The Suicide Collectors Post for Kelly

This post is for Kelly, an early reader of The Suicide Collectors. Originally the novel had a nanobot character named Bellum 9, and Kelly was particularly fond, I believe, of this passage:

“Bellum, why do you think this all happened?”

“Excuse me, sir?”

Norman rested his chin in his hand, reclining on his elbow.

“The Despair, I mean. Why do you think it happened? You say you’ve interviewed all these survivors, taken down their history. If you had to do a diagnostic analysis for, say, Dr. Briggs, what would you say brought all this on? Was it the Collectors?”

Bellum blinked.

“A diagnostic analysis, sir? Well, I believe there were many factors. Human civilization had reached a point where scientific acumen was increasing exponentially, and as a result the old ways of thinking were being stripped away rapidly. The existence of God was disproved when the spiritual region of the brain was located and manipulated. The rich began engineering their children into better, faster meta-humans. Machines were replacing many jobs, and soon multitudes of people found themselves unemployed, useless to the capitalistic system of economics. In short, everything became strictly material. It was a gradual process, but when human beings realized their esteemed scientists were telling them they were simply matter, and that they could prove it, the last bit of magic was sucked out of humanity’s world. Unfortunately, there was nothing there to replace the magic, and a vacuum arose in the collective consciousness of human kind. If you weren’t rich enough to pursue immortality, or at least the illusion of it, there was really no point in going on any longer (especially if you were poor, as many were, and could not attain a tolerable existence in the physical realm). So many simply gave up hope and ended their lives, perhaps hoping that their esteemed scientists were wrong after all, and with one last desperate toss of the dice they could prove it, too.”

Norman rubbed his face in his hands and yawned.

“That’s a pretty good theory, Bell. Why didn’t you say any of this before?”

“You never asked, sir.”

Norman laughed and lay back down. The ship rocked under him, and he could imagine the high waves smacking the hull as if he were there, himself hovering on the edge of all that cold water.