Finally, I feel like writing this. By “this”, of course, I mean this story.
Before I do that, though, I need to talk to you a little about what stories are.
We read stories. These stories can be movies. TV shows. Manga. Books. Anything.
Of course, we read to enjoy. But “enjoying” something like this means wondering how it’s going to end... or at least, it does a lot of the time. In other words, there’s an expectation that there’ll be some kind of end.
Of course, there are probably stories where you’ve said, “This is going to end soon, and I wish it wouldn’t.” But even in those cases, you only say that because you know stories have endings.
Put bluntly, stories are either about whether the protagonists die or are saved. That’s why any stories that move people - and I include myself in this - begin with an ending. This goes for both tragedy and comedy, too. Complex chains of events all lead up to a conclusion, where a combination of coincidences and human action collide and explode into one ultimate point! And this point is why “stories” exist. A character’s “fate,” whether it’s a happy ending or the Grim Reaper’s scythe, exists only for the purposes of the ending.
And if you’ve read this series so far, you know that stories are fictional, and yet control so much of our lives.
In other words... Yes. We think of stories starting from the ending.
A man meets a woman... and they get together, or they break up.
A crime is committed... The culprit is caught, or escapes.
A life is lived... It ends in happiness, or destruction.
Every choice we make is infected with the virus we call “stories”. Our own free will has nothing to do with it. People can’t perceive time objectively. Instead, they perceive it as a story.
It was just after the turn of the millennium, I think. I was in front of a condo in Yamato City, in Kanagawa Prefecture, when I got a call from an old friend. I thought they were calling to go hang out, but instead they were telling me that my ex-girlfriend, who I’d broken up with six months ago, had died. I hadn’t talked to her once since we broke up, but my friend had heard what happened from someone else.
“Huh? Really?”
“Really. Once I know more, I’ll call you.”
“Wow... You’re sure about this?”
“Yeah. Anyway, that’s what’s up...”
“Okay, got it. Thanks for letting me know.”
That’s how I remember the conversation. Completely devoid of meaning. I didn’t feel depressed or confused. I didn’t feel much of anything. But the next day, when I got a call from that same friend to tell me how she died, for some reason, I felt like something was chasing after me.
I felt cold and scared, and the sweat wouldn’t stop dripping down my cheeks.
It wasn’t that her death finally felt real to me, or anything like that. It never did feel “real” to me. I wasn’t going to ever see her again, anyway. The fact that I couldn’t, even if I wanted to, didn’t change a thing.
The cause of her death was something stupid and ridiculous.
She’d had a bad headache, and taken a little more of the medicine she always took than she was supposed to. It wasn’t suicide by sleeping pills. She was used to the medicine, and sometimes she’d taken more of it and suffered no ill effects. The direct cause of death was similar to what’s known as “Economy Class Syndrome”: an arterial blood clot.
The cause of death was sleeping in the same position for many hours, without getting any water.
The words “If only I hadn’t broken up with her...” flashed through my mind. Not to brag, but I’m pretty good at taking care of other people. I would’ve kept track of how much medicine she was taking, and made sure she was getting some mild exercise every day.
But that was actually the reason she’d broken up with me. She’d found that part of me annoying, she said.
—Maybe she’d still be alive today... I thought. If only I’d taken care of her...
No, but of course, that was impossible. It was impossible, but still...
That was what was freaking me out so much. She’d chosen a death that was close to a suicide. No, she had something within her personality that made her more likely than others to die. She was oblivious to her own physical condition, but sensitive to anything that threatened her mind. She chose passivity over action. And her personality was inclined to interpret goodwill as a personal attack. Over the long term, in every respect she was continually choosing death.
Most people say that animals that choose to kill themselves are insane. Supposedly, lemmings committed suicide en masse, but we know now that that’s a lie. (The lie got started when a certain documentary faked them jumping off a cliff.)
There are lots of confirmed cases of animals committing suicide, but as we research them more, we learn that almost all of these are caused either by parasites or poison from another animal. The hairworm, for instance, infects the body of a praying mantis and causes it to jump in the water. Hairworms can only reproduce in water, so they kill their host and then escape into the water.
There’s also a certain type of bee that can control a cockroach’s brain after it implants it with its eggs. The poison it injects steals the cockroach’s free will, and makes it so that even as the larvae hatch and devour its body, it doesn’t feel any pain. And for as long as it’s possible for the cockroach to walk, the bee leads it to its nest. So it’s literally walking toward its own grave.
Humans, of course, are living creatures too. So shouldn’t we try to live, no matter what happens? Doesn’t that mean that suicide should be impossible?
Yes. Humans never die of their own free will.
So what is “suicide”, then? There can only be one answer. Somebody is controlling our brains. I’ll say it again. Our minds are infected with a virus called “stories” that someone has injected us with. That’s why humans commit suicide. That’s why they do reckless things, and die.
But while stories are parasites, they can also bring gifts to humanity. People can’t perceive time objectively. They perceive time as stories. And sentience couldn’t have been born without the ability to perceive time. Stories are what make us conscious beings.
So what happens if we give up stories? No. We have to give them up. If we don’t, we’re finished.
All stories have an end. And when that time comes for humanity, it means our destruction. And when that time comes, we’ll know why the being who planted stories within us did so.
Will something hatch from within our brains?
Or after death, will we be devoured by some huge creature?
And if that’s true, can we give up stories now?
As primitive humans, we must think about what it was that gave rise to “stories”.
So... Let’s go see.