The Impassioned Apathy in the midst of All Things
The Abyss that don’t give a fuck
The Experiment
You wake to an agonizing ache that runs through your entire being. You manage to crack open your eyes that’s crusted with your own dried tears as you’re greeted by the same dank, cemented walls that contain your torment, and will surely contain your demise. Bare light bulbs flicker intermittently, casting the room’s sterile instruments in a menacing strobe.
You attempt to rise only to be reminded of the shackles biting into your wrists and ankles, restraining you to the rusted metal bedframe. How many days has it been? You’ve lost count. All sense of time dissolved after that first week of howling, begging for deaf gods to strike you dead.
Then as if from outer space, it comes through the crown of your head and exits the soles of your feet. Agony! You glance down to see your limbs, grotesquely swollen and discolored. Frostbite. The realization sends a shiver down your spine, colder than the ice that claimed your flesh. Memories flood back — being dragged here, the indifferent eyes of the soldiers, the sadistic smile of Surgeon General Shirō Ishii.
A loud clang of metal against concrete cuts through the silence like a razor. You flinch involuntarily, shredded nerves still raw from the previous “experiment.” The door creaks open and the all too familiar silhouette appears — that wretched man in the surgical mask and smock, backlit from the fluorescents in the hallway. He approaches with a scalpel, the glint of the blade reflecting your fear and hopelessness. Panic surges through you, but the restraints hold firm. His voice, cold and clinical, speaks words you barely register. You are just another subject, another experiment in his twisted pursuit of twisted knowledge.
“Ah, excellent. You’re awake,” a muffled voice lilts in feigned compassion. “I must apologize for the delays, we’ve been receiving a fresh batch of specimens to process. Shall we pick up where we left off?”
You clench your eyes shut and turn away as the surgical tray clatters numbingly close. You’ve learned there’s no bargaining, no reasoning with this devil. It is hard to accept that you are an insignificant blip of meaningless biological matter to be so callously dissected in the name of “science?”
The scalpel’s first incision into your flesh sparks a nauseating flare of torment through your nerve endings. You vent a scream — more from the violation to your existential being than the physical trauma itself.
As clumps of your butchered tissue are coldly catalogued, you wonder if this is the fate your divine architect envisioned. To persist as mangled subjects for the soulless exercise of curiosity?
The surgical tray clatters once more, your otherworldly howls having been tuned out long ago by these merchants of suffering. Fresh syringes glisten with lurid concoctions to be tested, and you pray this coming blackness finally allows for the eternal oblivion that will deliver you from your purgatory. But even that fleeting hope withers as the unforgiving cycle of violation begins anew.
The Blip
Dayo could barely contain his restless excitement as the KLM Boeing 747 taxied across the tarmac. After months of scrimping and saving, he was finally on his way to surprise his girlfriend Maria in Las Palmas. This holiday would be their chance to get away from the bustling streets of Lagos and plan for the future they both dreamed of. As the plane lumbered into position, Dayo’s mind raced with visions of himself dropping to one knee on a pristine beach at sunset. He’s had it on his vision board for months He had tucked the simple diamond ring into his carry-on, waiting for the perfect moment to make Maria his wife. He looked forward to explore exotic destinations together hand-in-hand with her.
If you saw him at that moment, you would see an unmistakable flare of content and happiness on his body. He was happy. He was right where he supposed to be. His head gently nodded in time with the thrum of the jet engines outside. He hoped this transcontinental flight marked just the first of many extraordinary adventures awaiting himself and Maria. Perhaps they’d visit Paris next, Malaysia after that — the possibilities stretched out as boundless as the cloudless azure sky outside his window.
Then, suddenly, the inevitable sent him an invite he had no choice than to accept. A piercing boom, like the sky itself was being torn asunder, drowned out the engine’s steady whine. The fuselage buckled violently as blazing sheets of shrapnel shredded the cabin interior. Time itself seemed to fracture as Dayo’s existence splintered into a kaleidoscope of fire, anguished screams, and distortions of searing white light.
As quickly as it began, an obliterating silence swallowed the terrible roar and the world went black. Just like that — in the span of mere seconds — Dayo’s vibrant dream of an endlessly unfolding future was extinguished. His life’s hopes, fears, and untold stories were abruptly compacted into an infinitesimal cosmic blip of matter flung across the infinite cosmos.
On that fateful day in Tenerife, two fully loaded jumbo jets collided on the very same runway where Dayo envisioned sunsets and proposals. In the horrific conflagration, 583 souls like his burned brilliantly for the final time before winking out into irrevocable oblivion, their quivering sparks of consciousness immediately scattered back into the universe’s intergalactic void. As swiftly as he flickered into being, his mortal light was consumed and left behind only silent, cooling wreckage strewn across the tarmac in Canary Islands.
The Winnowing
It began with a tickle in the throat. A minor irritation, no more disruptive than the annual colds that punctuated the march of seasons. But this was something else entirely…something insidious and cruel. At first, only a few scattered cases arose across the country. People shrugged it off as a just a virus. It was nothing to be overly alarmed about. But then the bodies started piling up. It struck indiscriminately — young and old, wealthy and pauper. A wracking cough that caused victims to spit up thick, inky-black phlegm. What initially appeared to be a familiar flu strain morphed into a terrifying nightmare, as fevers and chills gave way to violent convulsions and delirium in the days that followed.
No one was spared the plague’s remorseless culling. Babies, withered elders, the pious and the wicked — all were rendered the same bloody, wheezing husks. Those unfortunate enough to linger realized their loved ones could only look on in horror as the infection eclipsed any humanity remaining behind their fever-glazed eyes. The masses screamed out in vain for divine mercy and salvation from this scourge. But the heavens remained as silent and empty as the day the stars first ignited. Panic and paranoia set in as the body count grew higher by the day. Some turned on those few who remained healthy, accusing them of being cursed harbingers of the plague. Law and order disintegrated as the diseased retreated to pest houses, only to be left for dead by those still clinging to fleeting life.
Clergy and physicians alike scrambled for answers, resorting to desperate measures. They bled patients to purge the supposed toxins, drilled macabre holes in skulls to release the evil humors believed to be trapped within, still, their efforts were like a grim ballet before an uncaring audience. The plague raged on, its grip as relentless and enigmatic as the miasma they believed carried its putrid touch. In the end, the most beautiful and valuable gemstone of civilization could not be spared. The great human wellspring of art, literature, music — all the cultural pursuits that elevated the species and commemorated its boundless potential — withered in the wake of the plague’s senseless, sweeping path.
There was no reckoning for humanity’s sins, no cosmic accountant rebalancing the karmic books through this drawn-out ritual of torment. The plague cared nothing for human notions of virtue or justice. It simply took and took, offering no mercy or meaning. When the final death rattles at last, when the mass graves had swallowed their fill, there would be no witness. No mourner. It would be followed by the indifferent silence that heralded the beginning. There would be no sign on the cosmic board that something had gone wrong. Life would move on as it always does.
Nothing Truly Matters
There is no nothing as horrifyingly clearer than the reality that we are motes of impermanent stardust scattered throughout an existential abyss. Any appearance of cosmic significance we apportion ourselves is merely conceit born of desperation to hide the creeping suspicion that gnaws at our primitive hindbrains: that we are alone in the brutally indifferent theatre of existence.
The fundamental question of existence, “why is there something rather than nothing,” often stems from a pre-supposed ontology of self that believes that WE are SOMETHING. This is a severe misstep and not even a philosophical one at first. If existence arose from a fundamental state of “being,” then there should be undeniable evidence of this “intentionality,” a purposeful act of creation. Yet, the cosmos reveals no such grand design, no pre-existing blueprint. The only ontological constructs we encounter are those we ourselves create — mere after-the-fact attempts to impose meaning upon an indifferent universe.
One of the cruelest thing about WW2 was the rape of Nanjing. The Japanese subjected the civilian population to so much brutality that the SS would have been like, “You guys are disgusting”. Women were raped and executed. In fact, rape was a horrific aspect of the massacre, with estimates suggesting 20,000 to over 80,000 women and girls as victims. Some were found with swords pushed through their vaginas to make them experience the highest form of pain. The one incident I can never get out of mind was babies used for target practice where one man would toss a baby in the air so that another can catch with his bayonet or sword. Chinese men were buried alive. Some were burnt. There was no single moment during the massacre that any deity or grand patron of the cosmos came out of the blanket of invisiblity like, “You know what guys? I think I should step in.”
It is what it is.
Out of all the species on earth, it seems we are the only ones who find it difficult to accept that beneath the veneer of our seemingly progressive time on earth lies a timeline indifferent to our existence, uncaring about our joys or struggles. No matter our acts of creation or destruction, the stars remain fixed in the black void as if we did not exist. Reality bears no intrinsic meaning or value, and this is freaking hard for us to accept or even digest.
But when you think about it, or don’t, it is actually liberating. Facing life’s fundamental absurdity head on can be strangely liberating. Intentionally plunging oneself into the vortex of life’s disregard for all things and shedding the illusions of purpose or control can give rise to a peculiar calm in the midst of the storm of hopes and deliverance from the self-afflicted shackles of fear. Being apathetic to the subliminal push of destiny can help one to flow with existence rather than grasping at the tiny straws of meaning. This is not to say that emotions should be totally vanquished; rather, passions will burn fiercer when they are untethered to vain assurances.
The universe feels no grief. It has never authored the smallest byte of purpose since its beginning. Purpose can only be written by you and I. Life’s indifference shouldn’t be threatening. It should be embraced even if it finds you in the warm embrace of a lover or the torture chamber of a deranged Japanese scientist; in a body paralyzed and attacked by cancer or in the metal air bus just before getting shredded into pieces.
The only fervency in life is its indifference. You have two choices. Live with it. Or Die from it.
