “You never disagreed with me that the New Yins were evil. You never once questioned or brought up what happened there? Why now? Is it Father Marius? Do you trust him more than your own husband?”
“I have changed my opinion.” Her hands were shaking as she spoke, but her voice stayed consistent. “It happens from time to time.”
“The minute you start questioning what happened during the Genetics War is the minute you lose whatever shred of love I have clung to.”
“I already lost that,” Mary said.
“Then I’m leaving,” Johnathan said standing up. He walked into the bedroom to pack his things.
Mary sat there in the empty kitchen and stared at shattered coffee cup watching the steam rise and disappear fade into the air.
The next week Johnathan called Mary on his Itact. His voice stayed static but there was light in his eyes when the image of her appeared in front of his eyes. She looked tired and sick but smiled anyway. “I’m sorry,” Johnathan said. “We both said some things that shouldn’t have…”
“Where did you go?” Mary asked, “I looked up on the account and it says you charged to a cheap motel in Slicervile. Are you alright? Sy… Transcendents like you get snatched down there all the time for parts and I have been worried—”
“Don’t worry, it is temporary. I am getting an apartment in the Midtown tomorrow.” Johnathan licked his lips and said, “Unless you want me to come back…”
“I do,” Mary began before having the smile on her face fade. “But you can’t, not yet. I love you but I’m not ready yet.”
“When will you be ready?” Johnathan asked in a whisper.
“I don’t know, but I will visit you, and try to ease into it. Okay?”
#####
In the interim months they saw each other on a biweekly basis. Johnathan’s smile stretched all the way across his face but slowly faded every time she wouldn’t ask him to return to their home.
To Mary, the anxiety of seeing his youth again plagued her before every visit. Every time she saw him her disgust grew deeper, as he stood there, unchanged and unnatural.
One day, months later, while Johnathan was sitting in his small room watching something sent to him by a friend. The video was a show about a man trying to move past the weight of the war by falling in love with a younger woman. His Itact lens flashed with a call. The image flashed to life in front of his eyes as he saw a young woman. She had the face of youth but the expression that only comes with age. Most likely fellow Transcendent.
“Excuse me, sir, I have unfortunate news. Your wife had an accident.”
“What?” Johnathan sprung to his feet.
“It seems she was trying to reach something high in the kitchen when she slipped and impaled herself on a knife she was carrying. She is far too fragile to operate on and has lost too much blood to save. If you-” Johnathan had rushed out of the door and ignored everything else the woman said.
He barreled into his Transit and commanded it to speed to the hospital. It obeyed and within twenty heart pounding minutes he had arrived at the nearby hospital.
Johnathan wandered the halls of the same place he had ascended several months earlier. As he made his way to the front counter the robotic receptionist looked up. It had a smiling face molded into it that seemed incapable of change. It looked at Johnathan and said, “How may I help?” Its voice was electric yet warm.
“I need to see Mary Wilkins. I am her husband Johnathan Wilkins.”
“Of course,” it replied. There was a brief pause from the automaton. Once it had processed the request it snapped its head toward Johnathan. “I am afraid I cannot let you do that, Mr. Wilkins. She is currently in critical condition. But according to the doctors notes she will most likely not survive.”
Johnathan slammed his fist down on the counter in front of the machine that thundered with a crack. The machine said something in return but Johnathan couldn’t hear it. He was too focused on his fist and his strength. Something he couldn’t have done before his procedure. After a second of contemplation his head snapped up toward the robot. “As her next of kin I demand to see the doctor residing over her.”
The machine nodded and summoned the doctor at once. After a few minutes an older Asian woman walked through the door. Johnathan felt a quick jolt of anxiety as his body simulated his skipping a heartbeat.
She smiled as she walked up to him, “How can I help you Mr. Wilkins?”
“How can you save my wife?” Johnathan pleaded.
“I am very sorry, sir. We can’t. ”
“Her injuries are too severe for us to operate on her,” the doctor continued.
“What if we performed the Transcendence operation? Could that save her?” Johnathan’s voice was shaking.
“Only if she had given consent before we begin—“
“That is enough doctor,” a cool, familiar voice cut her off from behind Johnathan. Standing behind him was Doctor Hader in his black Eternium uniform. “I will take it from here,” he said with a smile.
Johnathan turned to see what the Asian Doctor had to say. She glared at both Johnathan and Doctor Hader before storming off.
“Ignore her.” Doctor Hader placed a hand on Johnathan’s shoulder. “Now tell me what is wrong with your wife…”
Johnathan explained what had happened. Doctor Hader listened very carefully. At the end explained a legal loophole that allowed Johnathan to use his marital statues to substitute for her consent.
“The document I have laid out before you also states that this is something she would give consent for if she was able. Also, that neither of you will perform any legal action against Eternium.”
Johnathan knew her. He knew she would never want to become a Transcendent. But she did love him, he knew that and when push came to shove they would always do what they needed to do for each other. But who needed more help now?
Johnathan looked past Hader into the night sky, praying for an answer. In that moment, he thought that the lights of the city out shined the lights of the stars above them. He looked down at the lengthy legal document on the tablet screen and silently picked up the stylus.
#####
Johnathan sat in the waiting room in the same chair Mary had sat in when he came out a new man all those months ago. Tears filled his eyes with worry. His mind couldn’t even begin to access his Itacts for any form of entertainment.
After several hours of waiting, she walked through the door. The same woman he had fallen in love with all those years ago. She was tall, much taller than Doctor Hader who had accompanied her. Her hair was long and black that framed bright green eyes that always matched the way she used to look at the world. But her eyes weren’t as warm as he remembered them, they seemed cold and distant. He went to hug her but she did nothing in return. Johnathan looked at her, then back at Hader.
He shrugged and said, “The operation was a complete success. She was talking a minute ago.”
Johnathan returned to face her with a puzzled look on his face. This time fury was filling her eyes. Johnathan took a slight step back and looked at Hader.
“You are free to go whenever you want. We will message the bill later…” he trailed off before leaving the tense silence of the room.
Johnathan didn’t say anything. He led her through the halls of the hospital to the Transit and told it to take them home. They both sat in the floating room as the dying lights of the city gave way to only the darkness of the night.
As they approached their home Johnathan spoke first, “Look I understand that you are angry with me–“
“Angry?” Mary said, cutting him off. “Angry that you turned me into this abomination of nature? Yes, I am very angry. Why would you do this to me?”
“Because I love you! Because I wanted to save you!” Johnathan yelled, anger and pain choking his voice.
“I did not want you to save me, and you never did love me,” her voice grew quiet and sharp. “If you did, you would have understood that this is not something that I would have wanted. It makes me less human, less than who I am.”
Johnathan’s mind tossed about for a few seconds, as he tried to determine whether anger or pain was correct. His fist tightened on the table, “What are you going to do? Leave after I saved your life?”
Mary’s eyes widened but before she could say anything the Transit stopped at their apartment. The door slid open as Mary stood up and walked out of the Transit.
Johnathan followed her out onto the balcony amid her garden. Most of her fruit had been harvested as the seasons shifted away from the warm life giving summer. The hanging greens looked withered and dead in the pale, artificial, light of the balcony.
Mary turned to face him. He couldn’t help but think how beautiful she was despite the anger on her face.
His focus on her beauty faded as the words came out, “I’m leaving you.” Her tone flat and emotionless.
“But,” he stammered out, “you are the love of my life. Both can continue now.”
“Did you really think our love would last forever just because we did?”
“Yes,” Johnathan whispered.
“Everything deserves to die at some point.”
She shook her head and stepped into the darkness of the apartment.
Johnathan turned around as the first light of a new day started to peek out through the gray buildings of the city. He stood amid the dead plants and watched sun rise alone.
END.
By: Andrew J. Gleason
Andrew Gleason currently lives in Chicago with his girlfriend teaching children with Autism. He went to Ohio University and came out of it with a Psychology Degree and a minor in English to satisfy his real passion for telling stories.