Free The Participants by Brian Blose Page A

options have turned this
world upside down.”
    Hess poured two goblets of mead. “You know
what else I can't do myself?”
    Elza took a sip. “So help me if you say this
decrepit body is your favorite.”
    The mead stung his mouth. “Wow. This is
strong.”
    “Do you remember Iteration twenty-six?” Elza
swirled the contents of her cup and took a gulp. “You were such a
beer snob.”
    Beer? What is Beer? Hess sent a query into the abyss of his memory,
seeking for beer and Iteration twenty-six. He took another drink,
feeling the liquid burn like fire down his throat. “This is my
favorite body of yours,” he said.
    Elza rolled her eyes. “You say that about
every body I wear.”
    “I mean it every time.”
    “You may love me every time, Hess, but not
my body. I have been morbidly obese, disturbingly frail,
cross-eyed, and now elderly.”
    “In their time, they were all my
favorite.”
    “You just like to humor me. To be honest, it
gets tiring.”
    The returning recollection bubbled up from
the endless eternity of his memory. Hess recalled dragging Elza to
the local brewery of every town they traveled through. They wore
matching middle-aged, dark-skinned bodies in that world. Elza had
rolled her eyes every time he asked the locals where the town
brewer lived. An associated recollection burst into his primary
memory, of Iteration ninety-five, when Elza produced the most
vitriolic substance ever called a wine. She had been a
breathtakingly beautiful blonde in that life, drawing the eyes of
every man who passed.
    “At least I had the decency to give you
something drinkable in twenty-six. Do you remember when you had a
winery? That hellish liquid was not fit for human consumption. When
it didn't sell, I had to help drink the entire inventory.”
    Elza blinked in surprise. “A winery?”
    “In a minute you'll remember why you don't
recall it more often.”
    They drank more of the
mead, which had subtle apple notes buried beneath its harshness.
Playing remember when over a glass of whatever poured was a tradition longer than
the entire recorded history of the current world. They remembered
every moment of their endless lives with perfect clarity, though
only a minute fraction of it fit into primary memory at any moment.
The time required to pull forth the seldom-accessed memories grew
longer as they continued to accumulate more experiences.
    Some Iterations lasted much longer than
others, but a good approximation was a thousand years each, which
meant he had close to a hundred and forty-three thousand years of
life stored inside his eternal skull. Sometimes he felt ancient.
But never a hundred and forty-three thousand years ancient.
    “You didn't drink more than a few bottles of
my wine,” Elza said. “We sold the bulk of it to be distilled into
grape liquor.”
    “Really? Well, you can't deny it was
bad.”
    Elza laughed. “It was terrible. You tried so
hard not to make a face when I let you do the first tasting after
it aged. I knew it wouldn't win any awards when it was still in
oak, but I didn't want to give up.”
    “I really mean it,” Hess said. “This body of
yours is my favorite.”
    “You must be trying to annoy me.”
    “I'm serious.”
    “Which is your second favorite?”
    “The first,” he said.
    “Lazy eye and all?”
    “You know, I never knew I was lonely till
the day I wasn't.”
    “Different question. Which body was the best
for a cozy?”
    Hess swirled his mead. “You've asked this
before. Iteration six, no question about it.”
    “I never understood your obsession with
curves,” she said.
    “To be quite honest, Elza, neither do I. It
just is.”
    They sat in silence. Hess slouched into his
chair. “I'm tired,” he said.
    Elza put a hand to her forehead and spoke
with slurred words. “I think we've been poisoned again. Annoying.
Hope wears off fast.”
    Crap. Hope it kills us –
effects will be shorter that way. If it's just inconvenient, it
could take hours for our bodies to