Uncertainty of Immortality

If the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, does that make immortality a blessing or a curse? Millions, if not billions, of ordinary people strove to accumulate the wealth required to accomplish the dream of becoming a capsuleer, as he reached the bottom of yet another bottle he could not stop wondering how many of them understood the double edged sword that made up this existence. Compared with the myriad of benefits gained from becoming a capsuleer a mere mortal existence was nothing but a wretched pitiful thing, or was it? He reached for another bottle sneering at his morose mood, surely a sick sense of purity could be taken from the brief, bright spark of the mortal coil, to have one’s purpose, deeds, feelings, every attribute of a person’s character coalesced, concentrated and distilled within the insignificant amount of time which they had lived was a heady proposition indeed. He burst out laughing the first swig of the new bottle spurting from his lips as he did so, a hollow, harsh sound  that lacked humor. The weakness of the human condition condemned both capsuleer and mortal alike to dream of owning what they could never obtain, as a way of running from current reality, faced with the dubious gift of old age and death, the chance to cheat both and in doing so discover your real destiny was surely too good to pass up, yet with an eternity to fade into obscurity and uncertainty what could be more intoxicating than the possibility of not living long enough to be found wanting, the finality of death drawing a line under a heroic life committed to history with pride and recalled with fondness. Flinging the half empty remains of the final bottle across the room in disgust he cast his head among the pillows behind him. The drink had been unable to quiet the maelstrom of his thoughts as was so often the case of late, he hoped it fulfilled the more simple purpose of allowing him to sleep quicker than usual. His final melancholic thought as he drifted into the black void of sleep was that while he could easily be considered a god by virtue of his endless lifespan, it was an altogether more difficult assumption that he had escaped the trappings of his origin, in these moods he felt distinctly human.