It took Marshall Rhine precisely 7.31 seconds to go from the womb to the grave. In that time he kissed twelve women and two men for a cumulative total of 1743 separate, if not wholly unique, kisses. He watched as his daughter grew up and started a family of her own, as his wife succumbed after a long battle with cancer, and as a car barreled through the side of his nursing home to crush his frail body. The last .00002 seconds of his life consisted of a flare of pain, then cold nothingness. He was eighty-one.
As Marshall became more and more aware of the endless expanse of darkness that surrounded him, he heard a faint hum. It was interrupted by a slow click, a quick whirr, a pause, another, quicker whirr, and a final click.
Marshall Rhine was born into a war-torn third-world country. His life lasted 0.9 seconds. The majority of that time was spent suffering, mainly for want of love or safety. When he was eleven a malicious grenade tore off the lower half of his body. Tears streamed down his eyes as he frantically tried to replace his intestines, all while crying for his mother.
Click, whirr, pause, whirr, click.
#
In a place not entirely elsewhere, Marshall Rhine was laying on a white, padded table. He wore a sterile gown that was woven with materials that monitored his vital signs and sent them to the scientist assigned to monitor him. Firmly attached to Marshall's head was a sliver-blue helmet that made a point to cover his eyes.
There were wires coming out from the helmet that were plugged into the building’s massive computer. The behemoth took up an entire wall and more, as its bulging arc was only a shadow of its true size. There were thousands of rooms and dozens of floors structured around the computer's perimeter. In most of the rooms were people in similar gowns hooked up to similar helmets. The outer layer of the computer had clear plastic panels, allowing people to marvel in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of colors that was the collected consciousness of an uncountable number of beings. The majority of these belonged to humans, some living and many dead, but there was a representation of every species somewhere in the glimmering mass.

The morning sun was fighting its way past the shadows, casting its orange light on the streets and buildings. Leaves that were not green were falling, and the air had a crispness that was genuine and welcoming. Men in business suits, with briefcases and appointments, were getting into their cars. In an hour, school buses would take children away from their homes. Right now, though, amidst the orange light and the not-green leaves and the business men in their business cars were two people sitting at a table in a diner, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
One of the two people flicked some ash into a metal tray and asked, "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" They had been sitting in a pleasant silence before this, and before that they had talked about old friends and movies and dancing, and before that they had kissed and sat down at the diner, but that was back when it was still just getting dark. Now it was orange light and leading questions.
The other person slid his empty mug to the edge of the table, his subtle signal to the lone and slightly irritated waitress. Then he furrowed his brow and waited a moment, then said, "I'm not sure. Afraid of what?"
"Anything. Is it a hard question?" She dug through her purse for another cigarette, but didn't light it. Instead she slid is between her ear and temple, resting it gently on the arm of her glasses. The question was from a book she was reading, and the main character hadn't known the answer either. She hadn't gotten far enough to find out if the question comes back up, and if there is a suitably clever answer attached to it.
"Well, I don't know. Drive faster? Steal? Walk around without the lights on? Is fear that much of a guiding factor? Maybe I'd speak my mind more. Tell people to shut up more often, I guess." The mug was still empty, so he took a small drag from his cigarette instead, taking care to blow the smoke off to the side. "What would you do, if you weren't afraid?"
There was still coffee in her mug, so she drank a little bit first, while acting like she was thinking about her answer. "I'd flirt a lot. I'd wear less and do a lot of drugs. Make fun of people to their face. Well, I'd quit my job first, then do that stuff." It was an answer that she had come up with early in the day.
"That's nice." The boy knew that she would have an answer. She was not the type of person to ask questions without knowing the answer. She knew all the answers.
The waitress refilled his coffee cup, and they went back to sitting in silence. Outside the diner, the orange light was getting brighter and the shadows were beating their retreat. A car drove by playing a song that they both knew, but only the girl knew the words to.
"I guess," the boy began, while slowly stirring milk and sugar into his coffee, "that if I weren't afraid, I'd leave you." It wasn't what he meant to say. It was what he wanted to say, but not what he meant to say. He tried to continue stirring as if nothing happened, but his hand became unsteady and started clinking around in the glass to the point of annoyance. He stopped and looked at the girl across from him. Her thumb had paused on the wheel of her dark-red lighter, and she slowly removed the unlit cigarette from her lips.