You know what really pisses me off???
I have the gift of Longevity. I may live forever. I certainly feel like I have lived for forever ( usually because the night before I have been drinking pints of slightly off beer in some sewer tunnel bar and woken up with some distant cousin growing on my tongue … or very possibly a small mouse living in my mouth. )
And since I have been gifted with Longevity I am a member of “The Club” as in “if you need to know what it takes to be in The Club then you are certainly not in THE CLUB!!!” and we meet every 84 years for a bit of a fry up and drinks. There are short term-ers expected to last no more than two meetings and of course there is the Old Guard who were at the first official meeting ( the games in 796 BC in Greece back when they let anyone in , ) Point of reference. Our charter was ratified on our 22nd supper and we each got a perfect copy thanks to Bi Sheng and his movable type machine ( yuh, 400 years before Gutenberg.. But when J.G. was popular we were shopping around for another version anyway because reading old Chinese is hard after too much good wine… oh and good wine is like the Egyptian wine aged properly .. You know how hard it is to find wine from 4000 bc? Can’t just pop into a local and get it, but I know a guy.)
But I was sitting and looking at my scrap book and there was daguerreotype ( in a very nice silk wallet ) and standing next to me ( I think at the time I was on an American Revolutionary named Cricket, or so? ) Was Swindle to my left and Perseus to my right.. It always seemed like I was next to them or someone like them.
And this then is what pisses me off.
Hang out with any so called “immortal” and you will hear stories like “ I was there when the American war of independence was ended just three months after the upstarts dumped tea into the Boston harbour” or “ How; in 1810 I convinced head of the British Empire to give the colonies their limited independence and thus ended potential war!” or “I was there when the Greek Gods closed the borders !” or “ I remember being at the signing of the ratification of the Constitution for ( fill in with one of these Cascadia/California/Texas/New Brighton)” or “ I served tea when the Circle met with the Dragon Empire and the National Workers and plotted the fall of the British Empire”.
But get them all in the same room and by the time they are done one upping each other you realise that if everyone had been in the damned stable in Bethlehem as said there was then some would have to have been standing on top of the quietly lowing donkey!
Worse part was when they turned to me I’d have very little to say. I always managed to be on entirely the wrong continent when most of the earth shattering events had happened. When the Armistice ending the Great War was signed in 1974 I was in a brothel in New Brighton dealing with a rather embarrassing situation as I had forgotten momentarily what sex I was and technically insulted the madam’s favourite houseboy in a most personal manner. I was there when the city was given all the rights of a nation and I certainly was there when the explosion effectively crippled the Empires Jewel. ( in a panic I had infested 5 separate individuals and it took me almost 30 years to get myself together. ) Where was I when Tesla won the Nobel prize? I was playing poker with a bunch of telepathics ( I learned later ). Where was I during The last coronation? I was trapped on a train in a tunnel because goats were on the track. Where was I when Prime Minister Kennedy was shot? I was hanging out with some guys shooting craps. Where was I when slavery was absolved? Sea sick just off a port somewhere near the horn. That thing in Bethlehem . I was there. Well not really, I got there early and I got a room. Taxes are the only thing that is constant in my life. Well taxes and death but taxes happen to everyone, death to me is a spectator sport.
I was there when the middle level Enhanced Hero “Haphazard” was born from the ashes. But in retrospect that might not be something to bring up… the best part is that as of this writing it will be another 69 years before the next meeting and thankfully I can either tell lies or say nothing and blame it on the fact that I will have just infested a new host so my memories are not what they used to be.
