2001 The Children of Bottle/Record Regarding Nile, Immortal (Excerpts)



Written by Victor Talbot (Immortal, FBI Agent)

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Synopsis
FBI Agent Victor Talbot introduces part of a report on the immortal Nile by writing that he will not provide his own personal opinion on Nile, since Nile's own statements will give the reader a good idea of Nile's personality. He then presents three statements from Nile: in the first statement, Nile says that he was a "king...taken in [by an archaeologist] solely for that purpose" and that the archaeologist had named Nile after "the river that was his mother." Since the archaeologist never gave him a surname, he never called the archaeologist Father.

Nile recalls in the second statement that after becoming immortal he had grown increasingly afraid of forgetting the concept of others' dying, and how he had subsequently thrown himself into war in order to hold death ever close to his side. In his third statement he confides that after being unable to protect his war comrades from death, he had realized that immortality itself no longer pained him. Instead, the reality that everyone but himself would someday die and he would be lost to darkness would be what sent him to his knees. He learned that losing those dear to him was not the tragedy of immortality - immortal or mortal, there was no difference. The number of losses was always the same.

He adds that there was one thing that had changed - his face. He says that he had caught a reflection of his face in the mirrored surface of a lake, and cried out when he found it expressionless (rather than twisted by rage or sadness). He had been terrified, realizing that in throwing himself into war in order to remember death, all he had done was inure himself to death instead. He admits that he is still afraid to look upon his face with his own two eyes.

Victor writes that Nile had come to him during the Cold War, and, exhausted, had shared his accounts with him. Instead of arresting him, Victor laughed and sent him on his way. He notes that submitting this report would jeopardize his position, and thus decides that it will serve as his secret diary from now on before adding that he is not cut out for "this stuff" at all. The reader is told that the rest of the 'report' is endless griping about FBI executives.