Gwen, are you ok?

Part 18

206 - Bruno

"I want to go home," said Gwen.

"Home as in...?"

"Vancouver. Canada."

"OK, we can do that." It was six p.m., and we had finished the bottle of the sugar cane drink. I wasn't sure if she was feeling homesick because she drank it, or if it was just one of those spontaneous decisions like wanting to go rollerblading all of a sudden. Either way, I was fine with whatever happened.

"Good," she replied, satisfied. After taking the dogs to the vet to do some paperwork, Gwen and I paid a two-hundred-dollar fine each for not having an entry stamp and boarded a flight to Canada. Bong Gu traveled as a service dog under my seat and the white, nameless dog was put inside a kennel and was sent as checked-in luggage.

"What happened after Spain?" She asked shortly after the flight had taken off.

"It doesn't matter, I'm not gonna dump my whole biography on you, not now at least. And I'm still thinking about what you said, about drinking because you know you're gonna die."

"It's true."

The stewardess asked if we wanted something to drink and we ordered two glasses of whiskey.

"I've been trying to figure out the meaning of life for a while now and I think this may be as close as it gets."

"The meaning of life?" Gwen repeated after me, as if she were a cartoon character.

"There's no meaning, I know. So we drink to forget."

"Yes," she said, satisfied, and finished her drink.

"There is no reason why we exist, we just do what we do and that's it."

"Yes."

"I had read that the meaning of life was to be happy and to avoid suffering. And then I read somewhere else that it was to prepare for the moment we die. So, then I thought I'd rather try to be happy than prepare to die. But how can I be happy while knowing I will die?"

"You can't."

"Exactly. We, humans, have achieved a self-awareness state in the one we can speculate and try to find the meaning of life. But the fact that you think there's a meaning of life doesn't mean there is one. The fact that someone looks for something doesn't mean it's there."

"Yes," Gwen was, once again satisfied with my answer. "So there's no point in searching for it."

The stewardess refilled our drinks. "Probably the meaning of our lives is the same meaning of the life of, let's say, a plant or a rat, to interrelate and interact with our environment and with other living creatures in the most self-preserving way possible, assuring the continuity of our species and the preservation our habitat."

"Yes, we are rats." She smiled at a random passenger that was listening to our conversation from the seat next to mine.

"There is no soul, no afterlife, no reincarnation or supernatural beings. Everything's clear now. They are only in my imagination and only as long as my brain is alive to create it in my mind. If my brain stops functioning, so will the thoughts I had about the meaning of life."

"Yes." Gwen raised her glass and said: "To rats."

"To rats."

We drank to that.

207 - Ria

The corridor walls were made of cold, hard, stone blocks, and the soil beneath my feet was soft and moist. I felt like Lara Croft for a second. Walking carefully to avoid any booby traps, I eventually made it to a fork on the road. Left, right or straight ahead. I knew every choice would be the wrong choice because I should be looking for Mia instead.