Word Count: 2,300
The spread of Christianity is an interesting phenomenon that Alexander mostly observes from the distance—metaphorically speaking, not physically. If that were the case, he wouldn't have gotten the news as fast as he did.
If he hadn't stopped believing in any kind of religion around the time he must've hit a thousand years on this damned planet, then he might have considered this as a viable option.
It starts out pretty good. Helping others, good deeds being the cause of a good life after death—ha. He can't help but laugh whenever he hears of it—and women being worth the same.
It's terrible that they're not allowed to practise their faith for the first few centuries and their numbers grow rapidly, nevertheless. It's impressive, really.
But then the Emperor Constantine legalises the religion and then suddenly everyone thinks that they have a right to force others to join them.
There had been a few people like those before, but that number seems to explode.
Which kind of sucks, honestly. So Alexander starts to head north, because he hasn't been there in a while and from what he hears, the guys up there are fascinating enough to warrant a visit.
The rumors are correct. Just their myths alone are worth the trip.
(Alexander realises that he probably isn't meant to connect with Loki out of all the god and goddesses, but that is what he does.)
The first time he sets foot on the continent that will later be called America is actually centuries before Columbus is there.
No, he hadn't arrived there with the people who would later become the Native Americans. He is old, yes, but he isn't that old. Which is something he can't say very often, so let him have this.
Alexander goes there with Leif Eriksson and his crew. He is in Iceland around that time and travelling with vikings is always exciting. Violent and sometimes disgusting, sure, but exciting nevertheless.
He stays over there—on the other side of the ocean—for a while, exploring as much as the continent as he feels like—which means almost all of it—before he eventually finds a ship that brings him back to Europe, once he disguises himself as one of them.
(Okay, granted, he goes back to Europe for a few years by himself. He doesn't know when or why his skills in illusions had started to include the skill of being in two places at once—nevermind how it works—but it happens and he spends a year or so in Italy while he is still on another continent entirely.)
That is when he meets Christopher Columbus. The man is a bit of a dick, really. Then again, so were many people in Europe around that time and Alexander is certain that people are—at least in part—shaped by their environment.
As soon as he is back in Europe, he catches up to what he has missed—the Black Plague, the Hundred Year War, and several Crusades, to name just a few examples—and he decides that it had been worth exploring another continent for almost half a millennium. Plus, he had done pretty much the same thing with Asia and Africa at one point, so it is only fair, really.
Alexander simply likes to know as much as possible about as many places as he can, it is a habit of his. One he does not intend to let go of anytime in the near future at that.
He probably is the best educated person in Europe at that point in history. It is fairly easy to be so when one simply had to catch up to new developments instead of learning history and attempting to study every single thing about several sciences from the ground up.
That is one of the things that lead to a change in his life now.
Respecting other cultures isn't nearly as complicated as the Europeans make it seem—he is not one of them. He had been born in the Middle East and the place he lives in changes regularly. He doesn't really feel at home anywhere.
And, maybe, that helps as well. Alexander supposes it would make sense, he has lived in so many cultures over the years and had left a small part of himself in every single one of them in exchange for some of their customs and beliefs. How can he choose a single home when he has so many?
Of course, this is largely made possible by the wealth he has gathered over time. When you work for centuries upon centuries, it is pretty much impossible to avoid, especially if you have less expenses—no real need for food or no children, for example. Money simply starts to pile up and why not use it for something worthwhile?
It is better than spending it all on useless things and it isn't like he could simply carry all of it around. He doesn't particularly like being stabbed in an armed robbery, thank you very much. Alexander may survive it without as much as a scar, but it still hurt quite a bit and, eh, no.
(It's weird that he can actually get hurt now when he hadn't been as he was younger. A part of him enjoys it, hoping that maybe it will get weaker and weaker and can one day finally die. Another wonders if it perhaps has something to do with his skills in illusion growing, or if it is a thing of focus or how else it could have happened.)
He has better things to do with his existence.
Once he has caught up to everything, Alexander beings looking for Nicolas Flamel.
There are rumors about that man. Rumors that state Flamel had unlocked the secret behind the Philosopher's Stone.
Alexander isn't sure if there is anything behind those rumors, but nevertheless he clings onto the hope that it is true. If Flamel he can figure out how to become immortal, then, maybe, he can figure out how Alexander can stop being so.
It's a vain hope and he is well aware that he is grasping on straws, but he is tired. He has been living for almost five thousand years at this point—three hundred years more or less don't matter that much to him anymore and he has no idea how old he is exactly—and he has more than enough of life. He has seen and experienced so much more than he ever thought he could and while that is wonderful, Alexander is still tired and alone.
There's no one who he can talk to openly, no one who knows all his secrets.
Because—despite all this time—a part of Alexander still is a scared child in desperate need for approval. He's afraid of losing people any more than he has to.
That's why Alexander looks for traces of Flamel all over Europe completely on his own, which of course takes some time.
Eventually, he discovers a shack with their writings somewhere in the Austrian woods, but he doesn't find evidence of Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel being dead.
After sitting in front of the hut for three weeks—three weeks that would have been filled mostly with boredom, had he not acquired new reading material—he doesn't have any proof of them being alive either.
When the king of Mali visits and shows off his wealth, Alexander debates returning to Africa for a while.
He sends a double there for a while.
The northern part is Islamic and not very fond of christians, which unfortunately includes his current disguise, so he heads out of there pretty quickly.
And getting through the Sahara on foot is technically possible for him, but it doesn't feel worth the effort. Based on what he heard not much changed since he last visited the southern parts.
It only occurs to him later that these accounts might have been biased and by then it is too late entirely.
By that point, many of the cultures have already been enslaved and forced to lose their identity which is just cruel and wrong and Alexander really wishes that he had gotten to collect information and preserve it in his library.
Hindsight always reveals the 'should haves'. Alexander likes to think he's gotten better at ignoring them when they are too depressing.
He still thinks about them way too much, but less so and everything counts here.
Alexander is miserable enough without those already.
Alexander spends the beginning of the sixteenth century in Italy and France. Right up until Leonardo Da Vinci—a great friend, despite the fact the man may have been his great-grandson—dies.
After that, he briefly considers heading back to Germany, but he sees the war on the horizon and had decides to opt out of that. Wars about religion are all the same and, essentially, pointless.
So Alexander decides to return to Asia. He hasn't been there in a while and there is a new system in China. Well, sort of new.
Whatever.
Systems always change. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but change is unavoidable. Sooner or later, people begin to get tired of old systems, when they realise that they don't work—at all, for them, as well as they used to; take your pick.
He hasn't been in China since it had been in part for the what? Second, third time? Something like that.
And since it was now in one part, the fact that there were changes is a logical consequence. He's curious to see how far these changes extend.
And then, of course, the Europeans arrive. While he's in China, he doesn't actually notice all that much from them—good work from the government there—but eventually he leaves the kingdom—they were a bit pretentious as well, calling themselves Celestial Empire and all that—and suddenly there are Europeans everywhere.
This is why he heads to the sunrise kingdom. Sure, they have their own problems, what with the emperor being more a figurehead than a real leader and the last couple of shogunate having been fought about.
By the time the government in Edo closes the country, he's already in.
It doesn't take all that long until Alexander decides to leave Japan. The government is too strict for him and it's even worth sailing away on a dutch ship—which is saying something.
It doesn't take much consideration until he decides to return to America, as they had started calling it a while ago. He's not completely sure what that Italian it had been named after had done to deserve the honor, but there are worse choices.
He's just glad they didn't name it after Columbus.
The continent across the Atlantic Ocean continues to change so much faster than Europe did and the fact that it seemed interesting was all Alexander needed as a reason to do it. After one had spent a certain amount of time on the planet and seen a certain amount of things, it is simply not particularly easy to get excited anymore.
So many things simply seemed old and boring, like he had seen them before. And repeated exposure had just made everything boring over time, as sad as it was.
But by now America was shaping up to do something that Alexander hasn't seen happen before. He can feel it.
He doesn't actually have any tangible reasons for it or know what exactly it will be, but he knows this is going to be interesting.
Sign him up.
He gets back to the American continent around the the shift of the fifteenth and sixteenth century.
At first he explores the southern half and wow, did those Spaniards and Portuguese change everything. Most of it looked like it was for the worse at first glance. A whole lot of people died because of them, that much was sure.
Alexander explores the rainforest for a decade or two, since he had barely done that last time. There are so many animals he has never seen before—and he may have mentioned it, but it's not easy to find something he hasn't seen at all.
He manages to befriend a few animals during that time. It's unlikely to ever be of use to him, but never say never. The unexpected is the exact thing that should be suspected around Alexander.
Once he's done there, he starts to head north. He gets to the West Indies—a name that doesn't really sits all right with him, but who is he supposed to complain to?—when he gets a new idea.
He manages to set up a fake pregnancy and he is going to pose as the infant once it is born. It is mainly just a test to see if he can do it.
And it seems like he can. Alexander hides nearby as the 'pregnancy' progresses and all seems to be going normal.
By the time the 'baby' gets born, Alexander has decided to try something else.
If he already gets the chance to grow up again—he had figured out how to copy realistic aging before the Romans had really been a major player—then he might as well do it properly.
Without all the years and years and years and years of memories that weigh him down.
He locks his memories. He has practised on people minutes before death for anything larger, and minor things, like names of former neighbors, on random people on the street once he is pretty sure he's not doing any harm.
And it all seems to work. Infinitely, or until something of his choice is triggered.
Alexander sets his memory up to unlock when any normal person would die. Given where he is doing this, he doesn't expect it to last seventy or eighty years, but a break of fifty years would be just as helpful at this point.
It doesn't even come close to that.
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