So, I've been thinking about death a lot.
It's always kicked around in the back of my mind. Like, all living things are doomed to die. I'll die. Probably not anytime soon, but hey. Now I'm not a psychiatrist, so this is gonna sound mostly shitty, but I want you to listen to me when I say dying sucks ass.
As a person who went through this bullshit four hundred twenty seven times, I know that getting your soul ripped out your body is actual horseshit and so are its causes. Fatal wounds, your stomach boiling with poison, your heart stopping yadda yadda methods of suicide aplenty all eat ass and not in the good way. But more importantly, for you to consider committing suicide in the first place, even if you're only thinking of it in passing means that deep down there is at the very least an inkling that whatever you're doing right now, whatever project that you might be working on, whatever goal you're trying to achieve simply isn't worth living for anymore. In fact, it in itself might be the reason why you're considering it, so you may be freed from whatever task or responsibility or burden, expectation, ambition, the list can go on for eons and I could rattle off the ones I personally experience, but we're not close enough for that yet. I hope you don't mind me being uncomfortable telling my life story here.
What I am willing to tell you, though, is that I've always wanted to die, and have died, a fuckton more times than any living thing probably should, but I'm somehow still here. Cursed be my fate, somehow I also remember every last body I lived, and, sure I don't have their personal memories, but I still have to live their lives for a small bit most of the time, and let me tell you, I've seen what shit fate can throw at someone. As the closest example, when I get bodies of Foundation employees, sometimes I still had to hold their job for whatever brief time until a replacement was put in. The horrors I've seen in how these people are treated when they think I'm their regular old punching bag are mind blowing. Then they shrivel up when they see this little doohickey dangled around my neck as if I'm any more human than that person used to be. It's disgusting and I hate it so much when people immediately become lap dogs in front of Site Director Bright but not Researcher Jeffrey Carter, who they must know better than some shady dude that holes up in his office all day. I looked into his records. Perfect attendance, does his job okay, the model form of a corporate office worker. Poor bastard was one of the few that actually did… this… on purpose.
That one time, I got the body of a D-Class and was in the middle of changing out of the orange jumpsuit when Doctor Mike Goodwyn grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around to face him, then yelled at me for worrying him so much over the years, referring to me as Devil Jevil and talking about how much he missed me with a tone both frustrated and relieved, laughing at the memory of a shitty tattoo on my arm that I didn't even notice, asking what the fuck I did to get myself on death row… and then I raised the amulet. I've never seen anyone deflate so quickly.
There was also this soon-to-be senior staff who worked for 30 years with 8 of them in field duty. Her name was Sitara and— wow God, sorry I'm getting emotional— Sitara. She served multiple sites in Asia, which, if you don't know, which I doubt, is a fucking bigass continent with upwards of seven hundred facilities. She'd been the brightest mind I've seen back then, and I was excited to finally give her her shiny new black key card in the Site 40 Seminar Room in front of about three hundred staff that all looked up to her. The whole incident was absolutely stupid, probably the only stupid thing she's ever done. She wore her nicer heels that she didn't bring out often, and of course, she wasn't used to walking in them. Tripped over a God damn tile gap and crashed into me. The moment I opened my eyes as her, I screamed. I've never willingly went to any of her old sites since. Not like they'd welcome the killer of their top scientist anyway.
Aside from, or rather, just like these examples, we all have some sort of unique value that makes us us. Every single one of these bodies? People. Every person that interacted with them? People. Every friend or acquaintance or a polite hello in the lobby every morning that suddenly stopped one day, leaving a person feel not-sad but definitely weird? These are all people. Nothing replaces a human soul, and nothing here can create one, either. They're custom made and made for you. I know, it's in tune with popular Fake Deep philosophical bullshit, but having seen how life is for so many people, I swear by it. But you don't have that kind of time, so aside from learning by experience, you can always pick a God and pray, and really, that's the closest you're gonna get to answering how we happened in the first place, because fuck if I know what's with the life and death system we have.
The only definite constant I can say is that the moment you get ripped out of this flesh cage, God or not, you face whatever you've done with your life and see what hell you've wrought upon this earth. I am no different than Carter or Jevil or Sitara were, in terms of personhood. Whenever I die, though I feel nothing, I remember everything I did and everything that it caused. It always happens every time, and although I'm probably a special case on death bullshit, I can totally buy that memories playback when you're about to cark it. You're mostly gonna remember the bad times that led you to this point, ending your life on a sad note. You don't wanna be trapped in the void with your sad baggage as your eternal playlist, trust me. I barely lasted three days suspended in the amulet before edging madness because holy shit, have I made some fucking mistakes.
Ugh… I just. I'm sorry that this turned into a vent. I keep preaching my own beliefs and projecting my shit and repeating every little message in this rant but I want to be absolutely sure I get the point across that my condition has allowed me to look at a lot of lives these past hundred years so you'd trust me to say that killing yourself is not great. Dying is a fucking bitch, to both yourself and the people who care. Shit hurts. You might be some edgy scenecore emo whateveryoucallitthesedays and shit saying things like, fuck, I'm not important and nobody cares about me. Wrong, bucko. You could kill a thousand men and have some nameless grave in the middle of nowhere but the moment a person with empathy passes by and prays for you or even just wonder what kind of living being is buried there, that shit? It's a person who cares. I care. Someone out there will.
I have to be at another site in about an hour, so I'll wrap it up here with me being level with you. I'm gonna be honest, things are rough. Working here is hell. Maybe you'll see actual hell at one point on the job, God knows. I know this is like, really rich, coming from a Site Director with a cushy position, but a seat up here really did come with its tolls.
Please remember that life extends way beyond what you work on, even if you feel less shitty when you're productive, burnout and anxiety of not being enough will bite you in the ass and refuse to let go. Look around and take a day or two off, talk to your colleagues about miscellaneous off-work shit, pick up a hobby. Find something that makes you happy that has nothing to do with the pressure of contributing work. And if down the line you ever need motivation to keep going, remember this talk of how you will always have value and how shitty dying is. My contact information is in the staff list if you need another dose of my existential rambling, okay? I'm always here for you.
Literally.