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Micro-fiction 042 – Age (Post-Apocalypse series)

An ancient species from the beginnings of the universe contemplates a strange debate between an old woman and a young man from the past.

Age

The year is 5055, at least it would be if earth years were still useful to the universe. In orbit around the once named Barnard’s Star a floating laboratory retains particles from dead planets, and reconstructs long-passed species within small spheres suspended by precise balancing forces. The observation deck is populated by a series of narrow shapes, pale blue, and translucent, which pass through air, walls and ceilings without making a distinction. These are the Aionios, entities of consciousness, unhindered by the demands of physical bodies who, it is said, have lived from the beginning of this universe.

“I have tried again.” One of the Aionios lingers by a sphere, hailing others to observe the swirling pattern of life within.

“You have spent so much time on this experiment.” They laugh, as if time mattered!

“I don’t perceive the essence of the problem. I’ll re-run it, watch the old and the young human talk.”

They peer into the sphere. An unfamiliar scene of a busy street, and beyond a pathway to trees and blustery skies.

* * *

“Steady!” The old woman, yelled at the younger human who had rushed past and knocked into her shoulder.

“Sorry ma’am!” He slowed, seemed to hesitate, and turned to look back. He was a confident twenty-five-year-old software engineer, and smartly dressed. His mother named him Galen, hoping he would stay calm in the uncertain world of the 2030s.

“So, you should be, you nearly knocked me into the road.” The old woman was still unsteady on her feet.

“I’m late, so— do you need help?” Galen half closed his eyes, the old woman seemed to be shabbily dressed, and, in truth he had not noticed her at all.

“Well don’t say it like that, just come here for a moment.” The old lady clenched her teeth in a familiar battle with the pain of her right hip, and the balancing aches on her left side.

“Sure.” Galen had made his mind up, he could delay for a little while, he would do the right thing. Across the street he saw several other people surging in all directions, and became anxious about how this action might appear to them, his ambitious generation, but as he slowed himself to help the old lady a strange thing happened: he noticed there were many others there too, mainly much older people walking more slowly, with their own sense of purpose.

“Well, come on then, stop gawping and help me over there.” The old woman fluttered her fingers, indicating the low wall by the nearest garden.

“Okay,” Galen strode over and hesitated again.

“Come on, come on, young man, put your arm out so I can rest on it! Don’t you have grandparents?”

“Ah, yes, yes, I suppose so.” He felt the old woman thread her arm through his and lean on him.

“That’s it.” Shen looked at Galen from the corner of her eye, and smiled to herself. “This will come to you, you know?”

“What will?” Galen had picked up the old woman’s bag and they shuffled across to the wall.

“The aches and pains of age.” She slumped down.

“Oh, I see.” Galen worried that she might fall off the little wall, and delay him further.

“I don’t think you do!” The old woman was grumpy. “Amara, by the way.”

“What?” Galen fired back, in the tone reserved for those others of his generation who would respond in equally curt terms.

“My name, young man, is Amara.” She sighed slightly, “now you’ve rescued me, perhaps you should tell me yours.” She often used longer responses to the young to see if their attention would hold long enough to the end of the sentence.

“Ah, oh, Galen. Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude.” Galen mumbled.

“I don’t think you are, and at least you came back, I’ll give you that.”

“What do you mean?” Galen sat next to her, close enough in case she tipped backwards, but maintaining a gap between her cheap coat, and his smart turtleneck sweater.

“I knew you’d bash into someone.”

“What just now?”

“Of course. I could hear the disturbance of your feet, pumping away like those old steam engines.” She pushed her feet up and down, like a child riding a toy truck. She coughed, loudly, “Oh my,” and again, “I wish I hadn’t done that.” She cackled, catching at her breath, suppressing her mirth away from her agitated throat.

“But I still knocked into you, I am sorry!”

“Yes, but I had already stepped to the side.”

“But still I hit you.”

“Oh, you youngsters, always rushing without thinking.”

“Well, I didn’t see you.”

“Ah, how true. Too busy with your head high, your eyes alert, looking for a mate, trying to impress your competitors.”

“What do you mean? I’m not a monkey!” Galen recoiled.

“We all were, once. It’s something we accept when you get to my great age. You’re just offended by the idea.” She managed a chuckle.

“I was just trying to get to my friends, I was – am – late. You don’t understand.”

“Oh, and why’s that young man?”

“Ah, well, you’ve lost your enthusiasm for life, you’re not striving anymore.”

“You mistake the lack of rushing and blundering at speed, for this ‘lack of enthusiasm’. I suppose you think I might dwell on the past too much.”

“Ah, well, I suppose so, I only ever look forward.”

“Well, that’s most fortunate for you, but when you’re as old as I am, 92 by the way, thanks for asking, two children and three grandchildren, five great grandchildren, all in different countries, sending me pictures and messages I can hardly read, you will look back at the lessons of the past, for comfort, to tease out the joy and the laughter. But I have my books, and my garden, my deep thoughts, I watch everything grow, while the stars stay the same. You’ve not had enough of that to look backwards.”

“I’ve not heard it said like that before.” Galen turned his head slightly towards Amara and saw her eyes were shut.

“Even if this old body would allow me, I no longer need to rush around, I have so much to think about, years of things, and all of them rolling over each other, memories linking back and forwards in time.”

“Oh, I have so much energy, I wish I could give some to you so you can see all the exciting things that are happening in the world, and the terrible things too, which we need to stop, what governments are doing, how people treat strangers, still.”

“Ah, well, we can agree on that, how people treat strangers, but let me tell you, it was much worse for my mother’s generation, bad too in mine, but we lived through and slowly made things better, people working together, young, old, experience and energy combined to improve our world.”

“I don’t know much about that.”

“No, I know, education these days is all about new technology, living on other planets, your generation has given up on this one. Somehow, us old people, we’re like a symbol for what is lost, and you don’t want to see that, so you don’t see us.”

Galen stayed silent.

“I’m glad you have the grace too think about what I’ve said. You know I used to live next door to you and your mother?”

“Oh!” Galen’s face blanched, and stiffened.

“Yes, I was a community leader. Drove real change in this neighbourhood. ‘Course, didn’t finish the job, couldn’t, too much to do, but handed it over to some good people.”

“Now you say it like that, I do remember you, you’ld always come home late, exhausted, and shout at your kids.”

“Oh, that’s right. My man went off to war.”

“Did he come back, I don’t remember him?”

“Oh no, didn’t ever see him again. Had to bring those kids up by myself. Your mammy was good to me though, helped out where she could.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry about now?”

“That I didn’t see you, at all, not just in the street, but recognise you, and I know who you are now, but I didn’t make the connection even back then, I thought you were just a tired mum, shouting a her kids, grieving for her lost husband. I didn’t understand about adult things.”

“Oh, there was grief alright, and anger, but determination too. He was a weak man, but a good one, and that was enough for me. I did what I could, to make things better for us all.”

They fell into silence on the wall. Galen had shuffled across the short divide between them and now they sat supporting each other shoulders and hips, in their relative states of health, joined in the moment.

“Will you do something for me?” Amara spoke quietly.

“Of course.”

“Make an effort to see us, the old men and women around you. We have brought this world to you, and now it’s your turn, but you stand on our tired shoulders, and soon others will stand on yours, as you tire. That’s how we become civilised, we reach up, lifted by our ancestors. We work together, understanding our strengths, complementing our weaknesses. Soon your generation will take us into the stars, take that message there.”

“Hah, perhaps youth is wasted on the young.” Galen said, smiling.

“Well, perhaps wisdom is wasted on the old.” Amara pressed playfully into Galen’s shoulder.

They both laughed.

* * *

Gathering around the floating sphere the Aionios slowly evanesced, leaving the original observer to puzzle at the human obsession with lapsed time and physicality.

[ends]

Part of a new series of micro-fiction stories, released as These Fantastic Worlds SF & Fantasy Fiction Podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher  and more. Also on this blog, These Fantastic Worlds.

Text, image, audio © 2020 Jake Jackson, thesefantasticworlds.com. Thanks to Frances Bodiam and Elise Wells,  Logic ProX, Sound Studio, the Twisted Wave Recorder App, Apogee Condenser microphone, and Alfons Schmidt’s fantastic Notebook app.


More Tales

There are many other great stories in this series, including:

And a carousel of 10 audio stories from the podcast with information about submissions.

Here’s a related post, 5 Steps to the SF and Fantasy Podcasts.