Amarr is on the way from Mehatoor to Mozzidit, where I am headed to book myself the cruise to Mezagorm. So, I took the opportunity to visit the Imperial History Museum again, and in particular its extensive library. Being surrounded by the embrace of old bookshelves, filled with books from floor to high ceiling, gives me a sense of safety and inner calm, a feeling of comfort and belonging.
Unfortunately, there is not much available to the general public about the mad emperor or his megalomania. This lack of information stands out, like a stain that has been removed with a detergent that is so powerful it leaves behind a conspicuous bleached-out spot.
In such a magnificent library, I cannot help but being distracted by beautiful tomes and browsing them, even if they have nothing to do with my current interest (or if, as today, I cannot readily find the information I look for). I came across an old book on mammalian biology, and there is a table that struck me; I put it into this little graph:
I think I had heard about this before, but never given it much thought. It appears that the heart has about one billion beats before it gives out.
This is true across most species - whether you look at a mouse, with a short lifespan at a hectic 600 beats per minute, or a whale, that lives 90 years but with a pulse averaging only 20 beats per minute. This countdown clock ticking away in our chest is a potent and constant reminder of our finitude: beasts and humans alike have been given a Divine life-gift of one billion beats.
Well. We humans are a bit of an exception. At 50 beats per minute, our expected lifespan according to this rule is about 40 years. We live much longer, as we have learned to mend, maintain, and ultimately replace our heart with cybernetics. But even within our own species, there is a correlation between pulse rate and lifespan - those that live stressfully with high pulse rate tend to live less long that the sportive type with a low pulse. Of course, correlation is no causation, and your heart may be good up to a couple of billion beats... but not that much more.
