Asymptote

The first thing that anyone wants to know about is the distant past, and to be honest, I don’t know anything about that.

Memories fade over time, but more than that, memories fade over lives. How many times can you halve yourself before there’s not enough left to be called yourself any more? I think I remember discovering my curse, but I know that what I really remember is remembering it. I remember being in the coffee shop while they warned us about the bombs, remembering laboring in the quarry under the eye of the supervisor prepared to cut down any of us who tried to run away, remembering learning to dive for pearls in my remote village, remembering discovering the curse. So who’s to say how much of the memory is still accurate?

So far as I recall, the unicorns were migrating. Yes, unicorns. Literal, actual unicorns with pure white hair and long silver horns? That’s how I remember them, but as I said – memory. Perhaps they were actually deer.

To successfully hunt a unicorn was an almost impossible achievement and the mark of truly glorious hunting prowess. They were too swift to chase, too keen-eyed to sneak up on, too clever to trap or to herd. Any hunter who could take one down would earn lifelong glory, and any lover who wore its horn would have proof of the heartfelt favour of a true hero.

I wanted that horn for my love, my everything, my darling moon-wife. I don’t remember her name, or mine. I do remember silky hair and soft lips; the things that generations of me since have known to be attractive. I do remember features similar to how more recent generations of me know neanderthal women must have looked.

We hunted them as a group, which would have increased our chances of taking most prey, but not a unicorn. The horn would go to the hunter who made the killing blow, so we weren’t cooperating properly. I was the one who noticed the young unicorn on the edge of the herd stumble; I was the one who saw it hurt its leg. I was the one who pressed to separate it, who angled myself so that I would have the kill.

I was too focused to see the larger unicorn – mother? Mate? – move to defend it.

The horn tore between my ribs and broke off in my body, far more fragile than I would have predicted. No unicorn was killed that day, but I carried with me, as I bled into my lungs, a final parting gift for my moon-wife. The other hunters dragged me home, but there was nothing that anybody could but watch as I died in my wife’s arms.

And then opened my wife’s eyes.

We were one person; half me, half her. The surprise, I remember clearly (or remember remembering remembering), but otherwise, I remember her as little as I remember me. How did we adjust? Did we still love each other, love being the same person, for as long as there was enough of us to love anything?

I don’t remember the third person that I became. I can logically assume that eventually my new self died, that I became half a new whole; quarter hunter, quarter moon-wife, half of this new person.

Another life, one-eighth me. Another, one-sixteenth. One-thirty-second.

I have clear memories of about three generations. I tend to die pretty old these days, so that’s still a fair span of time. I remember hearing about the Nagasaki bomb. I won’t go into my experiences during that time – they’re not pleasant to remember.

Earlier than that, the memories get fuzzier, less reliable, more restricted to key activities. I learned to control the shift a long, long time ago, far back enough that I can’t even remember learning it. Proximity helps, especially if I let the transfer happen randomly, but with focus I can pick a new host within about 100km of me if I’m fast enough. I’ve tried doing nonhumans occasionally, more for science than anything. I can’t, not even chimpanzees. I killed myself in a zoo once to test that one. I don’t know what that says about souls or the nature of personhood or whatever, but maybe the theologists will want to know about it, someday. It works on humans only.

I’ve tried using it for revenge. That goes badly, usually. I remember being a slave, being beaten to death by my master and deciding, in a fit of fury and fear and not-very-clear thinking, to take his life in exchange. But it doesn’t work like that. It’s a merging, not a possession. Do you know what it’s like for half of you to suddenly be the person who just beat you to death, on purpose, fully convinced that their actions were okay?

I kept abusing my slaves after that. The memories of a lifetime of being one didn’t stop me. I had to become a couple of nicer people after that to truly regret my actions, and now I’m much more careful about at least trying to maintain vaguely consistent viewpoints and ideologies between lives. You change around too much, and you’re just constantly being someone who despises everyone you used to be. So I don’t do it for revenge, any more. Better to become somebody I like and use that life to enact revenge in a more normal way.

It’s not all memory. It’s personality, too. The last me was more daring, which was how she died; this body was more timid, before I became him. So I’m indecisive a lot now. A bit erratic in behaviour, I think. A quarter of me says, ‘what’s the harm? I’m immortal.’ Half of me says, ‘I am less me with every life, and I don’t want to be a quarter of a person until I have to be.’ And the other quarter, well… at some point it’s simply not worth teasing the different impulses out into what former-people they came from.

It’s about three lives of clear memories. Probably about four of strong, distinct personality impulses. Some personalities are stronger than others, some lives more worth remembering, so you can get more than that. At least three lives, the three I remember clearly, of love and care for my loved ones – I care about the great-grandchildren of the man I was when the Nagasaki bomb fell.

So that’s what I’m offering you today, ladies and gentlemen. And why I’m offering it – some of those loved ones need money. Can I give you forever? No. But I can give you a lot longer than the bodies you wear will give you.

Well, I can give one of you that, anyway. There’s only one me, after all. And the doctor says I have about six months left, so if you want my kind of immortality, if you want to be me when I die, then you’d better decide fast.

So. What am I bid?