# Infinity on Clearance

He stood by the side of the road, surrounded by jars. You could tell right away that he was selling something, though if you spent more than the time it took to pass looking, you would realize that he wasn't very good at it.

The jars were all mismatched - some with lids, some covered with canvas tied with string. The majority of the containers were chipped, stained, and what they contained looked like nothing you would want anything to do with.

The man himself did little more to inspire confidence. You could tell he was making an effort there: a quick comb through unruly hair, as sparse and unruly as some beards. The look on his face was lost, as if he'd been given a piece of news he couldn't believe. The sign over his left shoulder read, "Immortality: $20"

People came up to him and talked, but it wasn't long before they were on their way again, shaking their heads or sharing a laugh with a companion.

Seeing what amounted to a kicked puppy, and feeling charitable, I approached the man and invited him to run me through his spiel.

"Gilweed's the name!" he said in a too-loud voice that someone who has never been enthusiastic might mistake for enthusiasm.

"What I have here is:" he limply made an attempt at a flourish. Instead it looked like a spasm ran through him. "Immortality!"

No big surprise, since that was what the sign on the stand said. But as I said, I was feeling charitable and figured I'd let him run down.

"My contact spent over thirty years in rural China, hunting down rumours of a plant that has been described as the Fountain of Youth. Sadly, for me at least, what he found will not turn back the rigours of time, but will stop them. It is not too late for you, sir, to hold on to what remains of your youth. To stop aging, and, all else equal, live forever!"

He stood, panting slightly, his patter done. I had to ask.

"How old are you?"

"I was seventy when the contact fed me the plant."

"And?"

"That was one hundred and sixty years ago. I haven't aged a day since." I couldn't think he believed what he was saying, he certainly didn't seem to care if I believed what he was saying, more just going through the motions.

"Okay. I'll take one," I said. He blinked. Several seconds passed before it registered. "Oh, okay. Twenty dollars, please!" he moved over to his shelf. "Which bottle would you like?"

I honestly didn't care. I figured he'd pick one of the uglier bottles to make it look better when he moved on, but when I suggested he pick, he took it very seriously. He would take a bottle off the shelf, sometimes open it and sniff it, but would always return it to the shelf.

This part was as close as I came to believing that he, at least, believed what he was selling that day. Eventually, he settled on one.

"Very important," he said, leaning in close. "You must drink it all. It would be disastrous if you stopped halfway through."

I unstoppered the jar - a very pretty little bottle with no mars whatsoever, and sniffed. Vile. I told him so.

"I don't sell perfume," he said haughtily. "I sell immortality. Immortality is filthy. Life is filthy. What you smell is the distilled essence of a thousand years of life -- smelly, dirty -- but underneath that, sweetness."

He was right. I could smell the sweetness. What the hell, right? I sipped.

"Ugh!" I said. "It burns."

"Hell burns! That taste is the taste of Hell avoided. Be glad it lasts only a moment and not for eternity. Drink!"

I continued to drink. Vile didn't begin to describe it. At times I felt my gorge rise, no doubt at the decomposition that I'd avoided. My tongue went numb, probably in response to the oblivion that atheists argue. The experience of drinking was interminable, or so it seemed. In the end, he offered me a glass of water.

"Some sort of baptism, a 'from water you were brought' kinda thing?"

"No. To wash it all down. It really does taste terrible."

So. I'd paid twenty dollars to drink what? Dirt and ground up leaves? It hadn't poisoned me, I was sure. I couldn't tell any difference and after that experience, I paid special attention to that. In fact, no change began to feel like the rule of the day. Of the month. Of the year. Time went on and I stayed in good health. People commented on how good I looked. Started mistaking my age. Died. And there was no change.

Seasons changed, years went by, and regimes came and went. I stayed as aloof as I could from the world. They would all leave me, so what was the point? Then I remembered. The old man. It was the short work of a decade to track the man down. It would have been shorter, but that was the start of the techno-war, during which a series of EMPs were set off, wiping out technology and sending the world back to the dark ages. All wars stopped then, but the rising seas had changed geography and made travel to some areas impossible.

Eventually, I tracked the man down. He was over-joyed to see me again.

"You know," he said, "you were the only one to drink the whole thing. Despite my warning, without fail, they all stopped drinking partway through. Except you. You must have really wanted immortality, eh?"

He laughed when I told him that I just wanted to be polite - that I hadn't believed he could give me immortality at all.

"I didn't believe either, when I drank it, but mine was not a desire to live forever, merely a desire not to be shot dead."

Gillweed's partner had wandered China for 30 years, though he'd found immortality straightaway. The difficulty had lain in getting away. In the course of his travels, the man had been shot, stabbed, hanged from the neck, and submerged in water, not to mention imprisoned multiple times over that span. His only desire, on getting out of China, was to inflict the same curse on Gillweed. After that, Gillweed had taken the reserves of the immortality plant. At first, he'd intended on selling it to make a living, but nobody would bite, which was okay, he'd realized, because he didn't need anything to survive.

When he said this, he showed the twenty-dollar bill to me that I'd given him all those years ago. Instead, he'd started trying to sell the elixir in the hopes of having someone else to go through eternity with.

We travel together now. Our quaint horse-drawn conveyance is not so rare now, in the wake of technological collapse, and we look for other souls who are willing to throw off the shackles of mortality. We're shunned more often than we are welcomed, but I keep heart. Gillweed found me, surely we can find another.

And after all, we can afford to be patient.