Freddie Seigel is a male Homo sapiens sapiens who is 5 feet seven inches tall, 142 pounds, 32 years old, an enneagram type 7, a Myers Briggs ESTP, atheistic, dating Loraine Cagley from accounting, and struggling to come to terms with a catgirl fetish, which he fears may develop into bestiality if left unchecked.
Right now, in the second-floor bedroom of a two-story apartment building at 12256 Angel Wing Court in Richmond, Virginia, of the United States of America, on a rainy November 24, 2010, at exactly 7:44:57, Freddie Seigel is sleeping in a pair of Joe Boxer boxers.
In three seconds, at 7:45, the digital clock on the desk beside his bed will sound an alarm.
The sound of the alarm will rouse Freddie Seigel from a quite unpleasant dream and into his waking world.
Outside his window, he will see the skies drained of their color by the torrential downpour.
Freddie will then think about his job.
Freddie will feel intense hatred toward his job.
Freddie will feel at a lost because he cannot do something useful for humanity.
Freddie will want to blame organized religion and the Republican Party as he reaches to the far end of the bed for week-old khakis and a dress shirt he doesn’t remember wearing for the past three days.
Freddie will walk out of his bedroom and down the stairs, wondering if anybody will remember his clothes from the last time he wore them.
He will walk into his kitchen, wondering whether it is true that girls have better memories than boys.
And then, as he pours Honey Nut Cheerios into a glass bowl sitting on the table from last night’s dinner, he will wonder whether gay men, being more feminine, have better memories than straight men like himself.
And now, as he opens the refrigerator to reach for whole milk, he will wonder if someone as wonderfully ditzy as Loraine Cagley can remember better than his probably homosexual boss whether the shirt he had on was clean based simply on the fact that Loraine had two X chromosomes and his boss only had one.
And as he walks over to the dishwasher to grab a spoon, he will think about how hot Loraine Cagley would look on all fours, with cat ears, a cat tail, and possibly retractable claws and hair over her entire body.
As he grabs the spoon and turns to walk back, he will stop wondering, because I (Death) will be standing on his front porch in the rain and ringing his doorbell.
As he walks to the door, he will mutter to himself: he is just a cat person, that’s all.
He will then stop, wonder, bend over to look through the peephole, and behold: a skeleton in the rain, clad in a soaked T-shirt (“I hate myself and want to die”) soaked ripped jeans and soaked Doc Marten boots.
At this point, Freddie, slightly surprised, will hesitate, and mull (for seven seconds) over the nature of this morning guest. I will continue to press the doorbell.
Freddie will then decide that, since his guest is clad in something as harmless as a T-shirt and had the courtesy to ring the doorbell, his guest seems harmless enough, and he will proceed to open the door.
Then “Good morning,” I will begin. “Is this Freddie Seigel?”
“Well! Good morning, and who might you be?” And Freddie, slightly nervous, will glance down to read the sharpie on my tee shirt and grin.
“I’m Death. How do you feel right now?”
Freddie will drop his smile and turn very pale. Nevertheless, he will force a smile. “Wow. Sort of scared, I guess. Death, huh? Did you ever think about wearing a mask?” He will laugh nervously
I have, if you must know. I have a Jesus, a Buddha, and a certain goth girl in her early teens, but Freddie is an atheist.
“Hey, come right on in, though,” Freddie Seigel will say after a bit. “It’s an honor to be meeting someone like you—I mean, as scared as I am, this is exhilarating!—but you do have a moment to spare, I hope?”
“All day.”
“Great! Wow! I mean, meeting Death himself! I don’t even know where to begin!” (as we walk through his front door) “So how exactly do I die?” (as we gather around his dining room table and he picks up the spoon)
“Concussion.”
“Goddamn! How anticlimactic! And say, how exactly does this fate thing work? Let’s say the concussion happens as a result of a fall, right? Is that what it will be? And let’s say the fall happens as I slip walking out my front porch. If I don’t leave the house today, wouldn’t I be still alive? Or will I suddenly die?”
“You won’t suddenly die.”
“Exactly. But when you really think about it, every little move I make can result in so many changes in my environment, right? So what makes you think I’ll die today? At best, you can only say “Mr. Seigel, you have an unusually high chance of dying today because the floor is all wet outside,” right?”
“Freddie, what I find you trying to suggest is the notion that we each have the power to manipulate reality to our own choosing. You are lifting the cereal to your spoon to your mouth now because you have chosen to.”
“That’s right. And I can stop my spoon just as easily.” The cereal will drop back into his bowl with a splash. “There. I don’t see how you can deny any of this.”
“If a robot was built which could do exactly what the human brain did, would it have free will?”
“I'm not sure.”
“Every robotic action it takes, every robotic lesson it learns in every second of its life would be just a reaction it was programmed to have.”
“But that’s ridiculous. We’re not like that, see, Mr. Death. Now, look here: I feel conscious. I know I’m conscious."
"And suppose it did as well?"
"But I know I am. See, because I can control what I feel and what I think and what I believe. I program myself.”
“Freddie, why did you choose to be an atheist?”
“I looked around me and I saw tons of science and no God.”
“If God appeared, Freddie, would you believe?”
“Sure.”
“Could you still choose not to believe, though?”
“I… guess I could go into denial.”
“Look at your bowl of cereal, Freddie. Can you deny it exists?”
“I guess beliefs, then, aren't… but my thoughts are still, like…”
“When you do something, you believe it to be the best option at the time.”
“I usually do. But I can choose to think about it a bit more and come up with a better option, or I can screw the best option and have a bit of fun.”
“Your choice to think more is what you believe to be the most advantageous at the moment in time. Your desire to do what you want at the moment and disregard the consequences is what you believe to be the most advantageous at the time. They are still exactly what you’ve been programmed to do.
The word "personality", I think, could be used as a synonym to this programming code. One personality might value foresight while another values immediate gratification.
And if you argue that these personalities have been shaped, Freddie, even so: the way your personality reacts, adapts, changes to better suit its environment, is exactly as it’s been programmed to change.
Freddie, now imagine a chain of dominoes. Imagine billions and trillions and quadrillions of dominoes. Imagine a sea of dominoes, of microscopic dominoes, each pushing into the next. Imagine yourself in this—”
Freddie will shake his head now. “But don’t you get it, Death? I don’t feel like dominoes. I feel like a hand pushing the dominoes,” he will say. He will pause, because of the ridiculousness of what he just said.
I will feel a bit guilty. "Are you still scared, Freddie?"
He will glance at a clock: 8:01. “Hey. Stay here if you’d like to. I’ll have to get going.”
He will walk upstairs to brush his teeth. In minutes, he will be back, and headed for the door.
“I like you, Death. You’re a good guy. A good chatter. So long? See you when I get back? Let's talk more on this.”
“Are you scared, Freddie?” (he will turn) “I often think I'm wrong. Because--to think the universe happened to fall together with all these rules just right, and somewhere in the middle a blue planet appears where beings evolve to the degree that they eventually attain consciousness, or even an illusion of consciousness, Freddie--”
“You sound like a Creationist pamphlet. What’s all this, all now?”
“Honest: are you scared Freddie?”
“Still a bit.”
“Well." And now I will pause. "What if I said you win? You have free will. You have a soul. You’ll see Loraine one day.”
“Shut up.”
“There is a God.” I will unwittingly let out a chuckle.
He smirks. “You’re lying.”
I will begin to laugh hysterically.
“Freddie, I was only kidding,” I will manage to say between peals of laughter.
I will continue laughing until he closes the door on me.
Freddie will enter his grey Honda Civic and back it up into the rainy streets.
He will wonder if he should take some time off today to write a will as he makes his way through the rainy suburban neighborhood.
He will decide it is safest if he drives slowly today as his car turns up the ramp and onto the highway.
He will drive at 30 miles an hour across the highway, so that it will already be 8:25 by the time he arrives downtown, five minutes before his work begins.
He will worry now about whether he will make it there on time. At 8:27, however, he will decide that arriving late was just a little bit better than dying from a concussion.
Just then, he will notice the cat running across the road.
He will step on the brakes and turn sharply to the left.
His car will hydroplane, at only 20 miles an hour.
In the opposite lane, a Toyota Supra will be waiting.
In the seconds before the collision, he will think about the ridiculousness of the events surrounding his death.
He will think: the cat! Had I not stopped for the cat, and had I been a dog person from the start--!
He will think: had I taken the time to pick out my clothes this morning, or had I waited a little longer at the door for Death, or had I driven just a bit faster or slower, even just by a second--! But oh! Fatalism! Colliding dominoes! How I do wish for an afterlife!
Now pan the shot. Slow motion, gradually grinding down to still-frames:
Shot 1: The cars make contact
Shot 2: The side of his car and the front of the Toyota crumple. His head swings toward the collision.
Shot 3: The cars continue crumpling. His head swings away.
Resume at normal speed. The sound of glass breaking, tires squeaking, metal crunching.
Freddie will now be feeling dizzy from shock and fighting to stay conscious.
He will look around to find many cars stopping around him.
He will loook down, and his shirt is soaked in blood. He will not feel pain.
As he starts to pass out, he will look up for a few seconds to a light shining through the clouds. It will be getting steadily brighter. As everything else drops away, he will wonder if I was right and not kidding after all about God, and he will try to believe it is the light of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and maybe Loraine Cagley will see him again, oh, Loraine!
It will actually just be the sun, but fortunately, he will never find out.
At 8:31 on November 24, 2010, by a traffic light in sunny downtown Richmond, Virginia, Freddie Seigel will happily lose consciousness forever believing in Jesus Christ.
In the ten years following his death, his body will be eaten by all sorts of invertebrates.
Loraine Cagley will be horrified at first, but in another ten years she will marry a better man, a dog person, and they will live happily without Freddie.
In yet another ten years, almost all the matter from Freddie’s body will have been turned into all sorts of useful things, like grass and trees and animals.
Right now, however, none of this has happened yet.
Freddie Seigel is still a man who is 5 feet seven inches tall, 142 pounds, 32 years old, an enneagram type 7, a Myers Briggs ESTP, atheistic, dating Loraine Cagley from accounting, and struggling to come to terms with a catgirl fetish, which he fears may develop into bestiality if left unchecked.
Right now, in the second-floor bedroom of a two-story apartment building at 12256 Angel Wing Court in Richmond, Virginia, of the United States of America, on a rainy November 24, 2010, at exactly 7:44:57, Freddie Seigel is sleeping in a pair of Joe Boxer boxers.
In his dreams, he is falling at 100 miles an hour, with nothing to hold on to.
