How can someone be immortal and still age?
I need an explanation for how one could be immortal and still age. If one was truly immortal one would remain an infant forever. How could this be explained?
I'm working on a character who is supposedly immortal, but is also in his later years (an old man). How would that work? Keep in mind he's been immortal since his birth and was not bestowed this attribute by anybody during any point in his life.
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Eternal youth and immortality are two completely different superpowers.
Eternal youth bestowed at the moment of birth is a curse. While the person could learn things, the lack of motor control and the lack of pruning in the brain would be permanent (unless you change the specifics of the curse). Eternal youth bestowed at, say, age 20, is something most people would consider a blessing (with caveats).
Someone with eternal youth can die like any 20 year old (or whatever age the body is) can die. The body's functions and ability to heal will stay consistent with a 20 year old's but injury and infection kill young people all the time. Someone with eternal youth won't get age-related disease and will have the healing power young people have, but even 20 year olds in the real world get Type II diabetes or heart disease or have strokes because of poor nutrition or chronic drug use, etc.
Immortality has different definitions depending on the author. In some cases, you simply can't die. Look at Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who and Torchwood. He can be encased in cement for 1000 years, or exploded into a million pieces, but he always comes back. The Doctor is immortal in the sense that he can in fact die but it takes an awful lot, since his species is long lived and can regenerate.
In other cases beings are called immortal even if they can die from injury or disease because they don't die from aging and generally they have more time to heal from things that would have already killed a regular human.
In other words, you as the author get to choose. If you want immortality to go hand and hand with eternal youth and both are bestowed at birth, well then you end up with a society filled with intelligent worldly infants who can't hold their heads up or articulate words very well (some real life adults are like that, see My Left Foot, and adaptive equipment might become very popular).
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