Waiting for the Next Asteroid Strike

By Kent Karnofski

 

I have been a medical marvel eighty-three times. 

My story begins with a choice I made, while in distress, similar to you, dangling there, just beyond death’s grip. 

I was five years old when it happened.  I was fishing with my dad, and I slipped on a rock.  The water was moving faster than I could have imagined and freezing cold with glacial melt.  A tree had fallen during the winter storms, and my jacket snagged on a branch.  I sputtered with water washing over me as I watched Dad bob on downstream.

I whimpered.  I pleaded.  I must have shouted out loud.

And I awoke, wrapped in blankets, next to a warm fire crackling in the fireplace.  Our wet clothes were drying on the hearth.  Dad was sitting next to me, also wrapped in blankets, and Mom was serving hot cocoa.  She was baking bread, pacing, sweeping, and wringing her hands.  Anything to ward off fear.  I understand this now.  At the time, it was just Mom doing Mom things.

I felt warm then.  Dad was still shivering.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It was my fault, Son.  I’m sorry.  How do you feel?”

“I’m OK.  I fell into the river.  I saw you fall in.  I was scared.”

“I was trying to pull you out.  Everything is OK now.”

Looking back, Mom was silent.  Nervous, relieved, angry, elated.  All of those Mom things, all at once.  I get chills thinking about that day.  That was a long time ago. 

 

After I turned 21, almost out of college, He appeared one afternoon.  It’s not what you think—the red skin, the horns, the pitchfork—none of that mythology is true.  But He is real.  

“Who are you?” I asked.

“You know who I am.”

I did know who He was.  I did not know how I knew.  

“What are you doing here?”

“You are old enough now to understand.”

His voice sounded like it floated on hot steam; a soothing, intoxicating, warmth surrounded me.  I slowly shook my head.  “I am not ready.”

“You are ready.  We made a pact.”

“I was 5 years old,” I protested.

“Still.  A pact.”  The strange man shrugged and nodded His head.

It wasn’t fair, but I knew He was right.  I did make a promise that day at the river.  I remembered now.  I had no choice.  Make a pact or Dad and I would have both drowned or frozen to death or frozen while drowning.

He patiently looked upon me as I thought this through. 

He wasn’t really patient, but with His sense of time, He could be infinitely polite.  It’s the only thing I have ever liked about Him.

“How does this work?”

“You know how this works.  I explained it to you when we made the pact.”

 “I was 5 years old,” I protested.  “And probably in shock.”

“Very well.  I will explain it again.”

“Where are my manners?  Please, have a seat.”  I was stalling.  I motioned toward the extra chair at the desk in my room.  My girlfriend and I would always study together, side by side.  Svetlana thought that was sweet.  Sometimes I copied her homework.  

He sat.

“You simply say ‘when’ and I freeze your aging process.  Do you want to appear to be a 20-year-old for the rest of time?  Or perhaps an athletic 35-year-old beginning to gray?  You may wish to be an old man.  You decide.  Your life will be normal until the time you say ‘when’.  Normal, except, you are already immortal.  I can advise you not to wait until your body begins to fail; you would be physically miserable forever.”

“After that moment, you will belong to me.  You will stop aging, but otherwise lead a normal human life.  In exchange, you will recruit new souls for me.”

“I’m sorry.  My manners.  Would you like a cup of tea?” 

“Yes, that would be delightful.”

I poured a second cup from the teapot on my desk.  I was beginning to understand the game.  I would not have to reap souls until after I froze my aging process.

“What if I never say ‘when’?”

“You will slowly, continuously, deteriorate.  You will be in poor health and miserable for all the rest of time, but never die.  You must say ‘when’ sometime.”

I had already figured that out.  I admit the stalling is inexplicable.  When time becomes endless, there is no stalling; time is already stalled for you.  I did not yet understand infinite time. 

I had intuitively known this day would come.  I could not run and hide.  I could not change His mind.  A deal is a deal; I have understood this ever since Timmy and I swapped bubblegum cards on the playground.

“What about Timmy?” I asked.  “He was only eight years old.  He could not have done anything wrong.”

“That was not me.  I am not responsible for everything.  Timmy died because his father crashed the car.  You did not die, because you were already immortal.”

I nodded, absorbing this information.

He finished his tea.  “Thank you.  That was delicious.”

He stood, bowed, and vanished.

 

I opted to freeze my aging after I turned 25.  How does one make a decision like this?  I had no experience with such a choice, and there was nobody I could talk to about making this choice.  Who did I know that could understand this?

I’d watched Dad age.  His hips went bad soon after he retired.  The men in Mom’s family went bald and grew large with age.  After college, I had started running and, at 25, my body still worked well.  I felt good.  I felt healthy.  I was not yet wise, but I would have infinite years to mature.  I suppose I chose a good age to say ‘when’.  

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, nothing was going on, and I shrugged my shoulders and said, “When.”  There was a flash of darkness and I knew I was an Eternal. 

Soon after, Dad had an accident.  His was the only car to be hit by a falling tree during a brief windstorm.  I understand His side of the situation.  People who knew me would be suspicious if they noticed me not aging.  Ergo, friends and family were separated from me.  I begged Him to spare my parents—I could move to Timbuktu—but He said I would try to sneak contact with them.

You could say it wasn’t fair, but remember, Dad could have drowned with me when I was 5, leaving Mom alone, or he could have lived long enough to see me graduate college, watch me develop into a man, and grow old with Mom.  That seems like an easy choice.  If he’d had a choice. 

Mom’s fate seemed less fair.  I cannot talk about it.

We were a good family, a loving family.  They enjoyed their life together and were proud parents.  They were disappointed when Svetlana and I did not marry.  An international student with culture and flair, my parents loved her.  I only liked her.       

She was mysteriously deported back to her home country, despite having a work visa and a job.  I thanked Him for sparing her.  I have never thanked Him for anything else.

 

After the separations, my life continued as He promised.  Although I have to say, an Eternal has no semblance of a “normal life.”

At first it was interesting.  Fun, even.  I participated in the running of the bulls.  The goring was painful but exhilarating, and my wounds healed quickly.  I took up canyoneering, knowing a flashflood would merely make me wet and cold.  I continued experimenting and exploring. 

I made new friends, and left them; I had new romantic endeavors, and left them.  They could not notice that I was not aging.  I caused heartbreak and suffered the same. 

At age 65, I returned to college to study physics, knowing that I had plenty of time to develop a new career, but that meant more work.  More exams.  More proving myself. 

And this has continued. 

Unabated.

It has now been some eight hundred years that I have been an average-looking 25-year-old man.  I’ve stopped enumerating my age.  

I need to do things to keep my mind active.  I have nineteen college degrees, mostly in different names from different institutions.  I have never run much, but enough to call myself a runner.  It clears my head.  I logged over four hundred thousand miles before I stopped counting.  I have traveled the world many times over and, you might imagine, I struggle to catalog all of my photographs.

At various times, I have taken up new hobbies such as skydiving, scuba diving, base jumping, polar exploration, prostitution, drag racing, experimental aircraft piloting, rock climbing, ice climbing, and bank robbing.  Each offers bursts of excitement.  I have cracked my skull, punctured lungs, broken legs, asphyxiated, and been shot dead.  Yet, I continue living. 

I was once on a geological expedition, standing on a volcanic island in the South Pacific when I was vaporized in a blaze of exploding lava and boiling toxic gases.  I rematerialized in downtown Los Angeles.  I hate Los Angeles.  I booked a flight to London that evening.

Occasionally an Eternal meets another Eternal.  Whatever it is—an air of boredom, carelessness crossing the street, arcane knowledge—we recognize each other.  I don’t know how many of us there are.  

I once fell in love with an Eternal.  She was permanently 33 years old.  Once an actor on Shakespeare’s stage, she has, like me, pursued countless endeavors.  We were crazy for each other.  We had it figured out.  The way to spend eternity was with another Eternal.  We had a torrid affair for three hundred years. 

We grew exhausted of each other.  All the bickering century after century and she had the worst friends.  We finally enjoyed almost fifty years of trying to kill each other.   We were both delightfully inventive, but even that game became tedious.  I should have fed her to a polar bear.

I met another Eternal, Karl, who tried to quit finding candidates for Him.  You know the mythology: fire yet darkness, crowded yet lonely, hot beyond Earthly comprehension.  Endless toil.  This part of the mythology is true.  Karl’s punishment was Down There.  Once allowed to walk the Earth again, Karl was so distraught that he brought wrath to the living not seen since the Black Plague debacle.  

He began working with a genetics team that was developing a new virus, which he then released in Times Square.  Manhattan became a flashpoint of mysterious illness.  He encouraged the ill to continue about their lives; travel, if they wished.  Soon after, Karl had scores of souls to reap.  He set the annual record for souls.  We are instructed to revere Karl’s methods, but actually, the other Eternals despise him.

In total, I have recommended 912 individuals to Him.  I recruit candidates as I was recruited.  People who find themselves in peril long before their natural demise.  Children in need.  Parents with painful, fatal diseases.  Aging politicians who refuse to retire will agree to almost anything. 

I never know if He transforms one of my referrals.  The whole thing wears on my conscience. 

I loathe the hopeless choices that I offer to you innocent people.  There is no way out of this.  I have conferred with a few other Eternals, but we have not found a way out of our predicament.  How does one keep moving eon after eon after eon?  It is madness.

You have a choice, as you dangle there.  Death nearby.  You can meet your demise now, swiftly, without pain, and completely unprepared.  Or, If you agree to what I offer, you might live an eternal life as you see fit.  Before you decide, please consider my story.

I want to die.  Someday, you will, too.

 

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Kent Karnofski is an emergent writer, image maker, and mathematician.  He is the lead hooligan in all of his best dreams.  He lives on the West Coast of the Americas.  He maintains an on-line landing spot at www.PlutoIsFlat.com.  

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