If I Were Immortal

We all have been asked the question “would you want to live forever?”. Everyone has their own philosophy when answering that sort of question. Regardless of your answer, I myself have pondered another question, while digging for my answer to the first. Who would I be after I’ve had my 90th birthday? What about my 2nd century? Could I hold onto my ideals? Or would time wash away most of what I think to be so vital to my identity? We see similar changes as we age through our natural lifecycle, typically never quite the same person from age 8 to age 10, or from puberty into our twenties. Though in my experience the longer you stick around the less frequently you seem to experience those changes. They become more like fine tuning.

Let's assume when achieving this gift of immortality, it's the whole package. Eternal youth living in my prime indefinitely. How long before I turn from my narcissism and study others? Psychology, now I’ve objectified the human mind. Slippery slope towards learning the skills to manipulate and otherwise predict others. Though at the end of the day injustice lay throughout the world, of course I would want to help. Sociology, Ecology, Political Science, Government, Economics, boiling down to decades of research. Though I’m now starting to see the gears in this hastily built and barely living clock. I’d want to make an art out of correcting the immoral men and women taking advantage of their fellow humans. Though I need more power than they if I plan to wage a secret war against the abuse of a government’s citizens. Leading me to a lifetime’s worth of planning, plotting, deceiving, and otherwise manipulating those in key positions. Pulling the right threads can unravel anything.

Now that I know the control I wield I use it to forge something better, like art I would beg for something elegant. Though I wouldn’t stop with one, take them all and unite Earth under one flag, enforcing peace and justice, an immortal judge with an objective and partial eye. The cold beating heart of the beautiful mechanism woven over every piece of the world. A few generations come and go, and the splashes I made dramatically changing the world begin to settle and the metaphorical water becomes still. Boredom bleeds into me no matter how hard humans might try, none will ever know the world like I do. No one could ever have the time to learn all the things I ever would know. I unfortunately form a god complex (to be fair I nearly have one as it is) and spend two decades in hiding. Give the world time to forget my face before going in under the guise of just another citizen. Learn their ways again, play their games rewarding those who are in need out of circumstance while punishing those who offend me. Never by my own hand, no the best part of this game is the hope that someone might be smart enough to see the pattern in all of the chaos. Could any human show the potential of outwitting me? Maybe build a network for organized crime. See how long the system could survive without you before becoming corrupt. Would the peace withstand turmoil… could I leave and trust they will be okay?

So it is that I’ve now set out to destroy the good I’ve given the world in hopes that it prevails. Every creature on the planet barely even noticed as autonomous, appearing more like complex toys and everywhere I send them… anywhere they could go is my sandbox. Given a few more centuries the outcome of my experiment would dictate how I would want the citizens of Earth to be left before I work towards traveling into the great frontier. Leaving to see the universe and its many secrets to one day return home to see what is left when I do return.

If I’m not the only immortal, then I'd probably just use my free time to study moral and ethics in an everlasting society and keep it all to myself.