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"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
Originally posted by serbsta
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
"...Listen, doctor. Here's what I want to ask you. Suppose you began to perform an org-trans operation on me, taking out my old stomach and putting in a new one, and something went wrong. It wouldn't hurt, would it? Because I'd be out. Could you do that?' He watched Eric's face. 'You understand me, don't you? I see you do.'
Behind them, at the closed door, the bodyguard stood impassively, keeping everyone else out, preventing them from hearing. This was for Eric alone. In utmost confidence.
'Why?' Eric said, after a time. Why not simply use Johannson's loger-magnum pistol? If this is what you want...'
'I don't know why, actually,' the Mole said. 'No one particular reason. The death of my wife, perhaps. Call it the responsibility I have to bear.. . and which I'm not managing to discharge properly, at least according to many people. I don't agree; I think I'm succeeding. But they don't understand all the factors in the situation.' He admitted, then, 'And I'm tired.'
'It - could be done,' Eric said truthfully.
'And you could do it?' The man's eyes blazed, keen and fixed on him. Sizing him up as each second ticked away.
'Yes, I could do it.' He held, personally, an odd view regarding suicide. Despite his code, the ethical under-structure of medicine, he believed - and it was based on certain very real experiences in his own life - that if a man wanted to die he had the right to die. He did not possess an elaborated rationalization to justify this belief; he had not even tried to construct one. The proposition, to him, seemed self-evident. There was no body of evidence which proved that life in the first place was a boon. Perhaps it was for some persons; obviously it was not for others. For Gino Molinari it was a nightmare. The man was sick, guilt-ridden, saddled with an enormous, really hopeless task: he did not have the confidence of his own people..and he did not enjoy the respect or trust or admiration of the [wartime enemy]. And then, above and beyond all that, lay the personal consideration, the events in his own private life, starting with the sudden, unexpected death of his wife and ending up with the pains in his belly. And then, too, Eric realized with acute comprehension, there was probably more. Factors known only to the Mole. Deciding factors which he did not intend to tell.