Outliving everything
OOC: crossposted from theatrical_muse from Oct 26.
Prompt 305: What have you outlived?
Everything.
Or damn near it, anyway.
Tashlin Mayoka was a fellow on Gifrai, a planet of bird-like sapients, who believed that his people could reclaim the skies that evolution had denied them. Everyone laughed at his flying machines, saying that if the gods had meant for the Gifra to fly, their wings would be bigger. But he was convinced that by studying the smaller, still-flying cousins of the Gifra, and then implementing what he learned, he could fly. And despite the laughably primitive condition of his equipment, he did it. The general Fashar Mukwaa fell in love with him, and she saw his flying machine as a way she could launch a rebellion against the oppressive Queen Eithgi Juray, and five years later Mayoka was a prince of the land of Sertif, married to the new Queen.
For five hundred years I watched as protocol and courtiers and the general day-to-day dullness of life in court tried to suck all the intelligence and spark out of Mayoka's descendants. In each generation, I found one child to exhibit the traits that Mayoka and Mukwaa had had, that drew my attention in the first place -- geniuses, tricksters and rebels, people who saw how life truly was and demanded to know why it couldn't be different. They fell from power, survived assassinations and coups, became ordinary folk who hid in academia or in guilds, clawed their way back to power because they thought their nation, or later, their world, needed them... over and over. Pushed, in part, by them, the Gifra went from being a species primarily governed by monarchies with a level of technology that Shakespeare would probably have been able to understand to a space-faring race on the verge of warp drive.
Their first contact was with the Borg, who promptly assimilated the entire species.
I moved on.
I have seen species evolve into their glory, and destroy themselves, and fall back into the mud. I have seen stupidity lead an intelligent race to poison themselves in the name of prosperity, heard the cries of the few far-sighted ones as they were executed for heresy because the state religion and the profiteers were in cahoots with each other until the apocalypse that the religion had predicted finally came, and boy weren't the fanatics surprised to discover that when their world's ecosystem collapsed from poison, they were not transported to a rapturous second life in a fantastical paradise, but died just as painfully as the critics they'd silenced. I have seen a sentient species destroy its own sentience with chemical reactions they didn't really understand, that mutated their children so they lost their intellects and became brute animals again. I have seen beings desperately chase the promise of ultimate power or free energy, and destroy themselves in the process.
I have seen planets blow up. I've seen stars go nova. I've made stars go nova. I've seen plagues, wars, sentient-made disasters. Smart mortals, dumb mortals, beautiful mortals with the fire of true intelligence, fascinating mortals, incredible mortals... and in the end, all of them mortal. All of them, in the end, died.
Nothing lasts in this universe. In my realm, my own kind are eternal, which can be comforting at times, but bores the living daylights out of me most of the time. I like the ephemera of mortality, depressing as it is, because at least it changes. Change is death is birth is life; things exist because other things ceased to exist. It fascinates me. I get off that wheel for millennia at a time, get depressed because of all the death and go back to my own kind... but eventually I always come back to this. The universe that changes, the flux of matter and energy, mortality and vitality. And in this universe, I outlive everything.
It is very possible, and in fact quite likely, that someday I will outlive this universe. It'll be interesting to see what comes after that.
Prompt 305: What have you outlived?
Everything.
Or damn near it, anyway.
Tashlin Mayoka was a fellow on Gifrai, a planet of bird-like sapients, who believed that his people could reclaim the skies that evolution had denied them. Everyone laughed at his flying machines, saying that if the gods had meant for the Gifra to fly, their wings would be bigger. But he was convinced that by studying the smaller, still-flying cousins of the Gifra, and then implementing what he learned, he could fly. And despite the laughably primitive condition of his equipment, he did it. The general Fashar Mukwaa fell in love with him, and she saw his flying machine as a way she could launch a rebellion against the oppressive Queen Eithgi Juray, and five years later Mayoka was a prince of the land of Sertif, married to the new Queen.
For five hundred years I watched as protocol and courtiers and the general day-to-day dullness of life in court tried to suck all the intelligence and spark out of Mayoka's descendants. In each generation, I found one child to exhibit the traits that Mayoka and Mukwaa had had, that drew my attention in the first place -- geniuses, tricksters and rebels, people who saw how life truly was and demanded to know why it couldn't be different. They fell from power, survived assassinations and coups, became ordinary folk who hid in academia or in guilds, clawed their way back to power because they thought their nation, or later, their world, needed them... over and over. Pushed, in part, by them, the Gifra went from being a species primarily governed by monarchies with a level of technology that Shakespeare would probably have been able to understand to a space-faring race on the verge of warp drive.
Their first contact was with the Borg, who promptly assimilated the entire species.
I moved on.
I have seen species evolve into their glory, and destroy themselves, and fall back into the mud. I have seen stupidity lead an intelligent race to poison themselves in the name of prosperity, heard the cries of the few far-sighted ones as they were executed for heresy because the state religion and the profiteers were in cahoots with each other until the apocalypse that the religion had predicted finally came, and boy weren't the fanatics surprised to discover that when their world's ecosystem collapsed from poison, they were not transported to a rapturous second life in a fantastical paradise, but died just as painfully as the critics they'd silenced. I have seen a sentient species destroy its own sentience with chemical reactions they didn't really understand, that mutated their children so they lost their intellects and became brute animals again. I have seen beings desperately chase the promise of ultimate power or free energy, and destroy themselves in the process.
I have seen planets blow up. I've seen stars go nova. I've made stars go nova. I've seen plagues, wars, sentient-made disasters. Smart mortals, dumb mortals, beautiful mortals with the fire of true intelligence, fascinating mortals, incredible mortals... and in the end, all of them mortal. All of them, in the end, died.
Nothing lasts in this universe. In my realm, my own kind are eternal, which can be comforting at times, but bores the living daylights out of me most of the time. I like the ephemera of mortality, depressing as it is, because at least it changes. Change is death is birth is life; things exist because other things ceased to exist. It fascinates me. I get off that wheel for millennia at a time, get depressed because of all the death and go back to my own kind... but eventually I always come back to this. The universe that changes, the flux of matter and energy, mortality and vitality. And in this universe, I outlive everything.
It is very possible, and in fact quite likely, that someday I will outlive this universe. It'll be interesting to see what comes after that.