Page 53 - Effable Encounters

Good and Dead

one Sunday morning, while my apparatus—which I dubbed the
exmentator—was turned on but not directly connected to any living
creature, an atherosclerotic rat dropped dead in a cage about twenty
feet away. My attention was drawn by the sudden absence of its
treadmill cycling, a previously constant background noise. I turned
and noted the death, then returned to my work bench. Suddenly the
exmentator began displaying values indicative of the presence of a
discarnate mind, one rather more complex than that of a snail or
salamander. It had to be the rat’s.”
“That spurred me to take a desperate gamble. Perhaps I was a little
unhinged by the decades of solitary labor, isolated socially and
convinced the world was against me. I constructed a much larger-
scale exmentator, powered by fuel cells good for decades of
operation, and managed to smuggle it out, piece by piece, before I
had to quit my job. It was a curious fixation: whether what I intended
to do succeeded or failed, no one alive would ever know it. But I
dared not ask a stranger—or even a former colleague—to aid me:
assisted suicide is highly illegal! So I had to do it alone, at the mouth
of that cave, with the activated exmentator concealed inside. It is
possible that someone will find it one day, realize who had designed
it and why, and carry forward my work.”
“Obviously, all went according to plan. I am here, a mind
separated from its corporeal substratum. That was seventeen years
ago. The batteries will not last much longer. In the meantime, as I
mentioned, a few other deaths randomly occurred within range of the
device. I discovered early on that I could directly communicate with
them, mind-to-mind without any loss of strength or independence.
That contact has kept me sane, although I have no evidence that one
can lose one’s mind if that’s all one is or has! So, Bob, here you are:
in the afterlife, heaven, paradise—whatever you choose to call it.
Disturbing sensations are a thing of the past. So are pleasurable ones,
but memory filters out most of the unpleasantness we’ve
experienced. Thought, in this existence, is unencumbered:
connections hidden in the unconscious are now manifest,
conclusions previously undrawn come easily and contemplation or
meditation may proceed at whatever pace or intensity you desire,
uninterrupted. Now, you must answer me: will you join us?”
“I don’t believe in heaven, or any sort of life after death.”

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