INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY - MINE

Dragons are immortal - didn't you know that? I say that if you have to
pick a picture of a dragon to illustrate your blog, you should pick a good one.
 This is a good one.

A few weeks ago, one of the daily freebie Kindle books was 1000 Awesome Writing Prompts by Ryan Andrew Kinder. I’ve written about prompt #2, and prompt #7 in last week’s blog. The next one to interest me was prompt #10: “You are given an opportunity for immortality. Do you take it or decline?”  Oooh – I’d take it. I do know that my immortal life could end ‘not with a bang but a whimper’ – a whimper of boredom when everyone else has gone – or in a fiery inferno as our sun dies. But we’re merely speculating here, so the end really doesn’t signify.

I’ve written before how When I Get to Heaven, God is going to have pictures for me to see some of the events I’d like to have seen from the past. Well, living forever, I can look ahead to things I might see in the future. Cars that run on water? Widespread and inexpensive use of solar and wind power? More and more features built into our personal electronic devices? Cures for everything from the common cold to the worst cancers. There has been so much change in the last century that it is a given that there will be more amazing things to come.

I know that unless the extraterrestrials come soon enough and we all band together – the eternal ‘them’ against ‘us’ – this world is going to see a lot more strife. Whereas in not all but much of our previous history, war has been caused by greed and expansionism, most the newer conflicts now seem to be caused by intolerance. Where will it end? When will it end? I’d like to be around to know that.

I’ve read enough fiction about those, like vampires, who’ve lived for hundreds of years, and those like the immortals who’ve been around since it all started. One of my persistent questions, one rarely answered, is how do you keep the mortals from guessing why you’re around so long - just keep changing your address, of course – and how do you hold on to your funds? I suppose you would leave it to yourself under a new name at that new address. I think that, given the proper circumstances, I’d happily deal with these problems. Birth certificates, Social Security numbers, bank accounts? I’d be immortal, I could figure it out.

I do hope that if I do become immortal I will also become a few decades younger. If I stayed at my current age of 72, I’d have to move quite often because folks would become wary of an already-old lady who is about to outlive the neighbors. And I’d want to be in the shape I was in when I was 52, maybe even 42. Yes, as long as I’m writing this piece of speculative fiction, I might as well choose 42. I weigh now what I weighed then, but it has all sagged a bit a lot. Hey, as long as I’m speculating, why not lose even more pounds and be immortal at my ideal weight? I can dream, can’t I? The possibilities, fictionally speaking, are endless. The possibilities are immortal.

Dragons live more than a thousand years - I'd love to have a dragon friend forever.
 A "realio, trulio, little pet dragon."