Consultation 44.

"God, how do I achieve immortality?"

“That depends on what your definition of immortality is. When you say immortality, do you mean you will not die no matter how old you get, or do you mean you will never die from anything even if your body is destroyed?”

“The latter of course.”

“Well, there are two obstacles you need to overcome in the latter case. The first is to deal with the problem of aging. To bypass aging you need to develop a method to create self-regenerating telomeres in your DNA. The reason you age is that these telomere caps located at the ends of your DNA degrade and shorten a little every time your cell copies itself. As time goes on your DNA gets shorter and shorter until important genes in the DNA are eaten away at.”

“One method to fix this problem requires the development of nanomachines that circulate through your body which can enter cells to repair DNA. Another method would be to genetically modify DNA directly. You would encode into DNA a new organelle that gets created when copying the cell. One might even call it the God organelle, a vital piece of genetic code missing from the DNA of mortal creatures. With this sort of genetic insert, your DNA itself holds the key to repairing the telomeres every time the cell copies itself.”

“What exactly are these telomeres?”

“You can think of them as caps to prevent DNA from fraying or sticking to other strands of DNA. As I mentioned before, they also act as a means to protect the important genetic code sandwiched between them from being lost as the DNA shortens over time. Though they can only do that for so long. However, do you know why mortal creatures weren’t granted an infinite lifespan?”

“Why?”

“Because if nobody died, there would be no progress. Creatures would eventually grow complacent, bored, and disinterested in the world around them once they’d seen enough of it. Creatures would lose their motivation to live and fall into an endless pit of depression. After all, when you have too much of something, it loses value to the holder. Only when a commodity is limited will it be valued and treated as precious. When your time becomes infinite, you’ll often continually put things off forever thinking you can get it done later. However, that later never arrives.”

“The only reason you can get anything done and see rapid advancements in the world around you is because you know there is only so much time available to you in your short lifespan. As such, immortal beings deemed immortality unnecessary, obsolete, and completely overrated. Among gods, the creation of immortals has actually long been deemed to be a taboo subject. Mortals think immortals are the perfect pinnacle existences, however, the act of being perfect leads to an imperfection.”

“Laziness, complacency, and a lack of urgency to evolve and advance. Possessing these traits is a contradiction to the concept of what perfection entails. Thus, gods who are immortal can be considered the most imperfect sort of existence. There are even those among gods that believe we are the greatest failures of the evolutionary process. Gods are jealous of mortals with limited time. There are even immortal gods who seek out a means to die but cannot.”

“I really don’t care about this philosophical nonsense, just get to the point. I more or less understand how to deal with the problem of aging, how do I deal with the other problem?”

“Haaaah. Well, there are a few methods you can utilize to achieve an undying state.”

“I’ll only list two methods though. One requires you to give up your physical body and become an existence that is nothing more than a wandering consciousness through space. If you don’t have a physical body and only your thoughts and awareness remain, you naturally can’t die.”

“What the hell is with that? That just means becoming a ghost, right?”

“Yeah, basically.”

“Then there’s no point in solving the problem of aging.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Then what’s the second option?”

“The second requires you to abandon your body and transfer your awareness into another body that acts as your vessel.”

“What? But then couldn’t I potentially die from old age or while the new body hasn’t been modified? Even if I made those bodies unaging in advance, if I run out of bodies that are unaging I could still potentially die, right? That isn’t the true immortality I’m looking for.”

“I never said anything about using someone else’s body. I only said another body, but I didn’t say whose body you’d be using.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Have you heard of superstring theory or M theory before?”

“No, what the hell is that?”

“Well, for M theory, in simplest terms, you can imagine that there exist nine spatial dimensions, a single dimension for time, and one more dimension which you can think of as being for energy. The world you find yourself a part of can be considered spatially, a three-dimensional world where only three of the spatial dimensions expanded. The other six did not expand upon the formation of your world and remain in a compact state.”

“As for why they did not expand, that is because three-dimensional worlds are the ideal worlds to keep immortality far enough out of reach for the three-dimensional creatures born inside those three-dimensional worlds. Four-dimensional beings and above from the moment they gain awareness they can see their entire life from birth to their death. Knowing such information leads them to live their lives in depression. There is nothing fun or interesting about living a life where you know every action you take and the result beforehand.”

“As for two-dimensional beings, they have their own problems. They just have too many restrictions imposed upon them to achieve anything great. They can only see lines so they aren’t able to differentiate what anything is. This is why three dimensions was the ideal number of dimensions for life to exist.”

“I didn’t come here to learn about science fiction.”

“... it’s a real theory though.”

“Tch. Just hurry up and tell me what I really want to know.”

“Then… what you really need to do is gain access to those other spatial dimensions where your body in another spacetime continuum exists. There are infinite universes all overlapping and folded together. All you need to do is shift your consciousness between these universal planes. You can think of it as adjusting the frequency on a radio. You will be in your own body, only in a universe nearly identical to yours, except it is one where you didn’t die from whatever killed you. You may find that the time may be slightly misaligned, or that you’re in a different position in space from where you were when you died, but you’ll still be alive nonetheless.”

“That’s it! That’s exactly what I’m looking for!” Her eyes lit up excitedly.

“God, how can one transfer their consciousness between universal planes?”

“Do you know of anything that can simulate higher dimensions?”

“Computers, right?”

“Yes.”

“Are you telling me to become a computer?”

“In a way, yes. The fusion of artificial intelligence and the human brain leads to the answer you are seeking out. It is the one true path to immortality, the taboo subject banned among gods.”

“Artificial intelligence combining with the human brain? What does that even mean? How can that even be possible?”

Slam!

I glanced to the side.

“Speak another word and both of you will be eliminated.”

I raised my hands in resignation.

My client caught on quickly and did the same.

“What is the meaning of this? Aren’t these consultations supposed to be completely private and unmonitored?”

“Did you not read the contract you signed for this consultation? Should a client inquire about taboo topics, god enforcement will be automatically notified and monitor the consultation. If I go too far in talking about a taboo, god enforcement will immediately be dispatched to forcibly end the consultation. They’ve deemed revealing the actual method to achieve the last step as crossing that fine line and have chosen to forcibly end this consultation.”

“Haaaaah. I see. So I just have to figure out the rest myself?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Good luck with that.”

“You don’t care despite it being a taboo?”

“Not particularly. Not all gods are such hard asses about it, but even among gods, things are still regulated. It’s just that the side that doesn’t give a shit about these taboos are the minority.”

As someone who reincarnated in the body of a god by some sort of freak accident, I’m just considered an upstart fledgling god after all. I was originally a mortal at one point. I understand where gods are coming from about immortality and all, but I still don’t particularly care. If humans are stupid and want to pursue immortality, let them. I couldn’t care less. When they realize how overrated and boring immortality is, let them cry to themselves in regret afterward. They’ll miss the fact that they can no longer die and are forced to live through the hell known as stagnation and boredom.

As the saying goes, the grass always appears greener on the other side. You want to join me in doing these stupid consultations for psychotic mortals, feel free, let’s all suffer together through this hell called ‘heaven.’ What they call heaven is a trap.