The Dragon Man - Brian Stableford [22]
“I doubt it,” Father Lemuel said, soberly. “Nobody knows how long people with my kind of IT will be able to live, or exactly what will happen when it begins it fail, but I won’t have to suffer the kind of ham-fisted repairs that he had to undergo when IT was in its infancy. He’s more cyborg than I’ll ever need to be.”
Sara knew that everyone with Internal Technology—or even a smartsuit—was a cyborg of sorts, but that the term was only used for people who had considerable quantities of inorganic material integrated into their bodies.
“Can’t they take the old repairs out and make new ones?” Sara asked.
“It’s not that easy. It’s safer to leave the old patches in place and keep adding new ones—if they tried to strip him back to the bare flesh, it would probably kill him. There aren’t many of his kind left—and most of the others spend even more time in virtual space than I do. He’s old in a way that people like us will probably never experience. People are picked off by accidents all the time, and there are still a few diseases that take their toll, but hardly anyone dies of old age any more. When Frank and his kindred are gone, we’ll never see their like again.”
Sara thought about that for a moment or two. “But he must have the same Internal Technology as you have,” she said. “Unless you’re much richer than he is. So why will he die of old age if you won’t?”
“Money doesn’t make that much difference,” Father Lemuel told her. “And I suppose I might get to die of old age if I’m lucky—or do I mean unlucky? Anyway, Frank had already done most of his aging before he was fitted with the first primitive IT suites; he’s been preserved, but not rejuvenated. He’s lasted a lot longer than he or anyone else expected, given that so much damage had already been done, and bearing in mind that he’s had a couple of bad accidents along the way. He’s tough—nobody knows what he might yet be capable of, including him.”
“He must remember the Crash,” Sara said, to prompt further revelations. “That must be weird.”
“After a fashion,” Father Lemuel agreed. “As you get older, your distant memories are edited down, but they never disappear. You lose the sense of having been there, though—I don’t suppose that Frank’s memories of the Crash are very much different from the impressions other people obtain by studying history, or surrounding themselves with collections of pre-Crash junk.”
“I always thought they called him the Dragon Man because of the dragon in his shop window,” Sara said. “I didn’t know he looked...different.”
“He doesn’t really have to,” Father Lemuel said, pensively. “He could program his smartsuit to provide the illusion of a face much like anyone else’s. I once asked him why he didn’t, but all he said was that other people could program their smartsuits to look like him if they wanted to, and if they weren’t prepared to take the trouble, why should he? It’s not so surprising, when you consider that he’s always made his living helping people to look different and distinctive. His smartsuit covers up his tattoos, though—and he still has those, from way back. He dresses very conservatively, but wearing a mask to complete the picture is a step too far, in his way of thinking. It’s just the way he is—I don’t think he’s trying to make a point, parading himself as a walking memento mori.”
“What’s a memento mori?” Sara asked.
“A reminder that we’re all mortal. Even now. Even if we can live forever—which we probably can’t—we won’t. Accident or disaster will get us in the end. We’re not immortal with an eye-double-em, and probably not even emortal with an ee. We can always be killed—any day, any moment. That’s why it’s really not a good idea to go climbing without the proper equipment, Sara. You really should take precautions.”
“That’s not what you said at the house meeting,” Sara reminded him.
“It’s not a good thing for parents to become too paranoid, or to put too many restrictions