Exit Survey 

Everyone does it these days. The other week my friend was going on about how he’ll “take the luxury option”—48 hours of opiates and then overdose, partially paid by unfelt mutilations; for some it’s more about the meat than the mind, and they’ll offset the cost for a docile subject. We discussed the pricing of it. It’d take years to get that “heaven on earth” package. A week later he jumped off a bridge pov style for a 4 viewer stream—an admittedly cheaper option, if you can stomach the fall. 

Nowadays they’ve got it all hooked up. Just think about killing yourself and you’ll find your feed packed with hangings, self-disembowelments, even active mummifications, just like those buddhists in the statues did—ingest a bit of poison to slow the metabolism and rot away for that niche engagement, all to fund a better method for your partner and son. Even the sick fucks who run the show are bored of it. They get it transmitted right to their nervous systems. They feel our collective pain on demand and some days they manage to work themselves up to a semi—and they can shut it off too, the lucky bastards. Half the time I can’t tell if screaming is coming from inside or outside my apartment. 

I’m trying not to be caught without an exit. It’s not enough to die anymore. Any debts you took out to pay for your share of the pie will be reimbursed by someone’s excruciation, interest included. If you want some quick cash work as a repo man dragging families out of their hovels—don’t feel too bad, the only reason most people have kids these days is to torture ‘em for dwindling audiences, funded by corporations

who make verified videos for tube sites with the highest production value they can get people to pay for (though amateur snuff won’t cut it anymore)—slow, long, even have someone playing stepmom. But some like it fast. Some only have time for fast—skull 

crush: I can’t waste time edging when I’m on the clock, servicing bigger and bigger packs of something beyond beasts—even most animals will exchange immediate pleasure for life—fucking whoever they can until it comes their time to be fucked. The difference between this place and Hell? The latter has a purpose. 

But I’ve got mine, nice and shiny, with a wide margin for error: shotgun, styled chrome like I’m some cyberpunk jackass—12 gauge retirement, worked my whole life for it (black market paid in cash). As I luxuriate with my lips over the barrels alarms go off on the sides of the stock alerting me of the debts I’ve yet to settle—gullible bastards, I’ve got the luck of having nobody left for the collectors (oh what a fucking privilege this is: I’ll die so, so fast); I heard they got little communes out there, or support circles, where people huddle and fuck until rent is due in castrations—it never lasts, and I could never get into ‘em. Even then, the only people making it to 40 are the pain-addicted freaks on the bottom and pale half-corpse ghouls on the top, whose decay is extended only to absorb more crystalized agony, until they grow too weak to defend it; oh I love my fair share of hurt, but I never stopped thinking the best part of sex was the finish, and I’m ready to blow. 

As someone who takes comfort in the thought of it all coming to an end, I am distressed to report that the captains of this shrinking industry have developed a contingency plan:

they’re going to make an AI copy of the minds of everyone left alive—they’ll even give them mechanical bodies made to work just like ours. Then when you die they’ll torture the AI, who’ll think it’s you, or at least do its damndest to convince everyone it does—they’ll just leave out the part where they killed the “real” you. It’s not a great fix. Presumably some day though they’ll create an AI copy of themselves that gets off to it, and this can keep going til the sun explodes, or the heat dissipates from the universe, depending on how resourceful they are–one eternal, strained, planetary screech. 

The speaker is telling me to put the gun down. My comrades are battering down the door. The hinges are squealing, and the artificial wood is splintering. “UNAUTHORIZED SUICIDE IS PROBIBITED BY LAW.” I’m fondling the trigger–savoring the moment. An advertisement blares outside. Beautiful people hold bright colored pills in their hands and chant “die like us: die the way you were meant to die.” Clambering boots, mouth opened wide, barrels to the sky—until two prongs jam electricity through the spasm of my trigger finger.