Nor Youth Nor Age
by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro
When we found out that our son was still alive and needed our help, Subee and I had the first real argument of our artificially-aged lives. I told her that we should at least go back home to Leiria and collect our thoughts before making a decision. If we left for New Zealand we might never complete our Tour. She said there was nothing to decide: he was our son. She was going to the North Island, with or without me. We hardly spoke ten words during the twenty-six hour flight from Barcelona to Wellington, and not a dozen more during the day's drive from Wellington to Gisborne.
Half an hour from the coastal suburbs we turned onto a steep cracked road. Ten feet before reaching the arched gateway of the secluded estate the road was overtaken by shrubs and blackberry weeds. I pinged the GPS and confirmed we were in the right place - "right" being a relative term, of course. We parked the rental by a semi-collapsed pillar of gray stones. I stretched. Redwoods and black alders blotted out the horizon all around. On the trip my ear-mite had whispered about the cliffs of the Dog of Paoa, the greenery of Kaiti Hill - none of it visible from here. This must be cheap land, I thought. The place where failed entrepreneurs erected lives of self-deception.
The gate creaked when I pushed it open. Subee slapped my hand and pointed at a combox in the arch-side. The rose quartz name-plate read Thabiet D'Costa. No surprise. I imagined our son had slipped out of one name and into another with the same ease with which we put on our pajamas each night in our drafty apartment.
Flakes of chipped taupe paint fell away from the sticky buzzer when my finger pressed the button. I shrugged at Subee and pressed again, flicking off a slimy residue with my thumbnail. We waited. Then Subee tried it. "You're the Bentons," a female voice finally exclaimed through the buzzing speaker. "I'm so glad you showed up." I wondered how many others had failed to do so throughout the years. "Give me a minute. I'll be right out and I'll take you to him."
I looked into Subee's deep charcoal eyes. Take us to him? Why couldn't he come out and greet us himself? She avoided my gaze.
If this was part of some scheme to make our son appear vulnerable so he could thieve our money again, I wasn't going to fall for it. We hadn't seen Syd - Thabiet - in decades, and though Subee was obviously dutiful in her sense of motherhood, time made no difference to me. We'd been young when he'd left, inexperienced parents trying to cope with the Sens revolution and the rift between Progresistas and Cuidadores. A week before Thanksgiving Syd told us he was going to marry Sandra, a young Progresista involved in human Sens testing. When we started to ask him questions about her he became furious. The next morning we found a note from him. Don't bother to look for me: I'm on my way to becoming someone else. As we soon discovered, that transformation involved stealing our life savings. After the initial anger, we prayed he'd come back.
He never did.
Why should I trust him now?
Why should I care?
I smelled the eucalyptus and did some quick math. We became lentigos, as they called artificial-agers, at the age of thirty-five, jumping forward to seventy-five. After that we'd aged ten years in the next half-century. Assuming Syd hadn't tampered with his own ageing he'd be sixty-seven now, making him eighteen years our junior.
"I'm Berra," a young woman said, appearing on a pebbled trail barely visible through the front garden weeds. Her auburn hair was pony-tailed and she wore no make-up. Berra was draped in a medical apron. Her hands were covered by nurse's sensi-gloves. She nodded when she reached us, as though recognizing something familiar. "Please follow me."
As we were led into the dilapidated house I got the feeling I'd met her somewhere before. She had Syd's cleft chin, and Subee's deep-set eyes and bronze skin. I put my hand on Subee's shoulder as we entered a large hall with yellow walls.
In a far corner of the spartan room was the only decoration in sight, a display of pictograms, floating holographic pixels that dissolved from one snapshot to the next in a repeating loop. We didn't ask permission to study them more closely. Berra excused herself, and by the time she returned we had deduced her role.
We had grandchildren.
"Of course," I said, clearing my throat. "Syd had children. You better tell us what this is about. What does he need, and why isn't he here?"
Berra asked us to sit in stiff plywood chairs with stainless steel legs. As soon as I felt the ramrod back against my spine, I wanted to bolt from this place. I longed to squeeze Subee's hand, run with her back to the car, drive to the airport and fly back to our hard-earned lives .I let the fantasy slip. With my arthritic legs and high blood pressure I couldn't run even on a good day, and today I had bounded across time zones and continents. I was so tired I wanted to throw up.
"I'm not exactly Thabiet's daughter," she said.
"Then who are you?" Subee asked. From the way she pursued her lips I could tell she was fighting back tears.
Berra's facial muscles tugged at her lips, as though willing her mouth to smile. All that came out was a grimace.
"This is ridiculous," I said, pointing my finger at her. "Speak up or we're leaving."
"I'm his waughter," she said. "I'm sure you've heard of us. The result of an infusion of the genetic material of his biological daughter and his wife. They both died years ago, I'm afraid. I'm his only remaining offspring, and his caregiver."
The room started to spin.
My head sank, my vision blurred. Subee and I had heard of these abominations, hybrid recreations that were neither original nor copy. It figured that our long-lost son had become mixed up with the seediest aspects of Sens biotech. I closed my eyes.
"Thabiet is very ill," I heard Berra say. "He's a lentigo, just like yourselves. The most recent treatments have not been kind to him."
We had resorted to variable ageing in desperation. Our son had left us with no money. When the new Progresista government in Portugal threatened to deport Subee back to Bangalore, we had no choice but to disappear. We traded in our youths for new identities, senior discounts, and social security pensions. It was the only way to stay together.
"Why on earth . . .?" Subee's voice trailed off into a whisper, returning me to reality.
"How old is he?" I asked.
"Outwardly, about a hundred and ten," Berra replied. "He's made many sacrifices to get where he is, but now he's found he can't go on without your help."
"We have nothing to do with this mess," I said, crossing my arms. "For all we know, our son is dead."
"Not yet," Berra said, "But he will be by the end of the week, unless you intervene. He had developed a rare cellular disorder. His treatment requires genetic samples from both parents. I need some of your skin."
I stared at Subee. The wrinkles on her delicate forehead spelled a frown. I shook my head gently. Her sense of responsibility had dragged me this far, but I wouldn't budge any further.
"Then I'm afraid he's out of luck," I said, and rose from the rigid chair.
Subee's eyes wouldn't let me go. They inquired: Where is your compassion? I struggled for an answer. It was the exhaustion, I told myself, the lack of sleep. The time difference. The shock of how far our son had strayed from Cuidador values. The revelation of this unnatural granddaughter. But did any of that entitle me to condemn him to death? In the end, only one thing mattered.
I needed to understand.
Berra avoided the condescension of saying she could imagine what we must be going through. She had the decency to realize that there was no way she could know our pain, not being a parent herself. Her reasonableness frustrated the heck out of me.
"Maybe I over-reacted," I said. "Even if I refuse, I'm sure you could scrape up some of our cells, couldn't you?"
Berra nodded.
I remembered the adhesive on the buzzer, which we'd both rung. Ah. A back-up in case we refused.
"But it's better if you provide the samples willingly," she said. "They'll be cleaner."
"Fine. What do you need?"
"Just hold out your hand."
Berra extracted a thin rod with a black handle from her pocket, removed its sheath, and extended a long moist filament from the rod. She held the filament firmly against my right palm and moved it like a comb. My hand trembled - not unusual under stress. She did the same with Subee, whose hand was steady. Subee smiled in acknowledgement of my bravery. It made me uncertain, that she thought me so weak as to need positive reinforcement.
A long time ago, I'd promised to be a strong father and husband.
Here I was, shaking.
"Syd's hands are a lot like yours. Or they were, before his most recent Sens treatment."
I contemplated the liver spots on my fingers. Skin stained with the sins of a past out of which I'd cheated myself.
Berra glanced at a small screen on the bio-scanner in her medical apron. A light changed from magenta to green. Numbers flashed. "He'll be ready to see you soon," she said. "In the meantime, I'd love to hear about your trip. And let me get you something to drink - some Tasmanian tea."
I sensed it would be useless to refuse. She disappeared with a brisk step.
"Subee, I'm sorry," I said, turning to face her.
"He is still our son."
"Maybe genetically," I conceded. "But we shouldn't believe anything this woman says."
"Do you remember the story you told me on our wedding night?"
I squinted.
A large window on the wall to my right let in the setting sun, barely visible against the harsh phosphorescent light from the ceiling panels. Apparently the rumors about waughters and hussons all suffering corneal deficiencies were true.
Your dad wouldn't ever get mad at you, he'd just become quiet. The day after your sixteenth birthday, Mr. Benton received a call from the police. You'd wrecked his electric Granada, and you'd been driving without a license. You told me that when you spoke with him, you expected his face to be unreadable."
"Why are you bringing this up? I was a foolish kid."
"But you did see something - you saw him cry. For the longest time you couldn't figure out why he'd broken into tears, instead of yelling at you, or withdrawing completely, like he normally did."
"Subee," I said.
"Later you understood that he cried because he blamed himself. He felt like he was failing as a father. He mistook your teenage disaffection for his own paternal incompetence."
"Things were different in his generation."
"Maybe things haven't changed so much," Subee said.
The large room with the bright lights felt unnaturally still and chilly. Light reflected off Subee's gray hair, briefly creating the illusion of a halo.
"I don't blame myself for Syd's actions, if that's what you're getting at," I said.
"He can't be your son unless you're his father," she replied.
Berra returned with a white plastic tray and disposable cups. "Sorry," she said, handing them to us. "These are temporary quarters."
I said, "How does Syd make his living?"
"He was an architect, quite a successful one," Berra said, leaning against the wall.
"But he never liked science or math," I said.
"Hated geometry," Subee added.
"Actually, he became a structural engineer first," Berra said, "and only later an architect."
I realized how ridiculous it was to try to pit my knowledge of Syd against Berra's, to try to compete with her on that level. I had only known Syd for the first fourteen years of his life, and a half-century ago at that .Thabiet D'Costa was an entirely new person.
"You said his wife and daughter died?"
"Terrorist attack of '29 in Jakarta. He took it hard. Withdrew to the Staten Landt. That's where he fashioned me."
Berra entered a command into her apron screen and the pictogram in the far corner of the room transformed and swelled. It revealed a smiling brunette holding a plump, curly-haired infant outside a mosque.
"That's not Sandra," I said.
"Who?"
"The woman he left us for. " I massaged my temple, stroked the white stubble on my chin.
"Oh," Berra said. "That's a part of his past that Thabiet rarely talks about. He was married twice before I came along. He aged himself both times, for love. Sandra was the first. When they met she'd just leapt from seventeen to twenty-five. He followed suit, only to discover that he'd missed out on life. His new adult body burdened him with more responsibility but conferred no new wisdom in exchange."
I gritted my teeth. It was true. Sens had given a whole new meaning to "acting one's age," a fact I forgot more often than I remembered.
"He had money at the time. When it didn't work out with Sandra, he considered starting over. It seems you had been saving handsomely for his education."
Subee said, "It was my dream that he would become a doctor. That's expensive, even in Lisbon. It seems he did all right."
I remembered the double and triple shifts at the gene scanning agency, the long nights made bearable by our dreams of a family.
"And after that - well. Here we are. The second time he aged himself the supplier provided faulty code. It took years to manifest, but the damage had been done. Quality control tends to be kind of shoddy in illegal biotech." She rubbed her hands together. "I've always wanted to know - what was he like as a young man?"
There was no easy way to answer that question. I cradled my head in the red glow of the sunset and sighed. Whatever we thought we knew about our son, we had been proven wrong. We never imagined that he'd run away, and he had. We were sure he would return to us. Wrong again. And an architect?
When we ran out of places to search for him, we would invoke him through conversation. It was like framing a butterfly while harboring the hope that its desiccated wings would flutter back to life. If we told the stories and anecdotes enough times, he might just re-appear and join in the fun. I remembered now, in this lonely disheveled house in Gisborne, all the things we had said back then. I regretted that we'd been so successful in hammering those nails into the cross of our recollection. What I would have given to remember nothing.
"He was a special boy," Subee said simply, and there was little I could add.
The air in the middle of the room wavered. I blinked, wondering if my body had finally decided enough was enough.
"That's him," Berra explained. "He's bedridden, you see. Too weak to walk, even to speak. But I have his consciousness connected to this remote encephalo-sensor." She foot-tapped a miniature projector discreetly installed in the floor. A yellow light shimmered, droplets of iridescence swirling together to form the portrait of an elderly figure, out of focus and translucent.
"He's ready to speak to you now," Berra said. "It may take his brain a few moments to adjust, since his body is still in bed."
The resolution sharpened, the translucence disappeared. Syd Benton, self-made man of the world, stretched out his arms and waited for a hug.
I remembered approaching Syd early one morning, before Cuidador prayer. The lights were on in the bathroom, the door open. He had spread shaving cream on his smooth cheeks and was staring at my razor, his cool blue eyes reflected in the mirror like gemstones. Only later did I realize that he hadn't been ready to shave, but simply emulating his older friends at school. Syd would lower his voice and apply his height and large bone-size as colors in an artist's palette, dabbing them on a canvas of learned confidence and adult mannerisms to simulate that he was a grown-up. Looking at him now, it occurred to me that the world had never been fooled by his con. The clarity of his eyes was diluted by cataracts. The whole face was crevassed by dark lines, drawn into gaunt, weathered cheeks sprigged with patches of scruffy white beard. And the same telling age spots that gave us our name - lentigos - mottled Syd's skin. The profusion of gray and brown and black discolorations was like a tattoo of time.
Subee and I took turns reaching for the hug with some awkwardness, unsure as to how solid the projection would be. Solid enough to grasp, as it turned out, but not to hide Syd's feebleness.
"You look so young," he said, in a raspy voice as high as when it had started to break. He swallowed with visible effort. I looked for sarcasm in his eyes, but found only weariness.
"Well, you know what they say," I replied. "Old age is wasted on the young."
He shrugged. "I hope you'll excuse my current state. Even as a projection, I can't convince my brain to pretend to be in much better shape than I actually am."
"We're here to help you," Subee said. I shot her a look.
"Let's not worry about appearances," I said. "Now that we have this geriatric convention in full swing, why don't we get to it."
"Forgive your father's forcefulness," Subee said. "We've both travelled a long way to be here."
I couldn't help myself. "No, don't forgive it. You interrupted our Tour of Reflection, and we won't be able to afford another. It was our last chance to say goodbye to this life, to make our peace, and you destroyed that. You're ill and we've given your nurse the samples she needed. What else do you want from us?"
Syd looked down and paced stiffly, hardly flexing his knee-joints.
"I'm more thankful to you than you can probably imagine right now," he said. "Berra has started the first phase of the treatment. I'm feeling better already. In a couple of weeks the damage will be reversed, and I'll be a regular age -addled centenarian. I'm sorry I interfered with your plans. Truly, I am."
"Then?" Subee asked.
"There are things I wanted to know," Syd said. "Even with the treatment, I won't have much time left. And I wasn't sure how much you might have, to be honest."
Berra interjected for the first time: "Sweetie, don't push yourself too hard. You don't have to do this if you don't want to. You're going to get better."
"Do what?" I asked.
Syd coughed. His whole body quaked. "As a result of the defective genetic transplant that caused my disease, I lost many of my memories. I can't remember anything . . . about either of you."
I tried not to spit while I spoke. "Your don't remember us? Let me get this straight. You don't recall what you did to us? More than convenient. Wouldn't you say Subee? He doesn't remember! Let's all sing Cuida-ya and dance around the fireplace.
"This wasn't a good idea," Berra admonished, her tone more stern than before. "You shouldn't be placing yourself under this level of stress, Thabiet."
I turned sharply, looked outside. Dusk had crept up on us. There was no way we were going to spend the night in this mausoleum. I kicked over my chair and staggered towards the window.
"Thabiet? Why don't we start there? That's not your name."
Subee said, "Eusebio! Can't you see the boy is sick?"
"The boy?" I cackled. "What boy?"
"What do you mean?" Syd asked.
"Thabiet is not your real name. You were born Syd. Syd Benton."
"I see," Syd said.
"You know why you changed it?"
"I'm sure I had my reasons," he said. I couldn't tell whether he was being smug or factual.
"Running away is never a good reason."
The edges of his lips threatened a grin. Not ha-ha, but bemused: like a parent who scolds its child for doing wrong but can't help being seduced by the cuteness of the misdeed. Only in this case he was both father and son, perpetrator and chastiser. Where did that leave me?
"Is that what I did?" he asked. "Is that why you're so mad? Why you erased me from your lives?"
"Syd. You really can't remember?" Subee wasn't confirming; she was imploring. I cringed.
All because of this old prune of a man. I knew I could have knocked him over without even trying, shoved him down onto the ground. Buried him in darkness, the place where he'd dwelled all this time as far as we'd been concerned. He must have seen the hardness in me; tears swelled in his age-molten eyes.
"You left us with nothing except heartbreak. You put us through hell, is what you did," I said. "Your mother went through a phase of insomnia - a wave of night terrors, visions of you dead, face all puffed up and blue, skin necrotic from a Sens gone bad. You might as well have been dead, for all we knew." I wanted to say it then, to tell him what had been on my mind all those years. I wished that he had died, so that we could have put an end to our hope. But the air wouldn't rise from my lungs, and my lips wouldn't form the words.
He was crying now, each tear like an autumn petal coaxed from its stem by the game of my accusations. "I can't remember," he whispered.
I breathed in and out. I felt the blood drain away from my emotion-pinched face, from each fine red vein that coursed through my sallow shin, making a map of my anger.
I had always thought that our son had stolen our lives. Since Subee had received Berra's message, I suspected this would somehow cinch the deal.
I realized now that the life Syd had snatched hadn't been ours.
It had been his own.
"Whatever my sins, I ask your forgiveness," he said. He shoulders sagged with the effort of keeping upright. He took a few shuffling steps toward his mother, placed his hand on her face and wiped her own tears. "Please."
Subee took his hand in hers, kissed it and held it there.
"'A boy's will is the wind's will,'" she said. "I forgive you."
"Thank you."
Then he said, "I've heard that line before."
"It's from a poem by Longfellow." Subee paused, which was my cue. But I didn't have the emotional stamina to pick up and say what she was about to. "Your father used to read it to you when you were a boy. The first Sens experiments in humans were starting up, and we were afraid for you. It was supposed to be a kind of warning. 'My Lost Youth.'"
Berra said, "Maybe it's better that you didn't remember, Thab. We don't always need to be reminded of our mistakes. That poem was more than a warning."
I turned to face her. Her eyes were closed, but there was mite-REM.
"I found these logs in Thab's files when he sent me looking for his medical history," she said, eyeballs moving furtively beneath her eyelids as she stared at a file bank only she could see. "Thab asked me to pour through his past for anything that might shed light on his condition. It's the same database that helped me trace you. But these files are password-protected. We couldn't figure out what they contained. Until now."
"You broke the code?" Syd's voice was dry, frail.
Berra nodded, eyes still closed. "'My Lost Youth.' I'm going to transfer the information to you."
It streamed into my mite, and from there it unspooled in my consciousness, a procession of cold facts that coiled around my own version of the truth like DNA, reprogramming my perspective. It was clear that Syd had regretted his terrible mistake, as he thought of it. When Sandra left him, the gravity of his actions caught up with him, and he looked for us. But it was too late. Just as all our efforts to locate him failed because we were looking for someone the wrong age, he had no way of knowing we had undergone an alteration. The parents he'd once known were gone.
I realized then what Berra meant when she talked about being reminded of mistakes; she hadn't been referring to her creator and partner, but to us.
And I saw from the ghost on Syd's face that knowing this provided no relief. He blamed himself for our lost time, as well as his own.
"I don't feel well," he said. He started to fall. The image flickered and he was gone.
Berra left us to attend to Syd's needs. I asked if we could join her, but he was sealed off in a cleanroom and decontaminating us would have been more trouble than it was worth. He was asleep, and only Berra would understand the myriad readings on the biometric scanners. She promised to return within ten minutes, but it was more like an hour. I felt Subee's hands gently rubbing my neck and I dozed off. When I woke up Berra was speaking to Subee in a hushed voice, and I didn't need to hear the specific words to know that she was troubled.
"Thab's been through a lot," Berra said. "His body is responding to the treatment, but it's going to be a few difficult weeks. Nausea, back spasms, migraines. He'll get through it."
I nodded. "Thank you for helping him. Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
She seemed amused.
"Do you like it here?"
"It's my home," Berra said without hesitation. "Where else would I be? I belong by Thabiet's side."
I wondered, not for the first time, if her attachment towards our son was part of her programming, conditioning - whatever you wanted to call it.
"I know what you're thinking, Mr. Benton," she said, and she was right. "It's true that your son made me - but we're all made, one way or another. Zygotes or plastigenes, it's all the same in the end. I love him because he's an enormously generous, warm human being." She seemed lost in memory for a moment. Then she added, "I love him for the same reasons you love your wife."
I saw it in her face then.
She had become his caregiver after falling in love with him, not the other way around. My eyes wandered back to the discolored hardwood floor. A few planks away from my feet, a series of dents near the door led to the other rooms. Everywhere a thin veneer of dust and the dirt of age coated the walls and floor. This house might have looked smart - twenty years ago.
"Does he need money?"
Berra chuckled. "Sorry. I just realized that because this house is in disrepair, you must be thinking he's in financial trouble."
"The medical technology - "
"Your son came here only when his illness began. Wanted to get away from everything. When he has his strength back, we'll be moving away. I'm sure he'll tell you all about it himself."
"Well, that's a relief," I said. I tried to think of any poor architects and engineers and decided she might be telling the truth.
"Where to?" Subee inquired.
"Back to his city of birth. Leiria." She said it almost like an afterthought.
I couldn't think of my own words, so I borrowed someone else's. "'A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'"
My eyes stung.
After this eternity, our boy was coming home.
"'And among the dreams of the days that were, I find my lost youth again.' He felt responsible for you, you know," Berra said.
"For us?"
"He's had more life experiences than you, and he's older. I don't think even he, with all his forward-looking, realized that one day he would become the father."
"He was so stubborn," I said.
"He aged himself for Sandra, the first time. So that he could be with her after she'd become an adult in appearance. Maybe so, in part. But there was another love that moved him to it."
I inched forward. "Yes?"
"He wanted to be a grown-up because he looked up to you," Berra went on. "Because he admired you and wanted to be what you were. It's in his journals, even if he can't remember it."
"He's certainly taken after Eusebio," Subee replied.
I couldn't deny it.
I rose, trembling a little. It was time to leave. Subee knew I had no desire to stay here. Ten minutes from Gisborne we'd passed an inn that I'd commented on. She intuited my wishes now, as only a companion through - and across - time can.
Subee said, "Miss D'Costa, you have been very kind to our son. You are taking good care of him. Thank you. Thank you, thank you."
In a gesture at once absurdly formal and reassuring, Berra gave us a handshake. "When he recovers, he'll still have to take it easy. He is more than thankful for your assistance and has arranged to pay for all your expenses on this trip. But you may want to hold off on your Tour of Reflection, at least for now."
I had started towards the door.
This stopped me cold.
"Do you think there'll be a place for us in Leiria, Mr. Benton? Thabiet - Syd, I suppose, I might as well start calling him - has written about the Cathedral and the Castle. And the pharmacy -"
"With the tiles of Socrates, yes," I said.
All the places we'd avoided for fifty years, all the places we had rendered invisible when he disappeared. They would all be coming back now. I reached out my hand to Subee. Her fingers were warm, tender. She beamed with the same irresistible contradiction of confidence and shyness as the first time I'd asked her out on a date, several lifetimes ago.
I said, "We'll be happy to show you around."
Alvaro Zinos-Amaro grew up in Europe, mostly and despite the advice of his betters earned a BS in Theoretical Physics and studied creative writing. He now lives in California. His fiction has appeared in Farrago's Wainscot, Neon Literary Magazine, New Dead Families and other online venues. His reviews and critical essays have appeared in The New York Review of Science Fiction, The Internet Review of Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Foundation and elsewhere. If you too are waiting for your own pet Aineko, visit Alvaro's blog.
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