Just as human as the day he was born, Jeff Kyle looked upon the funeral with a sad smile. He’d seen thousands of funerals in his life. He’d probably seen more than that, but he wasn’t sure. He’d forgotten his original name a couple of times but kept adopting new ones. The only thing he kept was an old bronze tool that he now wore around his neck as a reminder of where he’d come from.

It was at the dawn of the bronze age when Jeff had first been born. I say first born, because he’d been born again several times after his true, physical birth. Several times since then, he’d lost most memory of his past. There were several things that never went away, but people and places faded and then popped out of existence. Jeff was born an immortal, and the funeral made him sad.

Jeff had never been able to die. He’d tried after everyone he grew up with was dead. All of his friends and family passed away, and Jeff had tried to kill himself. It was first jumping off of a cliff, just to wake up a few days later on the shore. He’d also tried to stab himself, and this ended in having to pull the knife out of his chest two days after he entered it there.

He tried every poison and elixir he could find. He tried to burn himself in fire and dissolve himself in acid. It never worked quite the way he hoped, and after a day or two, he was corporeal again, whole. He wasn’t sure why, but he remembered having been either blessed or cursed for something he did back in the bronze age, back in his first life.

The invention of the French guillotine seemed like a god send, but he could never get anyone to execute him. He made his own version, and it separated his head, but his body and head still functioned. Jeff eventually picked his head up, sat it back on his shoulders, and decided to stop trying to end it all. He decided that whatever kept making him come back was stronger than he was.

Jeff snapped out of his trance as he saw the people leaving. He walked up to the graveside and bent over. The tombstone read “Dr. Anne Stenson 1943-1999” There was the usual rest in piece message, but Jeff just stared at the name and the years. “Thank you for trying.” Jeff said to the tombstone. He stood up and decided to leave this place and go back to Dr. Stenson’s lab.

Dr. Anne Stenson had run a brain and memory lab funded by the government. She had worked miracles in the areas of determining how the brain stores and retrieves memories. Jeff was a patient. He’d gone to her and explained his story. She couldn’t believe him. It made no sense to be talking to an immortal that wanted his memories back.

Jeff explained to her time and time again that he had forgotten several lives, that he remembered small bits of each life. He just couldn’t remember enough. He wanted to know what first happened to make him this way. He wanted to know why he couldn’t die, why he was forced to watch his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. die at the hands of time. He eventually bothered her enough to get her to try.

The first treatments were promising. He could remember every five hundred years or so. It seemed that his last life was spent touring the European country side. He was at times hailed as a priest or a saint. He was seen by several people that apparently knew him and started the legend. In the end, he went to America, seeking a land where know one would know him or bother him. He remembered the middle ages and the age of enlightenment well. He’d decided to spend his time studying everything he could find. Unfortunately, he eventually forgot it all.

Theses treatments were only promising, they proved less and less effective as time went on. Dr. Stenson tried to tell him that she believed that the brain had a certain capacity and flushed out everything after a certain amount of time. It seemed to get rid of all the useless memories and only keep what it felt was necessary. The memories were still there, but locked away somehow. Dr. Stenson told Jeff that his neural pathways had shifted, that new neurons had developed and that his capacity for memory was enormous.

It was then that Dr. Stenson believed Jeff. She’d never seen a brain like his. He became her obsession. She wanted to know everything that caused his brain to function in the ways that it did. It seemed to secrete other enzymes that told the rest of the body to keep repairing itself, not to let him die. She discovered that his brain had developed separate organs that she was so far unable to understand.

It was soon after this that Dr. Anne Stenson developed brain cancer. Inoperable and a quick killer. It spread fast enough and killed her silently one night. Her own body had rebelled against her. The one organ that she’d devoted her life to had turned and stabbed her in the back. Jeff Kyle could not stand for this anymore.

Jeff sat in the little chair that he was usually in when subjected to the tests. He’d been reading all of Dr. Stenson’s notes about his brain. Jeff never told her that he often felt smarter after each test. That he thought that he could make the drugs and electric therapy work. After all, he had lived a very long time and had a certain understanding of the world that few were able to grasp.

He’d changed the drugs and the electrical patterns. He based them closely on what the departed doctor had done, but there were several minor changes that he believed would add up to a major change. The only change that he wanted. Not some brief glimpse at a person he didn’t remember or pictures in his mind of people he couldn’t associate memories or events with. He wanted it all.

The drugs coursed, setting up the chemical pathways that would be needed, providing a bizarre soup to feed the brain. Then the electrical patterns started; massaging different areas, using the chemical paths as roads to travel down, locking and changing the direction of his memories. Then it was all there.

Jeff remembered it all. Not like a flying slap in the face, but a gentle lake of memory. It always had been there, but just not accessible. It was now all open. He started to cry. He could remember his parents, his children, his lovers. They were all there; as was their tragic passing, but with each passing was usually the passing on of life, new births, new generations, carrying on and creating life again.

The chemicals kept pumping and the electrical patterns kept moving and coalescing. Something else was happening in the brain of Jeff Kyle. With his remembrance of all that he was, he suddenly realized what he wasn’t. He was nothing special, nothing great, but more tragic. He wished it to be over. And he then realized that it would. That the combination of drugs and electricity would kill him, basically burn every neuron out of his head quicker that the specialized brain organs could save them. The drugs would eventually attack these organs, killing them.

It was an old blind man that took him in as a child. He was young and almost dead. The old man had found him abandoned in the woods. He felt pity for the small male and picked him up, hiding him deep in the folds of his robe. The old man didn’t wish for anyone to see what he had, he was afraid they’d take the child from him.

He took the child back to an old, old building set into a cliff. He went far back into the building until it was a cave in the cliff. There, chained against the wall was a dying being. The old man had tried for years to unchain the man. At least it appeared to be a man, but the bonds couldn’t be broken. He’d talked endlessly to it. He was blind and most people stayed away from him. Who else would listen, anyway?

The day he brought the child, he sat it on the chained man’s lap. “Here. Do what you can with the child. It’s at death’s door.” The old man said.

“It has gone old man.”

“Oh dear, I was afraid of that.”

“What would you wish me to do with it?”

“Do with it? I’ll bury it. The poor child should at least have a proper burial.”

“No, you knew the child was dead. Why did you bring him to me?”

“You don’t die, you never eat or drink, but you never suffer from it. I thought you might could help the child.”

“I can no longer help it, but I can help you if you’ll release me from these chains.”

“I can’t I’ve tried.” The old man whined, feebly turning from the bizarre man with the dead child in his lap.

“You could if you were younger and wiser. I can give you the gift I have, but I would like you to free me if I do.”

The old man agreed. With a touch, the stranger turned the clock back on him, turned the old flesh to new, and gave him a capacity to learn and understand that he never knew existed within him. He eventually was able to let the man out of his bonds. The chained man then left him, vanishing without a trace.

Jeff Kyle could not remember who he was before or how to talk; he couldn’t remember if the chained man had given him a curse or a blessing. He decided it was the latter. As he felt the life slip from his old, old body, and he felt the grip of death, he saw the chained man appear to him. He grabbed his hand and told him that he was a kind, wonderful man. The chained man thanked him for freedom, and asked Jeff Kyle to leave with him. Jeff resisted the urge not to, and went silently. It was finally his time.