I woke the morning of my five-hundredth birthday with the surreal realization flooding my thoughts: I'm five hundred years old! How is that possible? Even having lived those years in full knowledge of the answer, I struggled with its incomprehensibility when the day finally came.
I hadn't been celebrating my birthdays for many years by then. With so many behind me and so many likely ahead, there seemed no sense in continuing to make the passing of another year a big deal. So I hadn't received a birthday present since my sixtieth when my wife gave me forever. The memory of which continued to cause grief and pain. She gave me eternal life but sacrificed her own. And I lost her. Forever.
I celebrated my hundredth birthday with the woman I'd dated for several years, but I had already determined it was nearing the time for that relationship to end. I didn't remember whether she'd even known it was my birthday, certainly not that it had been my hundredth. She'd only been a little more than half my age. So, in many ways, to me, she felt far too young. Although, I'd appeared thirtyish again for years by then, turning our perceived ages nearly one-hundred-eighty degrees. She was quite happy being seen out with a younger man. I vaguely remembered getting laid.
The last birthday to have significance for me was my one-hundred-twenty-fifth. An arbitrary age, but for the fact that before my wife's discoveries, it had been the age that most biologists generally accepted to be the theoretical upper limit of the duration of a human lifetime. Following this, I'd given even that milestone little thought. But five hundred struck me as one of indisputable significance.
Why do these numbers matter to us? I wondered as I detached myself and climbed from the rack-like device where I'd slept the past few decades and peeled off my Virt suit. Mary remained asleep in an identical rack and Virt suit. We slept in these suits at the time, as did nearly all the other Immortals and many of the mortals in the developed areas of the world. Otherwise, it was too easy to become lost out in Virtuality and never awakened. Of course, these suits weren't something new, but new to anyone not old enough to have been around all those years ago when I'd been misbehaving.
We still had an actual bed, which we hadn't slept in since acquiring our Virt Racks. But Mary insisted we have one, even if most of our immortal neighbors saw them as unnecessary. But then, Mary and I had also continued to be more connected to the Real than most of the others who participated in Virtuality. We enjoyed real sex in a real bed.
I'm five hundred years old! I wanted to shout out this fact to the world in disbelief. Then I became aware of an odd box-shaped piece of furniture that stood waist high at the lower edge of the gently angled top. It sat in the middle of our bedroom, where I hadn't been aware of being the night before. It was wooden, with beautiful decoratively carved edges. I recognized it as an antique writing desk meant for use while standing. I'd seen similar pieces, but none near this ornate. A stunning mosaic covered what I presumed to be the front panel. It was a scene of a man and a woman standing together in a wooded setting made of tiny inlaid wooden pieces of different colors. Adam and Eve was my guess. There was a ribbon wrapped around its middle with a giant bow.
Mary awakened and removed her Virt suit as well. We were both naked, as we generally spent our days, even living in a glass house, since, as she'd insisted, there were rarely other people around who we might offend. She took my hand and confirmed my assessment of the piece being old, telling me, "This was already five hundred years old when you were born."
"Thank you," I said, "It is beautiful. Where in the world did you find this?"
Mary's answer was a smile.
There was a piece of paper - an actual piece of paper, something I hadn't seen for years, except for pages in old books, even though in parts of the world, it had returned to use during the AI war. But this appeared to be ancient paper. Upon closer inspection, I realized it wasn't paper but something far older.
YOU ARE READING
The Words - An Autobiography
Science Fiction"What if God was one of us?" Credit to Eric Bazzilion, and thanks to Joan Osborne for singing his brain-rattling words. Much earlier, my mother promised that if I applied myself, I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. Then, from somewhere, I r...
