The Postmortal

by Drew Magary

This impulse was allowed to bypass all that nonsense, to shoot through the gauzy tangle of second thoughts and emerge from me as pristine as when it first originated deep within the recesses of my mind.

I think we’ve all collectively adopted the unspoken rule that you don’t mention it out in the open. Like getting a nose job.

You know, science is usually agony. You conduct millions of experiments just to move the world forward a millimeter. But in a way, that’s a good thing. Science gives us time to adjust.

Nobility sounds wonderful as a concept. But nobility tends to go out the window when you find yourself forced to choose between life and oblivion.

You can’t stop people from doing what they want to do. They’re always going to do it. Mankind has a path for itself, a trajectory, and you can never knock it off of that course.

A thousand generations from today. I pictured him there, atop a remote and snowy mountain. The heavens opening and God congratulating him for his perseverance. Asking him to join Him and watch as the sun burns down to a dull orange cinder and everything around it breaks its orbit and goes tumbling, tumbling away, everything that once seemed permanent pulled apart effortlessly, like a ball of yarn. A life into divinity.

But I knew it was a lie. I’ve always known it was a lie. You cannot hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that’s left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.