Fiction by Zaslow Crane
“Ah, But I Was So Much Older Then; I’m Younger Than That Now” is an Editor’s Choice selection for this issue.
It dawned on me that perhaps I’d sat too long on the park bench watching the ocean. The gulls were restive. Ground squirrels were emboldened by my quietude. They came up to my boots and looked up at me inquisitively.
Do you have any food you’d like to share? Huh? Do ya?
Some time ago, another guy had seated himself at the other end of the bench. We nodded hello, and I went back to watching the sea; he started doing whatever it was that he did. I wasn’t paying attention.
Anyway, eventually, it was time to go, and my knees and hips, and maybe my ankles, were protesting that we had to move.
I may have grunted in discomfort as I got up.
I was about to nod and wave to the other guy when he said, “Hard to get old isn’t it? I mean, all the things that we used to enjoy are slowly drifting out of reach. And we can watch them float away like when you’re in a pool and the wind takes the floating cooler thing that holds your beer and pushes it all the way across the pool.”
“Yeah, you’re not wrong about that. My joints ache a bit more every day.”
“And you seldom sleep all the way through the night.”
“Seldom? Try, never!” We both laughed at the commonality—the unity that runs through us all, particularly two older gentlemen who were sixty-plus. Then, the guy said, “I can help you with that, you know.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“Getting older. You could actually be young again, if you wanted it badly enough.”
I’d finally stood, and I rubbed my face anxiously.
Damn. A nutjob. Just what I need.
“Younger. Yeah. Right. Look. I gotta go.”
He put a hand up. “Oh I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m some crazy old fart who is off his meds.”
“Something like that.”
“Well, you never know. I could be. But I could be telling the truth.” He seemed to warm to his sales pitch as if he’d done it many times in the past. He leaned in closer.
I looked at him a bit more carefully now. I may need to identify him to the cops or something.
He was about my age, but he was different somehow. It was as if he was some sort of person-shaped lantern, and someone had lit the wick and exposed more of the kerosene punk inside. He seemed to glow ever so slightly in the California afternoon sun. His dark brown hair was liberally streaked with gray, longish and tied behind his head with a simple scrunchy, and his clothes were nice, clean, high quality without being ostentatious. His shoes looked worn but expensive and had a nice polish on them.
No crusty deck sneakers. Interesting. He’s shaved today, and it looks like he has had a shower too.
“Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Have a nice day.”
“Wait.”
I stopped.
“I noticed that you have age spots on your hands.”
Yeah I do and they bug the crap out of me. “So?”
“So, maybe, sit back down? I may be able to help you with that at least. It won’t cost you anything, and it won’t take more that a minute or two.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to show you that I am what I say I am. I’m not some nut job off his meds. What I am proposing is a small, simple demonstration.”
“No. I don’t want to—”
“They bother you a lot, don’t they? Is it vanity? Or fear of skin cancer? That’s not usually a very serious type of cancer though, so I’m guessing vanity.”
I made a sour face.
“Is there some cream that you’re gonna sell me?”
“Nope.”
“Some pills that I’ll have to take?”
“There is nothing but me. Sit. It’ll only take a minute or two. I want to give you something to think about.”
I sighed. He hadn’t shown any symptoms of a guy on drugs, but these days you never know. He was, however, perfectly calm, and seemed acutely interested in persuading me.
Ok. I’ll bite.
I sat. I stifled an oof of relief. I’ll admit that it felt good to sit back down.
“Can I see your hand?”
I hesitated a bit, and he said reassuringly: “Don’t rutsch, it won’t hurt.”
I put my hand in both of his. I looked down at my hand, being held by his hands, and felt a gentle but insistent warmth. I thought nothing of it until he withdrew his hands.
My hand looked 20 years younger!
I held my hand up to the optimal distance for my bifocals to focus on the hand carefully.
“It’s clean. No spots, no wrinkles. How…?” I looked through the general-purpose part of the bifocals to look at him now. “Okay. This is quite a trick. What’s the catch?”
He smiled. “I wouldn’t call it a catch. The skin on your right hand—your entire hand—is effectively 20 years younger than the rest of your body. That’s not nothing, right?”
“No. It is definitely something. It’s just not possible.”
“Do you disbelieve your eyes?”
“No, but…. What just happened… That can’t have happened.” I flexed my hands, testing them out. Pain free! “But…No one can make that happen.”
He smiled as though he’d just handily won a hole at the local golf course. “I can.” He shifted a bit before continuing. “Would you like to be thirty again? I can manage that. Younger even than that, if you’re willing. I’ve taken people back to their teens, if that’s what they wanted.”
Okay. Time to go. He might be nuts; he might not be, but I don’t understand what’s happening right now. I’ve gotta absorb what just happened.
I leaned forward, hoping momentum would allow me to stand without pushing off the concrete armrest, betraying the stiffness that were the very first steps in a progression to a rather more permanent stiffness.
“Wait. You still disbelieve? Don’t you even want to know how it works?”
I turned to look at him with scorn and a bit of pity.
“That was a cute trick. I don’t see the upside for you. That makes me suspicious. I don’t know how you did it. I’m impressed. Still, I’ll see you around.”
“Alright. I’ll be here.”
“Are you sleeping here?”
“Oh no. I just mean that I know you’ll be back and, I’ll wait.”
I left thinking about the story I’d tell the guys in Mozzie’s on Main St. tomorrow afternoon over a couple of cheap beers. – “You would not believe who I met on the bench outside “The Moonstone” yesterday!”
But I didn’t.
Two days later, about the same time, and just as he said, he was waiting on our bench.
“Okay. You’re right. My hand feels great. How’d you do it? Why’d you do it?”
“Hi. Nice to see you as well. It took two days for you to be intrigued enough to return? Man, you’re quite a cynic, aren’t you? Okay.”
I lived in LA for waaay too long. I sized him up again.
“That’s an interesting accent you have.”
“Pennsylvania Dutch. Long ago and well in my past yet it persists.” He rubbed his hands together. “As for the why, that is the easy part. It’s like you won a lottery.”
“I didn’t enter a lottery.”
“I said it’s like that.” He shook his head. “Sit down. If you’re still doubting, I’ll do the same thing to your left hand, if you’d like. The lottery, that’s my doing and mine alone. I see people who might benefit and grow to be something more if they were given another chance. That’s pretty much it.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“Satisfaction? I don’t know, if I help you, that feels good. Isn’t that enough?”
“Sadly, it isn’t. I lived in LA for thirty years. I guess that I am a cynic.”
“See? I knew it! Here, give me your hand and I’ll explain a bit more. You’re a very tough audience, you know.”
LA will do that to you.
I sat and reached crossways across my body. He took my hand, and again my hand was suffused with that gentle but persistent warmth. Now I knew what to expect, so I’ll admit to being excited.
“Okay.” He looked into my eyes. “Here’s how it works: I am a conduit by which you can shed a great many years if you choose to. After that, everything will be in apple-pie order.”
I nodded. “But there’s a catch.”
He rolled his eyes a bit. “Yes. Yes, there is.”
I yanked my hand back.
He put his hands up in a “slow down” sort of gesture.
“You’re getting ahead of me, but yes there is … payment for this service. But I don’t think calling it a catch is a fair characterization.”
Here it comes. “Okay, what is it?” I crossed my arms without acknowledging that my left hand felt great. I’d pulled my hand away, and it felt hot but not unpleasant. And the spots on that hand were gone as well. In a few hours, if things progressed the way they had two days ago with my other hand, I knew that I could look forward to the arthritis easing up quite a lot.
“You pay for your youth, with your … experience. Your memories.”
“What?”
“You get younger … let’s for the sake of argument, let’s call it twenty years. Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Well you pay for that extra time with your experiences. If you’ve grown smarter over the years, you’ll lose twenty years worth of that smart—that experience, that knowledge.”
“Whoa. I was envisioning being younger but knowing what I know now.”
“Yeah that would be great.” He chuckled ruefully. “That would be lovely, but sadly that’s not how the process works.”
“Hold up!” I was upset now. “You just did my hand; you did the other one day before yesterday. What did I pay for that treatment? Did you already take some of my knowledge? What do you want with it anyway?”
He put both hands out as if to say, “hold on, slow down, it’s all good.”
“Today and Monday, think of them as freebies; a way to get you to believe. And you aren’t an easy one to convince.”
“Could I give up childhood memories? Essentially give up those? They’re worthless to me anyway.” I won’t miss my childhood memories. Not a bit of them!
“Nope. Sorry. The knowledge is peeled away in reverse order, chronologically. It’s the only way I can get at them. It’s like an archeological dig in some ways. The ones closest to the surface are the first ones I can get at.”
Damn. “Okay, presupposing that I believe you can actually do this.”
He seemed to suppress a bit of exasperation. “Don’t your hands feel better? Look better? What more proof do you need? I’m offering a second chance. Youth. Vitality. I don’t have infinite patience here. If you’re going to be so doplich about all this, I’ll just find someone else.”
“No please. Wait. Explain. Tell me more.” Maybe somehow, this is real?
“It’s pretty straightforward: I am the conduit for you to get younger; you get younger, you lose some memories, I get my finder’s fee. That’s it.”
“Finder’s fee?”
He looked a bit sheepish. “Yeah, I get a very small portion of energy that is expended in the trade, and I get another year added onto my life.”
“So, there is something in it for you.”
“It’s nominal, given the extreme benefit that you’ll reap, but yeah. I get a little something for my time and efforts.”
“You get a year? Every time you make someone younger? How long have you been doing this?”
He smiled. “I do. Guess how old I am.”
“I don’t know. Sixty-two? Sixty-three?”
He shook his head and made eye contact with me. “I’m just a scosh over two hundred and fifty. I’m a bit embarrassed, but I’m not at all certain of what my birthdate is. Though I remember colonial times in Pennsylvania. One of the thirteen colonies. I remember bad health, shortages, high infant mortality. I remember it all.”
He’d wandered off into his memories. He then caught himself and returned to me.
“I only do one or maybe two each year. It’s like treading water, trying to stay in the same place, afloat and alive. My body is thinking about failing, but just before I start to have something bad befall me, I get another infusion—from someone like you—and I buy another year.”
“So, I really can be younger?”
“Yeah, but you’ll give up learned experiences which is a part of you being smart, experienced, and savvy. Don’t forget that part. If you agree to this, I want you to be happy and satisfied.”
I wasn’t convinced. Not by a long shot!
He noted my expression with wry amusement and soldiered on nonetheless.
“You’ll likely have to move to another town, because when I take twenty, thirty, forty years away from you, someone will notice.”
“Forty years?”
“Indeed, my good sir,” he said archly. “If that is your wish. More if you’d like. In order to turn back the clock, to realign the hands of time, there is a price to be paid. As the Broker, I can provide the service, but the service must be paid, in full.”
“Just a moment, here. Wait. I don’t even know your name. Who are you?”
“You can call me Rolf.”
“Okay Ralph.”
“Rolf.”
“Okay, Rolf. You’re offering to make me younger? How would you do that? And for that matter, are you supposing to actually make me younger? Not just feeling better, younger. Really and truly a different, younger being?”
His eyes lit up. “Oh yes. Definitely younger. A new you. Younger, virile, more of what you were when you were much younger. Imagine being twenty-five again.”
“But I’d be dumber.”
“Not how I might have put it, but, yes. That’s essentially it. You’ll look as you did, say forty years ago, if, that is, you ask me to take almost half a century off your body for you. You’ll know what you knew then.”
I am not convinced, but this is an interesting thought experiment. That is, am I willing to trade one thing of value for another utterly different thing of worth? How would I gauge if this is a good trade? Being smarter as I’ve grown older is valuable, and there are more opportunities for younger people now, also more opportunities to get in trouble now.
When I was twenty I was a walking erection. All I thought about was sex; when I was forty all I did was work, as much as possible. All those experiences taught me valuable stuff. I’m not certain I want to give up some of the things that make me, me. And according to Rolf, I’d lose the most recent things the first—the more subtle and nuanced lessons that I’ve gained more recently.
I looked up at him after looking in wonder at my left hand again.
“I could be whatever age I choose?”
His eyes lit up even brighter.
“Oh, yes. Definitely younger, as young as you’d like! You’ll have your life to begin anew. You’re alone now, are you not? So no worries about that.”
I looked directly at him this time. No more pussyfooting, I see. “How would you know that?”
He shrugged.
He began ticking off items on his fingers with his other hand’s index finger. “You come and sit on this bench here around dinnertime almost every night. No missus in her right mind would stand for that, day in and day out. Yet you are not here for a liaison, nor a game of chess. You don’t even feed the squirrels or gulls. And you have that look about you. You’re lonely. You’ve lost your mate. With more time, the time I’m offering, you might find another? So, I think you are a widower. You are nearing the end of your life, and now you sit there, drinking your gin from your discrete flask, watching the waves and wondering where all the time has gone.”
I felt as though he’d hit me in the face with a three-day-old carp.
He couldn’t have been more on the money if he’d read my bio. Of course, that’s a confidence game trick. They usually go after widows, but why not a widower? Why not a lonely old man, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and knowing that the light is moving quickly towards him?
“Alright.” He continued, allowing another wrinkle into the fabric of our conversation. “There is one more thing. One more thing that I’d get, and I want to be clear about it. Included in my fee would be your memories. Someone has to keep ’em. And you can’t. Not if you go backwards. You can’t keep them, and I like them. Sometimes I find people’s memories interesting. You would not believe the things I know from others’ memories.” His eyes went elsewhere for a bit, then he came back to me. “So that’s my fee for services rendered.”
“What makes you feel that I’d be willing to give them up?” I thought of Flora and all the good times we’d had together. Our son, who had died of yellow fever in Panama. Even bad memories were the very stuff of which I was made. The stuff of which all of us are made.
“I dunno. Many have. A great many over the years. It depends on how much your hips and knees hurt and how much you’d like a second chance. If you’re not interested, I’ll leave you be. I’m not here to twist anyone’s arm. I’m just offering a service.”
“Wait.”
I can’t exactly say why I stopped him from getting off the breezy bench and leaving, but I did. Gulls complained as they always do just above us. We had no food. Why not? they cried.
“And again, I’m not saying that I’m interested, nor that I believe you can do as you say.”
At this point, a few younger men passing by had devolved into a sort of inebriated hooliganism. And a small unruly crowd surged passed us, unthinking and enveloped in drink or pot. They thankfully swept past without involving me in any of their shenanigans.
They are making memories right now.
“Why must I lose my memories?”
He pointed to the boardwalk and to the young men who by now were fifty feet away, walking and talking animatedly.
“Why must we walk on the sidewalk, or the raised planking they have here, instead of the ceiling? Why do we breathe air and not water? It is just the way things are.”
He put his hands out, almost shrugging, and for the first time, I saw him, truly saw him. He seemed as perplexed at this aspect of life (such as it was) as was I.
I paused.
For some reason, I was beginning to take this weird guy seriously. I think that it was because, at least for now, he wanted nothing from me. Except my memories. And another year’s life. Hah! I chuckled to myself.
I’ll take him up on this offer and see what happens. And if nothing happens, it might be worth the trouble to turn this old SOB into the cops.
I gripped my walking stick a bit more tightly than was necessary as this thought sent a slight thrill of adventure through me.
“I need to go feed my dog. She gets cranky if she isn’t fed by five.”
“And they always know when it’s five, don’t they?”
“Oh yeah! Let’s wait. I’m gonna go home and think hard about this (and flex my hands!). Let’s meet tomorrow at Mozzie’s around two, after the lunch drunks’ rush. We’ll talk then. Okay?”
He’d stood as I was talking. “Okay. See you there.”
I looked up. “Two at Mozzie’s. I’ll be there. Not promising anything, but I’ll be there.”
At home, I looked around. Not much had changed since Flora’s passing almost four years ago. The drapes, which she had picked out and been so happy with, now seemed drab and colorless; the furniture was somehow emptier now that only one of us sat on the couch.
Molly the dachshund met me at the door expecting to be fed, so I obliged her.
My entire hand, not simply the skin on that hand, truly felt better. All the aches and pains that just snipe at you when you least expect it were gone. My hands felt great!
“What about you Molly? Would you still recognize me if I was changed by this guy?” Molly looked at me quizzically and then returned to her bowl—I’d put in some of yesterday’s meat loaf, and I knew she loved that, so I didn’t expect her to pay any more attention to me so long as that was there. “How would you feel, girl? I mean if I got younger and you stayed … well … older? Would you feel cheated?”
Oh my god, would I forget Flora? If I went back far enough, I would! I don’t know if I could bear that! And Timothy! We loved him so much. We supported each other to get over his passing. I’d forget him too if I really did this. On the other hand, what an opportunity! There is precious little for me here and now.
On the wall was a grouping of the three of us hiking in the Andes. Those pictures will be like they’re of someone else if I do this. Sadly, I looked around the empty kitchen. The only sounds were a clock ticking and Molly finishing up her dinner. “So. What do you think, Molly? Should I do it? It’s quite a trade!”
Molly was no help with my quandary.
It was two o’clock. I walked into Mozzie’s. He smiled. His expression said, “Another happy customer.”
We had a beer each and sat way at the end of the long lacquered bar, away from everyone else and somewhat enveloped in the semi-secrecy of the wash of jukebox speakers.
I leaned as if imparting some great secret, some conspiracy. The same great secret or conspiracy everyone has to deal with, eventually. “You know, part of me wants this, wants this badly. But another part of me thinks that I’ll be giving up everything that makes me, me. My memories, my experiences … after all, that’s all we really are, aren’t we? A product of our experience and remembrances? If I agree, I’ll lose an important part of me. I’ll get incrementally more stupid. I’m smart now. I don’t think I want to get stupid, go backwards. I worked hard for what I know.”
Rolf nodded and his eyes said that he understood. “I will value what I take from you. The knowledge will not be lost.”
“It’ll be lost from me!”
“At least it won’t be wasted.”
“Uh, yeah, nature herself will take that from me soon enough. Then, it will be wasted! Maybe if I see a failing getting more pronounced I might take you up on this, but I just can’t throw away perfectly good memories when I’m still in fairly good shape.”
He sighed and drained his beer.
“Well, I’m sorry that you could see no value in this. Many others have.”
“Wait. I didn’t say no. I just said that I didn’t want to lose a big part of me.”
“But that is the only way.”
“Oh, I understand what you’re saying, but there still may be another way forward.”
I signaled for two more drafts. We were quiet as the beers were delivered. He now seemed quite intrigued. He waited for me to continue as he took a slow, small sip of the amber liquid.
“I think I’d would like you to turn back time for me.”
He smiled.
“But for one day, just one day. I haven’t learned anything momentous today. I can spare that knowledge. Make me one day younger.”
“But that will not benefit you.”
“It will.”
“How?”
“It will benefit you.”
“What?”
“If you induct me into this very rarified society, you’ll get another year doing what you do, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the way I see it, I may not be a great candidate because I’m too in love with the knowledge I’ve gained. You’re doing a good thing, giving a second chance to someone who might rewind and do something better in his new life. But that’s not for me—not now, anyway. If I do this, as I understand this, this keeps you alive and maybe helping someone truly in need. I think what you do is admirable.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Why not? Think about it. What do you get? Another year and some weird memories that have no context? By the way, I want my memories. I don’t want anyone else to have them. No offense.”
“None taken.” He waited. “So?”
“So, take me back to yesterday. Anytime you take away someone’s experiences and memories and years, you get a year? Right?”
“Yes, but—”
“That’ll be sufficient for you to get what you need, and I’ll get another day, which I promise you, I will enjoy.”
I looked around to emphasize my thought. Just outside the dim bar was sun, sand, sea, seagulls … pretty good stuff…
He looked mystified and a bit grateful.
I continued. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again, and maybe I’ll be feeling something different then.”
He nodded and shared a gentle, placid smile. “Maybe. And thank you.” He seemed to be starting to tear up, so I got up, and asked, “How does this work?”
“Follow me.”
The process knocked me out and I woke up at home. Molly lay next to me as if worried.
The guys down at Mozzie’s would never believe me when I told them this tale, but they’d argue for the rest of the day over how far back they’d go.
I went to my bench and sat and watched the waves. It’s astounding how calming that is, at least for me. In a little while, Rolf came and sat at the far end of the bench.
“You look well,” I offered.
“So do you.”
“So are you down here to watch the tide again?” I asked.
“No. I’m leaving here soon, and I just wanted to say thanks.”
“Thanks? For what?”
He sighed. “It’s too hard to explain, so just Thanks.”
I chuckled a bit.
“You’re welcome, I guess, for whatever.”
“Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“Like maybe next year.” At this, he waved, stood up, and walked away.
Next year? That’s oddly specific. I watched him walk away. The whack jobs are more common, but better dressed these days.
Then, absently, I flexed my hands. They felt great.
Zaslow Crane has published 11 books of fiction. He was the primary writer (as well as producer and host) for the parsec-award nominated podcast Smoke and Mirrors: Reimagining The Twilight Zone. He has contributed to dozens of industry magazines (cooking, in-flight, photography, training). He has been published in Galaxy’s Edge, Sci-Fi Lampoon, Unidentified Funny Objects and several other sci-fi magazines, books, and online ‘zines. He’s received multiple honorable mentions from L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future. He is currently working on a humor book, posting one cartoon at a time on Facebook to be compiled into one very silly volume in the near future.