Where do we go when we die?
Andrew had had this conversation with different people at different points in his life.
The first time was with the vicar at the church his mum used to bring him to for Sunday School. The vicar had said, "Well, Andrew, the Bible says that if you believe in Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and saviour, then you will have eternal life in heaven."
The second time was with a classmate in college. Dev came from a Hindu family but personally listed his religion as Jedi. Perhaps influenced by his Hindu traditions and his love of science fiction, Dev had told Andrew, "When we die, we are sent to another planet or another parallel universe to inhabit another body and relive our life all over again. Who sends us there I don't know. God? The Force? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? It doesn't matter to us. Some things we are not meant to know."
Andrew didn't quite like the thought of become a Martian after he died.
He'd had a conversation about death with Rhiannon on their first date. He remembered distinctly that they were sitting in a café, drinking hot chocolate, talking about everything from computers to Bertrand Russell to Doctor Who to their favourite Disney cartoons.
She had said, "I believe that there's nothing when we die. Our life is here and our life is now. It's a passing dream, this life of ours. When we wake up, there's nothing. We won't even know that there's nothing because there's nothing to know and no consciousness of ours to perceive that nothingness."
"But if there's nothing after we die," he argued, "doesn't that mean that whatever we do here is futile?"
Rhiannon shook her head. "I know that's a pretty good argument against my view of the afterlife, but I think we are forgetting that the earth continues after we are gone. Time continues, reality continues. All the things that we did here on earth, no matter how small, will have their effect on something else in reality. Our good choices, our bad choices. It's our responsibility, if you like, to the others left behind and the others coming after us to make the good choices and to improve this earth of ours."
"But can't we still make the good choices and believe that there's something in the afterlife?"
Rhiannon smiled that cute, sardonic smile of hers. "I see it this way. If there's something, then I shall be pleasantly surprised. But if there's nothing, I'll have no consciousness with which to think, Oh damn, just as I expected."
That was the night Andrew knew that he was going to love Rhiannon forever.
For a long time, Andrew didn't really care about what happened in the afterlife. He adopted a modified version of Rhiannon's philosophy – what matters is the here and now and what we intend to do with this reality of ours.
And now Andrew was here, standing on this busy road in the heart of London with explosives strapped onto him. He could do nothing but call his loved ones (the compassionate yet sickening generosity of his abductors), pass on instructions to the police, and pray that the sniper's bullet did not come flying at him.
He wondered if he believed in the existence of a higher power. His early days at Sunday School told him that there was a God that could not be proved by science. His days at school told him that anything that couldn't be proven by science or human logic probably did not exist.
Ah well. The time that he had left (six hours and twenty-two minutes) he had left was too short to be spent thinking about whether there was a God or not, or if there was anything in the afterlife. He would find out soon enough.
Soon enough…
"Oh God," Andrew muttered. It felt as if his heart was simultaneously being split in half yet squeezed tightly. "I don't want to die, I don't want to die!" He couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe.
His exclamation made a few people glance at him, but they continued on his way without caring. It was strange how Andrew had never really noticed how impersonal the urban life was. It was almost as if being a dying man had opened his eyes to so much.
There were so many things Andrew still wanted to do. He wanted to learn how to fly a plane. He wanted to learn how to cook French cuisine. He wanted to wheedle his mum's secret recipes out of her. He wanted to marry Rhiannon; they were going to have lots and lots of children, he had already decided.
All these dreams, unspoken desires in his heart… Now he would never have a chance to realise them.
It seemed such a waste.
So many things seemed such a waste.
Andrew wiped away more tears. No use in crying. If anything was a waste, tears were. He had not much time left and he wasn't going to spend it crying. It would bring too much satisfaction to his abductors.
If he was going to die, he wanted to die well.