Immortal character: how to keep alive through a beheading?

pinkrobot said:

I'm outlining what might be my best story idea to date, but I've run into a major snag.

One of my main characters is "immortal." Not in an epic-tale kind of way, but in a way that involves his having a disorder that causes his immune system to immediately repair any wounds and heal any sickness that comes upon him. So far, I have this whole thing worked out in my head. And in order for my story to work, this character can NOT die. No way, no how.

Then it occurred to me, what if his head was chopped off? If your head is chopped off, it's done. Game over.

My fiance suggested that the character's head could instantly grow back, which is...well, it's workable. But it feels awkward, like it's hard to envision that in my head.

Anyone have any other ideas how I can get around this whole character-can't-die-even-if-beheaded thing?

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If the cells/tissues can repair themselves fast enough, they'd heal as the axe goes through the neck. Like trying to slice water: it just closes back in as soon as the knife has moved on. (adding: this would involve more than just the immune system, though.)

Well, my first thought would be just to ignore it unless there is a beheading planned as part of the story (or the story is set during the French Revolution :-"). I mean, we didn't worry about Achilles being beheaded during the Iliad.

If it's still bothersome, perhaps make it so that his head can't really be removed. Perhaps his repair system works so quickly that even as a sword goes through his neck this defenses repair the wound. Yes, it's a stretch. Or make his bones as strong as steel; anyone attempting to cut off his head would meet with only partial success. Or maybe if his head is stuck back on soon enough it will reattach itself (again, a stretch).

Or make him functional in two parts! I'm kidding.

Edited to add: I was typing as Unimportant was posting. That idea was basically what I meant as well.

If you take it to the logical limit, then you have more than just beheading to worry about. What if he was crushed (like the Terminator)? Caught in a massive fire? Flung into outer space?

Unless you add in a magical or unearthly element (the Gods will save him) it's hard to make a physical body immortal.

You could overcome this by some other plot element. For example, if he kills himself then something else (say, the Kingdom of Camden, New Jersey) will automatically be destroyed (or something similar). In other words, instead of making it physically impossible to die, make it so there is an added reason why he shouldn't.

Upon beheading, both head and torso are still alive but the torso is now a creature of instinct whose only goal is to find its head and reattach it (using whatever healing factors your character has to knit the bones and tissue). Of course, this'll probably turn your work into a black comedy.

Unimportant said:

If the cells/tissues can repair themselves fast enough, they'd heal as the axe goes through the neck. Like trying to slice water: it just closes back in as soon as the knife has moved on. (adding: this would involve more than just the immune system, though.)

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Lawrence Watt Evans used this in a story about a thief who accidently gains wizard's powers and becomes a despot. Assassins regularly try to kill her and this is what happens when one tries to decapitate her.

The character can just assume it won't work, because nothing else has, and the consequences of trying make it too awful to have him try and fail.

Personally, I'd go with something like, "He knew he couldn't die, because he'd tried most forms of suicide, except for decapitation. He'd figured out plenty of ways to get his head cut off, but the lingering fear that he'd still be alive, trapped in a bodyless head, able to see, hear, think, and feel, but unable to interact with his environment in any way, horrified him even more than eternal life in a whole body."

Whatever you do, don't spend too much time on it. Give a reason, and move on. A little "hand waving" on why it won't work will probably work better in the story than a deep, detailed investigation. The more detailed the answer, the more reason the reader might call BS.

On the grounds that there is nothing in this thread that can be based in fact, I'm moving it to SF/F.

Originally Posted by Unimportant
If the cells/tissues can repair themselves fast enough, they'd heal as the axe goes through the neck. Like trying to slice water: it just closes back in as soon as the knife has moved on. (adding: this would involve more than just the immune system, though.)

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IIRC that's what happened when someone tried to behead Wolverine.

I've dealt with this in an RPG I ran a while back.

The way I played it, the head was the bit that survived - without being stuck back onto the body quite quickly, the body rotted and the beheaded one had to suffer growing a new body over the course of weeks, with all the attendant inconvenience and suffering that entailed, especially if they'd been buried in the meantime. Usually the immortal ones only engage in combat with sneaky allies present for the purpose of retrieval (and sticking heads back on bodies) for this very reason.

There was one demigod who would instead turn to stone when seriously deconstructed (or after seriously sinning) and a pack of monks would track down the bits and glue him back together again. If they missed any bits, they'd have to regrow. Unpleasant for him, either way, being conscious throughout.

Honestly, I wouldn't make a character that immortal. Sounds too much like god-modeing to me. Your character needs some limitations or they won't seem real to the reader.

Why does his immune system behave in this way? You might say its genetics but that's a whole other can of double-helical worms.

Two possibilities.

One: His disorder is encoded into his "junk" DNA (apparently the groovy term at the moment is "dark matter" not "junk" I'm sticking with junk 'cause it's shorter and I'm stubborn). Junk DNA is all the DNA that we have not so far discovered a purpose for.

Two: His disorder is caused by his mitochondria. Mitochondria (singular mitochondrion) reside in many of the cells of the human body. They are organelles that produce chemical energy. Uniquely they have their own independent genome i.e. they do not have the same genetic structure as the organism that plays host to them.

The net result of either cause for your character is that if someone chops his head off it just grows back out of the neck very slowly, the DNA in his own unusual junk DNA, or the part of his mitochondria that is doing the repairs just automatically grows the new cells to the blueprint stored in the DNA.

This does leave some questions. For a start, the concept of having some creepy sub-cellular colony living inside your cells can be disturbing. Also if it is these entities - technically outside agencies - that are doing this it implies they have some sort of agenda in producing this behaviour. If it's junk DNA that sinister agenda is off the table.

The other place the distinction has a consequence is in what happens to any "dead" material that is separated from the character. Say you lop his finger off. Sure his main body grows a new finger but the question is: does the finger grow a new body?

In the case of junk DNA the answer is: highly unlikely, because it would have to co-opt the small number of normal everyday mitochondria into regrowing the whole body. Maybe the larger mass of torso, head and limbs could do that but a lone finger probably wouldn't be able to muster the energy. The torso could feasibly grow a new head but it might take a while.

On the subject of energy, as mentioned above mitochondria are like little chemical power plants. If they are responsible for the accelerated healing and the cleansing of disease it is entirely possible that they could stimulate cells to grow, develop and divide, colonising the fresh cells and thus increasing the overall numbers of mitochondria available to make even more cells. In this case the character would have to be careful not to lose a finger, or to incinerate one that got lopped off, because in that scenario he would end up, eventually, with a doppelganger grown from his lost body part. I would imagine the mitochondrial answer would produce much faster healing. If you imagine that normal mitochondria are like batteries and this dude's are like minature nuclear reactors you get the analogy.

There's also the question of brains. The memories, emotions and experiences lost as the result of shedding a head. Thankfully there is some research that suggests some parts of personality and memory may, in fact, be stored in the heart, not the brain. If this phenomenon is another side effect of the same genetic quirk that makes your guy immortal then the problem of discontinued personality, or a fresh unprogrammed, infantile brain sprouting from the neck are solved. Essentially every cell in the guy's body could store not only the blueprints for making the guy but also his entire life history up to that point.

The only real way someone with either of these conditions could die is if there wasn't enough genetic material or functioning mitochondria left in the body to resurrect it i.e complete vaporisation/incineration; or if the genetics could be compromised by a viral attack (or some kind of prion condition like BSE). For all practical purposes genuine immortality with the potential for regrowth even in the case of dire maiming.

HTH.

Personally, I'd never bring it up in the course of the story. Never have the character mention it, never have anyone talk about beheading. Not all cultures used that means of execution or murder.

If you don't put the thought into the reader's mind, they won't have it while they're reading the book.

I wouldn't borrow the trouble, myself.

First of all is the body the seat of his "person" or is the head? Perhaps the head grows a new body.

Long ago, I read an SF story with the same premise. The character could not die but was desperate to. Eventually he managed to incinerate himself, but in the very last paragraph, what was left began to stir, the implication being that he was again starting to regenerate.

If you're going to keep this in the realm of SF and not fantasy, I'd say if any cell remains intact, the character will eventually regenerate (though it may take years). To keep multiple main characters from regenerating, perhaps the cells have an afinity to join back together so that any remaining cells "search" for each other. However, in this scenario, memory would be problematic unless each cell somehow holds the memory of every other cell in the body.

Final death could only occur if every single cell was destroyed.

If you want death absolutely impossible, you'd have to involve magic of some sort.

Does he have to be immortal in the same body, or just his consciousness? If the latter, he can just go and take over a new body after death, or perhaps reanimate his old one.

One pretty good series that revolves all around Immortals is Baccano!, which had worse deaths than just beheadings. When the head is cut off, it simply reattaches itself. No explanation beyond that the blood, even if scattered miles away, comes back and reintegrates itself into the body, or reforms the body from nothing.

I don't have enough science knowledge for a hard SF explanation, so I would just go with magic, demonic or otherwise.

I have a similar issue. My immortals can't be killed except by fire. They heal very fast, but not instantly. If a body is beheaded or hacked up, the body is taken to the healing center and the parts are arranged in their original places. Maybe they do a little hoodoo (haven't decided yet). Anyway, the more damage to the body, the longer it takes to come together and heal. Theoretically, they might be killed by having their body parts spread all over the place. They could also be forever entombed if they were buried before they were able to regenerate.

So, applying my method to your example, I'd get that head close to the guy's neck and cross my fingers.

You are approaching the immortality from a plausibility perspective. Plausability is good but to me consistency is more important when dealing with magic/super science/immortality/martians. Even inplausable things (such as the Force) can work with readers as long as its presented consistently (which SW did well; without midichlorians).

You need to know what the cause of his immortality is, where is it located and how does it manifest. Once you have that down use it to describe the effects plausibly.

So immortality to me is from an invisible purple and green martian who takes a liking to the character (cause: martian). This martian flitters around him continuously making sure he is whole and in perfect health (location: hovering around). The martian has a whisk broom with the "straw" being dispensers of "super dipper heal" chemical only made on mars (manifestation: healing broom).
This is my image of how immortality works, but since it is so ridiculously stupid I'll call it a Bio-Reg Field to the reader. (Reader's never get my ridiculously fun sense of humor, neither does my wife or kids to be honest)

So the character faces the "Off with his head" scene and plop now it's seperated from the body by 2 feet. Immediately the martian gets out his whisk broom and starts "sweeping" the head to the body, he doesn't pick it up because everyone knows martians hate blood. The "super dipper heal" in the straw works on the head and the eyes open and the mouth breathes (doesn't talk cause that's just strange). After the head is next to the body it is positioned to be attached. Sweep Sweep Sweep the head becomes part of the body again. But the body has lost most of its blood, so the martian (who thankfully flitters instead of walking in blood) brushes the body so that "super dipper heal" runs through the body and becomes healed.
This is how I imagine it, now I write it as:

The head rolled on the ground as the body fell into its own pool of blood. From its resting position it suddenly started vibrating and then small hops started. As this occurred his eyes poped open and looked around dazedly, while the mouth started sucking in resh air. With a chaotic motion the cognizant head slowly worked its way to the body, where it eventually lined up with the blood gushing body. A pop sound emerged as the head sealed with the body and wrinkles appeared on the neck joining bone, muscle and skin together as a whole. With focusing eyes he looked at his own body which was now jerking with healing spasms. When completed he slowly stood up and was delighted to see the Bio-Reg Field emitted by all Immortals worked once again.
With a look at the shocked executioner he snarkily asked, "Can I take a shower and change my clothes before lunch?"

(Please forgive the uneditted writing but my editor is once again suffering migraines. He's mentioned they started once we got together; it must be from my overuse of ly words.)

I will leave it as an excerise to the diligent writer to expand this to the horrible Death by Tickle Bunny scene. Hint: invisible purple and green martians turn yellow and red when tickled but still keep their invisibility.

I watch movies with my parents sometimes. Afterwards, my mom and I will be going, "Wow, what a great movie!" And then my stepdad will start picking apart every last technical error and explaining why the physics of the movie wouldn't work in real life, or how if he had been the main character he would've solved all the problems within the first five minutes by doing something obvious and brilliant and BLAH BLAH BLAH. Mind you, these movies will often have talking animals or all of the aliens will speak English, or some other very basic implausibilty. He's kind of a tedious asshole.

99.9% of your target audience won't be thinking about all the different ways your guy shoulda/coulda killed himself. I speak as a reader, not a writer. You can pick apart any fantasy/scifi book if you want to bother, and find dozens of logical flaws.

Why didn't the eagles just fly the ring to Mount Doom and drop it in? If lightsabers are lasers, why do they stop at a certain point? Why does destroying the heart of a vampire kill it, when the heart doesn't function anyway? If Edward could hear and smell things from miles away, how did it affect him when Bella was pooping in the next room? Didn't she get embarrassed knowing that he could hear her every toot like a trumpet, and could smell even the minutest poop like it was an enormous steaming lion turd? Or did her poops just smell like roses to him?

None of those things are addressed in the stories, but fans don't question them.

All you have to write is that at some point, the dude gave up trying to kill himself because he figured out that he can't die (worded much better than that, hopefully). As a reader, I will automatically ASSUME that your guy has tried everything that he can bear trying, and it didn't work. My mind fills in the details.

Maybe give him a Groundhog Day-esque conversation or inner monologue that sums it up.

Rita: I'm sorry? What was that again?
Phil: I'm a god.
Rita: You're God.
Phil: I'm a god — I'm not the God, I don't think.
Rita: Because you survived a car wreck?
Phil: I didn't just survive a wreck; I wasn't just blown up yesterday. I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted and burned.
Rita: Oh really?
Phil: [nods] Every morning I wake up without a scratch on me, not a dent in the fender: I am an immortal.

Honestly, I don't see how a head could grow a new body. Where/how would it obtain the protein etc?

Haaaa. I have a plot! Bad guy immortal is beheaded. Before head and body can meld, the hero snatches up the head, tucks it under his arm, and runs like hell. The only way to keep the world safe is for him to keep running. Should be good for a ten part series.

WriteMinded said:

Haaaa. I have a plot! Bad guy immortal is beheaded. Before head and body can meld, the hero snatches up the head, tucks it under his arm, and runs like hell. The only way to keep the world safe is for him to keep running. Should be good for a ten part series.

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Won't be complete without the villain's head taunting him for all ten books and getting him into awkward and increasingly hilarious situations.

"But, hero, why did you steal from the lady?"
"I didn't steal anything, Headlington!"
"Are you sure? I saw you steal some money from that lady."