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 was still a crude settlement, but we all loved it. The Mars 4 landing site. Red ugly desert as far as the eye could see, but we’d built this town here, hadn’t we? What used to be a stand-alone rocket site with a couple of disused landers and half a dozen robotic rovers had turned into a bustling town. Of course, it was all under domes and that kind of thing, because you still couldn’t breathe out there, but it was still interesting to see the planets. Coming from an age when going to another planet, even in our solar system, was practically impossible. I’ve now seen Titan. I’ve done Saturn, and I’ve also been on a cruise around Jupiter. That one was pretty good.
I met my third wife on that trip. We called it the trip of a lifetime, and here I am, moving to Mars on my own. She died earlier this month, some kind of infection that the shot didn’t fend off, and I just sold everything. The stuff they wouldn’t take, I boxed up and sent away to charities and auctions. If I could get a dollar for it, then I did. I didn’t care, but I got the ticket. They don’t even put you under for the trip anymore. It’s that fast. I swear it was like a light shuttle ride to the moon to get here. I think besides the fact that the jet lag on a trip like this can put you into a coma if you’re not careful, the strangest part was watching the earth disappear on the monitors and then watching as Mars blew until it was larger than life.
We landed, everything was just fine, about an hour ago, and I’ll be interested to see the apartment that I’ve selected. Everyone gets this big package before they buy into this place, it’s almost like one of those packets they used to get you to sign off on when they wanted to sell you a time-share or something, and the sell is about that hard, but I knew what I was doing, and was already going to buy before I got there. I wanted to get off the Earth again. I joke I was born on Earth, but that nobody who was ever born on Earth will ever die there now. It’s just too easy to get around. Moving to the moon is like relocating from New Jersey to Idaho for a job, and going to Saturn is something like a vacation spot. There’s a lot of gas mining going on at Jupiter, but Saturn is untouchable. You have to get all kinds of permits and things before you can get anywhere near the rings. They are paranoid that someone will pass a space freighter through there and tear them up. It’s like Saturn is some kind of behemoth state park that no one is allowed to touch.
Imagine someone driving an eighteen-wheeler onto Old Faithful and unloading a stack of Chinese snack cups headed for Disneyland and then crashing a cement truck into that. They don’t want anyone anywhere near Saturn. Ever. At least not anymore.
The apartment is pleasant, if sparse, and it came furnished, so I didn’t have to do anything about that. I brought some clothes with me, but all I want to do is log in on the table and see what my brother is up to. I check my bank accounts, and where there used to be nothing sits a pile of cash that I never spend. I have so few needs, and so few want anymore. The apartment is paid for, so I’ll have it. I think for about one hundred ninety-nine years before the contract runs out. With any luck, I’ll die before that’s over, but the way things are going, I just don’t expect that to be the case. I have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow. With any luck, I’ll have contracted a deadly disease or something. All I want is something to challenge my doctor a bit. It’s been so long since he had to treat anyone for anything that I think he’s just plain bored.
I heard that he’d taken up jet snow skiing, but I can’t confirm that. He won’t put pictures of that up on his profile, so naturally, I can’t confirm it.
I go out onto the veranda, something I paid extra for. Too many of these units face inward, and I didn’t see the point in doing that. There the view is a view of the rest of the city, up under the dome. It’s about thirty miles wide, and I’m in a sea of other little white stone high-rises that comprise much of my district. In the distance, you can see the red landscape of mars, and to the south, there is a magnificent canyon that you can don breathing gear and go climb in, but the real view is of the city at night and the glow of the desert under Phobos and Deimos above us. They aren’t more real than great potatoes in the sky, but I love them.
I hate the kitchen. It’s almost impossible to grow anything here, and all the food is synthesized, but it comes out okay, I guess. You tell the kitchen what you want and it cooks it for you. For another hundred thousand, the kitchen will provide you with synthesized raw ingredients and the means to mix and bake them for yourself. It’s all made of the same protein gel stuff, but I think I’m going to upgrade my kitchen next year. It all smells good, but it tastes like cardboard.
I also paid for the robot butler.
That was a serious waste of money that I won’t even get into.
I turn on the wall so I can dial up my doctor.
The wall finishes booting up, and there on the screen is a large waterfall, surrounded by a lush green hill. I punch in the numbers on a keyboard that’s built into my table, and after a moment, my old doctor’s office appears. He’s not there anymore. I haven’t gotten used to that.
Hovering on the screen is a small spherical robot.
“How are we feeling today, Jacob?” says the little robot. Its eyes blink and a flash of light forms a mouth on what’s almost just a screen for a face. It blinks at me and seems to cock its head slightly, but I realize that it’s just rotating its face within the unmoving screen on the hovering little ball.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” I say.
“Of course, everything will be perfectly fine. I’ve got your record up here now.”
“Where is it?”
“In my mind. I can see your entire work-up right now.”
“And what do you see?”
“I see it is time for your next dose.”
A small slit opens up in the table, and a syringe rises filled with a bright pink liquid. Vibrant in the stark white of the surrounding apartment.
“Must I?” I give the syringe a sideways glance.
“Your health is optimal. You have very infrequent injuries, and your rate of healing has declined little since you took your first dose so many years ago. This is a fresh batch, however.”
“What’s different about this one?” I pick it up. I’ve never seen it so clear and bright. It’s usually kind of dirty pink color, but this time it just seems to sing as I touch it.
“This is what we’re calling the last dose.”
“I’ll never have to take one again?”
“They might give you a slight boost if you break your arm or brain yourself somehow resulting in a hospital stay, but otherwise, yes, this is the last dose. You don’t have to take it.”
I take the syringe. “Anywhere will do?”
“We like to use the thigh, but no, it doesn’t matter.”
“I thought you might send a robot or something to do the job.”
“We thought about that, discussed it, but the implications are much too serious. Do it yourself.”
“Why?”
“Because outside of major injury that might lead to death, and that’s preventable these days, this serum will make you completely immortal. And it’s no longer covered by insurance.”
“It’s not?”
“No, what would the point be of insuring you if there was no longer a real chance of death? Shall we do it? You could put it back on the table. I’ll retract it, and no payment will need to be made.”
“If I say yes?”
“Then I’ll make sure to check your credit first, of course.”
“Of course. Let’s do it.”
“Okay, I’ll start the process…” but I was already plunging the needle into my skin and powering the liquid into my body.
I fell to my knees, then my face hit the floor.
I couldn’t move.
Above me, the robot was blathering on about credit scores and that due to my recent move to Mars I no longer qualified. I was sorry, but could I place the syringe back on the table now until we could secure the proper payment?
I remembered little after that.
The blackness came and when life swirled back into my body, I awoke in a small cell. It was lined with the same white walls that were in my apartment, but it was a jail cell, with a self-lowering bunk in the wall, a small desk, and a chair that wasn’t so much bolted to the floor as it was part of the surface of the floor extruded into a chair-like form.
I checked the computer on the table if there was a flat surface anywhere, it was available as a computer screen, and my credit had been reduced to a negative number. I was effectively owned by my doctor’s office until payment was completed. I didn’t have any ties. I was on my own. Who would miss me? I realized I didn’t even care. I checked the computer again and found that I was on duty for digging Martian rock for the next three-thousand-one-hundred-ninety-three days.
I let out one long gasp and then settled back down, turned on the wall, and watched for when my shift would start. There was enough time to sleep.
The next day I suited up, with about three dozen other men, all with heavy spacesuits on, charcoal red with mirrored visors and we went out from the airlock and out into the martian desert, with picks in our hands and spikes on our feet. I found I could hop and run pretty well, something that I hadn’t had a chance to enjoy yet. I could see it as the end of the world, but I saw it as a chance to regroup and work out. I might write a book at night with no one to bother me. Every day we went out there and dug at the rock for no reason that I could fathom until one day, at the bottom of a dark shaft we’d been working on, I came across something that wasn’t more red rock.
It was gold.
I scraped away a large swath and found a regular pattern etched in the metal. After a few minutes, the other men were together helping me.
My radio buzzed with a crackle from the guy who stayed topside. “They are on their way.”
This meant that the guards were on their way in a shuttle. Whatever it was, it was serious, and we had about fifteen minutes to see what it was before they got here.
We piled onto the gold square, now about the size of a car’s hood, and continued to scrape away at the surrounding rock. In five minutes, we’d cleared another few feet. In another five, we’d found the edge of what looked like some kind of door. A moment before the guards would arrive, we found the handle.
It was unlocked.
We wrenched at it, and the Martian soil blew away in the wind as we opened the hatchway. It was dark, and it was deep. While the other men were attaching a rope and beginning to lower themselves down into the darkness, I jumped. What would I hit? Would I survive? I whistled down through the air, falling with less force than I would on Earth, and landed on something soft. I could see the men a thousand feet above me, getting arrested and pulled from the hole. The hatchway was thrust closed, and I was left in darkness. I sat down where I was, looking around. I could see nothing.
After a moment, I allowed my eyes to get used to the darkness, and I saw again. The surrounding rocks were softly glowing, pulsing, and glittering. There was something nearby. I followed the lights, which were buried deep within the cavern walls. Traveling down, my feet stepped on gravel, which skittered into the darkness until I came to an enormous cavern. Sitting in the middle of it was a large silver disk.
A ramp extended, and stairs descended with a soft hum, and little feet attached to little bodies scurried down it.
I reached for a weapon I didn’t have and instead raised my arms to show I was no threat. Would that be enough?
They scrambled around me and shone lights on my legs.
I stopped moving.
They moved and examined my body.
I kept my arms up.
They crawled up and over my back and stood on my head. They knocked on my visor and checked their teeth in it, which they found to be hilarious.
I lowered my arms, to make sure they knew I was still alive, and they jumped back, then I was surrounded by the light of their little probing flashes again.
Either they were scanning me or they were just trying to make me feel like an idiot, I was never sure. They closed in, and then one of them took me by the hand, and they walked me towards the ship.
I looked back and heard them drilling through the door again, and the little creatures seemed to want to pick up the pace. They pointed their lights back behind me. They knew what was coming.
I stepped into the ship, which was beautiful and bronze, covered in flashing lights and computer screens. The inside seemed to comprise one large round room, a control room that was surrounded in little bunk cubicles for the crew. I saw several of them tuck themselves in while their replacements popped out and shook themselves awake. There were about seven crew members working the controls. About seven crew members were working a video display in the middle of the room that showed the guards from the jail, now on a run towards the ship, and another that showed an image of the hatchway we’d just entered closing up like a tear rejoins a body of water. The guards stopped and ran their hands over the surface of the ship, looking for the entrance, and then another one of the little creatures hit another button, and they all found themselves stuck to the surface of the ship as they were all electrocuted. When it was over, there were no bodies left, just dust.
They motioned me into a chair, which oddly was the right size for me, and as I sat down they lifted off, with absolutely no feeling of inertia in my body, and the craft lifted to the sky, through a cave-like tunnel, and disappeared into the reaches of space, at least as far as I knew. The truth was it was, only up to the moon, Phobos and back.
“They think you are dead now, Jacob,” said one of them without moving his mouth. To tell the truth, I did not know if the thing had a mouth, to begin with.
“Thank you, I think,” I said, “But I was pretty much all right with them.”
With that, he cocked his head and chortled a little.
Then they gave me the grand tour. The one who spoke to me took me by the hand and walked me around all the time, speaking quickly. Sometimes it was hard to follow their speech.
“Over here are the controls you see. It’s where we control the ship to move it around the universe. No, we’re not ‘Martians’ but we’ve seen them on television, at least the television that you remember as a child, none of that really exists anymore, I know, and over here are the sleeping quarters, they go all the way around. The part we love the most is the ceiling, which gives us a perfect map all the time of the night sky.”
I raised my hand.
“Yes, we’re here for you. No, you’re not in trouble. Yes, you’re special. Yes, you will be found.”
“What do you mean, found?”
Then I remembered no more.
When I woke up, I was standing next to a Martian gas station in full prison uniform, holding the pump on a cargo freighter that I was refueling. No one seemed to react to me, though people were walking all around me.
I asked what the year was.
It was three years later.