Page 15 - Ferry Tales

Mallflower

I was asking too much. She couldn’t sit still.
“No, this isn’t right. Heaven and Hell aren’t supposed to be real. I
wanted completely out of the game. Extinction. Zero.”
“I’ve got no information about Heaven. I’m a simple ferryman, not
a tour guide. As for totally extinguishing, like those Indian guys who
devote their lives to being sinless, it’s mathematically impossible. I’ve
explained that to them, one at a time, for centuries: don’t make me
try to simplify it enough for your benefit.”
She gives that a bit of cogitation; then says, “Like karma? I’ve got
to come back as some lower form of life, like those pathetic slobs on
reality TV, because I sinned by killing myself?’
“That’s all wrong, Mallflower. Do you think Hell is a temporary
way-station, like a dressing-room in a costume shop, where you put
on a different outfit based on your newly diminished size? Big fallacy,
there, really! Hell—let me make myself perfectly clear—is forever,
starting for you in just a couple of minutes. You’re not going back. If
your pill-popping was an attempt to evade ultimate justice, either by
total self-erasure or reincarnation, it did not and cannot succeed. As
the epigrammatist says,

Suicides only prove
That zero feared
Equals zero craved.

That zero is simply the end of your earthly existence: you know it’s
going to happen sooner or later, so you try not to fear it; but you also
know you can make it happen at any time, so you try not to crave it.
No matter. Does it deserve punishment? Not in the abstract, of
course. Apart from anything else you’ve done, the circumstances
surrounding your self-destruction are what will get your ticket
punched for Hades.”
She was still fixated on her big moment. “But it’s a victimless
crime!” Yes, she came up with that tired old solipsistic oxymoron.
“Not you, or anybody or anything else was damaged? Then why
did you do it, Mallflower? Are you going to make a case for
martyrdom? Were you helping anyone by removing yourself?”

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