This week I’ve got another fiction/sci-fi serial for you! A little while ago I really wanted to expand on one of my 10Minute shorts (this one, if you’re curious) and now I’ve finally had the time to do it.

As with Bray’s story there’ll be another post tomorrow, and the final instalment will follow on Thursday. The posts today and tomorrow will be told from a different person’s POV in 1st person, and the one on Thursday will be in 3rd person. You’ll see why I’ve written it like that on Thursday, but let me know if it’s too confusing 🙂

Now, onto the first post! I hope you’ll enjoy it, please don’t be shy to let me know what you thought! 🙂

***

“Hey, sweetheart.” With shaking legs I bent down to place the bouquet of flowers on her fresh grave. No matter how long I lived, I’d never get used to burying my family.

Shauna hadn’t known that I was her Grandmother. Or rather, she hadn’t known that I was her great-great-great-great-grandmother. Explaining to someone how something like this was possible when you didn’t have any answers got old quickly. I had wanted to be in her life and I had done the best that I could, but it hadn’t been the same.

“I brought you William. Here, let me.” Carefully I placed her teddy bear next to the flowers, between all the other bouquets and loving gifts. She had loved that bear, but had returned him to me shortly before she had died. To ease the pain, she had said. I didn’t want to be rude and say no to her last wish to me, so I had accepted him. The pain hadn’t stopped despite her wishing, and I didn’t feel right keeping him. He was hers, and he should stay with her even now.

“He missed you.” Shauna had only been eleven years old. In all these years that I’d lived they hadn’t found a cure for some diseases. We had conquered AIDS, we had conquered cancer, and we had defeated many other diseases along the way, but rare bone disabilities had proven a little tougher to battle. “He said he wanted to stay with you, make sure you get to heaven all right.” I choked on my words, but didn’t wipe the tears away. There were always more, no matter how hard I tried to rid myself of them. There was no point removing something if it was only going to be replaced so easily.

“He’ll look out for you in my place, sweetheart. William will make sure you’re okay.” I had been her ‘assigned friend’. Around two hundred years ago hospitals had begun to assign carers, kindergarten teachers, and any friendly people who passed a few tests as ‘friends’ to patients. For many being hospitalised was a scary experience, especially for children or the elderly. Having a ‘friend’ was supposed to help with that. I had pulled a few strings to be assigned to Shauna, and so she had come to know me after all. It wasn’t the close relationship I had wanted to have with her, but it had been better than nothing.

Still shaking I got up and walked back to my car. There was much to do, and even though I couldn’t die it never felt like I had enough time for everything. Even if I wouldn’t die, others would. If I didn’t get to them before that I could lose vital information, so, despite being immortal, I was in a rush to get things done.

Of course, these days a lot of people were ‘immortal’. Until the effectiveness of their procedures wore down with time, anyway. None of them were really immortal, like I was. In my entire life I hadn’t met a single other person like me. Someone who didn’t age past twenty, or thereabout. Someone who wouldn’t get sick, or die of a fever or an infection. Someone who could survive a shot to the head without any effort on anyone’s part. Just because their body willed it.

I was done living. I had lived far past what I should have done, and had seen more than anyone else alive today. Aliens had invaded us once, and I had been the one to broker the peace treaty with them because at the time, I had been President of the United World Alliance.

Today, immortality was just a small procedure away. An expensive and risky procedure, but many people were willing to throw themselves into debt over it, believing they’d have an eternity to pay it off again. But it wouldn’t last. Whatever it was they did to people, mankind couldn’t alter human biology to that extend. Even some of our alien neighbours didn’t possess that technology or knowledge.

Apart from me. Somehow, I was immortal and had always been immortal, but I didn’t know why. I had been born without the basic human right to die, and had to watch my loved ones pass on instead, generation after generation after generation. Like my first husband, or my wife. Or Shauna, who hadn’t even known who she was to me.

Life Corp. were the ones handing out Immortality Cures like flyers on the high street. They had been around for a very long time, under many different names and somehow they were connected to me. Somehow, they knew why I couldn’t die.

Sitting back down inside my car I checked the small compartment under my seat. I always felt better knowing that my gun was within reach, and after making sure that it was loaded I revved the engine, and drove.

Life Corp. had a lot to answer for. Today, the day of Shauna’s funeral, I’d make them kill me.

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All writing belongs to the author, Sarina Langer.

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