If I ever found out I was immortal, I know exactly how it would go. There would be no awe, no trembling hands, no cinematic gasp as I stared into the middle distance and whispered, “What have I become?” No. I would react with the exact same energy Dooce brought to every absurdity life ever threw at her: a long, exhausted, full‑body sigh followed by, “Oh for hell’s sake.” Because of course this would happen to me. Of course I’d get bitten by a radioactive spider or a rogue vampire on a random Tuesday when all I wanted was a Wawa drink and a quiet morning. And of course immortality would immediately become a logistics problem.
People imagine eternal life as a mystical experience. They picture moonlit rooftops, ancient secrets, forbidden romance, dramatic cloaks billowing in the wind. I picture… penny stocks. I picture opening an investment app with the grim determination of someone who now has to plan for the next 600 years of property taxes. Immortality doesn’t make me mysterious; it makes me a systems thinker with too much time on my hands and a deep, abiding irritation at inefficiency.
The moment I realize I can’t die, my first instinct isn’t to brood or reinvent myself or go full vampire chic. My first instinct is, “I need to start investing immediately because I refuse to be poor forever.” Mortality at least gives you an endpoint. Immortality means your financial mistakes compound until the sun burns out. So yes, I’d be immortal for five minutes and already setting up automated micro‑investments like a Victorian ghost haunting a Roth IRA. I wouldn’t even have my fangs yet and I’d be researching index funds.
And once the portfolio starts growing — because time is the one thing I suddenly have in obscene abundance — I’m not buying a castle or a secret lair. I’m buying land. In Maryland or Virginia. Near a river. Because if I’m going to live forever, I want hydropower. I want running water. I want a renewable energy source that doesn’t care if I’m undead, radioactive, or just very annoyed. I want a river that hums steadily through the centuries while I mutter about turbine maintenance schedules.
Then, naturally, I’d build a university. Not because I’m noble or wise or yearning to shape the minds of future generations. No. I’d build a university because I want stable housing, a library, and a campus full of curious people who won’t ask too many questions about why I never age. It’s not a gothic immortality fantasy; it’s a long‑term infrastructure project. Immortality as scaffolding. Immortality as “I guess I’m designing a hydro‑powered campus now.”
I love reading about immortality — vampires, ancient beings, all that brooding elegance — but when I imagine it for myself, it becomes hilariously practical. I’m not wandering the earth in a cloak. I’m filing permits. I’m managing endowments. I’m arguing with contractors about the waterwheel installation. I’m immortal and still dealing with zoning laws. I’m immortal and still trying to get a straight answer from a county office about setback requirements. I’m immortal and still muttering, “Why is this form in PDF?”
And the thing is, I know myself well enough to know that after a few decades of this — after the university is stable, the hydropower is humming, the housing is built, the gardens are thriving, and the archives are filling up — I would get bored. Not bored in a dramatic, existential way. Bored in the way you get bored when a closet has been messy for too long. Bored in the way that makes you sigh, roll up your sleeves, and start reorganizing the entire system because no one else is doing it right.
Which is how I know that at some point, I would quietly start greasing the wheels of politics. Not in a dramatic, House‑of‑Cards way. Not in a “mysterious billionaire pulling strings from the shadows” way. More in a “fine, if no one else is going to fix this, I guess I will” way. I wouldn’t want attention. I wouldn’t want power. I wouldn’t want my name on anything. I’d just start putting money behind things that actually move the needle — especially education. Because if I’m going to live forever, I want to live in a country where people can read, think, and build things without tripping over the same structural problems every generation.
And the idea of doing it quietly is what makes it so funny. Immortality gives you the patience to play the longest game imaginable. You don’t need credit. You don’t need headlines. You don’t need your name on a building. You can just… nudge things. Fund the right research. Support the right reforms. Back the right infrastructure. Let the world think it changed on its own. It’s immortality as civic housekeeping. Immortality as “I’m tired of watching this system squeak, let me oil it.”
Most people imagine eternal life as mystery, destiny, or cosmic purpose. I imagine it as a centuries‑long project plan with line items like:
“Fix American education (quietly).”
“Make sure the hydro turbines stay maintained.”
“Expand the university housing before the next century.”
“Rebalance the portfolio.”
“Check on the riverbank erosion.”
“Replace the roof tiles on the west dorm.”
“Nudge society toward literacy again.”
It’s not glamorous. It’s not dramatic. It’s not mythic. It’s scaffolding. It’s logistics. It’s me, immortal and slightly annoyed, trying to make the world run a little smoother because I have the time and the spreadsheets to do it.
And honestly, that’s the funniest part of all: give me eternal life, and I won’t become a creature of legend. I’ll become a creature of infrastructure. A creature of hydropower. A creature of long‑term planning. A creature who sighs like Dooce every time immortality hands me another century of paperwork.
Immortality, for me, isn’t about mystery. It’s about scaffolding. And apparently, I’m ready to build.
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
Twice or three times I didn’t think I’d make it this far. Bipolar disorder is a bitch. But thankfully, all the med checks I’ve had over the years have gone very well. I’m more relaxed in my body…… I can also feel time starting to drain away. I am lost, confused, and afraid. But everything will work out in the end because it always does.
Up and to a point.
I cannot imagine my daily grind until I’m 92, the age at which my grandfather died. However, I have so much in my life that’s feeding me, I tend to tap into my own resources, which is a polite way of saying I’m my own best company. I want friendships/relationships/whatever, but I am not dependent on them to provide anything I lack.
I didn’t get here until I’d lived alone for quite a while. Yes, I have housemates, but I do not interact with them much. For the most part, I am locked up in my room, and there are lots of reasons why, absolutely none of them having to do with me.
Here’s the bottom line:
Guy goes to the doctor and the results are really bad. Doc says, “you have six months to live.” Patient says, “six months? What am I going to do?” Doc says, “buy a pig farm. Move to Oklahoma. Marry the meanest woman you can find. You won’t live longer, but it’ll be the longest six months of your life.”
If you’re not picking up what I’m putting down, it’s that a year can seem like 10 minutes, and one moment can last 10 years. Time is relative. I do not need to live a long time to live a lot. I keep this in mind every day because though my grandfather died at 92, my mother died at 65. I’m only 20 years younger than that, and I think I have more than 20 years left in me…. but I can’t be sure. Not only due to the nature of my mental and physical health, but also because if you learn anything from the sudden death of a parent (embolism- it blew, she was dead 30 minutes later from a broken foot), it’s that a long life isn’t guaranteed.
So, whether I get to finish out my life like my grandfather, or whether it’s going to be cut short by some unknown force, I will be ecstatic either way, because I’m not saving up writing my passions until I don’t have anything else to do. It’s what I do instead of going out, because I feel more driven to get all of this down than I do to interact.
That’s because when you’re not interacting with people, there’s less chance to make a mistake. That’s one of the reasons I don’t want to live a long time. I have communication issues and it is relentless. Because I’m neurodivergent, I process information differently than a good bit of the world. Therefore, I am the problem child, not of my parents, but of my employers. Neurotypical people cannot hear neurodivergent people without training, and vice versa. Even the way things are written, when they’re written, are sketchy because we don’t all have our neurotypical decoder rings on us.
A hundred percent of the time, it’s not that I’m not listening. It’s that I don’t understand…… but you do. “Everyone does.” I am not stupid or slow because I read the directions differently than you did. It’s because of the way the instructions were written, and again, no neurotypical in my pocket to check…… because you can go to a boss occasionally to manage priorities, but if they feel like they’re doing your work, then you’re out. And it takes surprisingly little to get you out if they’re convinced you don’t listen and can’t learn.
80% of autistic people are unemployed, and none of us have job security. I am trying not only to manage money well, but also to create something that will last long after I do. These are not just empty pages. This is not for me after I’m finished using it. People, again (from another entry, I can’t remember which), are going to want to know about the way we lived. I’m going to be a part of that, and so will my friends.
So, even though I wasn’t nice to Sam, I think I’ll still come out all right in the end……. because after I processed all the feelings from said breakup, I let go of the anger and was indeed nice to her.
I can quote the first line from memory….. “Wilhousky, you had me at hello.” The Wilhousky arrangement of the Battle Hymn of the Republic is one of the most glorious things I’ve ever done with a brass quintet. I’ve sung it a hundred times, too, but there’s big brass energy when you’re the lead trumpet player for the clarion calls. So, when Sam told me that she was a soprano in the Army choir, the first question I ever asked her was “how many times have you sung the Wilhousky arrangement?” A nanosecond later…. “a million, conservatively.”
Now, the first trumpet part is actually not that difficult, it’s just very, very exposed. You are hanging out on a ledge with barely any accompaniment, so any flaw is going to show. Any impurity in the sound. So, when I pulled it off, I was right proud of myself.
But I suppose if you’ve performed it a million times and not just a hundred, you might not feel so great about it. I hate “Amazing Grace” for the same reason Sam and Peter Wilhousky are never ever ever getting back together. Well, two reasons. The first is that I’ve sung it into the ground. It just feels like an old war horse to me. The second is that organists tend to drag……….. I don’t know what it is, but a good chunk of piano/organ accompanists slow down “Amazing Grace” and “Happy Birthday” to “funeral procession.” I’m not just picking on those two things. I already know that if I end up in hell, my penance will be singing the soprano part to the hallelujah Chorus on repeat. Hold it till you turn purple. In that instance, I would wish for a short life, but it’s hell. I could end up singing The Hallelujah Chorus, anyway, without Lucifer Morningstar on baritone. You know he knows it.
If I was going to live a long life, like, vampire long, I would have time to go back and get the training I need to actually do something with voice. It’s not that I’m so great, it’s that I love being in a group. I will do a solo if someone asks me to, but I will not offer.
I am not a stereotypical soprano. I only compete with myself over my last performance, not with everyone else in the room. Believe it or not, I’ve listened to myself enough that I knew it was a bad note before you called attention to it, but it was so sweet of you to point it out just in case I’m a little slow on the uptake. Voice is an instrument, just like brass. Not every note is going to be perfect because it depends on so much more than your throat.
Singing is a full-body workout, and after a choir rehearsal, my core feels like I’ve been tied as tightly as an old sea salt twists his rope. It’s always my diaphragm. The only good part about knowing how to work your diaphragm is that you can stop your own hiccups…….. most of the time. But, training takes money.
Once I got vampire money, I’d pick a university and just park it. I could stay there a hundred years and still not learn everything. I’d start by finishing the coursework I’ve already started, then branch out. Maybe a second bachelor’s in music, but I doubt it. That part of my life is so long over that I really would be starting at zero again in terms of a professional career.
I’d probably read law, eventually. Lindsay and I were talking about that the other day, that sometimes I still feel the fire in the belly….. but what I’ve figured out is that I thought I was a bubbly personality and I am……… but not long enough to last an entire day in court. Repeatedly.
No, if I read law I’d still be in academia. There’s a lot you can do with a JD that doesn’t require taking the bar….. and I’d need a vampire’s lifetime to figure out where I’d want to live/work. Because after 200 years, DC might not be home. Who knows? What I do know is that I have no plans to relocate, not even out of this house, for now. I just mean that eventually, I’d like to see more of the world and write about it.
Doctor Who focuses on chance meetings with interesting people from the past. My thought is, “why not go meet them now, before all you have left is their work?” I can tell you the exact day I realized it- January 19th, 2019. On the 18th, Tony Mendez found out from the Publications Review Board at CIA that “The Moscow Rules” was approved and would be on shelves. He died the next day, before I got to meet him and believe me that is not the important part in the grand scheme of things- it just makes me sad.
I did try, but by the time I got here, he had stopped doing public appearances due to the Parkinson’s Disease. But meeting would have been good for both of us, according to Jonna, his widow. We’re not really friends, but we’ve talked to each other at The International Spy Museum a couple times and she’s read at least one entry here with her name in it and I cried when I got the note back- that she loved it, and that I was very perceptive about everything that was going on in the room.
Tony didn’t live as long as anyone would have wanted, so I wrote about being sad. It was a celebration of his last book, the last one I’d ever get. And, of course, that’s what makes Jonna’s next book so exciting. Only in Spy Dust did they really alternate chapters so that you could distinguish Jonna and Tony separately. “In True Face” is probably going to be my favorite book of them all because I love women that write about intelligence. Not that I don’t think Tony didn’t hang the moon.
I just want to know the woman he sat with while he was up there. She’s just as funny as he was, but different, I believe. She, in an interview, said that “she was a real hard-ass,” which means two things. The first is that CIA is a boys’ club, or it used to be when Jonna started….. and I want the tea if there’s any to sip. The second is that CIA is overwhelmingly geared toward women now, and the next cup would be how they got there. They’ve embraced female leadership at C/DIA in a way the that FBI just can’t handle. Thoughts and prayers.
So, their library is going to be read and reread by me long into the future, because I need female heroes. I need to see women succeeding because if I can’t reach that level of discourse myself, I would at least like to read about it.
I don’t know what Jonna’s famous line is, but John Le Carré’s was “I’m the only friend you’ve got.” That seems like tradecraft 101, but just like in music, spies have no accompaniment, and are completely exposed. Any flaw will show, because they’re hanging out on a ledge….. generally during a time where if you lose your footing, you aren’t exactly sure whether the person who helped you up is friend or foe.
In thinking about Rebecca, which I often do because the character is actually from a novel I started a long time ago, actually called -frog.- Gregory and Leila are also from that story, but not “Robert.” Robert is the new man in my life, for all practical intents and purposes, because once a character gets in, it’s hard to get them back out. Rebecca and Robert have been talking in my head all day long, and they need to go to bed.
Just not together.
Robert is a mixed bag. He talks tough. He’s a little boy. He knows Rebecca could end him, and that’s why he likes her. But Rebecca and Gregory are a solid item, and Robert is actually ace….. you just don’t see it because of his tough guy exterior. What man would admit that to a beautiful woman on first meeting? It’s all about representation. I picked up ace representation from TJ Klune, who is one of my favorite novelists and lives out in Fredericksburg, VA. So, it’s possible that he’ll do a book signing in DC eventually. I’d love to get an autograph on “Under the Whispering Door,” because I liked “House in the Cerulean Sea,” but I thought it couldn’t be topped.
I was wrong.
Under the Whispering Door is about death. Long lives, short lives, somewhere in between? It explores the great mystery……..
Stories That Are All True 