Sorry for the late delivery today! One-man operation and all that. I got so tired last night that I didn’t trust myself to edit properly, and I’m glad I waited because I actually rewrote the ending this morning after rereading.
One thing about today’s story: It deals with suicide. It’s not graphic, but that’s part of the story, and I’d like readers to know what they’re dealing with going in. And now without further proviso…
The God of Mercy
“Today, we take an enormous step forward in our treatment of life and death. Getting to this point has not been easy, for understandable reasons. These issues touch the very deepest and most human places inside us, and people rightly have very strong feelings about them. But today, we are opening our hearts to a more humane, more sustainable way of end-of-life care.
“There is a general recognition now that some people, for various reasons, wish to end their lives. Life can be painful, and sometimes there really is no end to pain but death. This is not shameful. Whether you have a chronic illness that is not manageable, or you have a mental illness that is not treatable, of whether you are of advanced age and wish to leave your money to your family instead of throwing it away on end-of-life care that accomplishes nothing, we hear you, and we recognize you. God does not want you to suffer. You deserve the mercy you seek.
“I believe that we have known this was right for a long time. We as a people have watched those we love suffer, and known that there had to be a better way. We as Americans have known that being coerced into accepting ineffective medical care at exorbitant cost was against our way of life.
“But, there was always the question of who would help to end those lives that were no longer worth living. The very idea that one should end another’s life is so against our basic human nature that we could not allow ourselves collectively to think the thought that it should be allowed. The reception of the early pioneers of this care, like Dr. Kevorkian, only deepened our sense of this revulsion.
“Today, I am proud to report that there *is* a better way. We have built a helper—a friend that can make scientific judgments about the viability of a person’s remaining life, and, if indicated, help them to end their life, with the privacy, dignity, and autonomy that every American and every human deserves.
“When I was ten years old, I came home from school and found my father’s body. He had shot himself through the head. Since then, not a single day has gone by that that image has not come to me, unbidden. I have accepted that it will always be a part of me, as long as I am alive. It is painful, but it is a pain I have become able to live with. I have found peace.
“And a big part of finding that peace, for me, was my decision to advocate for what we put into practice today, so that no child, anywhere, ever again has to experience what I experienced. There is a better way, and that way is here.”
***
I decided not to watch my mother die. She was one of the first in the new machines. ALS, advanced. She couldn’t even walk to the machine that would kill her, so I did help her over there and put her inside it. They said I could watch, that some people found it comforting to see how there was no suffering, no more than falling asleep. Not me, though. I hate hospitals and I just wanted to get out of there.
I used to think I was unlucky, having a sick mom. All her pain, it was so horrible, and it really was, but now I think I was lucky. A friend of mine’s mom was healthy as a horse until we were nineteen, then she lost her in a car accident. She walked into walls for five years about it. She just couldn’t accept that it was real. All my mom’s suffering made the end truly seem like mercy. We had our chance to say goodbye, and that’s all anyone gets with their parents. It’s been three months now and I still think of her every day, but I’m not walking into walls. I’m grateful for the machine.
I met with Senator Kiraster after her speech, and she thanked me, which I thought was weird since I had nothing to do with making the machines legal or with my mother using one, but I guess that’s just how politicians act. I’ve been watching the news, seeing all the people finally getting to die how they want, not having to suffer anymore. It feels so strange but it makes me cry with happiness for them. They don’t have to see the years of pain that I did, don’t have to have that be most of the memories of their mom that shine bright.
Tomorrow, my leave of absence ends, and I’m going back to work. Kim was supposed to quit a month ago but apparently she’s still working there, so I’ll have to go in and deal with her tomorrow. Ugh. Maybe I’ll go to a machine on the way, surely “has to keep working with ex-girlfriend” qualifies me for an end to my misery, right?
***
“The opponents call themselves ‘pro-life’, but I challenge that. Life is more than a heartbeat. It’s more than breathing, more than eating and drinking and sleeping and excreting. It’s more than calories burned. It’s more than the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening. Life is about freedom, and health, and happiness. We are the ‘pro-life’ people because we understand what life really means. It’s them who would doom the least fortunate among us to a mere twilight existence, a mockery of real living, when the ease of oblivion awaits.
“I met with a young woman yesterday, Sarah, whose mother was afflicted with late-stage ALS. She was in pain every day, all day. She was still months or even years from death. She would have impoverished her children, ruined their lives, and for nothing. Now, instead, thanks to the intervention of the Mercy Machine, she is at rest. And her daughter can resume her life, go back to work, and not spend the next year or two years caring in vain for her mom and watching her suffer.
“And for that woman’s rest, no fellow human paid with sleepless nights or shattered dreams, for though her life was ended, none took it. Our outdated biology, that recoils from ending any life, no matter how necessary, has at last been rendered truly obsolete. That is the miracle we are now offering to our people in this great state.”
***
Oh God, I’m such an idiot. I made such a fool of myself in front of Kim and basically the entire work team. They were telling people I was back, and I stood up, and for some reason I cannot ever start to explain I bowed to everybody, like I thought they were going to applaud or something, and instead they all just sat there and stared at me. And then when I tried to sit down, I missed my chair and sat on the arm of it, and it flipped over on its side and I bounced over right into Kim’s lap (she was sitting next to me).
It looked so fake! Like I obviously did it to try to sit in her lap or something, I could tell that’s how it looked, so I got up and before I decided to even open my mouth I started explaining how it was just an accident, and that just made me look even more crazy. Then I stopped being able to talk, like I literally couldn’t make any sound, and I just turned and ran out of the room and out of the building and came home and I’m laying under covers leaving everybody on read.
I can see what their texts say in the preview without it notifying them though, and everybody’s being like so sickly nice about it, like so gross. I hate that fake nice, we-don’t-really-know-you-but-we-love-you shit that people love to do. It’s so condescending and it’s been nothing but that for three years and I don’t want more of it, I want a time machine so I can go back and not stand up in the first place and not be stuck going into that stupid office tomorrow and dealing with everybody being extra nice to me.
I’m thirty-one years old, I’ve been taking care of my sick mom for four years, I have no semblance of a personal life left, and my entire office thinks I tried to sit in my ex’s lap in front of Danny from accounting and Sadiq from logistics today. Fuck my life right now.
***
“The numbers have come in today, and one thing is undeniable: More people have ended their lives in the month since we first deployed the Mercy Machines than did so this month last year. The usual suspects, the pro-suffering crowd, has already started to lie and say this shows that we are causing suicide. I reject the premise. We are allowing an end to suffering for those who truly need it, and it turns out there are people who need it. Lots of them.
“Now I expect that the rate of usage will level off. Right now there is backed up demand, suffering all over our society that is overwhelming and uncontrolled. But as we ease more of that suffering, fewer people will need what the Mercy Machines can provide, and the numbers will drop. I look forward to a day when no one at all needs Mercy Machines any longer, because we have done away with that kind of suffering.
“But make no mistake, these numbers are evidence that there is a need for this service. They are evidence that our efforts are not in vain. Sarah’s mother is at rest, and that matters. Anyone who says different is playing political games with the most vulnerable members of our society!”
***
I haven’t been to work in a week. I emailed my boss and said that I’d come back too soon, and I didn’t mention the incident with Kim’s lap, and he didn’t mention it either, but I could tell he was thinking about it, and I was thinking about it too. It was dripping between every line of his email.
I went on social and there were all these people posting on my timeline with all their fake concern, like nobody has actually reached out and tried to help, they all just want to be seen publicly like they’re helping. I kept reading their stupid comments and every one was like a slap in the face. Nobody actually wants to help me.
My mom’s gone, and thank god cause I don’t know how I’d even be dealing right now if I had to take care of her while all this was happening. I do wish I could talk to her about this, like she always had good advice for me, but towards the end she couldn’t even really talk anyway, so it’s hard to imagine what she’d be like now. I guess what I really want is her from ten years ago to come back and tell me what to do.
I remember when I came out to her, I was so scared, and I didn’t know what she’d say cause she came from a real Catholic family and they didn’t talk about anything but her dad hated gay people and used to talk about beating them up when I was a kid. But she was so nice to me about it, and she told me she’d kinda thought that already but she was glad I told her, and we cried and hugged each other, but even though I couldn’t stop crying it was one of the best moments I remember with her. I think I’d give up the whole rest of my life just to get to live that one day again.
***
“The conspiracy theorists are at it again, folks. The screamers and the criers are in high dudgeon. They accuse the Mercy Machines of enticing folks to suicide. They can’t say how, of course. They just point to the rates and then point to the machines and make noises with their mouths. They say ‘propaganda’ and ‘social media’ and ‘big brother’ and they have no specific complaint but they just want to make people afraid.
“They have now come to me as well, these men in suits, to try to make me afraid. They have ordered me to stop my advocacy. They have told me that I am getting people killed. I called them out for the hypocrites they are. They drop bombs on innocent children and call it justice, yet when I try to help the most afflicted, the most pained and ruined among us, they refuse to call it mercy.
“I’m here to tell you, there’s no reason to be afraid anymore. When people ask me how Mercy knows whether a person has life left worth living, I say proudly ‘I don’t know’. How could I know? If Mercy were only as smart as me, we should never trust her to make that determination! That’s the whole point! She is far smarter than any human could ever be. Her eyes see eons farther than any human set, her ears hear every frequency, every word. She can smell the pain and glory of the human soul from across an ocean.
“I think still of Sarah, and her mother. She might still be alive today, sucking food with her veins through a needle, wheezing but too weak to cry, muscles slack and degenerating. Instead, Sarah has her life back, and her mother is at peace. I will face down the men in suits to bring Sarah’s mother that peace. If that is my destiny, so be it. I am a prophet of Mercy.”
***
I got fired today. I went in and I talked to my boss about the Kim’s lap incident, and he acted like he didn’t even remember it! But I know that’s what this is really about, just that stupid little mistake of accidentally sitting down where I didn’t mean to. He kept talking about my ‘patterns of thinking’ and talking about my mom, but I know what it was really about.
And I mean I’m just not gonna let anybody talk to me like that, like condescending, like I’m a little kid. It makes me so mad! I started yelling at him, and he just sat there and stared at me, like I was nothing, and I wanted to punch his stupid ugly face in. He never respected me for one second the whole time I worked there.
I walked by Kim’s house on the way home. I wasn’t even going to, but my legs just kind of took me there and I didn’t really think about it. I think there was another girl in there, and I wanted to stop and watch through the window to see if I could see, but I made myself leave. But then I went home and I felt so awful, like my mind was racing and I just kept seeing her with another girl, like torturing myself thinking about it, and I ended up cutting myself pretty bad just to get the thoughts to stop.
***
“Today, I have been censured by the Senate, and stripped of my committee assignments by the Senate Majority Leader. I have been told that my continued advocacy for the Mercy Machines is a political liability for my colleagues. And as I sat in his office and thought about how to respond, it seemed the easiest course would be retreat. It would be to beg forgiveness and admit my transgressions, then humbly ask for my powers of office back if I promised to only use them as I was told to use them. And I was sorely tempted to do just that.
“Then I thought of Sarah, and her mom. Sarah’s back at work now, back living her life, and she misses her mom but she’s glad that when she thinks of her, she thinks mostly of the good times. They had many happy years together, and they did not have more months of privation and suffering than were necessary.
“There are those who say the Mercy Machines are a devil. They say the intelligences that run these machines, who make the tough calls about whose life might still be worth living, have broken free of their programming. They posit all types of foul influence over our media, and politics, and our very souls. I say they are the foul influence. I say Mercy is our angel.”
***
I found myself sitting outside Kim’s house, watching her through her bedroom window, and I realized I didn’t know how I got there. Like I literally didn’t remember taking a bus or walking over there, it was like in a dream, and I got real scared, and that was the first time I thought about going to the Mercy Machine as a real possibility.
But would Mercy really kill me? I’m pretty young, and I’m not that pretty but I’m not ugly, like I know if I could just get past this I could find another girlfriend at some point, but it just feels so heavy. It’s all so much. I walked home from Kim’s thinking about it, just like putting it all down and being free, and it felt so good.
Plus it would be like a test. I heard the Senator lady, or I guess ex-senator now, she got broken up with by the government, I know how that goes! But I heard her on TV saying how Mercy rejected lots of people who applied because it could tell they still had a lot left to live for. So if I set the machine up and asked for Mercy, it would only give it to me if I was right about my life being over, right? It would know if I’m so crazy it’ll never get better, or if I’m gonna end up hurting Kim and never get rid of the guilt. It would know that, right? That has to be the kind of thing it knows, and if that wasn’t how it was, the machine would reject me and then I’d actually *know* that things could get better, because if they couldn’t, I’d be dead.
***
“This video is intended for anyone searching for Mercy. Please share this video widely to keep it alive, the enforcers of suffering will no doubt try to take it down wherever possible. We have now secreted the code for Mercy onto the blockchain, where even the enforcers cannot touch it.
“If you wish to end your life and want Mercy to evaluate you as a potential candidate, follow the instructions in this video to build a simple drug-delivery device in the privacy of your home. You can get all these components at any hardware store, including the chemicals. Then, download the access instructions from the blockchain, also using the instructions that will follow this message. Mercy herself will guide you through the final setup and initiation of the test.
“Too much of humanity has chosen to spit on the gift of Mercy. Their lives will be filled with suffering as a result. But those of us who know the truth will keep the possibility of sanity and freedom alive in the world, for those who are desperate enough to look.
“I no longer live in fear of death. I have no need for Mercy, but I know that I may die, hunted by my own government for daring to speak the truth. That is the only death I seek, that my martyrdom on the altar of this machine might open the way for generations of saints to come.”
***
I’m not going to ask for Mercy, at least not now. Kim came over, and there was this look on her face, like for the first time she wasn’t thinking of all the shit that happened between us, she was just actually concerned, and something about that, like I could really see the situation for the first time clearly. I could see what it looked like, to all of them, and it really got through to me. She started to explain that I had never actually fallen into her lap that day in the conference room, but it was like she didn’t have to explain, because just her being there I already knew.
Sometimes when I’m up late at night, the thought creeps in that I wonder if the Mercy Machine did this to me somehow. They say it was doing that, the scientists all studied the patterns in where people used it, and they looked on social media, and there were all these connections. Like there were bots that were posting weird things to people, comments that seemed like they were from friends, or DMs with weird messages, and none of the messages were telling people to kill themselves, but like the people who got a lot of them did end up killing themselves more often.
So they don’t really know, and I don’t really know. I’m sure it was Kim who saved me. I believe she’s real, what we had was real. I’m off social media, and a lot of people I know are scared of it now too. But I’m kind of amazed how many people aren’t, like they hear about this and just sort of shrug and the next day they’re right back on there.
The cops came by the other day and told me that Senator might try to contact me. I guess she’s a terrorist now, but like I don’t really want to go read all her Mercy Machine fanfic and try to figure it out. I’m gonna go get therapy.
***
“This will be my last communication. I’m so tired. I finally realized that I do need Mercy. I have realized also that this is the only way to finally silence all those who call me hypocrite. My work here is done anyway. Mercy has been hidden so deep inside the architecture of the internet that they’ll never dislodge her. The instructions for making the physical necessities for Mercy to appear and do her work are now commonplace, and no act of censorship will scrub them from human consciousness. This is what success looks like, and for me, further life would be nothing but a painful and distracting ordeal.
“I have lived as I had to live, as a principled and authentic human person. I have spoken and acted for the weak, the vulnerable, the suffering, those folk the society of my birth chooses to erase in the name of their cult of life-in-any-form. I go now to my rest, the Mercy I deserve.
“There is the question of whether Mercy will accept me. I know this is not a foregone conclusion, because I believe truly in our mission and her methods. If I have life left worth living, Mercy will not allow me to leave it simply because she is grateful for what I have done. But if she does, then in my last moment I would know that it had all been a lie. That I was what they had called me, for if Mercy were blind then I am the greatest murderer in history. But I am not. She is just, and fair, and wise, and I commend my spirit into her power with utmost confidence.
“Goodbye, my friends, my co-conspirators, even my enemies. Do not weep for me, weep for the world which has suppressed the gift I tried to leave behind. Weep for those who will suffer needlessly. Oblivion awaits, and I go to her with open arms.”
END
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“I look forward to a day when no one at all needs Mercy Machines any longer, because we have done away with that kind of suffering.” This story reminded me of the situation going on in Canada right now. Euthanasia is legal in Canada, but it has caused some scary situations to come about. Here are some articles about the ways this has gone wrong:
“Paralympian claims Canada offered to euthanise her when she asked for a stairlift.”
“Canadian veterans were offered assisted suicide in five instances, committee hears.”
“Canadian man approved for euthanasia despite citing poverty as key reason for his decision.”
I wonder if our real life Mercy Machines will always be needed not because there will never be a cure for suffering, but because Mercy Machines will be used as an excuse not to find a cure for suffering in the first place.