I’m not Methuselah’s kid. I wasn’t there for the birth of the Child in the manger and then for World War two. I wasn’t with the robots when the sun came up either. And I certainly wasn’t cutting off anyone’s head in the highlands, having any part of the weapon shop that caused the big bang, being born as a Star Child, or spending one thousand years chanting in Sanskrit. Sorry! I did see Nikita Khrushchev bang his shoe on a podium and say, “We will bury you.”

I was there before Eisenhower’s interstate highway system was finished and heard the news the day the music died. I was also there when the Institute for Immortality Research found that I was the one candidate genetically suited to be “fixed” so that I could live for five thousand years. I said no. Why would I want to outlive everyone I cared about, go on and on like reruns of Friends? One million dollars? The companionship of a lovely, intelligent red head? No and no again. I might wind up like Tithonus and I already felt like Sisyphus. So, you say I’m crazy: a million dollars; a lovely red head? Try a black government site, need to know and who trusts the US government? Most likely I’d be “harvested” and kept in a cage. Unfortunately, both figuratively and literally, choice is an illusion. Or as my friend Ray said, “What the fuck don’t you get about becoming practically immortal?” That was just before he and Chloe betrayed me, and I had to run. Run Eric, run!