The Eyes of Argos

A Modern Greek Tragedy

Dear Reader,

Our ancient myths and histories inform our present and future, even as technologies, social structures, and knowledge advances. We stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us, but we always wrestle with the same concepts: the pursuit of happiness, the longing for love, the dissonance between parent and child, the fear of death, and the curiosity of what lies on the other side of that final great divide.

Family tragedies phase
new and grander casts
through generations’ maze
clad in neteoric masks.

The actors play
just one question
across the human stage;
‘will we learn our lesson?’

~S. C. Durbois

---

~The Eyes of Argos~

Mr. Seynan sat on the bench, the paper crinkling beneath him.  He adjusted to pull it out.

“Woah there, Mr. Seynan.  We’re going to leave that right there.  It’s meant to be there.”

And so it was.  Mr. Seynan examined it more closely with failing eyes and realized it wasn’t his newspaper.  Of course not, they didn’t have those anymore.  No point in destroying the world (as his son said) when information could be displayed digitally, on one of those screen-pad things. 

His son, Henri, loved those things.

“I’m sure he does,” said the man in front of him. 

Mr. Seynan realized he’d been saying all of this out loud.  He examined the man more closely.  His broad face was tan, but with none of the signs of wear on the skin from time spent in the sun.  His smile was polished, like the shine in his hair, smooth.  He wore a white medical coat. 

That Mr. Seynan recognized, but it wasn’t as loose as the ones he remembered from his childhood.  No, this was more like a uniform, and on it, right over the left side of the chest, was a navy-blue logo.  A peacock reduced to simple shapes.  The peacock… That’s right.  His son said he had an appointment with the peacocks.  What were they called?

The man had Mr. Seynan take off his starched button-up shirt.  It wasn't like the fabrics they sold these days, made from completely recyclable materials.  According to his son, his clothes put too much plastic in the water.  But Mr. Seynan refused the offer of a new wardrobe.  The new stuff felt like plastic.

Mr. Seynan has said firmly that he wasn’t interested in wearing other people’s trash, thank you very much.  If he threw out his old clothes, wouldn’t that add more plastic to the environment, add to that mountain that his son was always going on about?  Besides, Ines had bought him these shirts, and she always knew just what he liked.  Her taste was better than his, she knew what looked good on him.  He had no desire to change that look since she couldn't buy his clothes anymore.  His son had let it go with a smile and reminded him to take his medication.

The cool feel of the cuff brought him back and he found the doctor, Dr. Peacock, taking his blood pressure.  He couldn’t read the little numbers on the dial, but Dr. Peacock nodded, said good, good, and unwrapped his arm.  In the corner, there were mats, some exercise balls, yellow and purple and orange, and some tension bands.  But the rest of the space was filled up with complicated machines that had tubes and blinking lights.  There was a glove made of metal attached by wires to a mental helmet, that had more wires coming out.  There were no windows.

Mr. Seynan flinched at the prick as the doctor drew blood.

“There we are, that’s all we need today,” Dr. Peacock flicked the tube and plugged it into one of the machines.  He untied the rubber strap as the machine whirred.

In his prime, Mr. Seynan had made his living as a farmer raising cows, so he wasn’t sure what all the pictures on the walls meant.  There was one that looked like a brain, with all the different sections mapped out, but the type was too small to read.

“Good glucose levels, Henri’s found something that works then,” he said.

That was odd.  Mr. Seynan didn’t understand why he said that.

“Ines, my wife, she makes these waffles that Henri loves.  A special batter, she adds seeds and blueberries.  They’re his favorite.”

“Do you like them too?” Dr. Peacock asked, bringing over a tray of vials, glass tubes with bright orange medical caps.

“Oh yes, but I like everything she cooks,” Mr. Seynan smiled proudly.

Ines had been a chemist.  She found a hundred different ways to cook the slabs of meat Mr. Seynan brought home, and a million different recipes for the fresh milk and butter.  One time a neighbor had asked if she wasn’t concerned about her health with all that meat and dairy. 

Ines had laughed and said, “In the words of the French surgeon Alexis Carrel, ‘The quality of life is more important than life itself’.”

The doctor connected a syringe filled with a light greenish liquid to the needle in his arm.  He depressed the plungers.  Mr. Seynan wondered if Dr. Peacock had heard of Alexis Carrel.

Cooked.  He liked everything she cooked.  Ines had died.  How had he forgotten that?  Mr. Seynan felt the tears gather in his eyes.  The paper bracelet brushed his cheek.

“My apologies, Ines passed a while ago.”

The doctor gave him a kind smile.

“Ah well, we all know that eventually, someone leaves.  It's part of the deal when you take vows.  We part at the end," Mr. Seynan said. 

They had the wedding on his farm, with all their family and friends, when the daylilies were in bloom.  Ines had insisted.  She’d looked radiant in a dress whiter than milk, her hair spilling in waves like the dripping from honeycombs. 

“I always thought I’d go first though.”

But what about after death?  He knew it in his core; Ines was a presence the world had seen fit to grant space in the world.  She wouldn’t just cease to be.  A person, a soul, like hers?  No, he knew the truth, a truth that his son’s technology and this doctor’s science would never uncover.  Ines was somewhere.  Just not here, per se. 

He would find her.  His time was coming.  Soon.  He could feel it.  For now, after the loss of his mother, Henri needed him.  It was the first time he was certain his son had needed him, so he would wait.

 The doctor did more tests that Mr. Seynan couldn’t remember.  When it was over, he waited on a bench in a big grassy field with flowers and watched the birds.  Some of them were oddly large, in his opinion. 

The nurse who left him there said his son was coming to pick him up.  Mr. Seynan knew that couldn't be true since Henri was eleven, but the breeze was warm, and he was tired from all the tests, so Mr. Seynan was happy to sit on the bench and watch the birds.

“Dad?”

Mr. Seynan looked up and saw a young man around his own age standing there.  He had sandy blond hair, like Ines, and filled out his suit.  He reminded Mr. Seynan of those financers Ines worked with, the ones who ran her lab.  She said they were too clever for their own good sometimes.  But they were here one day and gone the next, so Mr. Seynan paid them little mind.

“I’m just waiting for my son,” Mr. Seynan said.

“It’s me, Dad,” the man took a seat on the bench next to him.  “It’s Henri.”

Mr. Seynan looked at the man.  There were the familiar freckles dusting his nose and cheeks, faded now in an older face.  The eyes were the same though, dark hazel, serious.

“Ah, I forget myself,” Mr. Seynan said.  Of course, it was his son.  He smacked his son’s knee.  “Take a look at those birds Henri.  They’ve gotten big huh?”

Henri grinned.  He always looked that way when he got a new toy, a new gadget, like the year he got a datapad that could grow virtual flowers.  It flourished even in the winter and never died.  Henri used to enjoy playing in the dirt next to his mother while she gardened, but when Ines asked if he wanted to help her again the following year, he had asked,

“Why?  They’re just going to die in a few weeks.”

“True,” Ines had quipped, “and they’re all the lovelier for it.  Besides, I’ll take my real flowers over your virtual garden every year.” 

She was always the one to keep up with Henri.  Mr. Seynan felt there was a gap between him and his son, as though he were standing still while Henri was many miles ahead.  His wife could walk with them both.  Mr. Seynan missed that about her, how she connected them.  The distance between them had only grown as he aged.

“They’re air shuttles.  My Peta-Hawk is over there.”  Henri pointed to one of the birds parked on the lawn.  Painted on the side was a short staff entwined by two snakes, with two wings at the top.  “Why don’t we take a ride?” 

Mr. Seynan did not want to ride the hawk.  He was too tired after all the tests.  He just wanted to sit and look at the flowers, like he used to do with Ines. 

But this man was his son and he had forgotten, so maybe he had forgotten other things too, and Henri was already pulling him up from the bench.  His genuine smile had banished the earlier concern, so Mr. Seynan went with the forty-year-old who was his son, who had never been good at letting time go by or watching flowers die.

---

The water fountain splashed in the sun like the creek the cows drank from.  Mr. Seynan had seen it before, he thought.  Where the water caught the light, he saw a faint green sheen.  Inside, thick bodies the exact shade of tangerine swam through the water.  Koi fish.

“We call it the fountain of youth.”

The man next to him wore a white doctor’s coat.  That’s right, he was at the doctor’s office.  For a moment, the rippling image had deceived him, sending him back half a century.

“A private joke among us.”

“How does it work?” Mr. Seynan asked.  Reflecting from the pool’s surface, he saw himself not as he was, skin wrinkled and drooping, with a texture like old paper that would crumple and disintegrate if rubbed too hard.  No, he saw himself as he used to be, young, skin firm, tan, molded around his square jaw.  His hair, which had left him years ago, was a rich shade of molasses.  No longer were his eyes clouded, but a sharp dark cobalt. 

“The water is full of reflective technology reading from an image database.  It identifies the person it sees, finds pictures from the prime of their life, makes the necessary lighting adjustments, and voila.”

The vibrant orange smudges slipped through the water, playful.  What a relief.  He had worried he imagined the last fifty years.  He seemed to forget all the wrong things these days.

“Do the fish know?” Mr. Seynan asked.

The doctor smiled.  “They’re not real.”

Not real. 

Nothing in this pool was real.  You had to be real to age.

The doctor guided Mr. Seynan to come back with him.  He half expected the man’s perfectly tanned hand to go right through him, a hologram.

They walked toward a building that seemed unbalanced to Mr. Seynan, top-heavy, as though it would fall on its head at any moment.  It was composed of glass blocks stacked on top of each other, facing all different angles so someone could look out from every side.  Grey walls honeycombed the interior, and doctors in white lab coats walking around inside.  It was like a brain with a million eyes. 

Huge metal letters in a slanted font were bolted to the wall in the lobby. 

“ARGOSIA.”

Beneath it was a peacock, the same as the one on all the coats.

“What does it mean?”

The doctor guided him to a platform, gripping his arm.  It rose off the ground.

“Argos was known as the all-seeing giant.”

There were no railings on the platform, but it glided to a stop, feather-light, a few floors above.  The doctor steered him down a hallway with amber walls and a rich green carpet.  Familiar.

“Argos the giant had hundreds of eyes all over his body.  The goddess Hera gave him the job of guarding a human girl, Io, whom Zeus had turned into a bovine.”

The doctor spoke smoothly, as though he had told the story many times before.  They entered a room with an exam table, exercise equipment, and other machines like a helmet with wires, a metal gauntlet, and a device with several tubes filled with a blue substance.

“Zeus had his son Hermes kill Argos, a giant who was meant to live forever.  So, Hera put his eyes in the tail feathers of a peacock to preserve them.” 

The doctor indicated he should sit on the exam table.

“Ah, the peacock,” Mr. Seynan said pointing to the symbol on the man’s white coat.  It made sense now.  He took off his shirt so the doctor could take his blood pressure.

After they were done with all the exercises and tests, the doctor handed him a fresh prescription of pills.  They were a nauseous shade of green behind the orange plastic, but when Mr. Seynan looked inside, he found the pills were a reassuring cerulean.

***

“How are you this morning, Dad?” Henri asked, clapping a hand on his shoulder as he passed him at the breakfast table. 

“My porridge is blue,” Mr. Seynan said.  An unnervingly bright blue.  It reminded him of the electric background of computers when they crashed, pretending to be the sky.

“It’s spirulina.  Don’t worry, you’ll like it.”  Henri sat in front of his own bowl of blue porridge at the head of a long, polished table.  Mr. Seynan sat on his left.  Across from him was a long wall of paneled grass.  Lush gardens spread before them, with every kind of bird flitting between the bushes and flowers.  Beyond these, Mr. Seynan’s old eyes almost made out a valley and distant mountains.  An investigative woodpecker knocked on the glass wall with a thin tap-tap-tap, making Mr. Seynan smile.  Not wood.  He flew away.  Ines would have liked this place.

Mr. Seynan spooned some of the gloppy blue porridge, along with pieces of what he thought might be mango.  It was as colorful as the birds outside.  He took a tentative bite.

“This is good,” he said, surprised.  He took another spoonful, savoring the rich flavors.  “We should have this every day.”

“That shirt looks good on you,” Henri said. 

“It’s new,” Mr. Seynan said, smoothing the unwrinkled fabric.  It felt expensive.  He didn’t remember buying it, but it was folded in his drawers, so he must have. 

A woman wearing the white collared shirt and black pants of serving staff poured Henri a cup of coffee, then Mr. Seynan.

“Oh, decaf for me dear.”

She gave him a lovely smile and continued to pour.  “Sure thing Mr. Seynan.”

He took a sip.  Decaf.  How did she know?  Maybe his son told her.

Once she left Mr. Seynan lowered his voice.  “When are we going home, Henri?”

“This is your home Dad, you live with me, remember?”

“You live in this place?” Mr. Seynan asked.  “Well, you’ve done well for yourself.”

Henri’s lips twitched in pride.

“Your mother’s smarts no doubt.”

“Don’t forget your medication,” Henri said, pointing to the blue pill on his napkin.

Mr. Seynan took it with a sip of coffee as Henri scrolled through his datapad.  He didn’t know what he was looking at.  No, Henri told him once, maybe a couple of times; he was checking the news, noting stock options, reviewing chemical formulas for the reappropriation of methane. 

It had been hard on Henri when Ines passed.  He remembered now; Henri had been building a company, so busy they hardly saw their son. 

Once a year Ines scheduled a vacation for him to come and spend time with them.  They were simple fare, a house rented near a lake in the deep woods, a hotel with a spa near the Grand Canyon, a visit to the Garden of the Gods, a week whose entire purpose was to stop and do something purposeless, just to look and see and be.  Henri came less and less in the years following college.  Eventually, his rigorous work schedule took over and he might visit for a day or two, but only if it was close to a city he had business contacts in.

The last one Ines planned was at a beach, hoping that if it was nice enough it might tempt their son to actually come and stay.  Mr. Seynan remembered the conversation as if it were yesterday.

“I just can’t get away, there’s a conference on waste appropriation,” he had told them on a call between meetings.

“Don’t you have assistants for that?” Ines had asked.

“I’m the one presenting, I want to make sure it’s done right.”

“Well, I'm grateful for all the work you're doing to save our planet, Henri.  Why don't you come and enjoy it with us?”

“I’ll send a care basket.”

“You’d better be in that basket Henri,” she told him. 

Mr. Seynan wanted to see his son, and for Ines to spend time with him, but it all sounded very urgent. The planet was important after all.

“The planet will be here in twenty years,” Ines had snapped when the call ended.  “We won’t be.”

Henri had been a curious observant child, allowing him to excel in school.  He did so well he became driven to use every scrap of his time, exponentiate the return, to succeed.  He had his mother’s brain for chemistry and a knack for technology.  When he went to the city for college and realized most people did not grow up on a farm, that in fact most people didn’t care about the environment and were slowly destroying the planet for future generations, he launched a business venture to save the world. 

Mr. Seynan hadn’t seen much of himself in his boy’s interests, but he wondered if growing up on a farm, if seeing his father work with cattle and his mother grow flowers, had in some way directed his course.  All the same, he wasn’t surprised when Henri didn’t come on vacation.  He was never good at watching time go by.

When Ines passed, it had shocked Henri.  He had been so busy conquering the world, solving the global waste problem to preserve the planet for ages to come, that he forgot to enjoy the time he had.  The doctors said she died of old age.

“Nobody dies of old age,” Henri had said after the funeral, holding an un-sipped glass with two fingers of an amber liquid.  “The body’s systems fail, they sicken, get heart disease like mom, and it doesn’t have the strength to fight it.” 

“It’s part of life,” Mr. Seynan had said, not knowing how to console his son.  Ines had always been better at knowing what to say to him.

“No, it’s not.  It’s death,” Henri had snapped.  “Life operates on its own steam.  It needs an upgrade.”  He finished the whisky in a single swallow. 

Mr. Seynan did not expect to see much of his son after that.  They had made plans for a retirement home, and he simply hoped Henri would visit.  But Henri surprised him by moving him into his personal residence.  A newly devoted son, Henri paid zealous attention to Mr. Seynan’s health, and disappeared with a new business venture.  He gave this new project, which Mr. Seynan did not grasp, the same dedicated concentration he had given to his doctoral thesis.

Mr. Seynan ate his vivid food and watched the vibrant birds as the memories returned.

Henri's business was the preservation of life for the future, but he never seemed to understand that life was lived in the present, enjoying the moments he had.  Mr. Seynan took another bite, crunching on something prickly that tasted mildly of chocolate.  Chocolate for breakfast.

Mr. Seynan had enjoyed every moment he had with Ines, all forty-seven years.  He would see her soon enough.  The trembling in his hands, the liver spots on his skin, told him that much.  But for now, Henri needed him.  Henri’s hazel eyes tracked the screen in his hand.  His warm honey hair, another gift from Ines, framing his face.

“What are we doing today?” Mr. Seynan asked.

“You have an appointment with the doctor,” Henri said.  Another sip.

“The doctor?”

“Dr. Peacock.”

“Ah yes, I remember.  Dr. Peacock.”

“And then you can do whatever you want,” Henri said. 

Mr. Seynan thought. 

“Do you know what you want to do with your time today?  It can be anything.”

“I’ve already done everything I want to do,” Mr. Seynan admitted.  The birds flitted by the windows.  “Maybe I’ll sit in your garden.  Would you like to join me?”

The offer in Henri’s eyes tightened, then disappeared.

“Not today, Dad, I’m sorry.  I have some meetings.  Another day.”

Mr. Seynan finished his breakfast, unsurprised.  He already saw more of his son than he expected to, and Henri was a busy man.  He wasn’t old and ready to take it slow yet.

“Another day then.”

---

Mr. Seynan was sitting in a chair.  He stroked the leather beneath his fingertips.  A quiet whirring.  The faint sound of ventilation.

“Motor reflexes are looking good.”

The room came into focus.  There were two men.  One had honey hair, faded in the dry industrial lights of the lab.  His skin was pallid, the freckles nearly erased.  His son.

“Henri,” he said.

Henri choked out a laugh.  He was leaning on the table, staring at him with his mother’s hazel eyes.  But there was something different about him.  Gone was the young boy who watched the world with curiosity.  Gone was the young man eager to conquer the markets and time itself.  The look in Henri’s eyes was closer to exhaustion, a ravenous hunger that starved even as it beheld the feast. 

Mr. Seynan felt he was a body in the sights of a carrion bird

“Cognition and memory look good, reversing the effects of previous damage,” the doctor said, reading something on the pad in his hands, tapping the screen.

Mr. Seynan made to push up.  His body felt excellent.  He didn’t remember the last time his body felt this good.  But something held him down.  On his shoulders metal bars, braces, kept him against the chair.  His legs were buckled into place, but the ache in his knees was gone.  IVs ran out of his arms, some coated in the flaking brown of old blood while others were a vibrant pomegranate red, as though his bodily fluid had been recycled for newer plasmas.  He felt a needle inserted into the top of his spine, and a port in his heart trailed tubes that glowed with radioactive green sludge.

A padded head brace kept his skull in place, but he must have wrestled against it because his brain ached.  His heartbeat powerfully, strong as the stallion he road when wrangling his cows.  The organ of his skin thrummed, no longer wrinkled like wax paper, but smooth, tan, even stronger than it had been when he was young.  He recalled with crystal clarity his eighty-two years of life, and began deciphering the meaning of the last few years living with his son.

“Henri,” Mr. Seynan began slowly, “What have you done?”

“It’s okay Dad, everything is going to be okay.”

The doctor clapped Henri’s back.  Mr. Seynan knew him.  He had spent nearly every day with him for the last three years, the lead scientist at ARGOSIA.  Something about a giant’s eyes…

“Your boy cracked the code on youth.  He’s changed the course of human history.  You should be very proud, Mr. Seynan.”

The machines breathed around him with the click and purr he associated with life-support pumps, whirring with the technological precision of the Peta-Hawk engines his son build.  This building, this project, was another achievement for him, another stock option for his company.  Mr. Seynan was another feather in his son’s cap.  Henri walked around the table and took Mr. Seynan’s hand, careful not to disturb the tubes. 

“We’ll get you out of this chair Dad, we just need to run a few more tests.”

Mr. Seynan grabbed his son’s hand with a ferocious strength that made Henri start.

“Henri, what have you done to me?”

“You’re going to live a long time Dad, no more Alzheimer’s, no more aches and pains, you’ll be young forever.  The formula reconstitutes the body’s cells, gets rid of unhealthy ones, regenerates, allowing optimal youth.  You can do all the things you’ve wanted to do now.”

At Mr. Seynan’s disbelief, Henri got a mirror and held it up to him.

Behind him were machines, empty tubes with a blue residue.   Before him was a young man, somewhere between his late twenties and early thirties, the flush of youth glowing through his tan skin.  His jaw was firm and strong, no longer drooping.  His hair was a glossy brown, the exact color of melted molasses, as Ines had once called it.  His eyes once again were a sharp dark blue.  The only difference was the light green ring around the iris.  It was iridescent. Engineered. Aberrant.

“I already did everything I wanted to do,” Mr. Seynan said. 

Ines was the best part of his life.  She had been taken away, and now, just at the point he would return to her…

Henri lowered the mirror.  “Now you have unlimited time Dad, you don’t have to go, you don’t have to die.  You will live forever.”

Forever.  He would live forever.  No Ines.  No rest.  To go through it all again without her, except this time there was no point because it would never end.  He was younger now than when the man across from him had been born.

“You never knew how to let go, Henri.  Without letting go, how can you enjoy what you have?”

Tears spilled down cheeks radiant with a synthetic vitality. 

Were they even his?  Were they even real?

---

Thank you for reading “The Eyes of Argos.” If you liked this month’s short story, please pass it along so I can share these free illustrated short stories with more people.

The next installment of “Refurbished” will be available to paying Subscribers in July. In the meantime, keep in touch with me on Instagram (@scdurbois).