text: I get my bag packed and drive to the station, my mind racing as to what is about to happen. The last few years have been highly uneventful but ever since mankind discovered immortality I had been envious of the people in those expensive tests, for a good 4 years I’ve been saving for the chance to enter a test, ‘it’s been fun see you guys on the flip!’ I post on my twitter account, and today is the day I start. I have been constantly researching for info about the legitimacy and the safety of these tests but today I take the plunge, I will become immortal, or so I hope... I arrive at the building about 2 hours later, the lab facility is exactly 2 hours out from Remote, yes my town is called ‘remote’ and it is quite remote, I open the creepily futuristic doors and I am greeted by a man in a suit and tie, he introduces himself as Andrew Sullingham. “You must be Elijah, come in!” he exclaims with a hint of monotone delight. I walk down a stairwell for what seemed to be 30 minutes at least and we arrive in the room that I will spend the rest of my unending life for, he points to a bus that is in the middle of the room surrounded by tarps, white tarps, they give an awfully Utopian and cliché feel to the whole lab setup, but what strikes me as irregular is that there is no control room or monitoring at all throughout the basement of the huge facility. I make the conclusion that the room must just be upstairs. Andrew directs me into the bus and yells “have a nice trip!”, and pushes me over, I get up from the black floor of the bus and murmur, “good pun.” He looks slightly discontent with the reaction I gave but he’ll recover. I find my way to the back of the bus and see a power point, ‘huh guess I paid a price of 40 thousand dollars, good thing they delivered a good product. I plug my phone charger in and my phone instantly reaches 100%, Andrew catches my reaction from the very front of the bus and shouts bemused “whaddya expect Elijah? You paid a stack of cash for this it’s the least we can do.” “Anyway, enough chit chat, you ready?” I look at him with a nervous anticipation on my face, “ok, I’m ready.” I get out my earphones and prepare Spotify for the journey, Andrew hands me a syringe that has what I assume is the immortality juice, as it is commonly referred to as. He explains to me that it won’t work if there is another person in the same vehicle and that it needs to be applied to the blue vein in my right arm. After that He promptly leaves. I inject myself and feel a tinge of pain and then nothing, I feel enlightened, as if nothing matters anymore, and I plug my earphones in as well as turn on Spotify, and my journey begins. It’s been 3 months and I am super lucky I paid for an infinite data plan on my phone because I would’ve run out on about day 15, I think that I’ve listened to nearly a 15th of all the songs on Spotify so far, I don’t have anyone that I miss and I can’t contact the outside world so I will enjoy my solitude forever. I haven’t thought about my family in about 7 years, but now I have, just now, I forgot to mention how beautiful the stars are around my space bus, they remind me of a Spotify playlist I made, it’s called stars. After being on the ride for 200 years I can’t remember my previous being, that’s what I call my life before immortality, kind of cool don’t you think? I want to get off, Where are my parents? What did I do? Where is Andrew? Why do I exist? Can I get off? What have I done? I have spent the last 3 years trying to answer these questions, there are now etchings on the walls, and they read ‘time is a concept, existing is reality’ they remind me of really cringe ‘deep’ Instagram accounts. Not sure how I will spend the rest of time, but hey maybe I will find somebody to pick up on the way, I will see so many things, the beginning, the end, the middle, and more stars. Year 83573814091848198473184731746217948137431998888821321874. I’m going to do it, I have seen all there is to see. Goodbye god, if you exist, maybe I’m a god with no power... I am going to end it all, I packed a rope, and I wonder who I’ll see on the flip? If there is one.