Not as Easy as it Used to be

"How's life?" Caspian started every single one of our little chats like this. Some morbid humor.

"Can't seem to catch a break. Lost my job the other day. How's death?" Jake sighed.

"Well, remember how it was the last time you asked?" Caspian grinned, "It's pretty much like that. My only entertainment is coming down and hearing about your misery."

"Am I sufficiently miserable for you?" asked Jake.

"Not yet, you haven't told me about losing your job. Spare me no details, this is literally all I have going on."

Jake sighed, rubbing his stubbled face, "I'm sure you heard this story enough when you were alive. We're making cuts. Your job has been deemed no longer necessary. Please turn in your badge and laptop. You know, like a robot that you haven't known the past four years? Like I didn't attend his daughter's bat mitzva. I mean, people will be people, right? If you expect nothing you get nothing."

"Yeah seems like a lonely way to go about life though. How'd Janie take the news?"

"Janie?" Jake's face got longer, "How long has it been since we last talked."

"A year? I don't know. Time doesn't really work the same way over there."

"Well, I was hoping to talk to her today. . ."

"Ah. . ." Caspian's usual smirk slipped, "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"People will be people."

"You want to get anything off your chest there?"

"The weird thing is, I was kind of relieved when she died?" Jake's eyes glazed with tears, letting out a low chuckle, "I was grateful for a lot of things. That she wouldn't have to be in pain, but more that I wouldn't have to deal with it anymore."

"Cancer?"

Jake shrugged.

"Well, I'm sorry either way. I didn't know."

"Can't hold it against you. It's been long enough, you know. Like it's scarred over. Sometimes I feel her though, like a phantom limb."

"That's only natural. As somebody who only has phantom limbs now, it's not the worst thing, eh?"

"The remembering is the worst part I think."

"Just a little death humor I guess. That's most of my material anymore."

"Anyways, yeah, I'm afraid I don't have much good news for you. No fun stories today."

"That's fine man. One thing you learn when you change over, time isn't the constraint we think it is. When time stretches infinitely before you, I think it loses a lot of its appeal. You know way back when your dad caught you smoking and made you smoke the whole pack? Like they do in the movies? I never thought people actually did that. But hey, you didn't ever look at a cigarette after that."

"The smell made me want to throw up."

"So, yeah, it's not some competition to make up good fun stories. The bad ones have the same appeal when you get distance through time. Even those phantom pains can become wistful remembrances. One day you'll realize you haven't tried to scratch your nuts in two years, and you don't even remember what that used to feel like."

"Is that what death is like?"

"Death is a slow forgetting. It sounds like something monumental, but one day, you just aren't alive anymore. Then with time you slowly forget what color your hair used to be, or simple stuff you used to take for granted. Then you forget that it had any meaning. The things that stick in my mind? Stories. Things that happened to us, or you."

"You don't remember what color your hair was? It was brown."

"It doesn't matter to me much anymore to be honest. I'm not trying to get laid here." Caspian chuckled.

"You never wanted to talk about what it's like when you aren't here in this room."

"I mean, I still don't really like talking about it much. It's nothing, like when you get so drunk you time travel. In absence of anything interesting you just let the days slide off."

"But time still passes?"

"It must I guess. You're different when I come back. I don't feel like time effects me so I tend to forget its passing. But yeah, enough about that, have you been looking for a new job?"

"Yeah, I just don't really know what I want to do anymore. Since Janie passed I've kinda been coasting, you know? Like eating hot pockets because I don't have to make decisions and they'll technically keep me alive. You should see my dumps." Jake gave his first wry smile in a long long time, "I don't really know what's the 'right' thing to do."

"The right thing to do is definitely not to tell me about your hot pocket dumps. Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decisions in life."

"You have regrets?"

"Not really. I mean, things I would've done differently, sure. You remember Angela?"

"Sure."

"She was a great girl, and I didn't treat her like one. I don't know if I could've been the person I had to be to keep her, but at least I should've apologized. Hey, actually, would you be able to apologize to her from me?"

"Yeah, 'Hey you remember that guy you dated like ten years ago who died, yeah he's sorry about kind of being a jerk'? Like that?"

Caspian grinned, "Sounds about right to me."

"So hey, you've known me for a long time, you know all my upsides and downsides, what should I do?"

"Like after you leave here? Probably go to sleep, it's late."

"Nah, I mean like, in life. I don't want to have regrets I guess."

"Oh, I'm definitely the best person to advise on that. I'm a real stellar example."

"You have to have something."

"Ok, sure, you know what I actually do. Keep changing. Make decisions. Do weird stuff. Those are the things I remember best. I loved it when we just got a wild hare and decided to go off and eat a hundred chicken nuggets, and you ate them plain because you're a monster."

"That's pretty vague."

"You want more specifics? It doesn't matter what you do. Just do something. You'll make a lot of wrong decisions before you make a few right ones."

"I'm tired of making bad decisions." Jake sighed.

Caspian grinned, "Get over it."