repeat.
“We’ve confirmed 2,796 deaths,” the communications officer from Interpol explained. On the same day, at the same time, 6,582 people all attempted suicide, and a little less than half of them were successful.
I subtracted the number of successful suicides from the total number of attempts: 6,582 minus 2,796 equaled 3,786.
For 3,786 people, that fateful moment was less than fatal.
The communications officer in my AR projection was still talking. Apparently several of those involved who had survived their initial attempt eight hours ago were in critical condition, meaning the total death toll could still rise.
Those “involved.”
Apparently, it had taken Interpol and all the senior Helix agents participating in this AR gathering quite some time to decide exactly what to call them. Were they victims? Suicides? For so many to attempt to end their own lives at the same time, they had to have been under some kind of influence or had been, indeed, victims of some sort of coercion. Yet look at any one of the people in the resulting pile of corpses and you had to think they did it themselves, all on their own.
Okay, people were allowed to grieve, fine. If one of my friends died, I’d grieve. But to sit back and judge someone else’s choice, someone completely unrelated to you—to talk about “public property” and “resource awareness” when someone just died to justify giving someone’s life a cold look? That was what I called arrogance, and I wanted no part of it.
Miach would have thought the same thing. Rather, Miach did think that.
But not the rest of the world.
The only reason the suicides weren’t punished was because they were dead.
Beyond the admedistration’s reach. Finally.
If someone were to come up with a way to effectively punish the dead, I’m sure the world wouldn’t hesitate. I knew the regimen of drugs and counseling awaiting the failed suicides—it would be an earnest attempt to reclaim the resources the “involved” very nearly squandered, to patch up these damaged goods and put them back on the assembly line. To reinstate them as the basic unit in the medical economy, so that they could fulfill their societal function as consumers. Cian and I knew how that went. Been there, done that.
Except Cian wouldn’t be coming back this time.
Suicide was an offense punishable by disdain. Even if it wasn’t technically a legal offense. I remembered Miach telling us how the Catholics buried their suicides in the middle of a crossroads as punishment for betraying God.
Admedistrative society, lifeist society, hadn’t quite figured out how to treat suicides yet. The gravediggers wanted to know if they were victims or perpetrators. So, uh, ma’am? Should we just go ahead and dig this hole in the crossroads here, just to be safe?
People had no idea what to do. I didn’t blame them. Lately, not even battlefields produced this many corpses. In lifeist society, it took old age, accidents, and the occasional, very rare homicide to result in a body. Otherwise, people just didn’t die. Cancer and other diseases were targeted in real time by WatchMe and removed. The all-important credo that was resource awareness helped us keep ourselves in check. Keep your WatchMe updated and your body fat ratio low.
The people who had killed themselves eight hours before were suspended in space over a chasm that ran between criminality on one side and victimhood on the other.
I participated in the Interpol/Helix session from my hotel room. The Helix Inspection Agency had called the AR
“We’ve confirmed 2,796 deaths,” the communications officer from Interpol explained. On the same day, at the same time, 6,582 people all attempted suicide, and a little less than half of them were successful.
I subtracted the number of successful suicides from the total number of attempts: 6,582 minus 2,796 equaled 3,786.
For 3,786 people, that fateful moment was less than fatal.
The communications officer in my AR projection was still talking. Apparently several of those involved who had survived their initial attempt eight hours ago were in critical condition, meaning the total death toll could still rise.
Those “involved.”
Apparently, it had taken Interpol and all the senior Helix agents participating in this AR gathering quite some time to decide exactly what to call them. Were they victims? Suicides? For so many to attempt to end their own lives at the same time, they had to have been under some kind of influence or had been, indeed, victims of some sort of coercion. Yet look at any one of the people in the resulting pile of corpses and you had to think they did it themselves, all on their own.
Okay, people were allowed to grieve, fine. If one of my friends died, I’d grieve. But to sit back and judge someone else’s choice, someone completely unrelated to you—to talk about “public property” and “resource awareness” when someone just died to justify giving someone’s life a cold look? That was what I called arrogance, and I wanted no part of it.
Miach would have thought the same thing. Rather, Miach did think that.
But not the rest of the world.
The only reason the suicides weren’t punished was because they were dead.
Beyond the admedistration’s reach. Finally.
If someone were to come up with a way to effectively punish the dead, I’m sure the world wouldn’t hesitate. I knew the regimen of drugs and counseling awaiting the failed suicides—it would be an earnest attempt to reclaim the resources the “involved” very nearly squandered, to patch up these damaged goods and put them back on the assembly line. To reinstate them as the basic unit in the medical economy, so that they could fulfill their societal function as consumers. Cian and I knew how that went. Been there, done that.
Except Cian wouldn’t be coming back this time.
Suicide was an offense punishable by disdain. Even if it wasn’t technically a legal offense. I remembered Miach telling us how the Catholics buried their suicides in the middle of a crossroads as punishment for betraying God.
Admedistrative society, lifeist society, hadn’t quite figured out how to treat suicides yet. The gravediggers wanted to know if they were victims or perpetrators. So, uh, ma’am? Should we just go ahead and dig this hole in the crossroads here, just to be safe?
People had no idea what to do. I didn’t blame them. Lately, not even battlefields produced this many corpses. In lifeist society, it took old age, accidents, and the occasional, very rare homicide to result in a body. Otherwise, people just didn’t die. Cancer and other diseases were targeted in real time by WatchMe and removed. The all-important credo that was resource awareness helped us keep ourselves in check. Keep your WatchMe updated and your body fat ratio low.
The people who had killed themselves eight hours before were suspended in space over a chasm that ran between criminality on one side and victimhood on the other.
I participated in the Interpol/Helix session from my hotel room. The Helix Inspection Agency had called the AR
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