Everlight

Mr. Aidan Meyer sat at the sleek, black granite meeting table to the side of the reception desk. He surveyed the room, wondering if this was where his interview was going to take place, but he saw no other doors or offices in the open-plan headquarters. It seemed the only place possible to do the interview, unless they were moving to the waiting area or behind the front desk, both seemingly more inappropriate. He placed his black Moleskine on the table in front of him and went to grab his pen from his jacket’s inner pocket when a large panel of the high-gloss lacquer walls retracted behind the front desk and slid open.

James Edward glided through the portal and behind the front desk, where he draped a quick hand on one of the concierge’s shoulders in acknowledgement. His staff swiveled their desk chairs and uniformly beamed at him, all their faces bright with irreverence or carefully-orchestrated obedience, Aidan couldn’t tell. James then slipped around the corner of the desk, arriving to face Aiden at the head of the conference table. Aidan rose to shake James’ hand and introduce himself. As he went to sit back down, he realized James had chosen the seat at the head of the table; he’d awkwardly be two seats away if he returned to his original chair. Aidan quickly grabbed his things and pulled them forward to sit at James’s two o’clock.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” James said, annunciating each syllable. He took a long sip from his water bottle without making eye contact with Aidan. “So… where do we begin?” How many times had Aidan thought about this exact moment? He had been covering the ethics of technology for The Atlantic for some time, interviewing quite a lot of powerful and influential people in the process, but none that sparked his curiosity and concern as much as Everlight. Afterlife preservation advancement was almost solely driven by Edward’s company. No one else on the market was claiming to do anything even remotely close to what they were saying they could do.

“Let’s start from the beginning. Who is James Edward, and why did he decide to create Everlight?” James nodded his head, looking directly at Aidan with gauzy eyes. “I am a vessel that distills Source material, filtering it so that others might see the creative vision I have planned for our future.” Aidan immediately recognized this language from Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being. James continued, “I wanted to create Everlight because time is something we have no control over, and I knew I wanted to change that.” A woman who was seated in the waiting area coughed gently, drawing Aidan’s attention to her. She was fidgeting with her black Hèrmes Kelly Sellier satchel, repeatedly opening and closing the front clasp.

“Is there any way we could do this interview in the back to not disturb your… patients?” Aidan realized he didn’t know what to call the people seeking Everlight services. “We call them ‘seekers,’” James stated calmly, sensing Aidan’s apprehension about his word choice, “but I’m afraid that’s a restricted area. Our lab is back there, and only those who have completed the down payment on their services are allowed.” Aidan jotted this down. He was resigned to the fact that he would have to conduct his most anticipated interview out in the open.

“You say you wanted to change our relationship with time. How did this become your calling?” James sighed very faintly, almost imperceptibly. His eyes softened. “My mother had early-onset Alzheimer’s. Very early-onset. Have you ever had someone close to you succumb to something like that?” The only thing Aidan could say was that he hadn’t. “Certainly you remember getting lost at a grocery or department store while shopping with your mom. Having a young parent with Alzheimer’s as a child is like continually searching for that parent, trying to quell the overwhelming sense of fear and anxiety about potentially having to navigate the meat aisle alone, dealing with the possibility that maybe you were forgotten, maybe you were left behind. You search for them, eager to cajole them into going home and returning to the comfort of your familiar. And finally, when you see an outline of someone who looks just like your mom, a person of similar stature and dress, you run up and grab their hand, only to find that the person is some stranger, a facsimile of your parent, or a mirage. It was a good dupe at first, in the stages between recognition and registration, but up close, they’re nothing alike. You realize you’re holding the hand of someone you don’t know at all, and they don’t know you. You end up stuck in this interminable cycle, like the scariest and saddest of merry-go-rounds.” The corners of James’ mouth turned upward ever-so-slightly while his brows curled down, almost as if they were trying to connect in a perfect circle.

Aidan felt truly sorry for the man—what decent human being wouldn’t—but he knew why he was at Everlight. He wouldn’t be distracted by endearing answers to his warm-up questions. “That must have been extremely difficult for you and your whole family. You believe Everlight is the solution to losing a loved one like this? Or in a variety of tragic ways? How do you…” But before Aidan could complete his question, James forcefully started explaining how the technology worked. His speech created such a departure from the relative placidity the office had enjoyed earlier, the elderly woman in the waiting room area jumped. Out of the corner of Aidan’s eye, he clocked just how intently the woman had been listening in. After James’ lengthy diatribe reciting all the information in Everlight’s promotional material that Aidan had studied in preparation for this interview, there was a long pause. James sat back in his chair again, leaning against the backrest from which he had animatedly sprang forward.

“It’s incredibly innovative. There’s nothing like it on the market. Nothing’s even been attempted like this elsewhere…” Aidan offered, “But are you ever worried about playing God? Wouldn’t you—or maybe not you, but wouldn’t someone—say this is also a facsimile of a person? If you’re preserving people’s consciousness digitally, is their consciousness what constitutes them as a person? I mean, is that the thing that gives them their personhood? And if there’s more to their being, in your opinion, then aren’t you essentially a transcriber or an archivist, only preserving one small faction, snapshot, or rendition of a ‘seeker?’”

James’s eyes widen, becoming less hazy and shrinking his pupils to reveal beautiful green irises with amber limbal rings. “Those are interesting questions, aren’t they, Mr. Meyer?”