Slade House

by David Mitchell

“It’s why religion got invented and it’s why religion stays invented. What else matters more than not dying? Power? Gold? Sex? A million quid? A billion? A trillion? Really? They won’t buy you an extra minute when your number’s up. No, cheating death, cheating aging, cheating the care home, cheating the mirror and the dug-up corpse’s face like mine that you’ll see in your mirror too, Miss Timms, and sooner than you think: That’s a prize worth the hunting, the taking. That’s the only prize worth hunting. And what we want, we dream of. The stage props change down the ages, but the dream stays the same: philosophers’ stones; magic fountains in lost Tibetan valleys; lichens that slow the decay of our cells; tanks of liquid whatever that’ll freeze us for a few centuries; computers that’ll store our personalities as ones and zeroes for the rest of time. To call a spade a spade: immortality.”