Diana Jocefus Rowland, The Undeadified (???-5,000 B.C.E.; 2,400? B.C.E.-990 B.C.E.; 9 C.E.-102; 585-627; 1066-1152; 1777-1834; 1941--???)

Almost nothing is known about Diana Jocefus Rowland's parentage except that she likely descended from a pairing between early Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens inmortui. The latter of these went functionally extinct sometime near the end of the Upper Paleolithic during what 19th-century anthropologist Johan Mannsucher called (in his 1978 book, The Rise of Mortal Man) The Mortal Purge, a cataclysmic clash between Homo sapiens sapiens and at least three other branches of the Homo sapiens line. However, this event might also have been sparked by the arrival of The Suitors in 13,544 B.C.E., an alien species who dedicated themselves to the vulgar manipulation of other sentient groups. There are, to date, at least seven records of The Suitors appearing on Earth in this period, though it remains unclear what role they played in the dawn of human civilization.

Regardless, we do know that Rowland was born with several unique characteristics, the most notable of which were her abilities to hibernate for extended periods of time without aging and to rejuvenate in extreme sunlight. This allowed her to “leapfrog” through the ages, playing a variety of roles in major moments in human history. Her first reported hibernation occurred in 5,000 B.C.E. She was awakened sometime in the 2400s by builders of the Pyramid of Sahure in Abusir during the Fifth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. While initially surprised by the construction, she eventually met and befriended the pharaoh Sahure, encouraging him to expand trade with Punt until he died and was succeeded by his son, Neferirkare Kakai. Upon the son's death, Rowland opted to travel into Europe, avoiding entirely the centuries-long conflicts in and around Mesopotamia and heading into Western Europe where she met a pair of other inmortui-hybrids: Papa Orv and Trahl the Forsaken. She traveled with them throughout Europe until 990 B.C.E., when she and her companions were captured by Thersippus in Athens and buried in separate tombs.

Rowland was awakened again in 9 C.E. when the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus demanded an excavation of several Greek tombs. It is unclear what happened to Papa Orv and Trahl, but Rowland's diaries suggest that she was immediately seized by the emperor's physicians to help devise a method for extending a human life indefinitely, about which she was not particularly interested. In a remarkable feat of trickery, she escaped from Rome using a combination of disguises, including as a tax collector, a talking bear named Moot, the emperor himself, and every single member of a traveling boy band called AudiVia Pueri. For nearly 100 years, she avoided capture by Roman authorities, attaining passage into the British Isles, where she found safe harbor in a Celtic tomb and hibernated again.

According to Rowland's journals, she emerged again several times between 585 and 1884 but found the conditions in Europe bereft of anything interesting enough to hold her attention for much more than a century. In particular, she identifies her general distaste of having to eat an absurd amount of bread and soup and the lack of variety in wines as factors which led her to return to hibernation. In 1941, she emerged again after her tomb was struck by a Luftwaffe bomb. Though not a particular fan of war or being bombed, she was surprised to discover the subversive qualities of “blue” comedy in Britain, which paved the way for her eventual career as a stand-up comic.

After the Second World War, Rowland took on the stage name “Vikky Rickshaw” and began touring the United States performing stand-up about being immortal, her dislike of bread, and why fish aren't actually from this planet. She continues to perform periodically in Las Vegas and on Comedy Central. It is unknown when she will go into hibernation again.