Endless: An Autobiography of an Immortal

Chapter 19 - Greece

Well, to be clear, this happened before the experiments on the elixir of life potions so I was still optimistic about contributing to the world. I went to Greece just after I "died" in Rome. Even from here I heard of Rome's next King loving nothing but war and doing everything he could to amass great fortune while expanding his territory. The talk in Greece was if he'd expand to the east and cause trouble in this part of the world. I still had hopes up till then of embedding myself in the government and ruling over here, but seeing the bloodlust of my successor I quickly gave that up. I was disheartened to see such a turn of events the moment I left. It was like they completely forgot what I tried to instill in them as a people. It was at this moment I knew that ruling the various powers of the world was futile. No lasting change was possible. Nothing stayed the same. So I quit that idea for good. Focusing on learning, and sharing that instead. Until, of course, China broke me.

While Rome was the up and coming power of the world, Greece was mature enough at that point to give way to many influential thinkers. People were not always caught up in war and thus able to pursue thoughts of interest. Science, math, ethics, religion, politics. Everything was open to new ways of thinking. From the baker to the banker and the soldier to the farmer, all walks of life were looking around them and finding discoveries. Some were very smart and came up with some amazing theories all the while working as a laborer to support their families. I would seek out those that had the inquiring mind and discuss with them at length. I had previously started writing down my ideas when I was in Rome and continued to do so here with my own and the people's ideas. Personally I didn't need them written for my own sake. Having perfect recall allowed me to remember everything that was told to me. I was trying to write it all down in order to share it with others who had the same field of interests so they wouldn't have to reinvent something that had already been figured out but never widely known since it came from a baker instead of a famous author. But then I met Pythagoras and I learned not to do that again.

While catching up with a friend on his latest math theories he told me about a man who, according to the rumors, found the key to immortality. My face lit up and I instantly wanted to know more. My friend laughed and made a passing remark about how it'd probably be pretty boring to live forever. Oh, if he only knew. I had to ask around to finally find out the man's name and where I could find him. I set off right away. When I finally caught up to him and started talking to him at length it became apparent that the legendary first philosopher was a legendary fraud. His so-called "transmigration of souls" theory was an absolute tripe created to defraud the gullible elite class in giving him money so that they could be saved from death. My heart fell instantly. I really wanted to believe the possibility. Probably why I was so headstrong in creating that elixir in China later. The other theories and ideas Pythagoras had were all rehashed from the very same ones I had in my collection. He would change them or describe them differently just enough to convince lesser intellectuals and ignorant people that they were astounding new concepts, showering him with money and gifts. He was the first con artist I had ever knowingly encountered. It wasn't a pleasant experience.

I have to admit I lost my temper. I called him a fraud and pulled out the proof to show the world. In hindsight, this was a mistake, but I wasn't thinking clearly in my rage. I was just heartbroken and uncontrollable. I went back to the inn I was staying at to calm down, unaware of being followed there. A couple from across the street was showing me hospitality by sharing a meal with me which gave Pythagoras' people the opportunity to steal my things. Obviously I never left anything "special" hanging around, but I didn't think that my work would have been stolen. I ended up spending the night at the couple's place as they had a much better room available. The inn was basically a dark closet with a bed, so I appreciated the opportunity for a good night's sleep. When I went back in the morning and noticed the room was cleaned of all my possessions I first assumed the inn had cleaned the room thinking I wasn't coming back. I spent a large amount of time talking to several different staff members until it dawned on me what had happened. I ran to Pythagoras' place and demanded an audience, which was quickly denied. I had Omni secretly scan the place in search of him. He was gone. Even with all my fancy toys I was not able to find out where he went. Being an expert con man, he knew not to share where he was going with people I could persuade to tell me. I was dejected and defeated.

It didn't take long for Pythagoras to "invent" several new concepts and theories that just happened to be the exact ones from my papers. The ill-informed public lapped it up lock, stock, and barrel. Several of his colleagues knew better but even together we were unable to persuade the gullible public from devouring his every utterance. Even after his death his followers would contribute to the lies and falsehoods with increasingly loud voices. Seems loud beats the truth more often than not. Which was sad to see. I would eventually just steer clear of them and not engage with them again. To relax I would attend building projects to watch grand structures being built around Athens. As many other people, then and today, the Parthenon was my favorite. While there I met a man named Heraclides but he was here for a different reason. The Parthenon was being built as a temple to Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Heraclides was here to show respect and ask for her blessing. He explained to me that his wife had just given birth to a new son, Hippocrates, and he was seeking the help of the gods to bless the new addition to his family. In our discussion I found out that he was a physician of sorts, having descended from a family who has always practiced a form of medicine. Back then medicine and worship of the gods were basically the same thing as one had always relied on the other. After I had mentioned that I was skilled in an herbal form of medicine, Heraclides insisted I go back with him to Kos to talk more and maybe even be a tutor to his son once he was of age. He thought I might be the answer to his prayer. So with a renewed spirit, I welcomed the offer.

I stayed on Kos, a Greek island, for many years. First instructing Heraclides and then Hippocrates, teaching them that using herbs in medicine was effective. I had also started seeing a sedentary lifestyle develop among the Greeks and encouraged others to be more active. Far too many sat around the baths but did little physical labor, then wondered why they were always getting sick. They would also have far too little variety in their diets, focusing more and more on meat so I tried to instill a good diet among the populous. When one plays the role of a physician, might as well go all out. Some, curious for my credentials, asked where I was from. I needed a place that seemed far enough away, exotic almost, but still believable. I said I was from Selymbria (which is in present day Turkey) and that I was a gymnastic coach, which is why I was into eating right, exercise, and massage to keep one healthy. I guess Pythagoras wasn't the only con artist. In my defense I didn't portray a character for wealth or fame. I just wanted to fit in and help others and the only way to do that was to lie about who I was.

Hippocrates was eager to learn when he grew old enough and I was able to teach him what I knew. The challenge at the time, however, was that it was taboo to dissect a body so I wasn't able to teach him about the various biology things I had previously learned. This greatly limited a physician's ability to learn about disease and prevention. I did the best with what I had. In any case, I enjoyed the time together and in many ways he far surpassed me, which gave me hope for his future as well as increased my own knowledge of various things. When it was time for me to leave I had seen Hippocrates grow from a very smart pupil to an accomplished doctor. He had rejected the superstition of disease due to punishment by the gods which was long ingrained in the Greek culture. His practice grew and his fame did as well. I would check up on him from time to time secretly and while some of his theories were wrong, he did the best for the time he lived in and I was so proud of what he became.

Throughout these many years I would meet almost all of the now famous Greek philosophers. Sorry to say that Socrates and Plato were my least favorite. They had some, shall we say, interesting ideas, but I was not drawn into their discussions. I preferred a hands on approach and a focus on science not a debate on ideas or reality. Plato even made fun of me when I lost my temper one time with him and added a joke inside one of his works about an island sinking into the sea after I told him where he could stick his ideas. Aristotle, on the other hand, I got along swimmingly with. We would share our research notes with each other and talk for hours on subjects like zoology and botany. His wife was equally smart and a biologist in her own right, so we'd spend many days and nights together talking about that. While Aristotle and I were scientists at heart we didn't always agree on many things. For one thing, he was extremely racist. He hated all who weren't Greek and I had to be careful around him when I referenced other nation's achievements to science, as he made rude remarks and walked off. I didn't understand where this dislike of other cultures came from and it didn't make sense to me how a person who thought they were intelligent could come to such an incorrect conclusion that they were born better than everyone else just because of the location of their birth and the color of their skin. How he justified war to Alexander the Great and yet at the same time talking about Ethics was mind-boggling. Although, when I see what's happening in the world today, I guess nothing has really changed.

Another disagreement we had was the same as his former teachers. I just was not interested in his epistemology or metaphysics studies. What I was interested in was his ideas in science, biology, geology, and psychology. Listening to him tell me at length that geology was the earth changing but it was too slow for humans to observe in their lifetime was a test of wills. He was exactly right, but if he only knew the changes I had seen over the course of thousands of years we could have written scores of volumes together that would make people's heads spin. Then there were his viewpoints on women. Much like his thoughts on race, he deemed women as inferior to men in more ways than I can count. He wanted women to be happy only because it would keep the peace. They were also required to be happy in their place as inferior, not happy in general, which made no sense. His wife couldn't take the emotional abuse suffered by him and finally took her life. It's surprising this was never written down in the history books, but when you're famous, have money, and were friends with the King, you can make just about anything go away. His daughter blamed him for what happened, lashing out and causing him headaches by her many broken marriages. Then she disappeared. It wasn't hard to connect the dots. I decided to steer clear of that whole mess and also dropped off the map.

I came to live in Alexandria just after Alexander founded it. I still wanted to be around the forward-thinking Greeks but also wanted to escape all their drama. It was here that I wrote a book on Mathematics. I had throughout the years given math a great deal of thought and finally put it all down in writing. I released the book under a random name I thought was glorious at the time and sat back to see what happened. To my great delight it was well received. I ended up writing several more books all on mathematics and shapes of objects. I was renowned all across the empire and many wanted to meet me in person, but no one knew who Euclid even was. That's just how I wanted it. When Archimedes took over as the lead mathematician a few years later everyone was distracted enough to no longer care. Fame was seriously fleeting and I just wanted to advance the human race so it didn't bother me at all. Since the populace at large was no longer looking for me it was very easy to keep everyone in the dark. Speaking of the dark, it was at this time I had the most profound and life-altering dream of all time.

I had just finished writing a book on shapes and I couldn't get the dodecahedron out of my mind. Images of the shape would flash into my mind constantly. I had trouble sleeping, trouble meditating, even trouble going about my day. Common sphere objects would transform into dodecahedrons when I looked at them. I had to rub my eyes over and over again for it to go away. Something about it was giving me a weird feeling like I should be extremely familiar with it. I tried to retrace my steps throughout eons of memories but never found something that gave me such a chilling reaction. Then one night it happened. A dream that would set me off on a wild adventure and a discovery of a lifetime.

I was standing in the field on the island I awoke on. Suddenly the ground gave way and I fell into an abyss. Omni came and picked me up in his protective shell. The bubble started to shrink and I felt as if I was gasping for air under the water. I reached out to escape Omni's force when it turned into the image of the globe of the earth that Omni shows. I pushed my way up out of the earth and stood up. Omni was gigantic in size because I was small enough to fit on his projection. He started glowing and I became instantly fearful as it was the color of power. A light shone onto my upper body and before I could react my heart was ripped out of my chest. It was beating and dripping in blood yet I was still alive. Omni brought it closer to him all the while it transformed in shape. From my beating heart came irradiate heat and sense of power as it turned into a burning ball. It didn't stop there. Pentagons made from the material that made up Omni, Psyche, and Water Bottle came flying past me, encasing the star until it was in the shape of the mysterious dodecahedron. It came to a rest inside Omni, beating like a heart. I gasped in understanding when suddenly Omni exploded sending me into the air. I landed in the Mediterranean Sea not too far from my original island home. The water was unusually warm and beneath me glowed a brilliant orange. Though I am an expert swimmer I was unable to fight the current as I was sucked below the waves. Down and down I went as the water became unbearably hot. I was being pulled towards the dodecahedron shaped device sitting on the ocean floor. The sea creatures that were around me were wide-eyed in fear as they too were sucked down towards the device. I tried to scream but bubbles rose up instead, then got sucked down themselves. Faster and faster I gravitated towards the dodecahedron until I was pulled directly into it.

I woke up yelling and dripping in sweat; confused and blinded by the noon sun. That was the most intense dream I had ever experienced. The maid came in to see if I was alright, screamed and ran away. I didn't know what was happening but knew I needed to compose myself. Once I got my bearings I headed over to the bowl on the table and splashed some water on my face. I looked down to see my reflection. My face was split into five different versions of myself from time's past. No wonder she was shocked. I quickly fixed my face and had just put it back to my normal Greek self when the cook came crashing into the room waving a pot in every direction. I demanded to know what the commotion was about. The maid peaked around the corner and looked at my face, confused by what she saw. Again requesting an answer to the invasion of my privacy they excused themselves profoundly and backed out of the room. I could hear the cook berate the maid and her insistence that something wasn't right about me. It didn't matter. Once I had gathered my things, I'll never see them again. I knew what I had to do and where to go to find it.

After Omni dropped my things off on my island I went straight to the location in the Mediterranean that was in my dream. It was further north in the Gulf of Naples in Italy and I remarked how close it had always been to me for the last couple thousand years. I asked Omni to protect me and bring me down into the waters. I could feel the coldness of the deep as we descended into the darkness. We reached the bottom of the sea but I could not see what was even in front of me. Once I requested Omni to light up the area, the place lit up and I could see all around me. A large sperm whale swam directly above me, curious why I was there. I waved at him out of impulse. I love sea creatures. When I looked back down to the sea floor I noticed a slight reflection about 100 meters away. I cautiously walked towards it. I stepped over some debris from a sunken ship, one that looked like it carried valuable metals, but I didn't care for those things. My mind and eyes were focused on one thing and one thing only. I walked along the sea flood made momentarily dry by Omni. Having reached the device, my heart was pounding against my chest and I looked up to make sure Omni wasn't glowing. I clutched my chest and forced myself to calm down. There at my feet laid the dodecahedron from my dreams covered by thousands of years of sediment. I half expected it to start beating. I hesitantly grabbed a hold of it and picked it up. Then willed Omni to take me home.

The device was about the size of a soccer ball being exactly 70 centimeters in circumference and weighed 9.801 kilograms, which is a little over 21 lbs. Being made with the same material of my other devices, I could guess it came from the same place. Following the interpretation of my dream I knew this was the heart of the other devices, what made them keep going. It was their power source. I asked Omni to tell me more about it as it had no symbols or openings, nor gave any response to my constant prodding. Omni scanned the device quickly but I had a feeling it already knew what it was. Of the images that it showed me one looked like a ball that was on fire, but instead of the flames reaching towards the sky they spread out in every direction. It was inside the device but the walls seem to absorb what came off the ball. What was that ball? I felt I knew the answer, but asked Omni to tell me anyway. Omni's image changed to the Earth, then zoomed out until the ball was in sight. Ah, it was the Sun, just a different color. My gut feeling was right. Omni showed that there were several other different colored balls floating around the Sun as well as the Earth. This would call for more study, but first I wanted to know more about the dodecahedron.

How it survived 290,000 years under the water was baffling. Hell, how any of them kept looking brand new was unfathomable. Everything around me degraded and wore away; every house of wood or even stone I had built, all the monuments and statues I had designed in Egypt, even the pyramids had already started showing their age. Yet these devices kept their original shape and shine. Almost like myself, though I knew my body was constantly renewing itself. I wondered if the devices somehow did the same. I asked Omni to show me how it was receiving life from the new device. It showed images I could hardly comprehend. There were also translation issues as none of the languages I knew had terminology for what it was trying to show me. It tried its best, though. It seems there was a non-physical connection between them all that shared the power that was generated from within the dodecahedron and it made energy by having a small sun inside. It was literally solar powered. Any time one of the other devices needed to recharge the power device would create a miniature sun, harvest the power, transfer it to the devices, charge itself, and then shut down. Nothing was wasted by keeping it active all the time nor was there any exhaust or anything left over. Due to my island being constantly hidden from the world's gaze by several Omni devices the power device was turning on more frequently. But something was still bothering me and I really shouldn't have questioned it.

How did I have that dream, which was unbelievably scary and accurate. The dream told me what the device did, what it looked like, and exactly where to find it. Dreams aren't supposed to do that. I was still looking over the power device to see if I had missed a symbol or button of some kind when it hit me. The fascinated smile on my face vanished instantly and my eyes slowly moved over to Omni. It knew what I wanted without speaking verbally when needed, which meant it could read my mind. I wondered if it could also influence my mind. I didn't hesitate. I immediately asked if it sent me that dream. When it glowed purple a chill went down my spine. Purple was affirmative. This device was frighteningly powerful. Once I started getting the hang of its capabilities, more strange powers would reveal themselves to me. I was worried what else it could do, what it could do to me. I begged it to tell me why it would do that. It picked me up and brought me back to the location where I found the power device. Then it moved closer to land, towards Mount Vesuvius, which was getting far bigger than I remembered. Images showed up in front of me overlaid on the background of the landscape. It showed various movements of stuff under the ground. I didn't know what it all meant, just that the power device was in danger and needed to be moved. I then understood. Omni knew the device was in trouble and the power contained with it could have caused widespread destruction if left to be damaged. Just what the danger was I didn't know until many years later when the mountain exploded.

I was on my island at the time, doing my best to continue to learn more about the power device and even see what else Omni could do. Omni flashed his warnings and just like last time I was spirited away to helplessly watch Pompeii and Herculaneum be obliterated by an exploding volcano. I wanted to go help, but Omni warned me that harmful gases were killing people and the only way to help would be to reveal myself and the technology along with me. After careful thinking, I knew what I had to do. I went back to the island and grabbed Psyche. I used both devices in order to put people to sleep as soon as I was near them then used Omni to bring them out of harm's way. I was not able to save everyone, especially those already dying in the city centers, but I was able to save many from the surrounding areas. They would later wake up not knowing what happened or how they got there and blamed it on the fumes from the explosion. That was for the best. The years after the mountain erupted was pretty odd to me. Everyone would go back to their daily lives faster than I thought possible. Just a few short years later Rome had already started building the Colosseum. I realized that I wasn't moving on as fast as I could be. The curse of having an instant recall of thousands of years of memory was that everything stayed fresh in my mind. While nothing was forgotten, I still had to move on just like the people of Rome. The people had to leave Pompeii behind them and look elsewhere. I had to finally admit that the answers to my many questions about myself weren't going to be on Earth. I've lived here for eons and never once got a clue of where I'm from. Only the devices were as unique as myself. I had to leave Earth behind and look elsewhere for answers.