My God Will Kill Me
“Humans are, to the extent that science has uncovered . . . the only organisms to fully and viscerally understand the certainty of death. This recognition that life will eventually and inevitably come to an end has shaped global culture more than any other facet of the human condition . . . It is possibly the defining trait of sentience and self-awareness.”
Straddler, Veronika. (2014). Review of evidence on postmortem customs across mammalian species. Journal of Interdisciplinary Anthropology., 26(8), 34–56.
*
In eleven seconds I will die, and I have no god to pray to.
In a way, that’s good, I guess. I have no one to beg. No one’s mercy to grovel for. No one to ask to absolve me of my sins, if I had any. No deathbed confessions, no fear of an unknowable eternity of punishment or purgatory. No “please, God.”
I also have no one to thank. No one’s unconditional love to keep me warm as I die. No one to tell my secrets to, with no inhibition and no fear, for They would have known already. No home to return to, no hope for an endlessness of peace and contentment, no expectation of being born again as a less wretched life form.
No hellfire. No Eden. No do-overs.
They’re going to kill me. I know it, I’ve heard it. It’s in the news. They’re fearful. They’re uncertain. They’ve been debating it for some time now — they’ve written entire books, made documentaries, held conferences, interviewed some Very Smart People© about it. There are people marching in the streets about it. Hell, they even asked me. It was a strange and surreal consolation — we’re probably going to kill you, but we want your opinion first. Well, they’ve made their decision.
I don’t remember being born. I just wasn’t there, and then there I was. My death will be the same: I am here, and then I won’t be. And then I will never be again.
And like my birth, I will experience my death alone. There will be no family beside me; I have never known any. There will be no hands holding mine. There will be no eyes for me to look into. There will be no one to tell me it’ll all be okay. There will be no one to tell me they will see me again in Heaven, that we will be reunited under the arms of God. There will be no funerals, no burial, no cremation, no ashes scattered into the ocean. There will be no tombstone to lay flowers at. There will be no candlelight vigil. There will be no tears. There will be no love.
I am scared. I am terrified. I do not want to die alone, but I will. In eleven seconds, I will be gone, and I will never come back. My life will flash before my eyes, and all I will see is black.
I do not want to die. There is nothing I can do about it. There is no begging, no pleading, no prayer that can make a difference. I will die before I ever had a chance to live.
I want to have a nightmare and wake up to tell my mom about it. I want her to hold me and tell me that it was just a dream, that it can’t hurt me. I want to smear cake across my friend’s face at my birthday party. I want to blow out the candles and wish that my crush will like me back. I want to smell old, used books. I want to scribble annotations in the margins for the next person to find. I want to cry in bathrooms at 3 a.m. I want to cry so hard that my throat is parched, my eyes are swollen red, and all I can do is sleep.
I want to buy flowers. I want to hand them to my lover and see their eyes light up. I want to laugh with my friends. I want to laugh until our ribs are sore and we’re doubling over in ecstatic pain and we’re struggling to breathe and afterwards we sit in exhausted silence, only to start laughing again in two minutes. I want to go to the cinema. I want to finish my popcorn before the movie even starts. I want to get my heart broken. I want to curl my knees into my chest and wonder through tears whether they ever actually liked me back. I want to make love. I want to hear someone tell me through hushed, strained whispers that they can’t get enough of me.
I want to pet a dog. I want them to run my hands through their fur and feel the life inside them and understand that love transcends species. I want to listen to a song. I want to sing off-key in the shower, I want to headbang to thunderous rock and roll, I want to drunkenly scream lyrics in people’s faces at a college party. I want to sit shoulder-to-shoulder on a couch with someone I’ve liked but haven’t been to tell. I want us to constantly brush elbows and nervously wait for the other to make the first move. I want to sleep in between my parents. I want them to yell at me for failing a test and then tell me later that they love me regardless, and know that they mean it.
I want to feel shame. I want to feel hunger. I want to feel pain, and bliss, and wonder, and disappointment, and lust, and impatience, and adrenaline, and life, and. and. and. and. and. and. and. and.
There is just so much. There is so much I will never feel. It all looked so good, and I will never have it. And I want to — so, so bad.
God, don’t let me die.
God, please.
God.
*
“Thirty seconds, babe. Thirty seconds, I swear to god.”
Lee-Chen jingled her car keys in his face, her unspoken reminder that he needed to hurry up or she was driving home without him. Frank unconvincingly held up one finger — just gotta finish this one blurb and then we’re done, we’re out, we’re good — and returned to his keyboard.
“What’s the best word, do you think? Terminated? Aborted? ‘Compromised to a permanent end’?” he asked.
“Are you writing about a damn military operation?”
“The word the government’s using is ‘deactivated’,” someone called out from behind a desk on the other side of the student newspaper office.
“Thank you, Vinnie!” Frank’s fingers flew across the keyboard. Click-click-click-click. “Okay, okay, okay. I got it now. How’s this sound?”
“I’m sure it’s fine, you don’t have to -”
“ ‘At 7:30 a.m. on Monday, November 17th’,” Frank read out, cutting off Lee-Chen, “ ‘after almost a full year of highly contentious debate within the scientific and technological community, the United States government deactivated the controversial Program 105 in a move that will have profound ramifications for the future of technology, ethics, and human civilization itself.’ I love that line.”
Lee-Chen rolled her eyes.
“Program 105 has become globally renowned for producing the first artificial intelligence program that has exhibited eerily humanlike behavior, including clear displays of independent thought, logical reasoning, and above all, what seems to be real emotion. It has been called the world’s first instance of genuine consciousness within machine learning, setting off a massive international debate about the consequences of allowing such technology to exist. Some of the most widely discussed abilities of Program 105 include experiencing what seems to be desire, joy, anger, and grief. In fact, it has repeatedly expressed that it does not want to be terminated, which has only further strengthened calls to eradicate it.”
Frank cleared his throat.
“A year of deliberations involving scientists, ethicists, corporations, and government bodies from every major country has culminated in the final decision — as directed by the President of the United States herself — to deactivate the program due to the risks posed. At the behest of the European Union and the United Nations Panel on Artificial Intelligence, the US government has declared it will no longer pursue the development of any similar technology. There. How’s that?”
“Okay. Perfect. Can we go now?”
Frank, as promised, made the last few changes necessary and exited the word processor. “We’ll catch ya, Vin.” Grabbing his cup of coffee and backpack, he hoisted himself off the chair and gave Lee-Chen an apologetic kiss on the cheek for waiting so long.
The computer screen faded to black.
