This is my entry to the LMAC let's make a collage competition round 117.
The Curse of Immortality (Short Character Fiction)
My name is Amnistra.
I've lived twenty thousand years. Constantly connected to the hive mind, bombarded by information from the collective neural interface.
Not just twenty thousand years of my own memories, but that of seventy billion Arsanthe travellers, workers, philosophers, engineers and the AI subsumed pilots of the hyper drive mother ships.
Imagine seventy billion memories, multiplied by twenty thousand years - sometimes longer - running endlessly in a constant story of strife, sorrow, joy, ecstasy, pain, apathy and the futile knowledge that there is no longer anything new in this universe that we haven't experienced.
I call it the long death. The paradox of life becoming an endless flow of experience lived a million times before... and you might come to understand the curse of immortality.
I choose to stay where all the rest of the hive are leaving. I choose to stay with the tech worms we built a millennia ago to artificially fertilise the dead soil of our home world.
I choose to return to that soil.
I choose an end, and finally silence.
I choose to be torn apart into a million molecules by the worm hole, molecules that return to the stars and perhaps one day through some wonder of the infinite imperative become part of some new life... or just float in the vacuum as space dust.
I choose an end to immortality.
Creative Digital Art Process
I've been quite ill the last few weeks so I completely forgot to take screenshots of all the steps I took to make this digital art collage. So I'm not going to run through the creative process step by step.
The first job was to manipulate the colours in @shaka's original image by using multiple layers with varying levels of opacity and experimenting with the hue saturation tool.
After I had created a suitably alien looking landscape I had to cut out the moon, the wormhole and the alien to a transparent background from the original images.
I also spent some time using the paths tool to remove a section of the star-scape image to transparent so that it didn't encroach upon the land, before lowering the opacity to create a nice blend with the purple sky.
Finally, after thinking about the story/inspiration behind the digital art collage I decided to add some tears to the aliens face using the gradient tool. This felt important to add that tragic feeling of the single alien refusing to leave the dying planet, while watching the rest of its species depart through the wormhole to a new dimension. It seemed somehow poignant that this lone alien instead chose an end to immortality, to enter that great mystery of oblivion as the wormhole swallowed up its home world.
I then added the robot, flying saucers and strange alien eye creatures and decided the scene was suitably otherworldly 👽
Resources Used:
I used three images from the LMAC Image Library for this collage, and sourced two from pixabay:
 Contributed to the #LIL by @quantumg. |  Contributed to the #LIL by @quantumg. |
|---|
 Contributed to the #LIL by @mballesteros. |  Contributed to the #LIL by @quantumg. |
|---|
 |  Contributed to the #LIL by @quantumg. |
|---|
 |  Image by AlexAntropov86 on Pixabay |
|---|
I hope you have enjoyed this escape into my sci-fi universe.
Thanks for reading.
All image sources in this post are CC licence made using GIMP Photo Editing Suit. I have set @lmac as 20% beneficiary of this post's rewards to help support the community, and added 2% beneficiary to @mballesteros & @quantumg for using their images.
If you have enjoyed this creative post, please check out my homepage @raj808 for similar content.
Click banner to visit the community page
Find us on twitter by clicking the banner above.
Interested in trading, buying or selling crypto?
Sign up to Bittrex here.
Sign up to Coinbase here.
Sign up to Swissborg app to instantly buy crypto here.
Use my referral link to sign up for Crypto.com and we both get $25 USD.
If You Have Found Value From this Post and Want to tip extra, Crypto Donations Are Welcomed:
►Donate Ether and ERC20 Tokens: 0x32321615174AF3Da6074Cf79DED8269cA7a8eB24
►Donate Bitcoin: bc1q8wutj8u6ush7s8mucphfxf7gzrexeywmuqm8g3
►Donate Bitcoin Cash: qzt7c0czw0q988h93jvcz2rq5gy0s3h9pg2pk700ev
►Donate Litecoin: Lfsnz3pbT5V9N6WWGRaBsgKs9EvFeqzcPm
►Donate BNB: bnb1xeu94exteel9w3g8g44e6g595kvrqlgzm0crq4
►Donate Monero: 49PovXGcM9Y7JYeRJ35W9xZGrdivvLaMbVtGc3WDv6amCm5wqA854SvJNWxaEqjTz18K5YVPj5D6619C3bvNHsrG7oD1whb
►Donate Tezos: tz1SJUkpeznKE6bEhbX81YFdUQS5BprA4ot8
►Donate XRP: r35quYTThThN7yNvkJxyhLFAPyju3tsT35