"Life is simple when observed dispassionately. Absent implications, absent fears, hopes, or dreams, it follows a very basic course of metabolizing and procreating, until eventually time runs out and it's over. That's that. And Life goes on, all around it. Careful consideration calls into question whether Death is even worthy of any independent consideration, being only a bookend on a repetitive organic process.
"Dying an animal's death terrifies humans, who hope (despite themselves) to exist forever. The human imagination of immortality recoils from the prospect of termination, of simple not-being. Once thrust forth into the universe as an existence, a reality, the mind of a mammal expecting eternity becomes its own fatal addiction. Existence itself becomes the underlying desire creating context and cause for all other desires.
"Cynics and atheists insist..."
K shut the book with a snap. Whoever Abel was--he didn't understand humans. "I was okay with not existing, before I did," he muttered. "Don't figure I'll mind after I don't anymore." With the slim volume clumsily back on the shelf, K fumbled toward the door.
He couldn't fault Abel too gravely, he decided in retrospect. Plenty of humans didn't understand humans--and they had the advantage over Abel of having actual experience being a human. As far as K could tell, Abel had only ever been an artificial intelligence algorithm living in a fungus hurtling through space in one of humanity's stupidest ideas.
June 2017
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