Professional Documents
Culture Documents
LifeMemory
By
Johnny Eponymous
James Gablin had turned one hundred at some point, probably last spring. He
could remember April/May picnics that could have been birthday parties from parents
who faded from his memory, lost in an accident, or maybe dead of old age. Regardless,
he lost them long ago. They were close to him once, for a long time closer than he
admitted, and then disappeared without a trace from the photos that surrounded the
bedroom. One hundred years old and still a great many questions that had only been half-
answered.
Death, he thought, Death will be here soon. He had shed tears when Martha was
not in the room. He could not accept post-vital nothingness, but could understand no
more than that as reward for a life well-lived. It was a trouble of faith; his heart had
touched no music Heavenly, though he had found God a convenient discussion partner
the edge of the bed, noticed that his wife, ninety-six and still she made breakfast every
morning, was gone. James wanted to call for her, tell her that he was ready to make the
motion towards the things he could never understand. He made no sound, just gripped
the bed tighter as she walked back into the room as if he had pulled the clap on some
invisible bell. His seventy-year-old children followed behind her, each holding a hat that
reminded James of trips with his father out in the fifties, when men wore such ornaments.
She's known all along. Martha had felt it before he had, may have even known
the tears that asked his thought of God for answers. They must have arrived this
morning: this morning that would be his last. They came to his bed, and Martha took his
hand, kissed it gently and sat in a chair that she must have brought in while he was
sleeping. He noticed how much like the slow death scene in the movies it must have
seemed: the chair and the children, the silent tears and the resolute stare of a dying man.
He had no words for the audience, he hadn't spoken for almost a month, the lungs no
longer able to support both respiration and his thoughts. He squeezed back as best he
could, though his arms were almost gone from the room, awaiting him somewhere else,
perhaps. Martha held his hand still while Tyler walked around the deathbed, leaned onto
"I know, James. I know. Just be comfortable. Let me and the boys be with you.
James nodded, leaned his head back into the pillow, and moved his gaze between
his two sons. He thought that he would like to see what they did with the years he had
wasted. Maybe he would be there, a ghost the family would blame missing cookies on.
He’d get to see the books they'd write, hear the stories they told to grandchildren. See his
He closed his eyes as he began to feel the strongest pull of sleep deprivation.
James could tell that there was something leading him, something stronger than himself,
but less than the force that had created the universe. He could still hear the sounds of a
family watching their patriarch go bravely into a Shakespearean rest, but it was
accompanied by the rhythmic rise and fall of machinery. His eyes began burning as they
reopened in the light of mid-afternoon sun off of high gloss paint as he awoke a lifetime
"Mr. Gablin. Mr. James Gablin. I need you to say something. I need to know
that you are fully back in the present. My name is Curtis. You are in hospice care in
James Gablin, forty-seven years old, dying of a disease he acquired and passed
along to his wife in their tender moments of reconciliation. He could barely move, but
his lungs were quite clear, his breath straightened and his mouth moist for the first time in
his memory.
"I'm alive."
The man in the white coat walked to his chart, checked all the numbers and
"You're alive and in hospice care, Mr. Gablin. You've just finished the first
LifeMemory program. You've been out for a little over an hour. Is your pain greater now
than before?"
Something came into focus for James, his heart pounded heavy, as if he had been
running for hours. He remembered his childhood, chasing Cassie Heartlet down Breen's
Hill to the water where they kissed, then walked back up with wet pant cuffs. He had
breathed this hard on the trip up the hill, but the pain had been far more distant than this.
Curtis noticed that he had not answered the pain question, and pushed the button
to release a very slow flow of morphine into his system. He took James' weathered wrist
between his fingers and counted to himself. He turned to the machine at the side and
turned a few of the dials slowly, slightly raising the tone of the machine. James had not
noticed the tube that entered his chest below the arch of his meeting ribs. Curtis removed
the silver band that lay across his forehead, dangled it like a worm, laying it precisely
"Yes. You've been here for the last three days. This was your first day on
LifeMemory. You asked that we set it to one hundred years. I hope it was a good
James did not move, finally feeling the weight of the clear tubes in his body.
Though his mouth was moist for the first time that he could remember, he felt he needed
Curtis went over to the small table where a pitcher sat. He poured a glass of water
for James, then walked it to the bedside. He tilted it into James' mouth. James did not
"What is LifeMemory?"
Curtis poured James another mouthful, tipping the cup deliberately.
"We are a service provided to people who are soon to leave us. We can speed
your mental time, make an hour into a hundred years, a thousand years in theory, though
a hundred makes for a more traditional life experience. The machine here is equipped
with all your life support as well as the GigaBooster to power the LifeMemory
experience. We want the patient to feel that he has found all the answers before it’s too
late.” Curtis paused and walked to a cart, grabbed another cup. “I hope you made full
James looked around the room, noting the lack of flowers. There were a few
cards on the table next to the bed, all of them the type you would give to a co-worker you
didn’t like who had been laid up. He could read the name Hilary on the half-open card.
He remembered Hilary Mandela, young and tan in 1978, and in this reality aging in
sunlight after the loss of a husband she was better off without.
"I'm a LifeMemory technician. They make us train as nurses, too. The feeling of
confusion is typical. You are having a perfectly normal reaction for the first time user.”
Curtis returned to the machine, checking registers. “I can recharge the machine, reset the
values and re-release you into LifeMemory, maybe set for 50 years? It will only take a
couple of hours."
“Turn it off.”
ran from him like a fire in a forest. He managed to make the escape into a forceful
declaration.
James made no move, but he swallowed this time to speed the process, to make
Curtis had the authority to turn off the support. All the personal technicians had
in case of serious troubles in the mental world. Unexpected brain death necessitated
bodily death for the most part, though the natural endings of the programs were simply a
way to disconnect the user. Curtis had yet to use his right, had never even been asked if it
was a possibility. He wanted to follow the procedures, make the patient consider his
"The pain you are feeling will go away if you go back into LifeMemory. We
Curtis went to the next step of training. James hadn't seen Martha in a hundred
years.
James sunk into the bed. He spoke over his sudden loss of rigidity.
"Turn it off. They were with me last time and it made no difference. Turn it off
now."
Curtis had to do it; the tape would reveal that the patient had been advised
properly and had made a rational decision. The rule that held most firmly burned in his
walk to the machine: In hospice, those who wish to die, may die. He squared himself to
the machine, set the water on top. Curtis inserted his key, turned the dials back down to
The room was still, except for the sound of breath coming slower and Curtis'
quick steps out the door into the waiting room. James heard Curtis calling for Martha,
and little else. He stopped his breathing, willed himself to fall into that sense of dread he
had felt in the last years of his LifeMemory. Martha made it to his side and took his hand
just as he thought a final note to his life. He died with a smile, the brief pained smile of a