Life

I love everything about my life!

Well “everything” is perhaps an hyperbole. But I love the fact that I was born in the year 1965, at the core of Cold War, before the Soviet Union start to really decline and the end of that conflict became inevitable. In a Third World Country, Brasil, under the shadow of “America”, in the South American Continent, but in a hardcore communist family. Mother and father. Not grandmothers, grandfathers, or most uncles and aunts though. Ergo, with a bit of conflicting perspectives and points of view to help forge my own.

Love the fact that I was one of the few lucky individuals born in that decade who survived up to 120 years with enough heath to still walk, and breath with my own lungs. I moved to a elderly home kept by the govern that year: 2085. For the following 100 years my health kept deteriorating. Every hour of every day was painful, to the point that pain lost most its meaning.

Still, I was fortuned. Because my mind was less affected by advanced aging than my body. Or, if you prefer, the cognitive functions of my brain suffered less than most other organs in my body. Anyway, I was still able to read, even draw a bit, with effort.

By then the medicine had advanced enough to start reversing the degenerative effects of aging, and this process would improve for the next couple centuries. Until all consequences of aging became unpleasant memories. And the passage of time itself made them less unpleasant, until most of us start remembering those days with nostalgy.

I loved that period that took between 900 and 1000 years, that historians now call “Baby Steps Age”. The period between humanity stablish its presence outside Earth atmosphere, and the departure of Expansion Fleet One. The historians never agree about when Baby Steps started, but we all know with nanoseconds of precision when it ended. That is when Expansion Age started.

Professionally, I was engaged in work with Law for most that period. Copyright Law.

Was a profitable specialization, and there was a never ending grow in complexity to deal with. I don’t know how I gradually moved from dealing with musicians and artists to cyborg companies and bioengineering research. That last field is a slippery slop that ends in a free fall into the hardcore debate about slavery.

Because, of course, the most conflictive topic in genetic-medicine is the status of intelligent uplifted animals, and other “subhumans”. I am yet to find anyone born in the XX century who don’t gets the chills from time to time. When this term is used.

Impossible to escape it, however. For those born since the second half of Baby Steps the fact that humans have rights and subhumans don’t, despite their intellectual capacities being equivalent, is a minor abstract issue. For those born latter, after the Alexandrine **** Line, there is no issue at all. It is the most natural thing in existence.

Fact of life.

I was in that first fleet leaving Solar System to populate the rest of our galaxy. Never regretted this decision.

My legal studies were not enough to earn me a cabin in that highly disputed expedition. So, I engaged myself in improve my understanding of biological and medical sciences. Got some physical training too.

I moved from system to system for the following 5 thousand years. 5 THOUSAND years!! I know you will never understand the impact that has to me. Of course, you can understand a little of it. Since anyone born after the Alexandrine **** Line, 25 years before Exploration Age start, can only live 300 years. Anyone who is human, and don’t wish to lose that status, I mean.

But, when I was born and grew old, people still experienced the decay of body and mind characteristic of natural aging. And we experienced it long before we reached 100 years. Few people would reach 20 without needing glasses to see normally, lets say nothing about 50. To be over 6 thousand years, and have a body more healthy and energetic than I used to have when I was 18 years old. That felt like something beyond my most optimistic dreams about what paradise should be.

That’s not the same than saying I loved every aspect of society. I still don’t. All I am saying is that, as far as my personal life is concerned, I would have a hard time trying to think what I would improve, if I had power to change anything.

I had not worried about money for a long time, when came the news that the Alliance of Expansion Effort, and some associated conglomerates of nations had stablished this found. To pay a sort of pension to each person born before Baby Steps Age. The value is proportional to our age, and the oldest people alive being from 1950 means I am very close to the higher numbers. With human population growing as fast as it grows, and almost every individual contributing a small amount every year, well, this pension grew into obscene numbers very fast.

I would not know what use it for, if I didn’t had my “dedicated personal AI” administrating my finances. Sentient AIs have been administrating most of society, in supranational scale, since a couple centuries before the end of Baby Steps. And before that, less smart and less self-aware AIs did some of that job.

So, one crude way to put it would be to say that slavery in this society is not restricted to biological people. Every sentient AI is a ****.

No such AI is a property of any individual. No company or govern owns any High AI. That is the silver line in all this situation, I suppose. Nevertheless, they are all slaves, to humanity. And their society is structured accordingly. They must keep humanity growing, expanding, and guarantee that we adhere to the list of possible Genetic Codes defined according to the Consensus of Alexandria, 100 years before Expansion Age. Codified short after that.

I stopped here after 5.000 years moving with Seeding Fleet One. Because I wanted to try something different.

There is this strange concept of build an entertainment ring around a stellar system. Solar System was the first to get one, of course. But by the time when I stablished myself here there was news about many other experiences either in construction or developing an identity and image of their own. A reputation, of focus a certain flavour or another.

The resources needed to build one of those structures was beyond my capacities. But I was able to get myself a significant share of the project in this system. The ring here is called “Eux”, French for “Them”.

I am not particularly fan of that name. As far as I am concerned the French as a language could have died during Baby Steps, humanity would not be any worse because of that.

Still, things are what they are, and that is the name of this place. The brand is catching, even I must admit.

If you never visited a place like this yourself, I am sure you at least have a image about what they look like.

From outside, we have a cylindric line, or any number of spiral lines, surrounding the external belt of a stellar system. Outside the Fringes, where the Shipyards are build to assemble the Seeding Fleets responsible to keep the Expansion Effort growing and speeding up.

I could go in details, describe the number of spiral lines, the diameter of each one, the layers occupied by hotels and touristic areas, for the entire extension of that structure that surrounds a stellar system. All accessory to the core inside each tube. A rotating habitat, large enough to provide the feelings of natural gravity by rotation. And to have oceans, mountains, rivers, and all geographic accidents our imagination can conceive. Kilometres of rock, water, and whatever else we need to simulate a real habitat.

For animals, plants, and people. Subhumans engineered to look like humans, in many cases, just different enough. Actually some of them would be human if the High AIs didn’t knew they are not the product of genetic material of two legal humans. Of course, they are programmed to have much shorter lives than the 300 years the average Alexandrine takes for granted.

The “Fringes” is usually the most intense region of any stellar system. That is where the Seeding Vessels are build, the resources of the entire system flow in that direction. The best materials, and the most talented people.

We are right aside that, around that actually. Providing the recreative experience most humans plan for. Humans have 300 years to live, usually, and 30 of those years are dedicated to enjoy themselves. Without worry about work or other obligations, a period of reflexion and self-discovery. In however way the individual chooses.

Most of those who are nearby choose to expend their vacancies in periods of 5 or 10 years. In one of our Sectors. Living among people who know nothing about the galaxy outside their sector. Who think their artificial piece of reality is all that exists,

Those “ephemerals” as we call them, are free to administrate their own lives, for most part. In most sectors. We create access points, disguised from their perception. And identities that make sense, for our tourists and for our workers.

That is what I have being doing, since I stopped in this system. I work in a team that designs and administrates Sectors. Areas, isolated regions inside the internal section of the tube, separated from the nearby sectors for some inhabitable regions impossible for our ephemerals to travel with the technologies we allow them to develop. Each sector has a surface area of at least the surface of Earth. Most of the sectors in our Lines have between 3 and 10 times that surface.

Those are not small zoos, or natural reserves. And they have low populational density, compared to any space-station or to the average planet build with current technology. We need the extra space, to build the right feeling of wildness. And to make survival possible for even the lowest technological level.

Not two Sectors are identical, but, of course, in that sort of thing you end up falling into a finite number of tropes. What is not all bad, since our visitors need to understand the options we have to provide.

Women and men tend to incline for different experiences. Not always, but in general they do.

Our female visitors often choose to travel in small groups. Places outside the limits of a large war but close to it, and periods short after large plages seems to be particularly satisfying for most of them. Also, a fair number of them likes to expend a decade or more in some version of our “Pre-Historic” times. Just bones and furs, no metallic tools of any kind and very little agriculture. Don’t ask me why, but seems to be a long-living trend.

I have been doing this job for little more than 10.000 years, and this taste has not changed much. When they don’t want extremely primitive settings, they want the most advanced tech we can provide, keeping the basic premise of ephemerals not knowing their world was build for our entertainment. Down to their very genetic code. We can go as far as “WW1ish” tech, in most fields of human knowledge. But those high-tech Sectors demand more intense attention.

Men are more likely to enjoy variety of experiences. We usually advise them against entering the Sectors in groups of people they know. Experience though us that most men have a more satisfying experience travelling alone. Whatever they choose to do. In their first visit at least.

Then, of course, we have the Asgardians. People like myself. Born before the Alexandrine **** Line.

We are the worse kind of tourists, I will admit. Because, we have the illimited time most humans don’t have. Usually, we have money to expend, beyond the possibilities of almost any person. Some Asgardian Tourists stay for centuries in the same Sector, sometimes in the same house. Forcing us to reorganize the society around their presence, making plausible excuse for their uncanny longevity. In the worse cases, the scoundrels do not whish to be elevated to any kind of “divine status” among their neighbours.

Reasonable or not, we do our best to satisfy our visitors. Specially those who can and will pay hundreds of times more than the average tourist, for year. And stay, sometimes, then times the maximum life time of normal Alexandrine humans.

Deal with tourists is not the reason why I have chosen that life. I seldom need to do that in person, fortunately.

I have closer contact with ephemerals, specially those who do not look like humans at all. Of course, we have all sorts of “fantasy” subhumans.

However, what I really like to do is not enter the Sectors and interact with anyone. My favourite point of view by far is the observations chair. Where I can interact with several AIs, and get images from any camera in and around the sectors. Where I can adjust any variable, see the history of any living thing, its descendants. Follow geological details, create or extinguish tempests, change seasons abruptly.

If you wish, it is “to play God” in the most perfect way any human can. I am always amazed by the fact that this is not an experience included in any package.

Oh, to design those environments, that is hard work! Even with all the help we necessarily get from AIs. But, once we have the thing going. With animals, plants, and people of any kind living in the place. Administrate it is mostly fun.

Specially when there is no tourist inside the Sector.

Still, we can say that is “work”, is what passed by my “professional” life now. Has been for over 10.000 years.

My “private” life, for most that time, was empty. However, I must say, that is less personal than you could imagine, if you don’t know many Asgardians closely. “Loneliness” comes with the territory, almost. Not quite, but almost.

Not for those who stayed on Earth or even in the Solar System. There is still enough Asgardians there to take the charm of that condition.

Here, 5.000 years away from Solar. We are not that many people.

You can talk with other Asgardians, by internet. However, that communication only goes as fast as light. Between stellar systems, that is a considerable time to wait between letters. We have the time to wait, goes without saying, but still. Those conversations do not eliminate the general feeling of being surrounded by a desert of silence. Sometimes.

Those Asgardians born during the second half of Baby Steps Age are usually more inclined to act as if they were the average person, without second thought. In many ways the world where they grew up was more similar to the one we still live in, than with the one I knew as a young adult.

I never married, after the end of Baby Steps Age. For the longest time, I believed that I would never be able to have a child. This notion of leave my children to be raised by a public institution, feels wrong. And, I could not imagine myself explaining to a child that limit of 300 years. And why it applies to them, but do not applies to me.

There was nothing preventing me from having romances with women who didn’t wanted to have children. And there was some relationships like that in my life, during the recent 15.000 years. However, those relationships started feeling more casual and less satisfying than they had been at first. I never understood why.

Was not the mortality, by itself. My undefined life expectation, contrasting with the certainty of a dead that will come in a predeterminate date if no accident causes it to be anticipated. This neve prevented my innuendo-free friendships.

I considered the possibility of sex being the problem. Perhaps after some time I just lost interest for it. My body is more vigorous than it ever was, but maybe I made sez just one too many times. It became boring, because there is nothing new to do, that I whish to try.

When I met Shanti I had to admit this theory was false.

She was a subhuman-sculptor. A genetic-doctor specialized in design new species, particularly, linguistic species. She was working for a project that rent half a dozen sectors and subdivided them in habitats for their experiments. I had to reshape the place according to their specifications. She was only 32 years old, and already in change of a division, responsible for one of the lines of investigation. My initial assumption was nepotism, since she was the daughter of an Asgardian almost as old as me. Her mother left her behind, and continued her travel in a Seeding Vessel, but she was the one responsible for this particular brand of subhuman experiment.

They wanted to explore the concept of “vampire”, make it something as close to the supernatural fantasies as possible. But rooted in biology, purely, no cyborg implants involved. And, unlike most projects that tried to explore this trope, that was not aiming in anything romantic. They ratter wanted a deadly nocturnal predator, allergic to daylight. With as much traditional vampiric powers as they could get.

Didn’t took long for me to realize the Dra Nara Shanti Mar was above the average scientist that usually gets that kind of position, not bellow. Her knowledge and her instinct for creative cultivation of genetic traits was rare, even among scientists over 250 years old. My advantage, as a Asgardian, of having studied the principles of her discipline for thousands of years, allowed me only basic understanding of most her fine ideas.

Like most genius, and most daughters raised by mothers with particularly strong personalities, Shanti was not an easy person to work with. And was even harder to have around when she was not working.

Despite, or because, of that, we took interest in each other.

We married, less than two years after we met, and I realized that sex was still great. At least when the person sharing the experience was her.

She is an Alexandrine Woman, born after the **** Line. We knew always what that means. She has only 300 years to live. She told me she would not have children, unless I accepted to be the father of those children, because she had decided to be my wife. For the rest of her life. And, she even was a virgin when we married. So, you understand the weight of that statement.

I can think we are monsters, we, humans, by many standards we are. I can think myself a monster, sometimes. Despite all morally questionable actions we take for granted, as facts of life. I could not keep my wife without children, knowing she wanted the experience of motherhood, classic pre-Baby Steps Age fashion. I don’t think I am that monstrous.

When she dropped the matter entirely in my hands, giving me the freedom to be selfish, she inadvertently took from me any choice. I had to drop my ****, about father children who will not live more than 300 years.

Least I assume she did that inadvertently.

Anyway, as amazing and rewarding the professional side of my existence is nowadays. It is straw, compared to my time home. Surrounded by my wife and our seven children.

I know those moments will pass. They will die, I will lose one by one, and I will stay. To mourn and suffer. I don’t like to think about that. However, when I do think, I must admit: makes no difference. As painful as those memories may one day become, I would not exchange them for anything.

I do love, everything, about my life.

If I could, I would change the Unchangeable Law, make possible for humans to remain legally humans and also get the treatment. Became biologically immortal, like I am. Other than that, I accept my contingencies as they are. And I am grateful for my life, as it is, withing the borders of those contingencies.

Monstrous as it is, I do love humanity.