An earth like our earth, save for one key detail: Life never grows old. Adulthood for people and for dogs means decades and centuries and maybe thousands of years of constant life. Unless of course disease finds you, or you fall from a high place, or perhaps someone who you should trust decides that you should die.
A famous movie star comes home to her birthplace, and old scores are going to be settled.
"I return home only for the best reasons.
"My mother isn't well, which is the perennial motivation. Despite a robust bloodline, she suffers from a slow decay of function -- mostly in her muscles, but increasingly in her mind too. She claims that she needs me. I am her only surviving daughter, and nobody else understands or has patience when it comes to an ancient woman. She suffers from tenacious fears and enduring panics. Modern medicines help -- antioxidants and tailored enzymes -- and if you chart her decay against the growth of biochemical knowledge, I suspect that she will pass out of this crisis in another five or six decades. But a daughter can take nothing for granted, and she is my mother. Of course I will come visit her. It is my duty to hold her hand and listen dutifully while she repeats stories that have been repeated too many times, and in exactly the same way, acquiring a stone-like reality of their own, immune to questions or the tiniest doubt."
Robert Reed is the author of many published stories as well as a few novels. His novella, "A Billion Eves," won the Hugo Award in 2007.
Genre: Science Fiction
A famous movie star comes home to her birthplace, and old scores are going to be settled.
"I return home only for the best reasons.
"My mother isn't well, which is the perennial motivation. Despite a robust bloodline, she suffers from a slow decay of function -- mostly in her muscles, but increasingly in her mind too. She claims that she needs me. I am her only surviving daughter, and nobody else understands or has patience when it comes to an ancient woman. She suffers from tenacious fears and enduring panics. Modern medicines help -- antioxidants and tailored enzymes -- and if you chart her decay against the growth of biochemical knowledge, I suspect that she will pass out of this crisis in another five or six decades. But a daughter can take nothing for granted, and she is my mother. Of course I will come visit her. It is my duty to hold her hand and listen dutifully while she repeats stories that have been repeated too many times, and in exactly the same way, acquiring a stone-like reality of their own, immune to questions or the tiniest doubt."
Robert Reed is the author of many published stories as well as a few novels. His novella, "A Billion Eves," won the Hugo Award in 2007.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Robert Reed's A Plague of Life