I am not a student of history as it is taught in the schools around the world. People in whom I have confided over the centuries have universally found this hard to reconcile, but that has always been the result of their own knowledge of the past. When one studies history one is afforded the luxury of collecting all the perspectives of far-flung individuals and events. For those actually living in the times being studied, the only perspective immediately available is the one before their very eyes. Given the state of communications technology prior to the telegraph is it any wonder that one might be ignorant of what transpired in other parts of the world at any given time? Of course not.

I have lived through a few “momentous” times, but mostly I slaved away in some obscure corner of the world while events transpired far, far away and I was as ignorant of them as the normal people around me. I spent a large portion of the first half of my life as a slave, either literally or virtually. In an odd way it afforded me a level of protection, almost anonymity as I glided through one decade after another for no one affords much attention to a slave. I always managed to move on before anyone noticed that the master’s concubine never seemed to get any older.

These days I spend my efforts in more productive ways. I am a teacher by choice, and wealthy enough to teach where I please. I am quite adept at reading the financial markets, identifying trends towards peaks and stepping in long enough to make a tidy sum. The recent dotcom madness served me quite well in a number of respects, particularly in allowing me to dive in and out of certain companies as they rose as well as leveraging my technology positions to attempt to redress one of my most pressing problems: identity. I still have not found an acceptable solution to that, but I am by nature quite patient.

Posted on December 14th, 2002 by Zsallia
Filed under: Immortality, The Past, The Present