Longevity

Image "Incandescence" by JohnSu over at Deviantart

She was a slow burner. That was part of why he loved her, but at times it was a drain. She was clever enough, and the flame on her head burned bright, but her thoughts and decisions moved slowly like the wax she melted from herself with the fire that kept her light. He himself had The Upgrade, but this late in her life, her light could not be transferred, and though she was beautiful and well off now, she was more likely to die of old age than he.

He could simply replace his bulb when it wore out (after so many years), and was effectively immortal, so long as the electricity inside him stayed present. He worked on battery and generator, and it meant that effectively as long as he stayed repaired, and didn't do anything really stupid like letting a battery corrode, or not replacing a dead battery or fixing a broken generator, his light would keep going and his life would continue, though each new bulb would change him fairly drastically. His base self would persist.

For her part, she would burn until she was a nub, short and ugly and wax left behind, and just a bare bit of wick, and if the surgeries went well and they were able to attach more wick and then more wax and keep it burning, repeatedly, she might live as many as eighty years, perhaps 120 since she was such a slow burner. You could do the surgeries earlier and stay beautiful and tall each time, but if it went poorly then you had just wasted years of life, which society had agreed was awfully sad, and so the practice had been outlawed. Upkeep of wax was possible and useful, but took large amounts of time. Whether you engaged in early or late surgeries, you could not expect the fourth surgery to go well, for the flame becomes tired, and even if relit, it has trouble recognizing such a far-removed wick. That's what the surgeons claimed anyway. More likely they just had well below an 80% success rate, and whether it was their fault or not, he had trouble deciding, knowing little or nothing about surgery.

The two of them had strong ties, and though he would live much longer, his current bulb would wear out about sixty-five years into her life, and they would deal with that when the time came. That's what they'd been talking about on the way home from the theatre, for the play they'd seen had been about the mortality of life, bringing up societal and personal issues with it. They'd both heard of LEDs, and they knew where they stood on that, and if they had a child, they would put his light in an LED body, for they had the money and wanted the best for their child, even if he wouldn't be able to feel the changes that came with incandescence or candledom. So the topic they'd been most interested in, during the play, had been the mother and father, who had grown old together and had the opportunity to know that the mother would die and the father would change, and the couple had stuck together through it, and she wanted to know what he was expecting when his new bulb came.

"It's just that I'll be halfway or three fourths of the way done, and if I don't like you anymore, I won't want to stay out of loyalty."

"What make you think you won't like me anymore? Don't you like my basic qualities? Those stay the same. Didn't we agree to cross this bridge when we got to it?"

She thought for several moments, processing what he had said, and synthesizing a response. He thought and thought during those movements, getting more thought done here than she would throughout the conversation. Despite all this thinking he failed to grasp that crossing a bridge when you get to it is impossible for two people when one of them has expectations. Finally she spoke. "I really like you most for your eccentricities dear. Will you still love me when I'm not so peppy and happy? When I'm more tired, after my wick has been extended time after time? Wouldn't it be better we agree to decide once we've changed? I don't want there to be any hard feelings, but we really won't be able to make a decision together without conflict if you've already made one."

It was his turn to think, and he decided to avoid the conflict. "We'll decide when we get there," he said. Her flame flickered high for a moment. They finished their walk home in silence, which was amiable on her part, but less so on his, though she did not notice. It took effort on her part to notice, so observance was not her strong suit. Since they'd developed incandescence some years ago, their nation had been much more difficult to attack, winning every defensive battle they engaged in simply by merit of heir scouts and lookouts. It had been all over the papers, which he read each night, including this one, once they were home and while she maintained her wax, resulting in the "hair" and figure that less well-maintained candles envied so much.

He loved her very much, but he would have to deal with the idea of her loving most his eccentricities, not necessarily caring about the other bits, the bits that would stay when his new bulb came. Suppose he broke his bulb early, tomorrow or the next day. He would still love her. Their essential qualities were compatible, by the mark of his essential qualities, but he worried. He dimmed his light, and at in his chair, relaxing, waiting for her to be done. When she was done, they would play their very long strategy game, which spanned days because of her speed of thought, but he was a patient man, and if he could find a way to keep their love going, the candle would be a long lasting one, whom he could, and would love to the end of her days, and when her days were over...well, he would actually cross that bridge when he got to it. He couldn't bear to do otherwise, or to so much as think about it.

"Longevity" Flash Fiction © Ben Clardy V

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.