The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Aging (short story)
The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Aging was the third story in The Boulevard: Volume One.
Summary
Cousin Sophia enters a dilapidated house on The Boulevard to see a young boy and his AI guard. She states that she's just there to observe their normal routine, but the boy insists on starting up a conversation. During the conversation, she asks if he knows why he's imprisoned here, as many don't. He says he does, it's to help him get better, so that one day, when he has control, he can leave. Sophia rejects this, saying that instead it was decided that it was too dangerous to kill an unstable space-time event like him, letting him die naturally was the safer option.
Eventually, the boy calms himself down, and Sophia asks if he can explain what happened. He quickly ages throughout his entire life before regressing to a baby and back to a young boy. This doesn't satisfy her. So he instead recounts a nice tale of domestic tranquility, a normal, peaceful life. How his life was supposed to run, rather than the myriad people he's driven mad.
Sophia and the boy walk through the house, past an Escherian labyrinth of stairs and rooms, as the boy continues to cycle through time, the guard following after, ever watchful. The group sits down to eat, and the boy recounts how he would force ageing on people, originally at first people he cared about on accident, but later on, criminals and failed politicians, taking over from them, crafting a criminal empire, he delights in this - he dreams about it still.
Sophia then questions him about his initiation into the Faction. He felt the entire ordeal was ridiculous, even if he didn't say it at the time. But he told a friend about the Faction, and the friend was interested in joining. So, the two of them together decided to try the initiation rituals, rather than a full group. This caused the boy to continuously age over and over, and his friend to die. He spent some time figuring out what had happened, his family ageing around him as a result, him bouncing around his timestream, damaging time in the process. Eventually the Faction caught up to him, and their agents were unaffected by his newfound power, eventually imprisoning him.
At the end of this story, Sophia says that the reason she's here is because it was noted that in spite of his stay in the boulevard, his resting age has seemingly gotten younger over time. She asks him if he knows how long she's been with him. He thinks a day, but it's actually been a year. She moves over to a hidden control panel in order to deactivate the AI. When she does, the boy vanishes.
The guard asks where the prisoner has gone, but Sophia insists he drop the act - he is the prisoner - he's the right age. He admits it, but insists that the fact that he didn't change his age at all the entire time shows he's gotten control, and what's more, claims that he finally has respect for the Faction rituals that he lacked before. She agrees. He's thrilled to hear it, and begins to celebrate. But as he does so, she points out that he wasn't sceptical of how easily she turned off the guard, or how she knew everything before she came in. He dismisses this and simply asks when the appeal is.
She says that she is the appeal. And the sentence is that the prisoner lacks remorse or respect for Faction rituals, regardless of what he claims. She's the new incorruptible AI guard assigned to him, her eyes haven't left him once, even as he's broken down and begun to age uncontrollably once more.
Characters
References
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Notes
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Continuity
to be added
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