randomeer: Random_Guy
I woke up this morning with that familiar heaviness in my bones, the kind that reminds me I’m well into my eighties now, even if my mind still insists I’m somewhere in my fifties. The house was quiet in that padded, softened way that only comes with age, and as I shuffled into the kitchen and bent down to pick up the morning paper, I already had that strange sense that something was waiting for me. Three faces stared up from the front page — three actors from my era, all gone within days of each other. It’s always threes. It’s been like that since I was young enough to pretend I didn’t notice. Back then it was Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse, Cory Monteith. Later it was Chadwick Boseman, Matthew Perry, Aaron Carter. Different decades, different tragedies, but the same eerie rhythm, like the universe clearing its throat every few decades. I sat down with my tea and felt that old curiosity stirring again, the one that always wakes up when the third obituary lands. It’s a strange instinct, almost a ritual now: whenever the trio completes, I start wondering who’s left. Who’s still here. Who from my era has managed to outrun the pattern.
I tapped the side of my cyber‑glasses — a gesture that has become as natural as adjusting spectacles — and the interface blinked into view, a soft blue overlay across my vision. “Search: surviving actors from my era,” I muttered, and the names began to scroll. Some I expected. Some I’d forgotten were still alive. Some surprised me — people I’d assumed had gone years ago. It felt like flipping through an old school yearbook where half the faces had faded. Then one name stopped me cold. Tom Cruise — Status: Alive. That couldn’t be right. He was already in his sixties when I was in my forties. That would put him somewhere around ninety now, maybe older. Ancient. Too old for the stunts, the running, the grin. Too old for the impossible energy he used to radiate like a second sun.
I tapped his name, and a profile opened. A photo appeared — an elderly man with silver hair, softened features, deep lines etched across his face. A dignified, respectable version of Tom Cruise. The kind of image you’d expect from a centenarian actor who had finally surrendered to time. But something about it felt wrong. The longer I stared, the more the edges seemed too smooth, the shadows too uniform, the eyes too sharp but somehow flat. It was the kind of uncanny perfection you only notice when you’ve lived long enough to see too many filters, too many digital lies. I zoomed in, and a tiny watermark revealed itself in the corner: AI‑AgeRender v12.4 — Projected Aging Estimate. Projected. Not real. My stomach tightened as I dug deeper, peeling back metadata layers like old wallpaper. And there it was — the original, unprocessed image buried underneath.
Tom Cruise. Not old. Not aged. Not softened by time in the slightest. He looked exactly the same as he did when I was forty. Same grin. Same hair. Same impossible energy. A man who should be a century old staring back at me with the face of someone in his forties. I sat back in my chair, the room suddenly colder, the morning paper still open on the table with its three fresh obituaries. The pattern. The rhythm. The quiet, relentless pruning of the cast list every few decades. And Tom Cruise — untouched, unaged, unending. I whispered into the empty kitchen, “How are you still here,” and the cyber‑glasses didn’t answer, but the question hung in the air like steam from my tea, refusing to fade.
