The Fourth Annual Writer Games: Canon

The Assassin | Fintan Bailey

What do you do when you realize that your life, and basically all the decisions you make are essentially meaningless?

That's an excellent question, and I'm so glad you asked! The obvious answer is, of course, that it doesn't matter what you do. You can do literally whatever you want, and since your actions and their consequences will have virtually no impact on the grand course of life and the universe, it doesn't matter. But, after I discovered the meaninglessness of life, here are the four things that I did.

One: Utilize your newfound nihilism, and the accompanying sense of optimism and recklessness to exert your will over those who haven't yet been enlightened. This one might seem a little cruel, and maybe it would be if any of us as individuals matter. But, that's sort of a silly thing to think when you're in the middle of a fight to the death.

See, even with all of her years of Career Training, her vastly superior skill with weapons, and strength that had hardly diminished since the Games began, Dioria still had one fatal flaw: that she cared. She didn't just want to win the Games, she wanted to win them with her dignity and beauty intact.

As for me, I pretty quickly realized that it didn't matter how undignified or ugly the fighting got. If I had dozens of cuts and scrapes all over my body and I died from them, that would sort of suck, but I would also be dead so I physically wouldn't be able to give half of a rat's ass. If I made myself look like a completely deranged psychopath, and emerged victoriously from the Games, even with a metric shit ton of wounds, I still won the Hunger Games, so it wouldn't matter.

Technically, my nihilism isn't the reason why I survived and Dioria's corpse was lying on the ground beside the Cornucopia. Me stabbing her through the neck is the reason why I was going up into the hovercraft, and she was lying in a pool of her own blood. But, I think if you trace it back a little bit more, you can pretty easily see that my nihilism is the force at fault here. It doesn't really matter anyway, but you asked me for advice, so I want to make sure I'm clear.

I bet you already have a pretty good idea of what the second thing I did post-enlightenment because you seem like a pretty smart individual, but, in case you haven't figured it out, the answer is morphling. Lots and lots of morphling.

Call me a hedonist, if you will (though Fintan is fewer syllables and probably easier to say), but when you don't have a big purpose to live for, the best remaining option is to make every second as pleasurable as you can. If you can find something that does that better than morphling, I will gladly add a fifth item to this list, but, until then, I'm pretty content with this one.

I guess that morphling isn't technically legal, so if you aren't a Victor whom the Capitol is eager to control, getting a hold of enough morphling to keep you happy and sedated your whole life is going to be a little difficult. So, I guess I was sort of lucky that my Games came when they did, right after the Haymitch Abernathy Fiasco, and the Capitol was looking for somebody who was more a symbol of peace (read: submission) than of strength.

My whole Victory Tour, I was higher than I've ever been in my entire life. It was like I was high for the very first time again, only I didn't kill anybody and nobody tried to kill me, which made it significantly better.

I don't remember a lot about the Districts that I went to, or the families I saw, or anything like that really. That's probably for the best, honestly, because I doubt the families of any of the boys (or girl! I only killed one of those, but I am an equal opportunity murderer) I killed would have been enthused to hear that their child's death was meaningless in the grand scheme of things. All I remember is feeling like I was floating, like the magnets that keep the trails above the rails were propelling me from District to District and I never had to touch the ground.