Clifford D. Simak

“ Achieving immortality is only half of the problem.
The other half is knowing how to live with it once
it's been made possible—and inescapable!
You did not die.
There was no normal way to die.
You lived as carelessly and as recklessly as you could and you hoped that you would be lucky and be accidentally killed.
You kept on living and you got tired of living.
"God, how tired a man can get of living!" Andrew Young said.
John Riggs, chairman of the immortality commission, cleared his throat. ”

“ Someday you may find a solution to the problem, but until that time arrives, I ask you, in the name of mercy, to give us relief from life."
"The problem, as we see it," said Riggs, "is to find some way to wipe out mental perspective. When a man lives as you have, sir, for fifty centuries, he has too long a memory. The memories add up to the disadvantage of present realities and prospects for the future." ”

“ I can remember my father telling me that, in his later years, he could recall things which happened in his childhood that had been forgotten all his younger years. And that, alone, should have tipped us off. The brain buries only the newer memories deeply ... they are not available; they do not rise to bother one, because they are not sorted or oriented or correlated or whatever it is that the brain may do with them. ”

“ The technician looked surprised and hurt. "No?"
"No," repeated Andrew Young. "I don't want it fancied up. I want it a simple lump of make-believe. No wonder the children of today have no imagination. Modern toys entertain them with a bag of tricks that leave the young'uns no room for imagination. They couldn't possibly think up, on their own, all the screwy things these new toys do. ”

“ It hasn't worked that way."
He made a savage gesture. "Gentlemen, I can recall my childhood much more vividly than I recall anything that happened yesterday."
"Memories are buried," said Riggs, "and in the old days, when men lived no longer than a hundred years at most, it was thought those buried memories were forgotten. Life, Man told himself, is a process of forgetting. So Man wasn't too worried over memories when he became immortal. ”

“ With his eyes open in the present, he could remember the brightness of the day of the past, the clean-washed goodness of it, the wonder of the colors that were more brilliant than he ever since had seen—as if it were the first second after Creation and the world was still shiningly new. ”

“ It was one of the problems which was recognized when immortality first became practical. But we always thought that memory would erase itself, that the brain could accommodate only so many memories, that when it got full up it would dump the old ones. ”

“ They have sought an answer and there is no answer yet except the pitifully basic answer, the brutally fundamental answer that I have given them.
"My request is simple," he told them, calmly. "I have asked for permission to discontinue life. And since suicide has been made psychologically impossible, I have asked that this commission appoint a panel of next-friends to make the necessary and somewhat distasteful arrangements to bring about the discontinuance of my life."
"If we did," said Riggs, "we would destroy everything we have. There is no virtue in a life of only five thousand years. ”

“ Crazy to be sitting in an overgrown high chair, playing with buttons and mouthing baby talk and trying to force a mind conditioned by five thousand years of life into the channels of an infant's thoughts. ”

“ It's all new to them and so old, so damned and damnably old to me."
"Ancestor Young," said Stanford, "you have seen Man spread out from Earth to distant stellar systems. You have seen the human race expand from one planet to several thousand planets. You have had a part in this. Is there not some satisfaction...."
"You're talking in abstracts," Young cut in. "What I am concerned about is myself ... a certain specific mass of protoplasm shaped in biped form and tagged by the designation, ironic as it may seem, of Andrew Young. I have been unselfish all my life. ”

“ Riggs nodded agreement. "There's a lag of a good many years in the brain's bookkeeping. We will overcome it in time."
"We have tried," said Stanford. "We tried conditioning, the same solution that worked with suicides. But in this, it didn't work. For a man's life is built upon his memories. There are certain basic memories that must remain intact. With conditioning, you could not be selective. You could not keep the structural memories and winnow out the trash. It didn't work that way."
"There was one machine that worked," Riggs put in. "It got rid of memories. ”

“ Our help with the house must be the help of an unseen, silent agency. Like brownies, I think the term was that he used, we must help and be never seen. Intrusion by anyone would introduce a jarring note and would destroy illusion and that is all he has to work on. ”

“ They were less of a problem."
"There's nothing more that we can do?"
"Nothing," Stanford said. "Just wait, that's all. Young has carried himself this far by the sheer force of will alone. That will is gone now. He can't consciously force himself any further back. He is more child than adult now. He's built up a regressive momentum and the only question is whether that momentum is sufficient to carry him all the way back to actual babyhood."
"It has to go back to that?" Riggs looked unhappy, obviously thinking of his own future. ”

“ And that is good, for the further he goes, the more memories are erased."
"And then?" asked Riggs worriedly.
"Then he can proceed to grow up again."
They stood watching, silently.
In the enormous house, lights came on in the kitchen and the windows gleamed with a homey brightness.
I, too, Stanford was thinking. Some day, I, too. Young has pointed the way, he has blazed the path. He had shown us, all the other billions of us, here on Earth and all over the Galaxy, the way it can be done. There will be others and for them there will be more help. We'll know then how to do it better. ”

“ But scaled to adult size."
"Now," said Stanford, "he wants a house built to the same proportions. A house that will make him think or help him believe that he is a child. But will it work, Riggs? His body will not change. He cannot make it change. It will only be in his mind."
"Illusion," declared Riggs. "The illusion of bigness in relation to himself. To a child, creeping on the floor, a door is twenty-five to thirty feet high, relatively. Of course the child doesn't know that. But Andrew Young does. ”

“ It took all memories and it left no capacity to build a new set. A man went in a human being and came out a vegetable."
"Suspended animation," said Stanford, "would be a solution. If we had suspended animation. Simply stack a man away until we found the answer, then revive and recondition him." ”

“ Every one involves accidental violence. Some of them drove their vehicles too fast and, more than likely, very recklessly. One fell off a cliff when he reached down to pick a flower that was growing on its edge. ”