Spider Man: Duty And Loss - Chapter 130

Title: ??

Type: Original

Sci-fi

Synopsis:

(Temporary)

What better way is there to teach someone than through life?

Date Written: 2018

Date Edited: 2020

Plan for prompt: An original that I won’t get to for a very long time I think

Inspiration: It’s an original for a reason.

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Prologue: Congratulations

I stared out the window and let the sun’s glow bath me in heat, it was funny, I never concentrated on how good this feeling was. Throughout the years I never truly appreciated the warmth I was feeling, the cosines that spread throughout my body.

I guess it comes when you’re about to die. How did I know? I could just feel it. The tiredness and fatigue that gripped my body most times of the day and the growing nostalgia, which would keep popping up from the smallest of things.

I would remember my school days and laugh at the silliness of it all. I would remember the hard times finding work and the desperation to find myself in the world.

The best and worst moments of my life would always come and go in a flash, and leave me reminiscing for hours.

I had been in this hospital room for a while now; I knew it would happen soon.

My health started to decline when I was 108. With the advances in technology these days, getting to 111 years was pretty good, but the richer people could extend that to 130 easily.

I never had a really good paying job to get the better treatments needed. I was only upper middle management. Better than a normal employee but nothing compared to the big wigs.

That’s all in the past now though, I got my severance package around 14 years ago. It was a good payout; I had spent a lot of time at the company. The money I saved dried up fast after my wife’s funeral though and then these hospital costs came along and took the rest I had saved.

I always said I was saving so me and her could go on a trip in the later years of our time together, but we never got to go before she died. I always put it off to earn more money through overtime and extra work.

It was useless in the end, I had waited too long.

I don’t know why I tried to live longer… …It kept me from her for longer…

I stretched my arm out to the bed side, grabbed the remote, turned on the TV and grabbed the most important thing in the room.

My eyes started to tear up as I stared at the picture in my hands; it was of me and my Wife on our honeymoon back in our late twenties. I smiled slightly. I knew I would be seeing her soon, she left me 8 years ago and since then it was never the same.

My kids stopped seeing me after I was admitted for a year, I had thought at least one of them would have visited, but I guess they have to deal with their own kids and grandkids.

Nearly all of my past friends had died off by now, 1 or 2 of them were still in aged care homes, but that was better than a hospital bed with nothing to do.

The TV caught my ear as I was reminiscing.

“With the advent of the new Virtual Reality (VR) pod version 2, results have shown faster learning in adolescence and sharper brain speeds with mathematical and grammatical learning, with the new VR peace treaty due to be put in place 2 months from now it shows how much VR has revolutionized how we as a society will evolve. Here to talk with me today about VR is Doctor…”

I turned away from the TV and stared back at the portrait. Virtual Reality huh? Something in the realm of fantasy back when I was a kid in the 2000’s. So much has progressed in the last 100 years, I didn’t do much with the time I had here, but the time spent with my wife was the best.

Sometimes I would feel lonely in this quite room, with only a bedside table, TV and window, I had to entertain myself. But it was hard doing that as I got on in the years, even going to the toilet was starting to become a pain.

I don’t want to end up as one of those people who pees through a catheter and has to be helped to go to the toilet. It’s one of my last dignities that I didn’t want to give up.

I couldn’t even play some of the new games that were released in the VR pod as my body couldn’t handle it. Turning the page of a book, took up too much energy. And I would find myself sleeping for the majority of the day.

My eyes started to feel slightly heavy and the warmth from the sun was starting to get even cozier as I lay on the bed.

Ahh it was time, I gazed into the picture in my hands, fixated on my wife’s eyes, they seemed so happy.

My mouth started to dry up as my breathing became weaker and weaker. I felt a light wetness on my cheek and knew I was crying. I whispered her name.

“Rebecca”

My final thoughts on her dazzling smile.

‘I’m coming to see you soon; I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.’

And it was then as the darkness closed in and my vision became pitch black; I heard a slightly robotic sound ring in my head.

“Congratulations, You’ve Graduated”