Mortal Sin - Sin Book II

Chapter 1

A foetus, at approximately 18 weeks old, can begin to hear sounds from outside the womb. Bones are in place, not just in the inner ear. Fingernails emerge to protect the fingertips and hair sprouts forth - eyelashes and mopatop alike rather than just the soft down that keeps the skin safe from being immersed in amniotic fluid for three quarters of a year. Eyelids are still fused shut, but, before too long, the unborn child can tell the difference between light and dark, shadow and sun. Soon thereafter fingerprints form, identifying the baby more uniquely than any Max, Isobella or Princess Tinkerbell label slapped on by the parents, sticky side down, could ever do. At what point, though, does the foetus become self-aware? How many weeks is it, from the moment the sperm wheedles its wriggly way into the heart of the egg until baby bump sits up - or swims up - and thinks, therefore is?

Or is it simply the fact that neurons are firing, like midnight on New Year's Eve, that gives a person mind, body and spirit? Even though thoughts stumble unbidden through the still forming brain, senseless voices in a chaotic void, does thought itself, recognisable or not, give Being?

Is the mind an entity in itself, trapped in the confines of the body? Or are those neurons actually an electrical cage, with the soul, whatever form it might take, crying out at the bars?

From conception to death, is the body a prison from which the spirit strains to be released? And if that is the case, birth isn't necessarily the beginning, and death is certainly not the end. Maybe Life is purely a sentence, incarceration for crimes unknown. A judge and jury sit sequestered, passing judgement and Life means just that. You've committed a crime so despicable that the ultimate punishment is to walk the Earth trapped in a shell of flesh, bone and blood. And when the bone breaks, down will come body, spirit and all.

Centenarians. They must be the ones who were the real nasty pieces of work. They are the ones given the longest sentences, forced to stay in this world for a seemingly unending amount of time, until their bodies no longer work without help and their bowels work with absolutely no help whatsoever.

Does that make suiciders the escapees?

Or are we simply batteries for the machines, with our world a video-on-demand stream of virtual unreality? There are no babies. There is no consciousness. And life after death is just another re-run, just like the omnibus edition of Coronation Street on a Sunday afternoon.

Would that mean killing your own mother wasn't Matricide but was actually Matrixcide?

We could be, of course, infinitesimal dots standing on slightly less infinitesimal spots circling each other in a ball around a cat's neck.

I don't know. Of course I don't. I doubt anyone does, or has ever. The whole how-why-what-and-who-be-do has been debated on the world stage, in pubs and at the footy match - to no avail. The battles that have decimated millions in the name of whichever god the warring parties held in reverence have never faced the question of what if...?

What if there is only one, and the Kurgen told the Highlander the truth? What if they're all sitting up there, playing chess, knocking down the odd pawn, whilst drinking tea and nattering about last night's Formula 1?

Do we ever find out? When we finally exit this reality, coffin lowered into the ground, set alight or body eaten by rats, do we discover that the answer isn't 42? Or even that it is?

Douglas Adams could be the only person to have ever been graced with the ultimate answer to the ultimate question. Well, one of them, anyway. Along with why are we here, what comes next, what came before and what's for dessert.

I'll take the Key Lime Pie, please. With cream. The squirty kind.