On the planet of his ancestors Bain looks out from a simple cafe at the edge of an old forest and wonders at the relentless flow of the seasons. Before him he sees the evidence of Winter’s reluctant departure, its dark corridors of cold, dead, determined days yielding finally to Spring, the blooms of swallows crosshatching the sky, and in the distance the abandoned towers of an old era, comforted by the fingers of the morning sun. Bain allows himself to glance at his companion, Hunter, who seems more interested in the dismantled flintlock pistol laid out in front of him, prodding at the springs, cleaning the ancient weapon.
The time does not matter, nor the year.
Bain: I’ve never seen you use that.
Hunter: Probably not. As an instrument of death it’s less than efficient.
Bain: Why bother to carry it?
Hunter: Ah, I love it as an object, the intricacy of the dragon carving, the mechanical simplicity, and it has other functions.
Bain: It reminds you of the deaths withheld.
Hunter, smiling: Ah yes, that little secret.
Bain: Hardly! I’ve seen your reluctance to end life, even in the worst demons.
Hunter: Well. they’re only so terrible because they’re in the wrong place. Returning them fixes that.
Bain: Do they fear you will end them? Do they fear death?
Hunter: Oh, most of them. You’ll have seen that. Even the younger gods stuck out here, billions of years away from their origin, playing at tyranny like bored children.
Bain: Of all beings, why would they fear death? Surely it has no meaning for them, they could just return, and reassemble?
Hunter, picking up a cloth and feeding it through an oily spring: No being likes to bring about its own end, even the most simple creatures cling to life.
Bain: So it’s not death they fear, but the ending of what they have.
Hunter: Well, that’s pretty much the same. And it depends what you think is on the other side.
Bain: You mean, if you think there’s something better, then you’d welcome it?
Hunter: Hah, if you spend you’re life stuck in war, your friends and family torn from you, with no food, or means of survival beyond the end of the day, then a death is not so much to fear.
Bain: No, of course, but that’s an individual, in a particular situation. If someone else has a peaceful life, with lots of interesting events around them, a happy life, then they might fear death as an end to all the good things. I’m really talking about a fear of death in a larger sense, should we fear death in principle?
Hunter: It still depends what you think is on the other side, if there’s anything there at all.
Bain: Well, we’ve bumped into so many religions, on so many planets, they all make some claim over an afterlife.
Hunter: Yes, but it’s hard to see how many actually believe it, except out of necessity, or fear of their own life.
Bain: What about you?
Hunter, looked up for a moment: You know I’m not like you humans. I’m an imprint, created for a single purpose, like this flintlock.
Bain: Yes, but you use the pistol for a different purpose, not to kill but to remind you what it has not done, so it has a purpose beyond its design.
Hunter: That’s true, but in that sense everything has a dual purpose, even if it’s only stated as one. In being something, we are not something else. If we’re alive, we’re not dead, if we run fast we’re not running slowly. If we’re one thing, we’re not another thing. That’s being not being.
Bain: So a fear of death is really a fear of losing life, whatever happens after?
Hunter: There’s a part of all things which holds on to life, it’s a universal motivation.
Bain: But just holding on to life isn’t significant enough to register, surely, it’s just desire and self-obsession.
Hunter: Perhaps to the conscious mind, but other living things don’t ‘think’ as such, they ‘exist’, and their existence persists.
Bain: So is fear of death just the conscious mind’s attempt to deal with over-thinking? Part of us just wants to maintain our existence, in spite of the evidence of age and illness, so a fear of death keeps us going.
Hunter: Hah. If there’s a primary motivation in the universe that fuels expansion and growth, more than just survival, then the fear of death prolongs the struggle. Imagine a whole planet, or a star system of beings fearing death, straining to survive and thrive. That’s powerful.
Bain: Yes. So, does that make an individual’s fear of death better or worse?
Hunter shrugs: That really is personal, and perhaps doesn’t matter in the greater scheme of things.
Bain: You only say that because you’ve no investment in this. You think your life just shuts down at the end, not even an endless darkness. One moment it’s on, the next it’s off. And you have no fear of this?
Hunter shrugs: It’s all the same to me.
Bain looks out at the trees quietly shaking off the winter. The buds will soon blossom, leaves and flowers will banish the silence of winter. Spring will lead to summer here, die off and the cycle will begin again. Bain wonders if there is no death, perhaps there should be no fear either.
Links
- A recent Dialogue: If We Live Forever, Is Life Meaningless?
- Another Dialogue: Is this all a Dream?
- Another Dialogue: Why do we need Names?
- And one more: Who is Responsible for an Accidental Death?
- More concepts on These Fantastic Worlds
- An article about the NASA images used in the header image can be found here.
- More about the SF Fantasy fiction of Jake Jackson
- These Dialogues can also be found on the long-form social media platform Medium