"I don't understand, Matthew.", Lasiter admitted.
Matt took a small sip of his cognac. It really *did* evaporate on the tongue.
"There's no way to break this kind of news gently, so I'll just blurt it out.
I
was born in what is now County Shannon in Ireland, as close as I can determine,
in 326 AD. Well, CE now, for common era. After nearly two millenia of the old
term, I'm having trouble with CE, let alone stardates. I'm an Immortal, though
to be honest, that term isn't entirely accurate. I can be killed, it's just
damned difficult to do so."
"But you're human...", he answered as if he were not completely sure.
"As human as you, Sam. Only, with a really long lifeline." He put the cigar to
his lips and opened the humidor lid to offer Sam one. After he had chosen (or
decline) Matt reached for the large silver ornamental lighter and used it to
light his cigar and then Sam's (if needbe).
"Thanks.", Samuel answered accepting the cigar and the light. While he wasn't
a smoker, he did enjoy the occassional cigar.
"I don't know how we get here," he said. "I don't know if we're a genetic
mutation, or what. I've studied my own blood and DNA, and I can't find the key
difference." He looked to Sam almost apologetically. Well, there was no
almost to it. "Believe me," he said, "if I could have found how this worked,
I'd have exploited it. This is not my first stint as a physician. All told,
I've spent well over seven hundred of my two thousand years as a healer. I've
lost more patients than I can even keep track of. And with every one of them,
my survivor guilt mounts."
All of this was a bit hard to digest. An immortal... If it were not for their
closeness as friends, and the trust that existed between them, Samuel would
have thought this a very poor joke. He wore his feelings on his face,
disbelief and surprise, yet trusting of his friend.
"Apparently we really are just like other humans at first, but we have that
spark of Immortality with us since birth, or hatching, or creation or whatever.
But I do have a belly button, so I have to assume a birth. It takes a violent
death to awaken the spark of Immortality. And once that happens, there are
only a few simple rules to guide us. We fight with each other, always one on
one. The challenger, and the challenged. Holy ground is our only refuge and,
they say, that in the end, there can be only one."
His only reaction, while he processed the information was to stop swirling his
beverage to take a precious taste which preceeded a long puff on the cigar.
"Helluva life," Matt said, exchanging the cigar for some cognac. "Having to
kill your own kind in order to survive. There are those among us who hunt
other immortals. I am not one of them," he said. "But if someone comes for
me, I will, and do, defend myself. And so far, at least, I've managed to do
so effectively."
"Matthew, I must admit that all of this sounds like tale of myth and legend.
If I didn't know you as I do, I would be chastizing you for taking me on this
fit of fantasy. I'd be lying if I told you that I didn't have questions, many
of them in fact. To start, why tell me this? Why now?"
>From Lasiter's body language and tone of voice, Matthew could see that he was
>still trying to process the information. He was suspicious, possibly
>skeptical, but open minded and trusting of his friend.
{response}
Co-GM of the Spacedock/JSOC Game
Characters:
Adm. Samuel Lasiter,
RAdm. Markus Garibaldi,
Emissary Marconis,
LCDR Donovan Black, and a host of others.
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