Wanderlust

"Where are you going, grandpa?" Reka eyed my shoulderbag with excitement.

"I knew I shoulda locked that door," I sighed. This wasn't the time for explanations, or arguments, or even goodbyes.

Reka just stood there, still staring at the shoulderbag on my bed, half filled with clothes and gear. A pile of other garments and whatnot littered the bed around it.

Reka shifted his gaze to me, waiting for an answer.

Poor kid.

Runty, thin, less rambunctious than a boy ought to be. Asthmatic, a little anemic, and near-sighted, too, as most people are nowadays. His parents could afford laser surgery to correct the problem, but he was probably going to need touch-up work on his eyes every twelve years or so. But he's my grandson, and I love him.

And besides... for all his physical frailty, Reka has a strength of intellect I applaud. His is a streak of curiosity six kilometers long and three wide.

"Come here," I invited, shoving some junk to the side and sitting on the bed.

Reka climbed up and sat on my lap.

"Now, it's like this," I started.

But how was I going to explain it?

Reka, I wanted to tell my grandson, when you grow up a bit and are a young man, you'll feel it come over you from time to time... especially -- if you're like me, at least -- in autumn. Even now, in the autumn of my life, as summer wanes and winter gathers on the distant horizon, as shadows pool deeper under reddening trees, I feel the tug of wanderlust. Where am I going? Wherever I must, to ease the ache in my jaw and the itching under my skin.

Rea looked up at me, and before I could begin, he asked: "Why aren't you staying here with us?"

And that, now that was a harder question altogether.

Reka, my boy, I wanted to say to him. Reka, the world was not always like it is today, with its mind-movies and its telepathic machines and languages you learn by swallowing soft-tabs full of little brain mites. Hell, you can even take a pill to install a whole new personality if you don't like the one you've already got... or rather, if someone else doesn't like it. There are even laws now that force "unpleasant" people to undergo mandatory personality therapy, which is just a bullshit word for over-writing a man's existing self with an agreeable, happy, plastic new self. A nice self. A palatable self.

No one has wanted me to take the personality cure yet, but I feel certain the day is coming. I have the excuse of being old and crotchety, which still buys you a little latitude, but the other day when I kind of grunted in reply to Mrs. Penrose's chirp of "Good Morning, Mr. Mendelsohn!" I could see how offended she was. Well, I'm sorry, my dear, but I just cannot bring myself to talk in curlicues and bangles all the damn time.

Reka, my boy, I wanted to say to him, men were once men. In the days of my youth.

My mind is as sharp as ever, and I'm not afraid of senility even at my age. Even so, in recent months I have found myself allowing my thoughts to drift back...

Drift back...

Remembering when there were only seven billion people on the planet. Almost forty years ago, now. Reka's mother was the age Reka is now. Even then, life was getting too burdensome, the world too full, the air itself getting tauter and more brittle...

Years before that. Thirty, thirty-six years before that, when there were only three billion souls on the Earth. When the men who belonged to what they used to call The Greatest Generation still strode this planet. Those were some tough sons of bitches, those fellows were. Upright, forthright, strong and brave. You certainly don't see their ilk any longer.

"Reka? Are you bothering your granddad?" Myka poked her head into my room. Seeing my clothes and other oddments strung out over my bed, taking special notice of the shoulderbag, she compressed her lips for a moment. Then: "Reka, go on outside, sweetie. Go out and play while it's sunny."

Reka looked like he wanted to protest.

"Go on, now, listen to your mother," I told him, setting the boy on the floor and giving him a nudge.

Reka threw me a betrayed look and then, reluctantly, started slowly across the floor.

"Go on," Myka said, a little sharply.

Reka scooted out of the room.

Myka turned to me with a look.

I returned her look. She got it from me, after all.

"Dad?"

"I told you this was going to have to happen," I said. "I told you I can't stay here forever."

"What's forever, Dad?" Her look melted; her smile was soft. "We don't have forever. We need to appreciate the day."

"What you mean is I'm an old man, and my years are numbered," I said. "If not my days. But Myka, my darling, it's like I told you. I have plenty of years left. I am perfectly strong and capable, and I mean to go get out in the world again."

"Even though it depresses you? Even though no real men are left?" There was a scornful edge to her words.

Oh, Myka. Even my lovely, brilliant daughter only heard what she wanted to hear.

"Let's take it from the beginning, Myka, and see if this time you understand what I'm telling you." I heard a roughness in my voice. Good thing Mrs. Penrose was nowhere within earshot. She'd have been on the phone to The Guarda in a stump-footed thrice.

"Right, dad, let's hear it then," Myka said, "and then let's put all your things away, shall we?" Her hands were already busy with a shirt pulled from the pile - smoothing it out, folding it into a neat little bundle.

Let her have that one. I didn't want to take it along anyway. In fact I was almost finished packing. There was so little I wanted to take of my life, I had only half filled the shoulderbag.

Myka paused, and picked a mind movie out of a careless scatter of cerebrex tabs that had pooled in a fold of my duvet.

"Dad, are you really thinking you'll leave?" She sounded more amused than concerned. "Won't you want to take your FFSRs with you?" She gathered a few more tabs into the palm of her hand.

She only did this to annoy me. She knew I had no patience for high tech toys, and less for the indecipherable alphabet soup that has replaced words these days. Nothing has a name; everything just has a string of letters. FSR, PCD, SODA... No, that's SODI. As in sodie-pop, something they don't even have any longer. Another simple pleasure gone, wiped away in the social and economic backlash of the diabetes epidemic. Well, soda pop was one thing fifty, seventy years ago. Then it became a health hazard, like most processed foods, when they started making it with super-sweeteners that ended up short circuiting the human body's metabolism. Of all the things that we used to worry would wipe us out... dirty bombs, super-bugs, those Tea Party jokers who rose and fell with the swiftness of their time... it was the way we had sabotaged out own food supply that nearly did us in. Hail the return of big, interventionist government, the only institution large and powerful enough to rise to the challenge of a full-on global health disaster.

Well, I've seen the cycles wax and wane before. Never quite like now, but still, when you get down to it, there's nothing new under the sun.

"Dad?" Myka was leaning toward me now, her eyes intent, looking at me with concern.

I pried myself out of musings of the past. "Whatever that is," I said, looking at the tabs in her hand, "I neither need nor want it."

"Shaun got them for you special," she said, shaking her head. "You don't appreciate how many favors he called in for these. They're not the usual FSR. They're a whole new kind of full-sense recording. They're fictional, they're FFSR, they... they replicate the experience of living in an earlier time. More like dramas than documentaries. They're supposed to re-create the days when you were a kid, Dad. The 1970s, the 1980s."

"They're fake," I said. "And I lived through those times once. I don't need to go back."

"But if you'd just try it," she argued, "you could tell Shaun how authentic they are. Or, not. Maybe you're right. Maybe they are fake... to someone who was there for real. The rest of us can't tall, but maybe you can. Maybe you could help Shaun improve the experience. It could be an important learning tool, Dad, and it could be a whole new kind of artistic expression. Don't you want to be part of that? And maybe you'd even like it."

She meant what she was saying. But what she wasn't saying as that Shaun had taken a gamble that I would have something interesting and useful and even a little sexy to tell him about the new technology. Something that would make it worth the maneuvering he'd done to get hold of some of the experimental recordings and the prototype equipment to play them on. Maybe Shaun thought he'd even get something from my feedback that would give him the edge for the next round of reviews and promotions.

Shaun had said, and not said, all those same things when he'd first brought the new tech home and showed it to me. His explanation was technical, having to do with cortical re-routings, and the sensory neuro-stack, and the Meshuggena, and the Mary Magdalena and Pons Magellan or something, but basically he was offering me a new kind of mind movie. Cerebrex tabs had been straightforward recordings of real experiences until now - like home movies you shoot and then re-live from behind your own eyes, or someone else's. The advent of cerebrex technology created a huge and instant fad because now, for the first time, human beings could experience first-hand someone else's life, and thoughts, and moods: What it felt like and psychologically tasted like to be them, living inside their own skin.

It created seismic tremors all throughout government, and religion, and society. Some feared the new technology, some embraced it. Only a few, like me, really knew what was going to happen, which was: Nothing much. All this stuff about the philosophical intimations, about walking in another person's shoes, and yet nothing really changed. The rich still plotted to rob the poor; the poor still dreamed about becoming rich; rich and poor alike bitched and back-bit and plotted against one another. Instead of discovering any Great Answer, the endless human comedy had another laugh line to add to its catalogue.

And, ahh, none of it interests me. I'll never again use one of those horrifying cerebrex things. It's not right, and it's not decent, to go peeking into someone else's naked thoughts and feelings. There are reasons we self-censor and filter and put on civilized faces, after all. Who wants to get a skull full of someone else's unfettered, unvarnished thoughts and responses? It's hard enough being me, and I don't really believe it's so different or educational to be somebody else for a while. Besides, I don't want anybody peeking into my mind.

And I'll tell you why: Because I am a bitter old bastard. I'm not proud of it. But it's who I am, and I'll hold on to my own memories and attitudes and point of view for a while longer, yet, thanks all the same.

"Fine, if you don't want to use it," Myka was saying, "but Dad, be reasonable. And be responsible, for Chist's sake. You can't go gallivanting around like a young man. Even with rejuvenation therapy - which," she added pointedly, "you still refuse to accept - but even if you did, you wouldn't be a spring chicken."

"I'm a man, sweetie," I told her. "Not a chicken. I can make my own way. I don't need to live here with you."

"First off, Dad, we like having you here. Reka adores you, and so does Shaun, and so do I... even if you are a stubborn old crustacean. And man or chicken, you're... how old are you, Dad? You have to be in your early 80s at least."

"At least," I couldn't help laughing. "Myka, my darling daughter... Listen to me, now. This is what I have been trying to tell you. People today don't scare me. They worry me... I am very worried for the whole human race, if you want to know... but I'm not afraid to go out and live among them. You know why? Because people to day aren't as strong, or solid, or focused, or well-put-together as people were from my generation. Even at my age, I will thrive among them, because - let me put it bluntly: I am far better organized, far better prepared to work and prosper, and far more confident than people are today. If things don't work out at first, they will in the long run. I am tough and flexible and adaptable. I don't discourage. I don't give up. And before you say what you always say when I try to tell you this, it's not just a matter of nostalgia. It's not a grumpy old man dismissing the age in which he finds himself because he's casting a golden glow on the days of his youth. It's actually, literally, and measurably true. People now are weaker. They're... it's hard to put this right. They're made of thinner stuff."

Myka looked exasperated. I could tell she was about to dismiss what I was saying out of hand.

"You know it's true, now," I interrupted. "People from generations ago could swing an axe in the woods all day long or wield a sword on the field of battle, and still stay up half the night singing and drinking. They could wrestle a plough dragged by a horse through hard, stony soil. They could live by the sweat of their brows - really live. And people now find it too much to handle if they're required to switch on the manual controls of their helicars and navigate ground traffic. Or they scream 'emotional rape' if someone doesn't make all nicey-nicey down at the bodega. Look at someone the wrong way and they report you for it. Myka, I'm not saying it was right, but in my day if you had a problem with someone you told them straight out about it. And if they had a problem with you having a problem, you'd throw down and trade a few punches, and that was just part of life. Now... well, now people haven't got that kind of starch."

"Oh yeah, the good old days. Brawls in the streets," she said.

"It wasn't like that, but I'd sooner a brawl than a social worker... or a personality rewrite," I said.

"Dad, you're exaggerating."

"I'm not. And I know you've read the medical papers coming out about this stuff in the journals - why so many people are so sick all the time, why life now is more stressful than ever, why everyone is anxious and worn out and pushed past their limits. I read your journals, you know, I have nothing better to do in the afternoons. What are they calling it? Competence disaffective disorder? Cognitive paralysis disorder?"

"There are different names for different disorders, but you're saying it's all one malaise," she said.

"Sweetie, it's not just the heavy metals and the super-sweeteners and the GMDs."

"GMOs," she said.

I ignored the correction. "It's the fact that... how can I put this? I have a theory, and you're just going to have to listen to me and try to understand this. I've watched the planet's population climb and climb until now there are 12 billion people on the surface of the Earth... surface! Ha! On the surface, under the ocean, on the Moon. And even as the numbers grew, the essential fiber of the average human person has degenerated. I think I knew why. You want to know why?"

"Okay, Dad, yes, I would," she said, glancing at her wrist chip to check the time, and I knew that now she was humoring me. Well, let her hear what I had to say, and then let's just see.

"Myka, I'm serious about this. I think there's a source for life that we don't understand. But that source isn't infinite. When there were a billion, less... well, that many souls had a full measure of what makes a man, or a woman. The hard, resilient, sticky stuff of the soul. There was enough to go around. But then the numbers of people started growing, and growing. All those bodies to fill up with life, all those human minds and human histories to fill up with will, and thought, and effort... and conflict! There are good things about conflict and competition, too, you know."

"Aw, Dad..." I could see it in her eyes. She was thinking I needed a visit from the psych medicos. She could call them if she wanted - after she heard me out.

"Now there are just so many people that no one has a fifth of the stuff he should have had to make him whole. That's why everyone's weak. No one has spark and spunk and vigor. Everyone is frail - physically, emotionally, spiritually..."

"Except you," she said dully. She was really scared, and really concerned. She truly believed I had slipped my moorings.

"Except me," I affirmed. "Yes. And you know something? If I could, I'd give myself back to that source, let it take my essential human stuff and distribute it - for all the good it might do. But I can't."

Something glimmered in her face - something like anger. "Well, I'm glad to hear that," she snapped, her color rising.

"You don't understand," I told her. "I'm not talking about suicide. I'm talking about the way things are supposed to be. But they aren't - not for me. Like I say, I have had a long time to see how things work, to think about the nature of life. And I know that human existence is like the tide. We roll in, we crest and crash, and that's life: All that noise and foam, that's our life. At the end of it there's debris, and then we're sucked back in, and then a new wave comes rolling in. That's the way it's supposed to me. But not... for some reason... not for me."

Myka stared at me, not getting it.

I held up my arm - my frail, aged, wrinkled arm. "For me, it's a different kind of ebb and flow. I woke up a few weeks ago and saw that it was starting again, just as it always has."

Myka looked at me blankly.

I rolled up my sleeve. "Look." I grasped my sagging, aged skin. I twisted and pulled.

"Dad, I don't care if you've got wrinkles and liver spots," Myka began.

I'm sure she was about to deliver an aria of filial devotion, of beauty being deeper than the sun-damaged skin. But she fell silent as I pulled harder and the skin split, pulled back...

And fresh, young skin emerged.

Myka gasped.

"It's all right," I said, showing her. "You see? Almost no blood. This flesh is moribund, drying out right on me. Soon it will fall away. And you can't see it yet, but..." I pulled on the thick snow-white thatch atop my scalp. "In a week or so the dark roots of my hair will start showing. And my jaw... that's the first sign. I woke up in the night two weeks ago, feeling the ache of new teeth budding, new teeth that are going to push the old, worn ones right out of my mouth."

"Dad?" She looked a little panicked.

"It's all right, my darling. I've gone through this time and again, more times than I can count. It's like having the flu for about six weeks, but then... but then it's the most marvelous sense of time and light and strength... But the deepest ache, the hardest ache of all is the wanderlust. Even if I thought I could stay here with you now that these changes are happening, the wanderlust won't let me. I have to go, Myka... "

"What does all this mean?" she cried. "Are you ill?"

"No!" I laughed. "No, it's not illness. It's life. Life renewing, maybe even life eternal. Did you ever stop to wonder if, in all the long history of human kind, out of 100 billion people who have lived and died, maybe there was one -- even just one -- who might survive time and age? I must be a mutation, Myka, because I don't believe in magic. This must be a physiological variant, and I've been the unbelievably lucky bastard who has benefitted."

"You're growing young again?" Her look of fear was now something else -- astonishment, maybe anger. "You knew this would happen? You never said anything?"

"I don't know. It has happened before, many times, but will it always happen? Say it didn't. You'd never believe me, and in the end there'd be no proof. And how could I ever prove this wild story except to show you? So, yes, I am growing young again. And no, I didn't tell you before."

"Will... will this happen to me? To Reka?" Mika asked.

"I don't know," I admitted. "As far as I know, none of my other children have ever reached a tipping point of age and then physically regenerated. But maybe some day it will happen. Maybe for you, maybe for Reka..."

"Other children?" Mika sat on the bed beside me. "Other lifetimes? Dad, how old are you?"

"I'm a lot older than you think I am, my sweet, sweet child," I told her. "I don't really know, but I think I must be something like four thousand years old."

She stared at me.

"It's not as easy to keep track of so much as you might think," I said. "And when I tried to figure it out using the history books... well, let me tell you. History in the books is a hell of lot different than actually living through it."

But Myka wasn't thinking about world history. She was trying to grasp that I had a lot more personal history than she had ever known about -- more than she could imagine. She leaned forward. I could almost see the wheels turning in her physician's mind. "And you simply, spontaneously snap back to youth, over and over again?"

"It happens cyclically," I explained. "I age, I go gray, and then... then all at once I regenerate. Every time it happens, I have to leave. The wanderlust comes on me so strong... it's the perfect survival mechanism, really. Do you think a man who grows younger could be accepted by his community? Or even his family -- even by you, my dear child? I have to go some place they don't freak out, they don't get superstitious... and believe me, honey, human beings are still superstitious, even in this age of technical wonders. But let's say they don't start calling me a freak or a devil? They'll want to lock me up, draw samples, study me. No thanks. That would be even worse. A time or two I came close to being burned at the stake, lynched, what have you. No, I'd sooner endure those time-honored torments than spend my life in a lab somewhere. You see what I'm saying, sweetie?"

Myka, shocked all over again, looked as though she might start calling me devil herself, instead of Dad.

"Sweetie, I'm sorry," I told her. "But maybe the best thing to do is pretend I have gone the way of all flesh. Tell yourself that I died, because that's what old dads do. Go on with your life. And if you really wonder... Well, think about me sometimes and know that I will be just fine. If you'll just let me be fine. If you'll just let me go."

Tears brimmed in her eyes but, bravely, she didn't let them spill. She simply nodded, once.

That's my girl.

I picked up my shoulderbag. "Don't let Reka forget about me," I asked her.

"No," she said.

"And tell Shaun... tell him that the air in 1983 was sweeter. Somehow. Like... like there was a scent of rosemary and sage. At least, in the places I was living back then. And the sunlight was a little less red. A lot less red than it is today. Otherwise, you know, I think he got it just about right."

I didn't look back to see how long she watched me. I set my gaze ahead, surrendered to the wanderlust, and let my feet carry me.