[ WP ] you were given the choice of immortality , and you took it . Now , millions of years later , you are floating in space . Alone with your thoughts .

This is going to take a while. 
 
 It's funny how fast time can elapse the older you get. A child, a month could last forever. Summer break was a lifetime. `` Next year'' sounded like forever. 
 
 In my twenties, time moved faster. Years got smaller, a month went by in no time fast. After I got married, had kids, years flew by. By grandkids, decades were just flying, life was ludicrously fast. 
 
 It never hit me until my wife died, how fast time flies. When I look back, it almost feels like lifetimes had passed with her, but it was only about 60 years. 6 short decades. Not even a full century. She I met her in college; a late winter day, sunny but brisk breeze, she was working at the campus sandwich shop. I was 21, she was 19. Behind a counter, in a hair net, a white apron smudged with condiments, toasting paninis. I ordered a sandwich and thought she was cute, her curly black hair streaked with a violet stripe, her big brown eyes as sharp as the weather. She wore black bracelets, her lipstick was a shade too dramatic, but her posture was so graceful on her frame. I could n't take my eyes off of her while she made my sandwich. The sun, the breeze, the scent of deli meat, her hair, her face, I can live in this moment forever. 
 
 She does n't remember meeting me then, she remembers a month later when I sat next to her in the library and casually helped her with her children's literature project on JM Barrie. Her name was Gwendolyn, Wendy for short. We started dating after that. And then time started to fly, and it does n't stop, we all learn that eventually. She knew I was different, that I would outlive her, and when she died she was happy to see me so healthy. She called me Peter Pan, the boy who would never grow up. She knew I would be there to take care of our daughter, and our grandchildren, and she eventually died peacefully. `` Where are we off to?'' she asked in a tired whisper. `` To Neverland,'' I responded. `` We'll fly, of course.'' And I wept. 
 
 Then the death of your child, decades later. Where did her life go? She had just graduated high school, now an elderly woman. And then the deaths of your grandchildren, were n't they just learning how to walk? And here they are, bedridden. 
 
 So, that's about when centuries start to fly by. Eventually, my progeny stopped breeding, so I was the last of my line long before things went to hell. Things going to hell is all relative. When you've lived for a few millennia, even flooding, nuclear war, and epidemic blight are n't that bad. I mean, it all went to hell long before the heat death of the earth. Humanity was typically resilient but still somehow found a way to snuff itself out on earth. 
 
 A millennium was n't much to me by then. I could weather about 10,000 years like it was about a week. I could watch earth die and bloom with new life over the course of a few hundred thousand years like the seasons changing. Maybe it's because I had to. Living forever, you have little choice. 
 
 And now the planet is gone. Humans colonized some nearby planets and moons, but those are long gone too. I wondered what would happen to me when the sun exhausted itself, like maybe my deal for eternal life was tied to our solar system, after all people worshipped the sun for a few thousand years. But I continued on. 
 
 And now I float in space. It's rather empty here, but at least I have a trajectory and velocity. I'm actually accelerating a bit, slowly but surely I've been captured by some gravitational pull, even if very slight. I've had a long time to plan this, but I know exactly which way I'm heading. 
 
 There. Do you see? Second star to the right, and straight on til morning. 
 
 But morning is a relative timeframe.
