The City of Mirrors

Think about it, he said: What would the world be like if human beings could live two hundred years? Five hundred? How about a thousand? What leaps of genius would a man be capable of, with a millennium of accumulated wisdom on which to draw? The great mistake of modern biological science, he believed, was to assume that death was natural, when it was anything but, and to view it in terms of isolated failures of the body. Cancer. Heart disease. Alzheimer’s. Diabetes. Trying to cure them one by one, he said, was as pointless as swatting at a swarm of bees. You might get a couple, but the swarm would kill you in the end. The key, he said, lay in confronting the whole question of death, to turn it on its head. Why should we have to die at all? Could it be that somewhere within the deep molecular coding of our species lay the road map to a next evolutionary step—one in which our physical attributes would be brought into equilibrium with our powers of thought? And wouldn’t it make sense that nature, in its genius, intended for us to discover this for ourselves, employing the unique endowments it had afforded us?

He was, in short, making a case for immortality as the apotheosis of the human state. This sounded like mad science to me. The only things missing from his argument were a slab of reassembled body parts and a lightning rod, and I’d told him as much. For me, science wasn’t about the big picture but the small one—the same modestly ambitious, hunt-and-peck investigations that Jonas decried as a waste of time. And yet his passion was attractive—even, in its own crackpot way, inspiring. Who wouldn’t want to live forever?

“The thing I don’t get is why he thinks the way he does,” I said. “He seems so sensible otherwise.”

My tone was light, but I could tell I’d hit on something. Liz called the waiter over and asked for another glass of wine.

“Well, there’s an answer for that,” she said. “I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“About me.”

This was how I came to learn the story. When Liz was eleven, she had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. The cancer had originated in the lymph nodes surrounding her trachea. Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy—she’d had it all. Twice she’d gone into remission, only to have the disease return. Her current remission had lasted four years.

“Maybe I’m cured, or so they tell me. I guess you never know.”

I had no idea how to respond. The news was deeply distressing, but anything I might have offered would have been an empty platitude. Yet in a way I could not put my finger on, the information did not seem entirely new to me. I had felt it from the day we’d met: there was a shadow over her life.

“I’m Jonas’s pet project, you see,” she continued. “I’m the problem he wants to solve. It’s pretty noble, when you think about it.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said. “He worships you. It’s totally obvious.”

She sipped her wine and returned it to the table. “Let me ask you something, Tim. Name one thing about Jonas Lear that isn’t perfect. I’m not talking about the fact that he’s always late or picks his nose at traffic lights. Something important.”

I searched my thoughts. She was right. I couldn’t.

“This is what I’m saying. Handsome, smart, charming, destined for great things. That’s our Jonas. Since the day he was born, everybody’s loved him. And it makes him feel guilty. I make him feel guilty. Did I tell you he wants to marry me? He tells me all the time. Say the word, Liz, and I’ll buy the ring. Which is ridiculous. Me, who might not live past twenty-five, or whatever the statistics say. And even if the cancer doesn’t come back, I can’t have children. The radiation took care of that.”

It was getting late; I could feel the city changing around me, its energies shifting. Down the block, people were stepping from the theater, hailing cabs, going in search of drinks or food. I was tired and overloaded by the emotions of the last few days. I signaled the waiter for the bill.

“I’ll tell you something else,” Liz said as we were paying the tab. “He really admires you.”

This was, in some ways, the strangest news of all. “Why would he admire me?”

“Oh, a lot of reasons. But I think it comes down to the fact that you’re something he can’t ever be. Authentic, maybe? I’m not talking about being modest, although you are. Too modest, if you ask me. You underestimate yourself. But there’s something…I don’t know, pure about you. A resilience. I saw it the moment I met you. I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but the one good thing about cancer, and I mean the only thing, is it teaches you to be honest.”