Will we all die wondering?

The operating mask obscured his face as he leaned over the body of the man lying on the surgery table.

‘There’s the culprit,’ he said, and moved his head to focus the torch onto the right spot. ‘Looks inflamed, but no sign of permanent damage.’

His words bounced around the empty operating theatre and returned back to him undelivered.

‘Swab count at five. Clamp.’ He continued to narrate the proceedings to himself. ‘Snip just above the clamp.’

The arms of his autonomous surgical system predictively responded before the words left his lips.

‘Irrigate and check for bleeding.’

He looked up for a second as the one of the chromium arms of the assistance system transformed into an irrigation syringe and began removing the remaining blood. The information screen on the wall showed the weather outside. The clock in the corner turned over to 3:30am.

‘That’s enough, let’s close up.’

He waited until all layers of tissue were stitched and dressing was applied, and did a final instrument count.

He left the room as a nursing drone arrived to push the patient back to the ward. The corridor was empty, and the automated lights remained off when they sensed the approaching assistance unit. His eyes followed as the drone silently disappeared into the darkness. When he turned around, he spotted light spilling into the dark corridor from one of the side rooms. He smiled and walked down towards the office. The door was wedged open. A woman stood pensively in front of the large floor-to-ceiling screen, displaying the nano-particle-maps of one of the patients.

He stopped in the door and cleared his throat. The woman looked up at him.

‘Ah,’ she said and turned back to the display. ‘Why am I not surprised to see you still here.’

‘I could say the same,’ he said smiling.

‘And you’d be wrong… as always,’ she said and looked at him. ‘I don’t have a family, but you do.’

‘I have just saved somebody’s life,’ he said.

‘The world ends in 5 days,’ she said and shook her head. ‘You’re saving lives for another 5 days. That guy might have made it for another 5 days even without your help.’

He paused and gazed into the nanoparticle map on the wall.

‘I guess he has the same right as anyone else,’ he said finally. ‘A week ago, before we knew about E-day, nobody would have questioned what I’ve done. The way I see it, that guy has the same rights as he would have had a week ago.’

She sighed in defeat.

‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘Surgery’s done. Go home.’ She turned back to her screen.

He wanted to say something witty, but his brain was swaddled in a soft layer of exhaustion. He waited another few seconds in case she’d reengage in a conversation, then he turned around and walked away.

His taxi pulled up outside his house which perched on a quiet hillside overlooking the city. The doors of the two-storey mansion glided open silently as soon as the house’s system detected his presence. The large hall was quiet, and the information screen on the wall showed both of his daughters and his wife were asleep in their bedrooms.

He walked over to the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out the milk. He poured some into a glass, and stopped in front of the kitchen’s large floor-to-ceiling window. His eyebrows relaxed as he pushed the cold glass against his forehead. He stared blankly into the night horizon of the city and took a few, prolonged sips of his milk. Five more days left. So much more to do. So many lives to save.

‘Are you OK, hon?’ the soft voice brought him back. In the reflection of the window he saw his wife walk into the kitchen.

‘Couldn’t be better,’ he said and turned around. ‘Why aren’t you asleep?’

‘I set the alarm to wake me when you return,’ she said. ‘Now that there’s so little time left, I don’t want to waste any of it without you.’

She walked over to him, wrapped her arms around him and looked into his eyes.

‘Why are you pushing yourself so hard?’ she said. ‘Let’s go somewhere wild, or do something we’ve always wanted to do but never dared express.’

‘You know I need to keep saving lives,’ he said and strengthened his hold around her waist. ‘That’s just who I am.’

‘I’ve married the only person in the world without a bucket list,’ she said and frowned to punctuate the sarcasm.

He looked at their reflection in the window.

‘Well, maybe you didn’t,’ he said hesitantly. ‘There is one thing. But it’s a bit awkward.’

‘Go on! What is it?’

‘Promise you won’t laugh!’

She playfully put her finger on her lips and shook her head.

‘I promise. I won’t,’ she said.

‘Well…,’ he continued and looked into her eyes. ‘I’ve never punched anyone in the face. Actually, I’ve never punched anyone anywhere.’

Her expression iterated through the widest possible range of emotions within a second, starting with a look of shock, which turned into a wide smile before breaking out in laughter.

He lifted his arms off her and took a step back.

‘I knew you wouldn’t understand,’ he said.

The sun began to rise over the horizon and the contours of the vast cityscape gradually took shape in front of his eyes. He walked back to the fridge to pour himself some more milk.

‘It figures,’ she said, still giggling. ‘You’re a saint. It makes perfect sense that you’d want to do something like this.’

‘It’s been bugging me ever since they announced E-day, and the closer we get the more it’s been torturing my every moment. I must try. I can’t go out without knowing what it feels like.’

She walked back to him and put her arms around him again.

‘How about you just punch me now,’ she said. ‘We can then go to bed and do something more fun,’ she said.

He smiled at her and shook his head.

‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘Let’s just go to bed.’

He didn’t sleep. Lying on his back, his eyes were fixated on the ceiling, where the morning sun painted an expressionist masterpiece of shadows. He watched as the lines moved around slowly in response to the nagging inevitability of passing. He closed his eyes and in his mind he rewound time back to his childhood. His parents' small inner city flat, the braces on his upper teeth, the khaki shorts he wore on those long summer days when they spent all day playing in the street, the dust which always made him sneeze at the most inappropriate moments, and Chad. Chad Holloway. Chad Holloway’s fist. He used to work so hard to avoid those fists, which he managed to do, most of the time.

He got up, showered, and quickly got dressed. Downstairs, his wife was already in the kitchen. He picked up his shoes from the hall and walked into the kitchen to put them on.

‘Coffee?’ she asked.

‘I’m going out for a walk,’ he replied and slipped on his shoes.

The look on her face punctuated every word she did not say.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said and walked over to her. ‘I need this. Otherwise I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering,’ he added facetiously.

She gently pushed him away.

‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Just go, but don’t turn it into a joke.’

He kissed her forehead and walked outside.

The old inner city chapel spelled a weird oxymoron against the modern buildings that surrounded. The exposed brick walls looked something out of history archives. “JOE’S GYM”, the letters faded almost completely into the weathered panel above the entrance. He paused in front of the wooden doors. So many times he walked past this door and never stopped to think what would be behind it, and there he was, suddenly wondering if it was an entrance to a place where he was never supposed to be.

Inside, everything felt unfamiliar. Nothing escaped the destructive force of the riots of E-day announcement. There was debris everywhere. All but one of the punchbags were ripped off the ceiling, and a burnt out car was parked right in the centre of one of the rings.

‘It’s the car I don’t get,’ a cranky voice said behind him.

He quickly turned around and looked at the old man carrying a broom and a bucket.

‘How did they get the car in the ring?’ the old man continued. ‘I can’t get my head around it.’

He looked around trying to find a clue to be helpful, but the doors seemed intact, and only one of the windows was broken.

‘Good question,’ he said. ‘It seems the destructive mind can be just as inventive as constructive.’ He smiled at the old man and held out his hand towards him.

The old man ignored his approach and started sweeping the floor, which stirred up the dust around him.

‘Are you going to reopen?’ he asked and put his hand back in his pocket.

The old man slowed down with his sweeping. The dust particles continued their dance in the ray of light that sipped in through the windows.

‘No. But the gym is the only thing I have. What am I supposed to do? Sit and watch the wreckage for the next five days?’

He nodded with full appreciation. He felt exactly the same way about his own job.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he said and stepped closer to the ring. ‘Is it difficult to punch someone?’

The old man continued to sweep the floor, stirring up even more dust into the air.

‘Throwing a punch is easy,’ he said and glanced at him. ‘Making sure that it counts is what’s difficult.’

Making sure that it counts. He had never thought of this. The statement added an extra layer of confusion to his thoughts. Did he just want to punch someone, or make it count? CAN HE make it count?

‘How about someone, who never punched anyone before?’ he asked.

The old man stopped and leaned on the end of his broom. His tired eyes surveyed him from head to toe.

‘Forget it, son,’ he said. ‘If you need to think about it, forget it. If it’s not instinctive, you don’t have a chance.’

‘Is there a way to make it instinctive?’ he asked.

The old man laughed. It was a cranky, chesty laugh, which disturbed the orderly dance of dust particles in the air around him, then he picked up his broom, and returned to sweeping the floor.

‘You either have it or not. And, if you want my opinion, you don’t have it.’

He nodded slowly and watched the old man’s slow waltz with the broom. Then, without saying another word, he turned around and walked back outside. He slipped back into his thoughts as the riot-filled night air filled his lungs.

He first tried to recollect if he had ever felt he had the instinct, or if he had deliberately killed off that part of his subconscious and sacrificed it on the altar of rationality. What would it take to resuscitate it? To be able to do things instinctively. To hurt someone. Such an innate feeling, yet, in his head he was immediately trying to find excuses to justify it.

A loud group of rioters marched past him, meticulously breaking all the shop windows. One of them was pushing a large shopping trolley, filled with an obscure melange of banknotes, and various food items. Blood was oozing onto some of the banknotes from what looked like a primal cut of raw beef.

The looters looked at him, but he was buried too deep in his thought to develop any sense of wariness. What if he was able to hit someone? To genuinely want to make it count. How could he realign it with the person he deliberately built. Rationalisation, denial, a trickle of thought to slowly numb the edge of his guilt. His mind became its own courtroom, where he was every participant, the accused, the prosecutor, and the judge. He was slowly realising how the judge surreptitiously became his superego, dressed in the cloak of the moral conviction that he was destined to only ever do good. Deep inside, he realised that his real conflict wasn’t moral at all. It was existential. Not about the act, but about who he would become afterwards. If he crosses that line, can he still inhabit the same self? Or would he be able to split, one part doing, the other part watching, disowning, pretending...

The first punch caught him right on his cheek, and took a few seconds to turn into realisation and pain. His whole body jerked back, hitting the glass walls of the building that must have been a bank or some corporate headquarters. He turned his head to see where the punch came from and stared straight into the next blow, right on his nose, which made his eyes fill with tears almost instantaneously. Reflex lacrimation. He understood his body’s reaction, but being able to name it didn’t make it less painful.

‘Finish him,’ he heard one of the attackers shout coldly and could see through the curtain of tears veiling his vision that there were three of them and a shopping trolley. An innate reflex made him close his eyes in anticipation of the next punch, but it did not arrive.

‘C’mon Chad, finish him,’ the same voice screamed in an impatient tone.

His eyes flung open. The word Chad sent a neuron down a dusty cob-webbed path in his brain, hitting a node that made his legs wobble and his heart wanting to scream out for help, help from a long-forgotten place in his past, a place where he shared a tiny suburban flat with his parents, a refuge where he so often hid from Chad Holloway, and he tried again to get inside, but the door was locked and he had to turn around, and face the inevitable with his right hand forming a fist and his brain ready to move on and turn him into someone who was able to do it.

‘Finish him!’ he heard again. The words made him lurch forward, his hand lifting, to finally know what it feels like, to tick off that bucket list and be able to go home.

And then it all went dark.

‘He’s waking up,’ he heard and tried to open his eyes, but the brightness sharply cut into his retina, so he closed them again and concentrated on the sounds which hurt less.

‘Honey,’ the words pushed through the cloud with an angelic ring, which sent a familiar soothing warmness down his spine.

‘Can you hear me, honey,’ he heard the same voice again, and nodded almost unnoticeably.

‘What happened?’ he whispered. The dryness of his mouth felt like a ball of razorblades pinballing around his throat.

‘You were attacked,’ the angelic voice said, and now it sounded less angelic, more like his wife, which was, in a way, less exciting than an angel, but more reassuring that he was still alive.

He pried his eyes open, the tiniest crack, and there she was, his wife, smiling through a hazy blur. His memory reactivated, and he started to remember. The old man in the boxing gym, his walk, and the punches that landed on his head. He remembered forming a fist, and the urge to throw a punch, aiming to hurt someone, the first time in his life.

‘Did I punch them?’ he whispered, and tried to move his fingers to see if his knuckles were bruised, but he didn’t feel anything.

‘I don’t know, honey,’ she said.

He nodded and tried to remember if he did throw that punch, and whether it still counts if he doesn’t remember.

‘How long have I been out?’ he asked.

A short pause wedged itself uncomfortably between his question and the answer.

‘Almost five days.’

‘E-day,’ he said, and this time there was no answer, only awkward silence.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ he whispered again, and opened his eyes a bit more, which made his wife’s face less pixellated and smooth enough to reveal true emotions.

‘I should have spent these days with you,’ he said and noticed his two daughters standing behind their mother.

‘You did,’ she said. ‘We were by your side the whole time.’

She put her hand on his cheek, which was still sore and made him hiss.

‘How much time left?’ he asked.

She looked up on the screen behind the bed, only long enough to read the time.

‘Just seconds,’ she said, and leaned forward for a final kiss.

The remaining particles of what used to be Earth were floating aimlessly in space, as if each particle was carrying an unfulfilled dream. Atomistic memories of a boy who never grew up. A mountain not climbed. A couple never married. An apology never heard.

A fist that never landed.