Cynthia gave him a serious look, all of the humor dropping away from her face. She could certainly be as dead serious as anyone when lives were on the line. “We’ve got to get ready.”
“I’ll go tell Georgia,” said John. “We need to start as soon as we can.”
“She’s asleep. Wasn’t feeling well again. Decided to head to bed early.”
“Then I’ll wake her up.”
13
“Do you think he believed us?”
Ken nodded. “I think so.”
Paul said nothing. He stared into the fire, watching not the flames but the orange coals beneath the burning wood.
“These coals,” said Paul, speaking after a full minute of silence. “They’re like humanity. Soon the flames, our great achievements, will have extinguished, leaving nothing but the glowing embers of what once was the greatest achievements this planet has ever seen.”
“Knock off the philosophical talk for a minute, won’t you?” said Ken. “You’re not in front of a classroom any longer. There’s no need to talk to me like that.”
“Don’t pretend like you don’t slip back into the speech patterns that we based our whole careers on. You talk like that more than I do.”
“Maybe so. But there’s a time and place for it.”
Paul’s career was over along with everyone else’s. His, in particular, offered almost nothing useful now. The world had fallen into chaos, where violence ruled. For his whole career, he had argued against the use of violence.
He knew now that everything pointed in the direction of him being dead wrong.
But while he may have lost his job, his prestigious position at the university, he wasn’t going to let go of his ideological beliefs. He’d stick to them no matter what.
He and Ken had agreed on that. They’d been colleagues. They’d been preparing for an upcoming conference, which they were hosting together, when the EMP had hit. Ever since then they’d been on the run, surviving with their wits, narrowly avoiding being killed too many times to count.
Their intelligence had served them well so far, despite the narrow misses. They’d been able to outsmart and outmaneuver the others. They had the ability to strategize, to visualize complex problems in their heads, and arrive at elegant solutions speedily and without much mental effort.
But that only went so far.
Paul knew that their time on this planet was coming to an end. Probably sooner rather than later.
“I hope he did believe us,” said Paul. “Because he doesn’t seem like the type who deserves to die.”
“How can you say that?” said Ken.
“You mean you want him to die?”
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that it sounds as if you’re making a value judgment on a man that we just saw commit murder.”
“It wasn’t in cold blood. He was acting in self-defense.”
“You know as well as I do that we’ve both disproven the self-defense rationale for violence of any sort. We’ve talked at how many conferences on that very same topic? We’ve co-written papers where the essential thesis rejected that very same notion. Don’t you remember any of that?”
“I’m not saying it’s wrong,” said Paul. “But that was all academic. It was completely theoretical. This is the real world. There aren’t any academic papers anymore. There’s not even a judge or a jury. The only thing that matters now is whether you live or die.”
Ken nodded. “But there are still ethics that exist in a timeless flux. How could you forget the shadows on the walls?”
“Don’t start with that Aristotelian crap with me again. I’ve had it up to my ears for my whole career.”
“You sound like you’re suddenly starting to reject your life’s work.”
“No,” said Paul, slowly. “It’s not that. I’m still deeply committed to a life of nonviolence, at whatever cost.”
“So where do you get off saying that that murder was justified?”
“I’m saying that it worked for that man. I’m not saying that I would do the same. Part of my non-violence work has always involved the acceptance of the individual’s right to their own philosophical and ethical guidelines. Who am I to judge that man for his non-violent act?”
“That’s the whole point!” shouted Ken, waving his hands in the air in frustration. “That’s the whole damn point of all our work. It’s to judge!”
Paul said nothing.
“You’re not even going to argue with me?”
“What’s the point?” said Paul. “I’m done. We’re done. We can’t keep running forever. We can debate the philosophical intricacies for eternity, but we don’t have eternity here on this Earth. Not anymore.”
“All right,” said Ken. “You win the argument. Finally, after all these years, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Let’s forget the whole thing. We’re arguing because we’re stressed. It’s understandable. Let’s get our stuff together and get going. The mob will be here before long.”
“Get going? Where to?”
“Wherever,” said Ken, not really paying attention. He was already picking up things from the campfire, throwing them hastily into his pack. “Wherever we can stay alive. Wherever we can continue to think.”
“Wherever we can continue to philosophize irrationally?”
“It’s not irrational. It’s completely rational. You sound like you’re losing it. Are you feeling OK, Paul?”
“No,” said Paul, the words feeling heavy as they came out of him. ‘I’m not feeling OK. Just go on without me. I can’t do it anymore.”
“Now you just sound crazy.”
“It was bound to happen,” said Paul. “You know as well as anyone about the reports of extreme stress on an individual’s psychological makeup, on their decision making, and on their will to live.”
“You’re talking about the rats again? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m sick of talking about the rats.”
“I don’t see why. They’ve been a staple of our careers.”
“Yeah,” said Ken, letting out a forced laugh. “But only because no one else could figure out how those learned helplessness rat experiments connected at all to the study of pacifism as a doctrine.”
“Well I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It really does have a connection, you know.”
“Come on,” said Ken. “We were just doing that for the numbers. We were the only ones doing it, and it worked out in our favor. It made for titles about as salacious as they can get for the academic world.”
“No,” said Paul. “I’m serious. There’s a real connection.”
“Then by all means, tell me what it is,” said Ken, who appeared to be only half-listening as he zipped up his pack and adjusted the straps.
“Remember that one experiment?” said Paul. “Where they would drop a rat in a tub of water? There was no way for it to get out. They measured how long the rat would swim for. And what was it? Something like a minute before it simply gave up and drowned. Now if that rat saw another rat that was able to escape, it got hope, essentially, and was able to swim for four to five times as long before it would eventually drown.”
“Fat lot of good it did that rat,” muttered Ken. He was kicking dirt onto the fire with his beat up sneaker.
Soon the fire was all but extinguished, and only the light of the moon illuminated them.
“Don’t you see?” said Paul. “We have no escape as pacifists. We’re going to give up sooner or later. And I’m just deciding that this is my time. I’m going to give up right now. We’ve been running for too long. Go on without me.”
“You’re nuts,” said Ken.
“Call me whatever you want. I’m sorry to do this to you, Ken. But I just have nothing left inside me. There never was a fight. But the will to survive… it’s been killed off.”