The Fountains of Youth - Brian Stableford [78]
The revival of Thanaticist ideas was at first purely theoretical. Although many hobbyist masochists became fond of asserting that the ultimate human experience must be the one that emortals had postponed indefinitely, there was no immediate rush to put aside the delay. There was, however, extensive experimentation with increasingly elaborate exercises in “recreational torture.” As time went by, and these activities became increasingly ingenious and daring, the leading proponents of the new philosophy of extreme experience began to look around for “martyrs,” who might be prepared to go all the way.
There had always been suicides in the true emortal population—indeed, once a firm line had been ruled beneath the death toll of the Decimation, suicide became the commonest cause of death in three-quarters of the Earthly nations, outnumbering accidental deaths by a facto of three in the most extreme cases. Such acts were, however, motivated by personal idiosyncrasy. None of the first dozen Thanaticist martyrs, all of whom were posthumously hailed, had committed suicide for any reason remotely linked to the cause of sensation seeking. I daresay that they would all have been horrified to be hailed as heroes and potential role models, but they were not around to object.
I would have been unpleasantly surprised by the developments of the 2710s and 2720s even if I had remained a mere spectator, but I did not. The new Thanaticists would probably have taken a considerable interest in my work anyway, simply because I was now well established in the scholarly sectors of Labyrinth as the leading historian of death. As chance would have it, though, they rose to prominence within twenty years of the publication of the third part of the project: the one that dealt so extensively, and so sympathetically, with the ancient martyrs of Christendom.
My interpretation of the myth of Christ and those who had followed him to horrible and ignominious destruction was publicly hailed by the prophets of the new Thanaticism as a major inspiration, and it was publicly claimed as proof of the respectability of their philosophy. The so-called Thanaticist Manifesto of 2717, which carried the ridiculous and obviously pseudonymous byline “Hellward Lucifer Nyxson,” quoted from The Empires of Faith—though not so extensively as to be in breach of copyright—and held up my work as an example to everyone interested in recovering the full range of sensations that early humans had been “privileged to enjoy.” The claim that anything I had written could be taken as support for the absurd manifesto was nonsensical, but it was read and heard by millions more people than ever bothered to look at the history itself.
My ideas were swiftly usurped, horribly perverted and lasciviously adopted—in their perverted forms—as key items of Thanaticist lore. The Thanaticists claimed that their own expeditionaries to the extremes of human experience were, like the Christian martyrs and their model, suffering and dying on behalf of others. According to Nyxson and his more vociferous followers, Thanaticist martyrs were nobly crucifying themselves so that the New Human Race would not lose touch with the more exotic possibilities of life, liberty, and the pursuit of self-knowledge.
I tried to protest, of course, but at first I protested privately and entirely in vain. I sent messages to people who misquoted and misrepresented me, begging them to desist, although I could not contrive to discover the real identity of Hellward Lucifer Nyxson. Such replies as I received were content to assure me that I had misunderstood the import of my own work. It quickly became clear that I would need to react more forcefully if I were to have any effect at all—but I had no idea how to go about it.
While I dithered, events moved on rapidly and relentlessly. Thanks to false advertisements by the most outspoken Thanaticists, I became a hero