[ WP ] Humanity has found a way to be immortal , and spread among the stars . On your 21st birthday you find out that you are the first person in 10,000 years that the process does n't work on .

`` We have discovered happiness'' -- say the last men, and blink thereby.'' 
 
 Julius set aside his story. He looked around the empty living room of his house, and remembered that he was alone. It had taken him some time to condition himself to this fact. A few months prior, he was surrounded by those he considered family: uncles, brothers, lovers... Ipitur, Yaren... 
 
 Mercelia. 
 
 *Oh, Julius*. 
 
 The faint, nostalgic echo of his name on her tongue grew fleeting. 
 
 *Julius, Julius*. 
 
 What remained was achingly less substantial; A collection of flickering glimpses... his gentle hand stroking her rose cheek, her commanding and disarming red dress which appeared to contradict her, and a soft, pink smile of understanding, of acceptance, full of the things he longed for. 
 
 That was gone now, of course, replaced instead by painful illusions and yearning fantasies which seemed all too real. When the longing overtook him, he would hold his hand to his heart simply to hear a thing, anything. At least to remind him that he was alive. Yet through disturbed breaths he only felt a heavy, rhythmic thumping. A bleeding candle, illuminating sullied dreams with dying light. How dearly he wished to harbor instead a fire, and to hear it's crackle. 
 
 For a moment, he found himself wishing he had n't been born. There was no shame in that thought, and there was no hate. There was only terror. The dreadful beckoning of age, of growing old and growing dead. Julius closed his eyes and turned his mind away from the darkness. 
 
 *Rather I grew young again, * he reconsidered. 
 
 It was an interesting thought. To go back a path you've traveled, and take new steps. To live again in innocence, and the bliss of ignorance. And then to *-poof! -*, into nothingness again. But that was all it was, an interesting thought. 
 
 Julius was well aware that if he did entertain the thought of death, it had now become less of a philosophical question and more of a choice. A choice between an act and a becoming. Yet they were both the same thing, were n't they? One just gave you more time. 
 
 He never imagined desiring time. He'd taken it for granted, because nothing could take it away. Someone could take away your air, something could take away your thoughts. But nothing could take away your time. *Nothing could take away your life. *
