Coming Across

"Coming Across" is a short story by Harry Turtledove, published in Flights, edited by Al Sarrantonio, Roc 2004. It starts as a conventional fantasy story, introducing a race of immortal elves. As boredom is their greatest enemy, the elves engage in as much mental, physical, and emotional stimulation as possible. Part of their routine is promiscuous use of drugs and sex. They also have discovered a Door that crosses over into our world. Each elf takes turns coming across for a period of time, as they find humans, while primitive, to be quite entertaining.

The story focuses on Lingol, an elf who crosses over into San Francisco in the early 1980s. He enters into a temporary sexual relationship with a Quebecois homosexual flight attendant named Gaetan. Lingol then returns home and carries on about his life. However, past lovers soon become ill with a wasting disease that is resistant to the elves healing magic. Soon, elves begin committing suicide rather than suffer eternal wasting. Lingol commits suicide at the end of the story, and only as he dies does he think of Gaetan.

Literary Comment
The wasting disease that afflicts the elves is (of course) HIV/AIDS.

Gaetan is almost certainly Gaetan Dugas, a French-Canadian flight attendant who was theorized as being Patient Zero. This theory has been discarded in recent years.