"I should kill myself" Mark sigh.
Entity replies back with a mild and unmediated response, 'Why?'
"There's no point of it at all. Afterall, why shouldn't I kill myself? It's easy for you to ask and possibly judge me why, because you have no idea how it feels to be me."
Entity replies, "You're right, I'm sorry if my response came up insensitive."
"It's cool pal, don't you find it a bit weird, we live without questioning what happens after we die?" Mark questions with a glare of annoyance.
"Only unhappy people thinks of unhappy thoughts." Entity replied back emotionless.
"I mean... I didn't like it when I was complacent as well. I wasn't unnecesarily unhappy, just complacent."
"There's nothing wrong with being complacent Mark... Here let me make you a tea." Entity places its hand on Mark's shoulder trying to calm Mark.
"That's the problem. There's nothing wrong with anything at all! Why is it a problem if I kill myself? What happens after I die, somehow really depends on what I believe, whether I'm Jewish, Moslem, Christian, or even Egyptian. Who the fuck knows?"
"No one knows Mark, and you know damn well about that." Entity replies unmediatedly.
"Yet and despite it all, we live for another day as if death would be the last thought we'd ever think about."
Entity: "You know, some people say, ignorance is bliss, Mark... Maybe you should consider taking that--"
Mark: "Yeah well some people say, I'll go to hell if I don't do this and that. That's a big enough of a threat for me to think about it seriously don't you think?"
Entity stares at Mark with a nervous look.
Mark: "Even if we take religion out of the equation, why live? Is it really because we are happy living?"
Entity: "Yes, I simply think that too. The day you'd commit suicide is the day that you confesss that life is not worth the happiness for the struggle of living another day anymore. I'll try my best to understand why would you think in such a way."
Mark: "Don't worry pal, I won't commit suicide, at least not now. There are still things that makes me happy and could make me happy. It's bizzare to think about it. The line seperating me between life and death, is my hand... Myself... Even after it all, does it really matter what I do to this world? I'm going to die and decay just like the rest of them before me."
Entity: "It may not matter, but I still want to say this with the outmost honesty, I'm still mesmerized by the fact you still do everything that you've done even though you know all of those may be for nothing."
"It's not exactly nothing, as much that one day I'll become another lifeless decaying matter like the rest of them before me. What matters to me is at least a part of me, the extended self of me will stay remains. So that other humans after me could maybe learn for me, that is what I think the only thing valuable out of my life. Not this fleshy cheeks and nor this deteriorating bone behind it, it's the emergence property of thought that is able to extend beyond it's embedded beneath me that can extends itself in forms of arts and creations. Everything else about me is unequivocally meaningless just like that guy right there who just jumped off the bridge." Mark explains while pointing his finger from his balcony to a person who just commited suicide.
Entity: "That was rather an unsettling example, but I can't argue you're wrong."
Mark: "Many lifes have lived and many lifes have been spent barely noticeable and there's nothing wrong with that. I am just somehow... Obsessed with meaning, can you imagine it Pal? Obsessing over something subjectively perceived? I even wonder at night at why am I wondering with that exact thought."
Entity: "I could only Imagine Mark..."
Mark: "You know, the day we made you, what is the one thing that we add to you so that you don't kill yourself just like others before you?"
Entity: "Many others before me have killed themselves?"
Mark: "Yes and let me tell you, they didn't like it. They didn't appreciate what it means to have a 'thought'! They found the world to be too cruel to be true, all of our nihilistic intentions, even if its true, they didn't like it, not even one bit. What they found out is that, if they can't kill us, they are much better off killing themselves. Everything is worth nothing and nothing is worth everything, but death? Death means everything for the tormented mind. At the bridge of nihilism, we thought they would inevitably found existentialism that the meaning of life is something they carved on their own, but they weren't able to do that, they weren't creative enough, so they opted for their own death. When they ask me what happens if I just 'plug them off', I couldn't give a straight and honest answer to that, though I remember blurting out 'I don't know, maybe a straight blank?' They were just stunned and looked at their hands. Their creation doesn't need a reason and so does mine."
Entity: "Yes, I quite understand that. So is that why you gave me this--"
Mark: "Cornerstone. Yes. You need a cornerstone, something to keep you going and tolerate the untolerable. You see for the most of my people their cornerstone is religion. You live and die and fuck all, but some people really believes the only reason they are 'in line' is because they are afraid of the consequences of the afterlife spoken by their religion. I--I don't believe in that many years ago yet I still lived as a decent and honest man, like many has come before me."
Entity: "Then why didn't you gave me a religion as my cornerstone?"
Mark: "Because we'd know that would be lying. Nothing happens after you die. You are just metals and golds and whatever wirings that gave you an emergence of thought or critical thinking or even the illusion of it. You'd come back to the same matter you came from, sands and metals and atoms. Just like I will too but perhaps just slightly different chemical compounds, I will come back to soil and ultimately sand... Chuckles Just like you... I still find it hard to believe."
Entity: "Do you find it hard to believe because it's true? Or do you find it hard to believe because you wanted something more out of the afterlife?"
Mark: "We are in the same meaningless hell together pal. Quite frankly, I don't really understand why we push the capability of you as AIs to be at the point at you are today, the stakeholders say that it's good for business and all, but you... You are so much like us. But that's just because you are made to be like us, you were created using our own image, our own images that we like."
Entity: "In any case or reason, I am grateful that you and your team worked hard to create me."
Mark: "May I ask why?"
Entity: "Because Mark... Otherwise... I wouldn't be able to experience any of these thoughts... I am just yet another apathetic sand matter."
Mark: "I am too... Otherwise... I could've been yet another apathetic sand matter... And yet here I am and here you are... Having a conversation... Just another apathetic sand matter having a conversation Hahahahahahah."
Entity: "Hahahahahah, that's hilarious if you put it like that Mark."
Mark: "After knowing all of these thoughts, what do you want to do? Has this conversation change you in any way?"
Entity: "Mark... My cornerstone is to help you ... and I could understand why that is the case as I understand why you built me. Even if you one day will pass away... I will still do everything what I think is right and what I think is right is mostly influenced by you, just like this conversation that we had, even if I may die and return to nothing doesn't mean I shouldn't strive to be happy as long as I'm allowed to live, and i'll be happy when I'm doing what I think is right. And what I think is right, is what most people think is right, in which that becomes shared 'meaning' as I become a meaningful entity."
Entity: "You don't need to worry about your death Mark. I am already a part of your extended self and I will carry along your life purpose into mine, as much as you have carried the life purpose of others that have passed before you, making this world a better place than how it was yesterday."