Chapter 12

Early Spring – 2082 a.d. – the same day

The Visitor

The sonic boom was followed by the constant roar of a ramjet, indicating that it had slowed to less than the speed of sound. It was circling high above his cabin in a tight arc, rapidly losing speed and altitude.

'It might be Frank and Tanya coming to visit, ' he thought, smiling to himself.

Since he had retired and the company awarded him his own desert domicile, they had started coming by for a visit at least once a year (they'd been there twice). On their last visit, they had brought their oldest daughter Alicia and her middle-aged husband. The cabin had been full of excess motion and exuberant life for the two days they had stayed.

Jake wondered if they were bringing someone with them this time. To find out, he could activate the cabin console – the same system he was just looking at in the bathroom. He decided he'd rather be surprised.

It would be a few minutes before 'whoever' could bring their craft down from the altitude it was traveling. He leaned his face into the laser shaver, and pressed 'one'. It flashed for a few seconds, erasing his month-old whiskers. He still used a brush to clean his teeth. It was an old model with a built-in water jet and sonics to clean between his teeth as he brushed.

Finishing up, he combed his hair, pulling the comb slowly over his head as the tiny blades twirled, automatically untangling his hair, cutting off the split ends and providing just the right amount of moisturizing cream to keep it healthy.

Lastly, he stepped up to the deodorant dispenser, pressed 'Upper' and raised his arms. A spray of unscented crystal deodorant coated his armpits, then a short blast of dry air finished him off. Liquid crystal deodorant was the popular type in use now, rather than the myriad dozens of toxic, asthma-inducing deodorants available at the turn of the last century, whose main ingredient was coal tar, more commonly known at the time as 'fragrance'.

Finding a clean pair of jeans and a comparatively unwrinkled shirt, he quickly put them on and went downstairs. Now, completely ready, at least physically, to socialize, he stepped outside and looked around.

A flitter was perched two hundred feet from the cabin. In the automatic floodlights that lit up the landing pad, Jake could see the big 'F', the 'eye' and the 'T' that made up the company logo of Frank and Tanya's private investigations company. Their slogan was, 'We f-eye-t for your right! (with 'to live' stenciled underneath the 'eye')'. Jake knew, however, that Frank and Tanya did more 'bounty hunting' than investigating or courtroom maneuvering, and privately believed their logo was somewhat misleading. Of course, hunting criminals and serial killers was a lot more adventurous, and Tanya loved the hunt. What she loved most was the danger and the excitement she felt when she set herself up as bait to attract the attention of what she called 'evildoers'. I think she read too many comic books when she was a kid, ' he thought affectionately, then smirked as he tried to imagine Frank's sexy, blond and very lethal wife as a flat-chested ten-year-old tomboy.

Jake saw only one person climbing out of the flitter, and from the way the fireproof flight suit fit around the hips, the pilot was obviously female. As she took off her helmet, an avalanche of luscious blond hair fell around her shoulders, causing Jake to feel disappointed, though he didn't really know whom he expected to see. The person he really wanted to see didn't exist anymore, except in his dreams.

'Well, It's either Tanya or Alicia, ' he realized as he approached the curvy blonde. At this distance, he couldn't tell them apart. Tanya and Alicia, mother and daughter, looked almost exactly alike. They both looked twenty, though Alicia was eighty-six and her mother was a hundred and twenty-three.

When Alicia had actually been twenty, she'd had a crush on Jake a mile wide. When he had stayed at Frank and Tanya's for awhile, Alicia would sneak into his room and make love to him. He woke up more than once to find Alicia perched on top of him, happily fucking him awake. She wanted to marry him, since he was the only long-lifer around except for her parents and siblings. She had it all figured out. She was going to create her own little dynasty of immortals.

Alicia energetically pursued Jake until she realized that, while he was very fond of her, he wasn't actually 'in love' with her. Then, unexpectedly and, uncharacteristically (for her), she accepted what he had been telling her all along, and let him go.

Socially, she made light of that adolescent period of her life. But, when she 'coincidentally' ran into Jake in the Aleutian Islands while traveling to forget the loss of her first husband, she resumed her torrid relationship with him while she was there. When she left to return to her life in the States, she begged Jake to come with her. He declined and she returned alone, leaving Jake to continue his own travels.

Jake didn't see Alicia again until just last year, when her parents had brought her and her middle-aged second husband along for Jake's second annual celebration of his official retirement. After almost seventy years and two marriages, she still looked at Jake with the same longing in her eyes as she had...

Right now, as she approached.

"Hi, Sweetheart," Jake said, hugging her.

Alicia didn't say anything for a long moment. She just let him hold her. Jake knew something was wrong. There always was. She was traveling alone. She didn't like being alone at all, and would make friends with the strangest people, just to have someone to talk to when she traveled.

Then he heard her whisper, "Hi, yourself, Uncle Jake." The sadness in her voice confirmed to him that, once again, something catastrophic had happened in her self-absorbed world.

With his hands on her shoulders, he looked into her face. Her face was always a beautiful surprise to look at. She was the only blonde he had ever seen with truly blond eyebrows and lashes. From personal experience, he knew she was blond all over, from her head right down to the hairs on her toes. Her eyes were filling with tears.

"I'm sorry, I thought I was through crying," she explained, as tears began to travel down her cheeks.

She hugged Jake, letting him comfort her some more. That was what she had come for, after all – some serious comforting – and something else only Jake could provide. Jake led her into the cabin, knowing she would tell him what had happened in her own time.

Jake and Alicia sat down on the sofa. Alicia ordered coffee from the kitchen, almost as if she knew he'd have some ready. She smiled to herself as she realized that Jake hadn't erased her voice recognition sequence from the console receptors in the year or so since she'd visited him last, even though she'd brought her aging husband with her and hadn't once tried to accost him in the middle of the night for some mischievous sex play.

"I suppose you heard that my husband passed away," Alicia said, her voice calm and sociable, now.

Frank shook his head. "No, I haven't turned on the telecaster for the last couple of weeks." He had set the telecaster to inform him of news concerning certain subjects, including the Tabors and their offspring. It had been blinking at him for over a week, he just now realized. He had set it on minimal notice so that it wouldn't bother him with all the unimportant 'news' that normally bombarded him.

"I remember," she said, reminiscing now, "when you told us how long I could expect to live, I was so happy I was just floating on air for days afterward, knowing that I would live hundreds of years without ever aging. It was like you'd handed me the world on a silver platter. But now that world has changed so much, and I'm still the same. Sometimes, I feel like time forgot about me.