So I did.
I tried spending time with Grandfather, but he didn’t want me around either. He was too busy on the computer or the phone, trying to figure out what was going on with Mother . . . and now with him.
Grandfather was shaking. Not all over, but in his hands. I could see it when he drank his tea—the liquid would slosh around and spill out long before he got the glass to his lips. He didn’t say anything about it, just stopped eating and drinking in front of anyone.
Soon Father started having problems too. He’d drop the remote or stumble on his way up the stairs. Little things . . . but scary.
At night I’d cower under the covers, trembling. My home was a house of horrors. We were all being stalked by some nameless, faceless thing. I ached to talk about it, but every time I tried, my family shut me out. It was like they were afraid if we said anything out loud, the bogeyman would come and get us even faster.
And if it was coming after everyone else in my family, I knew it would come for me, too.
I checked myself every night before I went to sleep. I clenched and unclenched every muscle; I did fitness tests I found on the Internet: squats, push-ups, sit-ups. I made crazy faces in the mirror. I taught myself to juggle. I did anything to prove I could control my body.
Grandfather eventually figured out what was happening.
“It’s the Elixir,” he told us. “It gives us eternal life, but it is not incorruptible. It loses potency over time—vast, vast swaths of time—and while it will keep us alive forever, it can only power our mortal bodies for so long.”
“How do you know?” Father asked.
Grandfather filled us in. He got his first clues on the Internet. He’d had to sift through misinformation, but eventually he found transcriptions of ancient writings about the Elixir, plus modern theories and research. It was stuff we could have learned before, I suppose, but despite our love of learning, we’d never researched the Elixir. It seems silly now, but once we’d outlived our normal life spans without incident, we just assumed Grandfather had been right about the Elixir, and we’d be fine forever. Maybe if we’d been more cynical, we’d have seen all our problems coming, but maybe not. Grandfather said the pieces weren’t easy to put together. If he hadn’t known what to look for, he probably wouldn’t have found it.
Once Grandfather read everything he could find online, he went further. He tracked down and contacted the historians, archaeologists, and other researchers who wrote the articles that impressed him most. He never told anyone our real story—he didn’t have to. He just presented himself as another Elixir enthusiast. His biggest question for everyone was always this: What, if any, were the Elixir’s limits?
The answer? Over thousands and thousands of years, it lost its strength and its ability to keep our bodies working properly.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Father said. “The Elixir is still working. Even now, if Petra gets cut, she heals.”
“For the moment,” Grandfather said. “Healing cuts might be one of the last things to go, but it will . . . it will. . . .”
“You mean,” I said in a voice so high and tiny I didn’t even recognize it, “we’re going to die?”
“No,” Grandfather said. “The Elixir won’t let us die. Ever. But it will stop affecting our bodies. What’s happening to your mother . . . what’s happening to every one of us . . . is the Elixir is conserving its energy to simply keep us alive, as opposed to alive and well.”
Father had his hand on Mother’s, and I could see his knuckles go white as he squeezed. His voice stayed calm.
“So what exactly will happen to us?”
“I don’t know for certain, but I believe our physical weakness will get progressively worse, until finally our bodies will go completely limp and lifeless. Even our organs will stop working—our eyes, our lungs, our hearts. To anyone who saw us, we would look like long-dead corpses, having gone in and out of rigor mortis.”
“But we’d be alive?” Father said.
“No . . . ,” Mother murmured. Her eyes were wild, and she looked like she wanted to scream but no longer had the power. “No . . .”
“Yes,” Grandfather continued. “The Elixir will keep us alive. It will keep our brains intact and functioning, even as our bodies become immobile husks.”
What he was describing was hell. It was coming for me next, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Tears started rolling down my face and my breath hitched.
“Mommy?”
I wanted to climb into her lap. She couldn’t hold me anymore, but if I could climb into her lap, it would be a tiny bit okay.
She hissed at me before I could even get close.
“Stay away from me! This is all your fault!”
I fell back on the floor, then started sobbing for real because this was it; my legs were going just like Mother’s, and soon I wouldn’t be able to move or speak or do anything but sit inside my head for the rest of eternity all by myself forever.
But this wasn’t it. Mother had startled me, and I’d tripped. That was all. Grandfather reached out a shaky hand to help me up, and I leaned against him, but it didn’t help. I wanted to catch Mother’s eye, but she wouldn’t look at me.
“This is not hopeless,” Grandfather said. “There are things we can do.”
The human brain, Grandfather explained, can make new synaptic connections for its entire life span. The more you challenge your brain—stimulate it with puzzles, reading, and constant attempts to master new tasks, both mental and physical—the more it grows in its capacity.
This wasn’t news to us. Grandfather had suspected as much from the start, long before he knew the science behind it. He had always made sure we stretched and exercised our brains. Not that we needed much urging. We enjoyed trying new things. It’s one of the reasons we had so much fun together for so many years.
Yet what Grandfather was saying now was different. He said the things people usually called “psychic” skills—movingthings with pure mental power, communicating psychically with other people, going on out-of-body journeys—were just further capacities of a well-honed human brain. Anyone could do them, provided they trained their minds.
If anyone had brains developed enough to tackle psychic ability, Grandfather said, it was our family. In a way, we’d spent the past twenty-five hundred years limbering up for the feat. That would help us. While mortals could spend a lifetime working on their mental skills and never master them, our minds should be so primed that it wouldn’t take much study at all. We’d have to work very hard, but we could do it. And if we succeeded, our brains could keep us active in the world even if our bodies went dormant.
Mother was skeptical. She thought we should spend the rest of our active time seeking a cure for the paralysis—perhaps a way to strengthen the Elixir. Grandfather said no. If we wasted our time searching, we might not gain the skills we’d need, and then we’d absolutely end up prisoners in our own frozen skins. Yet if we followed his suggestion and it worked, we’d have an eternity to look for a cure that would one day restore our mobility and physical health.
“I think we should do what Grandfather says!” I blurted.
Mother glared at me, but I looked away, and she seemed to calm down when Father took my side too.
Once we’d agreed, we had to prepare. If we were going to end up immobile, we needed a place for our bodies to remain safe until we restored our movement. It took precious weeks, but Grandfather eventually found a house in Switzerland that was acceptably remote. We moved there together, then Grandfather talked Father and me—the ones with the most use of our bodies—through the process of renovating it so it would be both highly secure and impervious to the elements. An inner, climate-controlled room I couldn’t help but think of as “the mausoleum” would be our resting place. Per Grandfather’s specifications, Father set up the glass-enclosed beds, rigged with muscle stimulators that would help avoid atrophy while our bodies hibernated. If and when we came back, the Elixir would
eventually heal any atrophy, but Grandfather imagined we wouldn’t want to wait any longer than we had to before we were totally back to normal.
Once we were set up, we began training our brains to reach their full psychic capacity. We spent eighteen-hour days in deep meditative states, listening to hypnosis tapes, working to channel every bit of our energy into these new skills.
Though she had been doubtful at first, Mother was the most dedicated, since her paralysis was the furthest along. When they didn’t know I was listening, I heard Grandfather murmuring to Father that he made a mistake taking so long to set up the house. He started our training too late, and now we’d lose Mother forever, entombed inside her own skin. Grandfather sounded distraught—he kept murmuring about Mother as a little girl, and how much he loved her. He cried a little when he said he couldn’t live with himself if he let her down. My father said it wasn’t his fault—Mother brought this on herself by being so stubborn and hiding her problem for so long. If she hadn’t, Grandfather could have figured out what was happening much sooner, and we’d have a better shot at training our minds. He said Mother’s pride would be the death of us.
Grandfather gasped, but he couldn’t have been as shocked as I was. I had never heard my father say a harsh word to or about Mother. That, more than anything, was what made me start sobbing out loud, even though I was trying to hide. Father and Grandfather must have heard me, but neither of them came to comfort me. They had more to worry about than my feelings, I guess. Besides, Grandfather couldn’t exactly rush to my side—he wasn’t moving much anymore.
My father may have thought Mother’s stubbornness was our downfall, but it was also her salvation. She was the first to accomplish something in one of our meditations. I heard the scratching sounds from my clearly-not-so-deep trance, and opened my eyes. A seashell coaster inched across the coffee table. I gasped and looked around at my family—who was doing this?
Mother’s entire body was coated in sweat, and she trembled violently.
It seemed like a lot of effort to slide a coaster a few centimeters, but at least it was something.
We had to hope it was enough. Mother came out of her trance weaker than ever, and the next morning it happened. She stopped. No pulse, no breathing.
I knew because early in the morning I heard Father wailing. A horrible, animal howl. I tiptoed to their room and cracked the door open to see them on the bed together, his body draped over hers as he wept.
She’s not dead, I repeated over and over to myself as I tiptoed back to my room. She’s not dead.
But if her mind wasn’t strong enough to leave her body, her continued life wasn’t a comfort—it was torture.
Later that day we laid Mother’s body to rest in her glass-enclosed bed— not a coffin, I kept reminding myself, it’s not a coffin because she’s not dead . I thought it was the worst moment of my life, but I was wrong. Worse than that was the wait . . . the wait for her to communicate with us, so we knew she wasn’t stuck inside herself.
Grandfather said he had confidence. Mother had learned a lot, and since her brain was alive and well inside her body, she could keep working on her psychic skills. She wasn’t necessarily gone from us forever, but there was no way to know for sure.
It took two weeks . . . then I woke to find a mug of steaming hot water mixed with honey on my nightstand.
I ran through the house screaming. I had to know if anyone else had done it, or if the gift had truly come from her. But of course it had. My room was the farthest from the kitchen . . . and by then no one else in the family could walk that far.
And the day before I had started tripping over my own two feet.
That night Mother came to me in my dreams. She held me close and apologized for blaming me, and for getting so mean and cold once the weakness hit. She said she’d been scared and angry, and regretted lashing out at me. She kissed my head, and my nose, and told me again and again how much she loved me. For the first time since it all started, I believed that everything would be okay.
Just as Grandfather had hoped, Mother’s mental abilities grew and grew. She spoke to us in our heads, made things move around the house, and visited us in our dreams. In many ways, she was more present after her “death” than she’d been when she was “sick.”
Things moved quickly in the next weeks. Grandfather fell the day after Mother left me the tea, then finally Father. Since I was the youngest and strongest, it was my job to get my family settled in their beds, one at a time. I didn’t do it alone. Each time, those already on the other side of consciousness helped me, lifting things I couldn’t lift, double-checking to make sure I left no important steps undone.
As the last one standing, I also had a list of chores from Grandfather to follow—things that would keep our bodies protected during what could be a long hibernation. There were alarms and thermostats to set, and backup generators to put in place. There were also final calls to a banking establishment Grandfather trusted. Our family had apparently been a major source of revenue for them for many years, but they never asked questions, and Grandfather liked that. The company wouldn’t have access to our “mausoleum,” but they would receive a large salary for keeping the house safely guarded. They were the ones who’d get the call if anything happened to the electricity and would make sure it was back on as soon as possible.
With everything in place, I had nothing to do but wait for my own turn to succumb to the weakness. It was terrifying, especially when I considered how helpless I was, alone in the house, my ability to move fading day by day. I would have lost my mind if my family hadn’t worked so hard to make sure I didn’t feel my solitude. The whole house danced with their invisible hands cooking, cleaning, and bringing me everything I needed. Mother sang my favorite songs in my ear, and Father hoisted me onto his shoulders in my dreams. In the last seconds of my body’s functional life, my ghostlike family hoisted me into bed and closed the glass case around me.
Like Snow White, was my final thought . . . and then everything changed.
After Mother, Grandfather, and Father crossed over, I’d asked them what it was like. How was it to exist as nothing but a conscious mind? How did it feel ? I’d get so frustrated when they wouldn’t answer me, but now I understood. It wasn’t that they wouldn’t answer me, but that they couldn’t . Being a mind . . . pure, untethered consciousness . . . it felt like nothing I could possibly describe. Even saying it “felt” wasn’t right, because it didn’t feel—not the way I’d felt before.
Life was suddenly timeless. I didn’t sleep or eat, which doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but sleeping and eating had been part of what defined each day. To be honest, none of us had needed to eat or sleep since we took the Elixir—we’d have survived without—but we’d have been awfully uncomfortable. Now eating and sleeping weren’t options. There was no mealtime, no day, no night. . . . There wasn’t even a sense of place. Our bodies were in their beds, but we weren’t there. We had far more freedom than that. We could be anywhere.
Yet no matter how strong we got, our mental powers weren’t limitless. And though we constantly found new things we could do, we also found unexpected blocks. A mind we could speak to one day would be deaf to us the next, and for seemingly no reason. And while we didn’t need actual sleep, if we exerted ourselves too much we’d get . . . “tired,” I suppose, but it wasn’t as human as that. We’d just . . . lose steam. Our consciousness would go away. Then, out of nowhere, we’d be back. It wasn’t like sleeping. . . . It was more like dying, and then reviving.
It was scary. But we couldn’t avoid it, because the threshold of “too much” changed constantly.
For twenty-five hundred years we hadn’t exactly been normal, but we’d been human.
Now we existed, but it was different. We had one another, and that was good, but we were more ghost than human.
The hardest part was losing our senses. Anything we touched, saw, smelled, heard . . . it wasn’t real, just a memory of the sensation. It was like
living inside a foot of cotton batting.
I handled it better than my family. Maybe it was because I was younger. Maybe that made me more adaptable, I don’t know. The rest of my family had a harder time—they missed everything they’d lost too much. I’d hear them screaming in frustration sometimes, especially when years went by and our senses dulled further and further as our memories of the sensations faded. I’d think about my mother and find her sobbing as she tried to sniff a flower, or pet a dog . . . the simplest things, but they were impossible the way we were now.
I concentrated on things I enjoyed, like visiting dreams, and joining my family just by thinking about them. I also loved my freedom of movement. If I wanted to visit a person or a place, I just had to know exactly where that person or place was, concentrate on it, and I’d be there. The Great Pyramids? I could just think hard about their location, and there I was. I just needed to be specific. If I wanted to see the Mona Lisa but had no idea where it was, I couldn’t think about the painting and be there. Yet if I knew it was in a certain gallery at the Louvre in Paris, I could think myself right there.
It was the same way with mortals. We couldn’t think about a mortal and go to them, but if we knew where he or she was, we could think ourselves there.
I discovered my most amazing skill a couple years into our new state of being. I was still getting over the shock of being without a body, and I decided to try to do something fun to make me feel better—something I’d never in a million years have been able to do before.
I went to the zoo and swam with the seals.
It wasn’t quite the same as being there in my body. The seals had no idea I was even around. But I was. At first it was awful because I wished so desperately that I could feel the water against my skin, and the cool smooth flanks of the seals, but I put that out of my head and concentrated on zipping my mind through the water with them and staring into their puppylike faces as they played together. It was strange . . . but magical. I loved it so much, I was dying to tell Mother all about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how incredible she’d think it was, and that she’d have to join me, and I wished like crazy I could tell her about it right now . . .