[ WP ] One person , an immortal , reveals to their current lover of their eternal life . Write from the mortal lover 's perspective .

My mother called me an old soul. As long as she could remember, I had the rather unnerving tendency to act older than I am. Being an adult, it is not as noticeable besides a distinct dislike for raucous parties and an affinity toward crossword puzzles. When I was a child, I stood out more. I was a disconcertingly calm, patient, friendless, little old woman, who would sit alone at recess, contemplating mortality and morality while my classmates played jump rope. 
 
 I never had a boyfriend until I met him. It had not bothered me much. I was busy in lab most of the time, and the men my age all seemed to focus on baser aspirations than long conversations concerning the needed assumptions required to bestow traditional meaning on life. Even the ones who claimed maturity seemed to hold only matrimony as their goal. Yet, Chen was different. He smiled softly and would talk about everything, without being too attached to one idea. Religion and politics became free discourse where we could consider everything without fear of provoking emotional upset. 
 
 “ I used to be afraid of death, after I stopped believing in God, ” I said, rubbing my arms against the chill. His apartment was always cold. Today I had forgotten my jacket, even though I knew better. With my “ old soul ” I had also been gifted with the absent-mindedness and memory of a tenured octogenarian professor. 
 
 “ How did you stop being afraid? ” he asked, handing me a mug of tea. 
 
 “ Well, it was one part understanding that it is the continual recycling of life, of energy, that allows humanity to evolve in the first place. We are all part of it. When we die, all of our macromolecules are there in the soil, waiting to be eaten up by microbes and insects. Our deaths create a void for another being to fill, a new chance at life. If no one died, then all there ’ d be would be proto-cells filled with some macromolecule haphazardly creating more of itself. There would be no growth, no science, no art, no culture, no us. ” 
 
 He was quiet, as I took a sip of tea to warm myself. “ What if only one person didn ’ t die? ” 
 
 “ Well, I thought about that too. Despite what romantics proclaim, I am of the belief that one could overcome the hardship of seeing everyone you ever loved die, assuming proper therapy. However, after several thousand years, you ’ d start noticing genetic drift occurring. Humanity will not be the same. Give enough time, and you ’ d become an oddity, not a person, per se. Perhaps genetic engineering will have advanced enough so that you may become as they are, but there is no guarantee. 
 
 “ Eventually, humanity time ’ s on Earth would come to an end, if for no other reason than our sun running out of hydrogen in its core and becoming a red giant. What if you couldn ’ t get out? What if you were stuck on the blistering surface of Earth, alone, with no one else? For eternity? One must have an awfully large imagination to withstand that, sanity intact. 
 
 “ Mostly, though, it ’ s not that I ’ m not afraid. I am terrified, but I choose to ignore it. It is no use dreading the inevitable. It is part of our biology; it ’ s part of entropy. I will die, and so will you, ” I said. 
 
 “ No, ” he said. I looked up. 
 
 “ No? ” I asked. 
 
 “ No, ” he responded. There was something in his face, a fierce sort of determination that demands my attention, and my silence. It doesn ’ t quite rise to the passionate throes of less mature men. It is not anger or fear. It is more concerted and focused. 
 
 *You don ’ t even work in science, Chen, much less aging. Everyone dies. You are not one of those callow youths who doubt their own mortality. You are not a man to say, ” I plan never to die. So far so good. ” What do you mean? I thought. * 
 
 “ I don ’ t die. I won ’ t die. I ’ ve never died. 
 
 “ I ’ m old, Cara. Much, much older than I look, and I met god. Not God, the Christian God, the Islamic God, the Jewish God, a Hindu God, or any of the other ones. Just god. The first force who pushed the Big Bang into being. And, I asked god to not die, to be able to observe humanity the whole way through. I ’ d like to say it was because I was curious, but I think it was mostly because I was afraid. ” 
 
 He paused to breathe and take a sip of tea. His hands did not shake. The words sounded slightly rehearsed. I ’ m unsure whether the first to hear this speech was Chen himself as he stared at a bathroom mirror, or some other woman, what sat as I sat, wondering whether to trust her ears. Whether to trust her love, as overly dramatic as that sounds. 
 
 “ You ’ re right, Cara. You do learn to move on through everyone ’ s death. It doesn ’ t hurt any less, but time pushes you on, and there isn ’ t anything I can do but keep living because I can ’ t die. You ’ ll die, Cara. And I ’ ll miss you. I will. Even if this is the last I ’ ll see of you because you want to find someone to grow old with, or, if we are honest with one another, someone whose possibility of insanity is distinctly lower, ” he said. 
 
 I took another sip of tea. With lips still warmed by the scalding liquid, I stood up and kissed him. 
 
 “ You raise a rather interesting hypothesis. I think we should test it. So, for one, we ’ d need a DNA swab. I can have it sequenced and see how it compares different specimens from the evolution of humans. We ’ ll figure out where you fit on that evolutionary tree. Two, we ’ ll see if we can find any sort of memory you possess which occurred at least several hundred years past that we can test either through a literature search or perhaps an archeological dig. You ’ ve met Sam, right? She ’ s an archeologist, you know, and I ’ m sure she ’ d be thrilled to help out if we can get something publishable, ” I said, naming the experiments out on my fingertips. “ Three, we ’ ll need to document your lack of aging over several decades, just to be sure. As many decades as we can. That is, if you agree to this experiment. There ’ ll be some forms you ’ ll have to sign to submit to being used as a research subject, but I can have the ethics board draw them up over several, long, bureaucratic weeks. You know how these things are. ” 
 
 The kiss was salty, from his tears or mine, I did not know. He smiled. “ I ’ d love to never grow old with you, Cara. ” 
 
 
 

