Fiction: A Conversation With Jean-Paul Sartre
Recently exposed to have become interested in cryonics in the late 1970s, faked his own death from edema of the lung, and cryogenically frozen himself, I met up with Jean-Paul Sartre at his Paris residence to discuss his plans for the new millennium. Entering in on a dingy, aged apartment with bags of trash in the hallway and the overpowering stench of bleach seeping from the walls, I knew I was in the right place. He opened the door with no greeting or even expression on his face, simply motioning me to sit on the stained gray couch around a coffee table with a copy of a book called âThe Genealogy of Painâ lying open. Shaking with anticipation, I took a seat and took a good look at the literary icon. I noticed that he still seemed a bit chilly from the thawing process and that he appeared to have still aged slightly (albeit noticeably slower) since he went in the chamber. I knew something good was going to come next.
He sat opposite me in a very uncomfortable-looking ornamental chair and I turned my tape recorder on. âJean-Paul, how are you my guy? The future treating you well?â
âAlright, then. Say, do you have any plans to continue writing? Your fans have been waiting for decades at this point and theyâre eager to read some new work of yours; not to mention the huge sum Iâm sure you could make, right?â
After a long, silent pause punctuated by his picking of a scabby mole on the side of his nose and the longest possible slurp from a cup of black coffee, he muttered âMoney is immaterial.â
âWell, whatever you say Mr. Academia, youâre the smart one hereâ I replied, puzzled by his seemingly stoic new demeanor, a far cry from the dense, passionate lectures he delivered in his prime years. He was silent. We stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity, him eventually breaking eye contact to go to the kitchen window and look at an ant crawling across the glass. He suddenly burst into tears.
âWhatâs wrong, Jean-Paul?â, I said. âArenât you happy that youâre getting another chance at life, greeted back to the non-frozen world by a legion of rabid fans eager to devour your work?â
He turned and sighed, sitting back down at the table. âI went away for a reason. Years and years ago, I made the decision to fake my death and immerse myself in the land of frost because, as my so-called legions of fans should have already been able to tell, our existence is meaningless. As the protagonist in my hit literary classic âNauseaâ once said, âthe past is nothing but an enormous vacuum.â We are completely and utterly immersed in the waking world yet also completely unaware of its absurdity â it doesnât matter if thereâs trash in my hallway, it doesnât matter if it smells like bleach. It doesnât matter that thereâs ants crawling across my window because they are all simply not here. We work day in and day out for a mere piece of paper that somehow carries intrinsic value despite none of us wanting to have to rely on such a thing, and thereâs simply no solution. We all know thereâs no solution, yet we keep on going. Freezing myself was the only way out and the only way to truly enjoy my life â frozen in a block of ice located within the French governmentâs secret laboratory being sustained on nutrients through a feeding tube lodged inside of me. The only reason I was discovered was because the timer had been set too early and, when I tried to get out and set it for about 100 more years, the goddamn receptionist noticed me and told his blabbermouth friends that eventually made the news catch wind of it. I didnât want to be frozen to come back, I wanted to be frozen to experience the living world without any stimulus, any interaction, any meaning â nothing. Just the way I like it.â
I was stunned and almost didnât know what to say next. But then I thought of the readers, the content they needed and deserved. âTell me more about this feeding tube.â
He sighed, seemingly disappointed by the question I was asking. âIt fed me a brown liquid that kind of looked like one of those organic smoothies all these new-generation people wearing fanny packs across their bodies and red-tinted sunglasses are getting at the new Whole Foods down the street. It was pumped directly into my stomach through a heat-containing tube so it didnât freeze over and make me malnourished.â He folded his arms, pouting a bit and sitting back in his chair that Iâm sure was killing him by now, obviously slightly pleased by the back pains that were starting to hit him.
âFascinatingâ, I said. âSo what do you think about all the new technology thatâs come around since you got frozen? Do you have an iPhone? Are you planning on setting up an Instagram account to promote your new work?â
âInstagram is immaterialâ, he replied.
I shot up, beaming with delight, reaching to shake his limp hand and gaze into his eyes. âI think weâve got everything we need for the new generation here.â Without saying another word, he escorted me to the door and I left his apartment.
As I was walking out, a roach crawled across my foot but I didnât even jump â I was too busy thinking about the philosophical gold I had just uncovered. Soon enough there would be undergraduate philosophy students flooding my emails with their term papers about the immateriality of Instagram â this is why I do this work, these are the kinds of facts Iâm trying to uncover.
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