In this year—2027—everyone would do anything for money. I am one of them. Or I should say,...was.

Seven years ago, I met this gentleman in a heavy rain all over the city of Goron. I was begging on the streets for chips to buy food at the vending machine when the clouds decided that they could no longer hold the water. Then it rained. It rained hard. It rained hard selfishly. I had to drag my damned artificial legs to take a shelter under a digital roof that appeared in a sudden from the wall of a movie theatre. I guess it must have been because of the weather-detected gadget.

There I was hugging my ragged coat when a stranger approached me and asked me a million dollar question:

“Are you not tired of this kind of life?”

I found myself decently wrapped in an expensive suit in a modern office signing contract on selling my body for science. After I signed the papers, I had to take off my suit and went back to my old dirty clothes and roamed the streets of Goron.

The contract did not change my life. But it did on my afterlife.

The issue was not to make sense to me. I just had to sign documents that I did not understand except for the many zeroes my family will be granted after I died…and that was in 2027.

After the signing, it was forbidden of me to meet any member of family. And I just did not know why, but after since, my life had gone down,…as if were not already at the bottom of this world.

I had a news that my wife cheated over a meal for my children back at the outskirts of Gordon. My fellow beggars accused me of being not caring for them. I have always been a beggar…how should I care more about others!!! Not to mention that I got hit and caused my artificial legs that were made of cotton plastic torn apart…like my heart. And as if those things were not enough, the government of Goron forbid beggars to roam around the city. We were forced to move to the outskirts of the city. Unfortunately it was the opposite of that of where my family lived.

One day I was starving when none of my fellow beggars cared for sharing a loaf of bread from the garbage can. And was that a Karma? And so I learnt that Karma applied to the poor as well. I was down at the dumps…literally. I sunk my heart meters below standard of happiness. The word was even blurred by the facts I was experiencing. Then my heartbeat seemed to slowdown. What was a hope? What was living? Then I died.

Do you believe in afterlife? Never on my side until I experienced it. I was alive in my death. I saw my body lying on that cold steel table and being torn apart on my heart. They got this syringe that sucked a blue liquid out of my veins. They put it in a vessel…in vessels. There were twenty of them. I cried but what were tears of the dead in the eyes of the living?

They took the liquid in the laboratory for hours. Then I saw that gentleman I saw years ago. He grew grey hair on the side of his hair. He just came in, took the liquid and some files. My dead soul followed him outside and went to a room full of another kind of him. They were all seated and listened tentatively. And he started to speak…

“I am holding vessels of the first ever attempt of emotional diagnostic of human death. And I just got the result from the laboratory. We are confirmed that this individual died because of too many disappointments. His nerves broke down and let out the blue liquid. Blue has always been a nice color, but not for feelings.”

--Je--