Don DeLillo - Zero K

“Aren’t you the man who lectured me on the shortness of the human life span? Our lives measured in seconds. And now you cut it even shorter, by choice.”

“I’m ending one version of my life to enter another and far more permanent version.”

“In the current version, you have regular health checks, I assume. Of course you do. And what do the doctors say? Is there one doctor, a little gimpy man with bad breath? Did he tell you there’s something potentially serious going on in your body?”

He waved away the idea.

“He sent you for tests, then more tests. Lungs, brain, pancreas.”

He looked at me and said, “One dies, the other has to die. It happens, doesn’t it?”

“You’re a healthy man.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re going with her.”

“Yes.”

I wasn’t finished looking for low motives.

“Tell me this. Have you committed crimes?”

“Crimes.”

“Enormous frauds. Doesn’t this happen all the time in your line of work? Investors get swindled. What else? Enormous sums of money get transferred illegally. What else? I don’t know. But these are reasons, right, for a man to disappear.”

“Stop babbling like a fucking idiot.”

“Stop babbling, okay. But one more idiotic question. Aren’t you supposed to die before they do the freezing?”

“There’s a special unit. Zero K. It’s predicated on the subject’s willingness to make a certain kind of transition to the next level.”

“In other words they help you die. But in this case, your case, the individual is nowhere near the end.”

“One dies, the other has to die.”

Again, silence.

“I’m having a completely unreal experience. I’m looking at you and trying to understand that you’re my father. Is that right? The man I’m looking at is my father.”

“This is unreal to you.”

“The man who is telling me these things is my father. Is that right? And he says he is going with her. ‘I am going with her.’ Is that right?”

“Your father, yes. And you’re my son.”

“No, no. I’m not ready for that. You’re getting ahead of me. I’m doing my best to recognize the fact that you’re my father. I’m not ready to be your son.”

“Maybe you ought to think about it.”

“Give me time. In time I may be able to think about it.”

I had a sense of being outside myself, aware of what I was saying but not saying it so much as simply hearing it.

“Do yourself a favor,” he said. “Listen to what I have to say.”

“I think you’ve been brainwashed. You’re a victim of these surroundings. You’re a member of a cult. Don’t you see it? Simple old-fashioned fanaticism. One question. Where is the charismatic leader?”

“I’ve made provisions for you.”

“Do you understand how this reduces me?”

“The future will be secure. Your choice to accept or reject. You’ll leave here tomorrow knowing this. A car will pick you up at noon. The flight arrangements are made.”

“I’m shamed by this, totally diminished.”

“You’ll be met along the way by a colleague of mine who will provide all the details, all the documents you may need, a secure file, to help you decide what it is you want to do from this day on.”

“My choice.”

“Accept, reject.”

I tried to laugh.

“Is there a time limit?”

“All the time you need. Weeks, months, years.”

He was still looking at me. This is the man who was walking barefoot, wall to wall, arms swinging, ten minutes ago. It made sense now. The prisoner pacing his cell, thinking last thoughts, having second thoughts, wondering if there’s a toilet in the special unit.

“And Artis has known this for how long?”

“When I knew it, she knew it. Once I was certain, I told her.”

“And she said what?”

“Try to understand that she and I share a life. The decision I made only deepens the bond. She said nothing. She simply looked at me in a way I can’t begin to describe. We want to be together.”

I had nothing to say to this. Other subjects eluded me as well except for one detail.

“Those in authority here. They will carry out your wishes.”

“We don’t need to get into that.”

“They will do this for you. Because it’s you. Simple injection, serious criminal act.”

“Let it go,” he said.

“And in return, what? You’ve framed wills and trusts and testaments granting them certain resources and holdings well beyond what you’ve already given them.”

“Finished?”

“Is it outright murder? Is it a form of assisted suicide that’s horribly premature? Or is it a metaphysical crime that needs to be analyzed by philosophers?”

He said, “Enough.”

“Die a while, then live forever.”

I didn’t know what else to say, what to do, where to go. Three, four, five days, however long I’d been here — time compressed, time drawn tight, overlapping time, dayless, nightless, many doors, no windows. I understood of course that this place was located at the far margins of plausibility. He’d said so himself. No one could make this up, he’d said. This was the point, their point, in three dimensions. A literal landmark of implausibility.

“I need a window to look out of. I need to know there’s something out there, out beyond these doors and walls.”

“There’s a window in the spare room next to the bedroom.”

I said, “Never mind,” and remained on the bench.

I’d mentioned a window because I assumed there would not be a window. Maybe I wanted one more thing to work against me. Pity the trapped man.

“You thought you knew who your father was. Isn’t this what you meant when you said you felt reduced by this decision?”

“I don’t know what I meant.”

He told me that I hadn’t done anything yet. Hadn’t lived yet. All you do is pass the time, he said. He mentioned my determined drift, week to week, year to year. He wanted to know if this was threatened by what he’d just told me. Job to job, city to city.

“You’re taking too much credit,” I said.

He was peering into my face.

The counter career, he said. The noncareer. Will this have to change now? He called it my little church of noncommitment.

He was getting angrier. Didn’t matter what he said. Words themselves, the momentum of his voice, this was shaping the moment.

“The women you’ve known. Do you get interested in them according to guidelines you’ve entered on your smartphone? Can’t last, won’t last, never last.”

She stabbed him. My mother stabbed this man with a steak knife.

My turn now.

“Going with her. You’re turning Artis into a mirage,” I said. “You’re walking straight into a distortion of light.”

He seemed ready to spring.

I said quietly, “Will you be able to make executive decisions from cold storage? Scrutinize the links between economic growth and equity returns? Firm up the client franchise? Is China still outperforming India?”

He hit me, slammed the heel of his hand off my chest, and it hurt. The bench wobbled under my shifted weight. I got up and walked across the floor to the spare room, where I went directly to the window. Stood and looked. Spare land, skin and bones, distant ridges whose height I could not estimate without a dependable reference. Sky pale and bare, day fading in the west, if it was the west, if it was the sky.

I stepped back gradually and watched the view reduce itself within the limits of the window frame. Then I looked at the window itself, tall and narrow, top-ended by an arch. A lancet window, I thought, recalling the term, and this brought me back to myself, to a diminished perspective, something steadfast, a word with a meaning.