I did 12 already, but ah yes, 218.
The year is 2206. I’m still breathing. I’m still active. It doesn’t make sense, they say. When I hit 150, news reports crop up in the local papers, which I manage mainly by ignoring them. At 160, bigger media conglomerates start knocking down my door. What’s your secret? Tell us your secret!
I avoid them, hire a reliable publicist to keep them off my back. Fire him when he sells an exclusive interview to the highest bidder. He gets a job working for the famous child prodigy who’s been accurately predicting the slow slump of continents into the rising oceans.
What’s your secret?
I think a lot about it, try to figure out what’s different about me, some easy trick I can share. The docs have got nothing, and after giving them every tissue sample imaginable for future research, I stay away from their tests. In a sort of cracked desperation, once I hit 200 I start attempting stuff other people have tried. “I lived to 140 eating only yogurt and potatoes!” so, hey, that couldn’t hurt, right?
Turns out it can. Turns out I now hate yogurt and potatoes. “I’ll never eat it for the rest of my life” is a pretty potent threat when you’re functionally immortal.
I start submitting my thoughts to a private log, which I know is about as private as a glass skytrain. But hell. I’ll put in the token effort. Maybe I want to be heard, a little. I try to reminisce about family, until that hurts to much. I try to get into politics. Read books. Stop when it becomes clear that people are actually paying attention to what I say.
Children send me pictures of their pets, together with heartbreaking, handwritten notes. Can you make Snickers live as long as you? And, with increasing hope, Can you bring Peaches back?
I can’t. I keep all the pictures, until my directory is full enough to begin attracting unwanted attention. And then, without much other choice, I start posting the pictures to my permanent, private log.
The pictures outlast the pets. The pictures outlast their owners. Millions upon millions of loving snapshots and videos of small creatures who were loved, once. I’ve dragged them with me into immortality.
For a long, long while, it’s enough.
#origfic #awesome #I think I was expecting an uploaded-consciousness kind of thing #mostly because of that one time I proofread an acquaintance’s Eclipse Phase fic #but this is great #and I thought the rest of you should see it too
Brinens and Things 