Human beings have a life span that can be measured in under a century in most cases. Depending on how you live your life, you can make it out of this world as a centurion, but eventually, we all pass away. No human will find the path to immortality on this earth, and under no circumstances will we see a person who cannot be harmed by conventional means, if we use all the conventional means at our disposal. We all die, and we eventually either become a part of the earth, or are stored in jars in somebody's basement.

A bicycle lasts an amount of time depending on how well you take care of it. Most metal objects do. A sword will last quite a while, and a plaque with your name on it will last until someone ceases to take care of it. This is the fate of metal. Kept in good condition, it can last thousands of years. Kept in bad condition, it can still last quite a while, as is shown by all the antiquities of museum fame, that we can see on a regular basis if we manage to pry ourselves from our medium of choice.

Mountains, those mighty natural wonders, the crust of the earth, jutting towards the heavens. They last for quite a while. The mountains you know now will be the mountains that people eons from now will still see on the horizon, barring some strange volcanic catastrophe. Therein lies a problem. Mountains can't be around from now till the earth's end. Ever so slowly, they erode, from melted snow running down them, from wind beating at their sides, from people who dislodge small stones in an attempt to scale the massive inanimate objects. In a long enough span of time, a mountain, like almost everything else, will be destroyed.

But the world of computers... This is something else entirely. Digital media never has to die. There is no force of nature with which to destroy it. It has no natural predators, and no one that it has to answer to. Provided an owner isn't distressed enough to toss his computer(s) out a window, the information on it will go on forever. It can be transferred from computer to computer and... ahhh... crap, my screen is all messing up... Don't tell me I'm gonna have to format it.

Again.

Ahhh.... fuck, nevermind.

This has been a nodeshell commando action