Chapter 2: Solitaire

One year ago

I never introduced myself did I? I guess it doesn't matter much now. I'm Dave. I'm a college student at a large Indiana college and my major is currently undecided. I live in mortal fear of choosing the wrong path, so I choose no path at all.
I came to a liberal arts college so I could sit in the air conditioned lecture halls and think big thoughts, but the only big thought, I mean my biggest thought, came to me at work. To help pay for all my big thinking, I got a job with University Storage driving a box truck. The university is as big as a small town and all the different supplies, furniture, records and assorted shit has to be moved and stored. Sitting in my work shirt, my name stitched over one pocket, waiting for something to need to be stored, moved or otherwise attended to, the end of the world occurred to me.
People will tell you that they saw this all coming. People, from the President of the United States down to some poor bastard locked in his hall closet with one shotgun shell and zombies murdering his family outside, will tell you that they knew this, or something like this was bound to happen. Super germs and particle accelerators and cloned sheep would all lead to this.
I say bullshit.
It doesn't take a genius to know that the ship is sinking if they're feet are already getting wet. It doesn't take a genius to know something is wrong when, in lieu of flowers, people start bringing rifles to funerals.
I saw this coming before the ship had sailed, before the baggage was stowed or the cruise even planned. I saw this coming before they even smashed a champagne bottle off the bow.
I saw this coming when somebody, somewhere decided that dead didn't exactly mean dead anymore.
“Dave?” Ben, surfing the web on the other computer in the office, probably not porn, never porn, before he came to college he shared the family computer with his seven-year-old sister, never porn, but he does make up for lost time on the internet by marathon research sessions and a prodigious video tape smut collection. He's the only person in the dorm who owns a VCR. Sad thought that it is, if I have a best friend, its him.
“Yeah.”
“Dave.”
I plucked my iPod ear bud out of the left side. Alice in Chains heavy now only in one ear. “What?”
“You want to hear something weird?” Ben constantly needed to share little bits of internet plankton on which he'd filter fed.
“No,” I said. “Solitaire.”
“This article says that some scientists...”
“Solitaire.”
“That some scientists...”
“Some? Who is 'some'?”
“For the sake of the conversation?”
“I don't want to be part of the conversations.”
“For the sake of the argument, then?”
“Are we arguing now?”
“Finland.”
“Finland?”
“Yes, Finlandian scientists...”
“Finnish.”
“I'm trying to.” I can't tell if he's joking.
“No, I'm saying scientists, or anyone really, from Finland are Finnish, not Finlandian. What's your major again?”
“Video production.”
“Well, I guess you're forgiven, then.”
Silence.
“So,” I said, “Ben?”
“Yeah.”
“What have the Finlandian scientists got to say?”
“I'm not going to tell if you if you are going to be like that.”
“Sorry.”
“The Finlandians are a proud people, Dave, especially the scientific community.”
“Sorry. Tell me.”
“What do you say?”
“Please, tell me.”
“What is the magic word?”
“Please fucking tell me.”
“That's better,” Ben said, settled back into his seat, refered to the computer screen. “These scientists are saying that dead might not mean dead-dead.”
“Dead-dead? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“There's dead...”
“Yes, I'm familiar with the concept.”
“And then there's dead-dead.”
“You've really cleared this up for me, Ben, the scientific community owes you a real debt of gratitude.”
“Whoa,” Ben said.
I glanced up for the first time from my game, smiled. “Did those crazy Finns find another flavor of dead?”
“No...”
“Really most sincerely dead? Grateful Dead? Night of the Living...”
“With modern resuscitation technology we may have to change the scientific and medical definition of death.”
“Dead-dead?”
“Dead-dead. In fact, considering these recent changes in the criteria for death...”
“'The dead-line' if you will. This isn't on Wikipedia, is it?”
“That we may have buried people who could have been saved.”
Silence.
“Oh, shit, Grandma,” Ben said and laughed. “Oh, well.”
I wasn't laughing, though. My parents were killed in a car crash when I was in grade school. Dead-dead?
I dumped solitaire and Googled “Finnish death science”
The results were several articles about the recent tragic death of a Finnish physicist. He died in a car crash. Ironic, but not relevant. “What are you looking at?”
“My bad.”
“What?”
“The scientists aren't in Finland.”
“Where then?”
“That's weird,” Ben said, “They're up in Indy.”
Indianapolis. An hour away. I found the article.
“I got class,” Ben said, gathering up his backpack.
I was already gone, lost in the article. “Yeah, later.”
An hour of link-hopping later, I slumped back in my seat. New resuscitation techniques. Advanced. Cutting edge. I should have been excited. I mean, I was, just not in the good way. Not in the “imagine all the people who will be saved” way. More like the fight or flight way. The “how far dead, how long dead is dead-dead.”
That's when I saw it all coming.
I dug the catalog of classes out of my back pack, flipped through the pages. Target shooting. Riflery. Wilderness survival. Advanced Self-defense.
For a liberal arts university, it is surprising how many combat classes there are.
After several hours of assembling the best schedule this side of Marine Corp boot camp, I slumped back in my chair again.
A bad thing was coming and I was going to be ready. I had avoided making decisions for fear of ruining my life, now I found myself making decisions to try and save it. As I locked up the office and headed home, there was one thing of which I was certain.
I was no longer undecided.