|
Biography of an Immortal(continued) In truth, John seemed incapable of forgetting anything, whether he
wanted to or not. Especially if he wanted to. His brain was a thousand
libraries of memories and knowledge packed into a few cubic centimeters
within his skull. Memories of every second of his long life were sprinkled
throughout his undying gray matter: the history of every culture on
Earth he ever studied while searching for a record of other immortals
in past history; every language he learned in his search for an immortal
in his own time; tomes of medical scientific ideas from the books he
poured over as he tried to find an answer to the question of why his
body refused to die. None of which did him any good now. They were just
bright specks in his mind, jewels that he could bring out every so often
to look at. They were beautiful but had no practical value. And then
there were those darker memories that would surface to his consciousness
periodically, like bubbles in the thick stew he had eaten as a child.
Death. The deaths of every friend and family member he had ever known,
clear and vivid in excruciating detail. It was these friends that John thought of now. It was John's experience
that an immortal only rarely felt physical pain. Emotional pain was
another matter. If only they could be with him now. John had never been much of a scientist. In fact, he received no education
at all in his own era, and had not even learned to read until the latter
half of the nineteenth century. But he certainly read about the end
of the universe a number of times in his life since then. Indeed, books
were all he had to fill the time after his species had gone extinct
and before the insects took over the planet and slowly but efficiently
wiped every trace of Homo Sapiens from the earth. Of course, reading every book on the subject would not have prepared
John for the actual experience of watching the end of the universe.
No written word could have done the sight justice. John irritably tried to push the thoughts from his immortal brain. Forget about it. The thought will just eat away at you until there's nothing left of your mind but a dry husk. There was no one left in the universe, and there hadn't been for a billion lifetimes. Wishing wouldn't change anything. What good had come about from his one other true wish? What good had it been to wish to die? he reminded himself harshly. Wishing was pointless. He turned his attention back to the universe collapsing around him.
A million years passed. A hundred million. Billions. The cold black
filling the heavens above and below began to lighten to a dull gray
around John as the shrinking universe concentrated the existing energy
and photons into a hot visible mix. No words in any of the languages
he knew would have been able to convey the sheer beauty. John's heart
raced, pumping blood through his cold tissues in an almost forgotten
response to what had once filled his days: pure excitement. The intense heat burned John's flesh briefly, but John was only vaguely
aware of the slight discomfort in the heat that should have incinerated
him. As the surrounding darkness continued to lighten, John was able
to see himself clearly for the first time since he left Earth an eternity
ago. He looked down at his pale skin, stretched over an athletic build
that would never atrophy. A silent sob caught in his throat. It wasn't
fair to be plagued with this curse of perfect immortality. He hadn't
asked for it, and God alone knew how and why it had been given to him. His body was flawless, as it had always been and would always be, showing
no evidence of the numerous ways and times he had tried to damage or
destroy it. The razors, the fire, the ropes, pills, guns, knives, potions
and elixirs, and that last effort, the rocket. After his ship missed
the sun and drifted outside the boundaries of the solar system, it slowly
fell apart around him, leaving him naked and floating in the timeless
depths, exposed but invulnerable to the cold radiation of space. 
|
