Prologue

Immortality. Mortals should probably never be given immortality. Our minds and perceptions and responses are all evolved around being on this planet a given number of years and then shuffling off the mortal coil for the next plane of existence. As such is the case, our minds are built to process this world with such lingering in the background even as we use the rest of it to go about our daily survival. We perceive the world in ways that help us in that survival and react to the events we chance upon accordingly.

Immortality changes that dynamic. We would no longer need to worry about doing everything in such a limited scope of time. Time is, in fact, on our side and we can plan and react accordingly. The rush to establish ourselves in our livelihood is not as urgent and the need, the ... drive to procreate is no longer an issue. We do not need to work to replace ourselves before we meet our end. The pressures, while not entirely gone, are much less. A lifetime seen over centuries, millennia even, allows for long-term planning the likes of which a mortal cannot truly comprehend, though we might touch the edges of it in speculation and theory.

So, what happens to those rare mortals gifted or cursed with immortality? Silly to even speculate on something so impossible, right? There are no such things as immortals! Unless, of course, one believes in a religion. In which case, the immortals are gods and angels and devils and the like. Not humans who have stumbled upon the one gift/ability/characteristic that separates the mortal from the divine. Right?

That was what I thought, too. Every Sunday as I sat in church listening to the priest, I knew that only God and the Devil and their minions were immortal. That was the way the system worked. Immortals mostly stayed in their realms and fought over us mortals, deciding where our souls would go when we finally died and our life's accomplishments were weighed. Anything else would be skirting blasphemy and heresy. The Pope frowns on that sort of thing.

So, I guess with that preamble you could imagine my surprise at the events that surrounded my thirtieth birthday.