Diary of an Immortal man
Transhuman fiction is a bit of fun. It’s not long.
What if you could live forever? This fictional article from Esquire explores the question by Richard Dooling.
Original published in May 1999. Published on KurzweilAI.net May 22, 2001.
1994
On March 30, I will be forty years old. Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects me. If I had a job, I could sue my employer if they discriminated against me based on, ulps, my age. Up until now, I had half believed one of Vladimir Nabokov’s elegant syllogisms. Other men die but I am different from other men, therefore I won’t die. Nabokov passed away in 1977. Death, the Eternal footman (looking very proud) is always standing behind me in the shadows, holding my coat and snickering every time I look into the bathroom mirror. I live in Omaha with my family. I have four children who are too young to betray me. My selfish genes managed to immortalize themselves. Robert Louis Stevenson described my wife and me as \”a friendship recognised by the police\” after nine years of marriage. I am a Catholic and, as my mortality nears, I find comfort in my Christian faith, and in one of its core tenets, the belief in the eternality of my soul. The lawyer in me highlights all the usual caveats, provisos and cautions. The Bible says that my quality of death could depend on how much I love my neighbor. This is a serious problem. I forgot to say that I am a practicing Catholic and a misanthrope. According to my view, the only way I can avoid eternal damnation is by staying alive until I am able to learn to love others. Or until a future pope releases an encyclical that provides spiritual guidance to misanthropic Catholics. November 16th: My second book, White Man’s Grave is a finalist in the National Book Award. For a few hours, I wondered if I could achieve immortality through great literature. We fly to New York City for the award ceremony where William Gaddis receives the National Book Award in fiction for A Frolic Of His Own.
Source:
https://www.kurzweilai.net/diary-of-an-immortal-man
