Atomic choice

What is life?

Images of life bloomed in my mind as I sat in the deep emptiness, striving to gather my thoughts.

Since childhood awareness dawned, this singular question has haunted me: Is life merely a series of moments—effort, sorrow, and fleeting joy? A test of human conduct? Or simply an experience, lived because we were born into it? Why should we survive? Who made all this? And ultimately... why even insist on asking why?

There it is—the absolute question of existence. "Why?"

It's the genesis of everything. If only we understood why we think, why we are conscious, and why we question all.

But sadly, we don't know. The only certainty is that full comprehension arrives when no questions remain, when all is known. And that... is true peace. This, I is life's ultimate goal. Complete knowledge, leaving no stone unturned, bestows satisfaction and absolute enlightenment... yet concurrently strips purpose, as no reason to live persists once all is revealed.

However, I doubt omniscience is attainable. One must transcend life's limits, spend an infinite duration gathering all knowledge. This leads to the only alternative path to peace: silencing this curious mind and heart... through death.

I observed my hands, sensing a slight tremble. An age factor, perhaps? Though young, how long until death claims me?

I rose and stepped into a bright room, where dim blue lights hummed with the soft murmur of an engine at rest.

Consider a simple case. In an unending void of nothingness, a lone being exists. Born from nowhere, the sole living thing, unjudged, living for no one. Every moment it endured, pain and harshness with just one goal, to exist and survive. But, the cosmos had death on it's mind, to set the being free and attain peace.

What did this being do?

Did it end its meaningless journey, or did it thrive to struggle?

That is a question I needn't seek an answer for, as its truth is known. For that creature was the foundational living entity that originated all of us, beginning a chain of organisms that, over countless ages, culminated in humanity.

That creature simply defied death and continued, solely to nurture life into the world... though without mind or emotion... it chose to fight... and only that creature truly comprehends why.

After seeing my surroundings, I reclined and attempted sleep in a chamber, but found it elusive. I kept my eyes closed, my thoughts returning to the core question.

For us intelligent beings, life appears as a unique opportunity to act before death arrives... or more precisely, before the unknown that death brings. Believing this, we strive to live and maintain our presence, aiming to discover life's meaning through every experience.

So, is life simply about finding meaning?

Then what is the meaning of an infant dying at birth? Or a bacterium living less than a day? These lives change nothing, seemingly without clear reason... yet they manifest. This implies life's purpose isn't simple to grasp, remaining hidden until death embraces us.

And I... now face a dilemma quite similar to that primordial creature's: to live and seek all knowledge as a mortal, knowing I'll surely die without finding it all, receiving peace after death... or to end it now, extinguishing this curious consciousness for instant peace through immediate death. Both choices, vastly different in difficulty, converged on the same end—death.

The only distinction was... one path demanded a life of striving and creating wonders for peace before death, while the other offered peace only in death's wake.

I will find peace... the enlightenment... and set myself free from this consciousness... and to do so, facing life and death... I choose...