I will die after
this conference, exactly at 1:32pm. He will come and kill me as it was declared
in the announcement. I could go in public when the conference is over to make
it harder on the executioner but what is the point of making a scene if it
won’t change the result; I will die in less than an hour, exactly at 1:32pm.
I came to accept
this fact much easier than I thought I would. But I can’t help the sudden urge
to achieve something before my execution takes place. Maybe I should
participate in this conference more intensely which is one of the boring, regular artists
meetings, considering it will be the last thing that I will ever do. Maybe talk
more, point out more, so the people will be more aware of me, so when I die, it
will mean something to somebody. No. I’d rather leave silently, without a
trace, knowing that my life meant a whole lot to me than to others. But
unfortunately the reason I accept my upcoming death so easily is because my
life doesn’t mean much to me either. But then, on a second thought, I could
have killed myself rather than letting a stranger’s hands own my last breath.
Yet, I couldn’t dare to figure out that I wasn’t brave enough to kill myself.
I know I’m a
coward but at least I don’t fear my death. I never feared death. It is a very
common part of our every day life, much more common than it was before. Now, they execute as easy as they give. They give you anything, you know,
anything you want, from food to luxury, free and easy. All you have to do to
survive is to deserve the air you breathe. If you fail, they execute you. People need air. It’s such a wonder that people
don’t live in fear, that one day they may fail to deserve the air they breathe
and their time would be announced. All of them think they will live
forever, which is principally true. Considering the extremely expanded life span
thanks to manipulated evolution, most people do live forever. Even I, despite of
my failure, managed to live for 556 years. But
time passes much faster now. Yesterday comes so quick that it becomes history
and future is just tomorrow around the corner.
But
it is not easy to deserve the air, especially for us. They attach too much importance to us. They say: “The salvation of the humanity lies in the hands of the
artists.” It causes such a pressure to carry the hope of all humanity on your
shoulders. Yet, it was proven before that this pressure made artists more and
more productive in the past. Because the pressure caused conflicts and revolt
which inspired early artists. But the world has changed since then. Now we have
them. Now you need air. The stress
causes you to hyperventilate and hyperventilation wastes air. But I don’t blame
anybody. My failure belongs to me only. I failed the hopes placed in me. I
failed myself. Even if I was born as an artist, I turned into a disaster.
Instead of using my conflicts productively to create art, I let them destroy
me. There is no point of blaming a perfectly working system at this point. It
is so perfect that when they
announced my time, I felt a great relief like I was finally dismissed… from
life.
It
was exactly 13 months ago when my downfall began. It began so slowly that it
was too late when I realized what I was doing. First the amount of pieces that
I produced was reduced to almost nothing. They
thought I was working on a masterpiece. Then I requested the machine to record
my thoughts. They were very common tools among the artists who were deemed to be average. The machine did most of the job in creating, all you had to do
was to think and the machine would filter your thoughts and present the final
piece. They never thought I would
want one. But then, they thought, a
masterpiece required some aid. I never thought I would want one either. I was
one of the premium ones, one of the exceptional artists unlike academic ones. My
art has always been exceptional until I got caught by the most lethal disease
of my era: skepticism. The sky is not blue anymore when you are skeptic, the
art is not the salvation and the life is not eternal.
I convinced them and myself as well, that I needed
an aid to be more productive. I kept telling to myself that they were for my convenience.
I never thought I was growing lazy, giving up my humanity to laziness. The next
thing I know, I stopped thinking. The machine didn’t record anything for 5
months. So, they took it back to give
it to someone who deserved it. This world is all about deserving and I deserve
my execution. It didn’t take me long to stop looking after the machine was taken.
I have to admit; I lost my interest. I knew nothing was eternal. Every
beautiful thing that we built would collapse and yet they are not even beautiful
anymore. I was at the point that I started 8 months ago. But now, I was
different. I was content with my dumbness and blindness even if I knew it would
bring my end. It was then I realized that I never intended to produce anything,
anyways. I was just placing obstacles on my way to postpone my end. But I
didn’t realize it until it was too late. Exactly 11 months after I requested
the machine they announced the time
of my death. I got the machine from the black market as soon as I could with
great helps of my friend Luvry. I was hoping to create my last masterpiece
before I died. But now I see it will be no more than a lousy suicide note. I
was expecting this. But know I feel sorry for the rest. Even thought most of the
people will have no idea about my departure, they will know that one more has left and many more will.
I
look around the amphitheatre and sorrily see how few of us have left; just a
little over one hundred from all over the world, just a little over one hundred
to save the humanity. I will be dead in an hour so one minus “just a little
over one hundred”. I see Hunchon at the front, quite a center of the attention
with his everlasting ambition. He is a happy and a very satisfied artist, as
well as the rest of the amphitheatre. He has always been happily ignorant, full
of exciting ideas, exciting and utterly dull, overused and poor. How easy it is
for them to create. They don’t worry about originality; all they care is to
deserve the air they breathe. They don’t care if they bring anything new to the
society, anything original. All they do is to repeat what has done before them.
They create just enough to deserve their air never realizing how lame they are.
But these ones are happy, content and satisfied, filling their machines with
useless thoughts that would only bring an end to the humanity rather than
saving it.
I see Luvry when
he slightly moves uncomfortably in his seat, hidden in the dark. He never
fancied ones like Hunchon. He thought they just mislead the society. They lead
it to its downfall. He is a natural born artist too, like me. He is one of the
true artists conflicted with pleasure and pain. But his death time is announced
as well: eight weeks from now on.
It’s is a really
great coincidence -or should I say plan- that both of our times were announced
the same day, but his execution was eight weeks after mine. I remember the
moment exactly. The announcement came when I was staring out of my window
thinking of contacting Luvry to tell him about the reality behind the
blackmarket. The feeling came too sudden. Images started to flow in front of my
eyes: me sitting in the amphitheatre, Luvry in the dark, Hunchon in the center
of attention, the face of the executioner and the time: April 12th 1.32pm.
I sat back in relief like this was what I was waiting for. Technically, you
can’t tell others about your time and nobody can conceive it either. It’s not
pronounceable and preventable. It’s like fate, a natural death forced by an
executioner. When I contacted Luvry, he knew it and I knew he knew it. I also
knew about his time too, eight weeks after my execution. We laughed. That’s all
we did. Then a silence came. I decided not to tell him about the blackmarket.
Instead I asked him if he could get me the gadgets. He was more than happy to
do it. He felt like he convinced one more for the cause, a cause lost long ago.
I can’t stop thinking that they had a plan of some sort when they
placed his death much after mine. They
knew that he was a lost case the first day he got involved in the blackmarket
but they waited until my fall to announce his time. So it makes me think, they really had a plan. Maybe they
wanted to examine the effects of the blackmarket from every possible point of
view. Maybe they wanted to give Luvry
some time to create his last masterpiece inspired by my departure. Maybe they just wanted to know if I would tell
him the truth about the blackmarket and as a result betray them. But I knew I had to keep quiet if I wanted them to take into
account of my last words that I will leave with the machine.
Luvry has been in
the blackmarket for a long time. He thought of it as the new salvation, a kind
of rebellion that humanity needed to survive. All the unregistered items and
many more could have been found there, some kind of a last resort. It was where
people knew that there was something wrong even if they couldn’t admit it. It
was where people looked slightly worried. It was where people, for the first
time, realized that the end is near. It was where everybody thought they found
something real. But I knew that he and the rest were wrong; blackmarket
belonged to them too; it was just
another controlled environment. It was built to offer an alternative.
I knew it from the
beginning, because it was my creation. I knew people needed to hide or runaway
eventually, because I felt that way. And they
took my idea and built the blackmarket for anyone who wanted difference, but in
the end all it offered was indifference. So he
got me an unregistered machine. I was hoping that my upcoming death would
trigger something in me to create art. But it didn’t take me long to realize
that I was dead long ago. Nothing came out. The machine stayed still. But
nobody came to take it; it was ‘supposed’ to be unregistered. So I thought I
could leave a warning with me, so they would know what’s coming. So they would
know that the artists are not capable of saving the humanity anymore, that they
have to find something else. But I can never be sure if they will ever listen
to me; after all I am a failed one, a disgrace.
It’s 1.16pm now. I
see Hunchon and his colleagues murmuring at the center of the amphitheatre. We
exchange an uncomfortable glance. He tries to smile but his smile freezes as he
sees my expression. He realizes what’s coming up for me even if he can’t tell
exactly what or when. He turns around in rush trying to avoid my presence. I
know that I just gave him the most lethal disease of our era: skepticism. It is
going to take him longer than me and Luvry to give up but he will give in
eventually. Now he thinks that he may be the next.
It’s funny and sad
at the same time that after we beat all the outer threats like AIDS, cancer and
AD01 that came right after them and scattered the whole humanity, the most
dangerous disease that will cause our extinction is our minds; it’s the way the
humans think and process. What is going to be next in our fight against extinction?
Will they replace our minds with
something more controllable and predictable? All of this is to prevent the
extinction, but all it does is making sure that it will come. What we failed to
see was; we evolved into something other than human to survive. What we can’t
see now is that human race has already extinct. We are something else.
I can’t stop
thinking what would have happened if we continued the way we were; killing each
other with wars and religion, poisoning ourselves with technology or biological
agents and therefore accelerating and also distorting our evolution, letting
diseases diminish our number drastically. I wonder if we would still survive. I
wonder if we were left alone, would we figure out eventually by ourselves a way
out of the upcoming Armageddon? But then
they wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t have evolved in to them. That’s why they
came back; we came back from the future to make sure that we will evolve into them. They said that the air is precious, that why we have to preserve
it. They said, in the future, one has
to deserve the air s/he breathes. They
showed us how miserable it will be if we don’t take extreme measures now. So we
accepted their rules and way of living. But now I see that whatever we did, do
and will do is not going to be able to stop what’s coming. We way passed their time with great celebrations. But
we, they, the humanity will still extinct.
All we and they did was postponing it
a little further. It doesn’t make me feel any better. It does not change the
fact that I failed myself. The whole world can end, I don’t care. But if I was
satisfied with myself then I’d know that I deserved the air I breathe. Now, I
don’t want to live a life that I failed to actualize myself.
I look at Luvry as
he leaves the amphitheatre. He looks at me for the last time without a single
expression on his face. He just looks to see me. He will know soon everything I
knew, everything about them. He’s smart enough to see the big picture. But
now, he just leaves. The lights are off and the amphitheatre is empty. I see
the time: 1.31pm.
THE END
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