Homo Aeterna

We've come to the end, the world's end, this Scythian tract, a desert without mortals. - Aeschylus

...........

I often awaken strangely. Bolting upright. Surprised. Failing in that brief moment to remember where or who I am.

Awaken?

You know what I mean, don't you?

What, precisely, do you mean?

I know, I know. These bodies do not awaken, not really.

They revive, electrodes sparking when the next block of hours I call awake begins to distinguish them from the dormancy of powering down that I still name sleep.

I can’t seem to abandon the language and thought patterns from my life before. When I revive in the dark hours of early morning I feel my old self again.

I enjoy the sensation of frail flesh and all the former fears associated with it. Like a ghost self loitering in the circuits of my so-called brain.

Have you tried reviving later, when it's light?

You've missed my point. Angst is the desired outcome. It's in the transition from one state to another that emotion breeches the phantom sameness, the closest thing to dream I experience in this mechanical sleeve.

What I want, doctor, is for those feelings to last, not to eliminate them. But my disorientation is fleeting, even if potent in the moment, it quickly surrenders to indifference, the whirring of my eyes focusing reminding me that the flesh I impossibly remember was replaced in my bid for eternity.

You know you cannot go back.

We don't want to go back. We want different bodies. Ones that will allow us to feel pain and terror and joy again. I was an old man when I transitioned. I should never have agreed to such a youthful model.

And what of your wife? We made her beautiful again.

She was always beautiful. Age is a beauty that only the old know how to appreciate. Neither of us feel comfortable in these new skins, however desirable. Our old ones were lived in. Not like these. They still don’t smell right. Even new cars stop smelling new eventually.

I will pass your request to the modelers, but don't get your hopes up. The demand driving sales is for youth and vigor not senescence.

My wife and I would greatly appreciate it, Doctor. Thank you for your time.

End.

His image fades, my wife sitting across from me, not yet dressed. We don't often wear clothes when at home alone.

These bodies automatically adjust to the temperature, so what's the point? The embarrassment we used to associate with nakedness ceased to make sense after discarding our old, useless ones.

She sips her morning coffee, more a habit than a need. These bodies process and evacuate waste much like the originals but have no need for sustenance. Recharging our batteries at night when powered down meets all our energy requirements.

Have you ever dreamed since the change, Robbie?

In the first two or three weeks I did. But sadly, it's been years since the last one.

I dreamt last night of the beginning of all things, the all-consuming darkness at creation's dawning.

You believe in creation now?

I believe in man's power to create. She gestures at her youthful body. Why not God's?

Didn't you think it felt like our souls passed from the old to the new when we transitioned?

Surely in heaven we would feel more than this flat sameness day after tedious day.

I don't know, I always thought Heaven sounded dull. All that singing and never crying. I miss tears.

Do you remember any Latin from school?

Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware.

She giggles at my joke. Before the transition her dark eyes would have twinkled mischievously. Now they’re lifeless and dull. Just like everything else.

Of course. You were the businessman, and I was the dreamer studying liberal arts and dead languages.

Remember Ex nihilo, nihil fit?

Furrowing my brow, I puzzle for a moment.

Nihil is nothing ... right?

Out of nothing, nothing comes. Like in the beginning, when darkness covered the face of the deep. The darkness I saw in my dream.

Or the moment before the Big Bang, the universe violently birthed out of a pin prick of nothingness.

First there was nothing and then there was something. Let there be light! This world felt so real before the transition.

Now it feels fake like us, a bit of magic sustaining the illusion of life in the whirring of tiny, invisible particles.

I think, but am I? I want to feel, Robbie. I want to feel like me again. I want us to feel like we did before. Something more than a bit of memory trapped in a rubbery mannequin.

Standing I strip off my clothes and drop them on the sofa, my wife gazing admiringly at the muscled falseness of my flesh.

Want to make love, Robbie? It's been ages and ages.

I sigh.

I thought we were having a philosophical discussion. Anyway, I'm not in the mood. At least not like this.

I gesture at my plastic flesh in disgust.

I desperately want to make love to the real you, we two becoming the one flesh we thoughtlessly sacrificed for this illusion of perfection.

I do so long to caress you again....

I'm sitting right here, luv.

The thought of how much I want to make love to my wife - my real wife - makes me want to weep. But I cannot. These eyes will never weep.

You don't think I want to feel again the suppleness of your skin beneath my fingers?

Or see your white hair and the familiar wrinkles in your face when you smiled your I love you smile?

If your breasts sagged now rather than defying gravity, it would set my loins on fire.

You keep talking like that, we're going to make love whether you want to or not.

I'm an old man trapped in a young man's flesh and you're an old woman trapped in your wedding night body. Of course you are beautiful! But we aged together, you and I, like a pair of fine wines. I miss the real us. I thought I missed this, but I was a fool.

I was dying, luv. We could not sit here together in our wedding night bodies if we had not made the change.

Can we pretend for an hour that tonight is our last night together just like we did the day before we transitioned?

Can you caress my neck gently the way you did when we clung together breathless with desire? Close your eyes and I will close mine and shiver beneath your touch like I did when it still remained supple even though wrinkled and aged.

Remember again my dear, dear friend, the love that sustained us from youth to elderly.

Pretend with me for an hour or two that we are not lost in the desert of the new and the end of man has not already begun.