Damned Sartre!

He was a Demon.

Not one based on the diabolical perversion of beings that populate myriad mythologies orchestrated by christianity (the lack of capitalization is not an error, rather, a contextuating statement), but rather, one in the nature of the cadet branch of divinity reflected in Hindu, Zoroastrian and other belief systems, much more akin, perhaps, to generic Hebrew angels, those both before and after the purported Great Fall from Grace. Or perhaps, he might be described as in the nature of the Achaean daemons.

It may have been that he’d forgotten.

He’d been around for a long time, perhaps, forever, although all he could recall is that his current memory failed to extend far enough back to encompass long portions of his existence. He did know he was male but didn’t recall whether that had always been the case. According to some, beings in his category (whichever that was) were supposed to be androgynous although Hebrew holy books were confusing on that score, for example, with respect to the Nephilim. But he’d been male for as long as he could remember.

Subject to that qualification, he could look like whatever he pleased and could change his physical appearance as often as it suited him. There were, apparently, limitations on mass which had to remain within boundaries but variable depending on intake and excrement. Excrement was optional so he could increase or decrease mass fairly quickly. Clothing though, had to be acquired (should he elect to avail himself of that option).

While immortal he could suffer pain, both physical and psychological, most often the latter. In time (at least to date) he had always managed to recover from the physical variant. He had certain transportation advantages involving transformational, transmutational and quantum abilities which greatly helped in avoiding difficult situations, should he wish to avoid them, unless, of course, they were emotional in nature. He was not all than fond of emotions, favoring Spock over Data.

Lilith may have been a very distant cousin, he couldn’t really recall. After having lived for so long and forgotten so much, she might have been an offspring; not likely though. Or an ancestor if he were not really eternal. In light of certain romantic interludes long ago, distant cousin was really best although he could not recall consanguineous relational restrictions. He’d never met the purported christian devil, Satan, nor its Semetic ancestor, Shaitan; he was not at all sure either was real, in fact, he suspected they were merely calumnious creations.

He lived wherever or whenever he pleased, being able to flit through time as well as space, albeit within reason.  Travel required expenditure of energy and energy required conversion from mass, so the longer he lived, the more limitations seemed to apply, especially with respect to temporal travel over long distances, and there did seem to be a forward travel barrier. Thus far he’d not been able to travel further future than a point at which he would have been had his existence been a continual unidirectional temporal voyage. However, he could occupy the same temporal instant concurrently and was thus able to interact with almost infinite prior versions of himself. There had been several conventions but they’d proved so confusing they’d been abandoned quite a while ago. Still, every once in a while, discreet meetings with several of himselves where all right although they would still cause memory problems so there had to be good reasons for them.

Lately he had played with a few inverse temporal relay races designed to go as far back as possible as a means of avoiding the energy drain involved in exploring his origins but they’d somehow failed. Perhaps, as in the human game of telephone the message had gotten garbled along the way and the purpose of the race had been distorted, or, perhaps the way back was longer than he imagined and the races were still ongoing. A third possibility of course involved distractions along the route back. For some reason, that made him think of Lilith, although he could no longer visualize her. Memories of memories told him she was very, very beautiful (no talons though, of that he was sure, he would have remembered that) but that’s all he had there. Hmmm, perhaps another inverse temporal relay race?

Very long ago he’d hung out with other demons but for several millennia now he’d blended in with humans. Sometime after that he’d started to sleep a lot. Not that he needed to, he’d faked it at first, then accidently succumbed to the habit and found it interesting, especially after he’d learned to dream. Until several millennia ago he’d sometimes be visited by friendly succubae but they’d inexplicably dried up towards the end of the Roman Republican period. He found dreams interesting and he’d become somewhat addicted to them as a cure for boredom.

He was a bit concerned that, as in the case of humans, addiction could prove detrimental and wondered if he could become permanently trapped within a dream. The thought frightened him but only because it sometimes made him wonder if perhaps that hadn’t already occurred, perhaps everything had been a dream for a long time, even, … perhaps, … forever,

Damned Sartre!
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2015; all rights reserved