“The worst thing about immortality,” Khamisi mulled as the smell of his stew grew savory, “is that everything gets boring eventually.” He felt qualified to think this, as he had tried most of the pleasures and tortures available to humankind so far. Oh, everything felt new for the first few decades he tried it, and sometimes he was surprised by just how refreshing even, say, slavery could be. But nothing lasted forever, except forever. And boredom, it seemed.
He was sure it all went back to that terrible day thirty-three suns after his birth, with that strange animal so far south from its habitat, when he had been so far north of his home—in the years since he had learned its name was “wolf.” But he didn’t consciously think about this now; his mind merely touched it like a chapped lip.
“The best thing about immortality,” his thoughts continued, “is the parlor tricks.” Those were always amusing for at least a brief moment, although like tobacco they always eventually created more trouble than they were worth, even for the unkillable. (“That’s true for the tobacco too. Now there’s an enslavement!”) But no, really, he shouldn’t be so hard on parlor tricks—they were what opened the door to his many years as king. And those years as a king opened the doors to so many pleasures. If nothing else, thanks to them he now knew they could not end his boredom. Women... Bantu women, Arab women, even women from even farther east... he had had his pick in those days. Gold and riches in every combination, though no silver.
(He said he couldn’t touch the damn stuff, and it was literally true. Every time he tried, his hand pulled away—he couldn’t force it with all his will. He never really explored this strange aspect of himself, unlike his constant broodings on immortality.)
Yes... all manner of playthings and curiosities had passed by his eyes. He had managed a lot in his few short decades as god-king, but in the end, he was only happy that it had to end. And it did have to end, because by the end, there was too much explaining, too much hatred, too little acceptance of a god-king that was truly immortal, rather than pretending so. They couldn’t kill him, but he found himself wishing he were dead more often than usual by the end of those years.
So his dearest and most trusted advisor Bakari was true to his name when he concocted the plan with that delightful ignoble defeat and overthrow. Khamisi reaped years of amusement and happiness for his friend’s lovely life when the “traitor” Bakari “found Khamisi’s weakness” and sent him into slavery at the fringe of the empire. Bakari, understanding his subject’s mortal agonies better than his Khamisi had, had been a wise ruler and beneficial, and Khamisi made sure to stay informed on news of his land even as a slave so that he could enjoy it. He found the pain and hard labor refreshing for those years, and perhaps the hardest thing was pretending to truly suffer “losing the short years of the only life he had” to it... and finding a way to be enslaved in a new place several times to avoid, yet again, those inevitable nagging questions about his rock-stable, unaging face.
“It’s so hard to still need when I really should need nothing, he grumbled,” as he ladled the stew into a bowl. And he really did need nothing. He’d never needed to eat, though he still enjoyed food. Nor to drink, nor sleep... nor even to piss. But he still enjoyed all of it. It was just like that goddamned tobacco that these new “Europeans” had showed him oh-so-short ago... decades at the most. Why pee? Why? When it doesn’t do anything that he needs? Because he loved it, more than sex, even.
“Oh, yeah. I’m gonna pee right now.” He journeyed to a not-recently-used spot in his shaman’s abode (even the visceral, lively pain of slavery eventually got boring) in the Amboni Caves, and let out a delicious stream. He felt great. And entertained. For ten tortuously infinitessimal seconds. Why pee, why? Because it was another tobacco.
What was it that trader from “India” had once said of the philosophy of that “Buddha” fellow? “All is Maya—illusion.”
Yeah. That.
Damn, that was a good piss, though!
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