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True Love, Chapter 2 |
| Written by Mark Grealish | |
| Monday, 04 August 2008 | |
Boredom defines our lives, Simon. Boredom drives the five of us apart in ways that were impossible for us imagine when we lived teeming cities of Earth and Meran. Sanya can manage the ship's systems far more efficiently than any of us who are merely flesh and blood, leaving us with a struggle to, not survive, but to exist. Our challenge is to face the empty decades ahead and remain human, to find something that can fill those empty years. I have you, but for the others? Sex? There are only so many variations and times in which you can have sex before it becomes just a dull grinding of flesh devoid of meaning or joy. Fantasy worlds? Sanya can create a ten thousand different freespace fantasies for us, but in the end they can only engage us for so long before we have killed the last dragon and looted the final chest. Conversation? There's nothing left for Kei, Tom, Ala, Sandra and I to talk about. We're in an informational time capsule caused our isolation. The moment we transited away from Uranus the outside stopped mid-sentence, and won't continue until we leave.
Can even the strongest emotions last? Nature intended humans to be short-lived, intense creatures. Did the geneticists of four hundred years ago truly realise what giving our species infinity would unleash? Immortality chains us, Simon, not frees us. What is the burning love toward your child when it's stretched thin over three centuries or more? Can you hate a group when their crimes have lost all meaning through the passage of time, when even those who would prosecute them have lost interest in pursuit? And that is where we are right now, Simon. Our whole race can choose to put off until tomorrow what it doesn't want to do today and so it stops to care about our fates now, because it can simply do it later.
Under these circumstances dinner has evolved (or devolved... I'm not sure which) into the only event that can still bring all of us together into one room at the same time. Everyone, Tom especially, is vocal about the pointlessness in attending, but they still comes. Whether it is that we are creatures of habit, or just habitually obedient creatures, I don't know. I know that when I order Tom, Kei, Ala and Sandra to ''attend dinner at 1900 sharp,'' they come. Oh, they *****, they procrastinate and they will beg out early, but without fail, Simon, they come.
After Kei left, I fed you and put you down to sleep before I showered and got dressed. Do I wear the black dress or the blue one? Oh, how I'm spoiled for choice. I chose the black one as the colour seemed apt and made my way to the gallery. Sanya had drawn back the shutters and an absolutely amazing sight filled the windows: Ten million stars hung in the void before me shining bright and true. I got so caught up in the view that I lost track of time.
''Lo the pale princess,'' spoke a soft Caledonian voice behind me. Copyright 2008 Mark Grealish |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 05 August 2008 ) |
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