Chapter 13
We returned home, unpacked all the stuff, and organized all the stuff, and John went right to work thinking about the portal placement. This part is probably the most gruesome part of our stay. You might not want to listen. You can skip to the next chapter. Because we didn’t precisely mark the spawning point, John decided he needed to die. He broke his bed on conjecture. That means, he believed without the bed, he would have to re-spawn at the spawn point.
“What if this doesn’t work?” I asked. “It should work,” John said.
“What if it doesn’t work?” I asked. “We can’t live here forever,” John said.
“Why? We’re doing fine,” I said.
“We’re doing better than just surviving, that’s for sure,” John said.
“Well, how are you going to do it?” I asked.
“You could hit me with your sword,” John said. “I am not killing you with my sword,” I said.
“You did before,” John said.
“That was an accident! Seriously, I thought you were a monster and you need to let that go,” I said.
“I let it go,” John said.
“Then, why did you bring it up?” I said. “Are you mad enough to hit me?” John said.
“No! We don’t hit people,” I said. “Unless they’re bad people and they hit first.”
“Good for you,” John said. “I could eat zombie meat.”
“I am telling you, it’s heals chester, it will heal us,” I said. “Now is a good time to test that theory,” John said.
Before I could stop him, he had eaten a zombie steak. I looked at him in horror. “I can’t believe you really ate that!” I said. “What if you become a zombie?”
“It was pretty nasty,” John agreed. He hiccupped. “Health bar is indicating a toxin is in my system, but…”
John ran to the composter box and vomited in it. It was green and awful and I wanted to throw up. I looked at the sky.
“Would you like some milk?” I asked.
“No!” John said. “I am okay….” He hurled again. “Seriously, milk might help,” I said.
His hiccups became more rapid. Then suddenly, he was gone. I waited. He arrived at the spawn point, facing away from me. I ran to him.
“Are you okay?”
“Put torches around my feet marking the space,” John instructed. I put down torches.
“Couldn’t we have just used the compass and triangulated this spot?” I asked.
John looked at me. “Technically,” John said. “If my math was better.” He considered. “But now we know for sure, don’t eat zombie meat.”
We walked back to the house.
“How come Chester can eat it and humans can’t?” I asked.
John shrugged. “Maybe they were making super dog food with genetic splicing genes and in the process of doing it, they unleashed the zombie accomplish virus.”
“So, dogs can now live forever, and people die?” I asked.
“The French were probably involve,” John said.
“That is so wrong,” I said.
“Why? The French love their dogs,” John said. “So do Americans,” I said.
“In China, they eat dogs,” John said. “That is so wrong,” I said.
“It’s just a thing,” John said.
“People shouldn’t eat dogs or horses,” I said.
“Old sickly horses are not cool,” John said. “Since Texas stopped selling and shipping horse meat to France, the number of sickly horses has increased, vet bills have increased, and more people are putting down horses, and that meat goes to waste. People still need to eat.”
“I could never eat Rusty,” I said.
“I hope we never have to put Rusty down,” John said.
I was mad. “Horses and dogs are family.”
“They are,” John agreed. “There is a limit to how long we can pets alive and healthy. There is a limit to how long people can live. Death is as much a part of life as being born.”
“Maybe we will get advanced enough in tech, we can just beam you up at the point of death and re-spawn you with a younger body,” I said.
“That might be a solution for 2121,” John said. I was still mad.
“Have you ever eaten horse or dog?” I asked. “I have,” John said.
I was super mad. John sat with me at the table. He put a paper down on the table. He put his hand on the paper and traced out a hand. He added webbed fingers. I looked at him and the picture.
“This is what our hands would like if cells didn’t die,” John said. “All cells have a clock. Cells are programmed to die. If this were not true, you would have webbed fingers, you would have fur as thick as any dog, and you would have a tail, and webbed toes.”
I made a face. “You’re just saying that.”
“As you grow, you make new cells, and loose cells,” John said. “Some of the cells you digest and reuse. Your stomach cells, they replace themselves every three days. You digest these cells, and you digest bacteria cells. We have bacteria, both flora and fauna, on our skins and inside us. They die, we digest them. In fact, we couldn’t live without these organisms. We need vitamin K to live. That comes from bacteria in our guts. If they didn’t die, we wouldn’t have vitamin K. If they didn’t die but kept making more, we would bloat up, faster than Veruca becoming a blue berry, and blow up and die, then they would die. All living things live in harmony with all other living things, and there is arrangement that things will die so new things can come into being.”
I was listening. I was emoting, but I wasn’t sure what I was feeling.
“All animals could live longer, healthier lives through tech and healthy living,” John said. “The earth can support hundred times the number of life forms on the earth, if we do it right. In your life time, you will see an end to disease. You are healthy. You will likely live 2 to 3 hundred years. I am right on the edge of seeing this. I might see it. I might get to live longer than of my ancestors. I am happy to just see us exploring space and settling Mars. There is so many wondrous things to do and see in this world. Death is also a mystery that we all eventual contend with. Don’t be afraid of it. There was an eternity before you came, there will be an eternity after you complete this life mission, but even though this life seems short, it is contained within eternity, which means you exist in infinity. We will always be connected. It just can’t be any other way.”
“Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure,” John said. “Let’s play chess.”
We moved to the chess table. I wondered if I get mad at losing because it’s like a death, or because I want to be really good at it. I know I am getting better in measure. John no longer wins in four moves. That’s the fastest one can win at chess.