Man: “I don’t think they’re stupid, but I do think you have a very reasonable objection. There are many answers to your question when you ask why they thought death without an afterlife could be good. One possible answer has to do with how different life was back then.”
Child: “What do you mean?”
Man: “Epicureans thought of pleasure as the absence of pain. That is, when you aren’t hurting or hungry or sad or lonely or anything else bad, that’s pleasure. It’s what we call a negative definition, defining something by what it isn’t, rather than what it is, like ‘clean’ means something isn’t dirty, and ‘dark’ means there isn’t light.”
Child: “But pleasure is when you feel happy or good.”
Man: “That’s a positive definition, saying what it is, not what it isn’t. They used a negative definition instead.”
Child: “Why?”
Man: “A lot of people think it has to do with the difference between what life was like in ancient Greece and what life is like now. Nowadays life is pretty good, don’t you think? You aren’t in pain very often, or sick, or hungry, or alone, and you don’t have to worry about your home getting smashed or your friends all getting killed by raiders.” He frowned in sympathy as the boy hugged his dog tighter. “In ancient Greece life was harder than now: there wasn’t enough food, there was war a lot, there were lots of diseases, and they didn’t have good medicine so doctors couldn’t fix things. A lot of people were in pain and hungry all the time, and afraid of getting conquered or enslaved, and everyone had to see lots of friends die. If you weren’t hungry or thirsty, and weren’t sick, and no one was hurting you, and you weren’t sad from having a friend die, that was very rare and good, so they thought of that as pleasure, a state with no pain. Can you see how that would make sense in their world?”
Bridger half-buried his face in the blue fur, sad at the thought of lives so hard. “I guess. Yeah. That’s sad to think, though.”
Man: “Yes, it is. But if death also meant that all that stopped, no hunger, pain, or sadness, then by the negative definition death was also pleasure.”
Child: “Then why didn’t they all just kill themselves?”
Man: “Some people did back then, but the Epicureans said that you should still try to be happy as much as you can in life, in simple ways that are hard to destroy, like conversation, or thinking about philosophy. You can do that even if you’re sick, or alone, or lose your home in war.”
The boy’s jaw set, his serious face, adorable in its effort to imitate his battle-wearied guardians. “The Major and the soldiers and Mycroft told me what war is like. They say it’s the second worst thing in the world.”
Man: “That’s an interesting definition. What did they say is the worst thing?”
Child: “Not having anything worth fighting for in the first place.”
The sensayer looked again to the frowning Major and his men, thinking ahead perhaps to their future sessions, as Bridger gave him this first sample of a veteran’s mind.
Man: “That’s a very powerful thought.”
Child: “Yeah. But we don’t have to have war anymore. Life is good, good enough to be worth fighting for, but we don’t have to fight. No more countries, no more armies, no more war.”
Carlyle nodded. “I bet your little soldiers still have a pretty tough life, being tiny and not being able to go out into the world and meet people, and remembering the war and friends that died in it. I bet Pointer had some bad things about their life, as well as good things.”
Child: “I guess so.”
Man: “So before you do anything, you could think about whether those bad things might be enough to make it better not to bring Pointer back.”
Hints of pain made Bridger’s voice grow weak. “I don’t know.”
Carlyle took a deep breath. “Bridger, are you sad now?”
Child: “Yes.”
Priest: “Why are you sad?”
“Because Pointer’s dead.” He buried his face fully in Boo’s fur, the dog no longer big enough to shield the growing boy completely as it had the toddler. “It made everybody sad, me and Thisbe and the Major, everybody’s sad when their friends are dead, even Mycroft.”
To my astonishment Carlyle’s eyes too grew wet with mourning for this plastic soldier he had never met, or perhaps the tears were grander, for the countless lost souls of the past, whom Time had taken from us. Something shifted in his posture, marking some new phase of dialogue, now that he had pushed the child this far.
Priest: “What does being sad feel like?”
Child: “It hurts.”
Carlyle leaned close. “Bridger, Pointer loved you, didn’t they?”
The boy wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Yes.”
Priest: “Pointer was a soldier too. They loved the other soldiers, and worked hard for you, and them, did hard things, risked their life. Pointer was willing to endure all kinds of pain to help you and the other soldiers, right?”
The Major smiled a self-satisfied smile here, as if he smelled meat in the argument at last, and saw its end.
Child: “Yes.”
Priest: “Did Pointer sometimes give up doing something nice and fun, like resting, to do something hard and not so fun for you?”
Child: “Yeah, lots of times. Like being on watch when it was really cold.”
Priest: “So Pointer would choose to give up pleasure and face pain, for you?”
Child: “Yeah.”
Priest: “Then even if death is better than being alive, do you think Pointer would be willing to be alive again to help you and the other soldiers?”
Child: “Yes,” the child answered. “Yes, Pointer would want to be here to help us. Even if death is nice they’d still want to be here to help us. So … so then it can be okay to bring Pointer back, even if death isn’t bad?”
Bridger smiled at last, and I felt the warmth of the conclusion spread through myself as well. I am no sensayer. In Carlyle’s place I would have just said that death is bad, and that of course he should bring Pointer back. But that would have brought a world of pain upon the child. Do you still not see it, reader? The moral consequences ten steps further along, which Carlyle foresees as clearly as signposts on a road? If Bridger had brought Pointer back on the theory that it’s always better to be alive than dead, then what about the other plastic corpses lost somewhere in the trench dust? He should bring them back. What about Emma Platz? Lesley’s parents? The recently deceased sensayer Carlyle replaced? What about the stranger who died yesterday in a hospital on the far side of the world? Or every stranger, every death, back to the dawn of time? Soon the nightmare guilt that sometimes kept me up at night would kindle in the boy, and make him feel that every soul that ever died was on his conscience for not resurrecting them. But this way, deciding based on what the soldier personally would want, Bridger could bring Pointer back and still reserve the possibility of death being okay, and not take up the burden (yet) of saving all of us. At this point I sent my silent signal to Thisbe and the Major that I thought this sensayer could be trusted.
“But what if there’s a God?” Only a child could ask so bluntly, reader.