My brother always made fun of my English degree, saying that it would never
be useful. Well, nowhere was that more apparent than in a time before English
exists. I didn’t know how to build or manufacture anything like an engineer. I
couldn’t wow some cavemen with science or art. I couldn’t even invent writing
early, since there wasn’t paper or ink yet. I don’t remember how I got there,
or really a whole lot of those early years. I think I just woke up on the open
ground one morning. Or maybe I fell and hit it. Like everything else though, it
doesn’t really matter. It just was. And so, I found myself in prehistory.
I spent a very long time in the
beginning searching for reasons and explanations. How did I get here? Where was
here? Why did this happen to me? Some answers came rather quickly; the mammoths
and giant glaciers told me I was around the time of the ice age. Other answers
still elude me, even some 15,000 years later. I did learn of my immortality, or
at least my invulnerability, early on though. That I remember clearly, I guess
since it was the first real trauma. A herd of huge deer or caribou came by one
day. I thought I’d be able to walk past them while they grazed and go about my
merry way. Turns out they were not all that friendly, and an antler to the side
later I was heaving on the ground with a giant open wound and what felt like a
million broken bones. I tried to fight off sleep as long as I could, since
that’s what all those TV doctors in the 21st century said, but
eventually it got the better of me. To my surprise, though, I woke up from that
sleep, and with all my injuries healed up. I don’t remember whether I felt
relieved, frightened, or both. I know I faced several more mortal injuries
early on and always managed to simply sleep them off.
Most of the details escape me now,
but I remember that the first 1500 years or so was the worst. Coming to terms
with immortality was far more cumbersome than I would have expected. I think I
ran into the first other humans after about 2 years. Or maybe it was 20. Either
way, they were certainly cautious of a lone stranger, and I of random savages.
But, after some time just following them at a distance, we finally approached
one another and got along well enough to not kill each other at first meeting.
It was with them that I learned of the rest of my immortality. I stayed with
them for many years, but never grew old. I watched children grow up, grow old,
and die, and yet I never changed. That fact was hard to swallow at first. I had
friends, lovers, even husbands die all around me. The tribesmen revered me like
a deity; I reviled myself like a monster. The emotional weight of every lost
loved one was maddening, and I think I even went mad for a time. But even that
madness passed in time, or maybe my immortality fixed mental damage as well as
physical. No matter which it was, the constant cycles of gain and loss, worship
and self-loathing, and, as one tribe died off and I found a new one, power and
poverty all became rather numbing within that first millennium.
Once the pains and lessons of
early immortality became dull, the remainder of human history was much more
tolerable. I never learned where I first came into the past, nor where I was
for many of the first few millennia. I wandered rather aimlessly, encountering
one tribe or village here, facing this or that challenge there. I managed to
pick up some useful skills along the way: hunting, gathering, making clothes
and shoes. While my immortality made the need for any of these things moot the journeys
were certainly more comfortable with them. Eventually I came across ancient
cities as well, Sumer or Jericho or one of the others. I even made it out to
China and the some of the developing cities there too. With cities came less
walking and, better still, the invention of writing. After spending a decade or
so learning a new city’s language I would usually get myself work as a scribe
or poet or something of the like. It was always just to get some money for
basic comforts though. My ambition had died out a long time ago; who needs it
when you need nothing to survive and you’ll outlive anyone who helps, hurts, or
remembers you. And so, I contented myself to just exist and observe.
Ambition may have been the first
feeling I lost, but it was not the last. As time marched on around me, I
continued to grow numb to just about everything. I could still feel pain and
physical discomfort but, since none of it was lethal, I eventually lost my fear
of it and found that I could see many new things or get to new places if I
ignored the pain it took to get there. I vaguely remember the first time I was
taken prisoner after a clan war. Dealing with the rape and abuse that first
time was not pleasant. But when you outlive your captors, heal from all wounds
over-night, then face those horrors again every few decades even these things
lose their bite. Love and joy also faded with time. Like pain, I could still
feel physical pleasure, and so I would use my “feminine wiles” to have fun from
time to time. But I learned quickly not to become attached to anyone or
anything; they would all go away, and I would still be here. And so, one by one
I found myself losing more feelings, but gaining more clarity.
Without ambition or emotions
clouding my thoughts I found that observing became far easier. I could sit for
hours, days, or even weeks at a time and just take in the sights, sounds, and
smells around me. I could deeply focus on learning new skills and ideas:
languages, cooking techniques, religions, trades, mathematics; all of these and
more could be picked up with just some years in any given place. The full
extent of my emotional apathy set in about the time I reached ancient Egypt,
and as such I remember the last 5,000 years with far more clarity. I remember
the first time papyrus became available to common people and being able to
write on a semi-familiar medium (although by this point I had forgotten English
and only wrote in Greek and hieroglyphs). I remember traveling with a trading
caravan to Rome while Marc Antony romanced the Cleopatra. I remember the middle
ages; moving out to the country side, the reinvention (or the original
invention I suppose) of English, and being burned as a witch once for staying
in one village too long with my eternal youth. I remember traveling to the new
world aboard an English ship docking in the Massachusetts colony. From King Tut
to King Cotton and the Punic wars to the Vietnam war I saw, observed, and
learned all I could in those last years.
Around the 16th or 17th
century a new thought occurred to me; very soon I would catch back up with the
timeline from where I had left it. Without the distraction of excitement or
anticipation for this event I was able to focus more on the logistics of it. If
I had existed at my current age for 15,000 years would I be born again as an
infant somewhere in the world? Would there be two of me at different ages in
existence? Would this cause a paradox if we met? While these questions piqued
my curiosity for observation my many years of experience had taught me two
things: not to worry about how time would work things out and not to seek out
or attempt to change history as I had known it in the 21st century.
As such, I decided not to look in on my life as it had been and instead to
continue my observation of the world and time around me. When the years of my
first life did come about, I instead bought a new flat in Prague, where I have
been living the last 20 years. It is from this flat that I am now writing this
piece. I don’t know who it is intended for or why I feel compelled to write it.
Perhaps it is because tomorrow is the day when I disappeared the first time.
Perhaps it is a new kind of madness that the apathy has brought on. Or perhaps
it is a delirium from an unusually large amount of blood loss from the cut on
my hand I got while cooking this afternoon. Whatever the case, this short
account of my existence is finished now, and just like this cut and all other
things will be meaningless in the morning.
Morning has come, and I feel I
should inform whomever this is meant for that my cut has not healed. This is
the first injury I have sustained in 15,000 years that has not healed after I
slept. This is proof to me that I have lost my invulnerability and is strong
evidence for the loss of my immortality. I now realize that I am a new person
in a new life who must once again face the challenges of mortality. I must once
again apply myself to eating and working for a living and properly taking care
of my body. And yet, despite this revelation, I am not afraid. I should be
worried and feel fear for what my now mortal life is to become. But instead
there is just the apathy. Despite the implications of this cut and the loss of
a factor of my life that has been with me since time immemorial, it is not something
to be feared. It just is.
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