Shademp
420
Starting with a therapeutic piece I wrote four months ago in reaction to my terrified anticipation before I started at my new job. I have no aspirations beyond therapeutic writing which means I'm not requesting feedback but feel free to comment if you feel inclined.
The piece was also inspired by the beautiful chibi avatar drawn by Fancy the Great. It happens to show you what Shademp looks like in the reflective piece below.
The piece was also inspired by the beautiful chibi avatar drawn by Fancy the Great. It happens to show you what Shademp looks like in the reflective piece below.
Even after all the preparations and all the time spent on building the spacecraft on which he currently resided it was an emotional goodbye to depart from Earth's atmosphere. With a simple mental switch, Shademp slowed down his subjective time so that his viewing of Earth was extended from minutes to hours. Near the horizon he could see the ever so beautiful orbital ring that circled around the whole planet. The "GEO ring" coupled with the large mirrors and stations circling the Earth was an elegant clockwork that helped the functioning of what some would call a near-perfect civilization.
The criticism that was voiced with greatest frequency was that Earth was a living museum effectively belonging to old people obsessed with archiving the past. Shademp saw the truth in this criticism and made no attempt to deny it even though he was an example of a very old man obsessed with preserving history. If the younger generations wanted to take up space of their own they had no choice but to leave Earth and perhaps even the solar system. Capability was definitely not a hurdle seeing as a twenty-something person could download knowledge and virtual experience to match that of a person who had accrued the same education for fifteen-hundred years via analog means. To be centuries old was no merit: It just meant you had the fortune of planting flags before anyone else.
Shademp felt great respect for the younger generations and their drive for adventure, whether that drive was typical of young people or forced by Earth being so occupied by old people. Some had asked Shad why he didn't just reprogram himself to become naturally more adventurous and risk-taking. The tools are all there, after all. For Shademp, as with all sentient beings in this day and age, the world was his playground...was it not? The question answered itself with one keyword: Self-preservation.
Tinkering with the assembly behind core personality traits quickly render a person unrecognizable, effectively killing the old persona for a new one to take shape. People may all be functionally immortal nowadays but what all these infinite capabilities meant was that death took on a new shape. Death is now more a question of when a person makes the CHOICE to let go of the illusory self and in what manner they may go. Some choose to go fully digital and join a hive mind. Some reprogram their entire personalities and keep an arbitrary amount of memories from their "previous life" as it were. Concepts that had previously only existed in religious mysticism, such as reincarnation or spiritual enlightenment, had effectively become reality through modern technology.
"We're going full circle...aren't we?" Shademp muttered to himself.
There were layers of meaning behind these words but with one emotional red thread running through them all: Fear. He feared leaving Earth behind in this manner. The ship was going to be circling the solar system at super-near-light-speed. The time dilation would be so extreme that a few weeks on the ship meant centuries passing by on Earth. The time dilation was a necessary part of the spacecraft's prime experiment which was to search for local spacetime anomalies. In the past Shademp had never left his home planet for more than thirty years at a time but now he was taking the risk of centuries, perhaps even millennia, passing by before his return.
It was true that Shad wasn't particularly adventurous or risk-taking. But even this careful, discreet old man knew and accepted that a life in preserved stillness is also a form of death. The choice was to either stay on Earth, knowing full well what was awaiting him, or to leave and explore untested grounds. The consequences of the latter were not certain and indeed that was precisely the whole point of this endeavor.
Shademp resumed normal subjective time and immediately after this the ship's computer was heard over the intercom.
"The Epoch is now leaving Earth orbit."
In a subtle act of self-motivation Shademp turned his back from the display of the quickly receding Earth, said to himself, "Let's go!" and walked to his workstation.
The criticism that was voiced with greatest frequency was that Earth was a living museum effectively belonging to old people obsessed with archiving the past. Shademp saw the truth in this criticism and made no attempt to deny it even though he was an example of a very old man obsessed with preserving history. If the younger generations wanted to take up space of their own they had no choice but to leave Earth and perhaps even the solar system. Capability was definitely not a hurdle seeing as a twenty-something person could download knowledge and virtual experience to match that of a person who had accrued the same education for fifteen-hundred years via analog means. To be centuries old was no merit: It just meant you had the fortune of planting flags before anyone else.
Shademp felt great respect for the younger generations and their drive for adventure, whether that drive was typical of young people or forced by Earth being so occupied by old people. Some had asked Shad why he didn't just reprogram himself to become naturally more adventurous and risk-taking. The tools are all there, after all. For Shademp, as with all sentient beings in this day and age, the world was his playground...was it not? The question answered itself with one keyword: Self-preservation.
Tinkering with the assembly behind core personality traits quickly render a person unrecognizable, effectively killing the old persona for a new one to take shape. People may all be functionally immortal nowadays but what all these infinite capabilities meant was that death took on a new shape. Death is now more a question of when a person makes the CHOICE to let go of the illusory self and in what manner they may go. Some choose to go fully digital and join a hive mind. Some reprogram their entire personalities and keep an arbitrary amount of memories from their "previous life" as it were. Concepts that had previously only existed in religious mysticism, such as reincarnation or spiritual enlightenment, had effectively become reality through modern technology.
"We're going full circle...aren't we?" Shademp muttered to himself.
There were layers of meaning behind these words but with one emotional red thread running through them all: Fear. He feared leaving Earth behind in this manner. The ship was going to be circling the solar system at super-near-light-speed. The time dilation would be so extreme that a few weeks on the ship meant centuries passing by on Earth. The time dilation was a necessary part of the spacecraft's prime experiment which was to search for local spacetime anomalies. In the past Shademp had never left his home planet for more than thirty years at a time but now he was taking the risk of centuries, perhaps even millennia, passing by before his return.
It was true that Shad wasn't particularly adventurous or risk-taking. But even this careful, discreet old man knew and accepted that a life in preserved stillness is also a form of death. The choice was to either stay on Earth, knowing full well what was awaiting him, or to leave and explore untested grounds. The consequences of the latter were not certain and indeed that was precisely the whole point of this endeavor.
Shademp resumed normal subjective time and immediately after this the ship's computer was heard over the intercom.
"The Epoch is now leaving Earth orbit."
In a subtle act of self-motivation Shademp turned his back from the display of the quickly receding Earth, said to himself, "Let's go!" and walked to his workstation.
Almost every day I look down on myself for how long it took me to get to this point and how long my periods of inactivity can be.
