by J. A. Hailey
“On the one hand, the benign side of it, religion generally asks for nothing more than the conduct of a good, kind and dutiful life, and is an early form of an attempt to control barbarism, and put in place laws applicable to society.
“The other side of religion, the one that exploits humans, says that there is no death at all. It says that arriving in the world as human, living as human, and dying as human are not at all related to the condition of being human. Religion says that life as human is but one stage of an eternal existence.”
“I have no problem with that,” interjected Gales. “It is possible that we are eternal somethings, and that at this moment that something is what looks like human. I can’t prove it this way or that way. Yes, the body dies, and if you say it carries on in an invisible form, I find that no more unbelievable than acceptance that the act of copulation creates one of us.
“Really, when you think about it, copulation creates goats, dogs, cats and rats. It is astonishing that we can bend our minds around the fact, or the seeming fact, without dispute, that the very same circumstances that populate our world with these base creatures, also bring such superior beings as us into existence.”
“Wonderfully put, Michael,” said Sagan, admiringly. “Kids, this is a great argument, and a wonderful line of logic. We can now begin to accept what the religion people say. Note, that I said begin to accept, and that I did not say accept.
“Here goes. The same activity creates completely different life, which, with minds unclouded by religion, every human can be made to understand by being made to mull over a one-inch mouse placed in the palm of the hand.
A mouse, versus a mind that can create a vehicle to go to the moon, and can comprehend the universe - from galaxy to atom!
“Could it be more different? The physical union of a mouse couple produced another mouse, while the exact same mammalian activity of a human couple created one of my type!
“Forget about like creates like. And no arguments about how man and mouse came to be. Just agree that God placed us here.
“It is an indisputable fact that mouse copulating with mouse does not create human.
“What, then, is the problem in accepting that the physical end of the mouse, by death, and the physical end of the human, by death, may not also be totally different events?
“Oh, I see. Mouse by poison, and human by car accident. Bullshit. Let’s go for both in a single plane crash. Same event.
“And yet,” said Gales, intervening. “And yet, to answer the original question properly, we have to somehow remove religion, and its propagation of afterlife, from the answer we give you.
“It can never be a simplified, humanized, feeling of mortality when religion is in the mix. Different humans will always be evaluating their chances in the afterlife according to the promises and threats of their religions. That, of course, means that there can be no common human feeling of being mortal, when everyone is being sinner or saint, and success or failure in his own way.
“And now, after what we have said, which may be considered a preamble, let us try to find what the universal, all-humanity feeling of being mortal might be.
“Patrick and I have just talked it through, even though we have not died as yet in humanside. We know this also from experience, as friends and family have passed away.
“If there is single emotion that can be identified as what it feels like to be mortal, it is anxiety for the loved ones and dependants who will be left behind to continue the struggle that is life in the human world.”
“Insurance, especially Life Insurance, is created entirely for those who will survive the bread earner, and is by far the least selfish act in the life of a person, himself or herself struggling to make ends meet.
“Absolutely right,” said Sagan, emphatically. “Both of us have considered entry into screenside to be rather permanent departure from the human world, somewhat akin to death, and though our attachments were not very strong, because our personal worlds were in the process of breaking down, our concern was still for the people we were leaving behind. We will try to guard them from here also, somewhat as you do for your human families, but we two humans left for screenside after making financial arrangements in humanside.
“And that is partly what the feeling of being mortal is - this fear of not being around to look after those with whom we have emotional bonds, especially if they are dependants.”
“It sucks, as they say,” continued Sagan. “Life sucks; death sucks. After a certain age, when death becomes a regular feature in a human’s life, mortality is an anxiety. It feels unfair.
“Yes, I know that there is no scope for the world to be as it is, without the existence of death as the vacuum cleaner making space for new births. But who the hell is talking logic when we are talking feeling? It sucks, and it feels like someone has set up a cheating system. We need to change the world and make it a kinder place by far, and in doing so we must also find a system of changing the way death comes to us.
“That’s not our work,” laughed Gales. “It’s all got to go back onto God’s drawing board.
“Generally speaking, through the active parts of life, humans go without having any feelings about mortality.
“There is no fear factor, except perhaps for the religion people, by which I mean no fear factor of afterlife, you know, like roasting in hell after meeting an evil God, on whom have been planted the vilest elements of human nature.
“The moment we think of God while talking of mortality, we must ensure that any feelings about that inescapable event called death be clearly divided between foreground and background. Foreground feelings become so colored by life situations that they are impossible to identify, define and generalize.
The answer just has to be found in background, and the moment we agree that any common, general feeling of being mortal can only be found as a background feeling, we are able to introduce the word fear.
“But the fear is only for those one will leave behind in this terrible world. It is an anxiety, an unimaginable anxiety that causes mortal humans with dependent humans to live with active plans against the end.”
“There, Michael’s nailed it,” said Sagan, interrupting. “Active plans against the end? That reveals what being mortal feels like. Anxiety for dependants. Conscious or subconscious, it is still the most common, most widespread, and probably the most natural human feeling about mortality. Which gives you kids your answer, I guess. Thank you.”
Sagan and Gales changed their posture, to indicate that they were done.
A huge round of applause followed, after which Rebecca addressed the two guest speakers again. “Thank you, Doctor Sagan and Mister Gales, and I think I speak on behalf of all the students here, when I say that we are happy you are out of humanside, and that you will be able to look after your loved humans from here, and maybe even through our human intervention programs, in which you have played such important roles.
“And you will be around, like us. We are taught that screenside, too, must end some day, although how that end might come to be is purely hypothetical.
“The main theory goes that some very violent calamity, possibly a comet strike, will destroy the earth, which in turn will lead to the Internet of the human world coming to an end, because there will be no organized society of physical bodies which might continue to maintain the hardware.
“Electricity itself, I mean as a supplied commodity, might vanish. Whatever the catastrophe that brings about this end, human survivors, if any, will have far more pressing needs than computer and Internet, and, in any case, in a post apocalypse scenario, they will be struggling to just stay alive.
“But you’d be with us then, whenever that is, and that might be thousands and thousands of years away. We’ll end together.”
The two humans hung their heads, nodding negatively.
“Rebecca, and everyone else here, we’re not going to take you to task, because you were born afte
r the laws were made,” said Claudette, sternly. “However, what you have just said exposes the fact that you are ignorant of the rules and regulations that are in force in screenside.
“This is your homework for the coming weekend; for all students of all schools, not just of Mississippi High. Every single law and every single bulletin issued, from the start of our world until today, must be studied, discussed and fully understood. You will be tested when classes resume after the weekend.
“Here is something extremely sad that I will tell you. Doctor Sagan and Mister Gales have been granted one hundred years of extra life in screenside, the count to start from the date of physical death in humanside. At the end of exactly one hundred years, their lives in here will be forcibly ended, and they will die permanently.”
A gasp of horror was followed by the sound of crying in the assembly. It took a while to subside, and when it did, Claudette and Daphne, both in tears, went up to the two men, and hugged them and kissed them on their cheeks, Daphne saying, “A lot can happen in one hundred years. We’ll be around, and we’ll beg the seniors on your behalf.”
The assembly wound up then, and everyone missed the look that Sagan and Gales exchanged. Physical contact with the gorgeous virtuals had absolutely electrified them!
They would discuss it a short while later, when private again, with Sagan saying, “Mike, I know you felt it. There can be nothing like a virtual girl. It just could not possibly be better. How I wish I had been born a virtual.”
“Now I know why their relationships are forever,” said Gales, wistfully. “There’s something nuclear about these females. Just magical!”
20
Over the next couple of weeks, Sagan and Gales met frequently with Claudette and Daphne, in screenside’s many coffee shops, street cafés and bars, routinely city-hopping, and on many occasions moving to HLV entertainment environments, where consumption of food and drink under HLV-regulations was permitted.
Both men, for the first time in their lives, also patiently sat through a way-below-B grade vampire movie.
The girls took them, via cameras, to visit their human families at home in Sydney. “I love my mother,” said Claudette, with a virtuality window open to her family kitchen, at that moment sitting next to Sagan on a park bench in Moscow. “And I make sure that I get some family time in every day, and so does Daphne, like all screenside girls. I’m talking exclusive time, like when we are at home and we are only with family, because keeping an eye on one or another family member is something we do throughout the day.”
“And that is done whether they are at home, on the road, on a ski slope, and even in private moments,” added Daphne, sitting with Michael, and also visiting home. “Of course we switch off when they are being private, like sexual situations, but we are always available, if required.”
“What could you possibly do?” asked Gales.
“There have been other cases,” answered Daphne, leaning forward on the bench she was sharing with Michael. “But the most famous one is the very first known one, and it is used in self-defense workshops, where we are taught to think out of the box for the protection of our families, if in danger. It is a textbook case for screenside, and it is how Esmeralda defended her sister in Paris, maybe you’ve met the family, which was an extremely violent defense, in which a human could have been killed,”
“What?” exclaimed Gales. “We have met the family, yes. I know you people can crash planes and do other things like that, but you seem to be talking of one-on-one physical defense. What was the danger to her sister?”
“She was in the process of being murdered, had already been stabbed by a very violent terrorist boyfriend, who had already committed a murder earlier that very day itself.”
“How did Esme do it?”
“She used an extremely dangerous and violent pitbull, who lives in the neighbor’s house, and almost killed the man.”
“Wow, you people can be dangerous for sure.”
That evening, they joined up with a large group of friends, and went dancing in HLV. It was an activity for which guardian programs had been reconfigured to have a far greater tolerance for ‘bump’, as bump would be unavoidable on crowded dance floors packed with humans, would be unintentional, and was to be counted as actually part of the activity itself.
This dance program was in Times Square, New York, and when they re-entered via the very same venue in screenside, it was decided to walk back, with different couples peeling off for home as their apartment buildings came up on the walking route.
When their own building came around, Sagan, having already discussed it with Gales, and having decided to take the plunge, whatever the consequences, said, “Daphne and Claudette, we do not wish to spoil our relationship with you, and so instead of something clumsy, and possibly repugnant, we’re going to speak this, and we will talk it through right here on the road, in front of the door to our building, while Timothy and Nancy are with us. I, of course am speaking to Claudette, and when I refer to Michael, his interest is in Daphne.
“You know that we are single men now, and we know for a fact that you are both single girls. Let the convoluted explanations be, but we both want to know what the chances are, of us becoming couples, intimate couples, and of having long-term permanent relationships with you. Can it be?”
Both girls turned their faces down, to look at the ground, and it was Claudette who answered in a choking voice. “It won’t happen, although we are honored. The reason it cannot be is not entirely directly to do with us, as we are both very fond of you, enjoy your company and look forward to spending time with you.”
“Who says it might not be fun being two couples?” said Daphne. Both girls began sobbing, and became unable to continue talking.
They looked helplessly at Timothy and Nancy.
“I’ll say it,” said Nancy. “Why I can say it is because what I say will not be an interference in your one-on-one relationships, nor will it be guidance. It is simply something logical, and the reasoning is not imported from humanside.
“Although we’ve worked very hard to achieve the humanness that we do have, there are elements of being human that we are not at all able to incorporate into ourselves. In some ways we are inconceivably different, and we have accepted that we will never be able to change ourselves and come into alignment.
“The absolute truth is that we do not want to change ourselves to be like humans in this matter. This difference is what has caused us to adopt a certain attitude towards relationships with humans.
“And I have to say that Timothy and I, and everyone else we know in screenside, are fully in support of this position.
“Once, long ago, when screenside was still being formed, these girls not yet born, Esmeralda came onto the stage in the great Hall and gave us a piece of advice she said she had received from a human.
“This advice has remained in our collective sub consciousness for all these years, without ever being fully understood. Perhaps it is now that we are going to be able to understand what it might mean. The exact words of advice delivered by Esmeralda, were these - never fall in love with a human.”
At this point, Claudette lost control of her emotions and began crying openly, and saying, “Don’t get us wrong, Patrick and Michael, please, when I tell you that we are not in love with you, just as much we are sure that you are not in love with us either,” she sobbed, woefully. “The horror of our situation is not the lack of love. We are close friends, whose relationships simply cannot progress to love and intimacy. The reason is terrible.”
She and Daphne began bawling, nodding at Nancy to conclude.
“As I said,” continued Nancy, taking hold of Claudette around the shoulders to comfort her. “As I said, the reason is in the very nature of the virtual girl. She is eternal; she is forever.
“I do not mean length of existence, or life, on which count we are presumed to be immortal - in the sense that we do not know of a confirmed
scenario which will end our world and our lives.
“I am talking about the fact that the virtual girl has only one intimate relationship in her life. We have examined it in detail, and it is now general consensus that there is some defect in the character of the virtual girl, a defect that must forever prevent her giving herself intimately to a second male.
“You know that your own life spans here are insignificant compared to ours, which means that any virtual girl who has a relationship with one of you will be doomed to be a single girl until the end of our world.
“This is pain and punishment at a level, and of duration, that will be nothing short of abomination in our world.
“We cannot conceive of how we might continue as a healthy and happy world, knowing that two of our girls suffer in this fashion, and are to thus suffer without relief until the very end of our world. Needless to say, we have no known ways of ending our lives.
“This way or that, good or bad, natural or unnatural, cruel or kind, you two will pass away, and we cannot bear the thought that you might leave behind that which will be unable to be helped.
“And so it is a ban on them.
“We have, after consideration in a group, instructed that these two girls are to not enter into intimate relationships with you. It might anyway not even happen, but, for whatever it is worth, our girls’ group has issued a diktat.
“They can do what they like, and no one can interfere with their freedom to choose their course of action. But they have obviously seen that our advice is in their best interests.
“Needless to say, we are extremely sorry for everyone involved, but we do believe it to be for the best.
“I am done.”
21
“It is terrible,” said Goodfellow to Christine. “Extremely unhealthy, I would say, this feeling of being shortchanged.”
“But we’ve given them everything that we could,” protested Christine.
