Story 346: All the Time in the World – Now What?

           (In a park, Friend 1 and Friend 2 sit on beach chairs, wearing hats and sunglasses and facing a lake)

            Friend 1: Sigh.

            Friend 2: No one actually says “Sigh,” you know.

            Friend 1: I wanted to emphasize the sentiment.

            Friend 2: Of what, contentment or disappointment?

            Friend 1: Both.

            Friend 2: You’ve lost me.

          Friend 1: Contentment in knowing that right now, in this moment, we are living The Good Life; disappointment in knowing this moment will end soon and we’ll have to go back to living The Blech Life.

            Friend 2: As with all things – just enjoy this now and let me do the same.

            Friend 1: I suppose.

            (They settle back in their chairs and watch some ducks paddle by)

            Friend 1: [Siiiiiiiiiiigh]

            Friend 2: OK, that’s even worse – what now?

          Friend 1: Just thinking how the Sun’ll set in less than two hours and the day is pretty much over.

           Friend 2: For the love of – can you just turn your mental gnawing on everything off for two seconds?!

            Friend 1: Yes.  But two seconds is a tiny period of time, so it’s virtually meaningless.

            Friend 2: Argh.

        Friend 1: As is any brief moment of enjoyment we manage to find in this world: ephemeral, evanescent, gone before we barely have a chance to truly appreciate it.  I miss the time in my life before I hit puberty when I didn’t realize all this.

            Friend 2: I miss that time in your life, too.  I’m going to watch funny videos on my phone and ignore you now.  (Does so)

            Friend 1: (Is hypnotized watching the ducks paddle by) [Sigh] If only I had all the time in the world….

ONE YEAR LATER

            Friend 2: (Answers cell phone) Hey, what’s up?

          Friend 1: (On the phone) You’ll never believe this: I got the results back from my physical and the bottom line of all the jargon is that I’m basically immortal.

            Friend 2: You’re right, I’ll never believe that – is today April Fool’s?

            Friend 1: I already got you with that last week; this is real!

          Friend 2: Oh right, I blanked out on that for a minute there.  You know, I’d be mad at you about that whole thing but I have to admit it was pretty funny.  I may steal it to use on my cousin next year, if you don’t mind.

            Friend 1: Not at all – I’m generous with my work.

            Friend 2: So, what’s up?

            Friend 1: Ummmmm… wait a minute… uhhhh… I’ll get it in a second….

            Friend 2: Oh right, you think you’re Dracula or something.

            Friend 1: Not Dracula; immortal!

            Friend 2: Isn’t that the same thing?

          Friend 1: The one is not dependent on the other!  I’m not drinking blood or sleeping during the day, I’m just living forever!  As in, FOREVER.

            Friend 2: That’s neat.  Good for you.

            Friend 1: Is that all you can say?!

          Friend 2: What, so you were given a life expectancy of 100-something years?  That’s great; hope you get to keep your faculties all the way to the end, if you know what I mean.

           Friend 1: You’re not getting it: my doctor found all these weird things in my blood and tissues and brain and what-not that mean nothing in me’ll ever get sick, or decay, or be destroyed!  I’m invincible!  AND I WILL LIVE FOREVER.

             Friend 2: You sure they didn’t mix up your sample with a cockroach’s?

         Friend 1: There is negative billion chance of that ever happening.  Now, having pondered on the ramifications of this for some time, I have accepted my new fate in truly having all the time in the world and therefore can do whatever I once thought impossible due to time constraints.  I can lean every world language now, including those of every species of whale!  I can literally travel to every country on the planet!  I can literally travel to every planet, eventually!  I can dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench just to say I did it!  I can learn every skill imaginable, becoming the international spy I always wanted to be!  I can even become an Olympic athlete because all it takes is a gazillion hours of training, which I now have!

            Friend 2: Well, it’s a little more than that –

          Friend 1: Where do I even begin with a whole universe of time ahead of me?  Ooh, I know: watching every single episode of that series, you know, Physician Whatsit, from its very first episode in 1963 to the present.

            Friend 2: …Wow, you really are serious about all this, aren’t you?

            Friend 1: I told you, it’s not April Fool’s!  (Disconnects the call firmly)

FIVE YEARS LATER

           (In a park, Friend 1 and Friend 2 sit on beach chairs, wearing hats and sunglasses and facing a lake, while Friend 1 flips frantically through a large book)

            Friend 2: I thought you wanted to relax now that time means nothing to you?

           Friend 1: How can I relax when I have yet to master the subjunctive of Vedic Sanksrit?!  (Flips more pages)

            Friend 2: (Furrows brow) I don’t think that one’s spoken too much anymore.

            Friend 1: It won’t be at this rate!  (Flips faster)

            Friend 2: (Settles back in the chair to watch the ducks paddle by) [Sigh]

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

            Friend 1: (Answers call in a hurry) Yes?

            Friend 2: Hey, sorry I had to back out of our skydiving trip sort-of last minute, but the arthritis is acting up again.

           Friend 1: Always excuses!  Never mind, you would’ve just slowed me down anyway – after I land back on Earth I’m hopping on the nearest train to begin my third round-the-world trek, which you already backed out of, again!

            Friend 2: Well, we did just get back from the Moon, and you know it’s my kid’s high school graduation –

            Friend 1: No sense of priorities!  You’re letting every opportunity to live pass you by!  (Turns off hologram call and jumps solo out of a plane) Liiiiiiiiiife!!!!

THIRTY YEARS LATER

           (In a park, Friend 1 and Friend 2 sit on beach chairs, wearing hats and sunglasses and facing a lake)

           Friend 1: – and I clearly explained the entire history of the U.S. banking system to demonstrate how their plan will lead to yet another recession, and the entire board room stared at me as if I had two heads!  Oh sorry, outdated reference: one of the board members does have two heads, so I guess it reminded me of that old phrase, heh…. Do you ever wonder if everybody on what we used to call Proxima Centauri b think we’re weird for just having one brain? 

             Friend 2: (Wakes up with a half-snore) Huh?  What?

             Friend 1: Forget it.  Oh, and Happy 80^th Birthday, if I missed mentioning that before.

         Friend 2: Oh, thanks.  You know, I really do owe you for helping find the cure for dementia all those years ago – I realized recently I’d’ve been knee-deep in it by now.

           Friend 1: No problem.  It’s amazing how simple it is to find a solution once one has adequate time to devote to the problem, know what I’m saying?  Sorry about the multiple sclerosis, though – working on that one now!  (Continues scrolling through medical texts on a holographic screen)

            Friend 2: That’s OK, I’ll take it over the other one any day.  You gonna stop all that and just watch the water with me now?

            Friend 1: Oh all right.  (Turns off the screen and leans back to watch the water) You know the Earth’ll rotate away from the Sun in less than two hours and the day is pretty much over.

            Friend 2: Unbelievable.

TWO HUNDRED YEARS LATER

            (In a lecture hall on Mars)

          Friend 1: (Pointing to a presentation on a large screen) And in conclusion, our continued presence in this universe actually will create the very extinction-level event for our insignificant planet that we have been dreading since the beginning of our entire species’ existence!  (The attendees stand, bow at Friend 1, and leave the room)  I miss applause.  (Stares out the panoramic window at tiny Earth, far in the distance) Sigh.  Think I reached the end of this academic avenue: what should I study next?  How to reverse entropy?  Time travel that actually works within this dimension?  Comparative religions of Earth and Venus?  Why fictional romances are so much more satisfying than real-life ones?  (Sighs softly) Why having all the time for everything I could ever want to do feels empty instead of fulfilling?

            Friend 2: Because you never learned to really appreciate anything?

           Friend 1: Huh?  What?  (Wakes up with a half-snore, back on the beach chair facing the lake in the park with Friend 2)

            Friend 2: You were talking in your doze.  And snoring pretty loudly.

         Friend 1: (Looks around, discombobulated) What – how – do you know I just lived several lifetimes’ worth of experiences and intellectual growth, and it was all for nothing!

          Friend 2: Well, welcome back, Dorothy.  Learn any life lessons that you’ll instantly forget?

          Friend 1: (Stares at the ducks as they paddle by) That I really do need to appreciate more in life and focus less on the time that’s passing.

            Friend 2: Good.  (Leans back in the chair and closes eyes)

            Friend 1: And also that space travel is the absolute worst.

            Friend 2: You certainly learned to keep on complaining.

Story 283: The Moon Did Not Appreciate the Landing

(Approximately 13 billion Earth years after the Big Bang/1,969^th orbit of the Earth during the human Common Era)

Earth: Ahem.  Say there, Moon?

Moon: [Oh, bother me] Hey Earth, how is… everything… with you lately?

Earth: Not so good, and getting worse with each rotation.  As I’m sure you’ve guessed.

Moon: Oh, it’s not so bad; from here I can’t even tell anything’s wrong.  Much.

Earth: Well, it’s better you can’t tell how epically the sentient apex predator experiment on this planet has failed.  Which brings me to why I caught your attention earlier.

Moon: Yeah, sure thing, what’s happening?

Earth: So, you know all that junk that’s been stuck in orbit around me lately?

Moon: Oh, well, one doesn’t like to point out such things, but yeah.  I have been getting a bit concerned about the increasing volume of it, actually: are your inhabitants going to be cleaning all that up soon, then?

Earth: Far from it: I wanted to warn you that those apes-with-airs are planning to climb into some sort of container and shoot themselves right out of my gravity for the sole purpose of landing on you.

Moon: Heh-heh-heh – what?  Are you serious?

Earth: Sadly, yes.

Moon: But how – I don’t understand, that shouldn’t even be theoretically possible, we’re too far away from each other for them to get halfway here!

Earth: Unfortunately, they figured out how to warp my materials to make stuff that’ll carry them fast enough and far enough to get them to you and back here to me without utterly obliviating them.

Moon: I don’t believe it.

Earth: They figured out the math.

Moon: Noooo, not the math!  Earth, how could you let them do this?!

Earth: Don’t pin this on me; they’ve been slowly killing me and every other living creature here for ages now – I’ve been a bit busy trying to maintain homeostasis in the face of that while simultaneously trying to figure out how to wipe them all out with as minimal collateral damage as possible.  They also don’t listen to me much.

Moon: This is a nightmare!

Earth: Tell me about it – I first was hoping that the damage to the air, land, and sea would at least preserve the microbes and the cockroaches, but that’s taking too long so now I’m banking on their insistence upon manipulating their own genetic building blocks to create a virus that would at least sterilize their entire species.  It would fit my sense of justice.

Moon: Oh Earth, you just know if they make it over here, they’ll completely destroy me with their junk!  And they won’t stop with that; you know Mars will be next!

Mars: Huh?

Moon: Go back to sleep; you’ve at least got a few more decades of peace left.

Earth: I’ll tip you off when they point their monstrosity in your direction; all I can say when they begin to break free from me is “Brace yourself.”

Moon: Ohhh, I wish I were a comet on my way out of this solar system!

(After the Moon landing)

Earth: Whelp, the interlopers splashed back down on me, safe and sound.

Moon: Oh, goody for them.

Earth: So, what’s the damage?

Moon: Let’s see, shall we?  They left behind their huge lander, some random pole with a piece of cloth jammed onto my surface, their footprints just everywhere, a bunch of other random garbage, and oh yeah, their flippin’ bacteria!  Which all died in my not-quite atmosphere, but still.

Earth: Bummer.

Moon: And to top it all off, those freaks actually took some of my surface back with them!  They didn’t even ask!

Earth: Heh-heh, “ask.”

Moon: I tell ya, Earth, I don’t know how you’ve put up with those destroyers for as many rotations as you have – I think I would’ve cracked open my surface and swallowed them all up long before now!

Earth: It ain’t easy, and it’s getting worse; a tiny percentage have a clue what’s happening and are trying to make things better, but the rest either overrule them or don’t care.

Moon: Just please don’t tell me they’re planning another trip up here.

Earth: Well….

Moon: Aaaaaahhhh!!!!  I can still see the stuff they used to fly over here, floating for eternity in our orbits!  I swear, the next one of them I see coming my way, I’m breaking orbit and crashing right into you!

Earth: Umm –

Moon: It’s for our own good, Earth!  Problem permanently solved, and we can start over, with us forming a whole new planet!

Earth: See, the thing is, Moon – and it’s a great idea, I’m all for it – the thing is, your crashing into me would definitely put a damper on all life here now, and I have a sneaking suspicion it also would push me out of orbit and we just might – might, mind you – crash into one of our chums out here and/or, perhaps… the Sun?  I’m just thinking worst-case scenario.

Moon: Argh, you’re right.  Although, now that you mention it: hey, Sun!  Hellloooo, Suuuuuunnnnn???!!!

Sun: (Distantly) Oh hi, Earth’s Moon, how are you?

Moon: (Grumbles) Earth’s Moon.  (Yells) Any chance of you going supernova anytime soon?!

Venus: “Supernova?”  Did I hear “supernova???!!!”

Mercury: I heard “supernova!”  What gives, Sun?!

Sun: (Chuckles) No, no supernova destined for me, and right now I’m growing into a red giant that’ll probably swallow up all of you, but that won’t be for awhile – I am still in my prime, you know.

Moon: (Mutters) Spawn of a singularity – (Yells) never mind thank you!

Sun: I can whip up a flare or a prominence, if you like?

Moon: Nope, we’re good here, thanks!  (To Earth) All-powerful star and absolutely no use whatsoever.

Earth: What are we going to do, Moon?  They keep repurposing my elements and shooting them out into space more and more as the years go by, and they’re also planning to send some junk to spy on everything way out there and beyond – and that’s just the beginning, they know once they’ve pretty much killed me they’ll need to track down another rock to infest, what if they find out about –

Moon: Ssh, don’t let them hear you!

Earth: Right.  Maybe they’ll never find it?

Moon: From what we know of them, it’s inevitable they’ll find it.  Maybe we’ll luck out and that invasion force next solar system over will make its way here and take care of the whole problem for us.

Earth: Oh, that would be lovely.  Pluto’s heard that once those folks wipe out the dominant species, they’re super-accommodating to the host planet.