Axiomatic (29 page)

He shakes his head, unoffended. ‘I wouldn’t call it a religion. There is no god. There are no souls.’

‘No? Well, if you’re offering me all the comforts of atheism, I don’t need an implant for that.’

‘Are you afraid of dying?’

‘What do you think?’

‘If you use the implant, you won’t be.’

‘You want to render me terminally brave, and then kill me? Or terminally
numb?
I’d rather be blissed out.’

‘Not brave. Or numb. Perceptive.’

He may not have found me pitiful, but I’m still human enough to do him the honour.
‘Perceptive?
You think swallowing some pathetic lie about death is
perceptive?’

‘No lies. This implant won’t change your beliefs on any question of fact.’

‘I don’t
believe
in life after death, so—’

‘Whose life?’

‘What?’

‘When you die, will other people live on?’

For a moment, I just can’t speak. I’m fighting for my life — and he’s treating the whole thing like some abstract philosophical debate. I almost scream:
Stop playing with me! Get it over with!

But I don’t want it to be
over.

And as long as I can keep him talking, there’s still the chance that I can rush him, the chance of a distraction, the chance of some miraculous reprieve.

I take a deep breath. ‘Yes,
other people will live on.’

‘Billions. Perhaps hundreds of billions, in centuries to come.’

‘No shit. I’ve never believed that the universe would vanish when I died. But if you think that’s some great consolation—’

‘How different can two humans be?’

‘I don’t know. You’re pretty fucking
different.’

‘Out of all those hundreds of billions, don’t you think there’ll be people who are
just like you?

‘What are you talking about now? Reincarnation?’

‘No. Statistics. There can be no “reincarnation” — there are no souls to be reborn. But eventually — by pure chance — someone will come along who’ll embody everything that defines you.’

I don’t know why, but the crazier this gets, the more hopeful I’m beginning to feel — as if Carter’s crippled powers of reasoning might make him vulnerable in other ways.

I say, ‘That’s just not true. How could anyone end up with my memories, my experiences—’

‘Memories don’t matter. Your experiences don’t define you. The accidental details of your life are as superficial as your appearance. They may have shaped who you are — but they’re not an intrinsic part of it. There’s a core, a deep abstraction—’

‘A soul by any other name.’

‘No.’

I shake my head, vehemently. There’s nothing to be gained by humouring him; I’m too bad an actor to make it convincing — and an argument can only buy me more time.

‘You think I should feel better about dying because . . . sometime in the future, some total stranger might have a few abstract traits in common with me?’

‘You said that you wished you’d had children.’

‘I lied.’

‘Good. Because they’re not the answer.’

‘And I should get more comfort from the thought of someone who’s no relation at all, with no memories of mine, no sense of continuity—’

‘How much do you have in common, now, with yourself when you were five years old?’

‘Not much.’

‘Don’t you think there must be thousands of people who are infinitely more like you — as you are now

— than that child ever was?’

‘Maybe. In some ways, maybe.’

‘What about when you were ten? Fifteen?’

‘What does it matter? OK: people change.
Slowly. Imperceptibly.’

He nods. ‘Imperceptibly — exactly! But does that make it any less
real?
Who’s swallowed the lie? It’s seeing the life of your body as the life
of one person
that’s the illusion. The idea that “you” are made up of all the events since your birth is nothing but a useful fiction. That’s not a person: it’s a composite, a mosaic.’

I shrug. ‘Perhaps. It’s still the closest thing to ...
an identity . . .
that anyone can possess.’

‘But it isn’t! And it distracts us from the truth!’ Carter is growing impassioned, but there’s no hint of fanaticism in his demeanour. I almost wish he’d start ranting — but instead he continues, more calmly, more reasonably than ever. ‘I’m not saying that memories make no difference; of course they do. But there’s a part of you that’s independent of them — and that part will live again. One day, someone, somewhere, will think as you did, act as you did. Even if it’s only for a second or two,
that person will
be you.’

I shake my head. I’m beginning to feel stupefied by this relentless dream-logic — and I’m dangerously close to losing touch with what’s at stake.

I say flatly, ‘This is bullshit. Nobody could think that way.’

‘You’re wrong.
I do.
And you can — if you want to.’

‘Well,
I don’t want to.’

‘I know it seems absurd to you, now — but I promise you, the implant would change all that.’ He absent-mindedly massages his right forearm. It must be stiff from holding the gun. ‘You can die afraid, or you can die reassured. It’s your decision.’

I close my fist over the applicator. ‘Do you offer this to all your victims?’

‘Not all. A few.’

‘And how many have used it?’

‘None so far.’

‘I’m not surprised. Who’d want to die like that? Fooling themselves?’

‘You said you did.’

‘Live. I said I wanted to
live,
fooling myself.’

I brush the flies from my face, for the hundredth time; they alight again, fearlessly. Carter is five metres away; if I take a step in his direction, he’ll shoot me in the head, without the slightest hesitation. I strain my ears, and hear nothing but crickets.

Using the implant would buy me more time: the four or five minutes before it takes effect. What have I got to lose?
Carter’s reluctance to kill me, ‘unenlightened’?
In the end, that’s made no difference, thirty-three times before.
My will to stay alive?
Maybe; maybe not. A change in my intellectual views about mortality need not render me utterly supine; even believers in a glorious afterlife have been known to struggle hard to postpone the trip.

Carter says softly, ‘Make up your mind. I’m going to count to ten.’

The chance to die honestly? The chance to cling to my own fear and confusion to the end?

Fuck that. If I die, then it makes no difference
how I faced it.
That’s
my
philosophy.

I say, ‘Don’t bother.’ I push the applicator deep into my right nostril, and squeeze the trigger. There’s a faint sting as the implant burrows into my nasal membranes, heading for the brain.

Carter laughs with delight. I almost join him.
From out of nowhere, I have five more minutes to save
my life.

I say, ‘OK, I’ve done what you wanted. But everything I said before still stands. Let me live, and I’ll make you rich. A million a year.
At least.’

He shakes his head. ‘You’re dreaming. Where would I go? Finn would track me down in a week.’

‘You wouldn’t need to
go
anywhere. I’d skip the country — and I’d pay your money into an Orbital account.’

‘Yeah? Even if you did, what use would the money be to me? I couldn’t risk spending it.’

‘Once you had enough, you could buy some security. Buy some independence. Start disentangling yourself from Finn.’

‘No.’ He laughs again. ‘Why are you still looking for a way out? Don’t you understand?
There’s no
need.
’

By now, the implant must have disgorged its nanomachines, to build links between my brain and the tiny optical processor whose neural net embodies Carter’s bizarre beliefs. Short-circuiting my own attitudes; hard-wiring his insanity into my brain. But no matter — I can always get it removed; that’s the easiest thing in the world.
If it’s still what I want.

I say, ‘There’s
no need
for anything. There’s
no need
for you to kill me. We can still both walk out of here. Why do you act like you have no choice?’

He shakes his head. ‘You’re dreaming.’

‘Fuck you!
Listen to me!
All Finn has is
money.
I can ruin him, if that’s what it takes. From the other side of the world!’ I don’t even know whether or not I’m lying any more. Could I do that? To save my life?

Carter says softly, finally, ‘No.’

I don’t know what to say. I have no more arguments, no more pleas. I almost turn and run, but I can’t do it. I can’t believe that I’d get away — and I can’t bring myself to make him pull the trigger a moment sooner.

The sunshine is dazzling; I close my eyes against the glare. I haven’t given up. I’ll pretend that the implant has failed — that should disconcert him, buy me a few more minutes.

And then?

A wave of giddiness sweeps over me. I stagger, but regain my balance. I stand, staring at my shadow on the ground, swaying gently, feeling impossibly light.

Then I look up, squinting. ‘I—’

Carter says, ‘You’re going to die. I’m going to shoot you through the skull. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it’s not the end of you. Not the end of what matters. You believe that, don’t you?’

I nod, begrudgingly. ‘Yes.’

‘You know you’re going to die — but you’re not afraid?’

I close my eyes again; the light still hurts them. I laugh wearily. ‘You’re wrong: I’m still afraid. You lied about that, didn’t you? You shit. But I understand. Everything you said makes sense now.’

And it does.
All my objections seem absurd, now; transparently ill-conceived. I resent the fact that Carter was right — but I can’t pretend that my reluctance to believe him was the product of anything but short-sightedness and self-deception. That it took
a neural implant
to enable me to see the obvious only proves how confused I must have been.

I stand, eyes shut, feeling the warm sunshine on the back of my neck. Waiting.

‘You don’t want to die . . . but you know it’s the only way out? You accept that, now?’ He sounds reluctant to believe me, as if he finds my instant conversion too good to be true.

I scream at him: ‘Yes, fuck you!
Yes!
So get it over with!
Get it over with!’

He’s silent for a while. Then there’s a soft thud, and a crash in the undergrowth.

The flies on my arms and face desert me.

After a moment, I open my eyes and sink to my knees, shaking. For a while, I lose myself: sobbing, banging the ground with my fists, tearing up handfuls of weeds, screaming at the birds for silence.

Then I scramble to my feet and walk over to the corpse.

He believed everything he claimed to believe — but he still needed something more. More than the abstract hope of someone, sometime, somewhere on the planet, falling into alignment —
becoming him

—
by pure chance. He needed someone else holding the very same beliefs, right before his eyes at the moment of death — someone else who ‘knew’ that they were going to die, someone else who was just as afraid as he was.

And what do
I
believe?

I look up at the sky, and the memories I fought away, before, start tumbling through my skull. From lazy childhood holidays, to the very last weekend I spent with my ex-wife and son, the same heartbreaking blue runs through them all. Unites them all.

Doesn’t it?

I look down at Carter, nudge him with my foot, and whisper, ‘Who died today? Tell me. Who really died?’

<>

* * * *

THE CUTIE

‘Why won’t you even talk about it?’

Diane rolled away from me and assumed a foetal position. ‘We talked about it two weeks ago. Nothing’s changed since then, so there’s no point, is there?’

We’d spent the afternoon with a friend of mine, his wife, and their six-month-old daughter. Now I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing again the expression of joy and astonishment on that beautiful child’s face, without hearing her peals of innocent laughter, without feeling once again the strange giddiness that I’d felt when Rosalie, the mother, had said, ‘Of course you can hold her.’

I had hoped that the visit would sway Diane. Instead, while leaving her untouched, it had multiplied a thousandfold my own longing for parenthood, intensifying it into an almost physical pain.

OK, OK, so it’s biologically programmed into us to love babies. So what? You could say the same about ninety per cent of human activity. It’s biologically programmed into us to enjoy sexual intercourse, but nobody seems to mind about that, nobody claims they’re being tricked by wicked nature into doing what they otherwise would not have done. Eventually someone is going to spell out, step by step, the physiological basis of the pleasure of listening to Bach, but will that make it, suddenly, a ‘primitive’

response, a biological con job, an experience as empty as the high from a euphoric drug?

‘Didn’t you feel
anything
when she smiled?’

‘Frank, shut up and let me get some sleep.’

‘If we have a baby, I’ll look after her. I’ll take six months off work and look after her.’

‘Oh, six months, very generous! And then what?’

‘Longer then. I could quit my job for good, if that’s what you want.’

‘And live on what? I’m not supporting you for the rest of your life! Shit! I suppose you’ll want to get married then, won’t you?’

‘All right, I won’t quit my job. We can put her in child care when she’s old enough. Why are you so set against it? Millions of people are having children every day, it’s such an
ordinary
thing, why do you keep manufacturing all these obstacles?’

‘Because
I do not want a child.
Understand? Simple as that.’

I stared up at the dark ceiling for a while, before saying with a not quite even voice, ‘I could carry it, you know. It’s perfectly safe these days, there’ve been thousands of successful male pregnancies. They could take the placenta and embryo from you after a couple of weeks, and attach it to the outer wall of my bowel.’