Why, he wondered, would he want to be born again anyhow? And again? And what good would suicide do, if you just woke up in another life? Christ, he grimaced. You could just go on killing yourself in one life, only to be born in another! If you did it fast enough, though, maybe giving yourself ten years to a life, he grinned bitterly—you’d get life, death, life, death, life, death, bam, bam, bam. Shit! He reached beneath his cot and popped some more pills without even checking to see what they were.

Of course, babies wouldn’t remember their past lives, at least he hoped not, so for a while, he thought, there’d be some peace—but just the same, you’d have to program yourself ahead of time to commit suicide before you grew up and started the whole thing over. And it wasn’t that he was poor or ignorant or sick—he disdained such excuses, he thought proudly—he just didn’t like … life itself, or the conditions of life.

He lay on the unmade cot, arms behind his head, leering at himself mentally; thinking that no matter how rotten he felt, he probably looked cool, nonchalant, clever, and sardonic. Because he always did. People always told him so.

“Clever.” He hated the word. And people. Because no matter what he said to them—and his fluent tongue spoke convincingly—he never really related to them. He didn’t know what they were up to. They were as impersonal, as far as he was concerned, as mathematical figures.

His glance went beyond his private corner to the communal kitchen with the greasy fake geranium on the windowsill, to the wooded area outside, and he remembered the cliffs that surrounded the campus and the water falls where all the beer parties were held.

And without ever having made any decision, Will dressed languidly, thumbed his nose at the poster Buddha (but making this an elegant, almost classy gesture), to find himself some ten minutes later merrily walking along the slippery edges of the rockbed. Jauntily, whistling, he threw his jacket over his arm and eyed the highest level of the cliffs that he could comfortably reach. No need to wear himself out, even for such an important occasion.

“What important occasion?” he asked himself.

“Who knows?” he answered. His mind felt curiously and beautifully divided, and his body felt so light and transparent that he almost felt invisible, though he knew that he wasn’t.

Then, eyes wide and clear, contemptuous and hurt, he looked down. It wasn’t too far.

But far enough.

And he was woozy enough to jump. The drugs had taken the edge off the moment.

All he had to do was

Jump off

the edge

of the moment.