--Oscar Wilde

Though it irritated both human and robotic nurses, Gwinn kept the little digital recorder on his hospice bed, where he could reach it without having to fumble on the night stand.

His trembling hands had knocked over two glasses of water already, that week. The gravity was so light, in the OGT -- Orbital Geriatric Thera-center -- that he could easily have caught them, if he'd been younger.

When the graviton feed had broken for a few hours last week, canceling their orbital gravity altogether, he'd deliberately knocked a glass over -- creating a crystalline water-sculpture in the air; the silvery brushstroke of water slowly broke up to become a miniature precipitation front as the gravity gradually came back on.

Now, he propped the recorder wand carefully on his chest, holding it with one hand resting on his sternum. That way it didn't tremble overmuch.

"This device," he said, his voice creaking into the recorder, "would record me visually, if I wanted; would hook up with a palmscreen, transcribe so I could edit -- and I don't want it to do any of those things. I just want to talk to it. I wish it could nod gravely back to me. But I'm just lying here in my permanent pajamas making recording 29..."

He paused to work up some saliva to make speech easier; finding saliva was a chore, at the age of 104, even here in orbit.

"A couple of decades ago, I think it was about 2054, I gave up trying to pretend I could keep up with technological trends. I tell myself that the world is supposed to pass me by. I've tried making a pass at the night-nurse, but since she's a robot, shaped like an industrial vacuum cleaner, I don't even get a..." What was the word?

F-a-c...something. Pronounced fass. A word he would once never have had to struggle for. Go for a, what do you call it, a synonym: "...I don't even get a whimsical response. T'wouldn't be natural, regardless of those finely tuned 'lovemates', with the vat-grown human skin on them, that console lonely men..."

He paused, worked wetness into his mouth, managed, "...yes, those terribly ironic devices notwithstanding...My opinion, however, is that anything is natural that doesn't revolt the ecology or further debase humanity."

He looked thoughtfully at the window, gathering his thoughts; outside was a long, high-ceilinged corridor, with transparent-steel panes in the ceiling that let in some of the light of the sun, and, sometimes, a glimpse of the fulsome blue-white arc of the Earth. He heard a hydrogen-cell air car hum softly by; he stared at the light striping through the window. Related the whirling dust-motes to his own thoughts. One good wind...

On the shelf under the window, not quite within reach, and next to the emergency graviton-feed, was a Sony-IBM Media Cluster, an oblong metal cluster of cryptic controls and small, arcane screens. One of his granddaughters had sent it to him. But it was difficult to sift through; so much of its offering was an outpouring of unregenerate imbecility, and he didn't know where to find the so-called educational channels, if they still existed. The Media Cluster converged hundreds of technologies and more into one box and then diverged them again as needed; that was natural for such media. Technology had its own nature.

"What is unnatural, of course, is... "

Gwinn paused as a tall, broad shouldered young man entered the room. Something familiar in the shape of him. Muscles delineated by a tight bodysuit printed with blocky patterns artfully borrowed from some 20th century abstract expressionist.

Gwinn couldn't make out his face well from here, and took him for one of the young journalists who tried to get some mileage out of the old hack -- as Gwinn thought of himself -- from time to time; he signaled for him to wait. He didn't want to lose his thought. And perhaps it would be impressive to be seen composing even now... The stranger nodded -- that nod so almost-familiar -- and leaned against the wall by the door to wait, arms crossed...

"What is unnatural," Gwinn resumed, "is the way the elderly are kept alive long past infirmity. My father wouldn't have agreed -- he was so into his baby-boomer youth fantasy. His death must've been quite a shock to him... My mind... my mind is reasonably sharp; but its center, too, does not hold... I seem to perceive a daily decay of... it's a good joke on me that I cannot think of the word, here -- cognitive!... Decay of cognitive quality. Of course I was very sick in my late '70s -- would probably have died then, but for three organ transplants, and other minor rejuvenations... And there are those who have lived handily, though miserably, to 130 -- the quality of their life is not good; they're like those boneless figures from Salvador Dali, slumped over arbitrary crutches on an empty landscape... But rejuvenation on the cellular level, repair of individual cells, millions and millions of them one by one, that is what's needed -- for real rejuvenation -- and it is what I don't have, what no one has...I have heard people in these hospices say they're weary of life and ready to go, and perhaps they are."

"I am not one of those. I did not understand the possibilities of life terribly well till I was in my late sixties... Then I was a semi-invalid, though still productive as a journalist, for twenty years...My Pulitzer, however, was long past...No, I deeply envy those capable of living thoroughly. Overcrowded and casually brutal the world may be -- over-complex, despite the moratorium on invasive new technologies in the last decade. But I want to enter the fray anyway, and I resent nature for keeping that flame alive in me while snuffing out the means to carry it into the field... I try to sustain some meaning with these probably unpublishable notes of a 20th century man's last days in the 21st century...Well, enough for now, as I seem to have a visitor."

He took his thumb from the recording tab, squinting at the young man as he sat down in the chair by the bed. The stranger was blurred by those spots of murk that moved about in Gwinn's vision.

The retinal implants he'd had put in twenty years ago needed replacing, but there didn't seem much point, now, the doctor having leveled with him: sometime this winter, barring a breakthrough in cellular rebuilding, there is some work in that area but we won't have general therapeutic access to it for another ten years or so... if ever...

What did the doctor mean, precisely, by "if ever"?

"Hello," the young man said. "Uncle James?"

"I am James Gwinn." He paused, till his mouth should become operational again. He'd already given it a great workout. "Are we...related?"

"I'm a sort of second grand nephew or something. One of your nephew Darian's sons. Rafe."

"Rafe. Would you be so kind as to hand me that glass of water, Rafe? Don't let go of it till I've got a good grip...The gravity is slower here, if that's the word, but the graviton flow keeps it in vigor... No I can deal with it now, the straw... but it takes both hands, as you can see... thank you... Well, have a seat, Rafe...You'll forgive me if I keep the glass on my chest here... If we are to talk, I'll need occasional sips... I've been holding forth already this morning... something I'm pretending to write..."

"Perhaps this isn't a good time..."

"Might well be...the only time. And you break up the monotony, my boy."

"How are you feeling?"

"Not bad. Painkillers now are very efficient. They don't knock me out as the old ones did. And the lower gravity here, the null-grav sessions -- those are a relief. Old folks who can't walk on Earth floating about in big padded rooms -- if they aren't subject to nausea. Quite a sight. So. What can I do for you?"

"I... have brought a message from your son. Bruce."

"Bruce! He might've phoned, or done a pix, rather than sending an... oh what's the word... like diplomat."

"Emissary?"

"You got it. So. Why the emissary?" One of the spots swam aside and he was able to see the young man's face more clearly. Yes, there was family resemblance: that long, bumped nose; the lips that had to try not to smirk. Even green eyes. The young man wore the sort of bodysuit favored by the buff, and Rafe was definitely buff. Though he wouldn't know that old term.

"Well -- he thought you might hang up on him. And...he thought it'd be more personal, this way. Thought you might enjoy a visitor."

"He thinks I'm angry with him? If I was, I've forgotten why. I suppose I was, for awhile. His attitude toward his later Mother. Refusing to visit her at the end. But really, I understand. One can only bear what one can bear. Is he still in that... that casino in Antarctica?"

Rafe smiled. "Oh he was never in one of the casinos. But I'll bet you know that. He's still working in satellite control there, yes."

"I would've thought he'd be near retiring -- he must be seventy-something now."

"No, he's had some new organs, a cerebral shunt... Not yet."

"I was actually going to try to write a letter, bury the hatchet... That's an old term, bury the hatchet..."

"I know that one. I mean -- it's... sort of self explanatory."

"I was going to try to wheedle him into visiting me... Really he has no cause to hold any deep seated resentments. I put aside several grand projects when he was a boy, so I could be there, with him, till he was 16 -- I took him with me when I did my global tour for the New York Times Online. Certainly he had more of me than I had of my father."

"Oh -- I had the impression you were close to your father."

"Not a bit of it. My father was too busy sulking because he'd given up a career in the arts to be an investment banker. Internet day trader specialist -- you know, when the Internet was all grandiloquent, before the media blurred together...I was determined to be there for Bruce. We have a bot repairman here who has been to the beaches in Antarctica, the under-the-big-window beaches -- underground beaches, it's something that still makes my stomach lurch to think of... Like those things... I've never quite gotten used to them..."

"He didn't know where to find the so-called educational channels, ifthey still existed. The Media Cluster converged hundreds of technologies and more into one box and then diverged them again as needed; that was natural for such media. Technology had its own nature."
     

He crooked the crooked twig of an index finger at the upper corner of the wall, where it was irising seamlessly open, to disgorge a small swarm of nanobots, like metallic bees, testing the air for bacteria, darting about the room as inconspicuously as possible.

A moment later the door opened, a squat robot nurse rolled in, extended a warm vinyl sensor to take his vital signs -- Gwinn waved it away. "Go, I have a visitor."

"How about a nice pee?" came the robot's soft, feminine voice said. It extended a hose toward his groin.

"No, good God, who programmed you for social protocol. Check your file on behavior during visitors."

"Oopsy doozy," it said, retreating.

Rafe watched it go, his gaze moving up to the deferential little swarm of nanobots as he nodded. "Bruce rarely comes up from the underground, except for a little seasonal cross-country skiing if conditions are right. I was passing through there, got in touch -- wanted to get acquainted. He asked me for this favor... He wanted to come himself, but..."

"But -- life! Life said 'Me first!' That I understand. I'm sure..."

Gwinn had to sip some water. "I'm sure I'd have been caught up in life just the same way, quite conscientiously, if my Father had lived to be that old... I'd have been no better about it. It's all part of the natural... what, the... oh Lord the memory boosters don't work for long... the natural severing, let's say... Mine and his both... I'm sorry, my mind runs to rambling..."

"Not at all. Thinking isn't rambling. I've... always admired you, you know. I read all of your books. I was quite proud to be related."

"You..." Gwinn wetted his mouth from the straw again. "Know just what to say. God bless you. Any particular message from Bruce?"

"Just to say... well not in words. He wanted me to take your hand..."

It'd been a while since any human being had surprised Gwinn. This was unexpected.

He allowed his shaking, spotted, arthritis-bent hand to be taken in Rafe's steady, smooth, symmetrical one. There was a certain urgency in Rafe's touch. Perhaps Rafe hadn't known his grandfather; perhaps Rafe was one of those young men who ached for a grandfather because of some deficiency in his father. He tried to remember his grand-nephew Darian -- he hadn't seen him but twice. He had a vague memory of Darian having four or five sons.

"So you're one of Darian's boys. How old are you?"

"Twenty four."

"Twenty four! Much to rejoice in, much to endure yet. I'll resist the impulse to give advice. Darian's boy... I didn't know Darian well -- I remember him as a slender young man himself...Very slender. There you are, so muscular. Not too muscular, not like a muscle fetishist -- but certainly more than is common among the Gwinns. We were all such skinny-minnies."

"I don't feel 'all there' unless I'm buff," Rafe said, almost apologetically.

"God, do people still say 'buff'? I hadn't heard it used in so long. But then you've read all my outdated books. Or so you claim..."

He was talking to cover what he supposed was the young man's embarrassment. The expression on Rafe's face was so ambiguous. His eyes were moist.

"Oh I've read them all," Rafe said. "The CIA and the Cartel..."

"My first! Somehow lately I'm remembering it better than later books..."

"...How the end of that one haunted me. Some people say it led to the fighting war against Columbia."

"It might've been... been one factor. If so I don't regret it. Unless one assumes that all wars are regrettable -- are... are atrocities... And they are. It was about that time that I began to realize that humanity was one of nature's failed experiments; that there was too much beast in it, in all of us, to justify its going on... And I wrote A Call For Voluntary Universal Sterilization, and tried to pass it off as Swiftian, and got in such trouble... But I'll just get into another pointless reminiscence..."

"No... reminisce on whatever you like. I have an hour. Then I have to hustle to catch my flight. It's one of those completely automated flights and there's no one to beg to open the doors if you're late..."

There was something about the young man's face that bothered Gwinn, like a gnat darting at his mind; he couldn't quite catch it...

Rafe hesitated on the edge of his chair -- then reached out with his other hand, and touched Gwinn's face, a fingertip stroke down along the old man's cheek. His young fingers trembled almost like Gwinn's old ones. Then suddenly he withdrew his hands. Gwinn could see him swallow.

"Could be, after all," Rafe said, his voice breaking, "I should go... I've done what he asked... I'm making a fool of myself..." He glanced at the upper wall as it irised shut behind the discreetly vanishing chrome bees. "Never got used to them myself..."

He stood up and went to the door.

Gwinn said, suddenly, "Wait. Would you do something for me? They won't do it here."

"What's that?" Rafe asked, turning back, eyes glistening.

"Open the window there for me. That one. About halfway. I want to hear the sound of people passing -- the sound of life passing me by, yes, but still, I want to hear it..."

Rafe hesitated, then went to the window. He examined the latch, worked it out, and shoved it up. "This style of window-- Old fashioned."

"They like it that way, Dad," Gwinn said, "so the old folks who're too decrepit can't use power windows -- they don't want them to open the windows. Not safe. And we take reassurance, here, in a few old fashioned touches, too."

Rafe was staring at him. "Did you..."

"I did call you Dad, yeah," said the old man to the young man. The young man, his father.

"That was too exactly the way Dad touched my face in his rare tender moments. He didn't often allow his emotions to overcome his anxiety about survival -- he always had a sort of... sense of competition with us. He did, you did. I'm having trouble consistently saying 'you' - looking at you. I didn't even know you when you looked this young. It was as if... as if he -- as if you -- thought I was taking up some part of the world that should belong to you, because I was your offspring...Yes and it wasn't only the touch, it was... your face, the way your eyes light and move away, and light again... the way... well, all of that could be inherited personality, characteristics in the family, but... not that scar on the back of your neck. I'll bet you paid them to get rid of it and they neglected it -- with all the other work they did."

The young face stared at Gwinn. "No, they didn't neglect it -- it's a flaw in the rejuvenation process. It replicates epidermal scar tissue."

"And Dad, unlike his kids, anyone else in the family, was the broad shouldered, muscular one. And here you are masquerading as your own great grand nephew so you can assuage your guilt over your son. That's a fine how-do-ya-do."

"I'm sorry -- I should just go..."

"Dad," Gwinn asked. "How old are you now?"

"One hundred twenty seven," said his father. Gwinn's father: The man who'd called himself Rafe.

Gwinn nodded. His heart was thudding. He hoped it would thud him to death.

"You're 127. It wouldn't be funny to say you look good for your age. You faked the accident?"

"Took advantage of an accident. I fell from the car as it went over... I knew the sea was deep there and I saw the car smash on its way down... And I had the inspiration to do it... And Maria..."

"Yes. Mother was a bitch. A yenta, Sol used to call her-- "

"Sol. Your agent."

"One of them. How many decades have you been out there, hiding from your family?"

"There were so many financial complications... I had some stock in Gerontek -- the family didn't know about it... I knew they'd come up with the technique first... I might've lost the stock if anyone knew I was alive because of all those debts... and..."

"You had to create another identity -- perhaps you had one ready, in case an opportunity came up?"

His father's young-old eyes looked away, as they always had.

"Yes. You did. You had the stock transferred to the other identity... Rafe, is it? And you bribed a lawyer somewhere?"

"Something like that."

"No real reason to risk the new life contacting children you were only occasional capable of feeling for... For whom you rationed your feelings -- and we were on half rations..."

"That isn't fair -- I felt a great deal. That's why I'm here. I had to come, at least say goodbye. But... I have to survive..."

"I suspected more than once you might be alive. No body found. Pictures, gewgaws you were sentimental about disappearing...Told myself it wasn't so -- Didn't want to believe it, when I had that vile period of black depression, the whole world of letters knew about -- such a small world, that one, now -- and you must've known, I needed such help, and you didn't come... And I had rather believe you dead than capable of abandoning me at such a time..."

"I almost came..."

Gwinn snorted. "When did the rejuvenation happen?".

"About six months ago," Gwinn's father said. His voice barely audible.

"I take it, since you have some emotional baggage around me -- around your son -- that you...that you would have offered me this rejuvenation if you could have. At this point I mean."

"I... It's...it's very expensive. Complete cellular rebuilding... From the bottom up, cell by cell... It costs seventeen million dollars, son! It's all I had. The public hasn't been told because -- well the social issues. But the procedure can be done. You are living on a pension -- there's no way you could afford it. Your property is long since sold. I had to sell all mine, and all my stock to afford this... It was... I couldn't..."

"It was you or me? That's what you're trying not to say isn't it? You had a choice -- rejuvenate your own son, or yourself. Decades of pretending you're dead and then . . . you remake yourself into someone else entirely. Perhaps, judging from your appearance, you've chosen that path you whined about missing out on -- gone back to acting."

"I have a contract," he admitted. "I'm to star in a virtual movie."

"Under the name Rafe?"

"Yes... I haven't got much income yet -- it's a decent part but it'll be years before... "

"Before you have another seventeen million?"

"Yes. And I believe the price will be going up." He took a shaky breath. "Son..." The young man said to the withered old man on the bed, "If I'd had enough money -- you'd have been the one that I rejuvenated, of my kids..."

"Get out, Dad. Get out. Go. I have a revulsion for the unnatural -- that means you."

Gwinn's beautiful young father left with relieved haste. Gwinn counted the seconds; he knew exactly how long to wait. As he waited, he plucked the little silver wand from its holster -- the emergency graviton feed. He set it to discharge a significant heaviness. Then he got up -- dizzy, swaying, his poor balance almost betraying him. But he made it, staggered to the window, set his feet, and looked down; he saw the door open... He aimed the wand of the graviton feed at the media Cluster -- in the lighter gravity here it would fall too slowly otherwise.

And he shoved the media Cluster out the window.

It fell two stories and struck his father squarely on the head. He could see death in the way the body lay on the sidewalk; in the lush spread of the blood.

Old age was like gravity; you could compromise with it, to a point -- but they'd found, in orbit, that in the long run they needed some gravity to stay healthy, to stay in "right relation" to the birth-world, to nature. Nature needed gravity, it was fundamental to its organization; so was entropy, in another direction, so was old age. The satisfaction he felt now was multi-leveled, like the GTC.

With some effort, he managed to close the window. Shaking with exhaustion, he went back to bed, and settled himself in to await developments. The nurses, fortunately, believed him incapable of getting out of bed on his own. He reached for his digital recorder, and spoke into it: "There are indeed satisfactions to be had, however, even at this point in life..."

the end