East in the Morning - David E. Fisher

One night during his two hundred and forty-fifth year—it began to seem to him purposeless, but he still kept accurate count—Henry pushed back from his desk and sighed.

Outside the window, in the gently falling snow, the campus of Princeton looked exactly as it had when he had first come, but things were different. No one now at the Institute knew him; he had known no one there for seventy-five years now. Probably at no other place in the country than at the Institute for Advanced Study could he have kept his study for so long, could he have been left so alone. And it was good, but now he was lonely. Lonely, bored by his solitude, aware of his boredom and utter lack of friends.

He had realized long ago the compensation demanded for eternity. When he had first begun to think of the possibility that he might not die, he had realized that it would mean leaving his friends, his family, and continuing alone. When he had first begun to speculate on his seeming immortality, how it had come about and why, he had known he would be lonely.

This is the way to the Übermensch,

Not in a crowd, but alone.

Nearly every great mind within the past hundred years had pointed out the difficulty of man's accomplishing anything in his brief hundred years of life, had pointed out the necessity of immortality to a great mind. And what is necessary will be. But this is the way of evolution: not in a crowd, but alone. One man in a million, then another, then another.

It was statistically improbable that he was the first. So there must be others. But so far, in two hundred and forty-five years, he had not met any that he knew of. Then again, there was no way of knowing. Anyone passing him on the street would not know, and he meeting another would not know.