Bone Tired

[Saint_]

Here's a short story I wrote about getting old and how quickly the world seems to change...

“Bone Tired”

By

Jon St. Ives

“Today is my 210th birthday!”

I remember my grandfather saying that very well. I was only fourteen at the time and the entire family, four hundred fifty strong, was standing in the grassy meadow on the slopes of Mt. Purgatory. Just behind him stood the family cabin, somewhat sagging and weather-beaten, but none the worse for its three-hundred-plus years of wear.

The wildflowers were in bloom since it was a pleasant August day, and a cool breeze was blowing the fragrance across the valley. Even above the voices I could hear the soft whooshing sound of the wind in the pines.

I loved the mountains. I was lucky because since I lived on Earth, I got to go to them at least four or five times a year. My cousins lived on Jupiter's moon, Io, at a mining facility, and watching them with their wide eyes and excited looks reminded me that I should never take things like this for granted.

As I looked around, I realized that the adults were very serious, whispering amongst each other and making the younger children nervous and excited. Many of the younger ones were talking to their expert programs on their wristcomps, asking questions or sending messages to their friends.

We had gathered to hear grandfather speak to the entire family. No one knew why he had called a complete family meeting. It was very rare for everyone in the entire family tree to get together. We had family reunions like everyone else, but those were regularly spaced at 5-year intervals.

It was only two years since the last one and travel expenses for some of us, especially those on the outer planets, was extremely expensive. So it was strange for grandfather to call for a gathering at this time. Everyone was there, though, and I gathered from my parents that grandfather had paid for travel and lodging for those who couldn’t afford it on their own.

Grandfather was sitting on the front porch of the cabin in weather-beaten rocking chair, flanked by his sons and daughters. Finally he rose and walked to the front of the porch. He looked incredibly old to me. It wasn’t just because he was the oldest person I knew, it was because he was so wrinkled, deeply tanned, age-spotted, and obviously old. Grandfather did not like biotechnology very much, so he showed the signs of age much more than the rest of us did, although he had given in to bloodstream nanobots when he had his heart attack about one hundred years ago.

“My dear family,” he began, his voice horse and creaky but still deep with an undercurrent of strength, “today is my 210th birthday. In my wildest dreams as a young man, I never dreamed that I would see this day. For me, this day is an absolute miracle. I know it seems strange, but most of the people of my day, my parents and their parents, rarely lived beyond 100.”

A murmur ran through the crowd at this statement, although everyone knew it to be true. It was just strange actually hearing someone talk about dying before 100. People still died that early, especially out in the asteroid belt. But people never died that young anymore unless they were the victims of an accident.

"I've resisted change mostly, and I know that has upset some of you." He continued, “I’m willing to use the grown replacement organs. The transplant process is almost flawless now. My last heart transplant was nearly painless as a matter of fact!” He smiled for a moment, no doubt recalling his previous three heart transplants that were not so painless. “The drugs and medicines that I take keep me feeling excellent except on the coldest of mornings up here.”

“I have even made a few concessions to the new age. As most of you know, ten decades ago I got my nanobots and now those little buggers are traveling throughout my system fixing the damage of the ages.” He chuckled a little here. I thought that he must still think it strange to have microscopic robots swimming through his blood, matching DNA patterns, killing bad bacteria and viruses, and repairing free radical damage even though most children under eighteen had the nanobots in them from birth these days.

“No,” he continued, “having the nanobots in my bloodstream never really upset me because it’s still my own blood coursing through these old veins. I’m also grateful for the lack of pain at this point in my life.”

“But I’m most grateful of all to have lived to see my children and my children’s children grow to be such a fine family! You have spread across the planets and the asteroid belts making homes and carrying forth our little clan on its great voyage into the future. I must confess that I feel a little like the last Centurion of Atlantis standing at the docks and seeing the final ship of colonists head for the other continents.”

“You were most likely expecting me to make The Decision today. I know that I am long overdue and many of you have chided me time and again for taking so long and putting off what is the most obvious choice for your generation. You may even think me a little selfish since, in the state I am in now, it’s not much fun to have to drag me around. I can’t run, swim, or play with the little ones. Nor can I climb, bike, and fly with the older of my children.”

“I know that all of you who are older than eighteen have already made The Decision and I understand perfectly that there is no danger and that the process has been completely perfected. My doctor tells me that after countless billions of transfers, not one in a million has a flaw nowadays, and even then the flaw was easily corrected with another upload phase.”

“I understand all that. Unfortunately, I do not have the news you expected.”

“I will not be making The Decision at all.”

At this, the crowd let out a roar of surprise, shock, and confusion. Men shouted to grandfather, “But you can’t! What about the family?” Women gathered the children that were in danger of being trampled. Some of them began to cry. The entire field was a tumult of voices, protests, and motion. The crowd surged forward towards the porch.

“Stop!” My grandfather shouted, his voice carrying the full authority of a six-generational family behind it. The crowd grew quiet again. All eyes were on grandfather now.

“Listen to me and understand,” he said, his voice taking on a very tired note. “You know that I love all of you dearly. What I do today I know will hurt you all and I am truly sorry for that. But your way is not mine. I am not going to follow the family into gigaspace. My brain will not be engrammed and downloaded to the beautiful new machine bodies that all of you have. I realize that means that all of my memories will be lost to the family, but I have written a diary during the last fifty years that I hope will go a little way in solving that problem.”

“Please spare me any lectures on the loss of my “soul” or any other such nonsense. I'm not afraid of that. All I have to do is to spend time with any of you adults to know that you are just the same person you were before you gave up the flesh and became android.”

“Suffice to say I have my reasons and they are my own. I will not change my mind. Immortality is not for me. Tonight, I have instructed the doctor to nullify my nanobots and let me die a peaceful death with my family beside me. It’s the way my father died and his father before him and it’s my wish to leave you this way too.”

With that he turned and stepped back into the cabin. His oldest children followed him, many with tears in their eyes. The family stood stock-still and dumbfounded in the field for the space of a minute. Then they slowly began to wend their way back down to the camping areas and cabins below. They spoke in low voices between themselves, but I could catch a bit of it.

“Once he’s made up his mind there’s no changing it, stubborn old man.”

“I’ll never understand the old coot, but I sure do love him.”

“Mommy? Does that mean that grandpa will go away?”

“Yes dear. We’ll go say goodbye to him later tonight.”

“Huh. I think he’s just being foolish and selfish!”

“Frank! Not in front of the children!”

Yes, I can remember that day as clear as if it was yesterday, although three million years have passed now. I’ve thought a lot about it as the years passed. Many, many times I wished grandfather could have been the rest of the family and I on our grand adventures.

I wished he could have seen the Tauran Nebula, the Volcanoes of Aldebarran, the Milky Way from above the plane of the ecliptic, or that radiation storm by Beta Lyrae that was a hundred light years across, filled with static discharge and light.

He never got to fly down the Black Velvet Tunnel nebula, or see N-space from outside of a ship. If he had lived, I know he would have loved the Fountains of Irridia deep in the core of the Galaxy where there is no night and a thousand colorful suns fill the sky all day long.

He could even have been there when we found the Correscidians. He would have loved mankind’s new friends. I just know he would have. We all did. They were just so …lovable! What fun we both could have had when they showed us how to travel the event horizons of a thousand black holes, jumping from star to star. He could have seen a thousand worlds as pretty as Earth and better. And he would have been so proud to know that his family, his, was one of the first to brave The Deep. I thought of him very much as we traveled across intergalactic space that year.

He missed so much, I thought. But I felt I understood him a bit better now, as I stood and looked out at the family.

There must have been over a million of them gathered there. We were on Tharsus. I’d picked it because of the beautiful mountains that towered 30,000 feet around the plain where I stood. A gorgeous waterfall cascaded down the side of one of them, cutting a rip miles wide by the time it got to the bottom. The plain was covered in red, yellow, and orange trees that reminded me of the fall colors in the Rockies when I had last seen grandfather.

Over the plains, the family hovered, a million pulsating and glittering balls of color and energy. Small twinkles of light chased each other playfully through the crowd. “Children will be children,” I thought to myself and smiled inwardly. Some things never change, even after millions of years.

“My dearest family,” I began. “I have been with you since the earliest days on Earth. I am one of the last who remember the home world and system. Many of you have been by my side for all the millennia since the Great Diaspora. Believe me when I tell you that I love you all very much.”

“I am old now, it’s true, but my fusion-heart and polynimbic brain are as functional as they ever were. It’s true that a few of my nanobinders are not what they used to be and I’ve had a bad limp since that crash on Feyeria. Not even the psions could repair my knee after it had melted that bad. Titanophorous memory-metal is the best there is, but it’s not completely indestructible.” I had to laugh there, thinking of all the times that I had cheated death over the years. Being an android made you very, very tough, but not invincible!

“These are small things, though. I want you to understand that it is no physical problem that bothers me or upsets my judgment today. You have all been very patient with me, and for that I thank you. Please try to understand. I will not be making The Decision at all today. Complete immortality is for you, but not for me. I will not complete the transfer process and change myself to pure energy as all of you have. Instead, I have elected to let the dampers on my heart go tonight and let my atoms return to the galaxy from whence they came.”

I was expecting a reaction, and of course I got one. The valley was lit up like an exploding supernova. Flares and flashes of light shot through the crowd. A solar flare had less color and energy than my family up in arms at the thought of leaving their grandfather behind. The intensity was so bright that I had to blanket my eyes and turn on the anti-radiation fields.

“Stop!” I sent out the FTL wave signal at my highest intensity, making myself a little woozy from loss of power. “You must understand. This is the way my father went and his father before him. It is my wish and I will not change my mind.”

My ship stood behind me. Although she was more than one million years old and quite antiquated by modern standards, I loved her clean lines and silver skin. “This is where I want to end it all,” I thought to myself as I turned and walked back in through the door. My sons and daughters were hovering worriedly behind me. Already they were overloading my receptors and circuits with pleas for me to think over my decision. Poor Diana was beside herself and shimmering uncontrollably.

I sat down in the command seat and talked with them for a while. Later, others came by and talked and pleaded, but eventually word got around that I was not to be swayed and everyone quit asking. They were sad and confused, but they understood that this is what I wanted.

I had finally understood my grandfather. When he had chosen not to become an android, at first I thought the same thing as everyone else. That he was religious and he believed that when his brain had been engrammed and deconstructed that his living soul would be lost.

Of course, all of us that had made the decision knew that wasn’t true, you were the same person you had always been, just a little faster and smarter. You took with you all your foibles, faults, gifts, and talents just as you were in the flesh. The only difference being that, barring accidents, you would never die. You’d never be sick and you’d never age. None of us at the time could understand why anyone would ever want to die. I mean, if you could be pain-free, young, and healthy forever, wouldn’t you go for it? It made no sense.

Then, shamefully, in the burning loss of his departure I had accused him of cowardice. “He could not follow us because he was afraid of change!” I had thought in my ignorance. He was a weak old man, not deserving the family name or my respect!

But none of that was true. I didn’t have the perspective to judge him at that time, but I did now. After three million years, I finally understood what it was that drove him to such an end. We were different now. Mankind had changed with that remarkable ability we had to adapt to almost anything. I had marveled at the time that one hundred years should seem long for a person. To the youth of today, a million years was but a day.

I knew now what I had not understood about my grandfather. It was the cumulative effect of the crushing heaviness and brutal immensity of time. To have lived and seen all that you ever thought you would see, and then to see more and more. To feel all human emotions again and again until they were like dirt in your mouth without taste and flavor. To see your enemies and comrades from your youth, your loves and dear friends, fall by the wayside and leave you alone on the path. That must have been a burden that was unbearable for my grandfather.

And I was just like him. I had not adapted. Just as my grandfather had gotten tired of decades of heartbreak, adventure, and change, so had I. I could look back across millennia and see thousands of voyages to millions of other worlds. But just as he had felt the creeping burden of too many experiences, too many lost things, and too much emotion, so had I.

No, my grandfather was not a coward. He was just tired. Bone tired. And so was I.









Copyright 2006

Jon St. Ives

[sharedfastlane]

Mmmmm, like it!

[Saint_]

Whoops! I deleted my subscription to my own thread....I'm a goof.:-2

[ZAP]

[B BEAUTIFULLY written!! I love your imagination. Thanks for sharing.