The Death Machine

Hedgewind Jalinbeti was dead. When I say that he was dead, I mean that his heart had stopped pumping blood. The tissues in his body, deprived of oxygen were dying at a cellular level. His brain, once full of thought and energy was also inert; mere jelly encased in a skull that was slowly cooling to room temperature. Hedgewind Jalinbeti was as dead as anyone had ever been.

The worst thing about Hedgewind's death was how disappointing it was for Hedgewind. He knew that dying would be a horrific process. All of his apprehensions were confirmed as he died. He doubted the usefulness of his life. He doubted whether he had ever truly loved. He doubted whether he had ever truly been loved. A choir of cascading doubts and disappointments swirled in his head as his heart stopped. His mind losing consciousness used the last of its faculties to process his greatest doubt; why had he ever lived at all. And then he was dead.

In death, Hedgewind understood that there were a number of possibilities. First of these, he assumed that his mind would simply be cast into a void, a nothingness from which nothing escapes. There would be no thought. Of course he considered the possibility that the clergy was correct. Had he not witnessed evidence of the power of the gods? Surely the powers possessed by the holiest of men were not all illusions.

If the clergy were to be believed, considering for a moment, "Which clergy?"

If they were to be believed, then the mind would not go to the void, but rather to some afterlife prepared by the gods. The gods would, or at the very least should, reward someone who has lived a good life to a pleasant afterlife. This afterlife would be so pleasant as to keep its charm for an eternity. The gods were, depending on which member of the clergy you asked, inclined to punish those who had lived a bad life. Some gods choosing destruction for the doomed soul, others endless punishment, and the third group received the worst punishment of all, an eternity of boredom.

As Hedgewind considered these various possibilities and dozens more, he found that he had run out of gods that he was aware of. He had exhausted his knowledge of rewards and punishments in the afterlife. It was then that he thought to think, "Why am I thinking?"

He quickly decided that the afterlife was not one of immediate destruction. He took some relief that he was not being destroyed; his instincts telling him that he would feel something if he were being destroyed. There would be no reason for the gods to impose a second death to a terrible person if that second death wasn't at least half as terrible as the first. "Why did the gods make death so terrible?" He wondered to himself.

"Maybe they didn't know it was terrible. No, surely someone had told them." He continued to think.

His hand gently brushed his thigh. He could feel. A reel of all the benevolent afterlife possibilities filled his head as he wondered if had the temerity to open his eyes. Would there be a paradise before him or a terrifying hellscape? For the hundredth time he allowed his pantheon of doubts to flash through his mind.