arobotlivesdownstairs

The rest of David’s journey is incidental. The important part is the destination. Sort of the opposite of what we’re taught.
Where he emerges, it’s Star Trek set design, too much blackness behind the foreground, unfinished, unpainted. Columns and arches that could be cardboard or marble. The figures sit on high, blocky chairs like thrones, all angles and hardness. They may be absurdly tall and broad but they seem mostly human, red clothes more uniform than robe, and though they exist apart you get the feeling they’re all holding hands in another dimension. With voices many-layered, feminine, masculine, animal, water and wind, ticking clocks, vast drums, they speak in unison: “It’s not that we don’t want you here, but no one has dared for so long that your presence concerns us.”
And then individuals.
“Why here?”
“Why now?”
“What do you hope for?”
And David notes that they don’t ask him who he is, or how he came to be here. “Did you expect me?”
There’s big eyes in these giants, it’s easy to register reactions. They are affronted. Probably.
“Answer ours.”
I am here against most probability, should I be humble now? He wonders. These beings have lived so long that he can puzzle indefinitely. What’s that song stuck in his head? Remember that boat, how sick you got? How many worlds did I visit to get to this one? Why do I think I’m this important?
“I hope you will change how death works.”
“Audacity. It’s what we love about you. Your little hands and your big ideas.” That one seems more male, if you have to engender androgynous beings.
“You mean people?”
“Of course. All of you. You’re a hubristic bunch.” And this one more female, because you have to, like David, having grown up with guns or dolls. But what is it about her that makes her her?
“But we cannot change death. We’ve tried.”
“It doesn’t work. Then the one that should have died suffers, and the ones who would have been left behind suffer too knowing the sufferer should have died and they themselves will suffer the same. That’s a lot of suffering in a sentence or a life.”
“Then I don’t want you to change death, I want you to change time. I’ll explain, but first, answer my first question. Did you expect me?”
“Yes. No. Someone, but not you. But you make us curious. Please explain what you are asking for.”
“Allow time to be relative and elastic according to the will of its observer, and not just like when you’re distracted and it seems to move faster. Actually alterable. Then you’ll fix the broken thing about death.”
“More.”
“Everyone would get to say goodbye when they were ready, and if you weren’t ready but the other was, time would just get altered for the two of you, one sped up and one slowed down, and the remaining years for you would be a blink for them.”
“You sound like a child asking for this. It can’t be this simple.”
“Ruth. She was the one. And she got cancer and died. And at the end, she chose death. I saw her stop fighting. I saw her decide it was enough. Have you ever felt her fucking skin after she dies? And I’m not stupid enough to think that if we cured cancer we’d cure giving up on life. Something is bound to make us tired and give up at some point in our lives. I don’t think that will ever change. And I don’t think it’s right to stop someone from giving up when they’re ready. But this is how it should have happened. Ruth should say, ‘I’m tired David, I really need to go.’ And I would say to her, ‘I love you, and go.’ And I would mean it. And for her, she’d go. But for me, I’d see her get better, and we’d spend more years together, and I would say to her, forty years from now, ‘I’m tired, Ruth, I really need to go.’ And she would say to me, ‘I love you, and go.’ But my life with her beyond her being tired, a blink right before she died. And for her, she got to say goodbye when she was ready. It’s just relative time. You make a second for her actually be forty years. There’s all kinds of configurations that would allow for the minimum amount of suffering. And judging from your manner, and your uniforms, and the weird voices, and the mythological levels of difficulty it took for me to get here and talk to you, I’m guessing you can make that happen. At least. If I am a child, fuck it. Fix it. Fix this nonsense.”
It stops there. I think that’s all we can ask.