Authors: Jennifer Pelland
Dr. Torremocha shrugged. “Maybe. We have no way of knowing. I’m sure that if the tests continue to go well, we’ll keep searching for new applications of nanotechnology for the human body.”
“Good, good. Keep me posted, okay?”
Dr. Torremocha winced and looked pointedly down at the latex gloves on Alex’s hands. “No offense, but…I’ve heard things about you.”
Alex felt the blood drain from his face. “Oh,” he said quietly. “Well.”
He went back to his office, eyes focused firmly on the floor. So, those damned rumors had been spreading. He heard people murmur when they thought he couldn’t hear. He’s crazy, they’d say. There’s something not right about him. You can see it in his eyes. He wears those gloves everywhere—even to lunch. Have you seen how he wears a bicycle helmet when he goes outside? They won’t even let him lecture anymore. He’s got no life outside of work. He’s too single-minded about his project.
They had no idea.
He put it out of his mind and fired up his computer to see how his investments were doing. His mother had been gracious enough to die of pneumonia and leave him a substantial inheritance three months ago. It was so convenient not to have to pray for her soul. Being damned had its advantages. Now that he had her money, it was time to start searching for a suitable parcel of land, one that fit his new rules. He wanted to build in a town with a low crime rate and a nearby commuter rail stop so that if he wanted to go into Boston, he didn’t need to risk his life on the Mass Pike. He also wanted to find a place that had low numbers of reported cases of Lyme disease or rabies, and that didn’t suffer from basement flooding. He knew all too well all the dangerous molds that ended up in damp and flooded basements. And of course, the property needed to have a good hospital nearby, just in case the worst happened.
He hoped Cassie appreciated how much he’d had to rearrange his life for her these past seven years.
Maybe she hadn’t gone to Heaven at all. Maybe she was still in Purgatory, burning off her sins. Fornication: he was sure she’d committed that with that boyfriend of hers. Lying: she’d done that to him in spades. She’d broken up his marriage—surely that had to count for something. Marriage was a sacrament. He’d still be married to Alison if it weren’t for her. And married men lived longer and healthier lives. If he died prematurely, surely it would be Cassie’s fault.
The building started to rumble, and Alex snapped his head up. No. It couldn’t be. In Boston?
From across the hall, Brenda yelled, “Get in the doorway, you idiot!”
He leapt from his chair and braced himself in the door frame. His helmet! No, he couldn’t go back to get it now. He stared helplessly at Brenda, who was standing in her own doorway.
Brenda’s eyes were wide, but she managed to quip, “Act of God, eh?”
His chest tightened painfully. No. This couldn’t—God wouldn’t kill a whole building full of people to get at him, would He?
He heard a creak, and turned just in time to see his large wooden bookcase wobble and start to fall. Time slowed like molasses, and his guts seized up as he realized that the corner of the bookcase was going to hit him. Blunt force trauma, several hundred pounds of force, all concentrated in a sharp point of wood. He’d be torn open like wet tissue. There was no way he’d survive. Alex saw flames flickering in his peripheral vision, and his chest felt like it was ablaze. He opened his mouth to scream as the heat rose, flames slowly licking higher—
The bookcase missed him by an inch.
And then the shaking stopped.
Brenda sagged against her doorframe and tittered nervously. “Man, that was something! I knew they said Boston was due for a big earthquake some day, but I never thought I’d live to see it!”
Alex collapsed, trembling, onto the floor. It was wet. It was…
Oh God, he’d pissed and shat all over himself.
Brenda sniffed. “Pipes must have burst. Come on, we should probably get out of here.”
“Just…just a minute,” Alex said weakly.
She took a tentative step toward him. “Are you all right?” Then her eyes widened in understanding before narrowing again in sympathy. “Oh, God. Alex.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ll be outside.”
He tried to close the door behind him, but the fallen bookcase wouldn’t budge. So he stood behind his door and changed into the spare set of clothes he kept in his desk, wiping the shit off of himself with his lab coat.
An act of God.
He had to get that safe house built, and fast. He was too easy a target in the city. If God wanted to kill him, He’d have to work for it.
* * * *
Alex had to steal his nanobots and a copy of the monitoring software. Luckily, it wasn’t hard.
He managed to stay at New England Medical long enough to inject himself with generation one, two, and three nanobots before he finally succumbed to the constant pressure to take early retirement. So he retreated full-time to his safe house in Wayland. It had cost a fortune, but it had been worth it. His floors were covered with mold-resistant carpet, even in the kitchen and bathroom, so he wouldn’t have to worry about slipping and hitting his head. There were no sharp corners anywhere. The house ran completely on geothermal energy generated on his own property, so his power would never go out. Every room was equipped with panic buttons, so if anything happened, he could summon an ambulance immediately. He had a food irradiation system. He had a refrigerator full of every medication he’d been able to get his hands on.
Everything he needed was delivered to his doorstep, so he wouldn’t have to risk getting into an accident by venturing outside. The water was heavily filtered. The house and everything in it were flame retardant. The windows were photograyed to keep out harmful UV radiation, and bulletproof to keep out projectiles. The locks and security system were keyed to his biometrics. The neighbors were all upstanding citizens. There was a fire station less than a mile away. There was a police station less than two miles away. And there was a hospital less than five miles away.
With any luck, he’d never need it. The nanobots cleaned away arterial plaque, destroyed blood clots, kept his teeth free from plaque, repaired minor damage to blood vessels, and constantly monitored his body for irregularities. Between them and the telomeric enhancements, if he was careful, he might never die. If he just followed his rules. The rules that were more important than ever.
He glared up at the ceiling. Take that, God.
The only person who ever called anymore was Brenda, and more often than not, he let the machine answer it. He couldn’t stand to look at her face on the vidscreen, all wrinkles and white hair. Like so many others, she’d never taken the treatments. She’d said that she’d had an epiphany about the naturalness of mortality, whatever that meant. Every so often, he’d have an actual conversation with her—just often enough to keep his connection to the college open. Sometimes she’d ask to visit, but he always turned her down. She’d probably want to touch him. He hadn’t touched anyone in nearly a decade. It kept him clean. And it kept him from wanting to be touched some more.
Still, he was going to have to figure out how to befriend a younger colleague of hers soon. She didn’t look like she’d be around much longer.
The house-wide computer chimed at him as he fingered the surgical steel shunt he’d had implanted in his forearm to facilitate his weekly blood tests. He would only trust the nanobots so far, so he liked to have a look for himself. The shunt was slightly sore to the touch. He’d need to check for infection. The computer’s soothing female voice said, “News story matching your pre-programmed search parameters found.”
“Display,” Alex said, and turned to the nearest wall.
The living room came alive with text. “Pope Weighs in on Human Cryogenics,” the headline read.
Alex felt a heady rush of adrenaline pour through his veins. This was it.
The
news he’d been waiting for these so many years. He sat down on his hard plastic couch and wiped his sweaty palms on his organic cotton pants, then let out a pent-up breath and started reading.
“Today, Pope Santiago I issued a papal bull on the status of the souls of cryogenically frozen humans,” the article read. “‘While the Church decries those who would play God in such a fashion,’ he wrote, ‘those who are cryogenically frozen before death in a manner that allows for revivification retain possession of their souls throughout their time in suspension. Their souls are only delivered to the afterlife upon their natural death.’”
Alex’s nanobot-littered blood thundered triumphantly in his ears, and he pressed shaking fingertips to his lips. Oh, this was good news. Such good news. Cryogenics
would
protect him. With a sufficiently redundant power system, a well-maintained, well-armored cryogenic chamber could keep him safe from disease and disaster indefinitely. He’d need to set up his investments so they’d be crisis-proof, but that could be arranged. Perhaps he could stipulate that he be awoken every twenty years, and additionally any time there was a financial crisis. The cryogenic technology still needed a decade or two for scientists to iron out all its wrinkles, so that gave him plenty of time to work out the details. And to pump some of his savings into the most promising cryogenic research project so he’d be first in line to use it once it had been proven safe. Maybe he’d even volunteer for phase three testing.
He felt sweat trickle down his temple and patted it dry with his cuff. If only his house’s temperature regulation system wouldn’t keep malfunctioning. He pulled the small nanobot monitor from his hip and checked his temperature. 98.6 degrees. Exactly what it should be. And he knew he was disease-free, at least as of this morning’s nanobot reports, so it clearly wasn’t his body’s fault that he was so hot. He’d have to see if he could get someone new to come out and fix the heater. The last repair person had told him everything was working fine. “Computer,” he said, “lower house temperature by another degree.”
“Temperature lowered. It is now forty-one degrees Fahrenheit.”
There was no way this was forty-one degrees. Alex rose and shuffled slowly toward his bedroom to change into a short-sleeved shirt, keeping one blue-fingered hand carefully on the wall railing at all times. He didn’t bother to look out the frost-covered window at the beautiful sunny day, at the yard he’d once imagined Cassie and their children in. He hardly ever thought about her anymore. She was unimportant, a footnote. All that mattered now was keeping at least one step ahead of God at all times.
Now more than ever, Alex knew just how important it was to follow his rules. If he stayed locked in his house, if he monitored his health vigilantly, if he spent all his spare time poring through medical journals looking for new breakthroughs, if he maintained his daily low-impact exercise and blood tests, if he ate only healthy foods and kept his caloric intake low, if he moved slowly and carefully to avoid injury, if he avoided all physical contact with any living being, then he’d make it. And then he’d be able to spend eternity so safe that he wouldn’t even have his worries to trouble him. Just blissful nothingness in the Heaven of his choosing.
The battle wasn’t over, but it was clear that he was winning.
God couldn’t touch him anymore.
If only it weren’t so damned hot.
Notes on “Immortal Sin”
This story is the direct result of my Catholic upbringing. I was not built to be a Catholic. I was the kind of child that took everything literally, and was very good at getting into shame spirals. I imagined God watching me constantly, disapprovingly, taking notes on every little bad thing I did so as to lengthen my inevitable time in Purgatory. Thankfully, logic prevailed, I became an atheist at age twelve, and got out from under that weight. But if I hadn’t, I could have eventually become as paranoid as the protagonist of this piece. It was surprisingly therapeutic to write this. The medical details for this piece also come from my pathologist friend, Dr. Kristin Fiebelkorn.
CALLIE NUMBS BOTH WRISTS TO the bone before slicing deep into each one with the cutter, its sonic waves effortlessly singing through the skin and veins, and as she watches her blood slip out, she wonders how people did this in the old days. How had they kept their hands steady through the pain as they’d ripped through their flesh with sharpened metal? But then again, the end came quicker back then—back when they had water. Tubs of it, warm and wonderful, that people could soak in, the heat coaxing the blood from their open veins.
She props her feet up against the wall to make the blood flow faster. She should be getting cold by now, but the blood warms her skin, sticky and sweet. Her feet go numb, almost as numb as her hands. If she can just keep her legs propped up, if she can just keep the blood flowing, then soon she’ll be away from this arid existence and on to an afterlife where she’ll finally learn to swim.
The door to her dressing room opens, and her manager’s narrow frame casts a shadow across her body. He clucks his tongue. “Is it high tide already? I thought the full moon was tomorrow night.”
She moans and looks away. “I didn’t think you’d be checking up on me so soon.”
He actually laughs. “Please. You like to be caught. You’d wait to slit your wrists at home otherwise. Come on, let’s clean you up for the show. I’ll have your press agent release a statement. The stadium’s been sold out for months, but maybe this can drive up the online viewers.”
Her cutter is taken away, and a laser is produced to close her veins and seal up the rents in her flesh. Jeremy, her manager, has a roadie take her to the sonics to get cleaned up, and when she gets back to the dressing room, he tells her that his request for plasma has been denied. “You could trade some water rations for it, but—”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
She turns to the mirror and stares at her too-pale face. “I can’t do it tonight. I’m too weak.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” Jeremy says. “We’re putting a divan on the stage. All you need to do is lie there and moan in tune. Now get your game face on and get out there.”