Felipe then kicked Joel2’s left flank so hard, he saw stars. “Turn over.”
Aching, my doppelg?nger did as instructed. The wooden patio he was now facing had one or two sisal carpets featuring designs of happy people crushing grapes. He wondered where they kept the ones that depicted suicide bombers. Felipe set the shotgun down on a coffee table and tied a rough rope around Joel2’s wrists, making sure to cinch it painfully tight. He yanked upward on the knot, pulling Joel2 to his feet.
Now that the fight was over, several areas of his body were reminding him why he hated fighting. He couldn’t tell if he had broken any bones during the attack, but there would definitely be some impressive bruises. He also had red spots—blood, he assumed—in one eye, but for the moment, he could still see clearly with the other. As he limped painfully into the villa, he saw some old-fashioned framed photographs, religious paintings, and antique LED candles that gave the room a flickering amber glow.
Felipe kicked him in the ass, not hard enough to knock him down, but to indicate in the most unpleasant way that he should move forward. They walked through a kitchen with very few modern conveniences. Instead of a printer, there was a real antique sink with a water spigot, and a six-foot-tall silver container that Joel2 had seen in old pictures. Refrigerator, that was it. These guys actually had to keep uneaten food on hand before they cooked it. Crazy.
At the other end of the room was a stairwell leading downward, which another sharp ass-kick indicated was Joel2’s destination.
Once he got to the bottom of the spiral stairs, he saw the basement level was in fact more of a cavern. It was at least twice as long as the floor above it. The ceilings soared what must have been eight or nine meters overhead, and one long rough-hewn rock wall was lined with huge wooden wine casks. The pungent smell of sour grapes was everywhere. On the other wall of the cavern, several small doors were set into the rock, each with a barred window. It appeared the whole area had been carved out of the mountain.
Felipe nudged Joel2 none too gently toward one of the small wooden doors. Inside was a circular table, big enough to seat six, and several wooden chairs. In the center of the table was a square planter brimming with orchids of various colors. The wooden ceiling, where he could see it through the darkness, was overlaid with various gold-and-silver-colored tenons. The chamber was configured such that the middle was its only illuminated section, but Joel2 could see the far wall was filled floor to ceiling with dusty bottles of dark wine. Before them, in a motorized wheelchair, sat the oldest man Joel2 had ever seen.
One of the unexpected outcomes of molecular nanotechnology was people now had the opportunity to live forever—sort of. Once most of humanity’s ills were cured, the next item on the biomed agenda became undoing the effects of vice. As such, the twenty-second century was a perfectly safe place to smoke, do drugs, get cancer, or become infected by an STD. The same little magic robots that undid your genetic misfortune could also undo the previous night’s mistakes. Accidents and murder were pretty much the only causes of death left.
Not only that, you also got to choose when you wanted to stop aging. Some people liked to stay young, while others enjoyed getting old. Age became a form of self-expression akin to tattoos and piercings.
To keep population in check, we aligned the quantity of an individual’s wealth with the length of mortality. Most people chose to die at around one hundred, since every year of life past then got more and more expensive. What I hear is that it also got mind-numbingly depressing, because every year you lived afforded you another 525,600 opportunities to do something you would regret for the rest of your life. In 2147 the oldest person on record had died at 165, and they left their family in a ton of debt. Even so, there were some people so freaked out by death that they spent every last chit they had on extending their lives. But eventually everyone ran out of juice.
Not this guy, though. There was a soft whir as the wheelchair moved forward, bringing the old man more into the light. He wore an off-white suit, or perhaps it was just dusty, like the wine bottles. Its lapels were frayed and the joints were thin, almost see-through. It definitely hadn’t been washed in quite some time. He was skeletal and almost entirely hairless, apart from a thin curtain of white hair that encircled the base of his skull. His tan, crinkled skin was covered in endless constellations of moles and liver spots. His eyes seemed closed, but his head followed Joel2’s movements, indicating he was awake and at least somewhat alert.
Felipe shoved Joel2 into one of the chairs, tied his wrists to the back, and bent to whisper in his ear, “Life is short, hermano. Make the most of what joo have left.” He then walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.
The old man smiled. His teeth were white and perfect, a shocking contrast to the rest of his crumbling decrepitude. He hacked a big throaty cough and then spoke. His voice was strange and metallic, the same voice that had kept Felipe from pulling the trigger of his shotgun. It was also barely audible. “So good to see you, Mr. Byram.”
“Huh?” said Joel2.
The old man tsk-tsked, then bent to adjust a dial somewhere on one arm of his wheelchair. “I SAID, SO GOOD TO SEE YOU.”
The volume of his voice rattled the bottles in the wine rack. Joel2 tried to clap his hands over his ears, but as they were bound together behind him, the best he could do was tuck one ear into his shoulder. His head rang with the metallic bellow.
The dial was adjusted again. “How is that? Better?” the old man said in a more normal, though still very synthesized, register.
“Yeah, thanks. I think you only popped one of my eardrums.”
His host coughed again, aluminum foil scraping on a cheese grater. “You’ll have to excuse me; my implants have not kept up with the deterioration of my vocal cords. Or it may be that they are deteriorating, too. Such is life, I’m afraid.” He smiled again. “I’ve often prayed that I would live long enough to meet the likes of you. My name is Roberto. Roberto Shila.”
The fucking leader of the Gehinnomites! Joel2 got to his feet, nearly bent over forward with the chair dangling behind him like a jagged wooden tail. His face darkened. He was about to charge. Joel2 didn’t care if he didn’t have use of his hands, he was going to take that leather fossil apart bit by bit until he brought Sylvia to him, and guaranteed that they both—
The old man held up a small egg-sized device. “This is a weapon. I would prefer not to use it on you, Mr. Byram. This archaic blunt-force suppression device—like me—is a relic of the Last War. I fear if we cannot speak civilly for a few moments, I shall be forced to enlist its aid.”