Read an Excerpt From The Museum of Human History

After nearly drowning, eight-year-old Maeve Wilhelm falls into a strange comatose state.

We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman, a novel that weaves together speculative elements and classic fables—publishing with Tin House Books on August 1.

After nearly drowning, eight-year-old Maeve Wilhelm falls into a strange comatose state. As years pass, it becomes clear that Maeve is not physically aging. A wide cast of characters finds themselves pulled toward Maeve, each believing that her mysterious “sleep” holds the answers to their life’s most pressing questions: Kevin Marks, a museum owner obsessed with preservation; Monique Gray, a refugee and performance artist; Lionel Wilhelm, an entomologist who dreamed of being an astrophysicist; and Evangeline Wilhelm, Maeve’s identical twin. As Maeve remains asleep, the characters grapple with a mysterious new technology and medical advances that promise to ease anxiety and end pain, but instead cause devastating side effects.

A brief introduction from the author:

In the coastal city of Marks Island, three biotech companies have been racing to develop new technology and medical advances. A cloned woolly mammoth attracts visitors, human head transplants are perfected, and then Prosyntus—a procedure to stop aging and pain—is released. Celebrities and athletes clamor for it and become its spokespeople. Soon, regular people choose to have the procedure too. People like Abe: a historian who has studied the role of pain in ancient societies, including the mysterious ancient tribe that once made Marks Island their home.

Abe is 23 years older than his wife, Syl, and Abe’s decision to have Prosyntus creates an even larger rift between them. Syl cannot understand why any person—let alone her husband–would pretend he could ever free himself from the bounds of time. Abe and Syl’s story is one of the many threads in the novel that orbits around Prosyntus, the ancient people of Marks Island, and a girl named Maeve who fell into a strange comatose state and stopped growing older.

— Rebekah Bergman, author of The Museum of Human History

Prosyntus: Make Age Just a Number

A memory: Abe making Syl guess the next celebrity patient. “Who will it be?” he pressed her. “Let’s bet a dollar on it.”

Buy the Book

The Museum of Human History

They were talking of Prosyntus. Celebrities were demanding it in a rush. At first, it was mostly old actors whose names were already slipping to the tips of tongues. But then even those who were more freshly famous began having the procedure.

Here was Syl struggling to come up with a likely candidate. “Monique Gray?” she guessed. As soon as she said it, she knew it was wrong. But why exactly?

“Who’s Monique Gray?” That was J. P., wanting to play the game with his parents.

“Monique Gray?” Abe spoke gently. “The performance artist? Remember, she came out with that statement condemning Prosyntus last week?”

***

Syl was eating breakfast at the kitchen counter. J. P. was between her and Abe. The morning news was on their small TV above the fridge, and an ad for Prosyntus played during each commercial break. They ate without speaking.

Syl had hated the name “Prosyntus” since the beginning. It made the procedure sound sterile and mythological while giving no clue as to what it really entailed. Medical language was like that. It hid its meaning, withheld what it could do. She and Abe had been calling it “The Process,” but this was misleading as well. Prosyntus stopped a process; it didn’t make one begin.

For a time, Prosyntus maintained its celebrity status. It was constant and yet removed from their normal existence. After the old actors, the supermodels lined up to preserve their bodies at the peaks of their careers. Athletes came next, though the ethical questions about that remained. Questions like, Should there be forced retirement for athletes who’d had the procedure? If so, when?

Now, it was something anyone could have if they chose to. Syl tried to see why anyone would choose to. She pictured a future where she approached death without any physical signs of aging, without changing. It was a hard image to hold on to. Her hair started sprouting curly white wires, like springs loosened from a clock. Her spine bent into a question mark.

This was how memory distorted imagination. It was impossible to empty the future of the past it was meant to contain.

After breakfast J. P. reminded his parents that his class was taking a field trip later that week. The end-of-year trip to Marks Island. Syl would be chaperoning.

“I think you’ll go into the Caves of Adina this time,” Abe said. J. P.’s eyes widened. “What’s that?”

“I don’t want to ruin the surprise,” Abe said. “You’ll see.” J. P. looked at Syl, anxious, and she patted his leg. “They aren’t scary,” she said. “You’ll like them.”

J.P. was not his father. Syl would have liked to remind Abe of this for the hundredth time. He was not the way Abe was when Abe was a boy. Not that Syl had known Abe then. But she’d heard his stories. Young Abe, an intrepid little explorer, hiking around Marks Island on his own.

Abe would climb into the Caves of Adina and through the passage that led to what had once been a shore. He would stand out there and pretend he was one of the ancient people who’d made that place home. It was all new—newly old, that was, freshly discovered.

J.P. was sensitive and nervous by nature. Thoughtful and curious, like his father, but more of a worrier than his father had been.

Outside, a car beeped. It was J. P.’s ride to school, Evangeline and her grandfather. J. P. hopped off the stool, kissed his parents, grabbed his lunch from the counter, and left.

Syl was brushing her teeth when Abe told her he’d be having The Process. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it. The first time he said it, she was stunned into silence. And the second time, she decided Abe was kidding. He had to be. She jutted her chin and teased him.

“Okay,” she said, “maybe there’s a two-for-one discount. We can both have it. Maybe J. P. should have it too.”

The procedure was not approved for use on children. They both knew this much, even though most details about Prosyntus were not yet disclosed.

“You’re joking,” Abe replied. “But I’m not.”

He had made his first appointment and he spoke of logistics. When it was over, would Syl be able to meet him at the facility? It was scheduled for Friday. From then on, it would be monthly injections. Someone would need to sign for him this first time, to drive him home. Could she do that?

Syl wanted to protest. To scream. To throw a tantrum. To make it stop. But it was too late. Abe had made up his mind, like crossing a threshold. Their reflections caught eyes in the bath-room mirror.

Yes, she told Abe, she could.

It was Syl’s turn to make dinner. J. P. was helping roll out the pizza dough. He dipped his hands into a bag of flour. When he pulled them out, they were the hands of a ghost. Syl needed to tell him about his father. She didn’t want to, but she should. Their son deserved to know.

She could start with, “It is a choice your father has made for his body.” Or, “It has nothing to do with you or with me.” Neutral, journalistic language. The problem was that it should have everything to do with them. Shouldn’t it? And then again, maybe it did.

She chopped vegetables and J. P. arranged them on the pizza, making a face with mushroom eyes. He was so young. His family must still seem like an extension of his body, his self. He hadn’t yet realized that this life was in no way inevitable. Parents, for instance. Most parents did not have such a wide gap of time between them.

Abe was older than Syl by twenty-three years. It was a long time, longer than the lifespan of a family pet. J. P. did not yet see this gap or how it formed a fault line between his mother and father. But one day he would. Syl expected J. P. to ask over his cornflakes any morning why Evangeline’s grandfather was about the same age as his dad.

“Mom,” J. P. said. He was setting the table. “Wednesday’s the field trip. Please don’t forget.”

Had she forgotten?

Yes. Once. Twice. She made a note and taped it to the cabinet. Just two words: “Don’t forget.”

***

“It does not postpone death. Remember that,” the artist was saying. She was being interviewed for a talk show called Time Line at the news station where Syl worked.

Syl could see several images of the artist at the same time. One was real—she was small and faced forward; the others were projected and enlarged from so many angles on so many screens. One camera zoomed in on Monique Gray’s face, and the beauty mark beside her lips was rendered in full, three-dimensional detail.

Syl thought the words “beauty mark” as she stared at it. A euphemism for what it really was: a mole. An ugly one, too, on an otherwise gorgeous woman. Gray was young. She had risen to fame from seemingly nowhere earlier that year. She had come out as the strongest voice against Prosyntus.

“You are fooling yourselves,” Gray pronounced. “This procedure—it’s a curse. No matter how many superficial attempts we make to cheat pain and death, it doesn’t matter: pain and death always win.”

This was more than Gray had said publicly. She was an artist who had been known as much for her gruesome and esoteric art as she was for her silence about it.

Syl had no interest in celebrity culture, but she knew about Gray because everyone had come to know about Gray. Also it had been a reporter at Syl’s own news station who had broken the story. The reporter was an obnoxious woman. She fancied herself an investigative journalist, but Syl could recall the early days of the reporter’s career when she had written nonsense—overeager fluff pieces, listicles, features with no hard news angle, five hundred words to accompany an interesting photograph of a blue whale. Just that kind of thing for years. Later, celebrity gossip disguised as cultural criticism.

And now she’d broken the story of how Gray had come to Marks Island City as a refugee, hidden her past, and changed her name.

Syl felt sad for Monique Gray, who sat on the orange couch under studio lighting taking a faux stand, Syl assumed, against The Process. It seemed like a weak attempt to wrest back control of her narrative.

The host asked Gray about the billboards on the highway.

“Those?” Gray said. “Yes, I’ve seen them. They fill the air like locusts.”

On each, there was a portrait of a beautiful celebrity who’d had The Process. Their features were so symmetrical they looked alien, and their foreheads disappeared into clouds. Strange advertising. But memorable. Gripping.

“We need to remember,” Gray said, “Prosyntus has not made these people beautiful. Fame and money have done that. We forget this. Although yes, it’s true, Prosyntus will keep them there. They won’t age.”

On the billboards, there was the catchphrase: “Make age just a number.”

“I get it,” she said. “It’s persuasive.”

The host nodded.

“But it’s not magic. It isn’t even medicine. It blocks aging, numbs pain. It stops symptoms so maybe you can forget about death for a while, but death will happen. One day, you—like everyone else—will be dead.”

Gray stopped, breathless, letting that sink in. The statement carried a subtext of what everyone had learned about her and the depths of her grief.

The host turned to the camera with a big-toothed grin. “Stay with us,” she said. “Time Line will be right back.”

Syl left the set to head to her office. It would be difficult to fact-check Gray’s interview. Not much about The Process was known. But Gray’s basic argument about it was true. It stopped aging and pain, but it did not stop death.

For a second, Syl envisioned a world without pain. A world where nobody could tell when a person was dying, not even that person himself. So—what? she thought. A woman buys orange juice in the grocery store, a man gets a haircut, a mother kisses her son, and the next instant, all those people are gone?