Thirteen

The Watchers didn't need to worry about losing track of the group, for they had decided to call it a day and make camp for the night. Edeline was impressed with how expertly the others foraged for food in the forest, how willingly they shared it, and how tasty they managed to prepare a supper of fire-roasted tubers, bananas, berries and nuts. She had to admit her dinner was as good as any she could recall.
She had shifted her seat a few times, trying to keep her distance from Barque, who annoyed her, and Princess, who still frightened her, despite the snake's best intentions, which it tried to express by flicking its tongue and staring straight at her. Edeline finally got up and put Baudry between herself and that symbiant duo.
"I don't know what he wants," she confided in her campfire companion, who chuckled and replied,
"It ought to be fairly self-evident, if you'd consider it for a moment."
"I'm a middle-aged woman," she bristled at the thought, "and he is only a boy."
"I'm afraid that you're wrong on both counts," Baudry advised. "As for Barque, he's been in his arrested development for many years now, and he's gotten quite used to having his way with the women."
"Ew," Edeline muttered.
"And as for you," Baudry continued, "you'll find yourself feeling younger and younger as time goes on for you here. Eventually you will come to understand that you are literally as young as you are, and by that I mean the age of your cells. That's what makes us what we are."
"Our cells? I don't understand," she replied.
"Exactly," he told her. "It used to be - oh, a long time ago, that we didn't know so precisely. We recognized ourselves in the main groupings, of course, as children, as teens, as primesters (as we used to call people like you) and oldies (those like myself). Finally a scientist settled the matter when he developed a dating technique and discovered the age of our cells. Ever since then we've known about the binary blockage. My term."
"Binary blockage?"
"Yes," Baudry said, "we reach ages of powers of two when we stop. The next highest power of two. It's what makes us suspect there were computers involved. Some people think it's a virus. I tend to think it's more like a bug."
Edeline didn't reply as she chewed on his words. She had heard of these theories before, back when it didn't apply to her personally, as far as she knew. The immortals were sometimes thought to be mutants of some rogue genetic experiment, and it was certainly possible. There were plenty of rumors of strange doings in top secret labs, government funding, attempts to create a more perfect specimen, for soldiers in particular. What if they could fight a war someday, a war in which no one could die? But what could possibly be the point of that? Wasn't war all about death?
"Do you feel your age?" she finally asked him, as Ember and Barque had wandered away to settle down for the night as far from each other as possible, yet remaining within the general confines of camp. Edeline and Baudry remained by the fire as it too prepared to wrap up for the night.
"The usual aches and pains, I suppose," he replied with a smile. "Not bad considering I'm well over a century old."
"But you said earlier something that made me quite sad," she put her hand on his arm to soften the query.
"You said that you'd lost your artistic soul, was that it?"
"Ah, yes," Baudry said. "I noticed your reaction to that. But it's true. One day I awoke to find it was gone, but I really don't miss it, you know. That me had its time, and after what happened, well, I don't want it back."
"What happened?" she pressed him.
"They had me," he told her, looking into her eyes. "Right there on a table, like all of the rest of my time. IN those days they were operating with efficiency, removing our pieces, one at a time, to find out what made us, what held us together. When they cut out our hearts ..."
He stopped to observe her alarm as she gasped.
"Yes, they cut out our hearts and that was the end. It was the one thing that ended our lifespan. Nothing short of that can do it. The rest of our parts, well, I had my share of extractions, let's say. What they took, what they left, this is me. I was one of the fortunate ones. I was lucky."
"Ember said the same thing about me," Edeline said in a whisper. "I didn't believe her. I just didn't know."
"It's not talked about much anymore, I would guess," Baudry said. "Those people out there aren't proud of themselves. At least I hope that they're not. They think now they're doing us a favor, casting us out and into this Escher-like wonderland. Are you familiar with that artist? He drew scenarios of perspectives impossible to exist, until here, until now. Now we're living in it."
He grinned and spread his arms out.
"Welcome to infinity," he declared in a louder voice.
"WIll you pipe down!" Ember demanded from somewhere behind them, and Baudry smiled at Edeline, and nodded.
"There are people who seek the way out," he told her more quietly. "They can seek all they want. They won't find it. There are others who want to destroy us. It's for our own good, they say, and maybe it is. Who knows for how long this life will go on? But the thing about life is, it just wants to live. It's really as simple as that. Even for us. The life force is strong."
"I want to live too," Edeline said.
"Then this mission we're on may not be at all what you want," Baudry said, rising to wish her a good night.