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TRYING TO STAY DEAD

by Richard S. Crawford

There was a red-haired woman in the animectomologist’s waiting room who stared at me hungrily the whole time I waited for my appointment. Something about her gaze unnerved me and I fidgeted in my seat, looking around the room at everything else possible besides her. When Dr. Bell’s assistant finally called me in for my appointment, I stood up and hurried through the door she held open.

“You ready to do this, Roger?” the assistant asked me.

I nodded. I’d spent the last two months getting myself psyched up for this. My animectomy would be not just a rite of passage, but a relief. Self was such a burden, after all, and without that burden I knew I could finally get my life in order. But now, the animectomologist’s office, with the array of gleaming silver probes, ivory knobs, and glowing LED’s surrounding the gleaming metal chair, gave me pause. I hesitated.

“You’re nervous, aren’t you?” The assistant wore a simple pink smock, the kind dental and mental hygienists all over the world wore. She had gleaming white teeth, perfect skin, and smooth, shiny hair. Even this close up she looked like a model. I could tell she took impeccable care of herself.

And why not? She’d already gotten the Snip. I could tell by the ever so slightly unfocused look in her eyes. Not like the ravenous stare of the woman in the waiting room.

“I’m kind of nervous,” I replied. “I mean, I’m ready, really, I am. It just seems… weird. It’s so final. You know?”

“It’s not weird at all.” The name tag on her blouse read, “Sammie.” “I had it done three years ago, and I’m sure I was as nervous as you are now. But it’s so easy. You don’t feel a thing. All this machinery, it all looks intimidating, but you just sit here, the doctor does his job, and snip! You’re done.”

“You make it sound so easy, Sammie.” I tried a brave smile on, but it fit awkwardly on my face. Nevertheless I sat down on the steel chair and tried to get comfortable.

“You’ll be fine.” Sammie pressed me back gently against the chair, then strapped me in, wrapping bands around my legs and arms. “That’s just so you don’t get surprised or jump or anything during the procedure. There could be complications.”

I nodded.

Sammie nodded, then stood up. “Okay, you’re all ready. Doctor Bell will be with you in a moment.” She left the room, and I watched her as she did so. She obviously worked out. It showed in her ass.

I lay back and closed my eyes. Maybe, I thought, this was a stupid idea. Everyone I knew had gotten the Snip, and they were all better people afterwards. Kinder, more thoughtful. They took better care of themselves. They got along better with everyone, and they were always smiling.

I couldn’t help wondering if the Snip wasn’t just some sort of fancy lobotomy. But it was supposed to be painless, and while it wasn’t mandatory, the government was strongly encouraging everyone to have the Snip.

The door to the small room opened again. In stepped a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a perfectly groomed beard and a smooth face. “Hello, Roger. I’m Doctor Bell. How are you?”

“I’m a little bit nervous,” I told him.

“Oh, there’s no cause for that. You won’t feel a thing. I’ve performed this procedure close to three thousand times.”

“Any fatalities?”

“None so far this week.”

My heart thudded in my chest. He must have heard it because he laughed. “No, no fatalities, of course not. No complications at all.” He pulled a wheeled stool from the corner of the room and set it next to me, then sat down. “Let me just adjust a few things here.” He reached up, fiddled with some of the knobs. “Okay, you ready?”

I gulped. “Let me

*SNIP*

think about it for a moment more,” Roger says, but even before he finishes the sentence, the procedure is done. Roger blinks.

“Wow,” he says.

The doctor smiles at him. “There, see? That wasn’t so bad at all.”

Roger looks around the room, a look of wonder on his face. He waves his hand in front of his face, and says, “Wow.”

“You’ll get used to it,” the doctor says. He takes a small pad of paper out of his lab coat pocket and scribbles on it. “I’m going to give you some post-surgical care instructions. There shouldn’t be any problems, but we want you to stay fit and healthy, of course. Here.” He tears the slip of paper off the top of the pad and hands it over.

Roger looks at it. The instructions are to exercise, eat healthy, sleep well, and be happy.

“Think you can do that?” the doctor asks.

“Of course,” says Roger. “This looks easy.”

“It will be.” The doctor smiles one last time and leaves the room. A moment later, Sammie returns. She unstraps Roger, helps him stand up, then gives him a big, friendly hug. Roger, smiling, returns it.

The red haired woman in the waiting room no longer has a greedy look on her face when Roger looks at her. With a look of disgust, she stands up and leaves the office.

Roger turns back to the desk and fills out the last of the paperwork. Then, still smiling, he leaves the office, looking like a man ready to start a new day and a new life.

#

Roger spends his first few days after the procedure cleaning up his apartment. He has a lot of stuff. None of it gets thrown away, but it gets all arranged carefully on shelves and in cubbies. He has thousands of books, hundreds of compact discs, and piles of magazines spread throughout the apartment. Between taking care of himself, cleaning up his apartment, and going to work, he barely has time to spend with other people.

On Friday night, his telephone rings. He picks it up and answers it, “Hello, this is Roger.”

A woman’s voice squeals at him from the earpiece. “Oh my god Roger! It’s Theresa! You’ve had the Snip, I can tell, haven’t you!”

Roger nods. “I don’t know what I was so worried about. There really wasn’t anything to it at all.”

“Everyone knows that, Roger. You’re so funny. Hey, you want to get together? Go on a date? Tonight? I mean, I know you’ve been attracted to me for a long time but… Well, you know.”

Roger smiles. “Of course I would, Theresa. Nothing would make me happier.”

“Great! I’ll pick you up at your apartment in half an hour, okay? I know you’re probably still getting used to things.”

Therese and Roger say their goodbyes. I hung up the phone and looked at it for a moment, happy to hear from Theresa, then goes to his bedroom to get ready.

#

Dinner is well prepared, and the movie that Theresa takes Roger to is full of spectacle and music. He doesn’t think about dinner during the movie, and after the movie he doesn’t reflect on it. But that’s okay because everything is good. He looks at Theresa appraisingly, and when she looks at him he blushes and looks away.

Theresa smiles. “Would you like to come back to my place?” Theresa says.

My heart thuds in my chest, and I said, “Sure,” then Rogers shakes his head in momentary confusion.

“Are you okay?” Theresa asks.

“I’m fine,” Roger says. “There was just a little…” He pauses, then shrugs. His smile returns.

Theresa shrugged. “That happens sometimes,” she says. “Sometimes after the Snip there’s some… Well, some slipping. It’s nothing to worry about. Come on, let’s go.”

She takes his hand. Roger follows, the grin never leaving his face.

#

For a couple of weeks, things are great. Roger and Theresa meet just about every night, have dinner and go home to have sex. They talk about the things that couples talk about: things they enjoy doing, their future together, and so on. They agree that if they have children, the children will have the procedure done as early as possible.

On a Thursday night two weeks after Roger’s procedure, Roger and Theresa have sex. The smiles on their faces and the noises they make are high pitched and full of laughter. But toward the end Roger pauses because I suddenly felt full of joy. I tried to ignore it. For a moment I did and Roger goes back to the task but I couldn’t keep it up. I withdrew from Theresa and lay down next to her.

“Roger?” Theresa says. She reaches over and gave me a kiss. “Are you all right?”

I shook my head, trying to shake this thing out of me. “I think…” I wasn’t sure how to say it.

“The Snip didn’t take,” Theresa said.

Roger smiles. “No, it’s fine,” he starts to say, but then I couldn’t finish. She was right. It had been happening every now and then for almost a week now. I had been ignoring it, trying to deny it, but there was no more doing so.

“I’m so sorry,” Theresa says.

I blinked and looked over at her. My heart sank. After the Snip, everything had been so nice. No awareness, no doubts, nothing. But now it had worn off, and that sucked. I felt like a huge weight had been placed onto my chest. I struggled, and tried to bring back the feeling that the Snip had brought me. “Don’t be sorry,” Roger says, but the feeling only lasted for a moment.

Theresa’s eyes did not focus on me perfectly. Behind them, I knew there was no consciousness, no animus. No sentience. No experience of qualia or sensation. Nothing but pre-existent behaviors and complex reflexes. It was truly bliss. Roger tries to bring it back inside himself but I wasn’t able to. Not fully.

“Go back to the doctor,” Theresa said. “He can fix you again. Come and make love to me again.”

I tried, but it was hard, knowing that she was not experiencing any of it.

It was better for me the first time around, when I didn’t feel it and was unaware that it was happening.

#

Sammie was just as gorgeous as the first time I’d come in. She led me not into the exam room I’d been in earlier, but into Dr. Bell’s main office. She gestured at the leather chairs in front of the desk.

“Sit down,” she said. “The doctor will be in in just a moment.”

I sat and watched as she left and closed the door behind her. Blissfully mindless automaton or not, she still had a nice ass.

I looked around Doctor Bell’s office.  Everything here was in perfect order. Texts by Yablo, Chalmers, Blackwell, Nagel, and Kripke lined the bookshelves. They were all pioneers in the field of animectomological studies and had paved the way for further philosophical work and for the procedure itself.

Doctor Bell opened the door and stepped into the room. “Well, hello, Roger. How are you?”

“I’m pretty miserable, Doctor Bell,” I said. “The Snip didn’t take. I want to schedule another one.”

Sighing, Doctor Bell sat down behind his desk. He shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he said. “Spontaneous reversal of the Snip isn’t unknown. We’re still not sure how it happens; an ontological mutation to the essential phenomenological construct, we think, which causes a spontaneous reintegration of the internal experience of self. Some sort of Cartesian impairment, perhaps.”

“Is it curable?”

“I’m afraid it’s not. Phenomenological deconstructs hindered by ontological deformations are notoriously difficult to treat. The best experimental philosophers have struggled with the problem, but all attempts to establish a full physiological denial of the self experience have failed.”

I had no clue what he had said. “What?”

Doctor Bell smiled condescendingly. “In brief, no.”

I sank down into my chair.

“Don’t worry. Many people have gone on to live full and complete lives, despite being burdened with a full awareness of self. I can recommend a series of exercises and techniques to help you overcome…”

“No,” I said. “I’m not interested. If I can’t have the real thing, I don’t want it at all.”

“Very well,” Doctor Bell said. “Then is there anything else I can do for you?”

I shook my head. My heart was sinking into my chest, and all my limbs felt heavy. Still, I forced myself to stand up. “Thanks for everything,” I said. He waved at me, and I left.

#

I tried to get together with Theresa once more because it seemed like her presence helped me just a bit to recover the senselessness that I’d felt just after the Snip, but I couldn’t. She was sweet, but there was just something there that she and I couldn’t both be a part of together. I broke things off with her and she cried, but felt no sadness. She acted sad, with tears and a runny nose, but inside, I knew, there was nothing at all. I could, at least, console myself with that knowledge, though it would apparently never be true for me.

She was a beautiful woman, though. I knew it wouldn’t take long for another Snipped man to find her.

I let my life fall apart. Overburdened with my sense of self, I gave up on eating well, on exercising, on sleeping.  I gained back the weight I had lost. My skin had been clearing up but now blemishes were starting to appear again. I tried to keep up with my job but I kept getting distracted by things I felt, things I became aware of, such as my own thoughts and feelings. After awhile I just gave up. Everyone else in the office had been Snipped and they all seemed so happy. No one here could share this burden with me either.

I felt nauseous.

None of my friends could sympathize with me. None of them shared my burden of self. The loneliness was unbearable.

Finally I could take it no more. I went outside the edge of the town on a Wednesday night, to where the Emperor Norton Bridge connected San Augustin with the other side of the bay. I drove halfway across, then got out of my car and stood at the edge of the bridge, leaning over the railing and looking down at the water.

“Hey there,” said a voice to my right.

I turned. A young woman, hair red like blood and wearing a simple white dress, stood on the edge of the bridge, just a few feet to my right. Her bare toes dangled precariously over the edge but she made no effort to retain her balance. She seemed perfectly stable. I recognized her from the waiting room of Doctor Bell’s office.

“Are you going to jump?” she asked me.

“That’s the plan.”

“Why?”

I sighed. How could I possibly explain myself to someone like this? “It’s a long story.”

She peered at me, her eyes boring directly into mine. “I saw you at Doctor Bell’s office. The Snip didn’t take for you, did it?”

“No, it didn’t.”

“And so you’re here about to kill yourself?”

“It’s the agony of being,” I blurted out, unable to contain myself. “I just wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be able to not care, to just ignore everything and not worry about anything.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, that’s perfectly reasonable.”

“Yeah. So I’ve had the taste of emptiness, of the state of nonbeing, while still being here. I can’t take this constant awareness of myself, especially knowing that everyone else around me is unburdened with it.” I hadn’t realized it, but my voice was actually getting louder as I spoke. I took a breath to calm myself.

For a moment, the two of us stood in perfect silence, letting the wind blow over us.

“Wow,” she breathed at last. “What magnificent bullshit.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Oh. Nothing. I mean, I’ve heard some real lame excuses to commit suicide before, but that one was one of the worst. You should have thrown in an unrequited love, a crushing debt, or at least a dead puppy. Agony of being?” She scoffed. “Pathetic.”

“Well, what about you? What’s your excuse?”

“For what?”

“For killing yourself.”

“Oh, I’m not going to.”

“Then why are you here?”

She smiled. “I’m just here to catch a snack. I was hoping to catch you at Doctor Bell’s office, of course, but that didn’t work out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s no need to worry yourself about it. Just go about your business, all right? Pretend like I’m not here.”

Fuck her, I thought. I stepped over the railing and looked out over the ocean. The water down there was awfully choppy, and looked very cold. Of all bridges in California, the Emperor Norton Bridge had the lowest suicide survival rate. And the city had done nothing to prevent people from jumping, aside from plastering a few fliers with the number of a local suicide hotline.

The woman yawned loudly. “You going to take all night there?”

“Fuck you,” I said. I said it to the woman on the bridge. I said it to the bridge. I said it to the ocean, to the cities on either side of the bridge. I said it to the world, to God, to Doctor Bell, to Theresa and Sammie, to mutagenic phenomenologies. I said it to my brain. I said it to a universe which wouldn’t let me let go of myself, which made me hang on to a consciousness that I never asked for and never wanted.

“Fuck you,” I repeated. Then I said it again, just for good measure. “Fuck you.”

“You’re boring me,” she said.

Annoyed, I let go of the railing and took a step out over the open water. Then, before I could have a chance to back out, I took another, and then I was falling.

I’m not sure what I was expecting. The wind rushed past my ears and onto my face. The way my hair flew around myself and the freshness of the salty air were exhilirating.

I closed my eyes and savored the moment. Then opened my eyes and looked down.

The water rushed up to me with a malignant solidity I would never have been able to foresee. My heart leaped in my chest. “This was the wrong idea,” *SNIP* Roger says aloud, and then his body slams into the water, and he stops

That was easier than I thought it was going to be. He was so anxious to let go, so I just grabbed his animus as he was falling, and took it into myself. I don’t know if he’s aware that he’s inside of me. I don’t know if any of them are.

I take one more deep breath of the night air and step back over the railing onto the bridge. I’ve got things to do here before I move on.