In a matter of minutes an agent of the syndicate will walk through the front door of the quarters, and an indeterminate amount of time afterwards I will be dead. I won’t know that, of course, because, as I’ve already stated, I’ll be dead and incapable of knowing that very fact. It’s not really a paradox, it’s more of a desperate realization.
You know, likely I’m not going to see it coming. Maybe all of a sudden everything will just end and I won’t have any more time to reflect on my situation. I think that would be best. A pulse through the window. Or perhaps my own recognition of my own peril will consume me and, driven only by the possibility of exterminating itself, convince my heart to stop beating and all of those neurons to stop firing and my eyelids to close. I can’t stop going over it, though, and I can’t die until I’ve figured it out.
Ah… from what I remember, though, the syndicate prefers to make known their presence. Those hilarious bastards can harvest some sort of pleasure, I guess, from making me aware of my own death precisely when it happens. The last thing I’ll ever know is a pulse, a slight wisp of pain, and—nothing. Litera—
…
For a moment all of my discontent and anger is directed solely at the refrigerator for misleading me as such. It clicked on, I twitched, the door might have been opening, I knew it was the fridge, I twitched again, I lost myself, but it was right there, I picked it up and found myself again and continued feeling nothing and everything. I calm and remember that it’s not the refrigerator’s fault I’m wrapped in this scenario. There’s another one of those desperate realizations again: my refrigerator is keeping what food is within it cold, for me, but I’ll be gone. And that energy will have been directed here for absolutely no purpose. It has arrived, all the electrons, looking around, being overwhelmed with despair at having no purpose at all, and having absolutely no other choice, melting into the machinery and cooling food.
I wrote a list once of a couple hundred questions I wanted to find answers to before I died. Most were things I could look up in an encyclopedia or on the grid or what not, but a few were those questions that everybody asks that no one has ever found answers to, or at least answers that are universally true. I felt I could tackle ‘em, and now it seems more than obvious that I can’t or ever could. Come to think of it, I never even took the time to research any of the others, either. I’m going to die without knowing the modified circumference of the earth or how many atoms there were in the city or… and without having answered the more important questions, how on earth am I to know whether my knowing the answers to those questions mattered?
Well now I have no idea where I’m headed. There’s certainly no afterlife which means things could only get better… only what if I’ve grown accustomed to that idea and all of a sudden I do exist and it’s extremely dissatisfying because I was looking forward to a long rest of nothingness (of course this doesn’t make sense either because what’s the point of a rest if you can’t even realize what’s going on).
You know, likely I’m not going to see it coming. Maybe all of a sudden everything will just end and I won’t have any more time to reflect on my situation. I think that would be best. A pulse through the window. Or perhaps my own recognition of my own peril will consume me and, driven only by the possibility of exterminating itself, convince my heart to stop beating and all of those neurons to stop firing and my eyelids to close. I can’t stop going over it, though, and I can’t die until I’ve figured it out.
Ah… from what I remember, though, the syndicate prefers to make known their presence. Those hilarious bastards can harvest some sort of pleasure, I guess, from making me aware of my own death precisely when it happens. The last thing I’ll ever know is a pulse, a slight wisp of pain, and—nothing. Litera—
…
For a moment all of my discontent and anger is directed solely at the refrigerator for misleading me as such. It clicked on, I twitched, the door might have been opening, I knew it was the fridge, I twitched again, I lost myself, but it was right there, I picked it up and found myself again and continued feeling nothing and everything. I calm and remember that it’s not the refrigerator’s fault I’m wrapped in this scenario. There’s another one of those desperate realizations again: my refrigerator is keeping what food is within it cold, for me, but I’ll be gone. And that energy will have been directed here for absolutely no purpose. It has arrived, all the electrons, looking around, being overwhelmed with despair at having no purpose at all, and having absolutely no other choice, melting into the machinery and cooling food.
I wrote a list once of a couple hundred questions I wanted to find answers to before I died. Most were things I could look up in an encyclopedia or on the grid or what not, but a few were those questions that everybody asks that no one has ever found answers to, or at least answers that are universally true. I felt I could tackle ‘em, and now it seems more than obvious that I can’t or ever could. Come to think of it, I never even took the time to research any of the others, either. I’m going to die without knowing the modified circumference of the earth or how many atoms there were in the city or… and without having answered the more important questions, how on earth am I to know whether my knowing the answers to those questions mattered?
Well now I have no idea where I’m headed. There’s certainly no afterlife which means things could only get better… only what if I’ve grown accustomed to that idea and all of a sudden I do exist and it’s extremely dissatisfying because I was looking forward to a long rest of nothingness (of course this doesn’t make sense either because what’s the point of a rest if you can’t even realize what’s going on).
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