Viewing Thread:
"A random story (Dunno what to call it :S)"

Lol ok, good use of posting :P

I will read it, but not quite yet, I have alot to do(hence my absence from Life) and not much time, so I will read it.

Ok final part, you might want to flip the order to.

14. Nuclei and Units.
When the rarefaction of peoples reached a pre-established limit, large compact nuclei were constituted, in the place of regions, states, and the enormous urban conglomerates that had formed until the first years of the twenty-first century.
It was a difficult, but inevitable decision. The essential needs being identified, all the rest was consequent.
Medical, nourishment, energy, and communication sciences, and the specialisation in the main types of maintenance - mechanical, computer, electro-nuclear, and hydraulic maintenance - were to be homogeneously and adequately present in each nucleus.
In practice, the world was reduced to four autonomous nuclei.
Number one was assigned to the numerically largest one, with respect to the greater technological contribution, and was localised on the East coast of the United States, on the former territories of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
Each nucleus was supposed to have at least one good airport, for any type of aircraft; the presence of a naval port was not deemed necessary, a large waterway access remaining, however, indispensable.
Historical denominations, nations, regions, and borders disappeared.
The new division was linked to the old continental distinction, numerically unbalanced but historically not eliminable, so as not to give birth to forced and unnatural valuations.
Nucleus number one, the Americas, with three units; nucleus number two, Eurasia, with three units; nucleus number three, Africa, with one unit; nucleus number four, Australia, with one unit.
The nuclei were organised concentrically: one central nucleus for each unit contained all essential functions, storehouses, laboratories, and most means of communication.
This structure had been prearranged to obviate the fast and inexorable decrease of the population, continuously re-arranging.
Every six months, a precise census was published and displayed.
The graphic curve representing the data was following natural laws unshakenly.
The unit structure, therefore, would suffer cyclic and circular shrinking, with periodical centripetal readjustments of its inhabitants and of the facilities it used.
The fusion of nuclei was not considered, each of them, however, could have ceased to exist in case of hardly probable, but assumable, dead due to extraordinary events, like epidemics or accidental pathological associations or natural disasters, or simple survivors' unbalance compared to the basic standards.
Previsions regarded, above all, nuclei number three and four.
Evacuation plans had been studied for both the possible quick transport of a thousand people and the staggered transfer of several groups of three to fifteen people.
The average age ineluctably rose and its range flattened. A hundred was the impassable conventional limit.
Range seventy-a hundred, range eighty-a hundred, range ninety-a hundred, and the unreal range ninety-nine-a hundred.
The medical science would scan man's extreme resources and the last psycho-physical efforts, even though the human psyche had become the steady property of individuals.
Epidemics died out conceptually and in practice, suicides disappeared, accidents reduced to irrelevant minimum levels.
Rigid programmes of physical maintenance were directing human efficiency beyond the old biological limits, in incredibly resisting bodies and minds.
The dead were buried in their areas of origin, with traditional rites. Names, information, dates, sentences, comments, words, pieces, numbers, signs, places, families, genealogies, flowers, peace, prayers, memories, affection, matter, order. The graves of mankind would remember mankind to men, to visitors, to silence, to the desert, to outbursting vegetable nature, excited and knocked down by the seasons' endless course, to silence.
World nuclei, units, central nuclei of the units, the almost perfect mind of man, of a man.

15. Vegetation and Explorations.
Around 2095, the organisation began to crumble, because of natural deterioration. Practical results were wanting, the research seemed to run across deadlocks continuously.
The last terrestrial class was turning ninety years of age. In fact, these people were in a spectacular physical shape, if compared to the average of just half a century before, yet they were old.
Only Robert and a few loyal ones, at high decisional levels, were keeping Maggie's idea unchanged in their thoughts.
The African and Australian nuclei had been sealed recently.
From the European nucleus, numerous departures of isolated groups took place, whose denominations were most quaint and changing. There was no repression, in any sense; health and food dependence was predominant, so the nucleus remained the reference point for such groups anyhow. It was not a revolution, but a human outlet for the brain.
The most common name was that of explorers, distinguished by numbers or initials. Few close people, in perfect efficiency, on systematic excursions among the prevailing vegetation camouflaging countries and cities, with different mentalities but with one purpose, to justify existence.
In the last years, Robert had been invested with a sort of conclusive power: he was the authority in charge of complex queries, each terminal could establish fast links to his, or to Michael's one, the person he considered like an alter ego.
The explorers, supported by reserved means, food storehouses, and supplying couriers, were confronted with new and unexpected situations; the common research plan and the renunciation of independent living had worn them out so, even if the purpose had been unselfish to the topmost level, the research of some isolated community, possibly escaped from Police inspections, immediately revealed itself to be very difficult. Autonomous life appeared to be very unlikely.
The essentially three groups sending reports on the state of the geographical researches were equally worthy and capable, consisted in a staff of a couple of dozen men each, and had semi-automatic ships, helicopters, four vertical-landing planes, and powerful jeeps at their disposal.
Two other groups were limiting researches to the land, in the African and Australian continents, essentially equipped with small jeeps.
They had all confined transceivers to possible emergency communications, merely writing a concise diary.
The groups would note down descriptions of peripheral countries admirably amalgamated into the vegetation. Thick bushes of climbers were covering to a great extent the foot of walls, with a decadent but clean scenic effect, a sort of completion of a large fresco: sharp lines and adjusted, shaded, and retouched colours.
Destiny was materializing in the gradual disappearing, through complete wrapping up, of brickwork and architectural works, with a progressive entangling vegetable amalgamation; dark dens with thorough and exhaustive technological and humanistic contents, a wide summary of man's work, manuscripts, paintings, statues, books, magnetic tapes, records, magnetic discs, digital discs, collections, summae, formulas, philosophies, music, poems, historical documents, geographical maps, photographs, slides, filmed sequences, movies, documentaries, newspapers, objects, journals, letters, notes, typescripts, drawings, ideas, intuitions.
In large cities, the work of the vegetable world was hindered by wide cement and asphalt oases, vitrified and synthetic planes, obstructions, insulating gorges, and towering, sparkling, structurally insurmountable, in some ways eternal, archetypal skyscrapers.
To walk along streets and boulevards, with no other movement or breath than their own, became the main source of pleasure and meditation for the explorers. Their reports were losing the cold consistence of conciseness as the new experience proceeded, gradually becoming pleasant description, sharing remark, and, finally, unexpected literature.
The first reports were represented by single sheets dotted with electronic writing, the last ones, five years later, were minute indelible handwriting, directly jotted down by the hand of few writers. The novel of the world without animal beings, compact vegetation to guard its reminiscences and undetectable exceptions: old elephants, tortoises, and parrots.
An expanding phytogeography, trees, shrubs, herbs, mosses and lichens, in alternated prevalence or in undisputed dominions, only very little changed by the almost total disappearance of the animal world, and exposed only to the influence of the climate, man's buildings, bacteria, algae, and fungi.
The extreme rarefaction of the peoples, in the course of a couple of centuries, would lead to the reconstitution of the luxuriant equatorial forests, changed, upset, and badly re-arranged by clumsy interventions prior to the last years of the past century.
Enormous centenarian trees would re-gain control, gradually substituting the scanty secondary forest, returning to a natural equilibrium lacking its worst corruption factor. A huge variety of vegetable species in a magical undisturbed mixture, with ferns and big flowers in the shadow of the thick intertwining high branches, in a silent twilight, and lianas and climbers clung everywhere, acacias, bamboos, teak trees, and eucalypti.
Archipelagos, plateaux, and tropical plains, from India to the Antilles, to South America, to Africa, subject to the sole influence of the uniform warm climate without thermic changes, to the volume and force of the rains, and to the system of monsoons and trade winds.
The most influential natural events remained tornadoes and hurricanes.
Mighty evergreen forests and savannahs, luxuriant tunnels along river banks, steppe, shrub, cactus and wild flower deserts, forests, Mediterranean bush, evergreen and deciduous broad-leaved plants, needle-leaved plants in a harmonious amalgamation and succession in the warm temperate climates as far as the prairies of North America, to the steppes of Eurasia, and to the deserts of Central Asia, to the tundra sprinkled with mosses, lichens, tufts of grass, mugo pines, and, in the silence of mountain areas, chestnut trees, oaks, beeches, and pines, firs, larches, juniper, blueberry, and rhododendron bushes, or tropical trees in small forests; the Alpine heights simulating polar climates, with slender shrubs, tufts of grass, and lean flowers, and again mosses and lichens.

16. Michael Towards the Last Shelter.
Years passed without the certainty of being able to start a process of cell division, in spite of an unceasing and motivated activity. Maggie had feared this.
Available material, by now extremely selected, and gathered data reached humanly insuperable levels. The foundations were laid, it was a question of concentrating all energy resources on the computer of the technologically best equipped nucleus, number one, and of connecting it to another one, number two, so that irreparable failures, even if theoretically impossible to occur, could allow the reserve to continue research and experimentation of the elaborated combinations automatically.
In any case, the functions of the two nuclei still working could have been reversed at the last minute. The practical carrying out of the connections was fast and accurate, since technologies and apparatus had been thus orientated for years.
2100. Worthy scientists were gathered in two groups stationed in nuclei number one and two. Some of them had become physically unsuitable, according to the previous canons, but even the mere mental energy left was necessary. A narrow world of over-ninety-year-olds gradually surrendering to nature's course.
Robert and Michael were actively in command of the two groups. It was from their will that the brilliant organisation of the last months came: brilliant and incredible, considering the poor chances of the collaborators assigned to verifications.
Each electronic machine stopped having human connections in 2102, while Winter was succeeding Autumn.
The desolating condition of the inhabitants of the earth showed in all its uncontrollable and powerful passivity. The last intuitions and incitements were recorded, in case of unlikely external aid interventions.
In reality, man's will-power was imperceptibly calming down to quiet and resigned slumbers of exhausted and lifeless old people.
Exhaustion of the staff of nucleus number one. Robert, helped by Michael, who had rushed there after a tiring flight, died after forty-eight hours of deep natural drowsiness, without perceptible suffering.
Michael buried him personally, like he would do within a few weeks with the last members of nucleus number two.
A feeling of complete solitude, not the certainty nor the evidence, the likely hypothesis of being the last living individual, the last thinking being, nearly a hundred years old, amazed at being still able to effectively move, walk, act, change the instructions for the machines, look for reply radio signals.
There were no replies, there could not be any.
He prepared a survival rucksack, reducing weights and impediments to a minimum: a compass, high-calory freeze-dried food, a torch, four litres of water, a light thermic bag, a multi-purpose knife Robert had given him as a gift, who had received it from Maggie, who had got it from Aleck, who had bought it on an incredibly distant day of happy thoughtlessness with Marcus, in a dreamlike Switzerland. Inextricable tangle of absurd temporal connections.
He checked and sealed each device systematically, gave a last look at the control room as a whole, without regret.
Provisions and small stock of energy had been left in a fair number of logistically and aesthetically propitious places, chosen taking into account the psychology and the means of the last survivors, a kind of last goal, so as to allow the occurrence of some occasion for freedom, imagination, or inspiration.
Robert and Michael, infringing the rules, had chosen a place somewhat off the beaten track, the only possible one for their hope to find tranquillity. Interests in common, the same life foundation, an identical need for incentives.
Michael got in the jeep which had been ready for this end for at least five years, tried it, checked its parameters. He was the last one, moved away slowly, up to the top of the hill.
He stopped, got out to look at the big valley. Years of commitment, the transfer to command nucleus number two, distant things.
A deep silence was stunning the senses. Calculations and endless attempts.
Tibet, Russia, or who knows where, life was not possible without an organisational support, there was just him, he convinced himself of that, and he was compelled to behave as such, anyhow.
He got back into the car and resolutely drove away heading South, towards the Alpine chain.
He did not drive exactly along the roads and through the places he would have liked to see again; he could not, directions were compulsory, the turns irrational, the map without choices.
He had a fairly good supply of fuel and a map of practicable roads with a uniform bed and a regular maintenance, as long as it had been possible.
The afternoon was clear and neat, and the conglomerates of houses and buildings appeared like merged into the luxuriant greenery, showing only foreshortened shady wooden walls and regular pointed multiform roofs. He did not have to get over any particular slope or obstacle.
He took a few sips of water and some freeze-dried food, without taking his eyes off the route except for the few instants necessary for opening the rucksack and searching in there in security.
The regular drone of the engine was causing the only noise in the region. He did not stop, so as not to hear the sound of silence and abandonment, not there.
The journey lasted seven hours. He stopped, without switching the engine off, at the foot of the big mountain he had not seen in over fifty years. He got out. It was gorgeous, on that sunny and lukewarm day, gorgeous and mysterious. The natural essentiality of the vegetation was accurately evoking images from the past.
He got back into the jeep, resumed his trip more cautiously, while some little fast grey cloud was running across those clear empty skies.
Steep hairpin bends, pebbles and large stones, dry branches, leaves. Slowly, warily. He reached a little higher than a thousand metres. The road was blocked by large rocks.
The mechanical means became useless and graceless. He examined his equipment again, rearranged it in his rucksack, and slowly hoisted it on his shoulders.
The silence of the mountain, now he allowed it, wrapped him up and dazed him.
He switched off the engine. Got out.
The very old frail body moved a few too enthusiastic steps, the mind sent warning signals; an almost centenarian man, a miracle of nature, in a sense.
A few instants of fear, fearing not to arrive, a few instants only.
The grey clouds grew in number and size, dimming the sun on that early afternoon without a season. The wind remained high on the peaks.
Michael began to ascend with precision and method, with a forced and rhythmical, deep, voluntary breath, exploiting his remaining muscular means to the utmost.
He had to make it, the last man could not die on a connection road.
He got over the rocks, which had a completely favourable position. He was feeling fairly well when, after a short tunnel, he ran into an apparently insurmountable obstacle: a short stretch of slid-down road, without visible holds, with a residual natural passage no wider than fifteen centimetres: rock standing perpendicularly onto a two-hundred-metre jump.
He could not leave his rucksack behind. Had he slipped, he would not have had the strength to cling on with his arms, so much the less to pull himself up on an overhang; he would have fallen hard.
He could only pass by, and he had only one attempt at his disposal, without second thoughts or help.
He waited for the favourable light of the sun to emphasize, in a wide foreshortening of the clouds, every single unevenness in harsh detail. Slowly, his face resting on the cold irregular rock, he dragged along that unpleasant gangway, taking exaggerated tiny little steps for endless minutes, until he reached the road again.
An unbearable sense of weakness. He was compelled to sit for half an hour, shaken by shudders and frozen by icy slippery and repulsive sweat.
He covered himself with the light windjammer he slipped off from the straps of his rucksack.
He had to reach as high a position as possible, he had three more hours of light.
It was a breathless, head down route, but without further dangers. The sky became grey and compact, there was no wind, not a breath, the clouds immobilised in a tangible and impending mass.
He ascended without sparing himself, allowing himself two sips of water fortified with salts and glucose.
He unconsciously caught himself thinking of the supplies he would find on arrival, things from times of old, stored up by Maggie, Robert, and himself decades before, during an extemporary and thoughtless very short holiday. He smiled.
Amazed and exhausted, he found himself before the last tunnel; another short straight stretch and his forced voluntary walk would find an end and completion.
He entered it while unexpected small fragments of dusty ice were falling from clouds that the incipient darkness was threateningly rendering black and uniform.
He proceeded for about fifty metres in the complete darkness of the big stone tube, but he was at the end of his strength. He had the time and the clear-headedness to take the thermic blanket out of the rucksack, and to settle down in the wide rustling and wrinkly pocket, falling asleep without a chance to resist, among opaque spirals void of dreams and sensations.

17. In an Hour, All Was Silence.
More than twelve hours passed. In one of the movements imposed by involuntary muscular contractions, Michael irreparably damaged the only watch he had brought with him. He woke up, switched on the little torch, stood up, without the help of acoustic or mental stimuli he began to move towards the end of the tunnel, stumbling over large pieces of cement and withered and noisy twigs.
The way out was blocked by a cold, partially yielding mass; the vivid and shadeless light of the lamp revealed a uniform barrier, about forty centimetres thick, of snow compacted into solid granular ice on which white crumbly matter stratified without apparent limits.
Neither images nor stimuli, freezing feeling of unbearable cold.
He imposed himself to make wide and continuous movements, in order to reactivate a blood circulation dropped to temperatures near the limits of thermic survival.
Some light began to peep through, a lot of light, violent light, growing in diffusion and intensity.
The white mass was now sending forth a hypnotising luminescence, while blades of warm sunshine without obstacles nor filters were quickly opening their way from above, between the vault of the tunnel and the top of the snow-clad surface.
He picked up everything, after he had gained warmth and new strength from that sun, standing upright in a total voluntary absorption.
He began to climb up the slippery obstacle with circumspection, sinking down to the knee in there, in some spots, desperate and not inclined to surrender, not there.
He managed to get outside, finding himself in a clear and pure atmosphere, under an absolutely blue sky, in the blinding light of a sun like that of creation.
He rested for half an hour, his head held between his hands, his elbows on his knees, sitting on the rucksack, half-sunk in the snow.
He needed to breathe, find his rhythm again, incredible breathless old man, aware of the hazard and the effort he had made.
Violent throbs inside the chest, in the temples, in the wrists, a feeling of giddiness and nausea, slight viscous sweating, uncoordinated muscular spasms, articular hindrance, an empty mind, laboured and rapid breathing, then a little slower, voluntary, rhythmical, and constant, unnoticed beats, undulant thoughts.
He felt better, weak but co-ordinated.
He put on dark polarized glasses: the landscape was enchanting, shining with billions of swarming minute countless crystals, reverberating in numerous shades of light, mechanically filtered visions and thoughts.
"I have made it" he whispered several times over, then said with a calm and blowing voice, and then cried, as well as he could, in shortened and broken off echoes, in distant and muffled sound waves.
The images of Robert, Maggie and Aleck, clear, out of focus, alternatively among the branches of the wood, bent by thick heavy clinging snow. They were there, too, for a few never ending seconds, finally leaving him by himself, uncertain, his eyes fixed upon the clear-cut dark disk of the burning star.
A sudden, bothersome, continuous, noisy, cold, and bursting wind pushed him to resume his walk. The houses of the old village, the roofs, at least, and the towering slender bell tower, were no farther than a hundred metres now.
Not so many years must have passed, after all, nor could he have really grown so old, perhaps.
He located the roof of a little house without difficulty, a house fading into decreasing snow in the gentle curving of the ground lying behind.
He reached the door in a sort of recalling, euphoric, and pressing frenzy: only its upper part was sticking out, where a small polychrome mosaic glass door once was set, which had been replaced, during their last sally, by solid seasoned wood.
The sun was high in the sky, surrounded by pale blue motionless clouds.
With gloved hands and a jagged twig, he began and finished a patient and essential work of re-arrangement of the white barrier, a yielding obstacle to his last goal. The space necessary to be able to let himself down onto the narrow entrance step, to rotate the heavy but balanced door, after sticking and turning the key in the lock.
A slight resistance on the hinges, a soft creaking, a cold sequence of familiar and distant furniture and objects.
He put his rucksack down, and allowed himself a few minutes' wait, waited for his breath to become regular, once again wondering at his own physical resistance.
He took a shovel out of a low and dark chest; with great effort, he freed two of the four windows of the house from the snow, so as to let some light in. There was no electricity, all energy had been poured onto the computers of nuclei number one and two, light years away from there, generation upon generation away, abandoned a few unreal days before, confused by the absence of time-keepers.
The room making up the interior, under a certain layer of dust, revealed traces of thoughtless days: the little kitchen, the table with four chairs without decoration, the two wide superposed beds, partially masked by a rough wood trellis with joints, the store-room with freeze-dried food and food kept according to forgotten methods, wine, lamp oil, spirits, flour, and oil, thanks to expert and provident Maggie.
The fireplace, wood in small regular logs, old newspapers, and matches.
He closed the door, lit the fire, there was a fair quantity of stacked, very dry wood.
He checked and ascertained there was a good draught, lay down on the bed, wrapped up in the thermic blanket. Uniform and constant warmth.
As he was dozing off, he felt distinctly he had reached the limit of his physical performances, nearly centenarian Michael, emptied and motionless Michael. He slept for hours. The room temperature went up a few precious degrees.
He got up under the pangs of hunger, moved to the table, drank a quarter-litre of good wine, full-bodied and just involved in the passing of time, swallowed a hot hotchpotch of re-hydrated and seasoned food, calmly chewed high-calory stuff, on which he laid another quarter-litre of wine warmed up by the fire.
The temperature was perfect. He put on a new shirt and a warm jumper, precious inheritance of Maggie's practical manual dexterity, who had put them away and prepared them for decade-long rests.
He needed to sleep again, now, but with a clearer head. He took off the pillows' coverings, took away the dusty bedspread, and brought sheets and blankets near the fire.
He went outside, shivering, to observe the infinite presence of luminous stars in the dark and impending sky. He went back in, made the bed again, wrapped himself up in the warm embrace of almost forgotten material, soft and rough, pleasant and draped, on the comfortable elasticity of the creaking couch. A heavy, invincible, complete sleep, without protection or limits, in the numb void of spurless senses.
The fire, maintained and rekindled by generous and well-disposed logs, continued its pleasing work of renewal and protection for hours, sending forth, at short intervals, tiny steaming sparks onto the stone plane separating it from the old man.
It snowed all night long. The windows and door, cleared with so much effort, were blocked again, insurmountable obstacles for Michael's worn out old age.
He dragged himself round the room for days, in order to keep his ability to move and invent, in a diffused and soft lighting, alternating with total darkness and absolute silence, broken only by the modulated whirlwinds. A kind of regenerative trance.
He gradually recovered strength. He examined the muscles of his arms and legs, and tested the movements of his joints. Tiring and constant exercise. He wanted to regain the remaining capacities of his not yet defeated physique, the potentiality of the moment when he had left the nucleus. It would take time.
He noted down the alternate rhythm of light and dark.
He reached the top of his possibilities ten weeks after his arrival.
He had nourished himself with no other thought than the accumulation of energy useful for a possible external excursion.
The temperature had become milder. A noise of big drops and rivulets of thawed snow, partly re-solidified by the cold of the night.
Until the moment when he could open the windows and the door again, so much as to allow him to slip outside. The thaw, slippery crusts, brittle ditch coverings.
The wide dell of the reviving village welcomed him with a blinding and friendly glitter.
"It's all yours, without boundaries."
He was happy and satisfied, somehow.
He destroyed the mirrors in the house, he did not want to see himself any longer. His hands, still nimble and not deformed, remained the only tangible signal of an age he wanted to veil and abstract. He erased faces, people, feelings, and events of the past.
He managed to do so after an out-of-focus afternoon of unintentional alcoholic stupor, caused by thick vigourless distillate: he had found himself melancholically stroking the smooth convexity of the lukewarm wood of the armchair, by the restless flames of the fireplace. His mind had escaped him, giving rise to emotions and images from the past. Years and decades overpassed in short instants without inhibitions: the back of his hand and his sensitive digital pulps were running along the nape, shoulders, the concavity of the back, the unripe firm curves of an exhausted and happy body.
They had thought they were going to die, sheltered by an incongruous roof in the middle of the ski run, violently shaken by the storm, reduced to wide open eyes and slowed down breathing, in a shell of ice-cold and disagreeable snow. Deep, unbearable, evil cold, in the embrace around the quivering body, too young to succumb and palpitating. He would shield her till he would die, conveying warmth and protection to her, he was ready for sacrifice.
In the end, all had ended, just as instantly as it had begun.
He had forcibly pulled himself together, with uncoordinated and powerful movements, as if panic-stricken; and he had shaken off the hostile hardened matter furiously, without sensitivity.
He had taken her, unconscious and beautiful, in his arms, rushing with sunk and slowed-down strides towards the building, so near and to all appearance unattainable.
He was panting noisily, his heart beating like mad; short stops to warm up her rosy face and to rub her body, only just felt underneath the thick stiffened clothes. He had succeeded. He had got into the house, warmth, the last quivers of a fire. He had taken all her clothes off, wrapped a woollen blanket, then another, around her, and had vigorously massaged her until he got substantial breathing and effective heart-beating. A cup of hot tea, winning the unconscious non-coordination of her wonderful lips.
He had put on clean and dry clothes, warmed up by the fire, which had now become roaring.
An invincible impulse, incited by the girl's frightened and contracted expression.
He had made a couch with overlapping blankets, by the fireside, and had delicately laid her down there, adjusting her as well as he could. He was stroking her.
She woke up, keeping an expression of fear, turned over several times, getting rid of the blankets wrapped around her, and calming down in a natural soft graceful prone position.
For a long time, he watched, spellbound and moved, the warm transparency of that young, mature, full body without impurities.
It was a thermic impulse, or the incongruous expression on her face, or instinct: an invincible physical tension, repressed and finally unbridled into affective energy conveyed to hands and fingers, which ran along every little part of that mellow and tangible succession of soft relief and gentle curves in magnetic contact.
The expression on the girl's face changed imperceptibly and positively, making a source of physical and mental well-being of her frowning mouth, cheeks, temples, her snow-white forehead, and her eyelids, gently wearing a welcome dreamless sleep.
Michael lost all notion of time and facts, exhausted by that tiring contact.
Little, slow movements, a gradual return to reality: eyes of a transparent deep and actual blue stared at him without fear, transmitting not yet experienced, almost unbearable tensions to him.
She thanked him with barely whispered, sighed words, and with the delicate shake of her beautiful hands. She sat up in front of the crackling flames, then turned to face him, at once disappearing in a total, frenzied and endless embrace.
Michael emerged from that powerful physical memory surrendering, with uncertainties, with effort, with distress, while his scared gaze was resting on the fire, the partially burnt logs, the smooth wood of the armchair, the dry skin of his hands, their desperately delicate movement touching defenceless and hard material, to the shapes and faces of the only surviving image.
He raised himself all of a sudden, painfully, with a moan flung the images into the fire, and watched them curl up and be reduced to ashes, while he fell in the armchair gasping, pierced by a myriad of painful pangs in the arms, neck, chin, temples, and chest, struck from within by violent and convulsive asynchronous beats.
He detached himself from memories once and for all.
The snows melted.
A mild Spring without tempests filled luxuriant meadows with white, pale blue, rosy, and soft yellow wild flowers.
Michael made an effort to explore every corner of the valley again, choosing roads without difficulties, in stages. In the rhododendron flowering time he ventured a long way, to admire their soft ubiquitous and involving composition, losing all notion of time and letting the evening take him by surprise, which after all was mild and lightened by a shining full moon. Dark shadows and nuances only just perceived by weary eyes.
He carefully walked along the way back, dusty remainder of human activity. Tired and without sleep.
He found some books, in a bag hidden in the store-room, but he could not concentrate on words and signs; and the following violent emotion of discovering a tape-recorder, and tapes with precise indexes, and also a small portable computer, was rapidly hard stifled and annulled by the discovery of chemical metal corrosion in the stock of batteries shut in a wooden box.
End of contacts.
Technology and mechanisms reduced to useless matter, matrix and conclusion of complex logical connections.
The Summer was violent, for the stifling heat of days without wind and for the sudden washing-away thunder-storms alternately following one another.
Short walks, old tired steps revived by singular images; he did not profane any house, nor the barred church, nor the storehouses, nor the shelters.
Man had circumscribed the old abandoned world, and untidy bushes and wild grass were discreetly wrapping up the village, giving an image of temporary evacuation rather than extinction.
He let himself survive with serenity.
Huge majestic old elephants were perhaps wandering through forests without enemies, and big strong tortoises on silent islands, and many-coloured croaking squeaky parrots in the depths of silent forests, distant, out of reach, possible.
Universal details in a mind freed from connections and elaboration, through palpitating optical means, attentive and continuous observation of objects, trees, shrubs, flowers, sky nuances, clouds, hand in the grass, mushrooms, blueberries, stones, crystalline rippling water, paths, remains, the wood, the beams, a background of light rustling, trickling, watery current, difficult steps, distant echoes.
Letting himself live was weakening and consuming him, urging and moulding him, directing him and sending him away, with a sensible loss of vital energy.
In Autumn, shortly before the big conclusive snowfall, he went as high as he could, walking through the gilded and opalescent wood, among shades of green, orange, yellow, and brown, resolved into hazy elementary and primitive tones.
A cold and windy night, with a howling continuous wind, received him protected by a hard stony refuge. He survived. It took him the following morning and afternoon to regain the basic shelter, getting there exhausted and satisfied.
Two hours later, the slow fall of large, light, thick snow flakes began. Within one week the house was blocked and then covered up.
Darkness took possession of his final world, in the form of white aggregates of uncontaminated crystals. The chimney cowl had no more outlets.
Elephants, tortoises, parrots, far-away trumpeting, infinite echoes.
His breath became regular, slow, deep.
In nucleus number one, every mechanism was proceeding with a synchronous precise pace.
Signals, conventions, friction, circuits, the research for the combination, robots and mechanical arms, frozen cells.
Waiting.
The night of the first day in December 2104, Michael died.
The central computer made a mistake, the cycle was blocked.
Nucleus number two was immediately inserted in the system, electronic and mechanical circuits, each datum was transferred and received, recording.
Another mistake.
Irreparably damaged, de-connected, deteriorated cells, spilling of cytoplasm, organules, nuclei, genetic material, uncoupled spirals, aimless calculations.
Videos furrowed by pictures without definition.
The alternative sources took over in a cascade-like way.
The apparatus died out and stopped quickly, one after the other, rendering the cross trials, security systems, precautionary measures, automatisms, and mechanical movements vain and ineffective. An obsession come true.
In an hour, all was silence.
Michael's body was rapidly becoming cold.

The end

8. The Animals.
Then, it was the animals' turn. Maggie reported it to Aleck while they were lying on two armchairs, side by side, after a straining and rather feverish day, trying to relax with some music in the background: "Here we go again!"
"You won't be able to satisfy your need for puppies for much longer" Aleck tried to play it down. But the news had genuinely upset him.
Summer of 2007, end of the animal life cycle. The television announcer had almost called out a proclamation, a sort of journalistic biblical curse.
In fact, the event was in the air, everybody was expecting it, by assonance of thought. A sense of panic spread in each person's mind. Will there be one next move? Who will make it? In twenty-four, otherwise ordinary and quiet, months, the dramatic upsetting of the animal kingdom had ended.
Obviously, there was room for rigorous inspections in the most hidden corners of the earth, like the previous time, but, like then, there would not be any surprises; expeditions of ecologists and technicians, volunteers and scouts would confirm it: no more broods, no more young, no more life simulacra, no more animal creation.
There were no insurmountable problems in the immediate future. This phenomenon had been foreseen by scientists, who had prearranged plans for the protection of edible species.
The first research was planned out according to the criterion of the minimum future food survival; a problem requiring some zeal, but resolvable. It was decided preservation through cold would be used mainly, with the partial exploitation of the Arctic.
A report on this topic was broadcast during the morning radio news.
"We will have nice restaurants at the North Pole!" Aleck, in a good mood, underlined. "Consider the convenience: vintage meat, two days' travel in a sledge, or a few hours in a motor-sledge, after half a day on planes and boats. I think our dinners will become less rich, dear Maggie; we'll either be happy with vegetable pies, or we'll adapt to huge omelettes, made with freeze-dried eggs, of course, or to some nice seaweed pudding. Sorry, I forgot, you prefer your seaweed fried."
"Stop it, this is serious." Maggie sighed, hugging him.
"I am afraid it is time to get up; the bistoury is in your hands, this morning. You don't want to arrive late at the hospital, do you?"
"What about you? You know you are my favourite assistant in the operating theatre."
"Only in the operating theatre?"
"I'll content myself with plush puppies, I already feel a lump in my throat at the mere thought of it" Maggie sighed again.
"You have survived the absence of plump and noisy babies, you'll survive the absence of humid and hairy puppies, too."
"Whose turn will be next?" Maggie asked, cheerless.
"I think this is it."
"This is no laughing matter, don't you think?"
"Hell, no, this has been no laughing matter at all. I'll cover you up with newly opened flowers to satisfy your need for tenderness." Aleck said, resolutely getting out of the large unmade bed.
"You vandal!" Maggie yelled at him throwing her pillow against the bathroom's lacquered door.
"What, darling?"
"Sweetheart!"
"What, darling?"
Maggie got closer on tiptoe, waited for him to lather up his face, and gave him a smacking kiss a few millimetres from his right ear, stopping any possible reaction from him by shouting in the other ear: the effect of a hook doubled by a straight. An elaborate and not very effective shaving, accompanied by one-side ringing and a light sense of pleasant dizziness.
The big chief had something important to announce: "Within one year I'll quit you, boys. I'll give you time to get organised, I'll help you, but I have made my decision. I realise I am a seventy-year-old." he said with a strangely calm tone, and went on: "If God allows me another twenty years, which is a hypothesis, the youngest person I'll be able to have at my deathbed will be my granddaughter Lisa, who will be twenty-two then. A woman. Who will never have children, nor grandchildren. I belong to the last generation of grandparents. It is harder, this way, I feel like a super-old man, and it will only get worse."
"Did you wake up in a bad mood this morning?" Maggie asked, half surprised and half ironical.
"No, not particularly, not more than in the last two or three hundred days. The world is changing, guys, you do not realise it, it is changing unnaturally."
"It will happen gradually" Aleck said, not very convinced.
"Yes, gradually and irreversibly. You'll have filmed sequences, movies, and photos tormenting your minds, and your childhood memories. You will all fall ill with acute regret."
"-We- will fall ill?" Maggie asked.
"I cannot complain" the chief replied.
"So, you're leaving" Aleck concluded.
"You have a free hand. One of you will come across some greenhorn who sooner or later will call him chief, and then big chief; one of the last greenhorns, I'm afraid" sighed the big chief, "but we'll have time to talk about this" he ended off.
"One fine piece of news after the other!" Maggie said huffily while washing her hands and forearms with impetuosity.
"These days are like this" said Aleck staring at himself in the mirror over the wash-basin. "A lot of new information and events, all negative. Who knows, they might be the last ones to be negative."
Maggie carried out a gastrectomy with skill and precision. Aleck resolved to leave her without him in the operating theatre more often, at least for the operations of intermediate difficulty; at twenty-eight she was a very promising surgeon, full of self control. Provided that you never called her surgeoness, with a final "ess", in front of strangers.

9. Calculation and Lucubration on Animals.
"Look, Aleck" Maggie said in a worried manner, her right hand slipped in her hair torturing it and rolling it up, her left hand weighing a thick encyclopaedia volume, among sheets with notes and smaller thin-leaved books.
"Yes?" Aleck answered, without taking his eyes off the television.
"A dog can live up to eighteen at the most, more commonly up to ten years, and before dying of old age it becomes lazy, indolent, gets heavier, its teeth turn yellow and look worn out, its senses are muffled…" Maggie went on, referring to mysterious notes.
"Yellow teeth and muffled senses? How exciting!" Aleck replied absent-mindedly.
"Hey, I'm talking to you!" Maggie tried to arouse his interest.
"Lazy and heavier" Aleck went on.
"Hell, I spent the evening studying the life of all possible animals, I'm spoiling my sight on it, I'm trying to understand who will keep us company in the future, who will outlive us..."
"Ten or eighteen years at the most."
"Aleck!"
"Yes?"
"I am talking to you, I want your attention, completely. You must help me understand, I would like some comments" Maggie got up and interposed between her partner and the coloured fluorescent screen, "I need your opinion!" she yelled in his ear.
"Dogs, all right, dogs. I know they have nine-week pregnancies, females are on heat twice a year, usually in February and August..."
"Stop, I know, I've read that. What I want of you is not this, but to acquaint you with the extinguishing species. I want you to think about it seriously" Maggie said, syllabising, as she turned off the television.
"All right, OK, you could have said it straight away, I'm listening, go on. We stopped with dogs, if I remember well." said Aleck in a low voice, clearing his throat.
"We have finished, with dogs" Maggie puffed.
"What do you say about horses?" Aleck suggested, leaning against the back of the armchair and heavily lowering his eyelids.
"Thirty, or forty years of life at the most."
"And… hens? I love a roast chicken, until when will we be able to allow ourselves some?" Aleck whispered.
"For ten or thirty years at the longest, according to breeds, if you want them just executed, otherwise you will have the overfrozen ones."
"Executed? Don't be so harsh, please, and forget about frozen meats, I have always hated them, just imagine the ones we will be offered, vintage ones!" Aleck replied, "What about boars and roe deer, instead? Delicious, with their gravy."
"We are talking about species which will become extinct, we are not at a restaurant, and nobody has asked you to order! In any case, the boar in twenty years, and the roe deer in twelve or fifteen years. Are you happy now?"
"A real well of learning!"
"I have gathered information."
"Right. What about hares and rabbits?"
"Ten or twelve years for hares, seven or eight for rabbits."
"Keep ready: and what about… rock-goats, deer, and chamois?"
"Thirty, fifteen to twenty, twenty to twenty-five."
"What kind of an answer is this supposed to be?"
"And what kind of a question is yours?"
"Look, what if we stopped this?"
"Tortoises will outlive us: they live even up to three hundred years. And elephants, which live more or less as long as us, and parrots, and hawks."
"Hawks?"
"Yes, I read they can live up to a hundred and sixty years!"
"And what will they eat, according to the encyclopaedia?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean they are carnivores! I don't think they feed on preys prone to centennial lives."
"Aleck, but the encyclopaedia does not predict the latest events!"
"Not very up-to-date! I do not think that hawks will become vegetarians to gratify it, I don't think so, at all. I am afraid we will have to content ourselves with the company of decrepit elephants, shrivelled tortoises, and arteriosclerotic parrots."
"Thanks for the updating!"
"Don't mention it. Ah, there must be some positive side to this all."
"That is?"
"In a few years there will be no more worms, mice, spiders, bees..."
"Stop, all right, you know more than I do, I give up, I have tried!" Maggie cried, as she silenced him physically with both hands. "Do you have a secret?"
"An encyclopaedia in my room, and a couple of free hours last week!"
"Oh, I hate you!"
"And we'll have no more lions in forty years, and toads, and crows in about seventy years, and cats in a quarter of a century, and deer in twenty years, and foxes and wolves in fifteen years, and snails in eight years, and doves in thirty…"
"Stop it!" Maggie cried again, smothering him with a long, ambiguously passionate kiss.

10. London, Italy, and Routine.
For several years, no considerable changes occurred in the life of mankind. At regular intervals, signs, hypotheses, and prophecies were re-interpreted, re-elaborated, and re-arranged. Scientists declared themselves certain they would succeed in creating a remedy to that sort of sweet and final natural, painless, and universal calamity; in fact, those who attended their world congresses - called with the aim of coordinating independent national meetings - came out confused and bewildered.
Soon after 2010 Aleck, Marcus, Maggie, and Alfred, developing a working hypothesis the big chief had suggested, who had retired to a serene farm in the hills, for a few months believed themselves to be on the right track; but spermatozoa and ova, patiently isolated from trusting male and female donors, proved to be unfit to start a vital cycle to which they appeared to be, by now, completely extraneous. In larger multi-specialistic studies, carried out in all nations, the same fact occurred.
Theirs was a scientific and enthusiastic attempt based on the principles that Maggie had absorbed during the first year after her graduation, under the strict guidance of one of Europe's best biologists, before she applied herself to surgery, and on Marcus's experience, who worked in close connection with the most renowned living geneticist.
The female and male gametes appeared absolutely normal in morphology and motility, yet the fascinating and mysterious process of nuclear fusion and the building of a new independent and recombined genetic inheritance seemed to be, and in fact was, irremediably lost.
In the field of theories on the cause, there was no real progress: the initial hypothesis, suggested by the majority of the people interviewed years before, at the start of this phenomenon, that is to say an effect of radiations, remained the most credited one for a long time, although it was a scientific absurdity.
Apart from the decrease of the world population, which was considerable and tangible, and which brought more possibilities of life choices rather than inconveniences or complications, there were no remarkable secondary phenomena. The negative psychological impact, feared by behavioural scientists, and in fact expected by nearly everyone, was much less than expected.
For some time, the controversy on the usefulness and legitimacy of the preservation of the marriage institution raged. From the civil point of view, after quick judgments from Courts and places of jurisdiction, the matter was almost unanimously resolved with the preservation of the institution. Instead, the matter was discussed at length in the religious circles, especially the Christian one: a Council, summoned in 2014, ended after several days of hard debates and misunderstandings with a decision analogous to that of the civil Authorities.
Scanty secessionist groups continued the discussion independently, crossing continents and seas searching for unlikely proselytes, until they silently disintegrated.
In the year 2011, kindergartens and nursery schools were closed. The children born in 2005 were preparing for their first school year.
An English newspaper published the title .
Lengthy, emphatic, sugary, a realistic title, anyway; Maggie was troubled by it. She had been in London with Aleck for two days, for a congress on liver transplants and infant liver surgery.
From the moment they had decided to live together, their careers had become indissolubly parallel: Aleck was in charge of abdominal, thoracic, and emergency surgery, succeeding the big chief whose power, however, had been redistributed in several different specialists' sectors, and in as many independent wards. Alfred had remained with them for four years, then had left for an external activity which was less fascinating but more compatible with the unchecked passion for golf that had caught him. They gathered periodically for dinners, discussions, and endless poker games: it was the three of them plus Marcus, now only a gynaecologist, since the term obstetric had been abolished four years before. Marcus always revealed himself to be enthusiastic and polemic, as in the old days, as usual.
Aleck and Maggie arrived in London on the Thursday evening. For two hours, charmed and frightened, they had waited for a violent storm at Paris Airport to abate and allow flying. They had got on the plane with circumspection and weariness. A rapid flight without surprises, ended off with an impeccable landing at Warwick disorderly airport. As they were walking down the long glass corridors towards the exit, another pretty vigorous storm broke out. They flung themselves into the first vacant taxi, soaked but in an excellent mood.
Man's great frenzy in the invention and marketing of new cars, new sign-boards, new gadgets, new accessories, new messages, new outer technology, new architecture, had much subsided, it was time for introspection; the dizzy race towards artificial intelligence had stopped a few steps from the cold and feared final outcome.
Aleck and Maggie asked for the key to their flat on the third floor and rushed there, climbing the steps two by two, which were covered by a thick and soft dark red runner, clinging to the solid wood banisters, while a page, puzzled by their pace, mounted to the third floor with their luggage, peeping at them from the slow lift without walls.
They got to the room door simultaneously, panting, happy, smiling at the expression on the page's imperturbable face. They dismissed him with a couple of French Francs, without waiting for his reaction.
Maggie undressed and wrapped herself in a big cream towel, laid herself down on the bed, and remained there relaxing without apparent signs of active movement. Aleck took advantage of this and plunged into the bath his partner had prepared previously.
He came out, refreshed and invigorated, after half an hour of blissful dozing. He found Maggie asleep; he delicately took off the towel and covered her with a plaid.
He got dressed without a sound and got downstairs to order dinner.
The congress lasted four days; during the first two, the presentation of diagrams and filmed sequences were scheduled, which proved to be of a remarkable precision; for the other two days, surgical operations had been organised, which were broadcast live on screens linked to the five operating theatres of the Centre. Aleck and Maggie could have access to the operating theatres, Aleck as an assistant, Maggie as an observer. A little recommendation from the big chief.
Those were new methodologies carried out by people who had spent years and resources on them. Aleck and Maggie were charmed by them, especially by the surprising active role of biologists during the crucial phases of the new organ's implantation. It was a rapid and essential way of gesturing.
Not taking part factually in the operations, however, made Maggie annoyed who, spurred by a tenuous accidental mishap on leaving the university, assailed Aleck with harsh words without limit nor proportion, exaggerating old habits and unpredictable manias. One of the dozen quarrels of the last two months, followed, as a rule, by passionate reconciliation.
Aleck left on the first double-decker passing by. No, she could not cast it in his teeth that he had forced her to interrupt her laboratory tests on fertilisations. It was not true. In any case, those matters did not pertain to them, they could never get any good out of it. And there was no connection with that morning's events.
Maggie angrily stuffed a suitcase and left the hotel, taking the first available plane.
Aleck found himself alone. No notes, no messages from the porter, nothing at all. He walked along the bright central streets for a long time, covering again and again, with an ever decreasing frenzy, the gummy and slightly polychrome paving of Carnaby Street, pausing to observe, and therefore to greet, Shakespeare fixedly showing from a window at a crossroads. "Good evening" he whispered to him as he walked away.
He leaned on a balustrade in Piccadilly Circus. He peered at some flashing neon lights with excessive attention, until he got hypnotised. His mind was flying without physical or ideational obstacles. This time Maggie had gone too far. He had never forced anyone ever! Not her.
His impetuosity and anger weakened until they imperceptibly disappeared with the gradual recovering of his conscience. He felt like looking at clean and pleasant images.
He found himself at the airport, with four days to use up. Maggie was out by now.
Milan. From there, a taxi to some Alpine resort, no, better to the seaside. The cold foggy London September must correspond to a sunny warmth on the Italian Riviera.
He would have himself driven to Portofino. It must have been twenty years, probably, since he had been there.
At nine, he was at the little harbour, after he had left his luggage in an old hotel in Rapallo, the only one whose name he had recollected.
The air temperature was perfect. He sat at a table peacefully, being the only customer. A waiter with a curious look served him a varied and adequate breakfast: crunchy and soft toasted bread, peach jam, soft cream butter, tender croissants, milk and coffee, fruit. He dozed off, his cheek against his right hand clenched into a fist. He dreamt of Kate.
The waiter's polite touch awoke him. He found himself sweaty and lost. He paid the bill quite confusedly, and left a good tip.
Three or four tables were now crowded with fine faces and exciting dresses. He inhaled the saltish air deeply and began to move, with a studied gait, along the pier, observing the moored boats. He bought a striped t-shirt, without writings, and a straw hat which had looked to him quite fitting for his frowning and oblong face.
He had himself driven to Santa Margherita. He greeted the elderly talkative taxi driver emphatically. A strong sun forced him to take off his jacket and roll up the sleeves of the shirt he had bought in London, in Bond Street, nothing less, during the last unfortunate day.
Italy. He put the places side by side with Kate's blurred image, with their short and unlucky union. He had been too silent and passive, at the time.
He entered a church: rituals of a rich and affected mass, like each chandelier and each column and each arabesque in that uncommonly sumptuous and neat place. It was very crowded. He leaned against the huge wide-open entrance door, so as to take advantage of a delightful draught slipping in there. Electric candles. Little motionless flames.
Almost immediately, his gaze fell on an elegant female figure sitting with a boy at her side, her son, probably. One of the last, or penultimate, generation, he thought, ten or eleven years. Automatic and casual considerations.
The delicate sun-tanned nape of the young woman, brown hair softly gathered by a simple hair-clip, a large-brimmed light straw hat with a vaguely masculine cut, and mirror glasses. She realised she was being watched, stared at him for a few instants. Aleck stood her attention.
They went outside, blinding sunshine, festive crowd. The son moved away from her, whistling.
Aleck was watching her from the other side of the little square. The woman moved away in the opposite direction, accurately observing the merchandise displayed on the stalls, she stopped, went back, turning her head towards the two sides of the street several times over, without apparent forcing. She arrived a few steps from Aleck, passed him by, nearly touching him, and slowly headed towards exhibitions of flowers and fruit in an extraordinary colour display.
He saw her stop again, amongst ceramic vases and plates. He moved towards the woman, at times noting her delicate movements, got as far as to smell her light and characterizing perfume, walked further on, turned to look at her, almost moved, excited and happy, he perceived her gaze for a few seconds, two, three, it was difficult to seize exact signs through those dark lenses.
The woman turned again, and went back to carefully judging the merchandise on display. Beauty, charm, confidence, in a transient and final amalgam.
A slight melancholy: it was not her he wanted, not that body. Something, in that whole, had pressingly evoked Kate. The opalescent shadow of the dream in Portofino's little harbour, and now that graceful and prevailing figure, stunned him and dragged him in a terrible whirl of memories and loves.
He lunched at the hotel. He had himself put through to an operator and, with a broken yet understandable Italian, asked if it was possible to find out a telephone number on the basis of a person's mere name and place of residence.
"We'll try" a girl's voice replied, rather rudely.
He told her the surname of Kate's father, and the name of the city he thought he remembered as her new abode. The vague information, which a friend had reported to him, dated back to many years before.
While waiting for the outcome of the search, he thought of the enormous number of events that must have followed one another during those years and he was on the point of hanging up.
"I have six surnames corresponding to the one requested" the telephonist concluded.
"All in Varese?"
"You asked about Varese, right?" she replied, annoyed.
"Yes, as far as I remember. All right, tell me their professions, he should be a musician."
"There is a violinist" the girl answered.
"Give me that number, please" Aleck replied, anxiously.
He wrote it down on a piece of newspaper which he then folded in four and slipped into his wallet. He did not think of it until the evening, it was quite an absurd situation, too many things in twenty-four hours, too many thoughts, too disconnected one from the other.
A heavy and uneasy sleep.
He had dinner in Rapallo. An unusual dish, which brought him back to the pleasures of the senses for half an hour, shielding thoughts and worries. Thin slices of swordfish, just cooked in lemon juice, with a generous and unexpected quantity of firm and savoury mushrooms, garlic, onion slices, celery fragrance. The emphatic and enthusiastic waiter ground some perfumed dark pepper on top of it. Delicious, and accompanied by an excellent clear and cold Venetian wine.
He went back to the hotel, made himself comfortable in a wide velvet armchair in the hall, stood up again, asked for the telephone, and dialled the number.
"Excuse me, I am an old friend of your daughter's, good evening" he said trying to express himself in the best Italian he knew.
"Yes?" replied the unmistakable voice of Kate's mother.
"I have…I have found some old scores with your daughter's signature. I was thinking of giving them back" Aleck continues.
"Scores?" the woman asked with a touch of surprise.
"Your husband's. Memories from old parties during which scores and music stands were being lent to each other" Aleck, uncertain, continued.
"I see", pause. "My husband died six years ago..." the woman said slowly.
"I did not know, I am sorry" Aleck, bewildered, whispered.
"My daughter married again, had a daughter, she is seven years old now, she is a sweetie, looks like her father..." the woman continued with enthusiasm.
"Could you give me your daughter's telephone number?" Aleck asked, interrupting her.
"I wouldn't want… A friend, you said? All right, a number is a number" replied the interlocutor dubiously. She gave it to him.
"Thank you, sorry, goodbye" Aleck hung up with force.
He called the telephone exchange again. A calm and reassuring man's voice answered. In a few seconds, he found the address corresponding to the telephone number Aleck had given him, and the surname of Kate's husband, Kate's new surname.
He did not like the coupling of those sounds, an extraneous identification came out of them. He wrote the address and telephone number on a new sheet of paper, folded it, and put it in his purse. He needed to think about it. He slept soundly, without further images.
The following day he was in Milan. A noisy hotel. Just the time to leave his luggage there.
He walked across the "piazza del Duomo", pausing several times over on the church-square, irresistibly attracted by the sight of the white impending façade, then dived into the underground, got into a crowded car, and got out only once he had reached the farthest suburban station.
He hired a robust racing bike, with which he tried to break down the agitation and instability consuming him. Kilometres along a parading anonymous plain, his muscles stiffened, anaesthetized by the crazy rhythm of his pedalling and the hard and excessive gear ratio he had positioned. He brought back the bicycle after one hour, exhausted and sweating.
He returned to the hotel, went up to his room for a refreshing shower and to change clothes. He did not quite know what he was doing. He was acting instinctively, at random, against logic. He decided not to have dinner. He bought a rather detailed map and hired a two-seat car. He found himself along the motorway, going at full speed, deafened by the noise coming from the lowered windows. He drove across Varese, in a maze of signals and wrong ways. He drove out of it, turned right, stopped to look at the map, checked the address, a strange name that, as he desolately raised his eyes, he saw engraved on a stone slab to mark the narrow road where he was.
He resumed his journey with more precision. The road was going up in gentle yet definite hairpin bends. A hill, the lake, dimmed in the distance. Kate had always said she wanted to live in the hills, over the lake. Another two or three, more demanding hairpin bends. He found himself at the summit.
He looked at the signs again, got back in the car, drove slowly down the winding road.
The sky had become dark and threatening. He saw the sign he was looking for. A lane recently asphalted.
Large drops were squashing on the car and the ground. He slowly got back in, observing the walls of the small villas one by one. Eight. Here it is. He went further on. A gloomy thick-eyebrowed gentleman looked at him suspiciously, at number twelve, while he carried out an arduous U-turn manoeuvre in a now pelting rain. The man set the shutters ajar.
Aleck drove down as far as the beginning of the road. He got out of the car, closed the door, taking cover under a large leafy tree. An oak. It was pouring, with gusts of wind to stress the rain's obliqueness. He headed for Kate's house on foot. He got there drenched and benumbed. He stopped at the gate, in front of the wall of variegated stone. Eight. A series of plates. The very surname. Doctor, specialist in otorhinolaryngology. It was their flat. Kate had a weakness for doctors.
The showers became annoying and painful.
He did not ring the bell. He looked for silhouettes behind the only open window. No shadows. No figures. He was feeling ill at ease. He slowly walked back to the car.
He turned one last time, got into the car, and drove along the road back to Milan without any particular sensations.
He paid for the hiring. Took a taxi back to the hotel. His throat was dry. In the hall, the manager, considerately and kindly, offered to have his rain-drenched clothes washed and put in order.
He thanked him. He was in a hurry to leave. He had to efface Kate from his mind once and for all.
Perhaps Maggie would telephone.
In the middle of the night, Aleck found himself in the comfortable, familiar flat of his last ten years of life. He had left Italy with decision and excellent plane connections. He stared at the telephone for a few minutes. He could not restrain himself.

"One last time" he said to himself.
He dialled Kate's number. A graceful, formal child's voice.
"Sorry, darling, wrong number. 'Bye" Aleck answered, as if freed from a nightmare.
He sat at the polished, friendly, just dusty piano. He played to a slightly slow, disillusioned rhythm with precision. Notes down-grading as to intensity and rhythm removed his desire for good.
Eight in the morning, week-start meeting. Aleck listened to the collaborators' report. He then distributed the assignments for the next fifteen days.
Maggie, with a vague nodding sign, moved towards the east ward. At ten o'clock, she was called to the Orthopaedics ward for an advice. A twelve-year-old boy who had been hospitalized at nine o'clock: multiple fractures in the limbs, his father deceased in the car accident. They had spent the night at some relations' celebrating an anniversary, and had stuffed themselves with food and drinks. They had been driving for two hours already, after a cheerful breakfast of sweet fritters, honey, and squeezed fruit. His father must have been rather euphoric. A fall from an overpass.
The orthopaedist on duty had asked for a surgeon's advice. Aleck had assigned the task of examining the case to Maggie.
"I don't like the look of this child, Aleck" the orthopaedist had said, "The blood tests are acceptable, just a slight decrease of haemoglobin and hematocrit; but his breathing is laboured, his pressure at the lower standard limit, his pulse very quick, although strong. The child answers questions wearily, with a melancholic look."
Maggie had a thorax radiogram taken on the bed, which proved the validity of her suspicion: a total pneumothorax on the left. In addition, an opaque section of doubtful meaning in the lower third of the thorax cavity on the same side.
"I'm going up to the operating theatre to drain him, he's got a pneumothorax" Maggie phoned Aleck, "I hope that's it!"
"All right, if complications arise let me know" replied Aleck, troubled by that subdued voice tone.
"Agreed" Maggie hung up.
She washed her hands and forearms with her usual accuracy, she was not thinking about Aleck, concentrated as she was on the rosy clear disinfectant. She kept her fists dipped in it for a few seconds in excess. A very young and accurate nurse quickly dressed her.
Maggie incised about two centimetres in the front wall of the left hemithorax, in the second intercostal space, retracted the fibres of the pectoralis major and the intercostal muscles, and exposed the strained pleura. She gave the assistant the two small retractors. She pierced the pleura with rounded-tipped scissors, pressurised air came out of it, she asked for a thick mushroom-shaped rubber tube, mounted on the suitable forceps, then stopped. She was watching, perplexed, some little fat lobules that had blocked the hole just made.
"Just a second" she said.
She had two delicate forceps handed to her, seized those lobules: she drew outside, for about three centimetres, some unmistakable tissue.
"Omentum" she whispered to herself.
"Omentum?" asked the assistant in amazement.
"Yes, damn, he must have a smashed in diaphragm, the omentum has moved from the abdomen into the thorax cavity."
She positioned the rubber tube, closed the breach, had the anaesthetist insert a naso-gastric probe, and requested a check radiogram.
It was no trifling breach: almost all of the stomach, containing the rolled up probe, was in the thorax cavity. The left lung had only partially re-expanded.
"Let us cut the abdomen open" Maggie said with decision, "It will take long" she added, addressing the anaesthetist.
There was free blood, not much, in the abdominal cavity; the patient was stable at good pressure and pulse levels. The analyses of the blood gases were satisfactory. A wide laceration in the left diaphragmatic dome had occurred; the spleen appeared to be undamaged. The stomach was turned over. A gastric artery began to bleed decidedly. While she was carrying out the haemostasis, she asked the nurse to make Aleck come up to the operating theatre.
"My goodness!" Aleck exclaimed as soon as he realised what the situation was, and continued: "Bravo, excellent job, go on!"
"I'd rather you did it" Maggie replied in an unusual and calm tone.
He looked her in the eye for a few instants. "All right" he answered, "Let us cut the thorax open, too."
Alimentary matter was scattered in the left pleural cavity, the lung had only one peripheral lesion, which was sutured without difficulty. The blow that the abdomen had suffered had pushed the stomach - full of food - against the diaphragm like a battering ram, therefore breaking it open; in the crash, a breach about two centimetres long had opened in its strong front wall, a kind of explosion, and some gastric vessels had torn; the content of the stomach had partially ended up in the pleural cavity.
"Let us rinse repeatedly" said Aleck, relaxing for a few seconds. He carefully sutured the stomach wall.
"There still is some blood in the abdomen" Maggie noted.
"What else have you got, child?" Aleck whispered, beginning to methodically inspect the viscera.
It was the spleen, a small tear that had escaped the previous quick general examination.
"Shall we remove it?" asked the assistant, solicitous and tired.
"We shall suture it. At least, I'll try." Aleck answered without a particular intonation.
The spleen suture came out satisfactorily.
"Let us rinse again" said Aleck.
Everything seemed to be under control. He sutured the diaphragm. They completed the approach of the ribs, which had been previously retracted.
"How is the child doing?" Aleck asked the anaesthetist.
"Very well. Have you finished?" he answered.
"Yes, we are going to put a drain in the thorax and one in the abdomen, and stitch. It will take another three quarters of an hour."
"Excellent. It's half past two" the anaesthetist added.
"Thanks" Maggie said, addressing Aleck, as she was taking off bonnet and mask simultaneously.
"I could have helped you, I am sure you would not have acted otherwise" answered Aleck, staring at her lowered eyes.
"I preferred so" said Maggie, "He is a boy."
They met again towards evening in Aleck's room.
Maggie reported that the operated patient's conditions were satisfactory. He had woken up without a problem, asking about his father.
"Are you having dinner with me?" Aleck proposed, without commenting on the good news.
"Yes" Maggie answered, slowly leaving the room.
They had dinner together and together returned to their flat.
While they were driving home, they heard - without paying much attention - pieces of a debate on the cultural and evolutionary meaning of the future closing of primary schools due to the inevitable exhaustion - so it was defined - of the human raw material.
"Perhaps tomorrow that London newspaper will publish the title " Aleck tried to sing-song.
"I love you" Maggie whispered strongly covering his mouth.
Aleck could not answer, struck dumb by Maggie's hand, and lost the time for a brilliant reply. He drove home in silence, feeling and suffering his partner's sweet embrace.

11. Calculations and Predictions.
"I did some calculations today" Maggie exclaimed.
They had had a demanding day, had been placed in a difficult position by a case of the Gynaecology ward. Marcus had called them for help directly from the operating theatre, where they spent three toilsome hours: an operation with a subverted anatomy made uniform by an extensive haematoma, without the usual topographic landmarks, with various possible solutions, none of which completely satisfactory.
"What kind of calculations?" Aleck asked, interested and well-disposed towards distracting topics.
"A lot of mathematical and logarithmic calculations, a mixture of science and absurdity, perhaps" Maggie replied half-closing her eyes and stretching.
"Would you mind telling me on what topic?"
"On us, on man!"
"I say! Have you written down anything? Some paper witnessing your brain efforts?"
"Certainly" Maggie answered leaping up from the armchair, heading for her half-open tidy locker. She took out three sheets of paper, one written on in a thick uniform way, with very minute and regular letters and figures, one with a few in-boxed notes, and a larger one crossed by mathematical operations in various dimensions and arrangements, in a confused and dazzling intertwining. "There, a whole evening of hypotheses, attempts, and conclusions."
"Explain yourself better, if you can, I have lost the thread of what you were saying."
"Well, I proposed to quantify the numerical size of future peoples; in particular, I was interested to know when the most evident decrease in the human presence on the earth would occur, and what, in this perspective, would be the key-years. Then, I resolved to compare my data to the ones scientists had foreseen before the phenomenon in which we have become involved. I have set a few fixed points: starting in 2005, arriving in 2105. I don't think it is possible to exceed a hundred years of life, provided that someone may reach a hundred, in view of the progressive exponential reduction in resources and therapeutical possibilities. I do not think there will be any considerable changes in pathologies, whether favourably or unfavourably: the fundamental ones have already taken place."
"That is to say? this is interesting."
"The big cause of death until the middle of the nineteenth century, infectious diseases, is not going to revolutionize the data of future existence. I might use the complete defeat of AIDS as an example."
"Have you got other data?"
"Yes, I'm going to bore you for another ten minutes, may I?"
"Go on!"
"The tables I have found refer to a hundred thousand inhabitants: now, from nearly eight hundred dead due to infectious diseases towards the end of the nineteenth century, we have moved to fifteen at the time of the last born; from just over five hundred dead due to respiratory system diseases, to seventy; and, in contrast with therapy evolution, from less than sixty dead due to tumours, to more than a hundred and seventy; also the datum on digestive system diseases is interesting: from more than four hundred to less than sixty…"
"Fine, I consider the ten minutes up."
"Wait, for my calculations, I took all this into consideration: general mortality, child mortality, then I added a pinch of intuition in addition to, of course, the use of Zeuner-Becker-Lexis schema with the consequent calculation of death probability."
"Zeuner, Becker, Lexis?" asked Aleck, quite astonished.
"In short, mortality is highest during the first year of life and around seventy-five, eighty, and lowest towards eleven years of age."
"You could have said so straight away, you should have become a lawyer: a lot of words and turns of the sentence!"
"Besides, I considered the progression of the average life, starting from thirty-five years in eighteen eighty-five, to seventy-four years in nineteen eighty-five. I extrapolated. I considered environmental conditions, which will, however, undergo fewer changes than it is commonly thought..."
"Do you reckon so?"
"Quiet! I'm following a logical thread. Environmental conditions, as I said, and economical conditions, the sanitary and health state, and the peoples' structure."
"I am anxious to hear the results, or the sentence, if you like."
"You are anxious to interrupt me all the time!"
"No, I swear, go on, I adore you when you are seized by a raptus."
"Thanks. I have foreseen a uniform decrease in the population for about seventy-five years, a twelve per thousand dead a year, with the exception of the first year, with a thirty per thousand rate."
"Don't give me explanations."
"I am not giving you any, but it's easy, if you have followed me. For ten years, a heavier drop, thirty per thousand, then four years at fifteen per cent, then three at thirty per cent, two at sixty per cent, three at ninety per cent, a couple at ninety-nine per cent. And we get to 2104."
"I have a slight feeling of dizziness" Aleck sighed.
"It's tiredness" Maggie reassured him.
"I believe it's that ninety-nine per cent" Aleck replied.
The telephone rang. Maggie's essential, quick dialogue: "It was Marcus. Your operated patient has woken up, everything seems to be all right."
"We'll see, it will take two days at least not to worry anymore, a bad case."
"You are getting old. Taken all this into consideration, then, I have written this detailed table."
"Beautiful, it will become as famous as the multiplication table. Cross your coordinates and find the future in numbers."
"I will only tell you the key points."
"Bravo. You understand me."
"In nineteen eighty-six there were over four billion people, in nineteen ninety-nine six billion. Now there are slightly fewer of us. In practice, a uniform decrease as far as the billion of 2091. Then, the matter becomes impetuous: three hundred million in 2097, just over three milliion in 2101, thirty-four thousand people in 2103…"
"Thirty-four thousand people in the entire world?"
"Yes, and the youngest one will be ninety-eight years old!"
"Incredible."
"Three hundred and forty people in 2104. And, listen here, three people in 2015."
"What, three people?"
"With the mathematical arguments, it is so."
"And in 2016?"
"Zero point zero three people."
"What do you mean by ? I am scared when you state absurd things in a serious tone!"
"There should be no one left, in that year!"
"The end?"
"End of a fine story."
"Few elephants, some tortoises, scanty parrots."
"If you like to put it this way."
"And…what were you saying regarding comparisons?"
"Are you really keen on this?"
"Yes, really, so we'll end the conversation and we won't pick it up again."
"Scholars, before ninety eighty-five, had foreseen we would be twelve or twenty billion in 2070: instead, we will be two billion; twenty-five or fifty billion between 2090 and 2105: instead, we will be just over one billion in 2090, thirty-four million in 2100, just over three million in 2101, just over three hundred thousand in 2102, just over thirty thousand in 2103, just over three hundred and forty in 2104, just over three people in 2105..."
"And just over zero point zero three in 2106."
"Just less, you mean. That is to say, absolute zero."
Aleck was visibly bewildered:
"Nothing better than an atypical operation and mathematical tables, to raise your spirits."
"I cannot let you listen to Brahms, the player is broken."
"Perfect. Are you hungry, by any chance?"
"No."
"Very well. Shall we go home?"
"I would like to take care of the operated woman for a couple of hours more."
"Excellent."
"Are you all right?"
"I'd like to die! Or rather, I'd like to be dead already. So as not to take great pains."

12. Maggie's Intuition.
Alfred died in a car accident in 2020. Aleck, Maggie, and Marcus, now divorced and in shape as usual, found themselves entangled in a new and uncomfortable aspect of solitude. The circle was narrowing.
Rigid and closed friendships, circles and groups of inseparable and homogeneous people, who were unlikely to mix or merge; in conclusion, a general, natural, and progressive intolerance towards vague and bound human relationships, an aspiration towards little forms of independence.
Aleck and Maggie retired from the hospital in 2026.
They went through a long period of existential panic which materialized in months of toilsome, systematic, and continual travels around the world, trying to satisfy and extinguish a romantic and improbable curiosity, in a way, although in a breathless manner, as if trying to forget the usual pace.
They derived a spur from re-reading their favourite authors, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, incredible, at such a distance in time. Ideals from forty years before, even then neglected by the media, which young and enthusiastic parents had passed on to them.
The decision to leave to see the world.
They travelled across the United States in a pedantic and systematic manner, physically suffered a dramatic and frantic Carnival in Rio, doubled Cape Horn passively carried by two historic and aged coxswains, on a slender fragile sailer; they wanted to exaggerate, forget themselves, go beyond the experiences they had read about and imagined so many times; they saw all of Europe in a kind of romantic trance, had breakfast in old Parisian, Viennese, Roman cafés, lunched in magnificent French, Italian, Austrian restaurants, dined after grand and involving theatre performances, after impeccable concerts at the Opéra, la Scala, Covent Garden, the Staatsoper, in Vienna, on the morning of New Year's Day. They let thousands of emotions, sensations, visual and sound stimuli hit and shake them. They spent a whole Winter in a dacha in Moscow's suburbs, happily, with long evenings at their disposal, at the warmth of the fire in the hearth characterising the Spartan furniture of the dining room; pages by Chekhov, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn and all that they had managed to grab during a quick stop at the severe National Library.
They experienced the melancholic charm of the splendid Bolshoi. They left the Red Square after pirouetting a silent and universal waltz there, among the amused gazes of friendly faces reddened by the ice-cold wind.
They came back vivified. New plans arose.
They arranged to meet with Marcus for a week in Scotland. They rented a small cottage on the banks of a good torrent with clear, pure, and icy waters. The best fishing season. The most suitable waters for good distillates.
But fish did not exist anymore. Since years before then. They laughed at that until they cried, until they felt moved, until they felt an angry anguish. Aleck, Maggie, and Marcus rolled about in the grass after flinging away the anachronistic and useless fishing equipment. They had repeatedly spoken to each other on the phone, a couple of evenings before their departure, enthusiastic about the idea of making use of their original fishing tecnique in a foreign country. They had accurately prepared their equipment, their precious and light fishing-rods, the delicate works of the reels. They had made personal and long-tested artificial baits.
Only at the time of the first cast did Aleck begin to laugh and weep, progressively and uncontrollably, even before the bait had settled on the torrent water, without being able to articulate understandable words or completed sentence fragments. He went on for minutes.
"Wh... wha... what... what the hell... what the hell are we fishing for?" he finally managed to say, almost in a state of apnoea, while tears were appearing larger, more true and desperate.
Maggie and Marcus looked at each other, surprised and uncertain, before they could associate the words with the situation, then fell into the same desolate fit of laughter.
They found themselves lying side by side, worn out and exhausted: bulky and thick clouds of luminescent whiteness were running ceaselessly along the portion of sky over their heads; only the regular and peaceful noise of the transparent waters of the lifeless torrent could be heard.
They flew to Spain, to forget and conclude. They saw picturesque bullfights being recalled, with costumes and big bulls mimed by skilled sturdy actors, perhaps old bull-fighters.
Each thing was becoming empty and dazed. The journey ended. They returned home a few days before Christmas. Aleck had just turned sixty.
It was the year two thousand and twenty-nine.
More years passed. The world population decreased considerably in number, more remarkably than statistics had foreseen. The causes were manifold and hardly verifiable: there had been neither a significant increase in suicides, nor wars or natural disasters of a special magnitude. Earthquakes and floods, however, had left the involved territories desolate and deserted: no one felt like re-building destroyed dwellings and apparatus with aimless labour and efforts.
Emptied and mute buildings, scattered over the continents.
When, around 2040, the world population was reduced to less than half, whole conglomerates, mainly suburban, were abandoned with the aim of concentrating people in large cities, which were kept under control by periodical censuses.
Man was indissolubly bound to civilization's achievements. Very few people chose a simple and isolated life; it had been a widespread dream, once, but now cruel reality was making it unfeasible and spiked with difficulties.
It was quite a peculiar situation: the world was involved in a drastic change in relationships, imposed by the ceasing of births and by the gradual extinction of the animals. People were finding themselves more and more isolated, less and less powerful, with more extensive, yet less practicable and specific, knowledge than in the past.
Everything became more complex and concentrated, some crafts, some activities were almost stopped, were becoming extinct; new ideas ran dry, lacking the powerful spur of posterity, of children and grandchildren to prepare or preserve an easy and rational future for.
The youngest people were thirty-five years old, there still was some enthusiasm. Decision-making and organising powers were totally in the hands of that last combative and vital generation.
Certain things became hardly feasible; nobody seemed to be able to do without the technology and the progress reached in every activity until 2015. Electricity, nuclear energy, coal, and oil were needed - whose importance, contrary to expectations, had not decreased - and so were means of communication, cross-continental connections, and air, ship, and aerospace transports.
In 2015 the space authorities for interplanetary journeys had been dissolved.
Mechanical and electronic summaries of miniaturized technology were wandering among the unsolved and by now insoluble mysteries of the Universe, towards destinations light-years away: but there was no life on them. Instruments which, within about sixty years, would only obtain automatic replies from deserted terrestrial bases.
Two thousand and forty-five.
Aleck turned seventy-six. Maggie, his inseparable partner, for some years already had been devoting all her mental and physical energy to one of the most important ongoing biological researches, in the attempt to replicate fertilizations by modifying computer selected and treated genetic inheritance: one of the most followed currents.
Neither Aleck nor Maggie initially had been attracted by the project, yet she let herself be convinced, and now was drawing an incitement out of it, so as not to think about reality, to busy her methodical mind that had no vents, and to live intensely again.
The world was continuing in the process of vital space contraction, men were maintaining the conglomeration levels to which they had become used. Great portions of the earth depopulated, being occasionally visited by scant groups of independent explorers.
Solitary survival had become almost unbearable, natural resources hardly controllable and canalizable. The basic problems of sustenance, balanced nutrition, in particular, were solved only in the large cultivation and preservation centres. The food distribution network was subject to the strict laws of the various governments. Only hard and often unbearable individual work in favourable agricultural areas allowed some combative and unconventional small autonomous communities a few years' survival. But, with time, it became a kind of forced labour, a challenge without a future.
Maggie was spending her days according to strict laboratory timetables, hypnotised by electronic microscopes, processors, and frantic printers. Everything was linked and controlled, every method was untiringly compared by computers, which received continuous updating and new programming just as methodically. It was impossible to do better than that; by now, there was very little room for intuitions or individual proposals.
The research variant which Maggie imposed in 2050, however, surely had a touch of entirely peculiar and feminine ingeniousness.
Aleck dissociated himself from it. In fact, he had never become interested in the project, which he held as unnatural and unfeasible.
He approved and admired his partner, her untiring strong mind and her inexhaustible sense of sacrifice. Physical sacrifice. Because her mind was invigorated and nourished by it, in a kind of addiction.
Aleck wrote a couple of long fictionalized reports on his life, edited them several times, enlarged them, entrusted them to printed and strongly bound copies, to magnetic tapes, to digital discs, to magnetic discs of a couple of standard sizes. A sort of mania.
At eighty-two years of age, in 2051, he had a bad kidney infection. He recovered well on the physical side, but became cautious and uncertain in his morale. He was a fine, vigorous old man, intellectually very active, but completely disillusioned and run down. He did not approve of Maggie's enthusiasm, rekindled by a tiny but objective result in the desperate attempt to start a process of cell division which had a practical aim and was autonomously replicable.
He was convinced that there had not been a casual, scientifically explainable reason at the basis of that universal and final stop.
He was annoyed by the enthusiasm for positive results, there could not be any. If someone had stopped to think, as he had done perhaps too many times, they would have understood, there could not be any.
Still, Maggie and her team were fascinated by that.
Maggie had become yet weaker, but her energy was impressing her youngest collaborators, fifty-year-olds with a patiently trained body.
One evening, without forewarnings or signals, Aleck fell into an unending sleep in his favourite armchair, while re-reading his writings for the nth time. He did not make a sound. Maggie was upset by that.
They had become a real indissoluble couple, they had endured their old age in the common memories of happy and incredibly remote years.
Everything appeared to be too far away.
Maggie lost all incentive, but was clear-headed enough to hand down her knowledge to the youngest and most esteemed of her collaborators.
The way seemed right, it had real prospects; what was required was steadfastness, synthesis, continuous data input, boring tests on more and more hardly available cells, according to the strict requisites required by computers' mathematical simulations, which would take time, perhaps too long, maybe decades.
Maggie quit the laboratories.
She was a tender and graceful old lady with soft white hair; she left a short clear message recorded on an optical disc of her personal processor:
"To my dear collaborator and friend Robert: I am leaving you. You know everything by now, I adore you. Aleck did not approve of this, and I esteemed him like nobody else, yet I keep on believing in this last chance for mankind. My statistical projections are appalling, it would take another fifty years at least to hope for a good genetic combination, and then more years to test the various possibilities. None of us will be alive then, no one, the cycle of life is unchangeable. However, I beg you, do set the machines as well as you can, give them all the data you can, even those apparently collateral, get rid of surely misleading information with decision, act so that all energy is exploitable by the central nucleus of computers. When you feel too weak, and only then, leave processors and mechanical arms to themselves, place as much suitable cellular material as you will have been able to select, as many activated gametes, as many combinations, at their disposal, and allow the machines to have energy to work for as long as possible, for centuries.
Concentrate everything on that group of computers and robots: power stations and nuclear power plants, which you will have made autonomous and interconnected.
Only thus, perhaps, might a complete process of division occur.
My brain cells are raving, probably, or I am too tired, or sorrowful, maybe I just wish I could hold Aleck close, maybe I wish I could live again, or die in peace.
Prepare extremely delicate, perfect nutrition devices, mechanical or electronic, but accurate and sensitive ones.
My ideas are confused: a long maze with sterile and self-sufficient compartments, to be abandoned sequentially as soon as waste products make them unfit for a safe life; discreet mechanisms will have to displace and remove the little vital space of the newborn, it won't be an insurmountable problem to feed it, and to progressively wrap it in visual and acoustic stimuli and in essential and increasing information; it will have to become self-sufficient between two and three years of age, with an autonomous survival capacity comparable to that of our last nine or ten-year-old children.
From then on, it is him who will have control over memories and mechanisms: he will oversee and direct the creation of a second life - his mate, the terminal fruit of cold biological programming - from the last innatural plastic and glass, lukewarm and uniform, womb. A chance to begin and continue a new human race.
All my love to you. God forgive me. I implore you to try."
Maggie would think about all this every time she walked wearily along the avenue lined with trees behind her house, now big and annoying.
She had a composed and erect gait, elegant, in a way. However, it was impossible to associate her with the explosion of vitality and attractiveness of her splendid youth.
One of Aleck's last cruel manias had been that of watching again the numerous filmed sequences of their moments of thoughtlessness: there appeared, repeatedly and with a tiring realism, Maggie's features, laughter, pirouettes, kisses, songs, details, and asynchronous dances.
Now, she was defeated and worn out. She had spent a large part of her life in a world without children nor youth. A future with old people was awaiting the last unlucky and final generations. How could all this be possible? And why? Why in that subtly sweet way?
She made a few solitary and troubled journeys. She saw places she had visited long ago and forgotten about in a similar period.
Faded and transparent shadows of three inseparable youth.
Exuberant Marcus, who did not resist the limitations imposed by an awkward old age much longer than his friend Aleck, brought a dramatic and theatrical suicide to an end, as from time to time he had enjoyed to suggest to hung up colleagues. A complicated and spectacular suicide.
Action in slow-motion, without a stunt man. A vigorous eighty-one-year-old man, returned a reckless adolescent, resolutely drove an old Cadillac in perfect conditions up winding slopes along the rugged and bare flanks of Arizona's plateaux, towards the Grand Canyon. Finally, he had seen it, America. It was at his disposal. He sped the powerful car up to the top of its speed, along the edge of the fearful precipice, catching glimpses of the narrow serpiginous silver ribbon of the Colorado river.
No traces of braking were found. Among the wreck's contorted auto panels, in addition to Marcus's unrecognizable body, a small brown suitcase was found, containing a copy of one of Aleck's books, and an old photograph of Aleck and Maggie's in Scotland. A recorder was also found. The message that Marcus was likely to have shouted into the microphone at that extraneous and incomprehensible world, during his long endless fall in the air, could not be retrieved.
Maggie cried over his grave with desperate resignation: her own wrinkly reflection was oppressing her from a polished brass plate, making the perception of matter corruption unbearable.
Maggie refused repeated requests for indirect and unofficial collaboration on the research.
By now, she was not entirely convinced of her choices, yet she indicated her words recorded on the optical disc as final.
Robert had understood, but he had wished for a more reassuring approval, a more precise conviction, a material baton to grasp.
"I am not sure that all this is right, Aleck did not want to, Marcus did not understand, I do not know if this is right, but it is a real possibility, you must try, you will have to, even when faith in yourselves seems to waver, this is something you owe to God, to those who created you, to those who could have been your children" Maggie said in a moved and firm tone.
"We will" Robert answered, kissing her slender restless fingers.
Maggie had finished her duty, maybe she had been forewarned by chemical signals in her body.
She had a violent infarct a few months later.
Robert treated her himself, moving away from her bed just for short intervals. He indefatigably followed the rhythmical signal on the monitor, rectified and changed the therapy, stimulated the senses and reason of the frail researcher, who seemed to recover.
"Go back to the laboratory" she told him with a small voice on the tenth day of hospitalization, "You are essential to the programme!"
"I'm staying a little while. There is Michael coordinating researches" Robert replied reassuring her.
"Michael is clever, a good boy, you all seem like boys now" Maggie whispered.
On the fifteenth day after the first infarct, Maggie's coronaries suffered a new and final aggression, leaving her cardiac muscle without oxygen; a mechanical matter, after all, which stifled an exhausted life.

13. Last Chance.
Only Robert and Michael were acquainted with the research's final plan now.
They named the papers regarding it. They could count on a group of close, experienced, well-trained collaborators between fifty-five and seventy-five years of age, people daily undergoing rigorous physical training, besides the exacting task of experimentation and verification.
The best possible human material was selected and used, and constantly kept at high psycho-physical standards. The people who had become biologically unfit were removed.
None of the subordinates thoroughly understood the real possibilities of success of the project, and none of them mastered its fundamental ideological mechanisms.
Maggie's intuition was entrusted to Robert's lucid reason and Michael's loyalty; the two of them were sustaining the daily unpleasant feeling of the ineluctability of the context in which they were working, but they had accepted Maggie's faith, they