A/N: Wow! Thanks to everyone who reviewed and marked this little ditty with alerts and favorites. And I am open to ideas for him to ponder should there be any issues you would really like him to mull (Ralynn- yours will be in the mix eventually). Cheers!
Forever Young
Dear Diary:
I used to think that the idea of living forever was quite a good one. Who wouldn't want to be immune to the slow decay of the body and the ravages of time? In my case it carried the added bonus of cheating time itself, opening a vast horizon of abilities to be harvested at my discretion and leisure like so many wildflowers spread as far as the eye could see, just waiting to be picked one by one, offering an almost limitless potential for my own personal evolution. I could laugh and frolic through this wonderland until the end of time itself and that didn't seem like a bad proposition at all. It also meant that I would survive numerous attempted murders and surely people like Bennett know this, especially since it was his own precious Claire-Bear that made it all possible, but it doesn't stop him from trying in the slightest.
I have found myself groggy and strapped to a table in some warehouse or deep, dark pit with no real idea of how I got there on more occasions than I like to admit thanks to him. Truthfully, it's a little baffling the way he always seems to be able to do the things he does to me considering he has no abilities himself and I'm the closest thing to a demigod that has walked the earth since the days of Zeus and his ilk. What's even more striking is the fact that he knows his efforts are futile, that although he can make me hurt and suffer for a time, taunting me, trying to play on my insecurities, that at the end of the day I will find a way to escape. He knows this and yet he seems to take great pleasure in his little covert torture operations. I can't describe the sick smile he gets when he can manage to make me scream and the twisted pleasure he gets from watching me writhe in pain. I can't believe that people think I'm the monster. He's so convinced that he is in the right and that he's trying to protect the world from me that he can't bring himself to realize that he created me- he made me what I am. I might not have been happy with my life, but left to my own devices I can't imagine that the very thought of murdering anyone would have ever crossed my mind. But, as they say, the genie is out of the bottle now and there's no stuffing me back in no matter how much he or anyone else may want to.
As bothersome as Bennet is, he won't live forever like I will. He can fill the rest of his days with chasing me, plotting against me, or fantasizing about ways he'd like to watch me pay for my crimes, but one day he'll be gone and I'll have the last laugh so to speak. There is a certain sense of comfort in that knowledge, but more and more I'm starting to wonder if living forever is really what I wanted. As pathetic as he was, my biological father made me stop and think when he told me that I'd just have that much longer to suffer with my boredom and restlessness and I hate to admit it, but I'm already starting to feel it and I haven't even lived out my own natural lifespan. I don't want to even contemplate what the future holds.
Where I used to see limitless possibility now I mostly see vapid hollowness and I find myself wishing I could die just so I don't have to sit through another episode of Jersey Shore or yet another season of people singing, making cakes, vying to be the most cutthroat employee of a shallow tycoon, or trying to see how many children their bodies can possibly reproduce as though they were personally responsible for repopulating a postwar civilization. The gleeful celebration of stupidity is both astounding and sad. I'm not an idealist, I don't believe that utopia is possible given our innate compulsion for competition and tribe confederacy, but I can't possibly see how the current direction of what is considered human achievement will end in anything other than utter disaster. When we are all focused on the latest celebrity rehab victim or buried in our devices texting and tweeting our latest mundane act of triviality, the bigger questions of our existence go unanswered. Is there life on other planets? How can we make less of an impact on the environment? How can we solve the issues of inadequate medical care and food insecurity? It might come as a shock to those who think they know me to discover that these things are important to me. I'm not a humanist the way Peter is, but while people say we need to fix these things for their grandchildren and great grandchildren, I say I need to fix them because it's my future too.
Ok, I admit that it is entirely self-serving because my regenerative ability will make me immune to the endemic problems that these issues pose. I will never need medical care, I can live with the potentially harmful effects of pollution and if it ever came down to it, I don't even have to eat because it's not like my body will let me starve to death. I might even be able to survive being blasted with spaceship lasers during an alien invasion, or ray guns, or whatever advanced technology they may have, but I don't want to live in that world if I don't have to. I can guarantee that should food and water become scarce, or the city sent into panic as a spacecraft looms overhead while people run screaming for their lives that I will do what I have to in order to ensure my own survival. I will take what I want just as I have because it will truly be survival of the fittest and there is no one else out there that is fitter, faster, or more determined to do what it takes than me. I will endure while the Snookies, Jerry Spingers, and Rod Blagojeviches of the world fall victim to the tide of evolution. In some ways, I almost wish that something like that would befall civilization to rid it of the weak and useless, scour humanity down to the point that only the toughest, smartest, and most resourceful remain to deal with what's really important in life.
I'm doing the best I can, but I'm only one man and even so I have standards. I wouldn't take any ability that Lindsay Lohan may have no matter how useful it might be. I'm not sure if such a thing exists, but I'm a little concerned that she might harbor the equivalent of ability syphilis and I'm not positive that my healing ability could handle that. I am certain that most of the cast of Jersey Shore have fallen victim to an as of yet unknown strain of brain sucking bacteria that has more or less rendered them zombies. Then again, it could just be the sheer amount of hair product they use. Less really is more, guys. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I can't imagine being stuck on the subway with any of them, listening to them giggle slurred, half articulated thoughts, muddled in a thick cloud of bad cologne and body spray while I worry about sustaining puncture wounds from their spiky, puffer fish hair. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is our future. These brilliant individuals will be the people making our laws and performing surgeries in hospitals. Suddenly, Bennet doesn't seem so bad. At least he stands for something and does his job with tenacity and integrity even if his motivations are suspect. I can't stand him, but he's old school and I respect that. I would probably respect him more if we were on the subway together and he took out a few of the mouth breathers with his secret agent moves he uses on me. It would not only benefit the whole of society, it would give me a chance to observe so I could avoid getting captured by him again. A true win-win.
