“Give it time love, you’ve only been at it for 170 years,” I reminded her. “You have forever.” It doesn’t take long for the motivation you have in your younger life to fizzle down dramatically. After 500 years, Dannie and I began to wonder what we were doing with our lives, and whether or not it was even worth it. Dannie continued with her work as a prosecution attorney and became well known all over the world for her success in the court room. There wasn’t a lawyer alive who could sit across the aisle from Dannie and still feel like he’d win. Her reputation preceded her, and as the years flew by, that turned out to be a boon as Dannie lost her drive. She needed that extra intimidation factor to make sure that none of the defense attorneys ever really brought their “A” game. She never admitted it but I could see her losing her drive every day. It wasn’t boredom that got to her—despite all of the advances society had made, crimes continued to get more and more creative—it was that same feeling she had so many years ago. No matter how hard she worked, there were still going to be people out there who she couldn’t get rid of. One more victim without justice, one more crime unpunished. Dannie was never satisfied with being the best – she never measured herself by the performance of others. No, Dannie wouldn’t settle for anything less than perfect. As for me, I became something of a Jack-of-all-trades. I learned 25 different languages, became a medical doctor and practiced medicine for awhile, then went back to school to pursue doctorates in history, anthropology, artificial intelligence and music. History was my real passion, because, surprisingly, it was this field that challenged my thinking the most. Its funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same. Society really hasn’t done much to further society as a whole in the past few thousand years. We still have crimes, war, social class struggles, betrayal and scandal. We have done a lot to help with personal issues though. Life extension, neuroceuticals, eradication of disease. You would think that, considering much of our society now has to spend eternity together, that we’d at least try to make it a little more bearable to be together. Take some advice from an old man, reader, anything you can do to benefit society as a whole will eventually make life better for you too, so step it up. The problem I ran into was essentially the opposite of Dannie’s. My problem was complete and utter boredom. I simply ran out of things I wanted to do. I used to sit in one of the ancient museums that showcase books all the way from the time of Gutenberg’s printing press to the cyberspace revolution, when the world was completely plugged in and online. It used to overwhelm me, how many things there were to read in the world, and I made it a mission to read them all. However, I quickly learned that just because you have an endless amount of time to read books on the biology of hookworms doesn’t make you any more inclined to do so. 144
Reality Hackers : Transhuman : Unthinkable (Short fiction)