The day started like any other – horribly and limping wearily into existence. It started with the Sun forcing its way into my room and went all downhill from there. The alarm(s) rang, so did the doorbell, and so did my phone. I ignored them all. I could not, however, ignore the pit of anxiety in my stomach signalling the end of the world. A meeting.
Here I was, drowning in existential dread that worsened by the day, and there my laptop was, with the screen innocently off, pretending not to be the bearer of bad news.
I took the day off. No more. I could not. So I lay there, sharing my bed with a sad imitation of peace, putting off the inevitable moment when I would have to leave bed.
My phone rang again. I covered my head with a pillow and wished it away. It rang louder somehow, and that caught my attention. The screen only said “1111111” instead of a number. How strange. I answered.
“Hello, please listen fully and carefully,” it started. Spam. I hung up. A message pinged immediately.
You should not have hung up. We will call you once more and you should listen for your own good.
No, thank you, I responded politely.
Idiot.
That got my attention. Naturally, my phone rang again, and naturally, I answered. Whoever they were, they knew me.
“Hello, please listen fully and carefully before responding.”
I was listening.
“Did you spend 39 minutes late last night on your phone trying to ask your AI companion how to exist in a world that does not make sense? And did you try to understand how to deal with the idea that everyone you care about will die, and complain about how you did not want to outlive any of them but that you could not put them through the grief of your death? Did you tell it you wanted the world to stop existing?”
…
…
…..
They knew. Might as well answer. “Yes.”
“Are you wondering how we know?” asked the voice.
“No,” I said, clipped and brusque. I would not give them the satisfaction of explaining their smart ways of knowing what I did in the privacy of my container. Let them rot with their knowledge.
There was a pause. Ah, so they were not infallible.
“Well, we have a proposal for you,” they went on. “You are a project manager, yes?”
“Yes.” I would not reveal anything more than I absolutely had to before they did.
“We would like to invite you to join a top secret project with us as a project manager.”
I laughed. I took the day off because I could not carry the weight of working, and they thought they could trick me into work by dangling information about me they should not have had?
“Wait,” and for the first time, their voice sounded panicky. “It is a project that will interest you.”
I was sure it would not interest me. But curiosity, ah, curiosity! What was this project and how did they have this information about me?
“We only need you for a little while,” they hurried on, “and the work will be minimal, and we swear the outcome will be one you like.”
I liked the change in their tone. They needed me. They were now the prey and I was the hunter.
“You need to start with giving me far more information.”
“We are a… an… entity that deals with cosmic events,” they began. Sounded like a load of tosh. “We plan the start and end of projects on a cosmic scale, things you would never imagin–”
Blah blah blah.
“Listen,” I interrupted, “This is not convincing me. You sound like everyone else. You have one final chance.”
“Okay, okay! We propose the destruction of your universe and we would like you to plan it!”
What.
“We think you have the skill and the motivation to lead this.”
My mind blanked. Was I supposed to believe this? Some part of me desperately wanted to. I had been thinking about this for so long as the solution to all my problems and now someone was offering it. Ending the universe meant I would no longer have to deal with loss, no one I cared about would have to deal with loss, and no one in the world would ever have to deal with loss again. It was the perfect solution. But it could not be real.
Could it?
“I’m listening,” I said. “But you need a lot more to even sound sane, let alone convince me this is real.”
“We can show you,” said the voice. “If you allow us to open a portal into your room, we can show you everything you need to know to believe us.”
I was stumped. They wanted to destroy the universe and they were asking me permission to open a portal? Should I be impressed by their social etiquette or confused by their complete lack of understanding of seriousness?
“Yes? Go ahead, I guess?”
My phone turned about twenty degrees hotter in a moment and I hurled it away. The screen lit up, turning into a blazing white that burned holes in my retinas before I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. When I opened them again, there was a gaping hole in the air above my phone screen with something grey, blue and black vaguely roiling. I suppose something was real in what they were talking about.
The voice came out of the phone’s speaker again. “What you’re seeing here is the interference of your universe with another new growing universe. If left alone, both will annihilate each other. One needs to be destroyed.”
“And you have chosen mine, why?”
“Because you wished for it so hard,” they said. “All our systems went into overload with the desperation with which you wished your universe would end. It was an easy choice. We would like you to lead the process because you’re efficient, organised, and resourceful.”
I knew what they were doing. It was the very human technique of flattering someone when you needed something from them. But I fell for it regardless. Never mind that I was nowhere close to efficient, organised, or resourceful.
“What will the project and my work look like?” I asked.
“If you would like to accept this role, we will set up a call with you soon to discuss details.”
There was a loud knock on the door.
“Go away, go away,” I hissed at my phone. “Someone’s here. Call me later.”
My roommate walked in, looking thoroughly upset. How much had she heard? She was the hopelessly-optimistic-and-romantic-about-life kind. She would not stand for destroying the universe.
I smiled tentatively at her. One could hope.
She jumped straight to it. “Are you seriously going to destroy the universe?”
I could not lie to her, did not want to, but I could convey my point convincingly. Show her why the world sucked.
“Think about it,” I said. “Think about the people you love. Think about how it would be if you lost them. When you lost them. It is inevitable. Do you think you could live with that grief? That pain? Can you imagine a world where something wonderful happens, and you want to share it with someone you love, and they don’t exist any longer? Can you imagine that gaping hole loss leaves that nothing can fill? And can you see any pleasure in such an existence? Time stretching endlessly ahead of you with no one to share joy with. Don’t you think joy would stop existing altogether? Don’t you think existence itself is bleak and pointless without people you love? Don’t you think it is better for you to not exist so you don’t have to deal with such pain? But you can’t leave, because then you would be inflicting that pain on the people you love. Imagine your funeral. Imagine how broken it would leave those who love you. What alternative exists, then, when immense pain exists irrespective of whether you die or live? What alternative to destroying the universe can you even come up with? It’s the only true answer to grief.”
I paused my tirade. “Say something.”
“I get it,” she said, and paused. It made me hope. “But don’t you think you would be stripping people of the opportunity to experience joy? To experience hope? Pleasure, happiness, excitement, accomplishment, love, and every other emotion apart from loss? Loss, even. Isn’t loss just love transformed? How can you take that away from others? For yourself, sure, that is your decision to make. But for others?”
I had thought of this and had an answer ready. “Death is a complete end. No one can hope or love or lose after that. And if you don’t exist, what does it matter what you miss? If everyone were to disappear without expecting it, what are they really losing? They won’t know what is coming, and they won’t know they will lose everything including their lives. There is no existence beyond death, and there is no loss that can follow you into nonexistence.”
“It is not a choice you can make for others, don’t you see that? You are unable to live in a world filled with loss. That does not mean others would make the same choice. What if they would rather love and lose than not exist at all? What if they would rather see their parents, their children grow and live and experience life fully, even knowing they would lose them? What if the joy of living overpowers their fear of loss and death? Who are you to make that choice for them?”
As she spoke, I crumbled bit by bit. I did not want to admit it, but she was right, and I knew it, and I was trying to pretend I didn’t. What alternative did that leave? Whose choice would I consider more important, mine or that of my loved ones? What could I bear more, the loss I would cause my loved ones they would never know about, or the pain I knew I would inevitably experience, that I was experiencing already even though there was no real loss yet? How was I to continue living in the shadow of death and loss and grief forever? Was it my choice to make for the entire universe?
But…
Would it truly be so bad to be selfish and blow up the universe? I still believed my argument. All it meant was that I would choose myself over the world, and I realised that was a sacrifice I was willing to make.
I nodded. “I agree,” I lied.