The house extends beyond sight in either direction, cutting into the mountain, its corners obscured by the trees and bushes that have sprouted up between its atriums and along its walls. Light passes softly through the great windows. Here he finds Charles, standing behind the panes of glass, supported on mechanical legs.
‘Hello, Zach,’ he croaks. ‘You look well.’
‘You don’t,’ he says, stepping up to the glass. Charles is old now. Or at least appears to be. His sallow skin sags around his narrow skull, his watery pale eyes bulge above bruised bags, and his frame jitters with a slight convolution held together by the machinery that runs up the side of his legs and spine.
‘I’d invite you in for a cup of tea but I can’t. All the windows are hermetically sealed and I have no control over the only airlock. The drones come in and out to give me my dinner and my medicine, and that’s about all I get for company. Even if I did let you in, we wouldn’t be talking for long. The smallest cold would kill me. Not to mention the sunlight. These windows are actually blackout panes, you’re looking at a live feed of me.’
‘What’s wrong with the sun?’ says Zach.
‘Oh, it’s not the sun. It’s me. I developed an allergy to ultraviolet light. One bodily weakness among many. I’m allergic to almost anything, which is why I have to rotate around the house, so those little drones can sterilize everything. Pollen, mites, most kinds of mold. Almost anything biological. All nuts. Fish. Milk. My diet is very limited now. But losing the sun is the hardest. I miss the outside. I’d like to go to a park again. But I never will.’
Zach watches the old man talk. What is there to say? He can’t feel sorry for him, not after all he’s done. But it’s sad to see him like this.
‘You’re wondering why?’
‘I can guess.’
‘My DNA is unspooling itself. At least, that’s the pedestrian way the doctors put it. I’m sure it’s more complex than that. But in layman’s terms, I am falling apart, at the very smallest level.’
‘Will it kill you?’
‘Obviously. I bought myself some time building this place. At least I can catch up on some reading before I choke on my own saliva. Oh, come now, don’t give me that look. You’re thinking of all the good that money could have done. The commie schtick only lasts so long, my friend.’
‘I thought death might at least give you some humility.’
Charles makes an odd, hacking sound. A laugh. ‘Fat chance. Listen, I didn’t ask you here to argue. It won’t get us much of anywhere. Zach, take a long look at me. This is you, not far from now. This is what awaits us.’
Zach swallows. ‘What do you mean?’
Charles snarls. ‘The transit you damn idiot. Didn’t you think all that superluminal travel would have some consequence? Most fools never set foot off the planet. A tiny fraction make a single journey. It’s almost unheard of for a normal person to have made two. How many journeys have we made Zach? Ten? A hundred? Can you even remember? I can’t. And this is what happens when you stop. Time catches up. We’ve subjected ourselves to forces that no one understands. This is our penance. Can’t cheat nature forever.’
Zach thinks on that. He sees himself in Charles’ ghostly eyes, behind the fake black pane. Staring at his future in the failing body of this old man.
‘And you’re still going, aren’t you?’ says Charles. ‘I stopped a while ago, as you can see. I had a few years of my health, before all this started. It’ll happen to you too, Zach. Consider this fair warning. It’s more than I got.’
‘What makes you think I’ll ever stop?’
Charles bares a toothless grin. ‘All things end, Zach. Even me. Even you.’
Paddy Dobson
11th June 2021