It was bright, very bright — the kind of light that stings your eyes for what feels like an infinite amount of time. After a while, I became numb to the sensation. My eyes, however, remained tender, partly because the walls, floor, and ceiling were painted in a white so brilliant it felt like someone had dipped their paintbrush into a distant star. The odd thing is, I failed to find any light source — no lightbulbs, windows, or lamps. It was then I realized the walls lacked corners, blending into the ceiling and floor seamlessly. It was an empty, soulless room.
***
Meet Kenneth Gauvin: champion golfer, freak athlete, and general polymath. Mr. Gauvin has just completed a slumber that has cost him nearly a millennium. The rollercoaster of events that brought Mr. Gauvin to this moment were set in motion when a traumatic head injury derailed a promising golf career. His path has led to a future, not a certain future, but one of many possibilities. This is not a new world, planet, or universe he finds himself in, but merely an appendage of what began in the old. What Mr. Gauvin is about to learn is that this future’s technological refinements have created a suave approach to the destruction of human achievement and his life’s work.
***
My bed was a distraction. It was comfortable — almost too comfortable; in fact, I still can’t quite describe its snug compression and ethereal touch. I was alone for two or maybe three hours — honestly, I’m unsure — that's when someone, something, limped into the room. It looked like a woman — but wasn’t. She had a jagged metal arm, suspended by a few dozen rusty nails. Her abdomen was stitched together by what looked to be a rainbow of different rusted metals. She had on a clear coat and white pants delicately embroidered with a caduceus. With her, she wheeled a pristine white shelf that was far too large for the crummy CRT TV placed upon it. Yet to acknowledge me, she switched on the TV. After a moment, it flickered, displaying an unfamiliar image of what looked to be some sort of sci-fi film. It appeared to be an attempt to accommodate me; in other words, give me something to stare at.
I opened my mouth to thank her — instead, all that came out was crackled gibberish. After a few seconds, a strong hum of vibrations echoed from the depths of my throat and produced muffled but decipherable speech.
“Thank you.”
She cocked her head back at me as if the dialogue was a foreign concept.
She started, “It's been a long wait for you, hasn’t it?”
Slightly puzzled, I responded, “If you don’t mind answering, where are we?”
You know, I don’t know why I was so passive in the moment — perhaps shock, dissociation, or denial — in the back of my head, I still thought it was all a bad trip.
“You, Mr. Gauvin, are in Medical Compound #273.”
A part of me was pissed off about how nondescript that answer was, but another admired how one could say so much and mean so little. I rebuffed, “What is that exactly?”
“Medical Facilities.”
“Okay, let me rephrase. Why am I here?”
“Mr. Gauvin, I didn’t mean to upset you. Medical Compound #273 is one of 3,007 rebirth and rehabilitation centers established by the Republic of North America. A program set up to rebirth and rehabilitate the comatose and deceased.”
My hair stood up at that explanation. “So why am I here, godammit? Just answer the damn question!”
“Mr. Gauvin, you’ve been dead for approximately 367,000 days.”
Even now, it's hard to describe the gravity of those words. At that moment, my cloudiness transformed into concern. I wanted to say something but couldn’t; I was frozen — a marionette without strings…
Nevertheless, she continued, unfazed, “It was an accident — they found you breathing but in dire condition; your file says here that you died less than 24 hours later. Instead of burial, it seems as if your family entered you into a cryopreservation program. With our ever-growing medical technology wing, we have finally unlocked the ability to breathe new life into dead souls.”
At that moment, my throat tensed up — I was hyperventilating. It felt like my lungs were trapped underwater, constricted from the rest of my being. All I wanted to do was raise questions — but all I could do was gasp for air. It felt like an eternity, but looking back, perhaps it was only a few seconds of pure terror. With a stinging breath, I summoned the strength to pose a trembling question:
“why?"
She stared at me pensively — after a few seconds, she responded, “The free energy project — it needs workers — and humanoid labor is better used elsewhere.”
I found myself fixated on the television screen. Its persistent fluorescence pierced my eyes, and the chaos unfolding was mesmerizing — still, I couldn't quite decipher what I was watching. I also realized I couldn’t work out the time — not that it matters — but I really wanted to know, and it agitated me that I didn’t. I decided to ask. She said it was 8 pm. It comforted me that after so long, time had remained unchanged. I started to calm down, feeling more curious than anxious at that point. So I asked a question: “Do people play golf — that is — in the future?”
“Well, yes, it’s our most popular pastime! I think R9 - 5342 will be approaching the green of the San Francisco to New Richmond hole shortly. Right now, he is playing through a hurricane, so his path might become a little convoluted, and he has to make the critical decision of when to use his wind power up to give his ball enough speed to fly through the storm. Regardless, he’s looking to become just the second individual to win the New Raleigh Invitational seven years in a row.”
I couldn’t tell if she was being serious — I couldn’t tell if any of this was serious. I yearned to know more. Her description of golf sounded familiar but also so foreign, like ex-lovers meeting as friends for the first time. A piece of my heart broke off when I heard her alien description — I guess I just wanted to know that something I had once loved had remained continuous, untouched by time. “To be honest, that doesn't sound similar to the golf I know at all.”
“It has evolved.”
“Evolved! How does a sport so placid evolve? Why change it, lady?!”
“Mr. Gauvin, I didn’t mean to upset you —”
“Oh, please, will you just shut up and answer my damn question!”
She looked at me — hollowly — almost as if she was searching for an answer. “Mr. Gauvin, in a sport where people improve, there is bound to be evolution. For years, golf experienced exponential growth, talent-wise. It came to a point where the courses couldn’t support the competitive ecosystem. They simply weren’t long enough to defend themselves against the players. So they expanded, ballooning to 16,000 yards, then the size of cities. Finally, they became the size of entire states. It became the case where some holes could take days, if not weeks. Then it all stopped — for humans, sports had reached their ceiling. No player was better than another. Athleticism became obsolete — no matter how hard any player tried, no one could stand out. Athletes became tangible. Fans don’t want tangible. Left uninspired and maxed out, people stopped playing sports — nobody knew what to do.”
I sat there, shaken. I realized that the hunk of metal standing in front of me — like the rest of the world — might, in fact, be better at golf than I ever was or could ever aspire to be. I realized my most prized accomplishments had become meaningless — relegated to an antique likely used for scrap metal.
She continued, “For hundreds of years, people just sat around. There was no drive or need for sports.” She looked down, “Then, everything changed. Biotechnology reached a level where humans could be implanted with advanced prosthetic limbs that heightened their speed, strength, logical and emotional intelligence. Once the technology was legalized by the Republic, the extremely wealthy began enhancing themselves with biotech. Over time, replacement limbs became more affordable — to the point where every person could get their hands on them — the human body became obsolete. With the new technology came a renaissance in sport. Golf courses, at unprecedented sizes, began opening all across the Republic.”
She lifted her head and leaned on the end of the mattress. “With our new technology, the end of sport is long behind us, and it’s revitalized souls like you that will power it all.”
***
At that moment, Mr. Gauvin became fixated on the screen in front of him. Staring into its cruel blue light, he realized the image it projected was no sci-fi film, but rather the sport he loved, transformed into a mere stranger.
The Nurse was only partially correct about the human body becoming a defunct piece of machinery. What she failed to grasp, however, was that, in her time, the very nature of human existence had become a mangled, empty experience. In a future where one’s emotions are dictated by the scrap metal placed upon their body and not their being, she herself is rendered obsolete. No future, world, or universe will ever be able to achieve if they do not reconcile with the limits of the human body. The question remains — How does a creature reconcile with the limits of itself? Perhaps, the answer can only be found in Compound #273.