Infinite Lives: Short Tales of Longevity

By Third Flatiron Publishing

"Infinite Lives: Short Tales of Longevity" is a new speculative fiction anthology with the themes of longevity, immortality, and technological life extension.

In "Infinite Lives," a man cursed with immortality finally finds joy when technology defeats death, an astronaut finds himself spaghettified by a black hole, a fairy queen returns to earth to bid goodbye to her dying human lover, the Grim Reaper finds an enthusiastic successor in a coffee shop barista, a rebel subvert AIs who don't allow death, a rich oligarch tricks his way into the Garden of Eden for a taste of the Tree of Life, a conquistador and his war dog put their dip in the fountain of youth to good use, aliens convince a scientist to abandon her immortality drug and let evolution take its course, a wooden puppet rues the day he never became a real boy, a war criminal pays back the lives she took, a grandmother decides ageism has got to stop, and a Zoroastrian angel battles a demon through eternity, until a truce becomes love. These and many more stories entertain while exploring the pros and cons of longevity and how it is achieved.

Third Flatiron Anthologies feature multiple winners of science fiction and fantasy reader polls and recommended reading lists. "Infinite Lives" presents 28 original stories from an international group of contributors. Writers include Brian Trent, Sloane Leong, Matt Thompson, J. B. Toner, Larry C. Kay, David F. Schultz, D. A. Campisi, Russell Dorn, Samson Stormcrow Hayes, Ingrid Garcia, Maureen Bowden, Brandon Butler, Caias Ward, Leah Miller, Megan Branning, Robert Walton, K. G. Anderson, Louis Evans, John Paul Davies, David Cleden, Tom Pappalardo, Philip John Schweitzer, Martin M. Clark, Wulf Moon, Mack Moyer, Konstantine Paradias, E. E. King, and Sarah Totton. Edited by Juliana Rew.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Third Flatiron Publishing
• Release date: Dec 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781733920735

Third Flatiron Publishing

Juli Rew is a former science writer/editor for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and is a software engineer by training. She is a believer in the scientific evidence for global warming. She also publishes fantasy and science fiction stories by other authors at Third Flatiron Publishing.

Book preview

Infinite Lives: Short Tales of Longevity

Third Flatiron Anthologies

Volume 8, Book 26, Fall/Winter 2019

Published by Third Flatiron Publishing

Edited by Juliana Rew

Copyright 2019 Third Flatiron Publishing

Boulder, Colorado

ISBN# 978-1-7339207-3-5

Discover other titles by Third Flatiron:

(1) Over the Brink: Tales of Environmental Disaster

(2) A High Shrill Thump: War Stories

(3) Origins: Colliding Causalities

(4) Universe Horribilis

(5) Playing with Fire

(6) Lost Worlds, Retraced

(7) Redshifted: Martian Stories

(8) Astronomical Odds

(9) Master Minds

(10) Abbreviated Epics

(11) The Time It Happened

(12) Only Disconnect

(13) Ain't Superstitious

(14) Third Flatiron's Best of 2015

(15) It's Come to Our Attention

(16) Hyperpowers

(17) Keystone Chronicles

(18) Principia Ponderosa

(19) Cat's Breakfast: Kurt Vonnegut Tribute

(20) Strange Beasties

(21) Third Flatiron Best of 2017

(22) Monstrosities

(23) Galileo's Theme Park

(24) Terra! Tara! Terror!

(25) Hidden Histories

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Support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/thirdflatiron

We always appreciate your reviews too.

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License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

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Contents

Editor's Note by Juliana Rew

Tunnels by Brian Trent

A Billion Bodies More by Sloane Leong

Del Boy Falling Through the Bar, Forever by Matt Thompson

Left of Eden by J. B. Toner

A Last Word by Larry C. Kay

Dry Bones by David F. Shultz

Only the Poor Die Young by D. A. Campisi

Long Stretches by Russell Dorn

Professional Envy by Samson Stormcrow Hayes

At the Precipice of Eternity by Ingrid Garcia

Frost on the Fields by Maureen Bowden

Secrets from the Land Without Fear by Brandon Butler

When They Damned the Name of Oma Rekkai from Memory, I Danced by Caias Ward

Thoughts of a Divergent Ephemeron by Leah Miller

The Scarecrow's Question by Megan Branning

Abe in Yosemite by Robert Walton

Wishbone by K. G. Anderson

The Reinvention of Death by Louis Evans

President Redux by John Paul Davies

Sweet Release by David Cleden

Chosen by Tom Pappalardo

Like a Seagull, Hurling Itself into the Mist by Philip John Schweitzer

Found Wanting by Martin M. Clark

Cold Iron by Wulf Moon

The Last Son of Geppetto by Mack Moyer

Find Her by Konstantine Paradias

Grins & Gurgles

Dear AirBnB by E. E. King

Best-Selling Items from the M.R. James Collectibles Catalogue

Credits and Acknowledgments

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Editor's Note

Fiction abounds with characters who can cheat death. Legends tell of people who lived a long time, like Methuselah. Some have rightfully earned a form of immortality (for example, Shakespeare or Hank Williams). Buddhist religion has Amitabha, god of infinite light and infinite life. Some species just naturally come by it (cats, bristlecone pines). For our twenty-sixth collection, we asked authors to ponder the idea of longevity, and are pleased to present an eclectic mix of speculative fiction for your entertainment. Welcome to the new anthology, Infinite Lives: Short Tales of Longevity, from Third Flatiron.

We lead off with Brian Trent's romantic, time-bending tale, Tunnels. Brian's fans may know that his story, Crash Site (F&SF 5-6/18) won Baen's fifth annual Year's Best Military and Adventure SF Readers' Choice Award. We're lucky to welcome him back to our pages this Fall.

We dream of a utopian future where death is easily rolled back by technology, and scientists such as Harvard's David Sinclair take the approach that old age is a pathology that can be treated. But what would happen if Humanity were to be yoked to the whims of an overly cautious super-computer, as in Matt Thompson's Del Boy Falling Through the Bar, Forever? That must give us pause, as does Ingrid Garcia's At the Precipice of Eternity, where aliens convince a scientist on the brink of a big discovery to just let evolution take its course… Still, it's possible that our future children will be hybrids or androids, and that they will honor their parents, as in Larry C. Kay's A Last Word, and Philip John Schweitzer's Like a Seagull, Hurling Itself into the Mist.

Not everyone believes the rich should live forever, such as Dr. Paul Krugman in his NYT faux-future essay:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/opinion/future-billionaires.html

We believe D. A. Campisi explores the idea of cheating death rather more fully in his satirical Only the Poor Die Young. We might want to consider expanding our insurance coverage.

Is ageism a real thing? In K. G. Anderson's Wishbone, a grandmother and her granddaughter decide the government has gone too far in cutting off benefits.

What makes me me? As technology offers the chance to swap in new parts in order to live longer, the philosophical question arises. Megan Branning presents a lovely parable on the topic, The Scarecrow's Question.

We also proffer some excellent cosmological contemplations about our role in the universe: Louis Evans has a theory about why things die, in The Reinvention of Death. And in Russell Dorn's Long Stretches, an astronaut stranded on a damaged spacecraft combats boredom, a failing ship, and a growing neurosis in which he fears his limbs extending too far. Spaghettification?

In Caias Ward's distant future, a world assassin is kept in check, with the most exquisite safeguards, until When They Damned the Name of Oma Rekkai from Memory, I Danced. Leah Miller's yarn asks whether the future might change in ways we haven't thought of yet, in Thoughts of a Divergent Ephemeron.

Revenge is a dish that often has a very long shelf life, as in Sloane Leong's A Billion Bodies More, about a general sentenced to live out the life sentences through the bodies of her fallen soldiers. In David Cleden's Sweet Release, a woman scorned has the upper hand in re-creating a better lover in virtual space.

Does the Garden exist? Come along with us out to the desert, as J. B. Toner's rich oligarch tricks his way in for a taste of the Tree of Life, Left of Eden.

One of the most enduring legends is that of the Faerie, where time moves more slowly than in the fields we know. We offer two tales where the worlds intersect: Maureen Bowden's Frost on the Fields, in which a fairy queen returns to earth to bid goodbye to her dying human lover, and Brandon Butler's Secrets from the Land Without Fear, in which an orphaned half-blood accuses a visitor from Fae of using the world as a playground for kicks. Lord Dunsany would be proud.

We offer a new tale, starring that perennial favorite, Death aka the Grim Reaper. In Tom Pappalardo's Chosen, Death finds an enthusiastic successor in a coffee shop barrista. What do you think the coffee shop playlist was playing? I'm thinking maybe, Don't Fear the Reaper?

Thinking we've forgotten about vampires? Nope. Samson Stormcrow Hayes takes us to a book signing, where the guest of honor is treated to a bit of Professional Envy.

Dark sorcery ever seeks a way to prolong life, no matter the cost, as in David F. Shultz's Dry Bones, and Mack Moyer's The Last Son of Geppetto, in which a wooden puppet rues the day he never became a real boy. Martin M. Clark introduces us to a sin eater in Found Wanting.

Presidents often gain a form of immortality in our memories, especially in alternate histories. There are the great ones, who share their love of the world, as in Robert Walton's Abe in Yosemite, or the other ones who make wars last forever, as in John Paul Davies' President Redux.

The Fountain of Youth has long caught the imagination, even including Leela on Futurama, and we're happy to include another story about the indomitable Spanish conquistador Capricho and his phoenixlike war dog Leoncillo, who put their dip in the Fountain to good use, in Wulf Moon's Cold Iron.

As we think about infinite lives, we wonder: Whatever happened to Zoroastrianism? It seemed to be one of the more sensible religions. . . except for the Wheel of Time. We close with a story for the ages: Konstantine Paradias's Find Her, in which a demon and an angel battle through eternity, until hate turns to love.

Our humor section, Grins & Gurgles, is composed of a couple of completely off-topic subjects, Dear AirBnB, by E. E. King, offering plenty of good examples of why not to venture into the VRBO world, and Best-Selling Items from the M. R. James Collectibles Catalogue, by Sarah Totton, for those interested in adding something new and unusual to their Halloween hoard.

Thanks for choosing Infinite Lives: Short Tales of Longevity. We hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as we have.

Juliana Rew

October 2019

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Back to Contents

Tunnels

by Brian Trent

I witnessed a carriage run down an old man in Vienna, 1809, during Napoleon's shelling of the city that spring. The man had been crossing a street when thunderous French howitzers startled a carriage's horses, and the animals bolted. The old man was struck, trampled, one heavy carriage wheel snapping his right leg as cleanly as a broomstick over a knee.

I pulled him to safety, as the Viennese crowds scattered and the night sky flashed and boomed from artillery. The man was around eighty years old, bearded and balding, with liver-spotted hands as frail as bundled twigs. I was four hundred-and-sixteen, despite an outward appearance of a lean, chestnut-haired forty. I crafted a makeshift splint for him right there, amid the bombardment. Poured a flask of whisky down his throat for the pain. Gazed into his watery blue eyes.

You will live, I assured him.

His lips quivered in his white beard. Please. . . please. . .

I swaddled him in my woolen coat. Your leg is broken, but you will live. I have, um, medical training.

Where am I? How did I get here? Please. . . I can't remember—

You're in Vienna.

Tears spilled down his cheeks. "I can't remember who I am!"

He had banged his head on the cobblestones, after all. For almost an hour, he could recall neither his name nor residence. It was only later, as I bore him to the shelter of my wine cellar (the French would later sack every last bottle during the occupation) and fed him soup spiked with anti-inflammatory paste (I'd learned to make it from my little rooftop garden in the Repubblica di Venezia in the 16th century, learning from a not-entirely-useless, bird-masked doctor) that his memory returned.

See? I told the old man. You will be all right.

I can't remember his name now.

What I remember are his blue eyes filled with terror as he failed to recall his name and history. It happens to the elderly, you see.

It happens to me.

When I wake in darkness, unsure of my surroundings. Unsure of what language to cry out in over the booming howitzers as—

. . .

The explosion reverberates in my skull, making me wonder if my teeth have shaken loose like bullets from a bandolier. The blackness is absolute. My wine cellar's candles must have burned out. In the distance, Napoleon's siege is a relentless thunderstorm.

Blindly, I reach for the old man. My fingers touch the cold, stiff arm of a corpse.

Someone whispers, Anthony? Are you still alive, mate?

I freeze, realizing I'm not at home in Vienna.

The unknown voice speaks again, in crisp King's English.

Anthony? The tunnel collapsed. Bloody Huns! We're buried alive beneath the Somme.

I don't know who the man is talking to. Don't know who Anthony is. It certainly isn't me: my name is Niccolò di Venezia, born in 1421 and as ageless as Italian marble.

Then the smell of the tunnel hits me—the pungent whiff of wet clay and loosened bowels. Memory crawls warily back to me. My name is Anthony now. Every sixty years or so it's necessary to change up locations and identities. I'm now Anthony Owens of Mining Company 233 from Hammersmith, England. The year is 1917. . .

But this isn't England, I mutter, listening to the pounding artillery.

We are certainly not in bloody England! A light kindles; the burning dot of a cigarette hanging from stubbly lips. I see the man, and recall that he is Reginald Shaw, First Rank of Mining Company 233. You must have knocked your head something awful, mate.

Must have, I whisper.

Mining Company 233 is my company, I remember, built up with many lifetimes of collected wealth. I've been requisitioned by King and country to help break the stalemate with Germany at the Somme. For two years my men and I have been digging tunnels beneath a rotting battlefield festooned with barbed wire and pockmarked by bomb craters.

And Reginald Shaw? He's my friend. My best friend for twenty years now.

What happened to our tunnel? I ask.

Reginald puffs on his smoke. Apparently the Germans had a tunnel of their own. Dug beneath us like maggots. Lit a few sticks of dynamite. Our whole company is dead or buried alive like us.

Then we'll dig our way out. I paw around the gloom for my spade. Coworkers lie dead around us. My fingers close around my shovel's wooden handle.

Legs are broken, mate.

"Then I shall dig." I smile at him.

My friend chuckles. You must have gotten yourself a real knock on your noggin! You were speaking in tongues! Sounded like some queer dialect of Italian!

I tear at the collapsed tunnel with my spade. For several minutes, I shovel earth and clay, until Reginald touches my shoulder.

Afraid we'll run out of air long before you succeed. He reaches into a pocket, hands me an envelope. "I want you to do me a favor. Bring this letter to my wife and little girl, if you manage to get out."

We're getting out together!

"There isn't air for both of us."

There is! I insist, though I realize my friend is correct. The tunnel air has a flat, thin quality. In an hour, maybe two, we'll be two more corpses in this hellish pocket of Stygia.

My friend smiles, cigarette glowing dully. I have greatly cherished our friendship.

Wait! Reginald, please don't—

And before I can stop him, he pulls his service pistol, presses it to his head, and—

. . .

I'm not a vampire, I tell the woman in my Mexico City apartment, 1973. The floor crawls with snakes, and the window droops like candlewax. Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same wafts from the stereo's cloth-covered speakers.

The woman—her name is Honoria, I remember—squints at me from where she's sprawled on the linoleum. Not a vampire? But you said you're five hundred years old.

Had I told her that? My head feels foggy with the mushrooms I've ingested. Old instinct grips me, the fear of being discovered. Admitting to immortality would have gotten me burned in Europe not so long ago.

My gaze drifts from the snakes that aren't there to the drooping window. The frame is festooned with skulls for El Dia de Los Muertos, their jaws hanging open in silent laughter. In the street below, firecrackers pop and shriek.

Honoria prods me playfully with one bare foot. "I've always liked older men, mi vida."

I turn to her, cradling her foot, rubbing the sole. I really am five hundred years old. Feels good to finally admit it to someone.

She considers my apartment, swaying to the music and 'shrooms we've taken. Your décor does have the look I'd expect from a vampire.

I'm not a vampire, I repeat. You've seen me in the sun and chowing down garlic. But I follow her gaze to the oil paintings, books, crates, statues. . . a lifetime of collected detritus brought with me, as if I'm a hermit crab hauling around past residences.

Honoria gives me a sly look. Then how else could you be five hundred years old?

I don't know.

What?

I shrug. I grew up in the Venetian Republic. Grew naturally as far as that goes, taking the normal time to sprout from toddler to thirty-something. But that was around when my aging just. . . stopped.

Honoria looks thoughtful. "Have you ever heard of progeria?"

Yes.

"Maybe you've got the opposite condition. Instead of aging rapidly, your cells age at a snail's pace. Or maybe some genetic quirk keeps them forever youthful. There are tortoises that live centuries. Trees that last millennia. . . "

That's as good a theory as I've ever heard. I keep growing new sets of teeth, after all.

I don't suppose you could spare a little immortality for me?

For you? I ask, surprised.

I'm dying, remember?

Oh. Then it hits me: she's already told me she's dying. That, coupled with the psilocybin, apparently convinced me to let my guard down and unload my secret. In a few months, she won't be alive to tell anyone. Even if she was the type to break promises (and she's not—she's sweet and trustworthy and smart and wonderful), who would believe her?

Oh? Honoria echoes coldly. "I guess you really are ancient. Seen so many people die that what's one more funeral, right?"

My cheeks grow hot with shame. That's not what I meant. I just. . .

You forgot how to feel.

Her words stay me.

She lights a cigarette, and for a moment I'm reminded of Reggie in the Great War's trenches. Zeppelin fades from the stereo, to be replaced by the escapades of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

When I was a kid, Honoria says, I thought summer vacations lasted a whole year. When my pet goldfish died, I grieved for weeks. But then I grew up. Summer vacations vanished in a puff of calendars, and the sight of a dead animal has no effect on me. If I was five hundred years old. . . I guess my emotions would be all worn out, like old leather.

I still have feelings, I insist.

It's okay, Wallace.

Is that the name I'm using now? I crawl drunkenly towards her, wrapping her in my embrace. This dying woman. . . this beautiful woman who. . . who I. . .

I love you, I say.

Honoria curls against my chest, touches my face. That Italianate jaw, the Mediterranean brow and complexion. . . you're a beautiful man. Yet you must be so sad. Generations bloom and die around you, but you go on. The constant gardener.

She falls asleep in my arms.

We marry a week later, November of 1973.

She dies in my arms on Christmas Day.

. . .

The tunnel.

I'm back in the tunnel of 1917, I think, and I'm wearing a gas mask, too. German chemical attacks must have seeped into the earth. I look around for Reggie, but instead I find that I'm alone, dizzy, and oddly weak.

And the tunnel has mint-green flares peppering its uneven terrain.

Flares?

We used lamps in the tunnels of the Somme; I wouldn't see my first flare for fifty years. I must still be in Mexico, hallucinating, because my head feels fuzzy, my body as airy as a Mylar balloon.

But then why am I wearing a gas mask? I lift my hand to the contraption and stare, astonished, at the sight of bulky gloves over my fingers. I try touching my mouth and encounter a fishbowl helmet over my entire head.

Pale words appear suddenly across the glass:

OXYGEN LEVELS STABILIZED. SUIT BREACH REPAIRED.

A woman's voice sounds at my ear:

Hey! You still there? Just follow the flares, okay? Please! They'll lead you right to us.

I'm not certain who is speaking. Don't know why flares are littering the ground. But old instinct impels me forward. Follow the flares, okay. I'll do that, until I can remember how the hell I ended up in this lava tube on Mars. . .

Mars!?

I round a bend in the tunnel, and see the flares end at a gathering of three people—one woman and two men. They're wearing pale life-support suits, smeared with rust-hued Martian dust. One of them has a badly broken leg, I can tell at a glance.