Immortality: Part 3

It's all for a good cause

The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real

Previously: A showman by the name of Stan Lazarus has been accused of murder and fraud by his supposed customers. They claim to have not received the advertised product: eternal life by way of expensive trips through the portals. Instead of carrying on with the story, today we’re jumping back 150 years into the past. Just go with it…

The city state of Lairn, Palinor.
3052. Brightsun.

There were only two seasons in Lairn, sat as it was along the equator. One half of the year was wet; the other was dry. At the turn of the season from Brightsun to Verdant, terms inherited from the north, clouds would begin to roil on the horizon, for months never quite reaching the city. The rainforests would cry out for relief, their mists burning away with each day’s sun. Eventually it would come, but not yet.

Stalanov stood on the balcony of his clinic and observed the evening’s sky. Tall clouds towered far off, drifting in a wide gyre, taunting the city’s inhabitants. The rivers were already swelling, run-off from the higher altitudes reaching them even if the rain was still weeks away. The heat made the air tight and surfaces uncomfortable to the touch. If Stalanov was to reach out and hold the stone of the balcony for too long, his hand would burn. He liked that time of year. It felt pregnant with potential.

He was making progress. Only thirty years of age, he was already being lauded as one of the greatest micrologists Palinor had ever seen. Educated in Lairn at the university, an institution perpetually in contest with Bruglia’s Fountain University, Stalanov was seen as the city’s next great champion. His work would elevate the city’s standing on the continent and beyond. Even Bruglia, with its new-found independence and power wrought as a consequence of those pesky portals, would have to pause and take note. Kaenamor had been gone half a century, yet still nobody had been deemed worthy to be his successor.

Stalanov intended to earn that accolade.

It was a shame he’d never met the fabled wizard, but he’d disappeared long before Stalanov’s birth. Vanished the same night as the portals opened. Rumours abounded, but nothing had ever been confirmed by Fountain University or Bruglia’s authorities. They preferred to leave the man’s fate to the imagination.

The sun was still high, despite the lateness of the day. He took a deep breath and returned to the shade and relative cool of the clinic. Below was the public area, where he and his colleagues treated the sick. Micrology’s capacity for healing had always been known, but Stalanov had elevated it to an art form. The upper floor was his private domain, where he conducted his experiments. He intended to change the world.

There were two cages, each holding a mouse. One lay on its side, gasping for air in the humidity. The other bounded about its cage, playing on a wheel. The tests appeared to be a success, though it was still early days. The mice were twins, born on the same day, but that was not apparent to the naked eye. One seemed youthful; the other altogether ready to die.

3062. Verdant.

The elderly man sipped at his cup of tea. “This is very good.”

“My assistant knows how to make the perfect infusion,” Stalanov said. He lit the operation lamps, positioned around the man’s chair. “Are you finished?”

Looking surprised, the man peered into the cup. “Oh, yes, so it seems.”

Stalanov took the cup and placed it to one side. “Please relax,” he said, positioning the man’s wrists on the arms of the chair and looping the straps over them. “I want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

“That’s very kind, very kind,” the man said, smiling. “I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“We have high hopes.” Stalanov tightened the straps, then crouched and checked the similar straps that bound the man’s ankles.

“Will this help me remember?”

“Perhaps,” Stalanov said, checking the man’s pulse. “It’s more about ensuring that you no longer forget. What’s gone is gone, but we can perhaps help you build new memories.”

“Ah, yes. I would very much love to remember my daughter, you see. I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks and, you know,” he made a fluttering gesture with his eyes, “it all just goes away.”

The old man’s daughter had died two years earlier. The degeneration of his mind had been accelerating ever since, which is how his file had fallen on to Stalanov’s desk.

“Do feel free to keep talking,” Stalanov said. “It will help with the procedure.”

“Oh, of course, of course. I’ve always been a good talker, that’s what they’ve always said about me. Talk your legs off, if you give me half a chance. When I was a lad I could charm the ladies, you know, given half a chance.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

He reached out, drawing power from the lamps, and peered into the man. The lamps dimmed as he conducted the energy. Stalanov felt the man’s skin, the slack, old membrane of his face that barely held together atop muscle and bone. He pushed past, through sinews and blood vessels, burrowed his way through the bone, feeling each cell, each component part of the man’s physical being. Stalanov had done this his whole life, from the moment his skills manifested. He excavated his way through the skull and reached the brain. It felt ancient: withered and decaying, the rot immediately evident. The man had been losing his faculties and was no longer able to care for himself.

“Where am I?” the man said, sitting more upright. “Who are you?” He pulled at his restraints, uselessly. “What’s going on? Why am I tied to this chair?” Stalanov could see the brain activity spiking, saw the neurons firing in a hundred million directions.

The human brain was beautiful, if chaotic.

Ignoring the man’s befuddled shrieks, he felt his way along synapses and around neurotransmitters, a hunter now, searching for damage. The man’s brain was misfiring and broken, full of dead ends. Stalanov began severing the faulty connections, rewiring them and forging new pathways. If this worked, the man would have his life back. He wouldn’t remember what he’d already lost, but he would at least be able to live out his final days with dignity and independence. He would be able to think like his youthful self.

It took three hours. Stalanov was unaware of his surroundings, his entire consciousness interfaced with the patient’s. He moved through the mind, repairing it as he could.

Then, at last, it was done. Stalanov withdrew, pulled himself out and stood in the surroundings of his clinical workshop, momentarily disoriented at his physical existence.

In front of him the man was slumped in the chair, his head lolling at an awkward angle, his mouth agape and saliva dripping from one corner. Darting forward, Stalanov checked for a pulse. The man was alive, though his heart beat with reluctance. “Can you hear me?” He took hold of the man’s head and repositioned it, so that he was sat upright. There was no response.

Confused, he reached back into the patient’s mind. Something had gone wrong. There was nothing there. The brain had ceased.

3072. Brightsun.

“Are you sure this will work?” the father asked. He was short, broad shouldered and bore a thick moustache. A sheen of sweat sat upon his skin.

“It absolutely will work,” Stalanov said. “I have conducted many tests, all of them successful. It is a proven technique.”

The father nodded. “Good. It is the best for her, and for us as a family. My wife would have done the same, if the option had been available thirty years ago, I’m sure. It’s for my girl’s sake, though. A little longer, you see? More time to be a child, to stay innocent. Isn’t that what every father wishes for their daughter? A few more years without the corruption and temptation of other men. Keep those lustful feelings at bay.”

“Yes, quite.” Stalanov wasn’t really listening. The man’s religious beliefs were neither here nor there, but he had provided an incredible opportunity regardless. His daughter was eleven years old and would soon be coming of age, at least according to the family’s history. That meant marriage, or liaisons at the very least, and there was a particular and peculiar group that reacted against such things for girls. Stalanov found it generally abhorrent, but it wasn’t his role to judge. Besides, the experiment was larger than any of them individually, more important than the girl or her father or even Stalanov.

He’d halted the onset of adolescence in animals, even large primates. This would be the critical test, though. If he could put the girl’s development into stasis, and then reactivate it at a subsequent time, it would prove his most critical hypothesis. He would have achieved control over ageing, and thus over death itself. And not a moment too soon: he had turned fifty years himself. Time would not wait for him.

3074. Verdant.

The rains fell incessantly. The air smelled wet, every surface in the streets disturbed by the continuous downpour. Dust turned to mud, the flood channels swelled, sheets of flowers bloomed on the plains. It had rained all day and continued through the night. Stalanov lay on his bed in his modest house, awake, staring at the ceiling. The home was simple, as he poured all of his funds into the clinic and his work. The humidity was too stifling to close the windows, so the constant noise of raindrops impacting on stone and metal and wood echoed through him.

There was a knock at the door. An unfriendly knocking, urgent and demanding. He hurried himself to his feet and pulled on a shirt, then padded through the house, grateful for the cool touch of stone. “I’m coming!” he shouted.

After he unlocked the door it was forcibly thrust open, pushing him back into the room. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, before noticing the uniforms of the city guards.

“Doctor Stalanov?”

“That is I. How dare you enter my house without permission. Don’t you know who I am?”

The guard captain smiled. “I know precisely who are you. You’re under arrest.”

Stalanov’s first thought was to his experiments, some half-finished, back at the workshop. “On what charge?”

“Malpractice, illegal experimentation on sentient races, deliberate grievous bodily harm, unsanctioned invasive operations, sexual assault…” The captain tilted his head and grimaced. “Need I go on?”

“Sexual assault? This is ridiculous.”

The captain consulted a notebook that he produced from a shirt pocket. “Yes, that one is in relation to the irreparable injuries inflicted upon one Ilana Yrtin. The mother is pressing charges against you.”

The girl from two years prior. “I was trying to help,” Stalanov said. “It was on the express request of the father.”

“Yes, well, he’s under arrest as well. Nasty thing you two did to her. Healers say she’s permanently scarred. Won’t be able to have children.” He tapped the side of his forehead. “Did a number up here, too, apparently. Anyway, that’s nothing to do with me. The magistrate can deal with it. Hold out your hands, please.” He held metal shackles.

A sequence of possible scenarios played through Stalanov’s head. The girl had been unfortunate, of course, but the science of wielding was inexact. It required iteration, and perfection was never attained in the first instance. Her sacrifice could still help countless others, change the very face of the planet, but only if he was able to continue his research. He could plead his case with the magistrate, but it sounded to Stalanov that a judgement had already been made. Perhaps the university would speak on his behalf? He could even continue his work from prison, if necessary. No - that would never be allowed. They’d confiscate his work, shut down the clinic. All the hundreds of people he’d helped in the course of his career, who the clinic had healed, and yet they were choosing to focus on his small number of failures. It was unfair.

The captain was accompanied by four other guards. It was a relatively trivial task for Stalanov to squeeze shut the blood vessels to their brains, just long enough for them to lose consciousness. The five men slumped to the floor.

He rushed about the house, dressing, packing a bag of essentials. A quick stop at the clinic, then he would be on his way. Lairn would not benefit from his genius, but perhaps somewhere else would.

The road was hard. He was not used to being a traveller, without bed or permanent shelter. He had lived in the city his whole life.

Travelling during the wet season made matters worse. The paths were washed away, and caravans moved slowly and with difficulty. He found a way regardless, from one cart to another, one village to the next. Each evening he worked on himself, using a mirror or a puddle to carve at his reflection. A tiny change each evening. First the outside, then he ventured inwards.

The journey took six months. At first he didn’t even know where he was going. The wanted posters appeared, forcing him to accelerate both his movements and his manipulation of his own flesh. The years began to drop away. It hurt, and he was doing it too quickly, but it was necessary. He couldn’t risk being recognised. The Stalanov who had lived for half a century had to go away.

A younger version of himself reached Bruglia, his old nemesis. He’d never been there before. It was a calmer place, somehow more refined than Lairn, but also less exciting. It was set in its ways, the glory days far behind it.

The same could be said for him. He’d evaded capture, and had managed to roll back the years such that he now appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He had perfected his techniques, at last, but too late. The rest of Palinor would not benefit from what he’d achieved. He would be the first and last recipient.

Portal transit was hideously expensive. He used the last of his funds to pay for a new identity, changing his name to Stanley Lanova, and made the journey to Mid-Earth. As he passed through the portal he felt his wielding capabilities fade away, like the sudden silencing of rainfall after a storm.

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Thanks for reading!

How is everyone this week? We’ve had lots of extended weekends here in the UK, which is always a nightmare when it comes to the writing routine. Great for hanging out with friends and family, disruptive for creativity. As such it’s been three weeks of scrambling.

Read some interesting stuff of late:

• This interview with the production designer of Rings of Power from

  Elle Griffin
  was interesting, in that it hints that the only way to build utopian cities is under the authoritarian rule of a dictator.

• Tears of the Kingdom is out today (woo), and this retrospective on the music of the Zelda series from

  Marc Normandin
  is great. Love the bit about musicians having to program music in binary. Madness!

• If you’re not reading

  Mike Sowden
  , you really should be. Over on notes he's regularly making brains explode. Did you know we live in the sea? Or that four seasons only exist in relatively narrow bands on Earth?

Right, how about some curtain peeking?

Author notes

Well, this chapter wasn’t in the plan. Part 3 of ‘Immortality’ was originally intended to continue the story, probably from the point of view of Kaminksi and Chakraborty, as they carried out the investigation.

The problem with that is it would have inevitably been a bit similar to the first two chapters in the storyline: dialogue-driven, interview-based. I wanted to find out more about Stan Lazarus, but do it in a more interesting way.

Hence - flashback! We get to see Stan’s past, which is a more surprising way to explore who he is than having him simply tell people. This chapter also becomes a way to peek at a different corner of Palinor. Ultimately, it’s a more empathetic way to explore Stan, and to get inside his mind.

What we also get is an opportunity to explore some cool spec fic ideas in a more direct way. Each of the snippets in this chapter is about posing a question, and exploring some what if possibilities. Longevity treatments and finer control over ageing is probably something that will happen at some point in the next 200 years, and it’s going to raise a lot of ethical conundrums.

Anyway, next week we’ll go back to the modern day to catch up with Stan and find out how he got from here to there.

Thanks again for reading!

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Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash