Methuselah's Daughter, Part 4 Chapter 39
J.A. Eddy
Pennsylvania, August 29, 2005 CE
[---Begin journal entry---]
Long ago, before Rufus—before my solitary madness, when I still dwelt amongst people but knew I was not of them—during that time, there was a woman. She was older, in her forties and still in remarkably good health. Her life was tragic; her mate dead, her children all lost in such a brief span of years they seemed to pass in but an eye blink. But she lived amongst good people and she had their sympathy, their support, even their love.
This woman, she suffered her losses and misfortune with the stoicism common amongst peoples of that time and place. Every day she made herself useful and none could call her a burden. Nonetheless there was emptiness in her, for the community in which she dwelt could not hold her as her family had. She looked about her and felt a longing for what she had lost and eventually that longing became too great for her to resist.
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Is it an abrupt ending? Indeed it is. Dean and I ran out of the will to keep fighting over the ending- we had different needs and different visions that in the end were simply irreconcilable.
Both of us hope to have a second novel to finish out the stories and give our girl some sense of closure. We actually have about 50,000 words in the vault already, but writing a novel is a time consuming project, and emotionally draining as well. Life has a way of overwhelming one's ability to write.
Anyhow, for those who've slogged through this entire thing, God bless you all and I hope it wasn't to terrible an experience. ;)
I appreciate how you deliberately stayed away from an attempt at explaining her existence. ut of course we can guess; shes a mutant, and submitting herself to scientific examination will be a genetic investigation. One wonders what her perspetive would be 3500 years from now, when all of humanity is also immortal thanks to her. Will she e able to relate to the eternal living? Or will she still be an outsider?
as for a true ending, I think its obvious how to end it. Someday, 10k years from now she meets a Scot wielding a very sharp, very old blade.
John prefers no solid explanation and keeping it forever a complete or near-complete mystery.
We tabled that argument during most of the writing, but it was always looming there and eventually we had to address it. The result was we never really finished the book- instead we just ended it at a convenient spot.
We were as careful as we could be to avoid stereotypical immortality plots, other than the obvious issue of watching everyone you love whither and die. If this story resembles the Highlander saga it is only in that respect.
One of the things we were both very aware of was that Zsallia's story is unique- she is utterly alone in her predicament. There are no other immortals. That's what makes her so interesting, and tragic.
One thing Dean and I share as a weakness in writing fiction is a need for some sort of reasonable explanation. We don't need it to be scientifically sound, just reasonable in a speculative way.
One of the things I dislike about the nanobots is the question of their origin (and remember- this was my working theory for a long time). Since we would be forced to accept we would never know how they got there we would have to wonder if she's immortal at all- maybe she's just been thoroughly brainwashed (for lack of a better term). It also seemed to rob her of something intangible for me- I needed an air of mystery around her that just seemed to vanish any time I thought about nanobots
Dean and I argued about this a lot :)
say shes a cross between wolverine and the cheerleader from Heroes and you pretty much have all the reasonableness of an explanation you need.
or, the utterly insaneanswer would also be ineresting.. have the medical examination reveal absolutely nothing different whatsoever, and then leave the ending open as to whether she really is immortal.
I prefer John's approach because Zsallia's condition can only come from one of three sources: It's biological, supernatural, or technological in nature. Once it's revealed to be one of these three, in my opinion, the cake deflates. The reader knew it could only be one of the three and having that confirmed makes the story a little bit less than it could have been. There's so much more fun to be had making the reader speculate.
Honestly, when I found out it was technological in nature I was a little let down. Nanobots? Been done before. It's obviously not human technology (unless she's the result of a human augmentation from the future and she was either sent back in time with her mind wiped or taken into the future and augmented [ala The 4400 - but with nanobots rather than chemicals] or some other combination thereof) therefore it must be extraterrestrial in nature. Do you really want to talk about aliens?
If her condition was biological in nature that might be a bit more interesting. Why is she so much more advanced than the rest of humanity at such an early time? Why hasn't the rest of humanity caught up?
Of course, I prefer a supernatural explanation if one must be given. I think the implications are much more interesting and meaningful. Nature of creation and the divine type stuff.
I think one of the reasons the Highlander franchise endures is because the nature of the Immortal has been kept shrouded for so long. Even the last film, which was suppose to reveal why Immortals are as they are, didn't really tell us much.
"This is just the way Zsallia is," is good enough in my opinion.
And in the end, it's not there. Hell, I'd have preferred not to see it aired in this forum- Dean and I posted nearly at the same time. He came right out with it, while I was vague because I don't want it to be common knowledge that I was considering that option.
It's a shame, really, because the underlying tension between Dean and I really added to the story- it just wound up making it impossible for us to finish.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.