FLASHed

5. Rift or Die

I'm sitting by a grave at the Pere LaChaise in the old layer of Paris.  It's a beautiful day, and I praise the foresight of city planners, all those years ago, for allowing direct sunlight to filter through the upper city. The sunlight hits the tomb and reveals a name that was partially hidden by the patina of hundreds of years of graffiti love; it reads, 'Oscar Wilde'. I search the name. He was a playwright. I skim through his bibliography and notice, with interest, that he wrote just one novel in his career: about a man's mortality held at bay by magic. 

I chuckle; there's no magic in the technique we use today to stave off death. The process is simple: replace the degraded DNA with a synthetically produced duplicate based on your personal genome. Six months following your genetic refresh (or gefresh) and your body looks and feels the physical age at which your genome was sequenced (typically thirty-two years).  The Protocols, the laws, dictate that an individual may receive a gefresh a maximum number of ten applications in a lifetime. From a scientific perspective, there's no limit to the number of times a person can receive a gefresh and therein lies the problem.

My twin brother Edgar died last year.  In a way, he died of old age:

He was two hundred and forty years old, with a body of a sixty-two-year-old that was super fit and in perfect health. There was no chance Edgar was going pass in his sleep. No, he was euthanised as punishment for undergoing an eleventh gefresh. He tried for a while to hide at a remote station outpost, but the Death Squad tracked him down and, when they found him, dealt out their brutal punishment. 

Today is my two hundred and forty-first birthday, and I'm faced with few options if I wish to live on without growing old. 

I could move to one of the seedy outer colonies. They say that people there have been evading old age outside of the clergy's radar.  Sounds reasonable, but once on the run, their criminal status makes the fugitives weak and easy prey for the crime lords and their slave cartels.  So, unless you start out extremely wealthy or powerful, by all reports, life would be a living hell.

Other than risking the same fate as Edgar, my only option is to rift. 

For over two hundred years people have been traveling between the stars within the Milky Way.  Algorithms generated by our Zeus processors calculate the phase entry and exit points within the galaxy. Knowing where we are phasing to, means that we can calculate a point from which to phase back (a two-way ticket).  I won't go into the science, but phase travel is only available within the gravitational fields of our galaxy. 

Finding an entry point that will take you to another galaxy is relatively easy, but even with today's technology, it's not possible to calculate where you'll surface in that other galaxy. If you don't know where you're going, there's no way you can calculate a return -- there's no way back from the other galaxy. This step-into-darkness is known as rifting. Rifting is a one way ticket to somewhere.

Several years ago, The Protocols were amended to allow 'the aged' (as we're known) to rift. Once out of this galaxy, we have permission to gefresh as many times as we like. Every year if we so choose. They sugar the laws by saying that Rifters are the ultimate explorers, carrying our race into new horizons. All they need to do is survive the initial jump.

For me, joining a rift crew was an easy decision. In a way, it seems exciting venturing into the unknown.  It's true that I will miss my children, partners and friends; I will miss the earth with its magical forests, snow and wild flowers in Spring. However, when all's said, more important to me, is a simple life.

Why am I am telling this to you Oscar Wilde? You must think me crazy.  But thanks -- you are a fresh pair of ears upon which to test my reasoning and my conviction.  You have been helpful.

***

I stand and move closer to Wilde's tomb to place my hand upon the comforting warmth of the sunbathed stone. Here and now, I'm struck by the feeling of love for life. This man died at age forty-six -- too young, even for primitive times. I see that his avatar for the afterlife is armed with wings for an escape from oblivion. I hope it worked for him, as I too hope it will work for me; tomorrow when I spread my wings and rift into my afterlife.

.fin

(795 words)

<◕.◕> 2023: I remember writing this one. It was in 2014 and I had just learned that I was shortlisted for the Wattys in that year. My thinking was to start developing the 'Beyond Flesh' universe and the ideas here form the background to 'Unholy Star' and also 'A Bird Watches Darkly'.