Word Count: 1762
There’s a glint in the eye of the unshaven smuggler as he drains his cup. He seems exhausted but satisfied. His hideout is well chosen, a small moon tucked against a gas giant close enough to a major tradeline that just grazes by this star system but I always know where he would go. Now he’ll fret a bit and kill time, waiting for his ride.
I fidget with the rifle again. His eyes loom impossibly large in my scope. They’re dark, the color of starless night, and I shiver slightly in anticipation. This is where it begins, where he discovers the meaning of life.
He’s about to deliver his first batch of Buddha’s Smile. And a great wolf will embark on an illustrious career of utter destruction, selling eldritch seeds designed to poison entire systems, atomic planet killers the size of a pill and automated military grade terraformers bigger than this miserable moon. No man will ever cast a shadow like this destroyer of worlds.
I must remove him from this plane of existence before he becomes too powerful, and ensconces himself under endless layers of security. I’ve torn my being to shreds, crossing gorges of time and space, to hunt this midnight moment down. And then, I sense her presence and my existence brightens briefly. My wife whispers in my ear, teasing almost. “What’s going on in that head, Tathagata? Don’t you want to talk to me anymore?” The lilt the artificial voice captures is haunting, uncanny. I know the AI mapped every last valley of Sara’s mind before she died but still… I want so badly to escape, to lose myself in her.
The voice twists, brisk and urgent. “Hang on, this is how your mind copes with danger. We’re not done yet. Samsara’s going to drag on a while longer, look at these coordinates.” She’s been monitoring vitals and the environment. I tilt my head uncomfortably, my wife is right as usual. I watch a robot sentry with a steel back arched like a wolf’s doing rounds in the far distance on my HUD. I’m surprised I haven’t noticed it till now and want to curse. It’s harmless in its current position but that could change very quickly.
The weight of my idea. Isn’t it too much for any person to bear? Could I not cross the pitted landscape and try to talk it out, let him know what happens to Sara? But he’s never met her and would never believe who I was. He would put me down as a weak psych-op by one of his opponents. I would be disposed of and he would instantly forget me. For that is the nature of his odyssey.
Trying to relax, I pump my arms slowly to avoid excess motion and pretend with all my heart that the Buddha’s smiling at me again. It might as well be that. The mystics were right, there’s no way to put it in human terms. Nirvana, extinction, the blowing out, liberation, meridian, enlightenment. So many words, so many useless descriptions, to box in the indescribable. I should know; I’ve taken so many drugs, stimulators, inhibitors and emplacers all my life (cCan’t remember much of Radeshi Port) but even I never dared touch the one called Buddha’s Smile.
For good reason: they say a merchant should avoid sampling his wares. My underlings were right to be afraid. Their faces creased with worry, alien and human, stared at me like I was a broken toy.
Alscin, my gleaming, round lieutenant, probed my bloodshot eyes. “Boss, you ain’t going to remember yourself by the end of this. This thing. One warlord always pumps it through a target system just before his invasion fleet. You know, to soften things up. It’s good for…pacification.”
He unnecessarily paused for effect, cyclopean eye bulging, before swallowing abruptly. “Boss, Ohhh, I seen the vidfeeds. They stand like zombies. And that damned, empty smile.” It’s not very surprising. Buddha’s Smile is designed to inhibit a subject’s egotism but in heavy doses, it completely evaporates what humanity still prefers to label the self.
Most humans take the drug maybe twice or thrice in their life. The drug affects everyone differently but I like to imagine my case is unique. It didn’t unfold in me like a lotus flower with each petal stretching towards infinity. Instead, I felt no relief, no sense of standing apart from my selfhood. So I pulled and pulled as more of the substance rode through my body. I’m sure it had never encountered such a concentrated, monstrous will. But it quickly mutated, becoming a slow, twisting master of my heart and mind. For a long time, the two wrestled within me in a silent, titanic struggle.
Neither truly won. Yes, the line between the world and my selfhood was gone like sea mist. I know now that there is no difference, it is all one thing. But my selfless act is also one of gratuitous, flagrant ego leaving me gasping for air. To do the greatest good regardless of the price or bloodshed, that would be my greatest achievement. And so I became Tathagata, thus gone. Should I smile benevolently like some saint?
“Are we ready yet?” the disembodied voice drops casually. My reverie breaks, I have more important things to do. “Nearly there, Sara.” I whisper to the frigid air. Her voice seems to slur in my glitching mind and I see her again like she was that first time on the landing platform in New Dakar. Sara seems so sharp and clear, like a lantern blazing in the pitch dark. Her loud, nervous laugh, reassuring of life and goodness like nothing else. I knew she was the only real person in that muddling crowd. But her gaze… I saw the steel in her soul even then. She was, oh so tough!
The AI and I argued for a long time about this final act. First, the reasons why. Wouldn’t somebody just as easily fill those big death dealer boots? Wasn’t violence intrinsic to the human experience? What’s justice in a pitiless, arbitrary universe? All exhausted till the last one, why does it have to be me?
Sure, I had enough money left to strap some anonymous professional into that infernal temporality portal which I slaved over so long and consumed so much capital. Many died testing the first imperfect prototypes, what was another life thrown away in the path of my sacred cause? At least, I wouldn’t torment myself in twisted knots anymore.
I won the messy debate. The AI ultimately acceded to my whim in a way Sara never would. Not on her life! Sometimes I forget how long it’s been. But then it slashes at me again, what she faced alone at the end with that streamlined, mindless seeker-killer.
Thirsting for revenge, I sifted carefully through its destroyed carcass for clues to its origin like a hound greedy for a scent. Trying to tease it out, I took the end-user coding apart but it kept going off in infinite loops, meticulously dense and beautiful. Completely untraceable. I became possessed by the thought that the drone had originally belonged to me before I sold it off onto my endless network of intermediaries. The intricacies in the coding only deepened my suspicion. I guess it shouldn’t matter. I mean with a snap of the spine, her’s was only one of the billions of lives I’ve extinguished in one way or the other.
But it doesn’t feel a distant throbbing pain now… It’s useless and my eyes burn again with shame and self-pity. Mercy! I summon up the names of Buddha to my bubbling, writhing mind. I try deep and calm repetition, each sequence part of a cascading order, the prayers marked by flashing colors in my mind.
“Take the solution now. It’s nearly time,” the AI informs me quietly as my HUD flashes suddenly, the sentry has creeped into my self-defense zone and caught me unaware.
“Why didn’t you say something?” I ask her but the AI curtly informs me to get ready before it’s too late. And I realize the system has carefully shut all the doors behind me, just as carefully as Sara might. My spirit suddenly feels light. Guilt is a useless weight and it’s time to free myself, perhaps to join my Sara. I will annihilate myself with my own weapon just as she was. This is my atonement for so much pain inflicted on the universe. “Of course, thank you….you always did take good care of me,” I murmur to the wind. I take a long swig of the crystalline solution to steady myself before the shot.
The sentry has spotted me now despite my thermal camo-layer. I remember now the sensor I installed that allows it to do that. The robot is an old close-combat model but very fast. It explodes into a ragged looping run, gouging up rock and dirt, as it traces a path to my position.
The universe compresses, becomes horribly, narrowly flat as I begin this most elaborate and longest of suicides. I take long, cool drafts of air. All the time, my rifle goes through its own personal rituals, making micro-adjustments on the perch I’ve settled it on. She’s a fine beast I’ve lugged, autocalibrated for a thousand ballistic parameters.
It shouldn’t be easy to squeeze the trigger on your own self. The weak body in my sights seems pathetically frail. He’s scratching that bony chin of his. The fragmenting slug will shred him into a thousand pieces but it doesn’t present much of a dilemma at this moment sharp as a wolf tooth. Given the chance, I would have no last words to say to him. It’s the fate we both deserve, our utmost destiny.
All those lives, my love above all, weigh infinitely more. I want to close my eyes for a second but my eyelids barely flicker. The solution is doing its silent work. Only a little of the path remains now and my greying mind is starting to shutter. Remember, if you meet the Buddha on a road, make sure to kill him. No one ever needed the man, only the idea of him and his unfathomable smile.