.
Please fill out the form clearly.
Reason/s for dying:
It was the time she stopped believing in the mission. Customer number fifty-three.
Customer number fifty three was unremarkable at first, but then he threw the
whole purpose of the mission. We sold him purpose and he came back and tried to
return it. How we sold purpose is we erased their memory of buying their
purpose so they felt they always had their purpose, that we didn’t simply
create it for them because if you knew your purpose was a creation, a purchase
you would not believe in it and the nature of purpose requires belief and that
is why no one has ever tried to return the purpose they bought from us because
they don’t realise they bought it. They think it real when it is a fabrication.
Yet there he was.
- I want to return the
purpose you gave me he said.
She glanced furious at
me, something gone wrong in the memory erasing.
-What are you talking
about, we don’t sell purpose because there is no such thing there used to be in
the past but its extinct now, everyone knows that, it’s been proven.
-Well I have one, I
don’t know how, but there are rumours about this clinic and I’m following them
up.
-This clinic provides
assisted suicide only. There’s no such thing as a rumour anymore, it is also
extinct a rumour is a claim to knowledge that may or may not be true, all
knowledge is known now, it’s been proven.
-Except for one item,
what happens after death?
-Wondering what
happens after you die is counter- productive in trying to live, that has been
proven.
- I find it baffling
that many of your customers come out alive with no memory of ever visiting
here.
She looked genuinely
scared. We should have prepared for this before number fifty-three, prepared
that this was going to happen. That someone would realise, that they would shut
us down, they would rob us of our purpose, the service we provide, taking our
purpose away from us and making us like any of the population and then we would
too have the desire to die again. That’s when she stopped believing because
surely someone who now held the joy of purpose should have understood its
importance should have understood not to take it from others. That’s why she
said we didn’t have to prepare for this situation and yet there it was
happening. So that’s when she stopped believing in purpose and the nature of
purpose is that it requires belief.
Life is not a gift, gifts can be returned. Yes
we can return our life but then we face the unknown. When have you gone into a
shop, returned a gift and instead of being returned the money you’re given a
question, a question you can’t answer.
Maybe things would be more interesting that way. Some people find a
thrill in the unknown. People like that might find the prospect of death the
biggest thrill of all because it presents the ultimate unknown.
So how did we create
the mission? The society we live in knows everything except what happens after
death. Everything but that. This was great for some and detrimental for others,
after all there are those who strive on searching, on discovering and there was
only one thing left to discover and there seemed to be only one way to find
out. The result was an increase in assisted suicide. She was one of those
people like me. She was looking for purpose. She found me. We were in the
waiting room of the assisted suicide clinic. Reasons for dying read the form, I
looked over my shoulder, she wrote to ‘discover the unknown’. A shock ran up my spine. Other people thought
this way. Others had lost their purpose because of certainty. I spoke to her
immediately
-Do you think we’re
the same, of a certain disposition?
-No, it’s been proven
that people who commit suicide are a variety of different
dispositions….Everything’s proven.
She ended rather
bitterly then continued.
-Everything but what
happens after we die.
-Is there another way
to find out?
-No it’s been proven
that this is the only way; it’s been proven to account for the slight increase
in assisted suicide recently.
-Do you think it’s a
bad thing? People like us dying
-Bad, there is no bad
or good, that has been proven. No one caring about us dying is probably a
consequence of that. Consequences are relevant only to those who care, no one
cares anymore because when you care about something you believe it to be bad or
good and now we know nothing is either bad or good. No one cares anymore,
everyone just knows.
We sat in silence
filling out our forms but my mind whirred. You can’t create answers, they have
to be there, you have to discover them but what about questions. Could we create questions? Answers came from
questions so we indirectly create the answers. We are only given answers
because we ask for them. So we should ask how do we create more questions and
we would be given the answer.
-I have another
question that we don’t know the answer to.
-That’s impossible she
said, there is only one question no one knows the answer to and that has been proven.
-How do we make more
questions? I whispered furitively.
Her eyes lit up. She
had what I now had, she had a purpose, we both had a purpose together. We both
possessed something unknown that no one knew was unknown.
-We can’t die, we need
to find the answer
-I agree.
That was the start of
our lives together. We truly believed that finding the answer would benefit
humanity, that if we could find more questions and give them to people so they
could also look for answers, then they would have purpose and purpose would
make their lives worth living. We found the answer. Now we had to give people
what we had. We called it the mission.
We live with many
different purposes, but the nature of purpose is such that there can only be
one true purpose. Life is the purpose. The only true purpose is to live. Some
would say there is no way to die without having fulfilled that because only the
living can die. Yet we kept witnessing the young coming to die, but you didn’t
have to be young to have not lived, you just had to have not tried, which
wasn’t your fault in this society where everything is provided and there is
hardly anything to try for. This is where the mission has brought us. They
filled out the forms in our clinic, it was for assisted suicide but we provided
another illegal service. Reason for dying the form read. The answers varied but
if they fitted the broad category of no reason, no purpose, no meaning, to find
the unknown. We welcomed them, we told them we could provide another service if
they were interested.
She is dead. I am
waiting now. Has this answered your question?
