Choose your Immortality!
CHOOSE YOUR IMMORTALITY
Who wants to live forever? According to a poll conducted by my imagination, darn near everyone. The only roadblock is this: what kind of immortality do you choose? Well I'm here to help you as I now present several forms of immortality, as well as the pros and cons that go along with them. Read, think, and then let me know which one you choose. I'll make sure to have your immortality in the mail no later than six weeks from the time I'm capable of mailing concepts like immortality.
#1. Not All It's Cracked Up to Be Immortality: You will live forever and you will not age. FOREVER. You are flat out incapable of dying no matter what. Atomized? You come back to life. Beheaded? You come back to life. Drowned? Asphyxiated? Burned? Boiled? Doesn't matter. You cannot die. You will live until the end of the universe, and when that's over? Who knows. Maybe you float around in neverending nothingness, or maybe you get to be the creator of some new universe.
Pros: No achilles heel to worry about. You cannot be killed. You heal instantly. You might even be invulnerable.
Con: Boredom. If you get trapped somewhere, you're there for a long, LONG time. The human race will almost assuredly evolve past you within just a few thousand years, making you very lonely unless you can get some kind of robot companion or something. Plan on being very cold for the last few million years after every sun winks out.
#2. Highlander Immortality: You know the drill. There can be only one. You're immortal unless you get beheaded, but if you're trapped underwater or left with a sword in your brain you'll either be wake up and die over and over or you'll just be dead until someone yanks the sword out.
Speaking of swords, get used to using one, because you'll have to fight to survive. For some reason you can't just pack an uzi, shoot your opponent, then chop his head off while he's recovering, so instead you'll have to get real good with a sword real fast.
Pros: Sexy adventures and a tendency to meet famous people from history. Vague mystical powers. Potential to win "The Prize" which, depending on your canon, is either some form of telepathy and mortality, the chance to make a star baby with your retconned girlfriend, or an unknown power that everyone wants. The more immortals you behead, the stronger you will get, but this is also vague and hardly ever seems to mean anything. Also: you can hide your sword seemingly anywhere, so you could always get a job smuggling antique swords across borders if you were really strapped for cash.
Cons: You won't know your immortal until you die once, and then you're stuck at that age. The death must also be violent. So you have to be ballsy enough to let yourself get shot or stabbed or something in order to find out if you're an immortal. Are you willing to take that risk? Also: You're probably going to get beheaded, but you might get a few centuries of living in first. Lastly: can't have kids.
#3. Clone Immortality: Technology. It's always great, right? Never backfired once in all the history of humanity, right? So how about this: when you're going to die you just upload your memories and personality into a computer, print out a fresh new body, and then download those memories and personality back into the new body. Presto-chango, you're going to live forever!
Pros: You can decide to opt out if you ever want to just die. As technology gets better and the ability to alter the genetic code is better understood, you could probably add new features to your clone body. Eventually you might be able to create a body that regenerates perfectly with no cellular degeneration, making you truly immortal except in the case of injury or disease.
Cons: Giving people the ability to alter their bodies means a substantial portion of the human population would eventually be women with 32ZZ breasts or guys with 20 inch penises. Also: it's not REALLY you who will be immortal, it's just a copy of you. The actual you is now dead, but that becomes a Theseus Paradox, so you get to spend the next few millenia in a constant philosophical depression as you wonder whether or not you are really you. Lastly: you are beholden to the technology that clones you (until such time as your body is simply made to regenerate perfectly), which means you may be forced to do the bidding of whoever controls that technology.
#4 Vampirism Immortality: You're a vampire. Someone sucked you, you sucked them, now you want to just keep on sucking forever and ever.
Pros: Super strength, super senses, and an inexplicable ability to make teenaged girls squeal in your presence. You might be able to turn into mist, a bat, a wolf, or any number of other things. You might also have the power to mesmerize others, especially the aforementioned teenaged girls.
Cons: You might sparkle. Also: sunlight will almost certainly kill you, crosses and garlic will repel and hurt you, you might not be able to enter someone's house without permission, you will have to drink blood regularly in order to remain healthy, your skin is pale and clammy, holy water and other blessed objects burn you, and you'll be forced to make googly eyes at teenaged girls while being either A) sweaty, dirty, pale, and gross or B) far too invested in your own hair (all without ever being able to look into a mirror. Also, whatever physical age you were when you were bitten is how old you're going to be forever, so if you're a little kid, watch out for pervy vampires.
#5 Werewolf Immortality: You're a werewolf. Someone bit you.
Pros: You might get some super strength. You'll probably have better than average senses most of the time. If you're really lucky, you might be able to control your change into a super-wolf, but the chances are you'll just be a normal person almost all the time. On the other hand, you can only be truly harmed by silver bullets, and Ted Nugent is the only guy who walks around with a weapon loaded up with silver ammunition these days. So just avoid him and you should be good to go.
Cons: Three nights a week you're probably going to turn into a mindless killing machine, and the more you go around killing people the better the chances are someone is going to figure out what you are and either call Ted Nugent or get some silver bullets of their own. You're also an allegory for either homosexuality or STDs, so that might cause you to have some sexuality or self-esteem issues.
#6 Undead Immortality: Lich, Frankenstein's Monster, Zombie, Deadite, whatever. The point is you died and now you're back, only you're not exactly alive anymore. If you're lucky you're a super-powerful wizard or a re-animated super corpse. If you're not lucky you're a mindless zombie.
Pros: Finally an excuse to eat brains! If you're a Lich you might have some magic powers. If you're Frankenstein's Monster you're pretty strong. If you're a Deadite then you're really talented at slapstick.
Cons: Let's face it: someone is going to hack you to pieces, unless you're a lich in which case you'll probably avoid that fate, but you're going to have to deal with people constantly claiming you stole your whole "place your soul in a container outside your body" thing from Voldemort, which is going to get really annoying after a while. You also look like a skeleton wearing a crown, and that's just goofy.
#7 Robot Immortality: Upload your mind into the body of a robot! Maybe you get a full brain transplant or maybe you just scan and copy your mind over, but one way or the other your body is now fully robotic. Regular maintenance and upgrades means you have the potential to exist for as long as you can keep up repairs.
Pros: Process information with the speed of a computer. Super strength. Virtual indestructability depending on what you're made from. Perfect memory and recall.
Cons: Will forever be haunted by the question "What is this emotion you call love?" (Also you can have your head exploded by any logical paradox, which is bad for you because Theseus's Paradox applies in this situation also, and the chances are you'll try to think about it at some point. Kaboom.)
#8 Demigod/god/angel/alien/mythical legend Immortality: You're secretly the son, daughter, or abstract offspring of a powerful mystical being. Maybe it's some pagan god. Maybe it's an Esper. Maybe it's Kryptonians. Whatever the case, you have awesome powers, a legendary legacy to inherit, and probably some great destiny to fulfill.
Pros: Superpowers! Also you likely don't have to worry about missing out on the possibility of an afterlife because you can just go pop down to the Underworld or poke your head into Heaven any time you want and check things out. Life just got a whole lot mysticler!
Cons: You might be the last of your kind. If you're a demigod then you're almost certainly going to have to confront the concept of incest at some point. If you're an alien or magical creature then you're probably so different from everyone else you know that you'll never be ablet o actually live with them. Expect loneliness. If you're not a god or demigod, then you may wind up living to the end of the universe and then you're right back at #1.
#9 Reincarnation Immortality: You died. Then you were born. Then you died. Then you were born. Repeat forever, only with each repetition you remember a little more about your former life. Eventually you can start tapping into your old lives, but not until you reach a certain age. You might even meet your soul mate again and again and again.
Pros: Wouldn't it be nice to live your life over knowing what you know now? Wouldn't it be nice to be sixteen and know how to build rocket engines like you do now? Life will never get boring because each new existence will have its own set of circumstances.
Cons: Insanity. Eventually there will be so many past lives that when you reach the age of enlightenment your whole brain will just shut down trying to process it. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder does not begin to describe just how truly fucked up you will be.
#10 Healing Factor Immortality: You were born different. You heal remarkably quickly. You don't get sick. You can't be poisoned. You reached your peak age of healthiness and stopped right there. You're not invincible, but you heal very quickly. It would take a nuclear blast, a beheading, or near total annihilation in order for you to be killed.
Pros: You might get some enhanced senses out of the deal, and your blood may be capable of causing others to heal rapidly for a short time.
Cons: Ostracism when others find out what you are. You can't get drunk, high, or even just a little bit tipsy. BigConspiracy will hunt you down and attempt to slice you open to find out what makes you the way you are, and they may attempt to turn you into their own personal killing machine.
#11 Nanite Immortality: Combine numbers 3 and 7 and mix in a little 10. Nanites rebuild your body and maintain total and perfect health at all times. They may provide you with enhancements, powers, and alterations.
Pros: Possible superpowers, the ability to interface with machines, and a healing factor.
Cons: Whoever controls your nanites, controls you. One dedicated hacker introduces his own nanite strain into the air and suddenly you're a slave for the rest of time.
#12 Mind-Hopper Immortality: You were going to die, but instead you were all, "Man, funk dat!" and transferred your mind into someone else's body. Your incredible mental powers have allowed you to continue hopping from body to body throughout the ages.
Pros: You're a supervillain. You have mental powers that allow you to take over other people's bodies. Find the right body and whatever they can do, you can do.
Cons: You're a supervillain. You won't get away with this! Also, there's a possibility that your own reincarnated body will come around and defeat you someday, but that's really because the Wave Existence was manipulating things from behind the scenes and some other crazy nanite guy wanted to create and kill God.
#13 In Memoriam Immortality: You'll die, but you'll be remembered. Maybe you created a great work of art. Maybe you solved a great mystery of the universe. Maybe you saved a billion lives, created the perfect government, or wrote the greatest song ever. On the other hand, maybe you killed a billion people, created the most oppressive regime ever, or wrote "Crank That" The point is, you will be remembered for something great or something awful.
Pros: Hey, maybe you did something great!
Cons: You fuck. You might be Soulja Boy.
Write In Immortalities
#14 Energy Being Immortality:: You've ascended, transformed, evolved, reached enlightenment, or somehow or another left your physical body behind. Now you are more than human; more than mortal. You are an energy being. You can float around the cosmos and, I dunno...do stuff.
Pros: You know things that no mortal could ever know. You can do things no mortal can ever do. The answers to questions long asked by humanity may be yours to discover.
Cons: You're a bag of energy. Say goodbye to sex. In a few thousand years you'll probably forget you were ever human, and there's a serious chance you might get trapped in some spatial anomaly somewhere and go crazy, thus becoming a sea-monster analog for spacefarers.
So there you have it. Choose your immortality! Which is the unlimited life for you, and why? Have I forgotten any? Are you immortal already and wish to tell us all how great and/or horrible it is? Get to it!
Who wants to live forever? According to a poll conducted by my imagination, darn near everyone. The only roadblock is this: what kind of immortality do you choose? Well I'm here to help you as I now present several forms of immortality, as well as the pros and cons that go along with them. Read, think, and then let me know which one you choose. I'll make sure to have your immortality in the mail no later than six weeks from the time I'm capable of mailing concepts like immortality.
#1. Not All It's Cracked Up to Be Immortality: You will live forever and you will not age. FOREVER. You are flat out incapable of dying no matter what. Atomized? You come back to life. Beheaded? You come back to life. Drowned? Asphyxiated? Burned? Boiled? Doesn't matter. You cannot die. You will live until the end of the universe, and when that's over? Who knows. Maybe you float around in neverending nothingness, or maybe you get to be the creator of some new universe.
Pros: No achilles heel to worry about. You cannot be killed. You heal instantly. You might even be invulnerable.
Con: Boredom. If you get trapped somewhere, you're there for a long, LONG time. The human race will almost assuredly evolve past you within just a few thousand years, making you very lonely unless you can get some kind of robot companion or something. Plan on being very cold for the last few million years after every sun winks out.
#2. Highlander Immortality: You know the drill. There can be only one. You're immortal unless you get beheaded, but if you're trapped underwater or left with a sword in your brain you'll either be wake up and die over and over or you'll just be dead until someone yanks the sword out.
Speaking of swords, get used to using one, because you'll have to fight to survive. For some reason you can't just pack an uzi, shoot your opponent, then chop his head off while he's recovering, so instead you'll have to get real good with a sword real fast.
Pros: Sexy adventures and a tendency to meet famous people from history. Vague mystical powers. Potential to win "The Prize" which, depending on your canon, is either some form of telepathy and mortality, the chance to make a star baby with your retconned girlfriend, or an unknown power that everyone wants. The more immortals you behead, the stronger you will get, but this is also vague and hardly ever seems to mean anything. Also: you can hide your sword seemingly anywhere, so you could always get a job smuggling antique swords across borders if you were really strapped for cash.
Cons: You won't know your immortal until you die once, and then you're stuck at that age. The death must also be violent. So you have to be ballsy enough to let yourself get shot or stabbed or something in order to find out if you're an immortal. Are you willing to take that risk? Also: You're probably going to get beheaded, but you might get a few centuries of living in first. Lastly: can't have kids.
#3. Clone Immortality: Technology. It's always great, right? Never backfired once in all the history of humanity, right? So how about this: when you're going to die you just upload your memories and personality into a computer, print out a fresh new body, and then download those memories and personality back into the new body. Presto-chango, you're going to live forever!
Pros: You can decide to opt out if you ever want to just die. As technology gets better and the ability to alter the genetic code is better understood, you could probably add new features to your clone body. Eventually you might be able to create a body that regenerates perfectly with no cellular degeneration, making you truly immortal except in the case of injury or disease.
Cons: Giving people the ability to alter their bodies means a substantial portion of the human population would eventually be women with 32ZZ breasts or guys with 20 inch penises. Also: it's not REALLY you who will be immortal, it's just a copy of you. The actual you is now dead, but that becomes a Theseus Paradox, so you get to spend the next few millenia in a constant philosophical depression as you wonder whether or not you are really you. Lastly: you are beholden to the technology that clones you (until such time as your body is simply made to regenerate perfectly), which means you may be forced to do the bidding of whoever controls that technology.
#4 Vampirism Immortality: You're a vampire. Someone sucked you, you sucked them, now you want to just keep on sucking forever and ever.
Pros: Super strength, super senses, and an inexplicable ability to make teenaged girls squeal in your presence. You might be able to turn into mist, a bat, a wolf, or any number of other things. You might also have the power to mesmerize others, especially the aforementioned teenaged girls.
Cons: You might sparkle. Also: sunlight will almost certainly kill you, crosses and garlic will repel and hurt you, you might not be able to enter someone's house without permission, you will have to drink blood regularly in order to remain healthy, your skin is pale and clammy, holy water and other blessed objects burn you, and you'll be forced to make googly eyes at teenaged girls while being either A) sweaty, dirty, pale, and gross or B) far too invested in your own hair (all without ever being able to look into a mirror. Also, whatever physical age you were when you were bitten is how old you're going to be forever, so if you're a little kid, watch out for pervy vampires.
#5 Werewolf Immortality: You're a werewolf. Someone bit you.
Pros: You might get some super strength. You'll probably have better than average senses most of the time. If you're really lucky, you might be able to control your change into a super-wolf, but the chances are you'll just be a normal person almost all the time. On the other hand, you can only be truly harmed by silver bullets, and Ted Nugent is the only guy who walks around with a weapon loaded up with silver ammunition these days. So just avoid him and you should be good to go.
Cons: Three nights a week you're probably going to turn into a mindless killing machine, and the more you go around killing people the better the chances are someone is going to figure out what you are and either call Ted Nugent or get some silver bullets of their own. You're also an allegory for either homosexuality or STDs, so that might cause you to have some sexuality or self-esteem issues.
#6 Undead Immortality: Lich, Frankenstein's Monster, Zombie, Deadite, whatever. The point is you died and now you're back, only you're not exactly alive anymore. If you're lucky you're a super-powerful wizard or a re-animated super corpse. If you're not lucky you're a mindless zombie.
Pros: Finally an excuse to eat brains! If you're a Lich you might have some magic powers. If you're Frankenstein's Monster you're pretty strong. If you're a Deadite then you're really talented at slapstick.
Cons: Let's face it: someone is going to hack you to pieces, unless you're a lich in which case you'll probably avoid that fate, but you're going to have to deal with people constantly claiming you stole your whole "place your soul in a container outside your body" thing from Voldemort, which is going to get really annoying after a while. You also look like a skeleton wearing a crown, and that's just goofy.
#7 Robot Immortality: Upload your mind into the body of a robot! Maybe you get a full brain transplant or maybe you just scan and copy your mind over, but one way or the other your body is now fully robotic. Regular maintenance and upgrades means you have the potential to exist for as long as you can keep up repairs.
Pros: Process information with the speed of a computer. Super strength. Virtual indestructability depending on what you're made from. Perfect memory and recall.
Cons: Will forever be haunted by the question "What is this emotion you call love?" (Also you can have your head exploded by any logical paradox, which is bad for you because Theseus's Paradox applies in this situation also, and the chances are you'll try to think about it at some point. Kaboom.)
#8 Demigod/god/angel/alien/mythical legend Immortality: You're secretly the son, daughter, or abstract offspring of a powerful mystical being. Maybe it's some pagan god. Maybe it's an Esper. Maybe it's Kryptonians. Whatever the case, you have awesome powers, a legendary legacy to inherit, and probably some great destiny to fulfill.
Pros: Superpowers! Also you likely don't have to worry about missing out on the possibility of an afterlife because you can just go pop down to the Underworld or poke your head into Heaven any time you want and check things out. Life just got a whole lot mysticler!
Cons: You might be the last of your kind. If you're a demigod then you're almost certainly going to have to confront the concept of incest at some point. If you're an alien or magical creature then you're probably so different from everyone else you know that you'll never be ablet o actually live with them. Expect loneliness. If you're not a god or demigod, then you may wind up living to the end of the universe and then you're right back at #1.
#9 Reincarnation Immortality: You died. Then you were born. Then you died. Then you were born. Repeat forever, only with each repetition you remember a little more about your former life. Eventually you can start tapping into your old lives, but not until you reach a certain age. You might even meet your soul mate again and again and again.
Pros: Wouldn't it be nice to live your life over knowing what you know now? Wouldn't it be nice to be sixteen and know how to build rocket engines like you do now? Life will never get boring because each new existence will have its own set of circumstances.
Cons: Insanity. Eventually there will be so many past lives that when you reach the age of enlightenment your whole brain will just shut down trying to process it. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder does not begin to describe just how truly fucked up you will be.
#10 Healing Factor Immortality: You were born different. You heal remarkably quickly. You don't get sick. You can't be poisoned. You reached your peak age of healthiness and stopped right there. You're not invincible, but you heal very quickly. It would take a nuclear blast, a beheading, or near total annihilation in order for you to be killed.
Pros: You might get some enhanced senses out of the deal, and your blood may be capable of causing others to heal rapidly for a short time.
Cons: Ostracism when others find out what you are. You can't get drunk, high, or even just a little bit tipsy. BigConspiracy will hunt you down and attempt to slice you open to find out what makes you the way you are, and they may attempt to turn you into their own personal killing machine.
#11 Nanite Immortality: Combine numbers 3 and 7 and mix in a little 10. Nanites rebuild your body and maintain total and perfect health at all times. They may provide you with enhancements, powers, and alterations.
Pros: Possible superpowers, the ability to interface with machines, and a healing factor.
Cons: Whoever controls your nanites, controls you. One dedicated hacker introduces his own nanite strain into the air and suddenly you're a slave for the rest of time.
#12 Mind-Hopper Immortality: You were going to die, but instead you were all, "Man, funk dat!" and transferred your mind into someone else's body. Your incredible mental powers have allowed you to continue hopping from body to body throughout the ages.
Pros: You're a supervillain. You have mental powers that allow you to take over other people's bodies. Find the right body and whatever they can do, you can do.
Cons: You're a supervillain. You won't get away with this! Also, there's a possibility that your own reincarnated body will come around and defeat you someday, but that's really because the Wave Existence was manipulating things from behind the scenes and some other crazy nanite guy wanted to create and kill God.
#13 In Memoriam Immortality: You'll die, but you'll be remembered. Maybe you created a great work of art. Maybe you solved a great mystery of the universe. Maybe you saved a billion lives, created the perfect government, or wrote the greatest song ever. On the other hand, maybe you killed a billion people, created the most oppressive regime ever, or wrote "Crank That" The point is, you will be remembered for something great or something awful.
Pros: Hey, maybe you did something great!
Cons: You fuck. You might be Soulja Boy.
Write In Immortalities
#14 Energy Being Immortality:: You've ascended, transformed, evolved, reached enlightenment, or somehow or another left your physical body behind. Now you are more than human; more than mortal. You are an energy being. You can float around the cosmos and, I dunno...do stuff.
Pros: You know things that no mortal could ever know. You can do things no mortal can ever do. The answers to questions long asked by humanity may be yours to discover.
Cons: You're a bag of energy. Say goodbye to sex. In a few thousand years you'll probably forget you were ever human, and there's a serious chance you might get trapped in some spatial anomaly somewhere and go crazy, thus becoming a sea-monster analog for spacefarers.
So there you have it. Choose your immortality! Which is the unlimited life for you, and why? Have I forgotten any? Are you immortal already and wish to tell us all how great and/or horrible it is? Get to it!