— That's the trick, isn't it? To survive?
— It's not just about living forever, Jackie. The trick is living with yourself forever.
— Jack, I have to ask... You had the chalices, the water, the tear... You could have lived maybe forever.
— The Fountain does test you, Gibbs. But better to not know which moment may be your last. Every morsel of your entire being... alive to the infinite mystery of it all. And who's to say I won't live forever, eh? Discoverer of the Fountain of Youth. I have no say in it, Gibbs. It's a pirate's life for me. Savvy?
Imagine immortality, where even a marriage of fifty years would feel like a one-night stand. Imagine seeing trends and fashions blur past you. Imagine the world more crowded and desperate every century. Imagine changing religions, homes, diets, careers, until none of them have any real value. Imagine traveling the world until you're bored with every square inch. Imagine your emotions, your loves and hates and rivalries and victories, played out again and again until life is nothing more than a melodramatic soap opera. Until you regard the birth and death of other people with no more emotion than the wilted cut flowers you throw away.
Important thing is not the me that's lying here, but the me that's sitting on the edge of the bed looking back at me, and the me that's downstairs cooking supper, or out in the garage under the car, or in the library reading. All the new parts, they count. I'm not really dying today. No person ever died that had a family. I'll be around a long time. A thousand years from now a whole township of my offspring will be biting sour apples in the gumwood shade. That's my answer to anyone asks big questions!
Halloween morning. Rotting pumpkins. Burning leaves. Black cats mating like rats in the alley. It was as... It were as if we felt no fear. As if we were already dead... and had nothing to lose by dying. Or perhaps it was because we lived life so well... and loved life so much... that we imagined ourselves immortal... overwhelming the powers that be with the force of our passion for science. Or maybe we were just fucked in the head.
Here we are, born to be kings.
We're the princes of the universe.
Here we belong, fighting to survive
In a world with the darkest powers, heh...
And here we are, we're the princes of the universe.
Here we belong, fighting for survival.
We've come to be the rulers of you all.
I am immortal, I have inside me blood of kings — yeah — yeah!
I have no rival, no man can be my equal!
Take me to the future of you all!
— I've been alive for 4 1/2 centuries. I cannot die.
— Huh. Well, everybody's got their problems.
We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!
- 1
- 2