A Letter for a Stranger

Dear stranger,

I don’t know who you are; I don’t know how seriously you’re going to take this letter. I don’t know if you've even read this far, maybe you've scrunched up the letter and put it in the bin immediately. Well if you haven’t - don’t. Please, give me a chance. I need one. Give me what I've been neglected.

Let me explain.

The room you’re standing in. The place you reached into at the back of the bookshelf where the brick pulls out and this letter lies. This was my room, my book shelf. I've gone now obviously, taken the books chipped away at the cement until the brick fell away so I can leave this letter. Why did I hide it? I had to. I hope you never have time to find out for yourself. I hope you just read these words and take heed. Where am I? I can’t tell you, I wouldn't be able to anyway, I have to keep moving. Who am I? Well that one’s easier I can start with that.

We moved here in the autumn sixty three years ago. Things were different then.  We were in love or that’s we thought anyway. You think that’s an irrelevant detail? Well it’s not so keep reading.  

They called us Memorias. Phenomenal memory, every detail of our lives etched into our minds. Not just personal memory, recollection of facts words, speeches, numbers anything. It wasn't apparent immediately of course, earliest recorded sudden appearance was at the age of twelve. The latest was twenty-five. How can I describe it? I was nineteen. It was so sudden, like burning, euphoria almost a rush. I imagine if I was a machine it was like being oiled after a long time, the words flowing water come to mind. It wasn't like autism, hyperthemisia, it wasn't any mental condition associated with memory because our memories were so inclusive to the details that we didn’t even have conscious awareness of at the time, inclusive to the point we seemed to remember ideas as well as memory itself as if either nothing left us or it was always there. It was as if we had access to something. Something, such a mere word and yet what name do you put on it. This if or when it was combined in some with a capacity for original thought made them something different, different again a mere word but definitions elude me when dealing with the scope of the situation. We were all different but one thing we had in common was we were all reported to be mentally healthy otherwise.  What caused it? Genetics? The environment? What was happening? No one knew but there we were a whole sub population of us. The government were astounded. Special accommodation they announced. Scholarships for college if we wanted and if we didn't  the money to sustain us, the capacities to work on any project we desired.

I bet you felt lucky when they offered you this flat, I bet your parents congratulated you, I bet your thinking of organizing a flat warming. One of the lucky ones, I remember the announcement, that’s what they called us lucky. I shudder to think of it now. So I've missed out on the details, how did they tell you to move here? Did they award you a college scholarship, did they tell you it was a grant for socio-economic disadvantage or maybe it was even some competition they created for the purpose. Whatever you were told, it’s a lie.  So who are you? What’s your type? Or how ‘lucky’ are you? There were types because we all retained our separate individual personalities which combined with the ‘gift’ as they called it. ‘Types’ as if they could classify us that easily, we were as individual as the rest of the population. The ‘rest of the population’ I speak like we’re a different species, but it was suggested by some at the time. One thing is certain you’re young and you haven’t properly realized who you are. But they have, they have and that’s why they put you here.

Now you’re thinking. That’s why you’re here. Those compulsory brain scans they implemented in schools, they weren't for the sake of your health. They found a way; they found a way to detect us before we become what we are. Yes I said, ‘us’. You are one. It hasn't happened to you yet but it will. That’s why I’m writing this letter, you need to escape. You need to leave.

They shouldn't have put us together that was their mistake, we started talking, those conversations, the future was so bright, we were going to shape society. We were a catalyst for each other. Plans came to the fore. They started to feel threatened.  I fell in love, we moved in together, that’s why it was a relevant detail. They didn’t understand what caused it but they suspected a  genetic component, although now they know that’s not the case. They were threatened then; they didn't want us to reproduce and we wanted to share a new life with what we had. Everyone was forcefully separated. That was the start. You’ll have heard about what happened after of course but they skim the details in history don’t they? They said it was due to a decline in the earth’s magnetic field. That was a lie, it was engineered. Technology ceased. The media shut down.  Food production was so difficult. We had to eat what they gave us, government supplied food packages. So many died. All of us of course and more, the ones without our ‘gift’ so it would look like it wasn’t genocide but that’s what it was, that was its purpose. No one even needed to blame anyone as there was no trust from anyone or anything. There wasn't any media so no opinion could spread. Later history would have to be written, the temporary collapse of technology, widespread illness and no efficiency in medical attention, society destroyed. 

So how did I survive, well to engineer such an operation over the whole population they needed our help, we had more skill. By now we had spent years using their money, developing our minds and we were vastly more capable. They manipulated us psychologically, they physically coerced us. You’re probably sickened, how could I have collaborated? But of course most died rather than co-operate. We were endowed with superior intellectual capabilities, but we still maintained the same emotional capacities, they told me they would save me if I co-operated but more importantly they told me they would save him. Then they used us to re-build society after the collapse. That’s what we’re still doing now, there are few left, I cannot say the exact numbers but our job is nearly over and if they don’t kill us, age will.

Then they started the research, they didn't want another generation of us. Generations passed and then they isolated the chemical we are born with, they didn't know the cause, it was just a seemingly random chemical distributed along generational lines. Do you still feel lucky? I’m sorry that was pessimistic. Now you have a chance, this letter is your chance.

I had to find my old flat, this flat and I did. We knew it was happening again, the compulsory scans followed by the property grants and this location was on the list. They contained us of course because they knew we would figure it out. But then the hurricane happened. All that has happened in the history of the human race and we still can’t exercise any control over the weather. There was chaos as relief was provided and they let their guard down, with a little free time, I stole across the city, I composed this letter, I left it here.

Still I’m gripped with the futility of this action now, maybe they found the letter, maybe you’re not reading this, they are and now they will attempt to find me. It’s a risk I’m willing to take on the possibility that it has come into the right hands. You must tell the others, I don’t know how you can identify them but they’re grouping you in disparate locations, young people who have moved because of any scheme, initiative etc, it’s so they know where you are, as for the plan after that I have no idea but you need to get out. At least I don’t have to tell you to remember because I know you will. Burn after reading. Erase my thoughts of their physical reality. 

The Expectation of Interpretation

He was the last person I expected do that. On the other hand what were those expectations based on, not evidence anyway, assumptions, presumptions, impressions, abstract and theory with no substance, expectations which were based on other expectations, a trembling tower miraculously suspended with no base at all to rest on.

To describe him, we’ll pretend we’re at a party. He didn’t  speak to many people. They encouraged him first and then felt frustrated. They gave up. Rather than simply give up, they talked, they bitched. They made assumptions he did not like them. They decided to dislike him based on the false assumption that he did not like them.

As if a reason to hate someone is because they do not  love you. Something reasoned by its opposites absence. Reasoning something is beautiful just because it is not ugly. On the other hand, emotion, it’s a whole different ball game. If we had discovered a way to defeat it with reason, I would make the reasoned estimate that we would have done it already.

So why didn’t  he speak to many people? He had too many expectations and he feared disappointing himself. They bubbled up inside, the urgencies in every moment and intention with every word. Conflict surged inside, the drive for action competed with the desire to avoid, to avoid what he saw as the inevitable result; failure and all of that inner turmoil led to an external paralysis. All of that paralysis led to social isolation to everyone until he met me, yet feelings linger, they remain and cling even when their causes are eliminated and they influence the very way we think, the way we interpret all occurrence. All of this, was something he himself could not even express so how is it that I know this?

We discovered a way. I met him in college in medical school. We used to perform autopsies to figure out causes of death but there were so few bodies to examine, physical ailments and illness were all but absent and all who died, died naturally and painlessly (due to technology to predict death and the consequent administration of drugs to alleviate associated pain). Yet suicide rates were rising so much. Suicide was prevented in no case as the individual was deemed to  have full body autonomy and was even helped to achieve death painlessly on expression of the intention. We did not examine those bodies. The cause of suicide traditionally were an area for genetic predisposition but also one for social or societal circumstance, context, conversation and memory. Interpretations essentially. We had no authority to determine cause in those situations.

Your forgetting, we live in Utopia. Genetic predispositions are predicted now, they’re isolated and examined, even spontaneous emergence of a brain chemical can be determined with the regular and compulsory school health checks and either are offset with the excellent and effective medication provided free by the state. The context was perfection, it was no longer considered to have any cause in suicide, the same for societal or social circumstance. All that was left was conversation and memory of the person which are things held by others but in that regard these were then subject to their interpretation. The only factor we deduced that could give us a clue therefore was interpretation itself.

We needed to find out how an individual interprets occurrence, any occurrence. After years of painstaking research, in Utopia not only did we trust the state but the state trusted us and funding was given without application to all who pursued it and after this research we found a way. The problem was our way required access to the bodies. The rates were rising and we still had no authority to access the bodies. It was deemed illegal for medical students to discover the functions of thought itself by way of physically examining the mind and that is just what we thought we had discovered, the reasons for this illegality was that such a discovery upon the processes of thought itself would allow alteration of these processes, anyone with yearning for power could then alter the thought processes of others to make them lose their trust in Utopia, everyone trusted this declaration by the state and we saw some suicides as a necessary sacrifice to maintain the trust we both received and invested. It was the only illegality that existed.  As I said those rates were rising, on a personal level, I lost my brother for no determinable cause, I tried to defeat the consequent emotion with reason, reason that to find a cause would prove eventually dangerous to the state which we all loved, but as mentioned before there is no way to defeat emotion with reason (Possibly this could also be discovered after the defeating the one illegality that existed) and I was helpless in grief  We examined an option to steal them but it seemed impossible, all dead bodies were nearly immediately disposed of by incineration. There was almost no interim, we had advanced to a point where families and friends were able to grieve and accept without the tangible confrontation of a dead body. The state was so trust worthy in Utopia that everyone naturally trusted it and thus death was recorded and accepted automatically. Then he suggested something I had never expected him to suggest.

That evening in the laboratory, I was near breaking point, surrounded by the bodies that we did have the authority to examine the minds of, the natural deaths, in there we saw no conclusive end to our research unless we had access to a mind which genuinely wanted to commit suicide. Research on the other minds prove futile, the thought processes of their interpretation of any occurrence were expected and already known without any of our research at all.  What he said made something occur to me which had never occurred before during the years of our research and indeed the realization struck me as obvious as well as the definitive end. I knew why I was doing the research, I wanted to help, merely help not solve, alleviate, merely alleviate, not eradicate, some, merely some not all of my own grief by the discovery of why my brother killed himself and in doing so help others in the same position and yet I never knew his position and I never thought to ask and then I became all too aware of his reason.

“I want to die, I have no idea why, but it is a genuine intention, an intention which provoked me to carry out all this research in the first place and once I commit suicide you will have full access to my mind, in some way my mind won’t be ideal because although I had intent to die prior to the research, the motivation that my mind could then be used will somehow have influenced my interpretation of occurrence but I urge you to pursue our end regardless” He said.

Those were his words, the exact formality of his speech of the man I never expected to want to die and in that way the man I never really knew but the man I now know more intimately than I know anyone, even myself. 

There

There’s not a lot of places to go in my town. There’s an industrial estate on the outskirts, warehouses blotting the landscape. We went there as teenagers after failed attempts to get into the local nightclub. We sat on cold wavin pipes, concrete tunnels and wondered. Wondered about climbing the cranes that were always there. During the day it held none of the same appeal. Desolation and emptiness suited our moods, cars coming in and out of the car park, students attending the youth reach, people spending their days in blocks, during the day it was just ugly not dangerous. Dangerous. Thats why I can’t go back, too many memories. Danger used to excite me, not frighten me. We drank too much one night, idle wonderings about the crane turned into a reality. Sometimes my mam wheels me by on the foot path, we have to go by there because there’s not a lot of places to go in this town – I try not to look.

Secrets are like fire

You sit at your table and do your work. Your teacher might not talk to you because they are trying to control the class. 

The other children might not talk to you because you're not particularly noticeable although for no definable reason. 

At school you can get lost. Its peculiar that you still feel lost when everyone around you is there to tell you where you are. 

There are spaces outside school, spaces to go. She went to the football pitch at the edge of town, not the new one, the one across the railway tracks where no one goes. She brought her dog. He never asked any questions. She took the petrol from her dads garage, she took a lighter. Watching those flames consume everything, everything she had gathered. Weeks of careful selection of what exactly needed to be destroyed most. The things they would miss. The things that meant something to them . At the same time, those that were easy to steal. A favorite pencil top of a classmate, her teachers framed photo of her children. Carefully, carefully, day by day so it wasn't noticeable. In the end she had quite a collection. Watching those flames curl and smolder  she didn't feel lost. You can draw your most substantial sense of identity not from others but from the actions you carry out even if those actions are in isolation especially if they are maybe because you draw those actions closer to yourself to the point they become more a part of yourself,no one knows and no one judges. 

She doused the fire with more petrol, she watched the it burn brighter but now it rolled too, balls tumbling from the center and into the air. She did not cower in fear. 

Secrets are like fire, they have the potential to destroy what made them. 

The family dog never returned home. 

The Pleasure of Guilt

Everyone was laughing except you and that's why I noticed you. You were new and you wanted to laugh too and you would. 

 The night was so dark and the space was so wide, the sky curves to meet the horizon line, the edges in the field in which we walked. A barely discernible line at the front of our vision marked the elusive boundary where space meets solidity. Darkness holds more silence than light and in the distance the laughter seemed louder than it should. We circled a fire orange sparks sprinkled the air around us. Hug your coat closer, quickening your step now as the previously star lit sky is blighted by clouds moving in from somewhere behind.  Let your eyes rest on the edges of the surroundings before letting them travel up on the curve of the sky.  It can be discomforting  can't it like a dome or a boundary? The way the space stretched so far and the sky reached to meet it. Only if you think about it, but then so is everything if you think about it. Think is the operative word here if you haven't noticed.

 The clouds seemed to roll and gather, a deep roll of thunder reverberated around the rain fell hitting our faces, sliding and trickling down our coats. Frozen now, trapped in your thoughts, watching us from far away. 

And you were trapped, that much was obvious. You were imprisoned by your own awareness but we were trapped too but in a different way, we just didn't know. Ignorance had set us free, we were free by consequence of just thinking we were free, regardless of whether it was true or not, what you knew had enslaved you yet all you knew was that you were trapped. Knowledge will not set you free when the nature of that knowledge confirms the opposite. 

You approached. We met.  You felt the need to give reason to us even though we didn't want it. 

Oh we all have reasons. Justification is alike but reason is justified in its own different ways. It didn't matter that you had different reasons because you wanted the same thing. Outcome and result trump intention and motivation. Outcome survives, your reason will  live and die, die with you. Pleasure, its always right, its always justified. The very nature of its definition makes it self-justifying. I don't need to explain myself. It defeats reason, it destroys reason so why should I give a reason I pursued it in the first place. You arrived and you wanted to explain why, the reason you wanted to be one of us, your reasoning to become one of us was to eradicate that incessant urge to reason and justify everything, your reason to act was to destroy any future or potential reasoning for any other action your reason to act in the first place was so that you could eventually act without reason. 

All drugs are legal, everyone can take them, when and how they want. In that way pleasure is not only justified because of its very nature but is also expressly accommodated for, it is deemed right and because it was deemed right no one could feel wrong about taking them, no one could feel guilt. 

They're not drugs, we needed a new name for them and we hadn't come up with one yet. The nature of drugs is that they have a physiological effect that effects the processes of mind or body and this was more. I wish I could explain how it was more, this was beyond mind, this was beyond body. Yes they were drugs in the sense that they were a chemical substance that we ingested and they gave us something that related to mind and body but they were different because they somehow managed to go beyond it. They gave us pleasure, drugs give pleasure but this was pure pleasure, true pleasure, this was pleasure with guilt, somehow we had discovered a chemical that gave us pleasure but at the same time made us feel like the pleasure was wrong, which subsequently further enhanced the pleasure. We lived for this. We abandoned everything, everything but to remain alive and feel like this. We had to keep it a secret, the chemical we had found, its discovery would be manipulated, used for control, if someone had control of it, then inevitably they would deprive others of it to control them, it was so addictive that anyone would do anything just to remain taking it, so we had to keep it a secret, we had to deprive it from those in power, those who would deprive it from us if they knew. 

Everyone was laughing except you and that's why I noticed you. You were new and you wanted to laugh too, we gave you what you wanted, you took it and you did. You laughed with us, you laughed without reason. You had so much pleasure, your reason was defeated because you were immersed. You weren't able to reason and without reason, things can't be justified, you couldn't justify it so you felt guilty because it wasn't deserved. Your guilt enhanced your pleasure. 

Please fill out the form clearly.

.

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?

Times Advance

Entertainment, hobbys, recreation and leisure

Temperaments like doormats

Minds that can be stilled

Thoughts like meek children,
easily silenced

A hobby is an insult to time

Satisfaction, contentment,
such mere solutions

Pleasure respects time,
overwhelms us

Obsession praises time,
envelops us,
obliterates all else

The point shouldn't be mere amusement

Time is not empty space,
that can be forgotten,
just because it is filled

The point is not to be distracted
The point is to be consumed