Solar Sailer Read online

  Bob shook it off and brightened his smile. Didn't make sense to dump his problems on someone else. “Hey, no worries. You're right. I've got a lot of time and there are a lot of smart people and machines out there. Somebody will figure it out.” He held up his glass. “In the meantime, I’ve still got my slot at the University. And now there's some mighty fine beer.”

  As he took another drink two men came through the door and took stools down the bar from Bob. Grem stepped back a bit. “Gotta work. I’ll be back in a few.”

  As Grem moved away Bob looked into the mirror behind the bar. He saw a gray-haired old man, face wrinkled with age and experience. He looked at the hand holding the glass of beer; it looked about right for seventy. A healthy seventy, and right for the rest of his body. The package as a whole looked aged but he thought he should be grateful. He was rather young looking considering how old he was. Unchanged for years. Two hundred years, give or take.

  The eyes and face in the mirror hardened, and he looked away. He knew what the view was like.

  Looking seventy in a world where almost everyone looked thirty or younger was not the best of circumstances. It wouldn’t be so bad if there were a few more people in the same situation. There weren’t a lot in the beginning, though, and even the few that there were had slowly disappeared. On the plus side, some had made it through the bad times and gone into space. On the minus, a few hundred years of famines and accidents hadn’t left a lot of survivors even with the longevity treatments. Then there were the people who made the decision, the ones who couldn’t take being lonely old people in the land of the young. He just didn’t like to think about them.

  He thought about Meg. They had both had the stabilizing treatment. The first ones to get it had been those who were both valuable and threatened by old age. It was nearly experimental when they started the treatment. It had worked, of course, but for the old ones like Meg and him there had been a major drawback. The old ones who were treated stopped aging, but they stopped at the age they were at. At first it was an easy price to pay to help rebuild, especially since the expertise they had acquired was critically needed. It wasn’t until the young ones started getting the treatment, with ages stabilized at twenty-five to thirty, that things went sour. Over time, the world Meg and he knew became younger and the original “old ones” became rarities. Not just rarities, but oddities.

  They had made it through most of the bad times. Thank God they had both gotten in to the experimental group. He didn’t know what he would have done if she had died in her nineties (or younger) like most people they had known. For sure he wouldn’t have made it through the bad times without her.

  As it was he’d come apart completely when he heard about the accident. They had made two hundred and fifty years together, much of it through really tough times. They had been survivors at a time when life was at risk everywhere.

  Then suddenly she was gone. A once-in-a-century accident, they’d said, as if the safety record meant anything to the people who lost loved ones. The University psych people had fought to bring him back from his breakdown for two solid years. He was mentally healthy now, sort of. He still wondered whether all the time and effort of the psych people had been worth it. He was still an old one in a world where everyone else was young.

  Bob’s thoughts were interrupted by a slap on the back. “Well, hello, old man. My, my, you don’t look a day over a hundred.”

  Bob turned to see his friend Al. “Considering I’m supposed to look seventy, that’s not so good.” He stuck out his hand. “You don’t look much younger than a hundred yourself.”

  Al smiled and shook hands with Bob. “Just stayin’ alive.”

  “Definitely. Come on, pull up a stool. What’ll you have? Grem’s got some really good beer on tap.”

  “Beer sounds good.” Al looked around and saw an empty booth. “Would you mind moving to a booth? Easier to chat over there.”

  Bob rose up from his stool. “Sounds good.” He turned and waved at Grem. “Bring another beer for our friend here. We’ll be over there.”

  Grem waved at Al. They moved and slid into the empty booth.

  “How have you been?” asked Al. “It’s been a long time. I didn’t realize how long until I started thinking about calling you.”

  “Doing all right,” responded Bob. “I had the same reaction when you called. Just didn’t occur to me how long it had been since we last got together.” He took a sip of his beer. “This longevity thing makes it easy to waste a lot of time. Like time is cheap or something.”

  Grem walked up and put Al’s glass on the table. “Another old timer. Good to see you, Al. Seems like it’s been forever since you’ve been in. What’s it been, ten years now?”

  “I think ten is about right,” said Al. “We were just talking about that. Now we’ve got time to waste, and it seems like that’s what we do with it.”

  “I know what you mean. I don’t know what it was like in the old days but it’s really easy to let things slide now. You’ve got to have something you want to do to keep moving. Gotta have a life plan or something.” Grem looked at Bob. “Like that thing we talked about. Making a trip to a star.”

  Al looked curious. “What’s this? A trip to a star?”

  Bob smiled. “A group of AIs have done experiments that seem to confirm that Einstein’s limit can be circumvented. If we hang around long enough we might see the first faster-than-light ship. We might even see humans on a planet around another star. Probably still a long trip, but not centuries like on a sublight ship.”

  Al frowned. “Hmm. Well, even with FTL a trip to another planet that’s worth going to would be a long one.”

  Bob shook his head. “Time is something we have a lot of. And who knows, maybe with some work even marginal planets might be livable. With all the time we’ve got, maybe a challenge is something we need.”

  “Maybe.” Al looked doubtful. “I don’t know, though. Humanity made a lot of challenges for itself. Not sure it makes sense to go off into the wilds of space looking for more. Besides, what would we do with a bunch of new territory? Probably just make a mess of it, like we did with Earth. At least here it was a matter of survival to straighten the mess out. If we started on new planets, we might just go around wrecking perfectly good ones because we could leave and forget about what we’d left behind.”

  Bob shook his head and smiled. “You always were a bit of a pessimist. Do you think we’re going to forget all we went through and just walk away after doing it again?”

  “Look around, Bob. They’re no different on the outside, but the young ones were never in the mess and don’t think about it. You know, people who are actually in their twenties and thirties, not the ones that only look like it. They’ve got the information in their heads; they don’t have it in their hearts. Not like the ones who came through the bad times. Not like us.”

  “Maybe. We don’t have just humans now, though. The AIs won’t forget. Neither will the enhanced humans. I think it would be hard to backslide.”

  Al shook his head and frowned. “I don’t know. If humanity goes out pioneering there won’t be a lot of law out there. There will be those who figure it’s all right as long as they don’t get caught. It’s not like somebody from Earth is likely to take off into interstellar space to chase down rumors of ecological destruction. As for people in other star systems, interstellar travel will be slow for years, maybe for decades, maybe for centuries. They’d have their own problems. Nobody would be interested in hunting down ecological pirates that mess up their own worlds.”

  Bob countered, “I think you’re too pessimistic. You can argue that we might destroy another planet’s ecology, but with what we can do now I’m not sure there’s a rationale for that sort of thing any longer. Why destroy a good planet when the things we need are probably available on uninhabitable planets? Even in our solar system, we can mine the moon, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Using the tough places might be more expensi
ve initially, but how much did it cost us to fix the damage we did to Earth?”

  Al looked thoughtful. “I guess you might be right. Nowadays we can put the really bad stuff in places where it doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s the real answer.” He took a drink of his beer. “Wow, this is good. I think I’ve been gone too long.”

  Bob finished his first beer and signaled Grem to bring another round for the both of them. “So what’s on your mind? Probably not interstellar travel.”

  Al lubricated with another taste of beer. “No, it’s not about interstellar travel.” He remained silent for a moment and then said, “Actually, I came to invite you to a party. A farewell party.”

  Surprised, Bob asked, “A farewell party? Have you got another project with the Corps?”

  Al smiled sadly. “No, it’s not for the Corps.” He hesitated again. “I’ve decided to leave.”

  Bob wondered if Al was still right in the head. “Yeah, I got that. That’s what a farewell party is for. So where are you going?”

  Al searched for the right words and decided to come straight out with it. “I’m not going anywhere, Bob. I mean I can’t stay in this life anymore.”

  Bob stared at his friend. “You mean…you can’t mean you’re going to suicide.”

  The nod that Al responded with seemed a little shaky to Bob. Maybe there was a way to talk him out of it.

  “Are you sure, Al? What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

  Al took a drink before he answered. “A little of everything, I guess. Frankly I’m surprised I’ve been able to hold out this long. Maybe it would be all right if we were like the young ones. The ones who got the treatment at the right age. I’m lonely, Bob, and I can’t fix that. We’re freaks, old people living among the forever young.

  “I don’t regret having done it. The country needed us and the world needed us. But now we’re paying the price for the decision. Some of the young ones are sympathetic, but most don’t care. For some we’re just reminders of the bad people who wrecked the planet, whether or not we helped put it back together again.

  “Man, this beer is good.” He took another sip, then set his glass down. “The Corps hasn’t called me for a couple of years now. They don’t need us anymore. My first kids have been adults for a hundred years. Even the second bunch are in their sixties. They talk to me now and then but it’s been years since I was a real part of their lives. Alia divorced me decades ago. She’s still around, I hear, but trying to bring that back would be like trying to raise the dead. Once in a while I run into some young thing that decides it will do her soul good to have sex with an old man, but they’re kidding themselves and they can’t kid me.

  “It’s not a life anymore, Bob. The world is telling me I’m obsolete. I’m no longer needed, even by my family. It feels like it’s time to call it quits.”

  “What about space? It’s wide open out there and completely different from what we’ve got here. I can’t imagine the Exploration Agency would turn you down. After all the things you did for the world? How could they? Even with your age issues, they need all the technical people they can find. I think they’d take you as soon as you walked through the door.”

  Al shook his head. “You’re probably right, but I think starting another job would be a temporary fix. Besides, I’m not interested in living in one of those glorified boxes out there. They make it look pretty but the reality is you’re living in a big tube under tons of rock just about anywhere you go. Not my cup of tea. I spent too much time fixing things so we could have a beautiful outside again.

  “Moving out wouldn’t change my situation. My problem is that I’m lonely. Most of the ones who were like us are gone and the young ones don’t need us.

  “Not the way I need to be needed anyhow. Alia divorced me after the second family was grown up. We hoped that the new kids would help us stay together. It didn’t work. She said she didn’t want to do it again and we’d been together so long it was boring. When I see my kids, you can tell they’re struggling too. Everyone’s been divorced, looking for a new playmate. Of course, they don’t look a day over twenty-five.

  “You know what really gets me now, Bob? There are no kids around anymore. I see a little one maybe once a month now. Sometimes it’s longer than that.

  “My daughter is sixty-one. The girl from the second bunch, I mean. When she applied for motherhood twenty years ago, they gave her one kid. One. That one’s grown up now, if twenty is grown up anymore, and just started to think about applying. She’s saying she might not have one until she’s sixty. Forty more years before there’s another little one in the family. And again, Family Planning will give her one. Maybe not even one, you know? If none of us are going, is there room for more kids? Maybe the only new ones will be born off Earth.”

  Bob tried to be sympathetic. “You know the rules, Al. A lot of the problem, maybe most, was overpopulation. It could get even worse with all of us living for centuries.”

  Al smiled ironically. “Doesn’t really help me. Knowing why doesn’t change things.” Bob thought that sounded pretty familiar. “And even if Family Planning wasn’t a problem, who would I have a kid with? You and I are the last of the old codgers, ugly old farts in the land of the beautiful. Raising a kid means someone would have to look at this face for at least a few years. Who would want to do that?

  “I’d like to stay with someone for a while. I’m not interested in two weeks of pity sex, although frankly I’d take even that now. It’s been a long time since I’ve had someone sharing a bed with me.”

  That struck a chord with Bob. No one would ever replace Meg, but after so many years it was lonely. Really lonely.

  Al sighed a long sigh. “It’s not one thing. It’s all of it put together. Not really anywhere to go and no one to go there with. I’ve decided I don’t want to do it anymore.”

  Bob hesitated, then gave it another try. “Are you really sure about this? Death is pretty permanent. No one’s going to bring you back once you’re gone.”

  Al stared at his drink for a long time. “Do you believe in God, Bob? Could it be there is an afterlife?”

  Bob shook his head slowly. “I’m not sure. I see where you’re going with this. Do you really want to gamble that there is something after death?”

  Al grimaced. “When times get hard we start to look at our options.” His face softened. “Do you ever think about Meg?”

  Thinking about Meg as part of this conversation was something Bob had hoped to avoid, but here it was. He took another sip of beer. “I do. I do a lot, actually. In a way she hasn’t really left me. I miss her. I’d like to think she’s out there, somewhere, and that someday we can be together again.” This time he took a solid gulp and emptied his glass. He caught Grem’s eye and pointed to his glass. Grem nodded. “Do you want another one?”

  Al finished off the little bit he had left in his glass. “Sure. Sounds good.” Bob waved his hand again, held up two fingers and Grem acknowledged.

  Bob looked down at his empty glass. “You know, in my heart I want to believe that there’s something more, that maybe we get to retry life and not make the mistakes we made the first time around. Or start a new life that makes some kind of sense. Then my head kicks in. What are we up to now, a hundred fifty orders of magnitude between the smallest and the largest things in the universe? That doesn’t even count the possibility that there might be a huge number of alternate universes out there, a lot or maybe all of them as big as ours.

  “I think about ants and how close they are in size to us on the scale of the universe. On the grand scale we’re just a tiny bit bigger than them, and maybe on that grand scale we’re also just a tiny bit smarter. Do you think God cares a heck of lot more about us than he does ants? Maybe he or she cares about all life, but that doesn’t mean he’s so committed to life that he’s got us and all the other intelligent beasts on an infinite loop, letting us all have a multitude of shots at things we haven’t done right in our prior lives. Maybe God and the univers
e are actually limited in some way and there just aren’t any options for him or for us. Who knows? I don’t want to think about Meg being gone forever, but it’s hard to have much hope. Too many paths to oblivion and too few to paradise.”

  Their conversation stopped for a minute as Grem brought fresh beers and took away the old glasses. “Thanks, Grem,” responded Bob.

  “I’m not betting on an afterlife,” said Al. “It’s just…I’m getting tired of being alone. I wonder if I’m taking up space that should be going to new life. I just don’t know if I can do it much longer.”

  “You know what I think? I think you’ve been on the sidelines too long. I think we’re back to doing things like going out to space. Maybe that applies to me, too. We can’t just sit around watching the world go by. We’re slowly going stir crazy in the life we’ve got now. Time to get off our butts and try new things. And there are new things to do. We should be out there trying to do them.”

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I haven’t tried hard enough. I know it’s the final alternative. Maybe I should give more things a try before I decide I’ve had enough.”

  Things still felt delicate and Bob wasn’t sure the next question was timely. But he gave it a try.

  “So, do you think you can put off this farewell party for a while longer?”

  Al nodded slowly. “Maybe. You’re the first one I’ve told. I didn’t want to get the kids all wound up until I could talk to someone in the same position. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  Bob smiled. “I’m glad you did. We should try to stay in touch more. We’ve let things slide. It’s so easy to put things off now. So much we’ve been through. Just getting together more often would be a good thing. Especially since we’ve got a long way to go yet.”

  “You know, I hadn’t thought much about what we’ve got left. Sounds like you’ve been keeping up with the news more than I have. What’s the word? Have you spoken to any of the doctors about how long we’ve got? I stopped being concerned about medical stuff years ago. How about a fix to our peculiar problem? Any word on that?”