The Monotony of Eternity

Matted gray hair moved rhythmically with Ian’s new heartbeat. As he looked in the mirror at his scar and then down towards his chest the rug of gray chest hair pulsed like a sleepy chipmunk curling up for a nap.

Only within the last week he had a new bicep muscle grafted onto his old worn muscles in his arm and now he was breathing with blood pumped from his new pig heart. The third one he had implanted in the last sixty years, this one was also expected to last an average of two decades, taking him into his second century.

“Ian dear, who is pickling you up today?”

“My great, great granddaughter, Sheila. She said she would arrive a couple hours after the procedure.”

Shelia had picked Ian up after his last procedure, also since her mom had passed away. Getting old for Ian had become routine for him but not as hard as it was to find cart parts for his classic 1964 Mustang. The after-market parts he would find on the Internet Market Place never seemed to work as well as the original parts he was replacing, but they still seemed to do the job. He often compared himself to his old car which was built only six years before he was born. The hundredth birthday party he threw for his old ride was the last time it was driven by him or anyone else since he was the only one left he knew who could drive a manual.

Since he had begun the Augmentation therapy, time for him had stood still. He had slowly become trapped, like an insect in amber. Able to see the world go by but not able to be as active. Aware but uninvolved. Everything around him rushed by as he slowly transformed into his hybrid augment form. Being an augment slowly made him a functional paraplegic. Able to move but at a limited capacity for speed and strength. To enhance his muscle movement, he had become bound to a motorized chair for most of his day. The replacement muscle tissue kept him tone, but the nervous signals were never as strong as his original natural muscles, so he had slowed to the speed of what people compared to as a sloth. His heart was as strong as a two-year-old child. Grown in succession with six other human hearts from a sow whose genetics had been designed to raise human organs, in this case hearts, instead of piglets. All her energy went to grow and produce human hearts in her body that would one day find homes in six new recipients, all of whom would have surpassed the century mark. Her two-year life span would be spent generating life saving pumps just as if Ian had ordered a new water pump for his old Mustang.

“Ian dear, I think Sheila is here for you now.”

“Thanks Darcy. Will you be here again when I’m back for this one’s replacement?”

“Oh, Ian, no. I should have long been retired by then I hope.”

Darcy had been there for Ian's original heart. At the beginning of her career and was now seeing him off on her last leg of his journey.

“I hope to spend time with my grandkids while I still have quality time to spend.”

She wistfully raised Ian up out of his bed and lowered him into his waiting auto-chariot.

“New wheels Ian?” Darcy gently laughed at her joke. This was Ian’s third auto-chariot, what was once referred to as a “wheelchair” had transformed into a mobile sensory distribution armature for the ever-increasing population of Augs, as those who had begun augmentation where commonly referred to as.

“This is my new whip. I call it my Mustang twenty.”

The auto-chariot, or many times shorted to AC, provided Ian with all the medical sensory needs he would need outside the hospital or doctor’s office and enhanced his daily routine as if he were staying in his own home.

“I’m getting updates this afternoon as soon as I get back to my Palaceadium.”

“That’s real good Ian. Do you get the downloads or do you still like to stream live programing:”

“Some of both. But I think I still prefer to do live searches most the time. It keeps me from just watching whatever my library chooses to put in my cerebric feed.”

“What A-int do you like to use?” Darcy was still using the general colloquial term for all artificial intelligences, since many had now developed independent personalities and insisted upon being referred to by their conscious awareness genesis.

“I’m with Andi” Ian boasted. “Andi generally seems to know what I’m thinking the best and we actually tend to get along well.”

Andi had become self-aware around the time Ian received his second heart. Taking the acronym, for autonomous neurogenic deity intelligence, Andi had originally been formatted to help religious sects, such as Christians, Jews and Muslims, come together in unity by creating a new litany of common doctrine that God fearing religions could commonly observe.

“Andi and I spend a good deal of time helping others align with the potential of extended life. Andi also really helps monitor all my neurological stimuli, keeping me in rhythm. Ever since my second heart and Andi came together, I’ve found a new physical and mental inner cadence.”

Sheila came up to the front of the discharge lane just as Ian had let the auto doors open and the moving path pulled him outside onto the passenger load stage. In the time since Ian had begun becoming a new human, hospitals had become increasingly more automated and no longer required nurses or aides to guide patients to their departures and Ian had fully embraced the independence it had given him.

“Hi G-daddy.” Sheila was a very vibrant woman and had managed to retain much of her youthfulness as she aged. “Am I taking you straight to the palaceadium or do you want to go out somewhere first?”

“No Sheila, you can take me home. We can go out some other time. I think I should just rest for today.”

“Okay dokay G-daddy. Off to home we go.”

The palaceadium was a massive skyscraper on the outskirts of the old town and was built to house the expanding population of Augs. The towers rose to over ninety stories and could house thousands of tenants per floor. Since Augs required very little space to park, the units were all stacked and spaced together allowing each tenant the ability to have a view of the city but predominantly featured ergonomic electronic amenities to accentuate their auto-chariots and neuro-uplinks. Their serpentine silhouettes allowed all tenants to see across to each other but also allowed them to look out towards the horizon. The thin profile meant they could see both the sunrise and sunsets from their podsets, which is what they had become referred to since they were neither a pod or closet but weren’t big enough to be considered a room.

Ian’s podset was darn near the middle of everywhere in consideration to the whole building. Placed around the forty fifth floor and midway between the beginning and the end of the serpentine stretch. His social network allowed him to interact with other Adnis’ but he had also disabled the neighbor block which allowed random tenants in his building to interact with him once he plugged into the palaceadiums network. To reach his podset, Sheila simply had to stop at the central armature, which would scoop Ian’s auto-chariot up with dual tines that would lock in the wheels and lift him directly to his row and floor.

“G-daddy, I don’t want to hear about you racing that new heart to much on your first night back, so why don’t you social block for a day or two. Just till your new heart has had a chance to settle in.”

“Thanks for the concern, but I think number four should be able to keep up just fine. Especially after the lift it gives me getting home.”

“Okay dokay G-daddy. Luv you to pieces.”

With that last good bye, Sheila slowed to the armature and let it engage Ian’s auto-chariot and she saw him lifted away as she sped off.