Immortal Homecoming

The giver of life had turned sinister. Hot gases of fiery gold sprayed out millions of kilometers into surrounding space. Like ferocious dragons the atomic flames licked hungrily at Mercury, vaporizing the tiny planet. Black blotches spread like cancer across the sun's surface. The distress call went out from Earth's endangered population to space colonies from Jupiter to the Oort belt. "MAYDAY. MAYDAY. SOLAR EXPANSION BECOMING CRITICAL. EARTH IN IMMINENT DANGER. REMAINING POPULATION MUST BE EVACUATED ASAP."

Spaceships from every terraformed world and space habitat in the solar system converged on the threatened planet. Among the rescuing craft was the battered freighter Thyme. Her captain had received the SOS two hours after he left a major space station near Pluto. Although he knew that the rescue would cost him many credits in lost revenue, he did not hesitate but immediately returned to have his ship fitted up as a refugee ship. Forty-eight hours later he took off again. Along with the special equipment and supplies that he would need, he had aboard medical personnel, additional crew and one special passenger.

The Thyme's hull, scarred and scorched from encounters with cosmic dust, micro meteorites and near disasters, had become a crazy quilt of welded patches. The interior was austere. Except for the bridge and the crew's quarters, it was simply a hollowed out shell used to store cargo. For this mission of mercy, however, five hundred cushioned pressure seats had been installed. The effect was of a barn-like theater minus a stage. Five hundred persons, out of the million or so persons still living on earth, would be saved. Very few, but there would be many other space vessels, some a hundred times larger, in the rescue operation. Medical supplies and preserved food took up the aisles.

An immobile mannequin sat in the front row. It had green unblinking eyes and shiny pink latex skin. Otherwise the figure was a perfect replica of distinguished elderly gentleman in gray coveralls. An electronic notebook rested on its lap. Its eyes were cast down as though studying what was written on the device's screen.

The freighter's young skipper stepped through the door from the bridge. He wore a beard, had on casual dress and wore his cap at a jaunty angle. If this had been the eighteenth or nineteenth century, he would have been the first officer of a sailing vessel.

As though a string had been yanked, the head of the apparition in the front row snapped up. Its mechanical voice greeted the space officer. "Hi. How much longer before we reach earth?"

"A day or two. We'll be coming out of hyperspace in three hours and twenty minutes, sir." Captain Craft was respectful of this distinguished person. His passenger was none other than a being described in the press as the "oldest human in the galaxy," although he wondered why they called the thing human when it was obviously an android. He hadn’t read the article himself. Another spacer whom he'd had a conversation with in a bar had told him this when he’d mentioned the name of his VIP passenger. According to the manifest, the apparition's name was Arthur Fortrel.

"Good," Fortrel replied, a half-smile playing around synthetic lips. "And don't call me sir. You're the master of this ship. I'm simply someone taking up valuable space."

Craft flushed. It was exactly what he’d been thinking. Who was this "very important person," and why was he or it headed to a place about to be destroyed? What business did it have on earth? As far as Craft knew, it had no special skills that would be needed. It would simply be in the way.

There was an awkward pause. Finally Craft shrugged and said, "Well Doctor Fortrel, one person more or less won't make much difference. We'll be a bit squeezed once the refugees are aboard though. You've listed your occupation as a historian. I suppose you wish to visit the birthplace of humanity before it perishes. Are you writing a history of the place?"

"Not as yet, but I might. But that's not the reason, I'm on board. Let's say that it's more of a sentimental journey. I was born on Earth. By the way, I'd like it if we were more informal. Call me, Arthur." He extended a plastic hand covered with a skin that was not quite flesh. After a moment's hesitation, Craft shook it.

***

Fortrel was glad that the present age was one where people were polite and tolerant. He hoped that it would last a long time.

"Fine with me, Arthur. You can call me Jog. I don't stand much on formality myself. That's why I'm piloting this old freighter instead of a Solar Federation Space Force ship." He made a sweeping gesture of ownership as if to say that uncovered metal ribs and rows of rusty rivets might be ugly, but it was all his.

Fortrel felt an instant liking for Craft. The spaceship captain had an easygoing breeziness, yet eyes that held an intelligent alertness as though their owner took in everything in his environment and carefully stored it for future use. He smiled easily now in a friendly way.

"Well Jog, since we have time to kill, perhaps we could talk awhile. That is, if you don't have any pressing duties."

"I'd be honored. As far as pressing duties, I'll let you in on a little secret." Craft cupped his hand around his mouth in mock furtiveness. "The real pilot of this vessel is an artificial intelligence; I'm more or less window dressing." He dropped carelessly into a seat. "They call you the oldest human in the solar system. What does that mean? How old are you?"

"I can answer that in two ways. My memories go back thousands of years. On the other hand, you might say that I'm only two. That's when this body was manufactured."

"You're confusing me."

"It's a long story which I'd love to tell if you have the time."

"All the time in the world. Are you immortal?"

"Perhaps. But nothing lasts forever. Someday I'll perish, even if it's ten billion years from now. Of course, death is no stranger to me. I've died many times."

"You mean, close to death?"

"No, I mean I literally died. Or let's say someone died. That someone was me."

Craft raised an eyebrow. "You're talking in riddles. Do you mean reincarnation? Or are you a ghost?"

A crackling sound like static issued from Fortrel's throat, the closest thing to laughter the robot body could manage. "Both in a way. You might say that I'm the ghost of someone who lived long ago. Or putting it another way, I suppose you might say that I've been reincarnated many times. Before I puzzle you anymore, let me begin at the beginning."

Fortrel leaned back. His shutter-like eyelids half closed as he concentrated on recalling the details. Some things from his past were irretrievably lost, but enough could be recovered to enable him to fill in the gaps so that his tale had continuity.

"I was born over nine thousand years ago as a human being, no different than you. My life expectancy was between seventy to one hundred if I lived the average number of years according to my statistical profile. If I was extremely long-lived, I might make it to as high as one hundred and twenty. But that would be a rather unusual occurrence.

"This was the era before androids and interstellar space travel. Human beings had landed on Mars for the first time during my lifetime. Robotic space vehicles had traveled as far as the orbits of Neptune and Pluto. The first forty-five years of my life were no different than most people of my time, place and status. I did what was expected of me, or what I thought was expected of me. I went to school for the proper number of years, married a woman I’d known since childhood and worked hard in my own business, a small manufacturing plant. I worked too hard. So hard in fact, my heart became diseased. Or maybe it wasn't the hard work, but my whole life style, eating fatty, rich foods, sitting at a desk most of the day, hardly ever exercising.

"One evening, while I was going over some reports, I felt a sharp pain as though someone had stuck a knife in my chest, and my left arm went numb. As soon as I realized what had happened, I called for help just before I passed out. That was my first death. At least the emergency people who brought me to the hospital told me later that I’d died. That is, my heart had stopped, and I was no longer breathing when they found me. I was lucky. They brought me back to life before my brain deteriorated.

"It was a strange experience. I don't know whether it was a dream, a hallucination or my soul leaving my body, but I recall looking down at my own body laying slumped over the desk. I floated away, higher and higher. Then somehow I was walking through a tunnel toward an extremely bright light.

"The next thing I recall was waking up in a hospital. Although weak, I was pretty chipper. I’d survived a heart attack. It was a fine spring morning. Outside my window a sparrow chirped on the window ledge. Beautiful weather for a game of golf, I thought. Golf was a game we played outdoors. It consisted of hitting a small ball around with stick. The idea was to get the ball into a hole using the least amount of strokes. I figured that in a few days I'd be out playing.

"But, my doctor’s expression told me that I was not out of the woods yet. My stomach tightened into a knot.

"'Look Arthur, I'm going to give it to you straight.' He stared glumly at my x-rays. 'Your heart’s in very bad shape. You’re going to need a transplant.'

"In those days, they used human hearts from corpses, and only from those who, when they’d been alive, agreed to donate their hearts. As a result, hearts were not always available. Usually, you were put on waiting list.

.

"'And if I don't go for it?' I asked.

"'You'd be lucky to live six months. What’s worse, donor hearts are at an all-time low. There's a good possibility that you could die before one becomes available. I'm sorry.'

"Six months to live. Unless you've experienced the fear of such a death sentence, you cannot know the terrible anguish. When the full impact of what he’d said hit me, I realized that death's frosty breath was on me. My mind went numb. Suddenly there was no future, only the past. I turned to it for comfort. Instead I received torment. When I contemplated my life, I realized that it’d been one monstrous rat race. I had an enormous expensive house that I barely saw on weekends, three fancy cars that sat in my garage most of the time and a closet full of clothes, half of which I’d never worn. That was an age when people slaved to obtain useless material possessions. I was one.

"I recalled all those hours that I sweated over a downturn in sales or the stock market or a price rise in materials. The worry seemed a horrible crime that I’d committed against myself. Covering my face with my hands I wept for the life I’d wasted.

"For God's sake, how can you stand there so calmly and tell me this,' I cried, a terrible anger and frustration rising within me.

"He put a hand on my arm. 'Wait Arthur, all is not lost yet. There's an alternative.'

"An alternative? What alternative?" I was ready to grasp at any straw.

"'An artificial heart. There's a new type available. It's been tested thoroughly on animals and has performed extremely well.'

"'How many people are walking around with this new artificial heart?'

"'No one. You’d be the first.'

"I felt like puking into his bland professional face. 'So that's it. You want me to be the guinea pig for some new untested device. No, let somebody else be the first.'

"Arthur, Arthur. I understand your anger. But in the first place, somebody always has to be the first. Why not you? Secondly, your choices are extremely limited. I said you could live six months without a transplant. That's an optimistic estimate. In truth, you could go at any time. You're heart's in that bad a shape.'

"I realized that what he was offering me was the only glimmer of hope left to me. I knew that allowing a surgeon to put an untried device inside me was a gamble. But this was not the first time in my life that I'd played for high stakes with the odds against me. Besides, as my doctor put it, my choices were limited. Do nothing and die in six months or less. Have them put the device inside me and have some chance -- unless I died on the operating table. At least this time, if I won, I’d have that second chance at life that everyone asks for.

"'Okay doc, I'll do it. Schedule the operation.'"

***

Fortrel paused in his story. It was satisfying to see the enthralled expression on the freighter captain.

"When the day came for the operation, I was positive that I would not survive it. The few hours before surgery my senses were intensely acute even through the veil of drugs they gave me. From my window I watched the sunrise, glorious in all the hues from powder-puff pink through deep rose. A breeze wafted the good smell of fresh-mowed grass into my room. A truck rumbled by. My skin tingled from starch-stiff sheets. I was never more alive.

"A few minutes later the aides came for me. After rendering me unconscious, the surgical team carved out my heart and replaced it with one of plastic, silicon and metal. That was my second death.

"The operation was a success of course. Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here. Or maybe I would be. Only I’d be someone else. Who knows?

"Afterwards I resolved to change my life. No more would I waste it slaving away trying to be the richest man in the grave. I sold my business and took up a life of hedonism. I devoted myself to experiencing everything that was either pleasurable or thrilling. I tried everything.

"Sex. I left my wife and surrounded myself with the most beautiful and desirable women in the world, supermodels, movie actresses, beauty contest winners. Food and drink. I gorged myself on exotic dishes around the world and sipped the finest wines and champagnes. Sport. I tried them all from ski diving to big game hunting to jai alai. Drugs. I knocked myself out with every dream inducer invented -- marijuana, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, peyote, lots more.

"I toured the world seeking ecstasy. I viewed the majestic vistas of the Himalayas and the incredible works of Michangelo. I slept in a space habitat a hundred miles above the earth. A privilege in those years open to a very few. I visited hundreds of museums and twice as many nightclubs. Every worthwhile drama, comedy, musical and concert saw me front row center.

"For five years I lived in this dissolute manner. But something was wrong. I became jaded and bored. Every thrill, every sensation had to be greater than the last, or I got nothing out of it. I worked as hard amusing myself as I had making money. By the end of that time, all I felt was weary and empty.

"One day I received word that my former wife had died. All at once I longed for what I’d given up. But it was too late.

"For the next six months I hid from the world. I sat for hours staring into the crackling flames of my fireplace asking myself the same questions over and over. What was wrong with me? Why had the last five years seem emptier than the previous thirty? Can only the young in their innocence by happy?

"I took to reading philosophy and learned many things -- but not the key to happiness. Certainly each author, and the philosophers and holy men they quoted, had his favorite method for reaching a joyful existence (at least those who were not nihilists and believed that death and nothingness was the ideal state). In most cases, they contradicted themselves and each other or wrote in such abstract terms as to be meaningless. The only thing they all agreed upon was that the best way to obtain bliss was to give to others, to become a humanitarian.

"Hence one day I decided to devote the remainder of my life to furthering causes that I believed would improve the human condition. The same drive that made me a business success and a failure as a playboy made me a famous philanthropist. For a long time I was happy enough, especially when someone or some organization that I’d aided expressed their gratitude.

"Nevertheless, a small core of dissatisfaction remained to irritate me. For one thing, as my fame increased, I was called upon to act as administrator of various charities. My life was not much different than it had been when my main concern was business.

"During those years medical science took enormous strides. Because I was rich, famous and well-respected, these benefits were mine for the asking. As a result, I lived to the previously unthinkable age of two hundred and one. Then I died again. This time it was a real death. There was no reviving that ancient corpse. The only thing that could be done for it was to make resounding eulogies and bury the husk in the ground.

"But did I die? You might say that I was born on that day. You see, before I -- or that tired old man, however you want to think about it -- died, a recording was made of the electrochemical patterns of his brain. His thoughts, memories and emotions were encapsulated on an electronic medium. An android resembling that man was built, and his electronic memories were transformed to its positronic brain.

"When I was first activated or regained consciousness (whichever term you prefer), I felt that I was still the same man. It was no different than waking from a dreamless sleep. Oh, some things were different. A robotic body does not feel and see and hear exactly as a living person, especially in those days, when robotics was not as sophisticated as they are now. But in my essence, I was still I, Arthur Fortrel.

"One of the differences that I noticed was that I could think clearer. Although I still had emotions, they didn’t interfere with my rational thought processes. I don't know whether these changes were deliberately designed into my new robotic brain, or whether they came about purely because of the mechanical nature of the machine body I inhabited. Whatever the reason for my new clearer, less emotional thought processes, I had a better perspective about my life.

"I realized that my supposedly generous acts had been flaying away at windmills. For all my compassionate deeds, the human condition was no different than it would've been had I never existed. Oh, a few individuals were aided and were able to live better lives. But on the whole, there was much too much suffering, hate, cruelty, violence and other evils in the world. It would never be any better without changing the nature of man. In what way though? That was a question to ponder.

"That’s why I became a scholar on the subject of humanity. Since I had unlimited time at my disposal, I could enter into a study of mankind to a depth beyond what an ordinary mortal could undertake. I could do research and studies on every facet of human life -- in sociology, history, psychology and physiology. My goal was to determine what could be done to ensure the happiness, or at least contentment, of the entire human race."

Fortrel sat motionless while a great many moments passed. Craft waited politely for him to continue with a puzzled expression on his face. Finally he cleared his throat and said, "What conclusion have you reached?"

Fortrel smiled wearily. "None so far. My study is incomplete." It was a lie, but a necessary one. "Well anyway, to complete my story. Every time someone comes out with a better android, I have my memories transferred to it. I consider each of these transfers a death because I have the old body destroyed. It wouldn’t do to have copies of myself hanging around. And, of course, a certain amount of data is lost in each transfer. So you see, in a sense, I'm a murderer as well. I’ve killed myself many times."

The pilot's expression showed his disappointment, although he glanced at his watch in an attempt to hide it. "You'll have to excuse me Arthur. I must return to the bridge. We'll be coming out of hyperspace in a few minutes."

As he was leaving, he turned and said, "It's been an interesting afternoon. And ... well, I think I've learned something."

Fortrel waved carelessly to signify that he’d enjoyed himself too. He waited until the captain disappeared through a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY before taking a hand-held computer from his pocket to dictate notes.

A few minutes later he sensed the slight changes in his circuits that meant the ship was making the transition from hyperspace to the normal space-time continuum. An ordinary man would have experienced vertigo and possibly nausea. Fortrel merely felt a small electrical impulse like a spark passing behind his eyes.

***

Days later a shuttle from the Thyme touched down on the mother world. Using impulse energy, the ship took four days to reach Earth from the point where it appeared in normal space, near an orbit between Mars and Earth. It waited in a high orbit for another seven days before the people coordinating the evacuation allowed the captain to land a shuttle. The landing itself was uneventful.

Before Fortrel disembarked, he asked Craft if he could borrow the pilot's atmosphere flier for a few hours.

"No problem. I won't need it here. I'll be too busy dealing with the evacuation people, the local authorities and the refugees to flit around. Just make sure you're back here by ..." He glanced at his watch. "... seventeen hundred hours tomorrow."

He seemed glad to have Fortrel out his hair.

Eagerly Fortrel walked down the ramp of the shuttle to the ancient soil of Terra Firma. As he peered around, however, he was disappointed. Thousands of years had passed since he’d last set eyes on Earth. Because of the changes brought about by the sun's dramatic rise in volume, and earlier man-made damage due to pollution and wars, the planet had changed drastically. In addition, Earth had been struck by a fair-sized asteroid about five hundred years earlier. The area around the spaceport was a moonlike no-mans-land, an alien graveyard of flat dusty gray soil unsullied by a blade of grass or a green tree. The surrounding jagged mountains loomed menacingly close in the toxic air superheated by the greenhouse effect.

Other than the spaceport, the only signs of human habitation were square mounds that led to a labyrinth of caverns below -- where earth's cities were now located since the surface was all but uninhabitable. On the field, thousands of space shuttles in endless rows queued up for the evacuation. Men in protective suits and lungless androids like himself walked rapidly about on eleventh hour errands. They ignored him.

After he wandered about for a while, he returned to the Thyme's shuttle and climbed into its two-seater flyer. He took the rocket-powered airplane up to thirty thousand feet, leveled off and disconnected the automatic rescue equipment that would allow someone to find him should he crash or land without the ability to return to the base. He crossed the Atlantic in under two hours. The ocean was much larger than he remembered it because of melting polar ice caps. When he reached the North American Continental Plateau, as it was marked on the map he found, he landed the flyer in an area once known as Boston, Massachusetts, the city in which he’d resided during his first life. It was a mass of ruins, no single building remained whole. He didn’t try to camouflage the flyer. By the time he was missed, it would be too late to search for him.

He sat back to wait. In a week the sun's expansion would cause the remaining atmosphere to escape into space and the water on the surface to boil away. Sometime afterwards the rocky crust would melt and finally vaporize. This was his secret reason for returning to earth -- to commit suicide in this odd fashion. It was not that he’d lost his taste for living even after thousands of years, although he was very, very bored. No, he’d come here to die because he held a secret too dangerous to humanity to reveal under any circumstances.

More than once he’d almost let it slip. For example, when he had been going on with that young ship captain. He shuddered at the thought of saying those fatal words to anyone.

***

For the rest of the week he poked around the twisted ruins to pass the time. The city's broken towers testified to the impermanence of man's works. On the evening of the last day, he waited for the dawn with his back against the stone of an ancient building facing east. The sun came up red, bloated and ugly. It filled the horizon. The fires of hell roasted the sky. He was glad. In a few moments he would know oblivion. His secret would die with him -- the secret that: TRUE HAPPINESS IS FOREVER BEYOND THE REACH OF MANKIND. PARADISE WAS LOST FOREVER.

The sun expanded before his eyes. Suddenly he realized what he’d missed. He’d been wrong. Leaping up, he ran for the flyer, one word before his eyes. There was always HOPE.

His robotic legs moved more swiftly than a man's legs could possibly. But not swiftly enough. The sky, the land and the ruins became flame and fire. He was consumed at the moment of his greatest revelation.

Bio: I am a retired technical writer who used to work for a major computer company. I am a voracious reader of all kinds of books, but am especially fond of science fiction and fantasy. I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, but have been living in a small town in upstate New York for many years. I am married with four children, ten grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. My hobbies, other than writing, are computer games and do-it-yourself projects. I have had the following short stories published or about to be published in internet E-zines: "The Sands of Time," Black Moon Rising, January, 2001 issue; "Empty Planet," Aphelion, Feb. 2002 issue; "Cosmoergy," Martian Wave, Mar. 2002 issue; "The Key," Black Moon Rising, Apr 2002 issue; "Shadow in the Sky," Aphelion, Apr 2002 issue; "Pop-Art Nightmare," Nocturne Horizons, Jan 2002 issue. I have also written several novels of which are yet to be published. To see more of my writing, visit my website at www.geocities.com/papajoev. It is called "The Fantastic World of Papa Joe."

E-mail: jvadalma@hvc.rr.com

URL: The Fantastic World of Papa Joe

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