Day 286 - Immortality Story

Immortality Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

His eyes opened and closed, barely able to perceive, let alone tell if there was any light. He didn’t know what time of day it was. Often times he forgot where he was and it took longer and longer for him to become reoriented.

At times he was very very sad. At times he was afraid. Not afraid of anything in particular, but just afraid in general. He would wake up, confused, unsure of himself and his surroundings. It was a sad pitiable existence.

His body was old and so very very weak. His body was old, but not his mind. At least he didn’t think so. It was probably hard to tell, but he felt his mind was still young and sharp and alive. He was probably fooling himself. The mind had a funny way of doing that. At least he knew that much.

He just lay there. All day. Every day. Lying in bed and sleeping a lot sounds like a good thing until that’s all you can do. Then it’s a little more like a living hell. He lay there with his thoughts. He didn’t speak. He didn’t open his mouth. No one was there to listen or to care. He thought a lot with no way to apply his thoughts into anything new or tangible. It really was a living hell.

Old old age turned out to be a great deal less than expected. He got sleepy more often and his mind wandered aimlessly now and he found it increasingly difficult to care about anything. He had thought about everything. He had evaluated every idea. He had forgotten more than he ever thought he would be able to learn. He had wisdom and experience and expertise and instead of being able to use any of it, he was stuck in a bed, slowly withering away.

He used to think life was a good thing. He used to want to live as long as he could and grow as old as possible. Now he would wonder which would die first – his body or his mind. He wondered if he would even be able to tell. Would they shut off at the same time? If his body died first would his mind exist in some tragic state of half-existence? Would that be any worse than what he faced now? He didn’t know, but he thought about things like that all the time. He wasn’t ready to give up on life yet, but he couldn’t make up his mind if what he had right now constituted life at all.

He couldn’t remember his name – he was too old. That should have been a clue. It wasn’t. His mind was too far gone. He didn’t realize who he was anymore or where he was or why. Sometimes though, something would come back, something horrible, something awful, like remembering just a taste of what it had been like to truly be alive. He would scream and curse and pray and sometimes hope. The worst was when he would hope for something more again and then stay lucid long enough to realize hope was futile. That was when he would want to commit suicide. But sadly, when he was lucid enough to realize hope was futile, he was also lucid enough to realize suicide was impossible. Then the real tragedy of his existence would sink in and the depression beyond depression would rise inside him.

He was trapped. Trapped in a box. He had no escape. He had aspired to greatness. He had sought power. He had achieved too much of what he had wanted. And they loved him for it. They loved him and hated him and feared him. But they loved him. He was a god. And his reward was to be stuck in a box forever, awake, alive, but dead and slowly rotting. It was a punishment fitting for his hubris to seek such greatness.

Thankfully he didn’t often remember all of this.

It would have been just terrible otherwise – truly terrible.

His body was rotten and wrecked. It had been preserved, but time wasn’t to be defeated that easily. Too much time. No amount of preparation or preservation was going to best too much time. His body was gone. His bones were brittle. His muscles non-existent. Somehow his mind was still there, even if his brain wasn’t. His mind was mostly clouded and foggy and didn’t fully comprehend the extent of all that had occurred. But his mind was still there. It lasted and lasted and lasted. It was bound to the remnants of what he had once been, unable to move on. He was too far gone to realize he should even want anything else.

His mind wandered. He lost track of what he could remember. His mind’s eye closed and he had a fanciful dream of something bright and lively, but he couldn’t fully make it out or realize what it was supposed to be. It didn’t matter. His mind wasn’t there enough anymore to know what his mind’s eye didn’t know.

His mind wandered, his body was gone, and yet unaware, his life continued on.