| Prologue | Vessel

 The ugly monster named time is always chasing after me and it's got a face even its mother doesn't love.

That's what I said last night.

I'm still young, but it doesn't matter--from the moment I was born, my fate is set in stone, just like everyone else's, and like every single star in the universe. The only difference is that we're capable of visualizing this agony while literal stars do not have a nervous system to feel the same.

Now, imagine we're little sailboats sailing on the endless ocean called life. And there's this eldritch, Lovecraftian monster--something resembles Cthulu, or something worse--tirelessly chasing after us, eroding everything we love away in the process. Nobody has had been able to outrun it, not for the lack of trying, but every vessel eventually breaks down. Even the ship with the shiniest finish and largest sails, eventually falls apart and gets swallowed by the monster, if not by the waves.

Now, however, we're at this presumed breakthrough point. Our sails are more flexible and robust than ever, our decks fitted with guns that, are still futile in stopping the monster, but are able to slow it down, even just a little bit.

What would you do if you can choose to live forever?

No, you don't have to live forever--it would be a different kind of torture to exist forever, as our pathetic minds nor our primitive bodies were ever fitted to handle such. However, now you have the choice to have as much time as you want, not more and not less. What would you do with that time?

I would finally slow down and enjoy the process like I was never able to.

I would finally pick up a hobby, read a book in silence, enjoy a cup of morning tea in a fairytale cottage among the woods and crochet some cute stuff I've always wanted to make. I'd stop stressing about things you'd have to accomplish while you're young.

So what's stopping you from living the life... now?

What I'm afraid of goes much deeper than just wrinkles on the skin. While I'd dread losing what amount of attractiveness I do have, it's also extremely difficult to imagine being riddled with perpetual illness and pain more so than I already am, from autoimmune disorders and the like. Now, what's even worse is the loss of autonomy--the freedom to do what I want to do, and be where I want to be. I will not accept being stuck, being trapped, being imprisoned in a decaying vessel that relies constantly on others' care to stay dangling on the verge of existing, being completely at the mercy of whatever abuse others might give me and not able to do anything, not to mention a bleek, empty outlook of future with nothing to look forward to but death.

Before I'd reach there, I'd choose death. Because, frankly, what I am afraid of was never death itself. It's the decaying process that would drain every wish, hope and dream out of me and leave me nothing but an empty husk with nothing but death to wish for.

And that came to everybody that lived before me.

I will not wait for it to catch up to me as well.