As near as I can tell from a casual glance, the Hindu drink of Immortality is the juice of the Magic Mushroom. If it doesn’t make you live forever, maybe the trip just feels like you lived forever. Which make me think about being immortal, one way or another. If you could drink something magical and never die, would you really want to do that?
Being a fan of sci fi and fantasy and other stories that don’t hold up so well if looked at long and hard in the light of day, I find that there are a lot of immortals floating around. But none of the immortals seem to be all that happy about it.
In Season Three of the New Doctor Who, The Doctor hooks up with Captain Jack-a man that cannot be killed and may live to be a million years old. By the time he finally does die, well, let’s just say he doesn’t look too good anymore. Dr Who himself seems to be on the immortal side and is so very lonely that he wants to be with his bitterest enemy rather than be the last of the Timelords.
Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a nifty short story called the Island of the Immortals, where living forever meant you might end up being turned into a diamond. Or that your poor misshapen body might be put on display from time to time for the tourist trade.
Douglas Adams of Hitchhikers Guide fame wrote a book about the Norse Gods and how it was a bit boring to be stuck in Valhalla for all eternity.
The Wandering Jew is supposed to the Roman that beat Jesus on his way to the crucifixion, immortality being about the worst punishment God could whip up on a moment’s notice.
Vampires are immortal, but they have to drink blood to stay that way and killing people seems to be the only kicks they get out of unlife. Unless they are Laurell K. Hamilton‘s vampires, then they get to have gobs of every kind of sex imaginable. But a lot of them seem a bit depressed most of the time as well.
Immortals of one kind or another pop up on Star Trek with annoying regularity. Somehow the crew of the Enterprise usually finds a way to ruin it for them. Of course, they are all nasty people anyway, or robots, or both.
Anyway-the list immortals in pretty much endless.
Would you want to be Immortal if you couldn’t take your loved ones with you? Or would that be part of the appeal, you could reinvent yourself every fifty or sixty years like that guy on the Twilight Zone?
Could you stand the world you grew up in turning to dust and being just so much history? Or would you start to collect thing and be the greatest antique dealer of all time, like that guy in The Highlander?
What if living forever meant aging forever? Dieting forever? Exercising forever? Watching Star Trek reruns forever?
I think I’d still drink it, anyway, wouldn’t you?
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