Accepting Reality

The morning is about to start. Here, it means the “stars” randomly spread through the sky turn down slowly, while the energy line in the middle of the sky, that goes from Deadly Mountains to Infinite Desert start lightning up. Slowly at principle. Emulating a sunrise on Earth in some ways. Not in “every way possible”, if they wanted that, they could have done a much better job.

The mountains are gorgeous, though. They raise like an irregular stair to my right, until they reach almost half the hight of the rotating cylinder. Long before that, they became impossible to climb with the instruments available to the natives. The “Infinite” Desert is not infinite, of course, but, just like the mountains, it has no animals or plants. Nothing to provide food. Conditions are too ****. Those regions are designed to prevent travel beyond the limits of this sector.

To my right the mountains gently turn into hills, covert on grass, and in front of me there is a region of blue lakes and swamps, tricky to travel, that ends in a thick forest. Few narrow roads cut that forest connecting us to the prosperous lands of Purple Valley, limited in the opposite **** by the Infinite River. Which also, is not really infinite, but deserves the nickname a lot more than that desert.

The region close to the Infinite looks like a fairy tale. Medieval Castles, build on white stone. Knights in shinning armour. Kings, thieves guilds, court wizards. Ruins of past civilizations, forgotten 900 years ago. Too large to be practical for humans.

I must remind myself that this place, confined as it is in a much larger structure, has the approximate surface of Earth and the moon combined, only in dry land. Not counting the Infinite River, lesser rivers and lakes. It is not a confined space, subjectively speaking.

The mounts they have are fast, but can’t travel for long without rest. Their beasts of burden are slower than ox. They have no means of communication and their agriculture is very Medieval Europe fashion. Because of all that the natives have small nations, commerce is part of their lives but contact with distant nations is almost non-existent. What favour cultural variety, important selling argument for this sector.

I came here 30 years ago, as alchemist “apprentice”, planning to stay only one year. Since then I have been prolonging my package.

My “mentor” was a local who was part of a somewhat secret cult that has some understanding about what this place is. Although filtered through metaphors and poems. He knew I am “from the lands of Gods, bellow our feet”. What is a valid description, since my people created their “world”, and what produces the illusion of gravity here is centrifuge ****. We are in the internal surface of a cylinder. Therefore, the rest of the structure sustaining this place, is “bellow” us.

There is a different layer of rotating habitats “below our feet” where the people who work to keep this place live. Also, there we find hotels, and all the structure necessary to welcome tourists coming and going. The thematic park following Infinite River is the main attraction, of course. Like other structures in the same franchise it runs around this entire stellar system, right outside the Fringes.

I still look like a person who just reached 20 years, that alone makes my reputation legendary in this place. Natives never leave more than 60 years, and seldom survive more than 40. I make potions, and sometimes accept to teach some fellow alchemist. What I teach is basic chemistry and biology, wrapped in adequate local mysticism.

They have elves and dragons in this sector. Elves live 900 years, dragons 1.000, both have much better eyesight than humans. Dragons, in top of that, can fly. Those natives are better equipped to pierce the illusion and figure out the true nature of this place.

I get visits from those non-human visitors from time to time. And sometimes even share with them a drop more than I should. About this place, my past and my plans for the future.

I was thinking about move to an island next year. In a different sector, one that is almost entirely covert by ocean, with only two smalls continents and some archipelagos. However, what I should do is move back to reality. My reality.

This place is real, completely and deadly so, for those who are natives. They belong here.

For me, to be in this place that long is shameful. I am like one of those adolescents from my young days. How expended day and night hiding in some dark room, playing video-games.

Most of them probably had better excused than mine.

My only advantage is that I can probably keep paying for that lifestyle, indefinitely. On the other hand, that is also the worse thing about my situation. Nothing is likely to **** me to face reality again. That, is dangerous.

I don’t like to be a cliché, but I suppose that is impossible to avoid once you reach a certain age that is impossible to avoid completely. Chances are, it will only became worse to me.

What I can do, is not to think about myself as a cliché. Pretend that I don’t notice it as much as I do, notice, it.

Three months ago was my birthday. I am 10.000 years old now. Expansion Age itself is a few years short from 9.000.

I was born on Planet Earth, therefore, goes without saying. Back in the time when no one would say “I was born on Earth” in a casual conversation. Because no one had been born anywhere else.

I am not in the select club of those who are older than Sputinik 1. However, I am a member of that slightly less select group that self-identifies as Twentians. People Born during the XX century of Old Calendar. Lucky to have a body that responded better than average to the first generation of longevity treatments developed by Genetic Medicine.

We are rich. Even more so than the larger number of people born during the XXI century who are still alive. Because we get the lion’s share of the Mtz Found. Distribute annually.

This found goes to “Pre-Baby Steps” born people. Which means us and the fellows born during the XXI. That is a small percentage of all “Asgardians”. Which means everyone born before the Alexandrine **** Line who didn’t decided to give up biological immortality.

For the first 5 thousand years of Expansion there was some heavy stigma attached to be an Asgardian. Since that was considered cheating. We should all have signed away our immortality, voluntarily. According to dominant opinion. However, despite the contradiction, there was already a sort of aura of reverential respect around the Pre Baby Steps generations.

As if we where a living reserve of something. I do not know what. But something that people feel that should be preserved. Like a historical monument or a painting.

Humanity as a whole paus us, a sort of bribery in exchange to we stay alive.

Ironically, being biologically immortal was normal for about 1 thousand years. From the CEO and the Chief of State to the ragged homeless man begging in the streets. We used to be, all, biologically immortal.

That was the civilization present in all countries on Earth, transversal to many cultural and political differences, when I was a very old man. In physical appearance. Weak, fragile. Learning to adapt to a reality where more and more people started to think that live in space-stations in orbit of Earth was acceptable. That generate and give birth to children in such experimental environment was not too irresponsible.

As G Med advanced, along with other fields, I regained vigour and stamina. That is a experience all Twentians have, people from the first half of XXI too, in some degree. My appearance moved from a fragile androgenous mummy barely able to raise from a wheelchair, no tooths and few straws of white hair. To the 20 years old man I still look like. More healthy than I ever was when I was actually in my 20’s.

It sounds like magic, when described. In reality, was a gradual process, took us over half a century to realize it was perhaps not just temporary delay in the inevitable. Took us 300 years still, after that, to understand the change of paradigm was real and irreversible. Aging was no longer a inevitable destiny of all humans who fail our natural mission of dying young.

Helped us the fact that, longevity extension was not the only thing distracting our attention.

I remember when artificial uterus became common to breed race horses. A thing for Arab Princes and the British Royal Family to distract their days with. Most people refused the idea that it could ever became a normal thing for humans.

Not 30 years latter some women had started adopting the practice of having one “traditional” pregnancy. For each 2 in external womb.

Only 50 years after, humanity was breeding like rabbits. Obsessed by the idea of populate all habitable regions in the Solar System.

I though it was insanity. Of course, I was right. Only, now I know that was not the kind of insanity the patient can recover from.

That is why I came here to enjoy a year of self-indulgence. And am still here, 30 years later. You could say.

Self-replicating space-stations, mines operated by robots and administrated by AIs. We could provide shelter, food and education for more people than we could possibly hope to breed by natural means. Even with almost every person convinced that their main mission in existence was to make as many children as they could.

That was never the reality of every person in society, in any society know by History. As far as I can tell, that happened only them.

That is still the reality inside every star system.

Family structures, and expectations, had to be broken and reshaped beyond recognition.

I was frustrated about that. Was no longer possible to know how many grandchildren and gran grandchildren I had. Stable, long time, marriages started coming back. Hard and heavy, in most nations. They still dominate most cultures. However, there was no expectation of bond between parents and their children anymore. Or between siblings.

Due to genetic medicine, I was among those who called it “madcine” them, **** became a popular and very fashionable distraction in many nations. I felt the need to move from my hometown for the first time because of that. To put some distance between my person and the spirit of modernity.

No offense, but it is objectively disgusting.

That was not the only thing that seemed out of place to me in this new society, of “Baby Steps”. Some other things were harder to escape. I was able to move to a country where incestuous intercourse had just been declared crime. I was not able to escape uplifting.

Talking cats and dogs became common. This one happened too fast.

Or, maybe just felt that way, because my attention was directed to other things.

Some countries decided to give some civil rights to talking animals, uplifted by genetic engineering. Once their intelligence and verbal skills surpassed those of 3 years old child you could no longer castrate them. Things like that. This slippery slop led to future and more intelligent uplifted getting the right to vote. And even, in rarer cases, the right of being voted for some positions.

Don’t take me wrong. I was not against giving rights to uplifted, withing reason. Political rights included. What bothered me in all that was ratter the opposite side of that coin.

Also, that was not the smooth process I am describing.

While that was happening in some countries, in others the law tried to prevent the creation of those intelligent non-humans. Of course, as you would expect. Self-determination of peoples, sovereignty of nations, is a bitch, but the alternative is aways far worse. You have to look no further than Alexandria to see that.

They failed in impose those limits, as was obvious to me that they would. Since the first time a cat actually spoke to me.

I only would never have imagined the laws could fail as fast as they did.

Humanity was fascinated with itself, having this chance to finally hear intelligent non-humans describing the human condition. Humans who where creatures of humanity, gifted with intelligence by our generosity. That chance was too delicious to not be enjoyed.

It is impossible to me to explain where that obsession came from. It was not present during the XX and XXI centuries. Had a subtle undertone of XIX century, perhaps, a XIX century described from the point of view of Noble, Imperial, Britainy.

I would like to write here that it was a collective insanity that most of us were immune to. Most of us “Pre Baby Steps” generations. Middle sentence, I realized I cannot sustain that affirmation. Because the laws that protect privacy severely limit my capacity of get statistics about that.

What I can risk to say is that it was less popular among us. That idea of sign away our right of immortality, for the sake of some fundamental ideal of “Humanity”. Because not give up it was a sort of “hypocrisy”.

The vast majority of people born after year 2100 of Old Calendar, the Gregorian Calendar, decided to sign away their biological immortality.

Because the Consensus of Alexandria had decided that people born after a future date, the “Alexandrine **** Line”, would only live up to 300 years. The legal limit for human longevity.

That was an integral element in that larger collective insanity I was pointing. The obsession for Humanity, as a value and a mission, timeless and without borders.

If I start writing about the people I lost. The friends who decided they would not use the right given to them by law to continue their lives. The bitter discussions during lunches, happy hours, new year parties. Or family dinners. If I start, I will go mad. And this text will die unfinished.

Would be poisonous to, whatever ended to be written. Toxic self-pity.

The first day of Expansion Age was magical.

That “proud to be human” in the air, that joy, the feelings are impossible to describe. Baby Steps was finally over. All sacrifices justified.

I was up there, in the Fringes.

Had been living there from over two centuries. Working as part of one of the teams that selected and trained the people who would be in those ships. The crews of the first Seeding Vessels ever launched.

Watch from a panoramic window the departure of one hundred thousand Seeding Vessels. Each one caring half billion people. To spread humanity beyond our system. Fuck!

Even I cannot say that didn’t touched me. Being Humans, in this galaxy. In this universe.

Was the first of many. Expansion Age had started. 1400 years later we got the message about Mystery Fleet. It had been destroyed. Sealine, the last post of observation outside Mystery System, could find no signs of survivors. That was the most terrible tragedy ever faced by Humanity.

We will probably never face any blow as hard as that one was. Certainly not in proportion to the size of humanity by the time.

Life continues.

Also, the aspects of life that disturb me. In daily basis.

Chief among those is our relationship with subhumans.

I learned to live with it by compartmentalizing.

Dogs, cats, and other uplifteds, the clearly non-human people. Is easy to accept that they don’t have human rights, practically anywhere. Since they are not human. They may talk and use reason as well as we do, but their ancestors were not humans. We have ancestors who were not humans as well, I am not that naïve, but our non-human ancestors are far more distant in time than theirs.

To rationalize that is easy.

I know a couple from Panama, yes the Panama, American Continent on Earth. They married and after 60 years they divorced. Had other relationships, started a new relationship. Drama, extra-conjugal affairs, alternated roles in that. Love, love, love, tears, “I will never”, and then again. More of the same. Both lovely people, funny and gentle. You probably know the plot.

I had not heard about them for 100 years, last time I saw they were living another Honey Moon. Months later someone told me they had separated again. He was moving out planet to Mercury. She was going to somewhere in orbit of Jupiter. I didn’t asked why.

That was perhaps one decade before Alexandrine **** Line.

She decided to sign away her biological immortality. Because, “was the right thing to do”.

So, she lived another 290 years after the **** Line.

Before she noticed that dying just didn’t looked like a will easy to swallow. Now that her time to do that in person was coming closer.

She had been born and raised during a time when biological immortality was normal for everyone. My friend changed her mind.

Just, she could not have back her biological immortality. Not without renouncing her legal rights as a person, in the eyes of Alexandrine Law.

She did do, 2 months before her time to die. Became legal property of her former husband.

Ever since, they have been together. Never separated again.

They could do so, since they live most the time in nations that provide considerable legal rights and guarantees to subhumans. Of course, those laws are local laws, and unlike Alexandria local laws do change over time. Besides, they both like to travel, do tourism, and that’s not a healthy habit for subhumans. For obvious reason.

For this couple worked well. Next time I saw them was 3500 of Expansion. No one would imagine she wasn’t an Alexandrine Woman. She seemed to be, also, a happy wife.

He as happy with the situation too, as far as I can say.

Many cases like that didn’t end in such a light tone.

Most people who gave up their immortality to “not be an hypocrite” and later regretted it, had to face some pretty **** experiences, of horrible and morbid nature. Some didn’t survive those experiences. Others, never recovered from them.

Also, there are those born after the **** Line. Who choose to abandon their rights as people in order to live longer lives. “Fallen humans”, naturally, they are as human as I am. Just not in the eyes of Law.

Their parents were humans. They only decided to have what I have. I don’t sacrificed anything for that, I just got the luck to be born a thousand years earlier. They have to sacrifice everything for that. Just because they are people born after the **** Line.

When I say those things, and think about, it does not feel so serious. That is just what our world is. The good things we have are, in some extent, collateral effects of the bad ones.

And vice-versa.

Live in that society, make friends, stablish personal relationship with those people. Who in many cases do terrible things to subhumans. Finding those things normal. This became too heavy to me.

I realize the irony. Of escape to a place like that.

There is few worse cases of cruel unfair fate than the fate of my neighbours here. The name for them our here is “ephemerals”.

They are subhumans programmed to live a limited number of years. Usually, only 60 years.

So, they get the limited longevity of Alexandrine Humans, cut shorter. And with no human right. Only thing that makes it somewhat light is the fact that they do not know the rest of our galaxy exists. They don’t know their world was build for our entertainment. To them, their section of the Infinite River is the entire universe.

I wonder if I would prefer to know the truth if I was one of them. Or if I would rather keep the illusion until I die?

Does knowing that some people can live indefinitely makes harder to accept having a life expectancy of 30 years? To live in a world where no human will even get past 60? Would I like to know that my country was created 3.000 years ago, with ruins that imitate the style of public buildings from another world? That everyone I know, every animal and plant I ever saw, is a product of genetic engineered. Except for a few random visitors who are the reason why my world was designed and build?

I suppose it could make no difference to me. However, if there was a difference, would not be improvement.

Well, there is a door to an access corridor in my basement. I can go there, walk to the nearest transport tube, and I would be back to “real life” in couple of hours. I can reserve the suite in a hotel and have proper civilized clothes waiting for me in my room. Without leave this chair. By the cyborg neuro-link inside my cranium.

Some 900 years ago I finally when to the famous surgery. “Step 1”, they call it. Replace all the bones in the body by cyborg implants. Mostly done by nano-robots, but arms and legs are cut off and replaced. For the sake of practicality. All Asgardians I know had had the surgery thousands of years ago. Because it really improves quality of life, and makes accidental **** far less likely.

My cyborg implants made me a perfect candidate for the role of warrior in the frontlines of those feudal wars they have here. I could end up a king. The touristic agent tried to sell me that idea. I wanted no part of it.

I wanted to be a scholar of sort. Sit, far away from any action. Except a little hunting with bow and arrow. Fishing in a small stream of some river in the mountains. Debate religion and metaphysics, and hear about the History of the tribes who live in this region. As they tell that History, from their point of view.

Alchemy carried more than a small portion of metaphysics. And sounds less phony to me than “wizardry”. I actually studied the Earthling version of it, as an intellectual curiosity.

Was an excellent choice. The reason why I ended in this specific sector. There was other options whit more interesting topography, but this one had the most promising secret society of alchemists. And a mentor for me, who had a personality that seemed really interesting.

The villages of Crossbridge have asked my help. They are being attacked more frequently by goblins, the little green fuckers mount giant wolves as big as horses and twice heavier. Intelligent, talking, beasts. Impossible for humans to domesticate, due to their innate hate for humanity. A trait they share with their hider and masters. Put there by geneticists on purpose, goes without saying.

If I choose to stay here a little longer, I have to take my stuff and go to Crossbridge. Is two days walk down mountain. The administrators of this sector would hate me for the rest of their lives if I introduced fireweapons in this place. They are fine with some medieval Molotovs and my homebrew recipe for napalm.

The access to information from the system grants me some additional unfair advantage. Obviously. Is up to me how much I use it in any situation.

A tourist can even take people from here. Buy them from the Park Administration. Take them back home. Probably have them injected with the genetic-serum that will grant them biological immortality. So, they can be like the vast majority of subhumans out there. No longer ephemerals.

I usually only use the system for information. I know the exact number of goblins and wargs in the region, for instance. The names of the tribes, their political structure. Their genetical history since Generation 1 in this sector. Exact position. Things like that.

My plans where not enter the fight myself. Just deliver the weapons, and suggest some strategies.

However, if I am really moving out this place in a few more weeks. Maybe the best thing I can do is to throw myself completely in that last adventure. Use my bow, my cleaver, kill some goblins with my bare hands even! Maybe.

Forget the fact that this dwarfed green people only hate humans and eat human flesh because some human genetic engineers have designed their DNA that way. Abstract the fact that they have the intelligence level of 5 years old humans, in most scales. Slightly less capable than their wolves when it comes to memory and tactic reasoning.

Nah! I Probably should go downstairs.

Leave the villages deal with their own problems, the best they can.

I think about that in those terms means that I have learned to accept the abyss between Humans and subhumans. As a mere fact, we all must live with. Then, maybe I am ready to deal with my problems again, as well.