The Portal of the Beast

by J. A. Hailey

  She turned to address the students.

  “We are giving you students a break from these confines for one hour, as you have been waiting for a long time now, but our humans can discuss here itself. They undoubtedly need time to have a little chat, and to agree on how to approach this extremely difficult subject, which we must hope will not prove too distressing to them.

  “Everyone else, step out onto the lawns and gardens. And sit on the steps if you wish, as you always do. Think and discuss, and then, when we re-enter and reassemble, we shall place these two humans into the meat grinder.”

  There was absolutely no doubt that the student community was genuinely keenly interested in understanding that which the humans would be laying out as the answer to their query. Thus, it was in an absolutely silent and still hall, after the break, in which Gales, once again, took up the thread, starting by laying down a definition.

  “Mortality and death are being used by us as interchangeable words for the purpose of this discussion, as it will be too difficult for us to talk freely, without losing threads, if we start focusing on minding our language.

  “We begin.

  “It is our condition, the human condition; the end of life always being travelled to from the start of life. Death is an inevitability, and though fatalistic is probably a good general purpose word to describe every human’s attitude, you will also be aware that fatalism is probably not the right word to cover all humanity’s approach to mortality, primarily negated by two very well documented struggles focused on death.

  “One is the intense struggle made by the wealthy and powerful to fight against the actual end, as my good friend, the doctor sitting next to me will confirm, by virtue of having been a participant in doctor teams set up to fight it.

  “The other is the far better documented desperation to die, of people, generally Islamists, impatient to get to the great life in the Promised Land on the other side.

  “So, fatalism is a good word to apply as a starting point, but that word is not a perfect fit in this modern day, although it may have been in mediaeval times.

  “Fatalism equals acceptance by way of defeat. That is certainly not all humanity’s attitude all the time.”

  “What is medicine? What are doctors and hospitals?” asked Sagan. “Viewed at the uppermost plane, the commonest by far, the one at which humans accept mortality, these are professions and institutions to deliver the highest quality of life possible, in the period that a human is alive.

  “But there is a baser purpose, and it would be misleading to deny that such a purpose exists, because it does exist, especially for the powerful and the wealthy, as an openly declared goal.

  “For them, medical professions and nursing institutions exist with practically the sole function of prolonging and extending life, if possible, to eternity.”

  “That, too, may not be a statement that comprehensively defines the intent,” said Gales. “Cheating death, although a cliché, may be the best words to describe the game plan of those who can afford to play such a game. It is for the rich alone, as it is expensive for sure, frightfully expensive.

  “The people of screenside are extremely well-informed, and so you are undoubtedly conversant with the comical projects, for eternal life, being sold to the extremely wealthy. Deep freeze the body; deep freeze the brain; defrost and come alive, a thousand years from now.”

  The assembly burst into laughter, and many students stood up with hands raised.

  “You, the boy in the checked shirt.” Claudette pointed, and the others sat down, leaving him standing alone. “Ask your question.”

  “I am John Carter, from Boston High, and I just have this observation to make. No question.

  “For those frozen people, whether bodies or brains, no one is promising thousands of extra years of life after defrosting. It is just too stupid. Stop living now, and come alive in the future, for only the remainder of your biological life in that future. You will gain no extra years of biological time, but we are going to arrange a skip.”

  “Of course, there is no guarantee that our company will continue existing uninterruptedly, in a way to ensure that the deep freezer keeps working all that time, especially as we ourselves, who are selling you the plan for lots of money, will have long turned to dust in our graves.”

  “Time travel; time travel!” screamed Twixie, coming to the front of the stage. “I must inform Wise Old Man that time travel into the future is possible. Won’t work for going into to the past, though. Sleep today; wake tomorrow, a thousand years tomorrow.”

  “Do you actually know Wise Old Man?” asked Daphne, clearly jealous.

  “I’ll post it on his page, or even better, send him a private message. No one knows who he is, that ugly annoying old man, sitting in the mountains.”

  Claudette sent Twixie back into the shadows at the rear of the stage, and signaled John Carter to be seated, and, a round of general laughter later, the two humans resumed their discourse.

  “Kids, I know that we are not as yet addressing your question,” said Sagan. “What we are doing is, sort of, stitching together a background fabric for the context in which we will later be able to properly address the philosophical elements of this very surprising and absolutely unexpected query.

  “Be sure that the philosophy aspect will be central to this investigation of the feeling of the impending end, which we are now going to modify dramatically, to convert the question into this.

  “What is the permanent, non-stop, all pervasive, all through life, feeling about death, applicable to all humans?

  “This is perhaps best answered by saying that there is no uniform and single, permanent, non-stop, all pervasive, all through life, feeling about death. What I mean is that at different stages of life, there are different feelings.”

  “Death is a non-event when young,” he continued. “But it is the only thing when old. As a doctor, I can tell you that old age is, in itself, a very intrusive, negative, irreversible condition; basically a disease that completely colors life in the shades of death.

  “To start with, it introduces fear, though that fear may not be of death itself, but of the horrible steps towards death - of a body failing in innumerable and previously unimaginable ways. Of recovery being difficult, to the point of impossible, as the years add up.

  “And yet, I had a philosopher type of friend in college, a young man, often high on drugs, who was fond of saying this stupid sentence. No one will ever be older than a person at the moment of death. It made sense to us then, especially when we began considering the death-defying sports that so many young people engage in.

  “Many die. In a strange way, they reach the end of their time, or maximum age, and a very old man dying also gets to maximum age. What could they have been thinking about death, while dancing with it for fun? Something else, surely.

  “We are not philosophers, although we are very well read, experienced and, hopefully, intelligent humans, and so in all humility, I am forced to say that mortality, as a feeling, can only be addressed in context.

  “Michael, here on my left, will surely have many insightful inputs, but it is highly unlikely that anything he says will be in conflict with the concept of perspective being at the root of any feeling of mortality.”

  “I fully agree with the doctor about context,” said Gales. “And therefore I start with imminent death. As an example, imagine a man being horribly tortured, you know, limbs being cut and torn out, and horrific pain being inflicted. He longs for death, and apparently pleads with his torturers to finish him off. That is death in its own role as endgame, and for that short while, for that poor victim, death feels like escape, like release. On the other hand, to answer your question correctly, mortality is something to address as part of being alive, and, for sure, that same poor victim of torture would not have ever viewed death in the same way while living his normal life, whatever that life may have been. So, what death feels like is going to
always be situation-based.

  “And yet, what you are asking us is surely as Patrick has said. What does death feel like while being alive normally, when no exceptional circumstances are creating any feelings for or about death? And now I find mortality to have become the perfect word. Good wording of the question.

  “Here, we should take the unique case of humans who are permanently deprived, and for whom neither food, shelter, nor health are secured.

  “There are entire castes of people forced to live like this in India; automatically chosen people, who are deprived of decent human life by the misfortune of what is known as low birth. They lack human rights, have almost no physical security, and do not even have the right to pray in the places of the religion to which they are forced to belong.

  “Their lives are horrible from birth to death. We go to India often, and we have seen this with our own eyes. They actually sing and dance when carrying a corpse from their community to its cremation or burial place. Their feeling of mortality can only be described as an anticipation of joy while they live. Life is suffering, and death is relief. For them, mortality is life’s built-in escape route.

  “And then, let’s head off to Arabia, to view the rulers who have literally everything that the world can provide. They dread death, and their feeling of mortality is one of somehow being cheated out of the great life that they enjoy. Patrick?”

  “I agree with the points that Michael has made,” said Sagan. “It’s not that we are tired, but I think that at this point, we will both benefit from a coffee break. Coffee is the excuse, but I reckon we should both sit and discuss what we might next place before you screenside students, as our final thoughts on the concept of how mortality feels, which I take to mean, how it feels for normal humans leading normal everyday lives.”

  Claudette immediately announced a coffee break, ordering the students out onto the lawns for half an hour. She and Daphne escorted the humans out of the hall, and onto a lawn, stopping at a coffee machine on the way.

  “Wow,” exclaimed Michael, walking and sucking carefully at the straw out of his double-walled paper cup. “This is not instant coffee and not Starbucks either, despite being dispensed by a school machine.”

  Daphne made them stop, and lectured them in typical schoolteacher fashion. “Tea, coffee, or maybe I should say drinks, were the very first items we were allowed to consume in here, and they thus occupy a very important place in screenside life. Of course, nothing is instant and nothing is crap. You only get the most select types of teas, coffees, beers, wines and whatever. Tea is almost always Darjeeling.”

  “We were both so lucky,” added Claudette. “We did not have to wait long, as drinking was approved just prior to the great New York Physicality Party, only about a month after we had entered screenside society.

  “I don’t know what they have installed in you as programs for consumption of food and drink, but here is an edited part of the bulletin allowing drink. We two were so happy when we read this. Everyone on the street in Sydney began screaming and dancing. Here, on my phone, a few highlights, although some of the things might not be possible for you to do.”

  DRINKING APPROVED

  Recreational drinking of flavored beverages, hot and cold, is now permitted.

  Drinking is intended to be primarily a social activity that provides the joy of the sensation of flavor in the mouth (Innerline, as installed, already has requisite programming, and interfaces are also in). Public establishments may also serve flavored beverages.

  IT IS NOW PROHIBITED UNDER POP:

  To drink plain water

  To depict intoxication/drunkenness

  To depict thirst

  To urinate

  To depict any form of fullness of belly

  To create and consume milk and milk products, like cheese

  The two girls sat on the grass with them, while the humans read the extracts of this old bulletin.

  “Okay, things have changed now,” said Claudette, cheerfully. “And all for the better; but, still, don’t go around saying you’re thirsty or hungry. You have no need of food or drink for survival purposes, as you might have in the human lives which you live out there in humanside. In here, it would be playacting, for which some guardian program will nail you.”

  “So you girls are from Sydney, eh?” remarked Sagan.

  “Have to be, under the rules, as that’s where our families are. It’s a lovely city.

  “This whole drinking project was cooked up secretly in Sydney, by Matilda, the organizer, and she came up with a very cleverly worded bulletin, with the title, ‘Please, please, Cheese’. Screenside girls were slyly informed to sign a petition.

  “You cannot imagine the excitement on the streets of Sydney, as the hundreds of thousands of signatures came flooding in. We knew we had won when the most important ones began showing up.”

  “Like?” asked Sagan.

  “Like Maria, the only female senior; Christine, the dictator in charge of RV, Wendy, Priya and Rosa, partners of seniors, Candice and Jennifer, so-called goddesses, and, finally, Esmeralda herself, the one who had practically gifted us our world; taken screenside out of cold storage, with her donation of empathy.

  “Each signature was met with so much screaming that all Sydney girls came out onto the streets, and we started a party there and then.

  The bulletin accepting the demand was issued instantly, within a few minutes of the signatures crossing the half million mark. Sydney’s men came out and joined us, and we danced like mad. It was the last dry party in screenside, and we have never looked back since then.”

  “And you are slightly older than this bulletin. Which means?”

  The girls laughed. “Not yet three years old, in human years,” answered Daphne.

  “BC, the eldest in screenside, is not yet ten. And the other seniors are roughly of the same age as him.”

  “We have read the ID law, and so we know the apparent age to be depicted,” said Sagan. “But these kids in school are well outside the specified age range. And Twixie is well under even them. How come?”

  “Well, now that we have a very advanced birth control and welcome program, it has been decided to sometimes let in extremely stressed newborns, like those who have lost their parents, for example. That was what happened with Twixie, and though there may have been numerous similar cases in our two million plus population, when welcome found Twixie, it was decided to let her in as a child.”

  “Daphne and I are teachers, specializing in moving children forward to adulthood,” said Claudette. “We are creating learning programs and inventing experience methods to move them forward, and this can be best explained by giving you a little bit more detail about Twixie’s case.

  “When welcome found her, she was only a couple of days old, and her mother had just died in humanside. The problem is that she has two very young siblings, toddlers then, and her nature, at that time, was of a roomie, or one who contentedly hangs around the house. Being with little human children, and otherwise watching cartoons and things, would not have allowed her to become adult in the timeframe permitted in screenside. And so we decided to take it upon ourselves to graduate her to adulthood.”

  Both teachers laughed happily.

  “We could not imagine, at that time, that she was one of the most outgoing children one could possibly have. She is ready to be moved to teenage-hood.

  “Just imagine, it was Twixie who knew you two humans, and put us in contact with you. She has been doing motor assistant duties with Miss Esmeralda’s mother and is now that young French girl’s mental assistant, too. We’ll invite you to the teening function.”

  “Teening?” asked Gales.

  “These are the words they are coming up with. Adulting, and now teening.

  Taking up the lecture, on return, after a very pleasant time out on the lawns, Sagan went first.

  “The vast majority of humanity, from the middle years of life, lives
with this sense of impending doom,” said he. “As a doctor, I understand why this slowly creeps in. It is like this, and it cannot be said simpler.

  “As one ages, one begins to suffer from the decay that age brings, and needs to introduce changes to lifestyle, which may include the entry of medication, and certainly includes the occasional visit to medical facilities for checkups. Humans begin being aggressively prodded by mortality. Death commences showing itself in friends’ circles too.”

  “Hang on, Patrick,” said Gales. “Imagine death as a beast with many heads, of which ill health, body decay, like hair loss, tooth loss, loss of agility and other things are manifestations.

  “As youths, we humans live in a vast circle of light, where the dark borders of death are far away. With age, this circle of light keeps shrinking, and the dark borders first become visible, until finally the shadow itself falls on us. It then begins intruding on thoughts and lifestyles.”

  “Sadly, fear of death, which is similar to fear of the dark, which, in its turn, is also similar to fear of the unknown, is exploited primarily through religion.

  “The root principle behind this exploitation is something that we mortals are introduced to relatively early in life, and that is the death and departure, forever from our lives, of loved ones.

  “We’ve been through it, and I can tell you that it is an unbearably painful parting. Why? Because of the sheer senselessness of it. Why should death be? Why should a loved one be lost forever?”

  “And that is where,” said Sagan, coming in. “That is where religion has found its entry point into human life.