I don’t remember much anymore, not in detail anyway. But I still remember the first time we became suspicious that something might be wrong. I’d taken a tumble, two-stories, working on a friend’s house (I don’t remember who the friend was at all) and the doctor had called my condition “miraculous” afterward. I’d never gotten hurt when I was boy, but then, I hadn’t exerted myself much, so that first time, that was a real shock.
The miracles got more and more miraculous though, until they got less and less. By the time we first really delved into it—tried figuring it all out—I’d been myself aware of it for quite a while, having endured quite a few things I’d elected not to share. By we, I mean me and Meryl, my second wife. I remember her best of all of them, I think, and I’d like to think it’s not just because I went through all that with her, but because I really did love her. She had red hair. It was with Meryl that I first woke up and said to her “Do I look like I’ve aged since I was thirty-five?” and she said no, but that a lot of men looked very young at forty-two, if they ate healthy, but then I stopped eating healthy, and then the big fifty came, and I still looked thirty-five, and that’s when we went to the doctors and started to really get into it all. They tried doing all kinds of small things to me then, blood tests and what have you, but they couldn’t get to my blood, even though they were sure I had it, and that’s when it got really strange. You’d probably think, from the way I’m describing it, that it was a big deal, but back then, it was hard for word to get around. You had to read it off your computer screen, and you had to do quite a bit to get there, and you had to own a computer, and you had to have money for that, and I don’t even want to get into what money was, or how that worked. But basically, aside from a few million people taking interest, there wasn’t much to it. Granted, that was a lot of people back then, unheard of at that time. Millions of people often talked about things or took interest in things, but I was a celebrity in my own right, and that lasted maybe a hundred years or so, before people just sort of got used to it. When I was seventy-two, the government took me in and started doing tests on me, but they found nothing. They spent years telling people that I was the key to stopping people from dying, but I wasn’t, and I’m not. I couldn’t even stop Meryl. She died when I was ninety-one. She was eighty-six. She was the first one to tell me that I should write my story down. That was difficult to do though, because being the Invincible Man meant I was busy. It wasn’t just government tests either, it was autographs and talk-shows, and all of those things. Talk shows were programs where you spoke to other famous people while regular people watched, and back then, you couldn’t watch everything at once, so there was a lot of fighting over who got to talk to me. Around the time that started to die off, the government people gave up for a while too. There just wasn’t anything special about me, other than that I didn’t age and couldn’t get hurt. By the time I celebrated my 150th with Marlene, no one thought I was some cure anymore, and I wasn’t even all that well known. I was just the guy who couldn’t die, and I have to tell you, I preferred it that way. I remember thinking then, that I would never get used to it, but I did. As the years went by, I got used to a lot of it. I even got used to other people dying. I remember the first time one of my children died. Hugh was ninety when he went, colon cancer (which was much worse back then). Oh, that broke my heart. I know he’d lived a good, long life to most, but to me, he went by in a flash. I’ve raised so many children in my life, and they’ve all went by like that, but his was the first and that stings. The youngest I’ve ever had a child die was Lucille. She was twelve. Drowned. I was around four hundred and seventy when that happened. I remember that a lot. I’d be lying if I said I remembered a lot else, though. I don’t remember a lot of my children, or my wives, or my husbands. A lot of my marriages, I know, weren’t really all that real--it was with people who wanted to be with me because of what I am, and who maybe thought that their kids would be like that, or something, but it was just never the case. I’ve lived through so much and I’ve seen some incredible things come and go, and I’ve seen people overcome a lot, but never dying. No, aside from me, oldest anyone’s ever made it I think was around 191, some women from J-52. But she aged, people knew she was going. I still look thirty-five. I was asked a lot about how things used to be, but when you’ve been around for a while, that’s a hard thing to answer, because things used to be a lot of ways. If you want to go back, I remember CrossLimb and LiveNow, back when you had to wait months to get a new arm or leg that fit right or an organ that worked. But if you want to go really far back, I remember wheelchair ramps, and hearing aids, and braille. And sign language. It’s always hard to explain what it meant when someone couldn’t see or hear or walk, because, of course, it’s all kind of merged together today. I’ve joined in on the times, of course, but even without all this damn heavy equipment, I’d still be able to function fine. Not like how it is now though, with UpLink. Now you’re born and you’re just immersed in this world, and these people have no idea what it means to be impaired. A lot of words have vanished, actually. That’s probably the strangest thing, even with all this new technology; the words. For the longest time, I was always learning new words, new languages even. Now it’s all one language, and words get phased out every day, I think. I remember “phones” (devices that used to MindSync, but not really MindSync, you could just talk from really far away) and I remember all the different words we had for places to live, like “apartments” and “condos” and those kinds of things, before Home1, Home2, etc. Once we started mixing numbers and words to make things more simple, it got a lot harder for people like me. A lot of that’s the reason I never got around to writing, I think. I remember talking to \/\ <^-|_|-> |-} (pronounced Yiz*ryei), my fifty-third wife, (who I think I remember because she reminds me a lot of T’raha, my twelfth) and her asking me why I didn’t write down all the things that I’d seen and been a part of. I think I answered something along the lines of not needing to; because anybody could know any of those things, if they bothered, so there was no reason to putting down my account of of anything. But that wasn’t really true. Truth was, I’d fallen out of it all, and didn’t think I’d know how to write things down. There are so many things that don’t even have physical words because they came around after we stopped using them. My memory isn’t all that strong either, honestly. It’s better than it should be, all things considered, I suppose, but I’ve often considered that if I decided to write, I might not remember how, or at least not in any meaningful language. I’m a little surprised at myself now, actually. Other things that I often get asked are just about what I’ve done, you know, what kind of life I’ve lived. That’s probably the weirdest thing to answer, because so much of it is really irrelevant; a lot of the things that people dedicate their lives to, the things they build, most of them really don’t last. I have a great-great-great granddaughter, I forget her name, but she helped create a sport that people still play today sometimes. I don’t know the name of it. But that’s actually the only thing I know of that’s really come from my lineage, and I’ve honestly lost count of all of my descendants. I’m sure they’re still out there reproducing, but I’ll never find them. On my end, a lot of what I’ve done is menial. Most of the work I’ve done was back when work was a bad thing, when you actually had to do things, and that was all back before you were assigned your tasks, so I jumped around. I’ve built things by hand (back when it was done that way) I’ve sorted programs, I’ve steered people during mass emigrations, I’ve done all of middle-of-the-pack stuff, and I’ve never really excelled at anything. That’s something that people never seem to understand, once they find out I’m the Invincible Man. That it doesn’t really do much. By the time I was 200, everyone that had been alive to see the whole ordeal unravel was dead, and nobody really cared, and now when people get close and scan me, and it shows up, they tend to mention it, but it never really carries a conversation. Everyone has just seen so many amazing things. Things we’ve done to ourselves, things out in space. You have to keep mind that this stuff I’m writing, it all happened back on A1 (we called it Earth back then) and there really wasn’t a lot of people, or a lot going on. So it was a big thing back then, having someone who couldn’t die. But there’s just stranger things out there, more practical things too, I guess. I don’t mind it, I like it, actually, but it’s a bit frustrating being this niche thing, where every now and then someone scans me, is actually surprised to see my age and learn my story, then starts asking me all these questions. I’d rather be a complete celebrity or a no-one, I hate the in-between. I was just over nine-hundred when the government came to me again, told me they were going to do tests on me, that they knew all about how it hadn’t worked last time, but now technology was better, now it was going to work. They’re the only thing that hasn’t changed, really. They’ll just never get it. They gave up after ten years or so, just like before. They never tried again. But then, they have changed, I suppose, it’s just been so slow that no one other than me has noticed. That might be the biggest thing that I can offer, really, but no one ever asks me to talk about it, because we don’t think about those things anyway. But I’ve been on planets long enough to see the waters dry up. I’ve watched entire stars burn out from a distance. I suppose that means that there’s something about me beyond being invincible; I can appreciate things just for happening. No one else does that. There needs to be something extra nowadays. You’re probably wondering just how long this has been going on for then, given what I’ve seen, but the truth is, I don’t know how to convey time anymore. Back when I was growing up--when I was first hitting thirty-five--time was this thing that everyone registered all at once. But now everyone’s scattered and time is slower here or faster there, and those words don’t make sense anymore either, but the system we’ve got now, with the big orb that glows different colors? There’s definitely no physical words for that. Which is upsetting, now that I think about it, because even though I know that no one can even read this, because no one knows physical words today, I’m realizing there will be probably be a point where no one can even think it. And then it might as well just not be real, and then I’ll be the only thing from some other reality entirely, living in this one here. And it’s a shame too, because there’s so much I want to go over about what I’ve seen, I’ve left out all of it, really, but no matter how long I make this, how much I write, I’ll never be any closer, because things are happening as I’m writing, and it’s just so damn frustrating. I do want to explain money. I want to talk about war, what that was, how what we have now is so much worse. You’ve probably read all about the Revolution, but I was there, I saw the Glass Prism shatter, I was two planets away. I want to talk about before we numbered things, or at least, back when we only numbered some things, and only things in a set. And religion! Gods, maybe there’s no physical words for what that’s like now either. As frustrating as it is, it’s funny in a way. It’s funny because the biggest change, more than anything else, is how everyone else's perspective changed. Back in that first time, circa me at thirty-five, the only thing everyone had in common was that they feared the end. That one day this was all going to stop, that one way or another, everything was going to go away. But we’ve known for a while now that that’s not the case. Everything eventually dies except for two things--the “universe” (now that’s an old word), and me. So people aren’t worried about the end anymore, because they know that even when they die, things are still going to happen. I’m the only one that doesn’t like it. Because I was counting on that, for a really long time. And now I feel even more left out, because it was one thing when I was the only one not dying, but it’s another thing to be the only one that thinks that dying is a big deal.
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About MeVekin87 is the author of the Albus Potter Series, a 7-book continuation of the J.K Rowling's Harry Potter books. The Things I Write While You're Asleep |
Photo used under Creative Commons from verchmarco