THE WAY IT WENT DOWN: FREEDOM AND TIME

Things become wondrous in their absence...even terrible things, the things that people live in fear of. Given the right circumstance, anything, any horror, can become beautiful to the right person. Aging, illness, death...these are precious to me now.

People dream of immortality but do not understand what it means. The facts of it. They imagine a stillness. The ability to have infinite time. Infinite freedom. But it is not that. Immortality is about an ever-speeding up of time and place, of a relentless mountain of memory burying your past, of great decades of existence that are nothing more than a distracted blink to you while the world churns on, changing and moving like a river.

Immortality is about maintenance and foresight. What could be worse that being immortal and hungry? Or without a home? Or captured? Much of my sped-up time is taken up by my affairs. Little wheels of commerce that I set to spin out and spiral into bigger wheels. The real trick, of course, is to see to it that I am not required to turn them, or, indeed, that I appear connected to them at all. They feed me and clothe me, and not a few of the enterprises might be familiar to you, but they are what they are: a machine to keep me from considering a daily toil and avoiding interference.

And the memories? Times and places and people. Too many to count. When I began to note them down, it was on rough paper I bought from a man in York whose mother had survived the great plague, but now of course, I use computers. Long, long ago my notes transformed into a short-hand of my own design; so of course, no one but me might understand them, but they are there. Hundreds of years of notes. Millions of names and places and wars and sums all in a code that only I can read. I write them down because that's something else they do not tell you about immortality: past sixty years, memories begin to...fade...to blend together. To warp. Past one hundred years? It is a haze.

So I keep my notes, and review them every decade or so. And the older I become (though my body does not change) the more entertaining this reading becomes. The more of a stranger I am in the past. The more secretive, and wondrous, and special, and odd. I was a character! And my achievements and travels and thoughts and friendships — if they were indeed real — marvel me.

I have told you the work, and the more neutral points of the needs of it, but I have not told you the downsides. I cannot be killed except in very specific ways, as far as I know. Yes, and my body heals even the most grievous wounds, but I see you are looking at my neck. Yes, it was broken once, not too long before, and you might note an odd tilt to my head? I have yet to work up the will to snap it again. When I woke, it had already...mended itself. Whatever this thing is that drives me, it takes the shortest route between two points. My body is a map of scars which would make an anatomist weep. And I do indeed feel all the pain of such things. So that is point one.

Point two is that I knew one like me, once. One from before me, and I saw him burned — and you must trust me, because there was nothing for me to do of it — alive. When the flame touched him, and he burned, his skin ran like wax, and he fell off the pyre and crawled about for some time. Even when the men struck the burning corpse with axes, the bits cleaved from his body twitched and moved. Then they poured pitch on the parts and burned that, and in the end, what was left — black ashes — moved no more. I waited at the charnel pit for three days, and he did not return. So...that is the only way I am certain we might die.

I imagine there are other ways out, of course. But disease, aging, bullets, nooses, drowning, spears and arrows, car crashes, train crashes, explosions. All of these have tried and failed. Sometimes more than one at once. And each time it is months of recovery. Sometimes years. But always, eventually, even my hair grows back. Still, the scars on the skin remain so that even now, I look a bit like a jigsaw man.

What happened to me, to bring me this immortality, is too odd to speak of, now. There was a book. There was what you might call a spell. And yes, I know the methods and ways. And yes, it could be done to you. But I will say, right now, it is not for everyone. And before you ask, no, it is not for you. For the tumor that eats you now, that too would become immortal. That too would live forever.

Trust me, friend, a death here...a hard fought death where each day is precious is a million times more special than my relentless now. As I said, death and illness, these things have become beautiful to me...dear. And here is where I tell you to say nothing, lest my secret escape, and people grow suspicious or I shall take out my rage upon your family.

I joke, of course. Feel free to say what you like to the hospital staff or your family. Tell them everything. Be free with your words. It is no matter. They are used to strange stories in hospice.  

Value the days you have, and rest, and we shall speak of this again my friend, and you may ask me of any time and place I might recall. I have read up what I could and I have many, many stories. And we shall pass this time, and I shall tell you more of why you should not like to live forever after all.