This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?
“It’s interesting is all I can say,” I said as I wedged my fingers into the crack of the rock face in front of me. “Sarah’s getting married now, and it just doesn’t seem all that real. I always heard that life seemed to speed up as you got older, but it just seemed like yesterday to me.”
Henry dangled next to me and swung about, trying for a better hold. The cables that were holding us up weren’t going anywhere. You could hold up a suspension bridge with them. Thin as a pencil, but pound for pound, it was rated to hold up a Mack truck with a single strand in a hurricane. They were already replacing the supports on major bridges with the stuff, and it held more than one little kid’s tire swing up with no fear of breaking. If anything, the tire would split first, but since they were so strong these days, you had to practically shred them yourself just to get rid of them when they came off the cars by brute force. They were a nuisance, and it wasn’t long before most of the houses had been shingled with reprocessed tires.
I pulled at my rope, and it didn’t budge. Three hundred feet in the air, and I was comfortable enough to pull out my lunch.
Henry stopped bobbling about and turned to face me.
I held out a sandwich and a squeeze bottle of coffee, and Henry took them.
After scalding his upper lip with some poor aim, he took to the sandwich and munched at it.
“Do you love her, Henry?” I said. “Do you love Sarah?”
“Yes sir, I do,” said Henry through a mouth full of a tuna salad sandwich.
“That’s good.”
Henry gave me a wary look. I still wasn’t sure I liked him.
“Don’t worry, I’m not here to scare you, or anything as foolish as that.”
“I know.”
“I just had to be sure. Here’s the thing, son,” I said.
“I love her mother more than just about anything in the world. I worship the quicksand she walks on.”
I took a sip from my coffee and then said: “Would you die for her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s good to hear. Now I’m going to tell you something that you probably will not expect.”
“Sir?”
“I want you to make the rules together.”
“The rules.”
“Yes, the rules. I don’t want you to listen to me, or anyone else, in laying down the law in your household. Don’t let us tell you what to do. Don’t let your parents tell you what to do. Don’t fall into a rut and do what you think society wants to tell you to do, either.”
“What should I do then?”
“You should make your own decisions. Are you going to this church or to that one, you and she, you decide together? Are you going to have children or not?”
“We were…”
“I mean, just don’t let us pressure you. There’s no point, anyway. You need to make all those kinds of decisions together. Take your time and get to know each other as much as you can.”
Henry nodded.
“Of course, that’s something that you can ignore, too. If you both thought it was right, and you wanted to run away together rather than having this big wedding we’re planning, then that’s what you should do.”
Jacob reached out a finger that looked like the finger of a thirty-year-old to him and poked the twenty-something Henry in the chest with it. He thought it should look older than it did, that it should have some spots or something, that some of his hair should be gray, but none of it was. There might be the occasional stray gray, but they were so few that they barely counted.
“That’s what I mean though,” I said. “It’s all about you and her deciding. Sarah’s one of my favorite people in the world, and not just because she’s my daughter. She’s bright and intelligent, and one of the happiest people I’ve ever met. She’s got this way of making you smile just by winking at you.”
“I know. I love that about her.”
“Good. You keep that, and here is the hardest part, well two parts that I’m certain are hard for me to say because I’m still working through them all in my head. Are you ready?”
“I think so.”
Henry burned himself, missing the coffee again.
“Here, stick that thing in your mouth when you do that.”
Jacob reached over and handed Henry a handkerchief, which Henry immediately dropped, then sheepishly wiped at his face with his hands again.
“Sorry about that.”
“Okay, here it is. First, if you and she decided not to take the shot, then I will not get upset about that. We’ll keep it to ourselves, and we’ll never speak of it, and if you need to move and take my daughter far away from me, then that’s what you’ve got to do. I’ll always see her someday. It’s not like we don’t have constant video streaming all the time. Even on this mountain, we could probably call her if we wanted to.”
Henry thought about it for a moment.
“First, while we’re not planning to move soon, we’re staying in the city. I thank you for that freedom. You never know when you’ll need to make a move somewhere. As for the shot. We’ve already taken it.”
I nodded. It’s what I had expected, and it wasn’t a big surprise.
“Dutiful son,” I said. “Good. Now let’s get up this mountain.”
We put away our lunches and climbed, first using our cables to get back in line with the rock face, and then up it was, finger after finger, and step after step, and inch by inch we made our way to the top.
We pushed up, and stood on the peak, a small flat place, about large enough to spread out and sit, and checked the equipment the guide had left there the day before. There was a strong clamp, holding all the cables in place. They still did not release those, even now. It was too easy to step off and opened a pack that had been left for them in a sturdy box, also clamped to the rock’s surface.
The box contained a couple of sleeping bags and a cooler with bottles of water and enough food for another couple of meals in it.
We spread out the sleeping bags. On the bottom side of the bags, small clamps, about the size of bottle caps were lined around the edges, and once the sleeping bags were laid down, and a button was pressed there was a small hiss, and the small metallic clamps locked them into place.
We spread out on the peak, folded our hands behind our heads, and looked at the sky.
Clouds were passing overhead, but it didn’t look like much. There were deep swirls and dark areas that looked pregnant with rain, but they would drop it somewhere else. They let the wind blow over their bodies, and they kept their eyes glued to the sky.
The clouds soon gave way to an open blue sky with occasional wisps of clouds in the distance. They watched the hawks, and eagles circling high above them, and the ravens that were tormenting them, and distracting them from their search for prey, pecking at their backs, and swooping in and out between them.
The hawks would fight back and fend them off, sometimes swooping down to fly somewhere else, but the eagles would just rise higher, and leave the ravens behind where they couldn’t reach them anymore.
Twilight overtook us, and the stars came out. It was going to be a nearly moonless night, and the closest city was miles and miles away from them. We kept our flashlights off and let our eyes adjust to the almost total darkness. The heavens opened up, and they could see thousands and thousands of stars. The constellations were easy to pick out, and with very little in their field of vision around them they could relax their minds and observe them by the Earth’s turning, the stars seemed to slowly rotate around us like a massive dome that was being rolled over them. After a couple of hours, we could see the galactic disk, where the largest concentration of stars was, where the rest of the Milky Way spun on into the night.
We also counted the satellites. Most of them followed similar paths, but we thought they could also see the remains of Russia’s space station, and Europe’s new Low Earth Orbit station. The US had one as well, but it didn’t come into view this night. Orbit stations looked like small moons, but dull metal instead of bright like the real moon, and about five percent the size of the moon to our eyes. Out there, fifteen people lived full time, sometimes swapping with extra crew members sent up on one of sixteen shuttles that might be on missions at any one time.
Later we found the constellation Pegasus and counted the stars we could see inside the square. I could see three more than Henry could, but Henry didn’t know I was bluffing.
“Do you think there’s anyone out there?” said Henry. He almost whispered it.
“Gotta be, right?”
A v-formation of jets flew over us and banked toward the south. It shook the mountain we were on and rustled the nearby brush.
“Woo,” I said.
We pushed up on our elbows and kept our eyes on the skies.
“A friend of mine once said that if there was life found elsewhere in the universe, it would be something boring like polar bears or something.”
We watched as the stars turned and turned above us.
We counted the satellites in silence for a while.
About an hour later, Henry’s arm popped into the sky as a shooting star went by. It streaked across in a long line and burned out.
“I’ve never seen one of those!” said Henry.
“What, the shooting star?”
“Yeah.”
“It won’t be the last. We’ll probably see a couple more of them tonight.”
Another one flashed by, and Jacob pushed up on one of his elbows. “Interesting,” he said.
Three more flashed across the sky, all in the same direction.
Zing! Zing! Zing!
We could almost hear them.
“That’s just amazing.”
“Look, another one.”
Henry smiled, and I was thinking about it a little.
“Now that I think of it, I think we might be in for a pretty magnificent show tonight. What a night to do this.”
“Why?”
“Looks like it’s a full meteor shower.”
Another one zipped by.
“How many might we see?”
“Could be a couple hundred.”
We sat back and thought about it, and watched the sky as one after another lit the night up, and the spark of life surrounded them. We saw hundreds and hundreds of them before the morning came.
In the early hours of the morning, before Henry rose for the day, I sat on the edge and drank an instant cup of coffee. All I had to do was pull on a tab near the edge of the cup, and it heated. I drank at it and checked my mobile.
I tapped a code into it and smiled. In the distance, I could hear the engine of my air car heating. Way down below, its headlights came on and slowly rose to us. I stored away my sleeping bag and camping gear. I stuffed them into my backpack and got dressed. Shoes on, I was ready.
Henry pushed and sat up. “What’s going on?”
I smiled at him.
“Hate to do this to you, Henry. We’ve had a good night. If you love my daughter, you’ll forgive me for this, but I want to test you just a little.”
The car rose, and the door opened.
“Are you going to leave me up here?”
“Yes, I am.”
I stepped into the car, where another pack was.
“But I will not leave you like this.”
I tossed the extra pack onto the mountain with Henry.
“Extra supplies.”
I smiled and waved as I drove off.
Henry never said another word.
I pulled away and lit up a display to my left.
“Let’s turn on that tracker, yeah?”
I hit a button, and a small blip appeared on the monitor.
“There he is. That’s good. He’s kept the pack I gave him. That’ll make him easier to track.”
The blip was moving fast.
“Oh, he’s good. Look at that. He’s already on the way down.”
The blip was plummeting to the ground, and fast.
“Very interesting.”
I banked to the left and circled the mountain. On the side of the mountain, he could see Henry repelling down, and not taking his time. Henry deftly hit all the right spots and made all the right jumps. He was heading down quickly.
I pulled the car around and touched down next to a small restaurant at the mountain’s base. I pulled in and parked in an open spot, and got out of the car. As I shut the door and looked up, I saw Henry there, sitting in a rocking chair I swore was empty as I landed.
Henry was out of breath. His face and arms and legs were covered in scratches. There was a branch sticking out of one of his jacket pockets, and there was a cut across his forehead that was bleeding, but not dangerously.
“Hello there Henry,” I said, how’s my son-in-law?”
“Good thanks, Never better.”
He shook off the last strap from the parachute, then got up, and we went into the restaurant together.
“How old do I look?” I said.
“I don’t know,” said Henry. “You look grown.”
“Interesting. I suppose that’s true. I’m fifty. Fifty today.”
“Are you? You look like you might be one of my friends.”
We placed orders, picking from a video menu built into the table. The table showed them their food being prepped in the back, and a small progress bar filled up from left to right.
We could see the meal being called to the cooks. 10%.
Then we watched as the cooks put their meals on. 20%.
Our steaks and eggs cooked and were flipped as the waffles went onto the iron. 30%.
Someone set up our plates on a tray. 40%.
One plate went down. 50%.
Another plate went down. 60%.
Waffles came off the iron and were plated. 70% and 80%.
The coffee finished brewing. 90%.
Coffee was poured up. 100%.
Then someone picked up the tray and headed out to meet us. Before the food hit the table, I watched as my bank account was hit for the total.
We dug in.
Henry allowed the cut on his head to continue to bleed.
We bit into our perfect steaks and ate our waffles.
A small trickle landed on Henry’s shirt.
I reached out and wiped Henry’s forehead. Henry applied a small stick to the cut. It looked like a small chapstick, and the cut healed over.
Henry stood up, and we faced each other.
I cleaned him up, removed the sticks and brush from him, and tended his other wounds.
Then I grabbed Henry in a massive bear hug.
“My son.”
They left the restaurant, and on our way back out to the cars, I stopped.
“I wanted to give this to you.”
“What’s this?”
I handed him a small card.
Henry took it.
“It’s a cash card.”
“How much is on it?”
“Enough to get you going.”
“How much?”
“Check it out yourself.”
Henry turned to a kiosk by the door and scanned the card.
“Please activate this card,” said a voice.
Henry pressed the activate button.
“Choose a pin,” said the voice.
Henry punched one in.
“Thank you,” said the voice. “Processing.”
A moment later, there was a ding, and the process was over.
Henry checked the screen for the balance.
“Are you serious?”
I kept silent.
“Sir?”
Henry pocketed the card.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Take care of my daughter. Don’t cheat on her. Don’t be an ass. Makeup after fights. Enjoy your life. Make sure you do something interesting with your life.”
“I can’t thank you enough.”
“I think you’ll have enough opportunities too. If you live as long as I think I’m going to, then you will have plenty of chances. It won’t last forever. One drawback to living this long all the time is that you’ll have to work longer, and the most likely cause of death is that of a deadly accident… Take nothing for granted.”
Henry got into his air car and pulled up into the sky. He drifted over the trees, and headed out, on his way to see Sarah again. He did it with a wave and a smile, as beaten as he looked by the quick return to ground level.
I got back into my air car.
Sitting on the dash was a card from Henry.
I opened it. A small dog was salivating over a bone on the front. Inside was a handwritten note.
It read, “I’ve drained the fuel from your air car, and taken your reserve can from the back. I love you too. See you at the wedding.”
I had to laugh. A little at first, and then longer and louder.
I stepped out of the car, locked it, and started the lonely trek to the next fuel station.
