The landscape is much the same as what he had seen in history books, in the imaginations of people from so long ago. The Earth has returned to its original grace, more or less. Lush forests, animals abound, the when it rains the droplets are sweet. He watches a group of large birds in the distance, slowly moving over the coastal area where the verdant plain meets the azure sea. The sun has just passed the zenith, its rays grace the gentle ripples of the sea with glitters. Across the bay is a peninsular where, so long ago, he first heard about the idea of eternal youth. That was where the university used to be.
He often comes here so he can remember that university, which now had disappeared over the past ten thousand years. His brain is full of memories, and senility is merely a word used for describing a symptom of some ancient time. His brain, like the brains of his friends and colleagues, is an bottomless bag of not only memory but thoughts and capacity to learn and understand. After ten thousand years they had all learned to find the equilibrium between this special species of which he is a member and the rest of the planet. He told his best friend the other day that he was watching an old movie that he remembered seeing when he was a child, before he crossed the line into the realm of eternal youth. It was what was then considered a science fiction. In the movie there were trains roaming along the sides of the skyscrapers, there were aliens, there were light-year traveling spacecrafts. But also, like so many science fictions of that era, there was gloom. The world was in chaos, there was greed, there was a need for salvation from mankind's evils. Pollution was abound, and human's appetite for more energy and more power was endless. Obviously, in their seemingly infinite wisdom now, he told his friend he understood why they had thought like that. He was part of that school of thought, and rightly so. They had to experience some form of the realization of that hopelessness. After all, they did go through an apocalypse of some sort that was caused mainly by that very avarice of human beings. But luckily, it didn't destroy the world or humanity. It just nearly did.
But what no science fiction at the time dared to imagine was what beauty had awaited them in the end. The end, as they can now see and experience, isn't some apocalypse, isn't some need to colonize other planets. The real end might be when the planet explodes, either from its own internal force or from a grave impact. Although they have the scientific knowledge to build spacecrafts to bail them out, or even quickly colonize other planets, they choose not to do so. This race of humans, evolved in the mind much more than their genes, have come to terms with their environment. They have accepted that they have found that equilibrium with nature, and that death isn't something to be feared, not even to make a big deal about. They no longer die from diseases, they no longer have a notion of famine, they no longer go about building anything, and for the past thousand years they have just let things disappear, absorbed back into nature as nature had designed. When natural disasters hit, some die, but many go on. Proper funerals would be made, but then it was little more than some celebration, without fanfare and yet without dread.
He looks much the way he did ten thousand years ago, give or take a year or two. He remembered the year, 2030. He was at that time about forty-five. They finally figured out how to let people live forever, and eventually they could wipe out all internal diseases like cancer, then one day the Nobel Prize was given to the person who understood the fundamental key to making the immune system always one step ahead of pathogens. He remembered all that. He loved to read, and he read everything, not just science. Everything. There are many writers now, not by profession because profession is no longer needed. People are doing whatever they wish to do. And they are brilliant at everything, and they get better everything at it. And since they have an eternity to do everything, they are never in a hurry to finish anything. This liberty from fear is the end. The savior isn't knowledge; they don't understand everything, but they have come to terms with their own ignorance and are very relaxed about it. They don't look back with remorse and never the future with dread. If anything, they look back with curiosity and the future with at least an iota of joy. They are all very confident people. That was the evolution of society, more important than evolution of the genes. They aren't afraid of any dark corner in their hearts. They have lived thousands of years, long enough to come to terms with anything.
He sees some movement in some nearby part of the forest below. Probably some sort of tree animal. He could hazard a guess on which one just by the nature and duration of the movement. He knows all the animals he wants to know, especially those he coexist. He has seen the return of many animals on the brink of extinction, but he had seen more animals that never returned. But he feels no regret. Right now he has all these wonderful creatures around him, some might be interested in tearing his flush apart and devouring him whole. But they wouldn't. They couldn't. He never worries about it. But he writes stories about it.
A seed in the shape of a parachute hovers in front of him. As if beckoning him. He takes it in his hand and looks at it. He knows of which tree this seed is. He caresses the wings on the seed. His brain quickly invokes a recent memory. And he smiles. There is a woman in his life. Actually in his heart. He has met many women in his life, and many, countless, had meant a lot to him. He has fallen in love in the deepest way more ways than he can count, though if he really wants to he can recall all the moments. But each one has been special, and after the end of each one, he felt less desperate. He remembers being very hurt after the previous one ended. But he also remembers how naturally his hurtful feelings flowed out along the river of his soul. He can still remember the endless, horrific pain he had experienced even when he was in his thirties. Now he could still feel intense love when he does fall in love, but when it ends, his life doesn't seem to stop long. He smiles at the thought that people ten thousand years, how suspicious they would be of him, probably accusing him of being the futuristic man who has lost his feelings, numbed his heart after ten thousand years. He remembers sitting in that university and his thesis adviser told him that if people really lived ten thousand years, wouldn't they just get bored. Yes, bored and also desensitized.
But not he. He loves everything around him. His people are the masters of the planet, as they always had been long before they let people live forever. But to be the master that doesn't feel any need to wield his power, this is what they have become and they know it. And in the same way, he has no desire to master his heart. He understands why he falls in love, why he falls out, why the ending is always, eternally, one can say now, so hard, so hurtful. But he never becomes bitter because he never feels a need to master his feelings. And in that same way now, he simply enjoys being in love. He is 45 by the standards of the ancients, but it doesn't matter now. Age is no longer relevant. She was 34 when she stopped aging. She is now just about his age, one can say, when measured in experience. And it's equally irrelevant to talk about when she is from; they have all been all over the world, through the different periods of the past ten millennia. They are from the earth. And so their identities aren't based on place or time, for locational and temporal identities are just two ways to express experience. They are identified by their own, different experiences. He has met her three times now. They spoke about their experiences, joked around, and listened. In the first meeting they couldn't understand each other well because of the language barrier. But by the second meeting, they were able to make jokes. And the last time they met they could even start understanding each other's thoughts. She is exciting to him. Her experience is like half of a jigsaw puzzle where you already can see what the story is more or less about and yet you know, even after ten thousand years, it is incomplete. And his half of the puzzle fits, he feels, so nicely with hers. It's like this landscape before him. While it is innocent, virgin in some way, this landscape, he personally knows, has experienced great changes, upheavals, especially in the past ten thousand years. And the sandy coast line is where the puzzle breaks off, so that she is the mysterious blue yonder and he is the green land, both pieces pregnant of possibilities and thoughts, and by being together they still would preserve their own identity, but being apart each would remain incomplete.
That is what he thinks. That is what he wants to share with her. He shares a lot of philosophical thoughts and ideas with his friends, both women and men, but with her, he finds himself wanting to share his heart, the words from his heart, not just from his mind. He isn't a poet like the ones he remembers reading during his schooling. He could see and now is absolutely sure that writers then were troubled people; they always had something they wanted to say in order for others to understand them. This hunger for understanding. He understands because he felt the same way for thousands of years, especially during the time when it was so sure that the world could truly come to an end and he found himself, still 45, alone, in the ruins of an apocalypse, wanting so much for a human touch, for the attention of a human heart. But now he is in love and he knows, without any second thought, that it is pure, that he has no need for anyone, but that finding someone to complete him is, better than a need, an excitement, much in the way that we are excited about nature's beauty without needing to conquer it, take it home, cage it. But love isn't the only reason he thinks about her. She is beautiful. She's exciting. There are about one billion of them on this planet, the same number, the same people, more or less, for the past few thousand years. He, unsurprisingly, knows quite a few, actually, close to a million peep, and he remembers all the faces. But she, he has never seen before. The attraction is deep. He wants her. He wants to be close to her, to hold her, to kiss her, to make love to her. Humanity had always fought between love and selfishness. And now that the latter had finally been vanquished, that fear had taken its rightful place outside the heart, he just wants to love her and show it. He is nervous, still, that she may not reciprocate, but while his mind understands the reasons he is still excited. It's the excitement that makes him nervous, not the let down, not the collapse of an ego.
He is still waiting for her to answer his message he had sent last night. He couldn't sleep the whole night, waiting for her to respond. He is still waiting. He did his special meditation to let off some of the stream from his excitement, his nervousness, and then he came here, on this cliff in the midway of the bay. He extends his arm whose hand is still gently holding the seed, and very soon a gust of wind carries the seed away from him. His eyes follow the path of the seed's flight, and then he notices the horizon. Clouds are forming afar. It will be a beautiful sunset. For ten thousand years, he had always cherished the sunset, even during one of the dark times when the sun couldn't pierce the muck that men had made in the sky. Her eyes were like the sunset, bright purple, with hints of gold. She was his nature, out there in the sea, shining over the land that is his ten-thousand year old soul.
