[Backstory] I Just Met A Girl Named Maria

[Scott of Hyperborea]

I Just Met A Girl Named Maria
ST. OLAF'S HOSPITAL, LA TERRE, AMOKOLIA
3714 ASC


Nathan Ross woke up to the sound of grey rain sounding on the windowpane and grey IRAC planes droning overhead, and began to seriously reconsider his life choices. He had rather more of them than usual to reconsider, and before he was even a fraction of the way done, an old and heavily accented nurse derailed his train of thought. "You're awake, yes?" she asked, and when Nathan said "no" she gave a forced laugh and went off to get the doctor.

Nathan laboriously wrenched his mind toward his most recent life choices, which had earned him a bullet in the leg ("You'll be able to walk again in a week. Maybe two.") and then a nasty case of hospital-bourne pneumonia ("You'll be able to breathe again just as soon as the antibiotics kick into effect; until then, we'll be sticking this horrible plastic tube into your lungs") and pain in all of its most repulsive forms ("You'll be able to smile again just as soon as we pump you full of opioids"). They'd also earned him the Ashkenatza Medal of Honor (which would go in a big box with the other ones) a few scars (which would heal in a couple of decades) and several memories (of which he'd had a chronic oversupply for some time).

"Ross, Nathan" said Dr. Lucas to the three or four interns who clouded around him. "Thirty six year old man presented with bullet wound in the leg from the Battle of La Terre, resulting in incomplete fracture of the femur and severe bleeding. Patient was given 100% oxygen and blood transfusion, then sent to Dr. Anderson for surgical removal of the bullet. Surgery was successful, but on the third day of recovery, patient developed pneumonia, organism unknown. Dr. Jangaard was unable to determine the cause of the pneumonia, so he was empirically treated with broad spectrum antibiotics and after four days mostly unconscious made a complete recovery. Now complains primarily of pain and of," here he looked more closely at the chart "the atrocious quality of the so-called food they serve at this place, my unit was once stuck in the Jaihan jungle without rations and had to survive on grubs and worms for a week and I'd do it again before I'd eat another bite of hospital food." Dr. Lucas smiled. "Colonel Ross. Good to have you back in the world of the living."

"Good to be back," said Nathan. "Looks like I didn't miss much; the fighting in Lucern's still indecisive, and this place is still a dump. When do I get to go home?"

"We'd like to keep you here for a few more days," said Dr. Lucas. "We still don't know what caused that pneumonia, and your leg still needs a little longer to heal. I see you're on pain medication. That's good. Any other complaints?"

"Eh," said Nathan. "My old hand injury's flared up again. Right wrist...no...a little lower...here. Probably overused it during the battle or something."

"I see," said the doctor. "And how long have you had this hand injury?"

About eight hundred years thought Ross to himself. But out of habit, he answered "Eight years, ever since I fell off a Jeep. It's been on and off since then."

"The morphine should take care of that," said one of the interns, who introduced herself as Dr. Christiansen. "But I'm a bit worried about your psychological state, to be honest. You've just been through a battle. The presurgical history we took says you have no living relatives, no romantic partner, and you've been moving from one country to another for quite some time now. A major hospital stay can bring on depression in susceptible people. How do you feel right now?"

"Well," said Nathan, "about the same as usual. This isn't my first war. I've been through a lot. I'm a soldier who's in it for the thrills, I got my thrills, and now I'm ready to go home for a decade or two. I'm financially set for life and not too bad with the ladies, so I'm content enough. All I need is the occasional war to keep me from getting bored to death, you know how it is." Dr. Christiansen looked very much like she did not know.

"As long as you're not depressed," said Dr. Lucas, "I think we'll leave you on just the painkillers for now. You seem to be recovering pretty well, which is a bit of a miracle after that pneumonia got you."

"Well," said Nathan, "I guess no disease can be fatal all the time."

"Life is a sexually transmitted disease, and it's a hundred percent fatal," quoted one of the younger interns.

"Ninety nine point nine percent fatal," corrected Nathan.

"What?" asked Dr. Christiansen, looking at Colonel Ross with the questioning eye of a psychiatrist who thinks she has spotted some mental nut or bolt not quite up to industry standards.

"Just sayin'" said Nathan. "I was in Shireroth once, and they said Kaiser Raynor I never died, he just kind of wandered off, and when the last battle comes, he'll be right back to lead his armies. The Goldshirerithians say the same thing about the old Duke, Yvain Wintersong, just sailed away in a boat one night to live forever in Avalon. Maybe if you're famous enough, you just get the chance to do that. Maybe there are some people who aren't so famous, who get the same opportunity."

Dr. Christiansen had stopped listening and was looking at her watch. Nathan's statement had been firmly placed in the category of religious belief, which the DSM IV said was completely different from ordinary delusions, and if the DSM IV said it, it had to be true.

"Oh," said Dr. Lucas. "One more thing. You had a visitor on Fishday. A Ms. Maria Morimoto. She wanted to see you, but I told her you were too sick. If she comes back, I'll tell reception to send her up, okay?"

"Hmmm," said Nathan. "I don't think I know a Maria Morimoto. Was she an Ashkenatzan?"

"Didn't look like it," said Dr. Lucas. "Young, maybe twenty five or thirty, Oriental or maybe half Oriental, very pretty. She kind of implied that she might be an old flame of yours."

Nathan thought for a second. "Not implausible," he mused. "Like I said, I'm pretty good with the ladies. And the name does sound sort of familiar." He sighed. He wasn't exactly the caring boyfriend type, but outright forgetting the name of a girl within a few years was a new low for him. "Yeah, I remember her," he lied. "If she comes back, send her up."

Dr. Lucas nodded with a bit of a grin, Dr. Christiansen harrumphed, and the team walked out of the room, leaving Nathan alone with his thoughts, which had taken an awkward new turn. Maria Morimoto. Say she was thirty. That meant he couldn't have slept with her more than ten years ago - he had his standards - well, fifteen years ago - they were rather low standards. Ten years ago he'd been in Kolmenitzky, as a mercenary attached to the Ashkenatzan army and an advisor to Shalipov industries. Fifteen years ago he'd been more or less the same. He'd travelled to Antica a few times for business, to Hyperborea once to catch up with old friends - well, the families of old friends - to Kildare once, for tourism, and a few times to Shirekeep and Koningenwaarde. He could think of not a small number of women he'd met there, but none who fit his visitor's name or description. Maybe the doctor had been wrong, and she was older than she looked? Forty? No, he'd only been calling himself "Nathan Ross" for the past twenty five years or so, and he'd spent that entire time in the Kolmenitzky job. Not an old flame then. A business partner. No, no major country's military was in the habit of hiring pretty twenty-five year old girls as military advisors - at least not since Kaiser Reynardine's abdication from the Golden Mango Throne. A friend's wife? That would require him to have friends.

He fell asleep without an answer, and only woke up to the nurse's call of "Visitor for you, Colonel Ross." A tall, thin Oriental-looking woman with short hair came in, closed the door, locked the door, and pulled up a chair beside Nathan's bed.

"Colonel Ross," said Maria Morimoto. "I trust you're recovering well from your recent injuries?"

"Very well," said Nathan. "I'm afraid you have me at an advantage here. You seem to know me, but I can't quite place you. Although you do look very familiar." His face was, appropriately, red.

"We met once in Ergosum," said Maria. "I was young. You were a dashing captain. We made love. Then we both, with regrets, went our separate ways."

Nathan was confused. "You must be mistaken," he told Maria. "I've never been to Ergosum." At least not under this name.

"Oh, come now. It was a beautiful spring day, about fifteen hundred years ago."

Nathan Ross sat bolt upright in bed, and several machines attached to him started beeping wildly. "Who the HELL are you?"

"Those were the best days of our lives, weren't they? The days of the grand conflict between Shireroth and the Commonwealth, when I was a Straylight girl barely out of medical school, and you were Admiral Nikolas Raesin, the Last Audente, hero of the Shirerithian defense of Jaris and Melangia. A chance meeting in an Ergosum cafe, when I was there for a conference on epigenetics and you were working to coordinate the defense of Lac Glacei. I think we spent three nights together there, and then you vanished without a trace. And now we're both one thousand five hundred year old legendary immortals. Funny how life works out, isn't it?"

"You...you're immortal too?" he asked.

"Well, I could hardly be here if I wasn't," said Maria. "Nik, Ergosum doesn't even exist any more. Hasn't for a couple of centuries. Now it's called Ieper, and even Ieper's just a ruin with a few souvenier stands."

"Maria," said Nathan. "This is all happening too fast. I thought I was the only immortal on Micras. If there's one more, there might be...hundreds of us. Hundreds of people who don't die, whose bodies recover abnormally fast from injury, and they don't even know why!"

"I know why," said Maria Morimoto. Various machines connected to Nathan Ross began beeping wildly again.

"Tell me," he said.

Maria gave a girlish smile.

"Look, Maria. When I reached sixty-five, I retired from the navy. Everyone told me what good health I was in, didn't look a day over forty. I went to the country in Kildare, got a house in New Jasonia, and whiled away my retirement painting and writing books on naval tactics. By the time I was a hundred and still didn't look a day over forty, I figured something was up. By the time I was a hundred and ten, I started getting inquiries. Certain doctors wanted to take a look at me, and by look they clearly meant 'poke with sharp instruments'. It became harder and harder to resist them. So when I reached about a hundred fifteen, I figured I wasn't going to die anytime soon, and I faked my own death. By that time I was crazy rich from interest, so I bribed enough bureaucrats to make it clear that I was Niels Rasmussen from Elwynn. After that I think I was Narsi Raikothion from Hyperborea. But I never figured out what was going on, and I never thought I would - not without becoming Experiment #47 in some military hospital somewhere. I thought...I thought I'd been chosen by God. Which was one more reason not to believe in Him, since it would reflect a serious error of judgment on His part."

"Nothing that interesting," said Maria. "I'm from Deep Trouble. It's a sanct in Straylight, we specialize in unethical medical experiments and we're proud of it. A millennium and a half ago, we discovered a gene that, if flipped, could potentially make people immortal. So we stuck it in a retrovirus and injected it into test subjects. There was a 99.9% failure rate - that was everyone else, may they rest in peace - and a .01% success rate - that was me. The retrovirus killed most people it infected, ignored most of the rest, and only actually stuck the gene into me. Because I'm special. I assume it's an immune system issue, but no one ever studied it further. Actually, I specifically discouraged people from studying it further. Severely discouraged them.

"I was hoping the virus would go into my body, insert the gene, and go away, but it turns out it became latent. Now it's sitting inside my bodily fluid, ready to infect anyone who comes into...ah...intimate contact with me. Only it's had centuries to evolve inside of me. It's become less virulent - to throw off my immune system, more likely - and better at infecting cells undetected. Although I've severely discouraged anyone from testing it, I do believe it's finally become what dear old Berihun Garret always wanted: a fully generalizable cure for death. It still only works in about one in every twenty people, but that's a damned sight better than Garret's original product and it doesn't kill people anymore.

"The virus doesn't have airborne transmisison, so there was no chance of it spreading through normal means. It was, however, sexually transmissible, which is why I've tried to avoid promiscuity the past few thousand years. There was, however, an unfortunate interval between the time the virus mutated to its new form, and the time I realized it would be a good idea to stop having sex. I spent three nights of that brief interval in Ergosum with an Audente admiral."

"But," asked Nathan, "why would you stop? This is...incredible! You could reveal this to the world, and become infinitely rich! You could end death forever! You could become the saviour of all of Micras."

"First of all," said Maria, "I am rich. The richest person on Micras, although enough of the accounts are in fake names that most people haven't figured it out. You're rich too - I've been following you pretty closely for a while now. And the reason I don't tell everyone else is...well...I kind of like being the only one. If everyone else was immortal too, that would spoil my fun."

"Fun?" asked Nathan.

"So much fun, Nik! Right now I'm trying to take over the world! It's really the only activity properly challenging for someone like myself, wouldn't you agree? I've already got the Kaiser of Shireroth in my pocket, though he's only vaguely aware of it, and a few other small countries too. I figure just a few more centuries. And that's why I'm so interested in keeping our little secret.

"I mean, sure, it's an open secret on Deep Trouble, and a few 'paranormalists' talk about the legend of the immortal Straylighter in the same books where they talk about Bigfoot and Giess and Leng and Cibola, but I mostly get by without being bothered. I haven't mentioned to anyone but my closest confidantes that the virus has mutated. I certainly haven't let anyone study me. And I've stopped having sex with anyone who wasn't expendable. Nope, Nik, it's just me and you now. Just me and you."

"...and a few hundred women I've slept with over the past millennium and a half," said Nathan. "No, wait, you said it only infected one in twenty or so. A few dozen, then. And everyone they've ever slept with. And..."

"Oh, no," said Maria. "I killed them. Most of them blabbed about how young they were looking around the time they hit seventy or so. I have people watching for that sort of thing. I found them and killed them before they could transmit the virus further."

"You killed...everyone...I've ever slept with?" asked Nathan, dumbfounded.

"Statistically, only about one in twenty," said Maria.

"But..." said Nathan, "...why didn't you kill me?"

"I couldn't find you!" Maria said, and giggled. "The rest of them were all boasting about it on the nets, and showing up in medical journals. You had the healthy paranoia of a mercenary captain, and by the time I even realized there was a problem Nik Raesin had vanished from the face of the earth and Niels Rasmussen and the others were keeping their mouths shut! I tried to get information from the women, but you generally don't sleep with eighty year olds. Do you know how hard it is to get a woman to remember all the people she slept with sixty years ago when you're trying to kill her? And by that time you'd have taken on a new identity anyway!"

"And then," said Nathan, "eventually you figured there was a statute of limitations on this whole thing, and you gave up?"

"Of course not," said Maria. "That's why I'm here. Any last words?"

"...?!" asked Nathan.

"Look," said Maria Morimoto, "haven't you ever watched any TV at all? The first rule of immortals is: There can be only one! You're cramping my style. I got information from you off of the last immortal girl I killed, and I managed to trace you out to Ashkenatza. By the time I arrived you'd gone off to fight in this silly war, and I combed over hospital records until I found you. You've had a good run, and you've earned my respect, but it's game over, Nik. Normally I'd delegate this sort of thing to an underling, but you seem harmless, and really I owe it to you to come myself. Don't be sad. You've lived longer than you ever had a right to hope, you've done some great things, and now you're going to die painlessly with all your questions answered. How many of the people who died in La Terre this month can say that?"

Nathan Ross tried to get up, but his bad leg, his pain, and the drugs coursing through his body failed him. He slunk back down onto the hospital bed.

"You can't do this, Maria," he said, in desperation. "If you kill me, you'll kill the only friend you could ever have. The only person who could ever possibly understand you. I've tried getting to know people. And just when I grow to like them, they go and die on me. And everyone's so...childish, thinking the ways of their own time are the only way things could ever be. If you kill me, you'll have nobody. Ten million years of loneliness stretching ahead of you, servants and employees but no one you can think of as an equal."

"Considered that," said Maria. "Had several centuries to consider it. Don't really care. Sorry."

"Look," cried Nathan. "Maybe that's the way you feel now. What if, a century from now, you change your mind? Are you going to wait a thousand years for another immortal to become a millenniarian? By that time you'll be twenty-five hundred. You have ten million years ahead of you. What you're about to do, you'll never be able to take back in ten million years. Are you willing to take that risk?"

"Yes," said Maria, but her voice was wavering.

"Maria, we've seen things no one else alive can even imagine. The glory of Shahanshahi-Tara in the days of the Grand Commonwealth. Dinarchs leading parades across the streets of Aquilaria. Gideon and his fleet arriving in Novatainia. he rise and fall of the House of conToketi. The last Atteran Ras going down in a blaze of glory. T The raising of the Nelagan Islands from the seas to the skies. Gold-draped archbishops in conclave in Tellia. The Reconsolidation of Mors the Redeemer. We alone carry such visions within us. If I die, all these memories will be yours to bear alone."

"Oh, Nik..." said Maria. And she fell into his arms. "I've missed you...I've missed you so much...all these past fifteen hundred years...you shouldn't have left..."

And as she kissed him, Nathan Ross once called Nik Raesin thought to himself: This, then, is how it will end. We will love each other forever, for ten million years, delighting in each other's company and sharing each other's infinitude of memories. We will rule the world together, and when we grow tired, we shall hand it over to a new race of immortal children we will bear, a new race of bright, happy, beautiful immortal children. And they will call it Paradise.

And then Nathan Ross woke up, two weeks later, feeling significantly the worse for wear. A nurse spotted him awake, gave him the requested opium shot, and then rushed out to get Dr. Lucas before Nathan could say anything.

"Um," said Nathan Ross. "Excuse me, but what the hell is going on? Did I just have a relapse or something? And do you know where Ms. Morimoto is?"

"Nathan," said Dr. Lucas. "Nathan, Nathan, Nathan. You must be part cat, because you just used up eight of your nine lives in a single go."

"Doctor," said Nathan, "I am very, very confused. Right now I want to know what happened, what day it is, and where the hell I can find Ms. Morimoto."

"It's first Vanchauslurk," said Dr. Lucas. "You've been unconscious two weeks, with the frickin' Jaihan Death Flu. I repeat, the frickin' Jaihan Death Flu."

"Vanchauslurk?" squealed Nathan in surprise. And then: "The frickin' what?"

"The Jaihan Death Flu. Only the deadliest disease known to medical science. Only three people have ever been known to recover - two extremely lucky Jaihan hunters, and now you. You survived because, by a wild coincidence, Dr. Pirumpayyar is visiting this hospital from Jaiha, is working on an experimental treatment for it, and combined with your frankly miraculous immune system and powers of self-regeneration it seems to have done the trick. If Pirumpayyar hadn't been visiting this very week, you would be in kingdom come. As it is, you're just the luckiest man alive."

"How the hell did I get a Jaihan Death Flu in the middle of Amokolia?" asked Nathan.

"There are only two ways it spreads," said the doctor. "One, you can get infected by a worm that lives in stagnant water in Jaiha. Unless you've been breaking out of the hospital to fly halfway around the world without us noticing, it ain't that one. The other way is sexual transmission. Did you by any chance have...intimate relations...with that visitor of yours. Ms. Morimoto, her name was?"

"Uh," said Nathan.

"Well," said Dr. Lukas, "She must be a carrier. Certain people, when exposed gradually over a long period of time, can develop a carrier state of the Death Flu, in which it doesn't harm them, but spreads immediately to anyone they sleep with. We need to find Ms. Morimoto immediately so we can warn her of the danger."

"Oh," said Nathan, and his fists clenched. "She knows. I'm sure she knows. She said...she said she needed to kill anyone she had sex with. I figured it was a bullet through the head or something, but that's not her style. No, she must have...deliberately infected herself with this...after she learned about the mutant virus...to make sure that no one escaped. And I thought...I'd melted her heart...this was her plan from the beginning. It was never..." He broke down crying.

"He's raving," said Dr. Christiansen. "The Death Flu must have spread to his brain and caused inflammation in some of the nervous tissue. Pirumpayyar's antiparasitics should take care of the causative organism, but in the meantime we'll need to put him on antiinflammatories to deal with the encephalopathy. I'll add it to the chart."

With a great force of effort, Nathan Ross got out of bed. "Someone bring me a wheelchair," he said. "I'm getting out of here."

"I'm afraid in your current state you can't possibly..."

Nathan reached into his wallet and took out a wad of very large denomination bills adding up to a very large number of Small Commonwealth Currency Units. "Here," he said, and he threw it at the two doctors. "I want you to record that I died of the Jaihan Death Flu. Record it very thoroughly. Tell Dr. Pirumpayyar his experimental treatment didn't work. And if Ms. Morimoto comes back, tell her you saw me die.

"How did you get all this money?" asked Dr. Christiansen, wide-eyed. It was a lot of money.

"The power of compound interest," he said, as a nurse brought him his wheelchair. "Forget you ever met a man named Nathan Ross. It's for the better. And for the love of God, if you have any samples of my blood anywhere, destroy them!" And then he was out of there, a little less quickly and less dignified than he would like, but out of there nevertheless, rolling out toward the city of La Terre. He'd stay at a hotel until he felt a bit better, then slip into the next identity he'd prepared for himself - it was getting to be time, anyway - and head home. The La Terre records would list the death of Nathan Ross, and no one would ever be able to prove them wrong.

As for him...the real him, Nik Raesin or whatever you wanted to call him...he was starting to feel more alive than he had in years. He was weak, but he would grow stronger. Give him another year, and he would be back to Nik standard: one of the better military men the world had ever known, and certainly the one with the most practice. And he had all eternity to prepare for what he now knew was his destiny.

He was going to find Maria Morimoto.

What he would do when he found her, he had no idea.




Summary: Introducing the character of Nathan Ross, mercenary leader

[Malliki Tosha]

[OOC: You're giving me performance anxiety Scott. I don't have time for this... ]

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Nah, this is something I've wanted to write for a while, since Ari started developing the Maria Morimoto character further, and I figured this war would be as good an excuse as any.

[Percy Rutherford]

NOTICE: You are over the required word limit for the Extended Essay (4000 words, not including footnotes, diagrams and appendices), and therefore will receive 0 for Criterion H (formal presentation) unless you correct your essay before final submission to IB Geneva.

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Moved on recommendation of Harvey/others who thought this would be better as a story and not as part of a recwar. I'll probably still stick Nathan Ross into the recwar, but no one need know who he is unless they want to.

[Andreas the Wise]

Wonderful, as always. I thoroughly enjoy reading your longer works, Scott.