[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction February 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Achieving immortality is only half of the problem.
The other half is knowing how to live with it once
it's been made possible--and inescapable!
You did not die.
There was no normal way to die.
You lived as carelessly and as recklessly as you could and you hoped
that you would be lucky and be accidentally killed.
You kept on living and you got tired of living.
"God, how tired a man can get of living!" Andrew Young said.
John Riggs, chairman of the immortality commission, cleared his throat.
"You realize," he said to Andrew Young, "that this petition is a highly
irregular procedure to bring to our attention."
He picked up the sheaf of papers off the table and ruffled through them
rapidly.
"There is no precedent," he added.
"I had hoped," said Andrew Young, "to establish precedent."
Commissioner Stanford said, "I must admit that you have made a good
case, Ancestor Young. Yet you must realize that this commission has no
possible jurisdiction over the life of any person, except to see that
everyone is assured of all the benefits of immortality and to work out
any kinks that may show up."
"I am well aware of that," answered Young, "and it seems to me that my
case is one of the kinks you mention."
He stood silently, watching the faces of the members of the board.
They are afraid, he thought. Every one of them. Afraid of the day they
will face the thing I am facing now. They have sought an answer and
there is no answer yet except the pitifully basic answer, the brutally
fundamental answer that I have given them.
"My request is simple," he told them, calmly. "I have asked for
permission to discontinue life. And since suicide has been made
psychologically impossible, I have asked that this commission appoint
a panel of next-friends to make the necessary and somewhat distasteful
arrangements to bring about the discontinuance of my life."
"If we did," said Riggs, "we would destroy everything we have. There
is no virtue in a life of only five thousand years. No more than in
a life of only a hundred years. If Man is to be immortal, he must be
genuinely immortal. He cannot compromise."
"And yet," said Young, "my friends are gone."
* * * * *
He gestured at the papers Riggs held in his hands. "I have them listed
there," he said. "Their names and when and where and how they died.
Take a look at them. More than two hundred names. People of my own
generation and of the generations closely following mine. Their names
and the photo-copies of their death certificates."
He put both of his hands upon the table, palms flat against the table,
and leaned his weight upon his arms.
"Take a look at how they died," he said. "Every one involves accidental
violence. Some of them drove their vehicles too fast and, more than
likely, very recklessly. One fell off a cliff when he reached down to
pick a flower that was growing on its edge. A case of deliberately poor
judgment, to my mind. One got stinking drunk and took a bath and passed
out in the tub. He drowned...."
"Ancestor Young," Riggs said sharply, "you are surely not implying
these folks were suicides."
"No," Andrew Young said bitterly. "We abolished suicide three thousand
years ago, cleared it clean out of human minds. How could they have
killed themselves?"
Stanford said, peering up at Young, "I believe, sir, you sat on the
board that resolved that problem."
Andrew Young nodded. "It was after the first wave of suicides. I
remember it quite well. It took years of work. We had to change human
perspective, shift certain facets of human nature. We had to condition
human reasoning by education and propaganda and instill a new set of
moral values. I think we did a good job of it. Perhaps too good a job.
Today a man can no more think of deliberately committing suicide than
he could think of overthrowing our government. The very idea, the very
word is repulsive, instinctively repulsive. You can come a long way,
gentlemen, in three thousand years."
He leaned across the table and tapped the sheaf of papers with a lean,
tense finger.
"They didn't kill themselves," he said. "They did not commit suicide.
They just didn't give a damn. They were tired of living ... as I am
tired of living. So they lived recklessly in every way. Perhaps there
always was a secret hope that they would drown while drunk or their car
would hit a tree or...."
* * * * *
He straightened up and faced them. "Gentlemen," he said. "I am 5,786
years of age. I was born at Lancaster, Maine, on the planet Earth on
September 21, 1968. I have served humankind well in those fifty-seven
centuries. My record is there for you to see. Boards, commissions,
legislative posts, diplomatic missions. No one can say that I have
shirked my duty. I submit that I have paid any debt I owe humanity ...
even the well-intentioned debt for a chance at immortality."
"We wish," said Riggs, "that you would reconsider."
"I am a lonely man," replied Young. "A lonely man and tired. I have no
friends. There is nothing any longer that holds my interest. It is my
hope that I can make you see the desirability of assuming jurisdiction
in cases such as mine. Someday you may find a solution to the problem,
but until that time arrives, I ask you, in the name of mercy, to give
us relief from life."
"The problem, as we see it," said Riggs, "is to find some way to
wipe out mental perspective. When a man lives as you have, sir, for
fifty centuries, he has too long a memory. The memories add up to the
disadvantage of present realities and prospects for the future."
"I know," said Young. "I remember we used to talk about that in the
early days. It was one of the problems which was recognized when
immortality first became practical. But we always thought that memory
would erase itself, that the brain could accommodate only so many
memories, that when it got full up it would dump the old ones. It
hasn't worked that way."
He made a savage gesture. "Gentlemen, I can recall my childhood much
more vividly than I recall anything that happened yesterday."
"Memories are buried," said Riggs, "and in the old days, when men
lived no longer than a hundred years at most, it was thought those
buried memories were forgotten. Life, Man told himself, is a process
of forgetting. So Man wasn't too worried over memories when he became
immortal. He thought he would forget them."
"He should have known," argued Young. "I can remember my father, and I
remember him much more intimately than I will remember you gentlemen
once I leave this room.... I can remember my father telling me that, in
his later years, he could recall things which happened in his childhood
that had been forgotten all his younger years. And that, alone, should
have tipped us off. The brain buries only the newer memories
deeply ... they are not available; they do not rise to bother one,
because they are not sorted or oriented or correlated or whatever it is
that the brain may do with them. But once they are all nicely docketed
and filed, they pop up in an instant."
* * * * *
Riggs nodded agreement. "There's a lag of a good many years in the
brain's bookkeeping. We will overcome it in time."
"We have tried," said Stanford. "We tried conditioning, the same
solution that worked with suicides. But in this, it didn't work. For a
man's life is built upon his memories. There are certain basic memories
that must remain intact. With conditioning, you could not be selective.
You could not keep the structural memories and winnow out the trash. It
didn't work that way."
"There was one machine that worked," Riggs put in. "It got rid of
memories. I don't understand exactly how it worked, but it did the job
all right. It did too good a job. It swept the mind as clean as an
empty room. It didn't leave a thing. It took all memories and it left
no capacity to build a new set. A man went in a human being and came
out a vegetable."
"Suspended animation," said Stanford, "would be a solution. If we had
suspended animation. Simply stack a man away until we found the answer,
then revive and recondition him."
"Be that as it may," Young told them, "I should like your most earnest
consideration of my petition. I do not feel quite equal to waiting
until you have the answer solved."