July 27th.
The day of the funeral.
The room was silent, except for the rustling of fabric and the occasional cough forced into a sleeve. Doctor Fredrick Inak sat in the front, staring forward. A white, skinny man with sharp cheekbones, dressed in a grey suit. His posture was straight, his hands rested on top of a black cane, positioned between his legs.
He didn't cry. He didn't speak. His face was neutral, almost bored.
It was his mother, laying there, in a coffin, dead… gone…
However, there was no sorrow written on his face. No sadness… no tears. Not because he held back. They simply weren't there.
I should feel something… but… I don't.
He thought while gazing at his hands on the cane…
The silence in the church pressed tighter around him. Everyone else seemed locked in ritual… heads bowed, tissues out, waiting for the priest to begin. But Inak was lost in his thoughts.
Is that it?
Do we all just… die?
Every effort, every choice, every moment of love, anger, and success... only to end up in a box.
Nothing about this feels fair...
That's all he felt. No grief, just a reminder that he too will die.
He kept looking at the stillness of her body, the pale skin, the closed eyes. Every time his eyes landed on her, it hit him again. this could be him next.
There was no escaping it.
No meaning, no answers. Just death.
Around him, people cried and whispered prayers, but inside, he felt nothing but the weight of that simple, terrible truth.
---
The thoughts circled in his mind, but there was nothing to do but move forward. There was a funeral to finish, a mother to bury, and a life to continue.
Hours passed in a blur. The church emptied. They were outside now… at the grave. Words were said. Dirt was thrown. The sky above was cloudless and blue, and yet everything around him felt gray.
He didn't move until the casket was completely in the ground, the ceremony concluded, and the crowd had dispersed. Only then did he begin to stand, rising slowly and dragging his cane by his side.
The cane wasn't for show. Years ago, an accident had crushed the nerves in his lower spine. His left leg had never worked again. From the knee down, it felt like stone… dead weight he dragged through life. Without the cane, walking was out of the question.
He left the funeral, his steps slow and heavy as he made his way toward his car.
The wind brushed against his face… it was… oddly cold, despite the summer heat.
His skin felt numb…
His ears ringing…
Voices were muffled.
Conversations slipped away before he could grasp them… he wasn't truly present.
He was just anxious. Not of anything specific… just the overwhelming, paralyzing fear of death. of dying. of no longer existing. He couldn't put it into words. He couldn't explain it. It was just fear.
As he reached for the handle of his car, still stuck in that quiet panic, a voice called out his name.
"Inak."
The sound sliced through his eardrums…
Everything around him, which had blurred into background noise, suddenly sharpened. like a camera snapping into focus.
It was Dr. Lence standing a few steps away—the head of the research team Inak worked with.
"You, okay?" Lence asked.
Inak gave a small nod but, it wasn't convincing. "Yeah," he said.
Lence lingered a moment longer, unsure whether to stay or walk away.
"I've always seen dead bodies in my career," Inak said suddenly.
"Opened them up… Looked at organs… Cold bodies on metal tables…"
Lence stayed quiet.
"But this…" Inak continued, eyes fixed on the windshield. "This is different."
Lence stood beside him, hands in his pockets. "Yeah," he said quietly. "It's different when it's someone you love."
"I can't imagine what that's like," Lence continued, gently. "Take a few days off from the lab. You don't have to rush back in."
"I'm fine," Inak replied.
Lence looked at him, then gave a small nod. "Still. A little time won't hurt."
Inak said nothing. He wasn't really mourning. He was certainly not thinking about his mother. Not even the funeral. But about the silence inside the coffin. The stillness. The complete absence. And how one day, that would be his.
After a few silent moments, "Thanks for coming, Lence," said Inak.
Lence hesitated for a moment, then gave a slow, understanding nod.
"You're handling this better than I would… if you need anything, you know where to find me."
Inak got into his car and started the engine, but didn't move. He just sat there, staring ahead… hands resting on the wheel, motionless.
Then, finally, he drove off.
---
He had been driving for a while. No destination. Just movement.
The silence in the car was unbearable, so he reached over and turned on the radio. Anything, he thought. Anything but his own thoughts.
Click…
"—in other news, authorities are still investigating the mass shooting that left six dead and at least a dozen injured. The suspect—"
He stared at the road, eyes unfocused.
"—four of the victims were pronounced dead on the scene. One of them a child, just eight years old—"
His grip on the wheel tightened.
He didn't want to hear it. Just by hearing the word 'dead' caused unease through him.
Click.
"…recent studies show a sharp increase in suicide rates nationwide..."
Click
"…Health officials report a sharp rise in cancer-related deaths this year, with new cases overwhelming hospitals across the region…"
Click... click... click... click... click... CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!
He slammed his fist into the radio once—bam. Nothing. Twice—bam, bam. Still nothing. The volume stayed stubbornly loud.
BAM!
Again and again, he hit it—slam, slam, slam—but it was useless. The radio didn't budge. All he managed were bruised hands.
Again and again and again and AGAIN! He kept hitting it. The pain in his hands was sharp, but it barely registered. His mind was somewhere else…
Finally, gasping for breath, he reached over and switched the radio off. The car slowed and he pulled to the side of the road, heart pounding, body trembling.
Then, without warning—
"Oooouuaaa—"
He leaned forward, vomiting onto his legs, the bitter taste burnt in his mouth.
For a moment, all he could do was sit there... overwhelmed by a deep disgust… for himself.
He wiped the vomit off his legs as best he could…
Then, he started the car again and drove home in silence.
---
Once inside his apartment, he changed out of his clothes and stepped into the shower.He rubbed his skin hard... so hard it turned red, almost peeling... as if he could scrub the day and the funeral off his skin
After a while, he stepped out onto the balcony and lit a cigarette.
It's ironic, he thought, how I fear death and now I'm hastening it with a cancer stick…
As the smoke curled upward, his mind drifted to religion. He ran through them all, one by one… almost like bargaining with every god. But the more he thought, the more he realized they all came from the same place.
It's stupid. All these delusions. All these comforts people cling to. All of it was born from the fear of dying…
Inak called himself a rational man. He was always calculating, believing only in what could be tested and proven. Cold and distant from emotion, he sorted everything into two categories: useful or useless. That was the only way anything made sense to him. Religion, he decided, was a useful tool for many… but it just wouldn't work for him. He couldn't lie to himself.
He watched flies circling a lamp nearby, then shifted his gaze to the distant trees. The goal of all biological lifeis to survive. To continue. To be…
Then he tried to make sense of his fear A cat hearing movement in the bushes should feel concern. Whether there's an actual threat or not doesn't matter. What matters is survival.
It's better to survive than to be wrong. Often an animal's ability to survive is at the cost of its psychological well-being.
Telling himself that the fear and anxiety he felt were just tools… warnings to act against danger and threats. But what could he possibly do about the ultimate enemy, the inevitable end? How does one escape death?
---
As he lay in bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, the thoughts wouldn't stop.
But what exactly is it that's trying to survive?
I mean... when someone dies, the matter doesn't disappear. It's still there. The atoms, the bones, the cells... all still exist. So, what the hell is it that dies ?
…Or how I still consider myself the same person I was ten years ago, even though, by every biological standard, I'm not. Every cell in my body has changed. The atoms that made up my skin, my muscles, even my brain, are replaced. And yet there is a sense of continuity… I still feel like 'me'.
Even my personality is the sum of my memories, my hormone levels, the surges of adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin. It's my blood sugar level, my hunger, my fatigue. It's the way blood flows to certain regions of my brain, the rate at which my heart beats, the oxygen saturation in my lungs, the gut bacteria digesting my food and sending signals to my brain. It's my temperature, my hydration, and my microbiome. It's the millions of variables fluctuating every second that combine to produce the 'mood' or 'personality' I experience.
Personality is a moment-to-moment interpretation of these physical states…
Some people lose their memories. Others wake up with a new accent after brain trauma. There are those who receive heart transplants and suddenly pick up new preferences, new cravings, even new emotions.
You think you're more patient today? Maybe it's because you ate. You feel more irritable? Perhaps your blood sugar dropped, or your cortisol spiked. Every opinion, every reaction, every emotional tilt you take… it's traceable. Measurable. Physical.
So, if personality is just biology in motion, neurons firing, chemicals releasing, tissues responding, then hypothetically, it can be replicated…
… if done right, atom for atom, cell for cell? Would that copy be you?
…if every particle was built and arranged in the exact same pattern, if I look at my body and see a carbon atom here, I place a carbon atom there. A water molecule sitting in this precise orientation? I copy it exactly. Down to the atomic fingerprint…
If I knew every variable, if I could scan every neuron, every molecule, every ion flowing through my body and reassemble it all in the exact same configuration, the result wouldn't just look like me, it would be me. It would respond like me, joke like me, argue like me. Because in truth, that's all me ever was, a self-consistent arrangement of physical processes.
And that replica wouldn't be pretending. It wouldn't be performing a version of me. It is me—because everything I believe myself to be is already determined by the pattern of my matter.
If everything about me… my thoughts, personality, and identity… can be traced back to atoms and chemical interactions, then identity should be no more mysterious than gravity or thermodynamics.
WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES ME… 'ME'?