The Eternal Optimist

He forced himself to look in the mirror. He still could not believe that there were no traces of the scars on his forehead from the treatment. He looked closer, just to make sure that he was not seeing things...

Seeing only what he wanted to believe.

Genetics had made some incredible leaps since 2124, almost 60 years ago. But he still had to be treated with powerful drugs, to make him normal. "Normal", he grinned, half sarcastically half with genuine joy. All his life he wanted to be normal, and now that he was, he had doubts. He knew medicine was not perfect... There was no perfection... Only nature was perfect. The kind of nature that kept Julius going. All he could think about was the impending honeymoon on Eden3Alpha. Perhaps, the only thing that kept him sane.

"Honey", came a female voice. "Honey", you up there? Dinner is ready".

"Ahh the sweet shrill of my sweetie", Julius thought smiling..."Sweet shrill"...He laughed aloud at the contradiction. Realizing that his subconscious probably crammed the term in his mind. "Everything ends...every love, every perfection, every..."His thoughts were interrupted by another, a bit more impatient, call by his wife, "Honeeey, you coming?"

"Oh yeah ... Hey Eve, What are we eating tonight?"

"Felexicous... With your favorite sauce"

"Ymmmm", he cried out. "Be right down". Yuckkkk is what he meant. Felexicous... Just another word for scrambled cats. Julius didn’t mind helping the world food shortage by eating anything that the human body can endure... But only if he only knew what parts of the cat he was eating. And only if his wife knew why the sauce was his favorite. The sauce was the only reasonable way he could swallow the food.

"There you are", came a voice from behind Julius. He found himself looking at a half decent, 5’7" 135 pounds of a very kind person. She was 33, but looked more liked 36... So Julius thought. But he still found her to be extremely attractive. Perhaps it was her undying faith in everything he did, or the fact that she never ever mentioned his genetic deficiency. "Whats wrong Jules?" she said loving and reached out to touch his head, as if he was a pet. Not that there were any pets... Everything had to be eaten...the law demanded it.

"Just thinking"

"You think too much"

"About the trip, I was just thinking..."

Eve know the drill. "Ok, what about the trip. Jules you take the most beautiful thing and turn it into some kind of an internal thinking war. This is the chance of a lifetime. Can you imagine a better honeymoon, then a new beginning? For our lives... For our future... What can be possibly be troubling you about this?"

"You never wondered...Wondered about the people", Julius chose his words carefully. "I mean, nobody has ever come back to earth."

"That should be the biggest reason to go there Jules", Eve said impatiently. Why in the world would you want to go to a place, where everybody is trying to get out?"

"The eternal optimist", Julius thought. But that comes easy, when you can dream - think like a normal human being - to immerse oneself into an alternate reality, a substitution of reality. Or call it daydreaming, or planning, or even imagining - if you will. But to be able to do in consciously, and be able to ascend out of it, by nothing more then the power of one’s will. It was different for Julius.