As Enrique went to enter the convenience store, he was startled by the sound of a woman being shot in the face. He paused for a moment, staring into the parking lot where a man in a hooded sweatshirt bent over to pick up the woman’s bag, his hand still shaking from the force of the gun’s shot. Enrique shook his head and sighed, mostly in confusion. He could only wonder what on earth possessed the man to do something like that.
As if on cue, the woman suddenly lept up and kicked the man in the nuts. She mumbled something about ‘ow fuckery’ and wagged her finger at the man, scampering away even as the man fell onto the ground, groaning in pain.
Enrique simply shook his head again and entered the store, ignoring the brilliant, annoying smile of the otherwise emotionless robo-cashier. The hooded man was clearly inexperienced with robbery if he expected to get anything of worth from the altercation. And from his quivering hand, he clearly wasn’t in it for the fun of it. Enrique had done a bit of robbery himself back in the 2100’s in the earlier days, as had many others. So what was this man doing during all that time? Though, Enrique had to admit that the woman recovered from the shock quicker than he expected. Simply bad luck for the hooded guy.
He perused the aisles, wandering around despite knowing exactly what he was here for. He simply had the cash to burn; after all, he had been saving for a few decades all to spend the next hundred years or so wasting away. Enrique was, in the end, tired of being alive.
On a whim, he picked up a pack of chewy candies before making his way to the refrigerated aisles and his original goal: chocolate milk. Ah, chocolate milk. One of the few things that, despite over five hundred years of being alive, Enrique never got tired of. After grabbing two cartons, hesitating, then grabbing a third, he strolled over and dumped the items on the cashier’s table. He ignored the pre-programmed pleasantries and pulled out his card to pay, but not before noticing something off about this particular bot. Despite himself, the years had made him even more observant than he already was. And this robot was clearly of a different make from the robo-cashier he encountered here the week before. Looking over, he saw it was different from the other two cashiers, too. This one was far more humanoid and intricate, with vaguely more expressive facial features. It was also extremely androgynous. Most robots he encountered on the San Francisco streets nowadays tended to lean into typically masculine or feminine features. Were the trends going towards something more akin to the 2420’s? That was a pretty fun time.
Either way, Enrique decided not to care about whatever experimentation this corporation was doing and simply paid for his chocolate milk in quiet. As he left, he noticed the hooded guy was resting on a bench nearby. The man barely reacted as Enrique strolled over, took the gun from his hands, and tucked it into his re-usable shopping bag.
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“Mai, turn on my feed,” Enrique said as the door to his apartment closed shut. Without having to say anything, his lights turned on to his preferred brightness and the various appliances strewn about began to hum quietly.
In response to his request, a voice pepped out from his phone. “Of course, Enrique.”
Mai, already connected to his home network, turned the tv on and switched it to play his two favorite programs. One, a live feed of news stations that automatically switched to whichever one was showing the most interesting events. And the other, a randomized selection of either long form videos, livestreams, tv shows, or movies that Mai curated for him every day. At the moment it seemed to be playing a documentary about penguins.
“You would like to talk about something,” Mai said. A statement, not a question. Of course, Mai could detect when that was the case. Enrique wondered why they had taken so long to make that a feature, as it only came in the latest updates. He knew artificial intelligence had made great strides a long, long time ago. He didn’t end up dwelling on it.
“Not really much of anything. Just saw a lady get shot in the parking lot convenience store and it made me realize how tired I was.”
“You have been expressing this exhaustion for some time now. Please take care. Would you like psychological care to process the trauma of witnessing this woman be shot and possibly killed?”
Enrique hoisted the ‘murder weapon’ and inspected it. It was old - either that or it was some sort of hobbyist device. Not only was it modified to shoot projectiles of a staggering variety, it also had the appearance of an old timey gun. A revolver.
“People don’t die, Mai. Of all things, why is that the fact you AI’s never seem to understand? Forget that; can you identify anything about this gun? It’s the weapon the guy used to shoot the lady. Oh look, it has actual bullets and everything.”
He held his phone up to the gun so Mai could scan it, and she did so without complaint. However, at some point, she stopped and made the phone buzz incessantly. And she only ever did that if two people were contacting him.
“Hey mamá. Como etsas?”
“Kiki! It has been so long since you came to visit. Quando vas a venir?” a familiar voice said from the other side of the call. Enrique cringed at his mother’s words. He hadn’t visited his parents back in Orlando for over 40 years, ever since he had come to San Francisco to begin making money.
“Soon mamá, soon. I’ve just got one week until my bonus comes in then I’ll have enough saved to chill out for a while. When I’m done here I’ll go visit you and papá.”
“Bueno, I made a surprise for you. Guess what it is!”
“I have no idea,” Enrique lied. Well, it wasn’t a full lie. Whenever his mom wanted him to visit, she made one of three surprises to entice him to return home to his childhood house down in good ol’ Orlando, Florida. He was glad it wasn’t only one surprise; he might have gotten tired of even those delicious morsels after this much time alive.
“The cookies! I know I have not made these cookies in años, so I made them for you.”
Ooh, galletas de noche, he thought with a grin. Literally ‘cookies of the night’ or Night cookies, so named because they contained so much chocolate that they appeared dark as the night itself.
“Well, don’t let papá eat them all before I arrive. Like last time,” Enrique said, trying not to laugh.
“I will put them in the freezer. And maybe I will lock it so he can’t eat them.”
After a bit more small talk, Enrique ended the call with a digital kiss. Speaking of the freezer, Enrique remembered the chocolate milk with a curse. He forgot to put them in the fridge! With a sigh he stood up, but not before asking Mai to tell him about the gun.
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While he shuffled along, Mai began to explain the weapon in detail. It was a sort of replica of a classic revolver, custom made even. It didn’t use classic mechanics, though. The revolver was modern, using a mechanism to launch the bullets faster than gunpowder had ever been able to. Even more interestingly, since the gun used a mechanism within the gun itself to launch bullets, it could theoretically use anything that fit in the barrels as ammo. It was also sturdy, according to Mia; for whatever reason, the client had requested for it to be made of hardy materials, enough to use as a bludgeoning weapon. Otherwise, it was similar to a revolver simply for the sake of it.
“I still don’t get why he was actually using it as a weapon against another person, though. With actual bullets and everything, despite that neat universal ammo feature.”
“Well, Enrique, it is very common for humans to commit violence against others for seemingly purposeless purposes. It is simply a tragedy that a woman had to be killed.”
Enrique sighed, but didn’t correct Mia. For some reason, AI’s had never been able to understand that humans had been immortal for five hundred years now, ever since the far-off year of 2025. He remembered it, though only vaguely. A normal boring day. Nothing much happening. Until for some reason, babies couldn’t be born. Oh, and humans had become completely immortal out of nowhere. Unaging, undying. Hospital-ridden elderly were suddenly spry enough to stand. Mortal wounds closed in moments. A person was decapitated across the street, that he remembered vividly. Just as he remembered that same person’s body flailing about while their head yelled for it to pick them up, like something from a certain old pirate movie. Since that day, not a single baby had been born, but neither had a single person died.
He took a swig of chocolate milk, that sweet sweet nectar, and sat on the couch with his glass, staring at the screen. However, rather than relax, he still felt a certain tension in his shoulders.
“You still want to talk.”
“Well, sure I guess. All I can really talk about is how tired I am. I was already tired five hundred years ago, and I’ve only become more and more tired as I kept living. I’ve tried to distract myself, hurt myself, and numb myself but it never got better. Maybe for moments. But moments are literally nothing after five hundred twenty five years. I mean, I can only even remember my age because its such a milestone. The year 2000. And now it’s 2525. My memory is so bad that I can’t remember anything particularly good or bad - just feelings. And it’s so tiring. So tiring.”
For the first time in years, Enrique’s dam broke once again. He kept talking all throughout the penguin documentary, through the entire three glasses of chocolate milk, and all the way until he finally fell asleep. And Mai provided not a word of actually helpful advice.
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The next morning, Enrique felt an indescribable sense of dread. It was a strange sensation, one unfamiliar and disquieting. When was the last time he had felt actual dread? An emotion like that was reserved for people with mortality. Which was nobody. That feeling followed him throughout the day, throughout his time in the warehouse, and then throughout his walk home. It was so overpowering that he had taken the gun with him to work, not that it would be useful for anything in particular. Maybe if someone attacked him, he could stun them for a moment before they recovered and kicked him in a sensitive place.
The sense of dread was pounding against his skull during the walk home, and it only got louder and louder as he strolled along. By the time he was passing the convenience store, it felt like his head was physically straining to stay intact, and it became so painful that Enrique doubled over with a gasp.
Mai made his phone buzz. This was different from when his mom or dad called. He tapped his forehead with his palm and pulled out his phone, only to see a massive red alert symbol plastered on the screen. Without prompting, Mai opened the alert. A news broadcast began playing.
“…and the reports are continuing to flood in from across the city. Just now, two men got into an altercation and began shooting, but both have yet to wake up-“
The first broadcast was interrupted by a different one. “It isn’t just in those cities. Every city in the United States has reported cases of people collapsing and shriveling away, or being permanently downed due to violence-“
“This just in: people around the globe are… my god, I think they’re dying.”
Enrique stared at the screen. A pair of people in the convenience store parking lot were also watching their phones, a look of skepticism marking the face of one while the other looked on in horror. In the distance, a muffled explosion rang out, snapping Enrique out of his stupor. He saw people running down the street, and one young man was pushed slightly too hard by the throng. He fell, his head snapping sharply against the pavement. At first, nobody noticed. But when the man failed to rise, and his body instead began to shrivel like a time lapse of a prune, the first scream echoed. Then another. Then another.
Enrique found himself staring into the distance. Questions ran through his head, as did fear and confusion. In response, he began running into the first building he saw: the convenience store. The robo-cashiers greeted him as if nothing was wrong as he dashed behind the last shelves, hoping nobody would see him losing his damn mind.
The pandemonium outside only grew. Explosions continued to ring, one so close it shook the roof of the store he hid in. He tried steadying his breathing, something he had become quite adept at a few centuries ago during one of his fitness phases. But in this situation, calming down felt like trying to lift a mountain. Instead, he tried thinking. Logically. Turning down his phone’s volume, he tried his best to study the outpouring of articles and live news feeds.
It seemed, impossible as it sounded, that humanity had lost its immortality.
The stories he saw were of people spontaneously shriveling up and dying, but Enrique hadn’t seen anything like that in person. After sorting through the drivel, he realized this was mostly relegated to older people, with the occasional young person mixed in. It was possible, then, that only the people who were elderly or perhaps sick prior to 2025 were spontaneously dying.
Another detail was the mysterious shriveling. He had seen the man outside shrivel up like a raisin after hitting his head. Had he died due to that impact? It would track if that were the case. So then, had humanity just up and lost the gift it had been given 500 years ago?
Enrique’s breathing sped up. A thought crossed into his mind. Wasn’t this what he wanted? For the grind to come to an end? Slipping the revolver out of his waistband, he looked at it. Really looked. With a steady hand, he brought it to his temple and closed his eyes. He was so tired. It was a simple procedure; he had done it a million times, many times just to know what it felt like. And he was so tired. A press of the trigger, and his 500 year-long life would end.
His once steady hand was shaking. Why was it shaking? He had wanted this for ages. Wanting to live? Absurd. A thought like that hadn’t crossed into the mind of humanity for hundreds of years. And yet, Enrique brought the revolver down with his shaky hand. Funny thing about the human mind; it tends to want what it doesn’t have. And it really tends to want what it can’t have.
In his other hand, Enrique’s phone began to ring. Numb, he answered the call. It was his dad.
“Kiki. I’m going to die soon. I don’t want to, it’s just… going to happen. Your mamá… She already… She died, Kiki. I’m going to die. I don’t want to. But I wanted to talk to you one more time. Goodbye buddy.”
Enrique didn’t respond. The labored breathing on the other side of the call lasted mere moments before fading away, replaced by an ugly sizzling sound.
“Papá?”
No response.
“Papá?”
Nothing.
Enrique looked at the phone in one hand and the revolver in the other. Meanwhile, screams continued flowing in from the outside, and the reality of the world was mercifully separated behind automatic doors. A thousand thoughts rushed through his head, deadly mixtures of sadness and anger, as well as rushes of adrenaline that hadn’t appeared in ages. Across the convenience store aisle, in the refrigerator, his eye caught a carton of chocolate milk. Chocolate. Chocolate like… cookies.
Enrique hung up the call. In that moment of panic, of excessive emotion, his brain latched onto a single thing to maintain its sanity. A single fact, a single idea. Something to keep his body moving and living, a reason to continue existing after five-hundred years of carelessness.
And that single thing was in a freezer in Orlando, Florida.