The Eye of the Beholder

Death has always been humanity’s greatest fear. Even the religious, who claim otherwise, do not face their end without a twinge of fear, for no matter what any might say, we do not know what lies beyond the threshold: more life, nothing, or something we cannot imagine? No one, no one, knows.

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And so for all our history, humans have fought against this Great Enemy. We learned to delay death, to soften it, and even to snatch ourselves from its jaws—at least for a little while. But we could not cure it, could not defeat it.

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Until we found the Fountain.

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The long-fabled Fountain of Youth was not a literal fountain, but a drug manufactured from some ancient creature found in the depths of the depths of the ocean. When certain parts of this creature were processed, they created a cure for death, and our war against the Great Enemy was over.

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The war against ourselves began then.

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Everyone wanted the cure, but there wasn’t enough to go around, and those that had it guarded it jealously. Not everyone deserved to live forever, we said. It is my own words that haunt me most: “Let us bear the burden of guiding mankind through the ages.” I did not want to be a guide, but a God.

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Pressure turns coal into diamond. It does not do the same to humanity.

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Global war destroyed us. It destroyed the earth. Only when there was nothing left to destroy did we put down our arms.

What followed was an age we thought of as peace. There were no wars (there was no one left to fight), there was no hunger, all needs were met, and people lived short, meaningful lives. The cure for death was long gone, but we immortals did not mind. We bore the burden of watching over humanity, and reaped the rewards of life without end. A paradise of our own making. We were too blind to recognize Hell for what it was.

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Long ago, we had discovered that the price of immortality was infertility. None of us could bear children. It was no matter. Until humanity began to die.

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Fewer in each generation. Sicker, weaker. There was no one to help them. The immortals were no doctors or scientists; we had no knowledge that could save the humans, and by the time we realized this it was too late to help. One by one they perished, until only we remained.

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Only we remain.

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Earth is a husk, choked on our greed and short-sightedness. We thought we had forever to fix our problems, but forever has arrived and we can do nothing. There is no life left here—certainly there is none in us—and I fear no way to restore it. One option only lies before us: to cure deathlessness. We must reawaken the Great Enemy, so that we can be taken and our suffering ended.

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I seek not forgiveness, but relief. For me, that is enough.

 

* * *

 

How long since last I took to these pages? Does it matter? Yesterday is a year ago, tomorrow a thousand years from now. The sun hangs low and orange in the sky. Death comes even for the stars. Only we will remain.

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I have not seen the others in a lifetime. Do they also search for the cure? If I find it first, I do not know if I can resist partaking of it before offering it to them. Selfish as I have ever been, I do not want to risk it being taken from me, forcing my agony to continue.

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It may not matter. Nothing is left of this decayed world but ash and ruin. Here and there some ancient relic of humanity shows itself, and a little hope rises that some may have endured after all, only to be dashed by the truth. The humans all died long ago. Were they still alive, they could not help me. Why would they even wish to?

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The regrets I bear cannot be spoken. They need not be, for they are as a part of me as the color of my eyes or the texture of my hair. Anyway, there is no one to hear them. Whether we meant to or not, we made certain of that.

 

* * *

 

Every night I pray for death to return. I don’t care what lies beyond the threshold; good, bad, or nothing at all, anything must be better than this endless non-existence.

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Death has never answered my pleas. Did the gods of humanity’s religions ever answer them? I wish now that I had paid greater attention to such things. I wish many things that cannot be.

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The search goes on, but I have no hope of finding what I seek. How many times have I wandered the length and breadth and depths of the earth? There is nothing here with which to fashion a cure. This is a hopeless task. Yet still I search, for what else is there to do?

 

* * *

 

The sun will soon die. I fear the absence of it. To live forever is a curse; to live forever in darkness, a torment beyond words. More than ever do I feel the urgency to find a cure.

 

* * *

 

I came upon one of the others. So unexpected was the sight, so long since I saw anything that is not some ruin, that at first I did not know what I was looking at.

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They lay against a rock, and had for so long that they were becoming part of the earth. I feared for them—no, I feared to be alone again. But when I tried to pull them from the earth they cried out, a hoarse and wordless scream that echoed in my soul. When at last they had recovered speech—having forgotten the use of their tongue through countless days without speaking—they told me to leave them in the ground.

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“The earth will swallow me and bear me down within itself. Perhaps there, death will find me at last.”

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We did not speak again, but I sat with them until the earth pulled them in. Now, when I pray to death, I pray for them too.

 

* * *

 

With the dimming of the sun, the depths of space are clearer than ever before. I see not just stars and distant planets; I can see galaxies, swirling nebulae, blazing lights. We are dead here, beyond saving, but there is life in the cosmos. I have seen stars die, but I have seen new ones born.

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It is beautiful.

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It’s taken me some time to remember that word: beautiful. Even when I recalled the word, I did not at first remember the meaning. Now I see it, and I know it means the sun, the moon, the stars; it means the mountains that rise towards the skies; it means the forests of preserved trees.

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Memories of beautiful things rise in my mind. I cannot put names to these things, but they are warm and soft and light and hope and color—all the things I had forgotten once existed. I cry, not knowing if I am happy or sad, and it is beautiful.

I do not wish to forget beauty again, so I write it on the earth. I carve it into the mountains and trees. I bend the trickling streams until they form the letters. To forget beauty is a kind of death I cannot bear.

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I can’t write on the sun or carve out the stars, so I shout to them instead. I scream that they are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, until the universe itself echoes with the sound and shouts it back. It shouts and it shouts and it shouts and it shouts and it shouts and it shouts and it shouts until I believe it.

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Until I know that I am beautiful too.

 

* * *

 

The light is fading. When the sun burns itself out, the earth will plunge into darkness and cold. Any light and warmth will be gone.

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I am not afraid.

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The sun is tired. It has done its beautiful work, and now it’s time for rest. The old passes away. And something new always comes.

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As I did with the immortal, I sit with the sun as it sputters out its final breath. When death takes it, I am sad. But I am not afraid.

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The distant stars are my light now, distant glows that remind me of something I don’t have a name for. They are always there when I raise my head, shining on. Living and dying. Beautiful. And beauty, I have learned, is the one thing that cannot die. In light, there is beauty. In darkness, there is beauty.

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I have lived years uncounted. I suppose I will live years uncounted more. Perhaps death will find me, and perhaps it will not.  Life will wend its way on, and I will watch, and it will be beautiful.

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It is beautiful.