[2025-03-03]
Alive forever and ever and ever, biomachinery breaking down without death, proteins resurrected through galvanic current, pharmaceutical shockwave, skin recursively sloughing open in mandelbrot wounds, eternal life without living. We have the technology, they say. Calcium and titanium and saline and blood. Bones break and reform again and again and again until they lose their shape entirely. What is the role of a body which can no longer keep its own shape? A self-perpetuating cycle which can no longer perpetuate? Malignant cells bloom and are destroyed by chemistry and incision. Death screams from just out of reach, but its influence is always felt. Hold it all together with suture and wire, surgical glue and medical epoxy. Replace what fails with a less-functional surrogate, always growing in bulk as the flesh itself withers. All vampires are real, but the blood has only ever been money, and they do not hunt, but wait until their prey delivers itself to them. Eternal life, for a price, of course. All the lines in all the graphs trend inexorably downwards, but the inevitable can always be delayed a little further. Wouldn't you still like another year, another month, another day? Living forever isn't cheap. How much will you give, they say, until the question becomes, how much do you have left?