252+ Atk Universe Existentialism vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Human Mind: 3356-3950 (515.5 - 606.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO

[Rattlesnake]

((Continued for Al Gore, Al Gorier, Al Goriest))

Anthony was sure he wouldn't mind being dead.

That said nothing for the process of getting there, of course.

So did his thoughts turn in his solitude beneath the needled canopy. Those thick, heady seconds of anticipation and terror had grown thin and stretched like the season's shadows into minutes and hours, leaving nothing but his racing mind in evidence. A little fire burned beside him, set up somewhere that hopefully wouldn't spread. His bundled clothing and emergency blankets wrapped close around him in the little nook he'd wedged himself into.

He really, really wouldn't. There would be nothing to feel, so there should be nothing to fear.

A death was a tragedy, of course. A painful, drawn-out one even more. A life cut raw from the connections that supported it. But, at the end of the day, your body couldn't be any more unhappy than the rocks and dirt it lay against. That was—not a quandary. Simply reality. The collective fate of those on the island was something none should ever endure, should never even think to happen. Heaven and earth should move before that, and the effort involved would be well-spent. But, inescapably, that end would truly be the end.

Perhaps he would simply awaken afterward, in a higher reality where his entire life had been some idle diversion or project or curiosity. A simulation. It was likely as not. According to those in the know, even moreso. The argument went that life would end before achieving that capability, or it wouldn't; progress was a constant march, and the former seemed less a matter of tilted probability than an outright inevitability. And if that was true, you were either outside or inside; a single star could support more life in constructed habitations than all the planets in its galaxy, and if dedicated wholly to computation rather than physical living space, the synthetic consciousnesses could outnumber the teeming masses by that same ratio. Cast a pebble into that mixed crowd, and who would it likely land on?

And, again, what would it matter? The thing that would awaken would only think itself the same entity. His mind played by the rules of the sandbox it played in. Could that base collection of neurons that called itself his identity lay claim to the broader world that opened before him at that point? More likely, there wouldn't be, and whatever awakened would only think itself the same. It would be him, but he would not be it.

That was something for him to worry about—or not worry, as it were—later. For all his unbidden stoicism over the final trajectory of his existence, in the here and now, he would fight to the last to avoid it all coming to pass. Existing was all he'd ever done; ceasing would be absolute anathema. The here and now was, by definition, all that mattered, and so it only made sense to grasp it with all one's might. It would be a long night, and a cold one. One with untold pain and agony past the other side. And he would do his best to see it through. To see the next day, and the next, and the one after if possible. That was what his flesh wanted. That was what he wanted.

And, there was a chance... he reached out toward the stars peeking through the trees, closed his fingers. Skimming just beneath them, or so he could almost believe. It was all so frustrating. They were so close. The sky he could no longer see ended more closely than the nearest human habitation. In a world fast divulging the final secrets of its surface, discovering wherever the fuck they were seemed such a trivial point of awareness. A place where people ad very clearly been already, no less. Billions of people, and millions at least well invested in the unfolding tragedy of the minute. They were in someone's back yard, certainly?

At some point, sleep snuck up on him, and the next day arrived.

((Continued elsewhere))