michael i koperwas

“What’s the catch?”
I shrug.  “Like I know?”
Without a doubt this is the strangest company meeting I’ve ever been to.  At least the slides were interesting.  Steve Jobs’s influence shows even here — clean gradients and very simple transitions.
“You gonna do it?”
“Hell yeah!  Do you really care what the catch is?  It’s eternal life… and the company’s paying for it!”
The pitchwoman completes her circuit around the stage, looking a lot like Charlize Theron in a navy pantsuit.  Everyone’s heads bob in unison approval.  There are around thirty of us in total, plus with the executive staff in the front row.  The company president’s smile is trying to eat her face.
I catch myself smiling too.  It is revolutionary.
The guy next to me leans over.  “Back in a sec; gotta take a leak.”  I don’t think I’ve ever met Mr. Beck-with-a-shave before.  Why do people so often feel the need to announce their restroom breaks?

The smaller Q&A meeting is unbearable.  For a company of seemingly intelligent people, my colleagues invariably ask the most asinine questions.  I know when you get promoted you get dumber, but this implies that my peers could barely tie their shoes when they started and it’s been downhill since then.  Which begs the question — what does that say about me?
“Is there a battery that I have to recharge?”
“How long would you estimate forever will be?”
“Can I bring my dog with me?”
Seriously, if the life eternal they’re offering lasts half as long as the patience of these presenters, we’re in good hands.
We get some pamphlets to read.  Time to ask my question.
“Are our contracts extended for eternity too?”
The room falls silent.  The president stands and turns to look at me.  I’ve always envied his hair.
“No.  This isn’t indentured servitude.”  He turns and gestures with his palms upward in a business school opening of the arms.  “We consider you all to be part of our family and you should be treated as such.  So, normal contract negotiations will occur, and we’ll revisit each person’s personal situation every ten years.”
Time’s up.  Coffee and restroom break.

We walk into their offices for the actual procedure.  It’s Trump meets minimalism — depressed, minimalist Austrian Trump.  Everything is grey marble with touches of gold in the shadows of great towering columns.  Fiery red tapestries hang from towering ceilings.  The hallways we’re in right now doesn’t even seem to have a ceiling; it just fades up into the sky somewhere.  Whoever the architect was got their word right — the place looks eternal.
While we’re walking down the corridor, I remember something from the Q&A that stuck out.  While the procedure was being described, they said that clinically we would have to be dead and then brought back to life.  To do so, we’d all be murdered, but it was perfectly normal.
It was the word murdered that stuck out to me, being so harsh and blunt.  Nothing like the rest of the spiel of rainbows and positive reinforcement.
When someone offers you life everlasting at no cost with no negative effects, and no strings attached… you don’t let the opportunity pass you by.  By then we’d had so much of the Kool-Aid that they could have told us we’d have to murder our first-born and cut off a pinky toe and it wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.
A woman asks, surprisingly loudly, where the restrooms are.  That Kool-Aid goes right through some people.

There’s something nagging at me, though, and I can’t seem to shake it.  None of my coworkers seem bothered in the slightest but I can’t get the whole ‘murder’ thing out of my head.  Why would they say that?  Didn’t their PR department give them the memo that that words like ‘murder’ might put their audience ill at ease?
And come to think of it, I’m pretty up-to-date with current events and I can’t remember anything even remotely close to this level of bio-technology being mentioned, let alone tested.  I can’t imagine any country achieving a breakthrough like this with other technology being at the level of capability it is.  We’re still impressed with iPhones and yet some mid-level manager has an opportunity for eternal life that’s paid for on the company’s dime?  It doesn’t make sense.
I must be dreaming.
Oh…  Shit…
I am.

Or at least I was.  It’s 5:45 and now I’m laying in bed, staring at the ceiling.  The sheets have that odd smell because they haven’t been changed in two weeks.  The bedroom stinks of sleep because the window’s closed and it’s too cold out.  I should’ve gotten up to piss 30 minutes ago when I first woke up to go.  Instead I tried going back to sleep and ended up in that crazy lucid dream.  The bathroom looks so far away.
A frustrated grunt comes from the bed while I stomp to the bathroom.  Moving quietly at night isn’t something I’ve ever been good at.

The toilet hisses while I wash my hands.  The bathroom’s lighting makes me look a few years older.  Or maybe it’s been a few years since I looked that closely.  A few gray hairs have grown back since the last time I plucked them out.  There are still few enough to count but I don’t know how long that’ll last.
For a second I don’t want to look at myself.  I keep thinking I’m seeing more grey but it’s just the light reflecting.  Did I always have this many blue veins?

Thinking back to the dream and the giant hallway, I think about how hard the decision seemed to be.  Was eternal life really something I’d go through with?  It hadn’t been an easy choice for me, if I wanted it or not.  Which seems silly now, because I’d trade my left arm for eternal life in less than a second.
Now it’s not even a choice.  That’s the hardest thing to accept.  I thought I might escape mortality, but it’s nothing more than a dream.