Hello, hello. Before I dive into telling you about the weapon, you have to know about the events that led up to it. Or not, I mean, you can always skip this part and dive straight in.
My year’s been a wild ride, as I’m sure yours has been too. I’ve been reflecting on some of the remarkable moments from 2023. Here are a few that made me smile. This year, I:
Travelled to Bali, spent a month exploring its islands, jumping into the ocean at the drop of a hat, marvelling at sunsets, and hiking up dormant volcanoes. The experience was life-altering, which is to say I don’t think I’ll ever be able to write about it. But what I will say is this: I’m officially an Open Water Diver!
Moved to a new city, rebuilt my life from the ground up. Made new friends, acquaintances, and infinite new memories.
Learned to lean into the discomfort of unfamiliarity.
Danced at concerts, spent quality time with my family (something I hadn’t valued until this year), turned 26 with people I now call friends, bought books, nurtured plants, grew into my role as a sister, a daughter, a friend, a person.
Cried happy tears at my best friend’s wedding.
Cried sad tears from being treated unfairly. Learned the value of walking away from things and people that don’t align with where I’m headed in life.
Made rough estimations of where I’m headed in life.
Started a company.
Wrote through the tough things, the good things, the amazing things. Wrote a lot.
Learned patience.
Hung out with a lot of dogs.
Maybe all years are dramatic. Maybe some are more dramatic than others. Maybe the dramaticness of a year is a function of our own threshold for uncertainty. I don’t know, I don’t have the answers.
There are years that ask questions and years that answer. - Zora Neale Hurston
What I do know is that 2023 raised good questions. Which brings me to my encounter with fiction writing.
Wait, I write fiction now?
I was processing some difficult emotions that I didn’t think journalling would be able to help with. You know when something is so complex you have to invent characters and plots to truly process it?
Therapy was out of the question, given my therapist has been on vacation for a month now. I could have spammed her email, but we’re working on giving each other space (she said I need to give her space). So I yanked my laptop open and began typing with the kind of ferocity that’s hard to imagine; you just had to be there.
That passionate typing ended up being a piece of fiction which I spent the last few days revisiting and editing, and well, here’s the outcome. I’m new to this, but hey I just said I’m beginning to be okay with unfamiliarity, so I won’t chicken out of publishing this.
Before I begin, here’s a shoutout to the editors who validated my rage-writing as actual fiction that is worthy of publishing: Jude Klinger, Felicity Brand, Alice Sholto-Douglas, Michael Shafer, and Danver Chandler.
Alright, alright, here goes.
The weapon that won’t kill you
In the clandestine corridors of The National Security Secret Division, a weapon was conceived—a weapon far deadlier than any in the annals of human history. A gun, not laden with conventional bullets, but armed with an insidious elixir designed to exploit the very essence of what it means to be human. The goal was to honour, in the truest sense, the desire to cause pain.
The directive was clear: “Death in the 21st century has become far too simplistic; it’s painless, and it’s quick,” the authorities said, in morbid disgust. “When did we become such merciful killers, that we chose to bless the enemy with a single bullet, giving them a clean exit within seconds?” “Leave your ethics at the door,” they declared. “Focus on the mission, or leave.”
Naturally, chemical warfare was suggested.
The Top Dog, the leader of the Panel of Authorities, rose, and to everyone’s astonishment, declared, “No. The animals, trees, oceans, and the land must remain untouched. Especially the animals. Nobody. Touches. The Animals. Is that clear?”
Silence.
This secret unit of the highest scholars, tasked with the study of human behaviour from a trinity of perspectives—biology, motivation, and environment—was in search of a formula that could kill humans without causing destruction to any other species on earth. Nobody dared ask why. Everyone, in mild fascination with the moral compass of the enigmatic Top Dog, had questions that they knew better than to ask.
After weeks of permutations, they arrived at a set of variables that needed to be optimised. Pain, they posited, was an integral part of the equation, which they defined as a function of acute emotional, mental, and physical discomfort multiplied by the relentless passage of time.
Pain = f[(emotional, mental, physical discomfort), time]
In the weeks to come, they dissected each variable, to zero in on the most effective, discreet, and agonising way to end human life. What can kill a human being? A chemical injected into the veins? A concoction ingested into the intestines? Perhaps a bullet that's quiet, unnoticeable.
Physical pain stood as the primal solution. Kill someone with a chemical, a concoction, or gunpowder— sharp pain followed by a swift death. Fair, but not prolonged enough. What if we considered torture? Physical pain over a longer period of time. Sure, but it's not discreet enough.
Frustrated, they threw their calculations off the table, and went home for the day. Every day, they battled with the ethical quandary of their work, coupled with the frustration of failing at it. Each day, increasingly wondering if they should feel relief at having failed, or shame at not being up to the task.
They went back to their regular lives, pretending to be regular people. Their role at the Secret Unit demanded that they remain in disguise. A professor, an entrepreneur, an engineer… exceptional minds, about to build a weapon that would end humanity, hidden in plain sight. Always conducting research. Always observing humans. Always on the lookout for vulnerabilities.
After weeks of failure, the Scholars showed up one morning with renewed vigour, not because the ethical composition of the task had changed, but because their intellectual ego was bigger than their moral compass. “If we can’t do this, nobody in the world can. We need to cause some fucking pain.”
“Now, ladies and gentlemen,” said the Lead Scholar, a man, enveloped in his sense of entitlement, harnessing the vigour with which the world outside of this Unit had applauded his every move. “What, I ask you again, will cause the most pain?”
An intern, at the back of the group, reluctantly raised her hand. She was a recent hire, a woman with achievements that could put world leaders to shame, a woman with a dark enough bent of mind to be admitted to this unit. “What if we looked at emotional pain alone? Nothing else. It solves for discretion and prolonged pain.”
“Ridiculous.” The Lead Scholar dismissed her, feeling intellectually threatened. After a minute of silence, he finally said, rhetorically, “How would we even do that?!”
“Consider”, she ventured, “the most agonising moments of your existence—those instances where pain is not a fleeting encounter but a slow, persistent intrusion.”
Frustrated at this point, the Lead Scholar was also subtly gloating at the simplicity of her thought. “No, we get that.” “*How* is the question. How would we define emotional pain, and how could we deal with its subjective nature? It's ridiculous.”
“Well, that's where machine learning comes in.” She had everyone’s attention. “We train an algorithm on an individual's needs, drives, dreams, and desires. And then, when the time comes, we shoot the bullet. The bullet, miniscule in size, barely noticeable, armed with each human’s unique Code of Death, enters the victim's blood stream, and immediately begins its work.”
“The soldiers,” she continued, “would shoot their shots and give you emotional scars that would take you years to get over. Scars that would break your spirit, over and over. Scars that make you wonder if there's a point to existence itself.”
The room fell silent. They knew they had it. They knew this was it. The ethical quandary was thrown out the window. The Scholars, feeble victims of their own intellectual curiosity, decided they had to create this. So they began the work.
They spent the next few weeks delving into human motivation, the will to live, the sequence of events that has to occur for a human life to be perceived as worth pursuing. What keeps humans going, and why do people pursue dreams? What gives people hope? What takes it away? They pored through thousands of years of literature: history, philosophy, art, science, and sociology. Each week, they formed extensive arguments and counterarguments for pivotal questions about human existence. If it weren’t for its dark purpose, the task was almost exciting. It scratched the Scholars’ itch for probing and prodding at life’s big and small questions; it achieved their purpose of creating something nobody could ever have imagined. They didn’t want to admit it, but they loved this. Their egos loved this.
Only six weeks later, they emerged with an algorithm trained on human desire, motivation, and hope, with the sole purpose of destroying the human it spent so much time understanding.
Now, it was time to test it. Naturally, nobody volunteered. They presented this prototype to the Top Dog, with the question: who’s going to be the subject of this test? The Top Dog, despite his skewed moral compass, was an intelligent man. He put out a notice calling for the “toughest, manliest men.” The reward for being subjected to this experiment was nothing other than a certificate, a title, that stated that the winner was the Manliest Man in the World. Naturally, an army of “manly” men walked in for the fanfare of manliness, with their ape-like builds and their protein shakes.
The Scholars warned these men that this experiment would likely kill their will to live. The Masculinity Army laughed, “That’s impossible.” The Scholars, in that moment, recognised the true genius of the Top Dog.
His moral reasoning was controversial, no doubt. That someone lacks intellectual prowess is no reason to kill them. That they themselves walked into a unit, were warned about the experiment’s effects, and went through with it anyway, is still no reason to kill them. The Scholars knew this, but something inside them took comfort in the lack of authority they had.
–
The results of the test were never published. No, not even in the Secret Files. The weapon was destroyed. Maybe because it was too powerful and those men actually killed themselves over time. The secret unit was disbanded almost as quickly as it was assembled. No explanation. Everybody went back to their regular lives—still, perhaps out of habit, always in search of the best way to kill a human being. Still pondering the ethical implications of their once-in-a-lifetime creation. Possibly forever shaken by its power.
-
Sometimes I wonder if you were in on this. If you knew. If you were complicit in building it. If you saved the blueprint and built the weapon only to shoot me with it.
YES Yashmi!!!!
Woah.