Void Star

by Zachary Mason

He’s about to start deleting the memories of his family but stops, surprised at his own tenderness toward these delicate structures, and, there, on the screen, is his tenderness as a glyph, which is keeping him from acting, and always will, which implies he’s trapped forever. His despair is so strong it becomes a kind of clarity and he watches as though from a distance as his hand moves toward the tablet’s screen and the glyph is deleted. He’d expected a sense of profound violation but in fact it feels like nothing, and he should have done it long ago—it would be a shame not to use this unprecedented degree of self-control. As his sadness serves no purpose he deletes that too, along with his fear and his attachment to his old life, for change will come, has come, must be accepted. It occurs to him that, no longer being human, he need not die. He stares out over the sea, blank but alert, a neutral intelligence devoid of purpose, impatience and suffering.