The boy sitting opposite me has eyes the colour of paint-splatter, a mop of greasy magenta hair, and a black ring through his left nostril. It’s not the look I would have chosen, but even the scars of Victoria’s increasingly garish fashion cycles cannot conceal his natural beauty. He’s like something from an old American movie about a long, hot, frivolous teenage summer. Looking at him makes me want to take a bite out of my spoon.1
“Goddammit, you need to stop that,” he says.
“Stop what?”
“Looking at me like that.” The boy laughs as he speaks. “I mean, Jesus, you could try and be a bit more subtle. Hell, we’re just two guys aboard a Starship named after a long dead Queen, enjoying some wine and shooting the shit. Don’t overthink it.”
The irreverence is too much. It feels inauthentic. The way he litters his speech with sentence tags and fillers makes him sound like a first-year philosophy student mimicking his trendy professor. Still, there’s something in that, isn’t there? There’s something about affectation and bravado that recalls the sweet beginnings of adulthood.
The touring freight Aleksander frees itself of its moorings and pushes skyward. It rises elegantly from the dockland as though tethered to a million invisible balloons.2
“You can’t understand,” I tell my stepfather, “because you’re from a different time. I know you think you have all the answers because you’re older, or because you have more experience, or whatever, but everything you think you know is wrong now, just like when I’m your age everything I know will be outdated too. Only, I like to think I’ll be wise enough to listen to the young people of tomorrow.”
My stepfather smiles at me, and something about that smile makes me feel two inches tall.
“You use a lot of old religious terms,” I say. “Do you practice?”
“What?”
“You said Jesus, God, and Hell, practically in the same breath.”
“Oh,” he says. “No. It’s just something you say. Just things people say, you know?”
Linus, dressed head to toe in piano-key tails, stops by our table and refills our glasses with what I’m told is a 2012 Rioja, but could be a 2012 Snakebite for all I know about wine. I thank him and he leaves.
“So, young man,” I say, “why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?”
The boy shrugs. “There’s not much to it, really. I was born about five years into the expedition, which means I’ve lived just about the same life as everyone else my age. I teach four-year-olds to read and write, and some basic arithmetic. So, I suppose that means I’m not very smart either, at least not in the way my parents hoped. I was never good at the sciences and always hated engineering. On the plus side, I am great at selling myself.”
The boy grins and sips his wine. Lack of self-esteem is not an attractive quality in and of itself, but I wonder if that’s a misread; maybe it’s humility.
“Is it the work you’d have chosen?” I say.
“I like it well enough. It’s not all that stimulating — but it can be fun. It can be sad sometimes, too. That’s the thing about children, isn’t it? On the one hand you can’t help being swept up in their simple joy. On the other, there’s nothing quite like staring at little happy people to make you think about the things you don’t have anymore.”
“I do hope you’re not lamenting your age,” I tease. “If you’re old, what hope is there for me?”
“But that’s just it, right? There’s always someone older and there’s always someone younger. I think it does us good to seek those people out. The Ancient Greeks knew that, right?”
Oh dear. “The Greeks?” I say with a forced smile.
“Well, it’s like, we both have something the other one desires, right? On the surface it might seem like there’s an imbalance; you have power, experience, knowledge, wealth, and whatever else. But I have things you don’t have. I have youth. I have a certain naivety. You offer me wisdom and I offer you relevance — and somewhere in that exchange you can feel young again. In the same way I can feel wise.”
Oh, what I wouldn’t give to once more cast youthful verve onto rusty relics.
I find him sitting in a dimly lit bar at the back of a pop-up arcade in Soho. Smoke rises from the novelty cocktail in front of him, whilst green laser beams scour his mess of dirty blonde hair. In perfect time with the generic reggae track blaring out from the arcade’s shitty sound system, he brings down his boots onto imaginary bass-pedals, and with the palms of his hands he slaps his jeans on the offbeats. Then, as though feeling my stare in the back of his head, he turns to look at me. We catch eyes. He sticks out his tongue. I worry that if I blink he’ll disappear.
Two days later I start the company that will make me one of the wealthiest men on Earth.
“That is a very generous reading of ancient Greek culture,” I say.
The boy shrugs. “Do you have a better one?”
Arrogance is a clever touch. It rings true.
“Well,” I say, taking a gulp of wine, “let us not forget that the sorts of pederasty you’re referring to were a practice limited to aristocrats and soldiers. In other words, men with power. If history tells us anything it’s that men with power tend to use that power in ways that are of little benefit to those around them. So, how about if we are not talking about an equal exchange but an exercise of power to placate desire? And not intellectual desires, but carnal ones. The man fears death and time, so he imposes his will and drinks from the fountain of youth, so to speak, and in doing so is allowed briefly to forget himself.”
“But these relationships were mutual. It’s well documented.”
Yes, as mutual as you and me sitting across from one another right now. “Probably less mutual than you would think,” I say, “but let’s presume you’re right and say the adolescent is complicit – you tell me; why would a perfect creature at the height of his powers choose to waste its youth on some crusty dying thing?”
“We’re all dying things,” says the boy.
“Don’t dodge.”
“Well, maybe he thinks he can learn something. Maybe it’s a mentorship as much as it’s a relationship. The boy learns the ways of the world in exchange for giving the man purpose,” he says, with great self-satisfaction, as though he were the first person to ever think of it.
“Or, in other words,” I say, “more fear. The boy feels inadequate. He wants so desperately to be older and wiser. Unable to perceive his own riches, he trades in everything and finds himself penniless.”
I tell him that we only live once, in case he doesn’t already know, and he tells me I’m an idiot, and that I’m not eighteen anymore, and that I’m trying to cling to something I’ve already lost.
I try for hours to make him understand that it’s not about sex, it’s about life. It’s about experiencing everything the world has to offer you and giving back everything you have to offer the world. It doesn’t mean I love him any less. I want him to experience it, too. We’ll both be the better for it.
And then ten years flash by before I see him again.
The boy grins. “Is that how you think of yourself, as a crusty dying thing?”
He’s got me there. I laugh, and realise, despite myself, I’m having some fun. “At times,” I say. “In moments.”
Linus appears again. He deftly fills our glasses before beckoning a second waiter with a serving cart. In less than a minute our table is filled; shrimp and caviar, chorizo and honey-mustard mashed potatoes, shallow cauldrons of sizzling Mediterranean vegetables.
“Is it like you remember it?” says the boy, spooning mashed potatoes onto his plate.
“It’s close enough.”
The boy wants to say something else. I can see it in the way his mouth twitches, but he stops himself and returns to his food.
“Go on,” I say.
He shifts, scratches behind his ear. His face tenses slightly. “I was just wondering why you did it. I’m sure you get this all the time, or maybe you don’t because people are too embarrassed to ask you, but I’d just kick myself if I didn’t ask. Why did you come by yourself? You must have had people you loved and cared about, the same as everyone else. But out of all the thousands of people that left that day, you’re the only one who came alone. Or, at least, that’s what they say about you.”
“That is what they say, and there’s truth in it. Honestly, it feels like a different me who made that decision.”
“You had everything,” says the boy, emboldened by the ease of my reply. “You had everything anyone could ask for in life, and you traded it all in for — what?”
“There is always sacrifice,” I say. “You don’t need wealth and power to know sacrifice. The truth is I was unhappy. I looked out my window one day and did not like what I saw. The planet was dying, and every day was a painful reminder of my part in its murder.”
“But it wouldn’t have died in your lifetime, right? From what I’ve heard, Earth was a wonderland. It had blue skies and green grass, and anything you could ever want at the snap of your fingers. Am I wrong?”
“Not particularly,” I say. “Everything you’ve just said is true on the surface.”
“So?”
“So, you look deeper. And the deeper you look the more you see. You see the layers of paint holding it all together, and you see where the paint is starting to crack.”
The boy rolls his eyes. “No offence, but that seems a bit abstract. Like you’re not really saying anything. Like you’re expecting me to do all the work.”
“All those lovely things arriving on your doorstep at the snap of a finger, who do you think pays for that?”
“Let me guess,” says the boy. “Everyone.”
“Everyone. We all paid. We paid with our lungs and with our planet, and with our children.”
“But Earth is still there!”
“It keeps spinning for now,” I say, “but one day it will stop.”
“Well, that’s not something I can argue with, but who’s dodging now? Why did you give up everything for an experiment that would have happened without you?”
I don’t know. Why does anyone do what they do? It seemed to be the right thing at the time. No. That’s not quite it. There were reasons. “Some of it was guilt,” I say. “I was so young when I started the company. I cared about being successful and not much else. Something happens in your late twenties, or something happened to me anyway. I had a sort of breakdown. All my aspirations suddenly seemed childish and worthless, and for a time I gave in to nihilism. It wrapped me up like a cocoon and when I emerged from it, somewhere in my early thirties, everything was different3. I saw for the first time the impact my work had had on the world; I realised most anyone would be hard-pressed to call it a good one. Around that time, they asked me to go, and I said yes. They needed a high-profile passenger. They figured if people saw someone who had a lot to lose deciding to go along for the ride, then other people would want to go, too. They thought it would validate the mission, and in a way it did. So, I guess some of it was guilt. Some of it was that I thought I could be helpful in ways I never had been before, but mostly it was just that they asked me at the right time and I said yes. And now it’s twenty-nine years later and here I am, and there you are.”
“Here we are,” says the boy, and then he throws me a half-smile so delicious I could have eaten it. “Now this is the part where you say, enough about me, what about you?”
“I thought you said there was nothing interesting to say? That you were just the same as everyone else?”
“Nothing interesting to say to you, I think is what I meant. How can anyone say anything that sounds interesting to you? But we don’t have to set the world on fire. I’ve found that talking to people about what Earth things they like can be pretty illuminating.”
Oh really? And I suppose now is the time you’ll tell me that your favourite novel is Moby-Dick. It was a clear reuse from the last model.
“Like, for example,” says the boy, “My favourite novel is Moby-Dick.”
“What an unlikely coincidence,” I say. “That happens to be my favourite novel as well.”
“Really?” he says, with the genuine excitement of someone who has not already had this conversation several times in the past year.
I sigh. “You want to ask me whether I’m Ishmael or Ahab, don’t you?”
“Err… Sort of? But that’s okay, right? Because it seems like you want to tell me.”
This is awful. We sound like one of those old daytime soaps. What am I doing?
“I want to stop this now,” I say, loud enough to be heard over the clinks and mumblings of the restaurant.
The other diners pretend not to notice. It’s not hard for them. They’ve had a long time to grow accustomed to my dalliances. I believe they’ve come to enjoy them as a kind of spectator sport.
Linus returns. “I’m sorry, Mr. Nord. Is there a problem?”
The boy’s furrowed expression is a terrible thing. I’m such a despicable person, really.
“Not particularly, Linus. He’s lovely. Your best yet. More than lovely, actually; he’s beautiful.”
“What’s going on?” says the boy. “What is this?”
There is always this moment. It kills me every time. I always convince myself I won’t tell them the truth but then this moment always gets the better of me. “What’s going on is that I’m a sick, old, lonely man with a penchant for sweet things, and you are the latest in a series of such sweet things made to appease me. You were the best one yet if it’s any consolation. You felt almost real.”
“Mr. Nord,” says Linus, “If you were to go a little further you will find he’s very real in other ways as well. He can—”
“Linus, please, don’t be crude,” I say. “It’s not right. None of this is right.”
The boy rolls his eyes and stands up to leave. “You’re a crazy old man. I thought you were interesting, but it turns out you’re just mad.”
“What is your name?” I say, regretting the question the instant it leaves my lips. The boy’s mouth opens and stays open. His face twists in discomfort.
“I… What is my name?” he says. “Why can’t I remember my name?”
I walk over to him. His slender shoulder fits into the palm of my hand. “You can’t remember your name because you don’t have one. You’re programmed to accept the first name I greet you with, but I didn’t greet you at all because I wanted to see what would happen, and because I’m cruel. I know this is painful, Christian—”
“Christian!” he gasps. “My name is… My name…”
I kiss his soft hair; cucumber and mint. It smells like him. “Linus, please take Christian away now. Ensure he has every comfort.”
Still the diners pretend not to notice as I leave. They’ll all have a great tale to tell their co-workers tomorrow morning.
“Wait,” croaks a voice from behind me. I turn to find young Christian’s eyes filled with silent tears, bravely holding back the flood. “You never told me whether you were Ishmael or Ahab. I still want to know.”
A last-ditch attempt to save himself, maybe, to affirm his humanity. Very well.
“I’m neither. Both those men are heroes. I’m nothing but an old deck hand, long since driven mad by the voyage and good for nothing but scrubbing.”
And even that, which I’d intended as honest and self-deprecating, has my ego’s unfailing self-preservation written all over it.4
I catch a glimpse of him in the blur of the crowd. Just a glimpse, just for a second, but it’s him; I’d know those eyes if they were staring at me through a pane of frosted glass.
I see him. He sees me. We exchange a look I will project countless meanings onto in the coming years. And then he’s swallowed up by the jeering, cheering masses that have come to wish us on our way.
Ahead of us, innumerable time, they say, a noble mission and a new beginning. But as we push off and up through the overcast sky, none of that really seems to matter. All I can think about as we break the atmosphere is how unfair it is that you must live forever with the mistakes you make when you’re young.