Living Forever

Abigail walked down the street of her youth for the first time in over a century. Her body hadn’t aged a day since she last left, but to say she was unchanged would not be accurate. Like the street she walked down, she bore unmistakable signs of someone or something that had been neglected at best, ravaged at worst. Her t-shirt and jeans had holes and slashes in them; the damages echoed on the skin below. A hole—a bullet hole—ran through her upper arm. Her face held a deep gash across the cheek. The wounds weren’t bloody, although blood could be seen. Souvenirs from the Breakdown and all else that followed. Living forever, Abigail had come to realize, came with its costs.

Abigail reached the house that she grew up in. It had taken close to three years to get here once she made up her mind. The sidewalk, where her parents once walked her to school, was overgrown with grass and weeds to the point where there was no sidewalk anymore. Her home, once a soft blue, was faded and dirty like her clothes. A breeze rustled the trees and the grass, but Abigail didn’t really feel it. She didn’t feel much of anything anymore except some basic emotions. But, even those had been beaten down and dulled to a general apathy— until recently. Now, she held a fear that drove her forward. 

Her foot made contact with the door, and it flew open. Stepping inside, the house looked as she remembered, except for a gaping hole in the side of the house. Remnants of a rotted, fallen tree covered the floor of the once dining room. Their dining table was most likely mixed with the pile of rotted and decayed wood. Abigail moved into the living room and sat on the couch. She heard a squish, but the wet cushions wouldn’t bother her. Looking up, a hole in the ceiling gave her a view of her bedroom. Her gaze moved further upward to the blue sky through the roof above that. 

Memories flooded her. This couch. This room. It’s where they all sat and heard the news about a hundred years ago. 

A special announcement by the President had been advertised all week, and Abigail’s parents made sure she was there to listen to it. 

“My fellow Americans,” The President began, “and to all those listening around the world. Today will mark a day in history that will change the very meaning of history itself.” 

Abigail’s father inched forward on the couch. 

“This news won’t be easy to hear because it may seem to belong to the realm of fiction, but I assure you it is not.” The President pulled from around his neck a heart-shaped locket. The metal seemed to change colors and bend light around it, so it wasn’t always fully visible. Abigail leaned forward. 

“This is being called a Capsule. A team of scientists has recently accomplished a task that makes this little device the most valuable piece of jewelry of all time. It is a capsule for… my… life-force, we could say. Whether a soul or a spirit, the energy that makes us... us is being held within this Capsule. With it, my body has ceased to age and will never degenerate. My body will exist in a state of stasis while my soul lives on in here. I can now live… forever.” He held up the locket. “What’s more, is that these devices will be made available to all American citizens, and soon to the rest of the world.”

The reporters erupted with questions, and Abigail sat stunned beside her equally stunned parents.

Two weeks later, in the same living room, Abigail was in a heated argument with her parents. 

“I am seventeen years old!” Abigail said, leaning forward, head hot. “I can decide for myself!” 

“Abigail,” her father said, “I don’t trust these… Capsules. It goes against nature, against the natural order of things.” 

“That’s a load of hippy crap, Dad. We’re talking living forever!” 

“It’s not right! To live forever must have its costs! You’re not considering—”

Her mother stepped in, putting a hand on her and her father’s shoulder. “Abigail,” she said. “All we’re asking is for you to wait. Just a bit. Let us wait for there to be some more information before you—”

“No,” Abigail said, stepping away from her parents. “If we wait… if I wait, it might be too late. I could die tomorrow! How would you feel then?!”

Abigail stalked off.

Another week later, when Abigail returned with her locket, her parents treated her like a zombie, or just not like herself. 

“Nothing’s changed,” Abigail said over dinner. “I’m still the same!”

But that wasn’t entirely true. She felt different. No heartbeat. No need to breathe except to speak. And her sense of touch, of hot and cold, seemed muted, dulled. They existed far outside of her now.

Her parent’s phones began to ping with text messages. Many text messages. Soon, her father turned the television on in the living room, and Abigail and her mother joined him. Riots were breaking out all around the world. Skirmishes and all-out battles. It was the beginning of what the media eventually dubbed, The Breakdown.

Without the fear of death, certain groups of people became unapologetically violent and unafraid of any risk. Attempted bank robberies were becoming a daily occurrence. Men and women leaving the banks in handcuffs, bullet holes throughout their bodies, but still alive, and they would keep on living. 

The government soon threatened to destroy the lockets, the Capsules, of these individuals. A ploy to restore order and keep people in line. But, that just led to everyone, if they hadn’t already, hiding their Capsules. Breakdown of order ensued, and soon wars erupted everywhere. Endless fights and battles, where people could not die. Abigail’s family had been killed in a bombing the very first year. 

Whoever survived The Breakdown found themselves in a world of nomads. No government, no society, and certainly no trust. No one wanted their bodies any more maimed than they’d become. It was a world of immortals who mostly kept to themselves. 

She had wanted to live forever, and now that she could, she didn’t know what to do with it. Was it to find love? If so, their bodies were in stasis. There would be no family to grow. Earth would be a world of walking corpses, a step above zombies.

So, Abigail simply roamed. She traveled to see the world. A place of endless destruction as it may be, at least she had a purpose, a thing to do. 

Three years ago, however, Abigail witnessed something that brought her trajectory back home. Something that brought a realization to her mind. A realization that she should have understood long ago. Perhaps she just didn’t want to look too closely. Maybe she didn’t want to understand. It was that kind of thinking that got her into this mess, and it nearly put her into an even worse state. A limbo. A forever purgatory. Abigail kicked herself as fear exploded in her, and she began making her way back where it all started.

Abigail got up from the couch and made her way through the kitchen to the back door. The backyard was a forest. She found the shed, a crumble of rotted wood. Slowly, she picked through until she found a good enough tool for the job. A shovel without a handle. Then, with a little effort, as the place had changed so much, she found the place and began to dig. 

As she dug, flashes of that man, of that scene from three years ago fueled her. She had been in Cairo; a bunch of other immortals like herself, people with ravaged bodies, walked around aimlessly. They all kept their distance from each other. But, suddenly, an explosion filled the air. Her dulled senses still picked up the sound and the light. Although any heat on the skin was lost to her.

There was a blackened hole in the sand, and all around were the effects of a man who stepped on a hidden mine. It was grotesque to witness, but that’s not what frightened her. This was not the first body in a century to have been blown away from bombs. During the Breakdown, that sort of thing was common with all the fighting. Billions of people had disappeared from the Earth in a few short years. What she realized at that moment, though, was that she had been thinking of the word “people” all wrong. Billions of people didn’t disappear from the world—billions of bodies had disappeared. The implications of the realization shocked her into frightened and purposeful motion.

Abigail removed a lockbox from the ground after several minutes of digging. She put a combination in and opened it to reveal a heart-shaped locket. It was made of a glowing metal that bent the light around it like a mirage. Her Capsule. It could have been her in Cairo. A simple misplaced step and her body would be spread into a thousand pieces. Yet—she thought, grasping her Capsule—I would not have died. 

What was that man sensing at the moment? He had no eyes to see from, no ears, no voice… yet, he was alive. Somewhere, his life-force continued on, contained in a Capsule that he hid somewhere. It might never be destroyed. Billions of lockets hidden around the world, keeping their owners alive; but, without bodies… what was that life like?

Living forever came with its costs—Abigail thought, remembering her father’s words.

Abigail carried her locket back over to the pile of rotted wood that was once a shed. She found a metal hammer, and she grasped it firmly. Then, placed her Capsule on a rock that once lined a beautiful garden. It’s was better to be fully alive—she thought—or fully dead. Only one of those options remained to her now. With that same fearful purpose that brought her back home, she swung the hammer down upon the metal Capsule.