“Is death inevitable?” Tattiana asks me as we float down a long glass corridor.
Again with the death thing. Why does she keep flogging this horse? Actually, I’d rather not know.
I follow her into a small room with glowing geodesic panels on the wall.
“I suppose death is inevitable,” I reply. “We have managed to extend life past a hundred but as far as I know there is no immortality pill available to lengthen our years indefinitely.”
She grabs me by the scruff of my neck like one grabs a helpless kitten and tethers me to a body suit in the middle of the room.
“In the following exercise,” she tells me, “you will be presented with a multi-sensory array of images, sounds, smells, and so forth. It is essential that you keep your eyes open.”
“That’s all I have to do? Watch and listen?”
“That is correct.”
She floats out of the room and locks the door.
The lights grow dim, and the panels on the wall light up with video and images depicting gruesome death scenes. The moans and cries of the dying fill the room along with the putrid smell of rotting meat. I can feel the worms crawl on my skin, and though I know it’s just the body sensors, the sensation is real enough to fool a primitive part of me and initiate a death reflex. Panic. The screams. Funeral rituals from various cultures are displayed on multiple panels. Flickering flames in the solemn hour. Hypnotic chants to mourn the dead, and script the rites that make up humanity’s own death reflex. Decay. Fire. The cries of loved ones left behind. It’s all too much to take in. Generations come and go. Disease. Violence. Starvation. Old age. I want to close my eyes, but I won’t do it. I won’t give her the satisfaction. So, I stare at death in all its myriad forms and configurations. I feel like I’m reaching the end of my tether, but just before I get there, everything stops, and a single object floats before me.
A mirror.
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