If it kills me, tell my story, but please don't you dare feel sad. No one ducks death. This has been coming for a long time. Since the day I was born, I've been living to die, so celebrate, tap a keg, tell funny anecdotes. Maybe go fishing. Sit on a sun-warmed rock. Let the breeze lift your arm hairs.
I will get old before I die, but don't mourn for my youth. I treated my youth like an overworked horse, rode it hard and put it away wet. It didn't kill me. And I have been places you have never gone. Hell, I bet I've been places you can't even imagine.
If you think about it, the whole world is like one big joke where we don't yet know the punchline. I'm looking forward to the end of the show. I want to see the slides they promise. I want to walk towards the light that is my synapses expiring. I want my last words, but if they're stupid, go ahead and make up something better. No one wants their last words to be, "I think I shit myself..."
I've had a cool life, and I've got a lot more left to live. I want to see if we get jetpacks. I want to learn how to fly. I want to see if we fix global warming. And if we don't? Doesn't matter. Step up the timetable. Maybe stay inside, though.
Skip the fishing.
I never thought I’d hear you suggesting that folk ought to skip fishing.
ReplyDeleteThis is a contemplative set of notions, having a more philosophical bent than your usual narratives. It’s a missive from the past, meant to be read in your future, but with digressions from your present. Or a self-penned eulogy, but one with a grasp of reality, rather than being a set of self-glorifications. It’s very well written, as we’d always expect from you, of course.
But jetpacks? That’s just a Jetson’s dream.
And I don’t believe you’d not go fishing either.
The star winked out, and then it was gone. A point of light, sustenance, and warmth for billions. Amelia’s world had been in orbit about it, near the mid-point of its Goldilocks zone, ideally placed to develop sentient lifeforms.
ReplyDelete“You need to purge your brain,” Hobson said, filling a syringe. “It’s the only way you can survive it. The residual effects will radiate outward, and in another few hours, you’ll be catatonic.”
“It’s the coward’s way out. I need to feel some regret. Otherwise, I’m just shirking my responsibilities. I owe it to my family and all the billions I’ve never known. They need to be mourned by someone.” Amelia stared at the spot that would soon be unoccupied, the plasma cloud burning back to become a vacuum.
“Just consider it an emotional reset. A way to accept the inevitabilities of fate. You’ll tear yourself apart if you allow yourself to feel. It’s either the needle or the yawning space beyond the airlock.”
The bridge of their ship was like a fragile but protective bubble, sheltering the last surviving specimens of humanity. Beyond the warmth and their flickering lights, there was nothing but the cold and dark, devoid of everything else they’d created.
“Suit yourself,” said Hobson. “I hope we’ll meet again on the other side.”
She sank the needle into her own arm and closed her eyes. All her memories of Home World would soon be erased; it would be as though she had never been there.