Eighth Circle

Mother was twenty-five at the time and her egg had been taken from her body. Father was over three-hundred and his sperm was taken from a sperm bank. There were no photographs of him from the distant past and one could only guess what he looked like when he was a fully-functioning human being.

The guardians' preservation process left few clues to the original person. It paid a lot of attention to the head and tended to disregard the other parts of the body. The head contained the brain and the rest of the body were deemed unnecessary for the attainment of immortality.

Father was little more than a head floating in nourishing fluids. His body had shrunk to the size of a child's and hung awkwardly below a scrawny neck. Mother shook visibly when she saw him but little Crispin was entranced. There was something appealing about the strange being floating in the glass jar.

Father stared down at them as if suspended in space. His eyes radiated love and understanding. When he spoke his lips moved but no sound emerged. His voice was produced by an electronic device. It was neither old nor young. He didn't croak like the guardians. His voice was ageless and full of understanding.

To Crispin, he had the wisdom of an old person and the curiosity of a young one. He wanted to know what his family were doing and what was happening in the world outside his jar. Most of all, he wanted to know about the guardians.

Father had once been king. The country had a royal family when the guardians seized power. They imprisoned him and argued about killing him. When they couldn't make up their minds, they assigned him to the jar and used his sperm to produce a succession of royal prisoners.

His jar was in a far corner of the building. To get to it they had to walk past rows of similar jars, each containing its own immortal. That was the part of the visit Peter most dreaded. The immortals never slept. They stared from their jars. He felt a hundred eyes burning into the back of his neck as he and Crispin made their way down the rows, doing their best to look as if they had every right to be there.

Footsteps sounded from the direction of the guardroom and they weren't made by the dainty feet of a palace troll. They were heavy. Peter thought about death trolls and wondered if he was about to meet one. He quickened his pace and Crispin held him back.

'We mustn't hurry ... that will attract attention.'