METANOIA

LIGHTNING

As it turned out, the plane was one of the smaller jets. Silas and Pete were sitting toward the middle of the plane, while Misha was all the way at the back. There were double seats on the starboard side and a single seat on the port side of each row, three people per row. The cold water vapor rising from the air jets condensed into a thick white cloud which made the plane feel like a steam engine.

There was an older man sitting in the single seat in the same row as Silas and Pete. Pete was by the window, and Silas had the aisle seat. Misha was about ten rows behind them, sitting between an elderly woman who looked like she might not survive the flight and an obese man with a very peculiar odor. The man had started to snore even before the plane took off.

Misha whispered to himself, "Fuck my life."

The three friends sat uncomfortably in their rigid seats, soaring through the skies like gods in their chariots...

Silas had read somewhere about a project that was underway to create planes that were partially transparent at the bottom. As the plane ascended, he tried to imagine how that would look. He knew, as passengers, they were placing a great deal of trust in the pilot. A man he had never met was fully in control of his life. One mistake and it was a joyride to the other side for all the passengers. He realized, with surprise, he had not thought of death in a very long time.

Silas used to read frequently about the ancient samurai and their warrior code. He knew the Hagakure and the Bushido Shoshinshu like the back of his hand, which over time, led to his interest in the Stoics, who viewed death in a different manner. Marcus Aurelius was his primary tutor, training him how to be the king he was to become. Death was not something he dreaded; at least, not in the way most people fear it. On the contrary, the fear of death allowed him to accomplish incredible feats with ease. When he thought about his self-annihilation, he tapped into his most primal fears, which rewarded him with an appreciation of all things coming to an end and became a source of motivation for him. He even had a mental exercise he liked to do. Everywhere he went, he would imagine all the different ways he could die there.

The obvious ways of dying had long lost their element of surprise and were not as effective. He would go to great lengths to think of the least likely way to die. He wove creative series of mini-events that lead to a surprising demise. A plane crash was, in this sense, a lame way to go. Instead, he imagined the hostess accidentally spilling hot coffee on the lady sitting in front of him. He imagined her then jumping from her seat, screaming in pain. He imagined her accidently kicking the recline button that allowed her to lean her seat backward. Then he imagined the old man next to her, who was obviously her husband, trying to help the lady and in panic, knocking the back of the chair, which was now loose. He imagined the back of the chair hitting him on the temple hard enough to cause an aneurysm. He imagined collapsing on the ground an hour later and dying a helpless, quiet death... simple, unforeseeable, and truly unfortunate. This type of death was far scarier for him than falling from the sky in a ball of flames and molten metal.

Silas imagined that last second of death... assessing what it would mean. His career gone, people he employed left to themselves, and the meaningless, pointless story of Silas' life. He didn't even want to consider the possibility of an afterlife. He was a militant atheist. An afterlife would rob him of the beautiful gift of possible, timeless annihilation, which made this moment so magnanimous.

If he were to die in a plane crash now, he would just be some punk who died tragically on a plane along with a gazillion others. Nothing left behind. Back home, he would be the talk of the town for maybe a year. His employees might be upset for a few weeks, but he had a brother, so no real loss there. His family would miss him genuinely for about three years, after which they would eventually get used to it, and remember him as a formality. When they were dead, Silas would be nothing but an aging gravestone.