Chapter 41 / 51 · 2 min

Matilda

I said, “So this is goodbye, Matilda?”

There was a vast emptiness in Matilda’s small eyes. “It isn’t your fault. But I’m not happy with you. I’m leaving.”

Matilda picked up the jacket draped over the chair, put it on, opened the door, and walked out without a sound. Hurting me the same way. Hurt the same way.

I watched the eighth Matilda leave, captivated. If I didn’t tell you, you’d never guess that I made the last seven Matildas. With my own hands. In my own lab.

We need to talk

August 01, 2020

“Listen. We need to talk.”

In a single moment I thought about a great many things. Today was the 28th of August, 6021. The 51st anniversary of my marriage to Tiara. On average a man and a woman stay together forty years. None of my earlier marriages had lasted more than thirty-five. But Tiara and I had clicked so beautifully that I’d thought we might last a hundred years. But no. Fifty-one years was all that was written for us.

I said, “Sure.”

Then I said “Sure” many times. Always half a second after Tiara finished a sentence. Our breakup went very smoothly. But right before Tiara left, I said, “Tiara? Can I tell you something?”

Tiara stopped. Her eyes were questioning, but she asked nothing.

I said, “A thousand years ago, the vaccine I arranged to give every man on earth, I never took it myself.”

Tiara stared at me, her eyes wide. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if we want, we could run away. And have a child.”

Tiara understood what running away meant, and so she stood frozen, thinking for a long time. The child we wanted to bring secretly into the world could not be made immortal. To try would mean losing our own immortality. But we would have a tiny human of our own making. We would be mother and father again, and we would have to watch our child grow from small to old and die.

Tiara kept thinking. In her two and a half thousand years of life, she had never had to make a decision this hard.