Charon 2073

- What is lost is gone forever –

He had no dead. On the bleak wall of his emotions, no names of the departed were inscribed. He did not make pilgrimages to the cemetery, like so many he knew, whether in their own villages, the cities where they lived, the far corners of the country, or even distant spots across the globe.

He kept only a single urn. A tiny, black ceramic vessel adorned with the imprints of paw pads, accompanied by a photograph from the happy times.

In the picture, he was smiling, his arm around his friend, who sat beside him on the steps with blissful contentment.

Even the house itself was gone now, he thought linesqually, though he knew well that this had been his own decision. There was no one to leave it to; in fact, he hadn' t even wanted to pass it on. His goal had been preservation, to restore a fragment of the world, to rescue it from the cobwebs and the heaps of dead flies that lay in black clusters all over the windowsills and the floor when he first stepped through the creaking door and walked around the empty house, his footsteps echoing in the void.

Long before this day, he had known this would be his fate. This lonely life with no room for anyone who coud have hurt his heart, that had slowly, bit by bit over the years, shattered into a thousand shards, and was now covered by a thick, impenetrable crust as hard as titanium.

He didn't want anymore joyful chapters in the book of his life, where the final words are tearful. He didn't feel that he wanted to or could endure the stomach-wrenching, gripping, and alive-devouring agony that was so familiar to him on the slope of his life's path, turning from spring to autumn and then into icy winter.

On the selective altar of his memory, he could summon only a few good months or years, for he had shared more in a collective or solitary lack than in pasta-salad lunches around family and friends.

He knew it was his fault too that things had escalated to this point, but he could not shed his own skin, nor could he deny his own existence, and like the others, he waited for his being to be understood and accepted, even though this was as impossible a wish as building a bonfire from a flash of straw.

The best days of his life were those when he was home alone. In the intoxicating spring light, in the balmy autumn sunshine, he sat out in the garden, reading a book. He listened to the chirping of the birds and the soft breathing of his dog; the parasol cast its shade over him, while a bit of a drink and the bitter smoke of a cigarette lulled him into a daze, turning him an outsider to the world.

In these moments, he felt for the first time that the world held something intimate and pleasant for him, too. Nothing more, just some indulgent idleness int the wilderness of anxiety-ridden everyday life, moments that were barely more than a brief breathing space before the end of the world, which, invisible and incomprehensible to many, pressed forward with absolute reality from behind the curtain of false promises. These fleeting instances were little more than a brief, gasping pause before the end of the world—an end that, invisible yet unfathomably real to many, was surging forward from behind a curtain of false promises.

He withdrew, staying away from a world condemned to damnation. He enjoyed the momentary silence and peace that was still granted to him before the breath of the final second.

*****

He volunteered for the program. He didn't hesitate for a single second to scrawl his name in the corner of the document. He was glad to close the past in this way. Now, the final chapter he chose, the tearful farewell, finally gives birth to happy tears, which glide down his cheeks as gently as a shallow brook in a forest clearing in the light of dusk.

He liked that what was going to happen was his own choice. That it wasn't just happening to him in an unplanned, random way, but that his own decision had created both the time and the place.

He hesitated for a long time, finding it difficult to choose from the packages offered to him. The entire procedure was still in its testing phase when he signed the contract. But that was a very long time ago. A long, lonely succession of years had passed since then as he waited for the date he had chosen himself, a time during which the law was enacted and the technically impossible mission was realized, ensuring through decades of work the possibility of voluntary withdrawal for those who required it.

Naturally, this sort of things was not favored on Earth, so the venue was built much further away. Opponents of the method cited historical and theological reasons, but the proponents of free will ultimately pushed the plan through at the twenty-third plenary session of the World Council in the year two thousand and thirty-two.

Of course, he could have done it on Earth, like so many others who lacked the money for this so-called exotic journey, and thus secretly put an end to their fate when their souls could no longer bear the burden measured out to them, which they had carried for decades, dragging it along in boredom or heavy with pain, just as Sisyphus rolled his rock up and forward as a punishment.

He was quite averse to this. He did not want such an end. Perhaps he was a coward, or perhaps somewhere deep down, in the bottomless well of his memory, there was still a kind of attachment to himself, to the world, and to a life he had not chosen. And perhaps that was precisely why he saw the opportunity in this new venture, to which he said "yes" almost immediately.

Throughout his life, he had often thought about the contents of his will. First, having no heirs or relatives, he had requested cremation and the scattering of his ashes, later, he changed his mind and wanted to become a cocoon in a vast park, his body serving to nourish a broad-crowned oak tree.

Over time, he became more drawn to the ocean, and he presented a new request to his lawyer, that his ashes, together with those of his friend, be scattered into the vast saltwater expanse, so that they could travel around the Earth with the currents and be together until the Sun rises for the last time, in the midst of tiny schools of fish, in the bellies of whales and in the eternal darkness of the deepest trench.

However, the Charon Program exceeded all his imagination. Never in his wildest dreams would he has thought that such a version of passing away could become reality in his lifetime.

According to the brochure, the basic idea was born when the New Horizons interplanetary space probe flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015, and humanity saw clear, sharp images of the dwarf planet and its moons for the very first time.

Following the law was passed in 2032, work began almost immediately, ranging from the design phase through implementation, all the way to the grand opening ceremony.

The Program offered several alternatives for those choosing a voluntary departure, with various packages tailored to individuals, friends, and families, keeping in mind both respectful and budget-friendly solutions.

Choosing sub-option "E" of the In Eternity with Friends package, he finally stood here halfway between Pluto and Charon, on a ferry floating in the blackness of space, to cast one final glance at the infinite world beyond the window, which from this moment on would be his home.

Under his contract, he was given one last hour to relive the more important milestones of his existence, to immerse himself one last time in the lonely well of his memory, flashes of happy moments appearing, while the silent, dark abyss around him was already calling, hurrying him toward the end.

When the hour had passed, a white-coated doctor and his assistants arrived to perform the necessary procedure, then entrusted his mortal remains to the technicians, who, showing due respect, pushed the stretcher in dead silence toward the crematorium.

*****

A glass globe floats on infinite black fields,

two bodies, dust and ashes, one at last,

traveling this way through endless night

held in eternal embrace

by the warmth of glowing love

and light.