I’ll start off with one, Being upset about a breakup that happened hundreds of years ago.
Edit 1:
- Heath death of the universe, Death of the sun, etc, does not count. I feel like focusing on this is an overused point.
Edit 2:
- Loneliness does not count. I feel like we all know immortality means you’ll miss people and lose them.
Basically all of the time you’re alive will be after the heat death of the universe, where you will be floating in space, with nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to experience. Complete darkness, complete silence, in a complete vacuum, for eternity. Every other particle in the universe is forever out of your reach. You know that you will have nothing forever. You will never see, hear, or touch anything again, for all of time, which will never end. The trillions of years that preceded your float through the void fade into a distant memory as you outlive twice as much time, four times as much, a trillion-trillion times as much, and infinitely more.
So just my normal day?
I wrote a story that features such an entity and what was interesting about it to me was how even the slightest glimmer of life beyond their void would lead to an all-consuming desire to experience “living” again.
Or you get to experience another big bang. That would be worth the wait.
Then you could call yourself Galactus
Being asked your birthdate in order to view a game on Steam, and the year dropdown not going back far enough.
Or not being able to play a board game, because it says “ages 9 - 99” on the box.
Worse still, no manual entry of the birth date, so it takes ages to scroll down and select the year.
Date pickers that assume you have a 5 digit birth year.
I once entered an extremely far back yet technically plausible birthday there and steam just wouldn’t accept it. I remember thinking “what if Kane Tanaka wanted to check out this steam game, you just wouldn’t let her?” (RIP by the way, she was the last oldest person whose name I learned. They change too often)
Given a long enough time frame, the vast majority of an immortal life would be spent buried beneath something or floating in the void of space. Think about it, you outlast planets and stars. When those go dark, but you don’t die…nothing to do but float in space.
You might counter that with, "well yeah, but eventually I’d find other sentient life forms and/or people again.” And sure, maybe, but that wouldn’t last as long as you…and then you’re just alone floating in space again, for the vast majority of your life. The only thing to look forward to, since you will outlast everything, is the end of time itself.
Does your consciousness evolve to Godhood, and you reach back beyond time and create the universe which birthed you?
The fantastic animated show, Pantheon explores that very idea at the very end of its second and final season.
You join the Q Continuom.
I think there is a clear difference between being immortal and being indestructible. I would think if your planet breaks apart you’d probably die with it being crushed or whatever. Also always unclear if being immortal means you don’t need to breathe air.
I think a good author makes it explicit.
Here’s a sci-fi web novel I read years ago, where a couple of the characters end up being immortal in different ways, and in one case they show exactly how far that can go (in the context of the story) even without invoking heat death.
Think about it, you outlast planets and stars. When those go dark, but you don’t die…nothing to do but float in space.
LOL, that’s just the beginning – only on the order of 1012 - 1014 years. After that, you’re going to be waiting around for proton decay (1036 - 1043 years), all the way up to 10^10^120 years* for the final heat death of the universe.
(* Anybody know how to get Lemmy markdown to do nested superscripts?)
10^10^10
Being eaten by sea anemones, tuna, sharks, swordfish, sea turtles, penguins, and other jellyfish.
outlasting humanity and all its trappings
If everyone gets to be immortal, imagine never being able to get rid of dictators. Putin’s 600th won election.
People in the future wouldn’t be allowed to have children, Earth will be filled to the brim with very old people and very few new ideas.
I suppose it depends on the rules of this specfic immortality. As someone who lives with chronic pain that literally never feels physically comfortable in any position, immortality sounds like a cruel joke. Not that I’m suicidal or eager to die, but the fact that it would progressively get worse and worse without any sort of end is… horrorific.
Read this on the largest number every used in a mathematical proof.
Then ask yourself, if you think you could handle this number in microseconds let alone an eternity
Having to keep creating fake identities to prevent people and governments from finding out that you’re immortal. That would be a massive pain in the butt, especially in a world where mass surveillance of the population is common.
Unless you have a lot of money to rely on I don’t even know if it’s reliably possible right now. You’re basically in the same situation as an undocumented immigrant.
And the more times you do it, it’s like playing a Russian roulette over and over again, you’ll eventually be caught.
This would just be an occasional nuisance I reckon. You’d get pretty good at it. Just like all the other mundane things we have to do in our mortal lives.
What I meant is that it would get more and more difficult with more mass surveillance. Think about it, in 1950 it would take relatively little effort to fake an identity by inserting fake documents into a few physical cabinets. In 2000, cyber security was so weak that hacking to some government agency to modify their databases would be relatively simple. Now it would require advanced social engineering, and is extremely risky, and on top of that, they have a lot of mass surveillance.
If we assume everything will have a biometric database, you’ll have to find ways to change your fingerprints and face every few decades.
Over a long enough duration, you are guaranteed to be caught.
(Edit: grammar)
One of my books features an immortal protagonist and I’ve as such thought about this quite a bit. More than the answers already provided here, what I found interesting as a writer was the balance I needed to find between making an immortal detached from mortal values while still being engaging to mortal readers.
Said as a pithy question, if you can outlive everyone’s decisions and mistakes, what would it take to make you do anything at all?
If you’re injured and you survive with the scarring from said injuries. Well, good luck because you’re now going to wear those and wish you had died from them. If you’re incapacitated or amputated? Gotta live with that for years and years.
Sounds like you have time to figure out alternatives. Like cyborgetics or using cloned parts.
And robocop was born
That was a horror cause he wasn’t willing. If he was willing then it would be like cult mechanicus, ghost in the shell, or Adam smasher. Embrace the certainly of steel! Or course if your brain is damaged and you can’t die that is a curse.
Agreed
I’ll say no one can truly know. Unless you are yourself immortal
secrets!
i think that experiencing all the things & people i care about would be the worst of it.
either that or seeing us repeat history over and over again as a society complete with all of the indifferent cruelties it entails and studying it, but ignoring it anyways
As we get older, our perception of time speeds up. An immortal would easily lose track of time after just two human lifetimes, causing an immortal to suffer from dementia-like symptoms where they expect one date but find themselves habitually late. And since time doesn’t mean the same thing as us to an immortal, they would eventually become disconnected from the world around them and be unable to reintegrate. They wouldn’t be able to maintain friendships, relationships, mortgages, payments, etc. They would be surrounded by people but forever alone.
Based on your question, you might dig the book “Boat of a Million Years.” The author put quite a bit of thought into just that.
