Immortality Street

by Jeff Haas

Frowning, Professor Richard Wasiolek stepped out of the Nanotechnology Institute at the University of Chicago and tapped with his cane down 57th Street to Medici’s for lunch. He had spent the better part of the morning directing his grad students in a failed attempt to prove that nanobots could be used to repair damaged cells in the human body. He believed that not only would such a discovery lead to human immortality but, more importantly, it would finally land him the Nobel Prize in Physiology he had coveted for so many years. At seventy-eight, Wasiolek understood that he might not have too many experiments left in him, so he was pushing his grad students well beyond their limits, trying to instill in them the one overriding lesson he’d learned after three degrees and forty years at the University: you’ll never be good enough.

Pausing for a traffic light at Woodlawn Avenue, Wasiolek saw a double-accordion bus pull up to the intersection and release several passengers. On the side of the bus was a photograph of a beautiful blonde sitting at a table in her bedroom, seductively applying red lipstick as she stared into an oval mirror. The caption read “Vanity of Vanities” and provided the name of an upscale furniture store. The intense concentration in the woman’s eyes reminded him of his late wife; even now, seven years after her death, he couldn’t quite escape her reproving glare. He wondered fleetingly if his ambition for human immortality was vain, but he reminded himself that he wasn’t seeking immortality for himself but for those who came after him. All he asked in return was a little gold medal from Stockholm.

He crossed the street, entered the dark pizza joint, and sat in a back booth with E=mc² scratched prominently into the wood. He placed the cane under his feet and ran a hand over his scalp as if he still had hair.

“I’ll have the —”

“Greek salad, hold the banana peppers, and a Diet Coke.” A buxom twenty-something brunette hovered over him.

“Very good. You must be prescient.”

“You’ve been ordering the same thing for thirty years.”

“Indeed I have, but how would you know?” He glanced up at her breasts. She didn’t seem to be wearing a bra beneath the plain black T-shirt.

“There’s a syndicate of waitresses. We pass down information from one generation to the next.”

She walked off with his order, and he returned to his nanobot conundrum. Something must be wrong with his theory. A cube-shaped nanobot couldn’t repair a cell sufficiently to restore it to its proper vitality. His grad students had warned him that his experiment just wouldn’t work, but he’d insisted on proceeding against their collective objections. Those arrogant young Turks still had decades ahead of them, but the clock was ticking for him.

The brunette returned with his meal a few minutes later. “You know,” she said, “I took P-Chem from you last year. At the College.”

“How’d you do?”

“Flunked. Had to change my major.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not. As I recall, you were particularly cruel on the final.”

“Well, P-Chem is a serious subject for serious students.”

“I am a serious student. Everybody knows that the University uses P-Chem to weed out pre-meds. You were intentionally trying to flunk out as many students as you could. But I wasn’t even a pre-med — I wanted to be a research scientist like you.”

“What are you studying now?”

“English.”

“You’ll be much happier.”

She rolled her eyes. “Anything else?”

“No, thanks.”

He looked down at his meal. He hated the food at Medici’s but kept coming back year after year because it was close to campus and he could get back to work quickly. He dug into the salad and stared off into space, visualizing an army of nanobots attacking a conglomeration of unsuspecting red blood cells. But it was no use. He was too tired after the morning’s defeat. He still had the same enthusiasm, but he lacked the stamina he once possessed for the life of the mind.

Twenty minutes later the brunette returned with his check but accidentally dropped it on the floor. As she was bending forward to pick it up he was suddenly presented with a lovely view of her large, braless breasts. Just for a moment, the immaculate white globes hung suspended in the air like two perfectly shaped moons in the infinite blackness of space. They were the epitome of roundness. He politely averted his eyes as she stood up, but the image seared its way into his brain and he was struck by an epiphany.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed.

“That’s what?”

He jumped up from the booth and grabbed her by the shoulders. “I’ve been trying to fit a square peg in a round hole!”

“What?”

He snatched his cane, handed her a twenty, and rushed out of the restaurant.

Hobbling as fast as he could, he tapped his way back to 57th and Woodlawn but forgot to look both ways before entering the intersection. A double-accordion bus slammed into him hard, sending his fragile body flying into the middle of the street and throwing his cane clattering to the sidewalk. Struggling to raise his head, he looked up to see his dead wife’s eyes staring down at him reproachfully from the side of the bus, the words “Vanity of Vanities” beneath her. As he felt the pain rushing in through every pore of his body, he laid his head back down on the pavement and he died, one block away from immortality.