Solipsis: Escape from the Comatorium (18 page)

“
You
can't separate the two.”

“
Well,
you say you've felt the lord's presence,” Renee says, Seth
nods, “so then it's easy for you to believe. But I've never
felt the lord's presence, making it very difficult to believe.
Doesn't that make the question of faith drastically different for us.
How is that fair?”

“
You
have to
let
God
into your life,” Seth replies.

“
But
he can do anything, so why leave me hanging with no awareness or
feeling of his presence,” Renee asks.

“
You're
letting logic get in the way.”

“
How
else can we understand the world but through logic?” Renee
asks.

“
The
lord doesn't follow logic, he doesn't have to. He created logic, so
when you start trying to prove his existence, you'll run into
trouble. Knowledge only exists because he created it, he created
rationality and logic, and so the very concept of something 'making
sense,' is dependent on the lord having first created it. It's then
clear to see that something that existed prior to and outside of the
rationality and logic we posses would also not have to follow the
rules or make sense within them. You see?”

“
Do
you really think that torturing all these people is what god wants?
You think he'd rather have people devoting their lives to worshiping
him in the hope that he'll reward them in the afterlife? If I were
god, I wouldn't need to have my ego stroked constantly. Why would I
want a world filled with sheep? I'd want people to be themselves,
have fun, to be creative, to discover new things, and I'd prevent
them from too much suffering. The fact that the holocaust happened,
that's game over for the concept of a loving god.”

“
Concepts
are the construct of men, therefore they are fallible,” Seth
replies.

“
Well
then you're starting from the assumption that god does exist and
working backwards to prove that his existence doesn't have to make
sense because he exists, it's circular reasoning,” Renee says
dismissively.

“
But
I just told you, logic doesn't apply,” Seth replies.

“
This
is gonna be harder than I thought,” Renee sighs.

“
What
?
Are you trying to change my mind?” Seth asks. “No
offense, but you're not going to change my mind. Please, take some
water.”

Renee
refuses. Seth stands up and walks away.

Renee
stares into a horizon of lush green trees swaying gently in the wind.

“
You're
not going to change my mind by attacking the existence of God,”
Seth says, walking next to her in this lush forest. “You'll
have to accept that I know God to exist and personally feel his
presence and that I somehow know that it's not a delusion. Those
things have to be given, argue within those terms.”

“
How
do I do that?” Renee asks.

“
You
don't have to convince me there is no god,” Seth replies,
“that's going to be impossible. But you can try to change my
mind about whether this is the right thing, whether my dad is really
doing the lord's work. That's the weak link in all this.”

Renee
meditates, her eyes flutter. It's been days. Though the suns don't
rise or set, perched forever in the same spots in the sky. Her mouth
is dry, her lungs burn, her stomach has collapsed in on itself. The
damage being done to her body isn't real, but the pain is.

Why
bother? I'll probably never even have the opportunity to argue with
Lazarus. Even if I did, I wouldn't be able to change his mind. It's a
fools errand. I'm just indulging myself toward madness.

Renee
awakens, sitting up, every joint aches. An angel sits meters away,
staring at her. “Would you like some food?”

“
What's
the catch,” Renee says. Her throat is so dry she can barely
speak.

“
No
catch,” the angel offers her bread and wine. Renee takes it,
suspicious. “You know, in heaven, you will be reunited with
your family.”

“
There's
no such place,” Renee responds.

“
All
you have to do is cooperate, and we will save your soul, and we'll
pull the plug on your brain,” the angel says. “Then your
mind will finally join your body in the afterlife, reunited in
heaven.”

“
Are
people actually falling for this?” Renee asks.

“
It's
not a trick,” the angel responds. “We're saving your
souls.”

“
I
can't believe you actually think you're doing the right thing,”
Renee replies, disgusted. “You're ruining the lives of
thousands of people. You're a bunch of murderers.”

“
We're
only allowing people to die like God intended. It's not murder.”

“
It's
assisted suicide then,” Renee retorts. “If you just left
us alone, we could have lived for hundreds of years, being good human
beings, helping others, saving lives.”

“
Humans
are not meant to be immortal,” the angel replies.

“
How
do you know that?”

“
You're
obviously not ready,” the angel says, getting up. “I'm
wasting my time. You'll change your mind once the real fun starts.”
The angel smiles creepily. He turns and starts walking away, picking
up his pace and starting to flap his wings. Just before he takes to
the air, a rock slams into his right wing. Renee pumps her fist in
celebration. He gets into the air, but tumbles, crashing to the
ground in a cartwheel. The angel tries to stand up, but its right leg
is broken. It is unable to stand. Renee walks up to the stricken
angel, clumsily flailing around. The person behind the angel doesn't
physically feel any pain at all, he's sitting at a console, not
directly linked in to his nervous system.

“
Save
this,” Renee says as she slams down her rock-covered foot in
the angel's face, bludgeoning it to bits. The angel becomes
completely still. It might appear like Renee has killed the angel,
and perhaps it's accurate to describe it that way, but the real
person who was controlling the angel has simply disconnected from his
now useless avatar. The only way for him to save the avatar would
have been to get it to a televator. Without eyes that was going to be
nearly impossible. He can however disconnect, and then respawn in a
new avatar, but he will emerge from a televator, and there aren't any
nearby. In fact, only a handful of televators are still accessible,
all strictly guarded, and none near the trapped souls in hell. Renee
lays down beside the dead angel, falling back into a fevered dream
state.

Seth
returns, waking Renee from a shallow sleep. The pain won't allow her
to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. She's been in this
spot in hell for days, losing all track of time and reality. The
angel she murdered lies beside her, bludgeoned.

“
What
do you want?” Renee asks of Seth. He doesn't offer, he comes up
to her, pouring water at her face. She turns away, the water pours
down her face, filling the cracks in her skin.

“
Please,
drink,” Seth pleads.

“
Leave
me alone.”

Seth
holds his hand out. “Please, let me help you.”

Renee
glares up at him, wanting nothing more than to beat him senseless.
“You want to help me? Then come down here and look me in the
eye when you talk to me.”

Seth
hesitates, then crouches across from her. His eyes again dart
downward. The virtual eyes point in the direction his real eyes are
pointing as he wears an immersive helmet.

“
No,”
Renee says strongly. “Look in my eyes.”

Seth's
virtual eyes attempt courage, taking short looks at her. She reaches
her cracked, bloody hands for his cheeks, locking his gaze at her.

“
I
want to help you,” Seth says bravely.

“
I
don't want your help,” Renee replies.

“
Please,
even if you don't believe, just come with me, go through the motions,
maybe you'll feel something. Your just going to suffer in here until
you accept your savior. So go along with it.”

“
You
idiots are so deluded you think you're doing the right thing,”
Renee says, “it makes me wanna fucking puke.”

“
Why
are you so closed off to the truth?”

“
You
only believe in this crap because you were indoctrinated as a child,”
Renee replies, “I wasn't indoctrinated, so I haven't been
brainwashed to see the
truth
.”

“
And
you were indoctrinated with atheism.”

“
Fine,
so we're both just products of indoctrination, shouldn't we then have
to keep an open mind and consider all possibilities?” Renee
asks.

“
But
you atheists are so sure of yourselves,” Seth replies.

“
Says
the torturer.”

“
This
is all for your sake, to save your soul from eternal torment. The
ends justifies any means.”

“
Only
from your point of view,” Renee replies. “From my point
of view, you're murdering and torturing innocent people so that
they'll believe in your invisible man in the sky. It's barbaric. It's
downright evil.”

“
But
where do you get the authority to call us barbaric? You have no
ground to stand on to call us evil. Without God there's no such thing
as good or evil. Only through God can we have objective moral truth.
Like it or not, when you make such a judgment, you're using your
God-given morals to make the claim.”

“
That
doesn't make any damn sense,” Renee replies. “What does
an invisible sky-god have to do with morality?”

“
Well
if there's no God, then rape and murder are fine, you still lose the
argument.”

“
That
makes no sense, are you listening to yourself? Let's suppose that
there is no god, we know that there's no god, we're just animals
living on a rock in space. That doesn't then mean that life has no
meaning. It has whatever meaning we give it. Morality is based on the
happiness or suffering of conscious minds. If I do some action that
harms other people, then it's wrong, where does god enter into the
equation?”

“
Okay,
so you're a utilitarian. I see, so let me pose to you a moral
dilemma,
as
a utilitarian,” Seth says. “Let's say you're a doctor and
you have five patients that are dying. One needs a kidney, another
needs a lung, a heart, a liver, and so on. They're waiting for
donors, but none come. If you do nothing, these five will die in a
few hours. But, you notice a man in the waiting room has the right
blood type, all the right factors, so that if you take this man, put
him under, take his liver and kidneys and heart and lungs, that you
could kill this one healthy man and save the lives of five others.
Would you do it?”