_{Dr. Tal—Anguish—David—Mesopotamia}

I was telling Dr. Tal that my life is has been so stagnant, has been so useless, and meaningless, and vain, even for myself. For many people, at least they could live for themselves, wanting at the very least to see another day. I don’t have that, either. Many times I lie in bed and look at the ceiling and hope that I would die instantly. Nothing painful, hopefully. But just vanish. And I don’t even want to go to paradise (not that I am invited). I want to vanish and diminish finally into total nothingness. The Buddhists had some sense of this; in many schools of Buddhism, and some schools of Hinduism, the goal is to achieve nonexistence—that is, escape the cycle of birth and death.

I read also that in some schools of Buddhism, it was very much possible to become reincarnated as a god, but the gods themselves wish to be reincarnated into people, because gods do not have the motivation to practice (the practices necessary for enlightenment), living lives of almost complete pleasure and leisure, and so have little chance of achieving Nirvana. As with Christian cosmology, humans are at the cusp of the scala naturae, and this very enjambment between the divine and the worldly is what spurs them to yearn for something greater.

I yearn for nothing greater. Or lesser or the same. I want for nothing, and I want nothing. This is why I cannot end myself, either. But I am totally in anguish. In my younger years, I suffered from anxiety, a kind of constant fear in the distance, pinning at me. But now I suffer from anguish, not fear but actual pain, constant and bearing down on me.

After David, I played so many video games. I did barely anything else apart from play video games for months. I gave him so much, and he left so abruptly. I was so sure that he would never do anything like this; it had not even crossed my mind that he would be capable of it. I called him my beaver, in the stupid way that I do. He was Canadian, that was the most obvious reason. But he was also hardy, hard-working, never complained, noble. Cute. I suppose at the end of the day beavers are also rodents. Wild animals…

We went to a traveling exhibition of Mesopotamian History at the SMX Convention Center. My clone, Elmer, and I were there. Emily and Danny were with us, but they were in the mall. Emily wanted to buy components for her computer.

Elmer and I were staring at a statue of a king, now crumbled, although more or less intact. To think that this thing had been around for thousands of years. I imagine the moment of its creation, what it must have been like for that sculptor. Was it an ordinary day for them? What did they have to eat that day? Were they in love, did they have a family? What were their secrets? They couldn’t have imagined that, someday, beyond what they could possibly ever fathom, someone would be staring at their work at a place like this.

I said, “Do you think you could make a time machine that brings us to ancient Mesopotamia?”

Elmer thought about it for a moment. He was staring at the statue with me, his hands behind his back, his glasses dangling at the tip of his nose.

“Sure,” he said. “Although the further back you travel, the more dangerous it is. As you might have guessed.”

“How dangerous?”

He turned to me. “When you ask questions like that, it scares me.”

I shrugged. “Anything worth knowing is worth risking your life for, don’t you think?”

“No,” he said. “Sometimes, maybe. But often no.”

“Is it like fifty percent? Sixty?”

He took some time to respond. “I’m going to have to make the exact calculations to even give you a ballpark figure,” he said. “But the chances of making it are just as likely as the machine being destroyed before we even get there.”

“So fifty-fifty?”

“No.”

“That sounds like fifty-fifty.”

We moved on, looking at the other specimens on display: Vases, tablets, other statues, chariots.

Elmer said, “You’re not really thinking of doing it?”

I shrugged. “If you’re willing, maybe we could.”

“We?”

“Who’s going to drive?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not going to risk my life to go to some ancient shithole. I don’t know what you think Ur is like, but that place must be terrible.”

“Because it’s ancient?”

“Among other things…”