Who really wants to live forever?

"Do you want to live forever?"

Professor LeRande barely looked at her pale student whenever he visited during her office hours, and this question failed to raise an exception. He never seemed to mind how she ignored him. It was a small cluster of offices, and as the work study, his only place was a chair beside the secretary's desk. He would sometimes sit there, angled in such a way that he could look into her office as she worked. Rarely, he would speak to her—ask questions about class, or some photo that related to an anecdote she had shared. Once he even showed up to a reading of the university's student journal which she was adviser of.

That day had been depressing and gray as well, but the coffee shop on campus was filled with English majors sharing ideas and snacks and laughter, pretending for an afternoon that their literary pursuits could get them jobs, talking over that nervousness of performing and fear of rejection they all shared as they prepared to step up to the microphone and be judged in the court of public opinion by this microcosm of like-minded individuals.

Except for him. Black pants, dark hair, dark shirt, forgettable face. He wasn't unique in a room of young people wearing differing shades of black, ranging from Artistic to Chic to Hiding Belly Fat. He offered nothing to read, was never engaged in conversation despite the efforts of those around him who could only draw short, truthful comments.

He may have looked identical today, but Professor LeRande had sixty four papers from three classes when she should have had seventy two, and she refreshed the tabs for her email inbox and Acedemic DropBox every time she finished reading through a page, and not a shred of attention left for a quiet student whose paper she wouldn't be bothered with until the following week.

And then, in a mystery she would happily leave to the Anthropology department as she listened to pretentious jazz music and read pretentious books in the future looking back on the event, he stood, walked into her room, and engaged her.

She didn't hear his question at first, too busy wading her way through a clumsily written paper on Macbeth that seemed obsessed with the word "gynophobia," proving that the student had done absolutely no work in between turning in her thesis and writing the final draft of her research paper.

Then work-study spoke again: "Would you like to live forever?"

His voice was unfamiliar, as he never spoke up in class.

LeRande appreciated the rarity of this event, set the paper down, and turned in her chair to face the work study. Robert. His name was Robert Flannery.

"Excuse me?" she said politely, reaching for her coffee mug, instinctively maneuvering her chair to block the computer to protect the information of her students.

"What are your thoughts on immortality," he asked. "And would you want it for yourself."

If she were teaching creative writing that semester instead of all literature classes, she might have dwelled upon how each question's tone ended in a period rather than a question mark. But instead, with a brain already eight hours into its work day, she didn't.

"Well," she began, "I think that's the wrong question."

"Why?" he asked.

"I think a better question is 'Who wants to live forever?'" she answered.

"Why?" he asked again.

"Well, try to answer the question," she said, settling into her seat. "Who is it who wants to live forever?"

"Everyone," he said.

"Wrong," she said. "Many people consider the afterlife to be preferable to this life, and in that they welcome a death and reward. Try again."

"People who fear death," he answered, almost too quickly. A counselor might have dwelt on that, but LeRande didn't.

"Wrong again. There are many suicidal people who are terrified of death, but they find life so unbearable that they take the risk of the unknown evil over what they have reasoned to be a known evil. Fear of death isn't enough to keep some people from welcoming it. One more try."

"I give up," he answered. "Who wants to live forever?"

LeRande took a long, theatrical sip of her coffee to collect her thoughts during her dramatic pause.

"In everything I've read, in all the media I've studied, there always seems to be one answer to the question of 'Who wants to live forever?' And that answer is always the same: Eventually, no one."

The work-study nodded, and he had this way of fading into the background of any setting. LeRande had a pile of work to distract her, so she got back to it.

The boy wasn't in class the next day, and that evening she found an email in her inbox saying that he had withdrawn from classes. That night, it rained. Never thundering, never letting up, a constant rain as though laying down after a long day's work on her rooftop.

He was easy to forget, but sometimes just the memory of that floated to the top of her mind, carried on raindrops, and again she would ask herself, "Who wants to live forever?"

And always, thunder accompanied the answer of "Eventually, no one."