Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Room 42

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.

The world longed to hear a baby cry.

It was lunch hour and the residents of the Eternal Sunshine Care Facility were watching their favorite soap opera, As the Universe Turns, now in its 115th year of broadcasting. A majority of the elderly living there suffered from some form of dementia, and they enjoyed each episode over and over. The recycled plots droned on, every possible storyline already played out decades ago.

The familiar music of the soap opera filled the room of rapt viewers. Some spontaneously applauded, others simply stared at the television screen, oblivious. Two of the ladies cackled and mumbled to one another. The staff walked around, arranging the residents into a semicircle around the large screen.

Attached to each wheelchair was a lidded container with a straw, filled with a smoothie of synthesized ingredients, enhanced with bright colors. The meal processors were set to produce based on the day of the week. Purple Promise today. Turquoise Delight tomorrow.

Mrs. Janice Doggerel possessed a clear mind, but a broken body. Her aide, a bored eternal teenager, told her it was time to join the other residents. Not for the first time, she wished telepathy existed. She didn’t want to join the other residents and desperately desired to convey that message to her aide. When her attendant wheeled her in front of the common room television, she silently screamed.

Mrs. Doggerel’s daily wish to die went unanswered.

Menial labor had been performed by androids for decades, freeing up time for people to pursue whatever interested them. The typical 4-hour workday allowed for more leisure time than at any other period in history. Instead of causing unrest, this abundance of free time lulled the majority of the population into compliance.

The unhealthy and the bored chose another path.

The immortals’ taste in reading changed after The Event. The most popular genre: Utopian. Unlike previous generations who wrote constantly about the end of the world, immortal authors created perfect worlds for their readers to dream about.

Julia Kingsley’s book had been in the top ten on the New World Chronicle’s Best Sellers List for fifty years. She’d created a world where the citizens chose the age they wanted to be when they became immortal. The residents of this utopia also gave birth to children and chose the dates of their deaths. The names of the towns in this fictional account reflected the state of mind of their citizens: Harmony, Bliss, Paradise, Wonder, and of course, Nirvana.

Jenna Toujours highlighted her favorite chapters in Our Perfect World, imagining herself at twenty-eight. She wanted to live in Bliss with her husband, two children, and a real dog. Daydreaming about living in the author’s version of Utopia, she didn’t hear the front door open.

“Hey, Jenna, I’m home!”

“Hey, Mom, I’m in my bedroom. Wanna come in?”

Vivian entered the room, immediately distressed to see her daughter re-reading Julia Kingsley’s book, but quickly adjusted her face into a smile.

“Could you order dinner? I’m too tired to decide what to eat. Anything except eggplant, OK?”

“Sure, Mom, just a bit. I want to read to the end of this chapter.”

Vivian sat on her daughter’s bed watching her read, wondering why Jenna felt compelled to lose herself in that world.

A little while later, Vivian and Jenna sat on the sofa eating hamburgers made from synthetic beef. Standard meal processor fodder. Another side effect of The Event: animals were also sterile. It wasn’t long before meat became unavailable. Anything edible had been hunted to extinction; the rest of the animals died from natural causes. The only natural choices for food were plants.

Vivian and Jenna weren’t adventurous when it came to eating; they preferred to eat whatever their synthesizer could produce. They’d grown used to the flavor of fake meat. Decades of eating it dulled their taste buds. Everything they ate was synthetic, and Vivian had thought more than once that real food would probably shock their numbed senses.

“How was work today, Mom?” Jenna continued reading her book while speaking to her mother.

“I found a cure for immortality and everything will go back to normal.”

Vivian testing to see if Jenna was paying attention.

“That’s cool, Mom,” Jenna murmured.

If I don’t find a cure soon, Jenna will never leave her head. And what if she decides she’s tired of living?

The day before she became immortal, Mrs. Janice Doggerel was being transferred to a hospice center. Hope gone, her disease was in its end stages. Her death was predicted to be imminent. Her only daughter said a tearful goodbye, not sure if her mother could hear her.

She could.

Her granddaughter stood in the corner sobbing. Seeing her grandmother look so frail, and knowing she would soon be gone, had broken through the fragile web of optimism Jenna had woven before coming for her final visit. At last she bent down and kissed her grandmother and whispered, “I love you, Nana.”

Her daughter signed the papers required for her transfer, insisting that the main priority be that the doctors and nurses allow her mother to die without pain. Mrs. Doggerel would continue to be fed and hydrated intravenously. Vivian couldn’t bear the thought of her mother starving to death.

The hospice nurses counseled the small family, instructing them about the stages of grief. After the nurses left, Vivian and Jenna huddled together, trying to accept the looming death of their sweet mother and grandmother. Uncontrolled tears rolled down the faces of the next two generations of Doggerels, dripping onto their folded hands.

Janice Doggerel suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS. Unlike history’s most famous sufferer of the disease, Dr. Stephen Hawking, she could not function. She was barely alive, unable to communicate, move, or feel any honest joy. Mrs. Doggerel looked forward to the release of death, but leaving the last remaining members of her family pained her. If she could get better and stay with them, she would, but her life at this point was more than miserable—it was torturous. She felt like a captive in her failing body, unable to do anything other than exist.

The next day, at forty-two minutes after the hour, her real nightmare began.

Those not willing to live forever decided to take their own lives. Natural deaths no longer existed; no one died of disease or old age, so in order to cease living, an immortal had to cause his or her own death. For years, people killed themselves with guns, by taking sleeping pills, or jumping off a building, a bridge, or a cliff.

It was all very messy.

In response to pressure from the public, a new suicide industry quietly arose, catering to people who wanted to experience a beautiful death—or whose families wanted them to. These entrepreneurs advertised one-way vacations to nirvana. The menu for seekers of the ultimate release ranged from a simple room and an injection, to a glorious party ending in a mass suicide. Owners of these businesses were careful not to be the ones to administer the lethal dose.

Governments around the world gradually realized that there was a need for the population to have a choice after so many years of immortality. Assisted suicide became completely legal worldwide forty-two years after The Event. The only requirement was an interview given by a psychiatrist. Then, with a prescription from a doctor, the patient could gain admittance to a Death House. To prevent too many from taking this path, the number of prescriptions allowed remained limited.

Gaining admittance to a Death House became a celebration. Families gave farewell parties and sent announcements to their friends. Obtaining a prescription to end this eternal existence was on a par with winning the lottery.

Each year after the law passed, the prescriptions ran out by the end of January.

After spending the weekend trying to come up with a new experiment, Vivian arrived at her lab feeling defeated. Her current idea didn’t feel promising, but she couldn’t give up. Too many people depended on her. She wanted to find a cure. She needed to find a cure. She had to.

For the last decade, an awful word kept fighting to escape her subconscious. Vivian expended a lot of energy suppressing it, but today it crept up on her. A word she’d never uttered aloud filled her thoughts.

Hopeless.

Now that the unspoken word had escaped, Vivian thought about the Death House, someplace you could check in and never check out.

On that dismal note, she began working on what she hoped would be the cure with her mantra echoing inside her head: This is it, this is it. Its answer was the terrible word she’d let out: Hopeless.

Waiting for her computer to analyze her data, Vivian experienced conflicted feelings about the speed of getting results. Testing that used to take weeks was now completed in hours. That would be wonderful if her results were positive, but for her, it meant failure being thrown in her face every day. It became a lodestone. The weight of her failure dragged her further into a state of depression.

“Good morning, Keri. Large coffee with cream, please.”

“Yes, Vivian.”

“I’m running the new experiment. Think this one is a winner?”

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

Vivian walked over to the coffee machine and shouted. “Do you have any opinions on ANYTHING?”

“That question does not make sense to me.”

“Do you care if I ever develop a mortality serum?”

“I remain ever hopeful for you.”

Screaming in frustration, Vivian turned off the machine, then returned to her desk, trying to calm down. The result would be ready in thirty minutes. She got up to pace for a while, then settled again at her desk.

Sipping her coffee, Vivian awaited the inevitable bad news.

Jenna decided to take Tujin for a walk. Pretending he needed to exercise maintained the illusion her pet was real. She passed other dog owners, nodding to them as they walked by. Some of the people walking their dogs complimented Jenna on her pet, and she returned the favor. Everyone helped one another maintain a communal dream.

Today’s destination was the care home for a visit to her grandmother. She stopped by weekly to hold her nana’s hand and read to her. Under her arm was an eReader loaded with a copy of Our Perfect World. Jenna wanted to read a particular passage to her nana about the town called Bliss. She wondered if her grandmother would be interested in hearing about her dream to live there.

Rotating books made the visits fresh, staving off boredom for Jenna. She remained hopeful her grandmother wasn’t bored. She never asked, not wanting to know the true answer. Not that it mattered, since her grandmother couldn’t reply. But Jenna remained convinced that the visits helped her grandmother cope with her state of purgatory. She felt helpless without any other way to comfort her.

From the doorway of her grandmother’s small, ascetic room, Jenna watched the aide prepare her nana for a visit. He propped her up in a semi-upright position, adjusting her head to look forward, and finished up by folding her hands. Turning to Jenna, he nodded, then left the room.

“Hi, Nana, it’s me. It’s Jenna.”

No response. But she hadn’t expected one.

“It’s been a long time since I read Our Perfect World to you. Last night I found a passage I thought you’d like.”

Jenna stared into her grandmother’s blank face, trying as she always did to see some flicker of the woman she had been. In answer to Jenna’s offer to read, her grandmother blinked once. Her way of communicating: one blink for ‘yes,’ two blinks for ‘no.’ At least, that’s what Jenna told herself.

“OK, here goes…Chapter Four. Bliss.”

She read two chapters, her favorite ones, about a happy couple about to have their first child. Jenna had marked the passage about the couple naming the baby. They’d chosen the name Emma. She liked that, and fantasized that her daughter would have the same name. Her mother told her the story about deciding what to name her. ‘Jenna’ had been her grandmother’s choice. She wished she could ask her nana why.

Certain her grandmother was asleep, Jenna left the room and stopped by the nurses’ station to chat with the staff. They were always ready to chat and gossip. Jenna thought they might be a good diversion for her.

“Hey, did you hear there might be fewer death prescriptions granted next year? I wish I could convince my mother to let my nana put her name on the list.”

As she always did, Nurse Becker listened with empathy before she answered. Jenna could see the truth on her face before she said anything.

“You’re forgetting, Jenna, your grandmother can’t get a prescription. Since she’s unable to communicate, there’s no way for the psychiatrist to interview her. I know it’s sad. I think she’d be better off if she could die, but that’s the law.”

Jenna’s eyes filled with tears of frustration. Nurse Becker tried to hug her, but Jenna shook her off.

Until the government changed the law to include non-verbal replies, her grandmother was stuck in a loophole. She knew that. But hearing it from someone as kind as Nurse Becker made it hurt more somehow.

“I’m sorry, Jenna. We all feel for your grandmother. Please believe me, we do whatever we can to keep her comfortable. We bring her to the common room every day so she won’t feel alone. I remember your mother telling us she had a favorite soap opera. Since your grandmother’s admission, she’s never missed an episode. I’m sure she enjoys watching it.”

“But she can communicate! She can blink yes and no! Why doesn’t that count? If I went back in the room and asked her if she wanted to die, I bet she’d blink once. For yes. I know she would.”

“I know, honey,” Nurse Becker said. “But it’s the law.”

Another year passed without a successful mortality serum. Finally, Vivian made the decision to accept defeat and tell her superiors her time was being wasted. She wanted to concentrate on something else and vanquish the feeling of failure that constantly surrounded her. Realizing the irony in the statement ‘a waste of time,’ she still felt moving on would be the best decision for her.

After arguing her point for several hours, she couldn’t convince her superiors at the lab to release her from the experiment. They gave her an ultimatum: keep working on the serum or leave. So she went back to her lab to think about her future.

Vivian looked through the failed experiments, each one a monument to her disappointment. She thought about the wasted years, the futility of her efforts. Bit by bit, her confidence left her. Resisting the urge to wreck her lab, she made another decision. It was time to do something else with her life. She had no idea what, but deciding to leave gave her some relief.

As she exited her second home of eighty-six years, she turned and waved good-bye to Keri the coffee machine.

Riding the subway home, Vivian watched the immortals surrounding her. These people weren’t young and beautiful. They looked like an average cross-section of society. All sorts were represented: young, old, fat, skinny, beautiful, ugly. The only thing they had in common was their inability to die a natural death.

Walking the few blocks to her home, Vivian reflected on her decision to quit her life’s work. She couldn’t change her mind. Just this one time, she would trust her instincts. She worried about disappointing Jenna, but knew her daughter would respect her decision.

Inside the empty house, Vivian sat in the dining room and stared out the window. Out of habit, she swiped the screen on her tablet. Pages of data sped past, unseen by the scientist.

Looking skyward, she imagined the birds that used to fly by. The bird feeder in her backyard was completely hidden, overgrown with ivy. The Event hadn’t affected plants. They continued their cycle of life and death, taunting Vivian.

After a while, Jenna came home from walking Tujin and came over to her mother, who was still sitting motionless next to the window.

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

No response.

“Mom?”

Vivian turned to Jenna, not bothering to smile. She placed her tablet on the table as she stared at her daughter. They looked at each other for a few moments, neither of them wanting to break eye contact.

“I quit. I can’t keep going back to the lab to fail. I’m tired, Jenna.”

Jenna was silent for a minute. Then she sat at her mother’s feet and placed her head on Vivian’s lap.

“It’s okay, Mom. You tried. You tried for so long. Please don’t be sad.”

Tujin walked over to them, barking for attention. His timing was perfect, and they both burst into giggles. Jenna scratched Tujin’s head, and it became obvious to Vivian that she wanted to say something.

Finally, she said, “I saw Nana yesterday.”

“You visited her without me? Have you done that before?” Vivian was surprised.

“Mom, I may look like a little girl, but I’m a hundred and three years old. I can find my way to her place no problem.”

“I know, I just…I didn’t know you visited her on your own. I’m happy you did. Or do. How often do you see her?”

“I try to go once a week and read to her. She seems to enjoy it, or at least I think she does. I hope she does.”

Vivian decided it was time for her to see her mother. Once a month wasn’t enough. She’d let her work get in the way of being a good daughter—of doing what needed to be done. Determined to make more changes in her life, Vivian planned what to do next. There were things to take care of before she could visit her mother.

She needed to stop by her lab.

Back on the subway, Vivian stopped fighting her tears. She let the frustration of the last few decades slide down her face. Not sure how Jenna would feel about what she planned, she waited impatiently for her stop. As soon as the doors opened she walked out of the station and headed to her lab to prepare.

Knowing her mother wasn’t the only person in the world who was suffering renewed Vivian’s desire to continue with her work. It might take years before anyone came up with a solution, but she couldn’t stop. Jenna needed to know what it was like to physically become an adult, have a family, and watch her hair go gray.

With that knowledge came the realization that she couldn’t let her mother suffer any longer. She sent emails informing her superiors of her decision to go on with her research.

Then she walked to the supply closet and took what she needed for tomorrow’s visit to the Eternal Sunshine Care Facility.

Vivian and Jenna walked through the doors of the care home. Checking in at the nurses’ station, Vivian nodded at the staff and inquired about her mother.

“No change, Dr. Toujours.”

“We want to have a nice long visit with her. Would you please tell her aide not to disturb us? I know she’ll miss her show today, but that’s okay. Just don’t come into her room. We’d like some private time with her.”

The walk to the end of the hall gave Vivian time to think about her mother. The majority of her memories were happy. Stopping outside Room 42, she paused. Breathing in deeply, she knocked, then entered.

As she approached the bed, Vivian looked into her mother’s watery eyes, attempting to see into her mind. She touched her hand, stroking the top of it as she smiled, but got no response. Vivian leaned in to kiss her mother’s forehead, lingering a moment to remember the woman who no longer existed.

Jenna hung back, unable to approach her nana yet.

“Jenna tells me you like it when she reads to you. I never knew she visited you without me. I’ve been so distracted with my work, I didn’t notice. I’m sorry, Mom. I thought I’d do that for you today.”

Vivian opened her bag, withdrawing a rare paperback copy of one of her favorite books, hoping her mother would enjoy listening to it. The book, a gift from her mother for her thirteenth birthday. Bringing it to her nose, she inhaled the musty smell. Then Vivian leaned over her mother, placing the book near her face.

“Breathe in, Mom. Remember what was. Remember my joy when you gave this to me.”

Her mother blinked once.

For the next hour, Vivian read to her mother, stroking her hair, stopping every few pages to look at her mother’s frozen profile. Jenna pulled a chair to the other side of the bed and held her nana’s hand.

Pausing, Vivian tore a page out of the book. She folded it and tucked it into a pocket in her mother’s nightgown. Quoting a line from that page, she whispered:

And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.

Her mother blinked.

“I’m leaving Edgar Allen Poe to keep you company. Goodbye, Mommy. I love you.”

“Goodbye, Nana,” Jenna said softly. “I’ll miss you. Be happy.”

Then Jenna turned away, not able to watch.

Dr. Vivian Toujours injected her mother in the arm, pushing the plunger filled with sweet release. Janice’s body caved into itself, freeing the tortured person within. One last breath and it was over.

Ninety-five years of hell were over.

“What will you do now, Mom?” Jenna asked.

Vivian turned to her daughter, who still seemed to be eight years old. Years ago, she had wanted Jenna to remain small forever, to cuddle with her, to depend on her. Part of that was still true—Jenna did still depend on her.

So did a lot of other people.

“Keep working,” Vivian said. “I’m going to keep working.”