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INT. THE WAREHOUSE CONFERENCE ROOM – DAY

Toozie, now comfortably dressed, sits with her college friends Miranda, Sherman, and, perhaps surprisingly, Chad. The three friends all wear lanyards with security badges; Toozie does not. Chad is a bit more formally dressed.

TOOZIE

I’m glad you all came to see me off, guys.

MIRANDA

I couldn’t think of being anywhere else.

SHERMAN

No, me neither.

CHAD

You can always…not do this, you know.

TOOZIE

They’ve made it entirely clear to me that I can back out.

CHAD

And?

TOOZIE

I just don’t think I will.

MIRANDA

I know why you think you have to do this, Toozie, and I’m sure we’re all behind you but..

…we’re going to miss you so much.

Toozie reaches out and comforts Miranda.

TOOZIE

Oh, Miranda. It’s important. You make me feel like I have to play Socrates here.

(releases Miranda)

Remember when we read the Phaedo all together as first-years?

CHAD

You and I argued about that for three hours.

SHERMAN

Yes. I’m still not sure who won.

CHAD

Toozie seems at least seems as imperturbable in the face of…extinction as Socrates was.

SHERMAN

Socrates didn’t see his cup of hemlock as extinction, necessarily.

TOOZIE

Nor do I, necessarily. Socrates at one point suggests that his death was possibly a sort of pilgrimage, and perhaps that what I’m about to go on as well.

MIRANDA

(snifflig)

And if extinction?

TOOZIE

To paraphrase Epicurus, where death is, I am not, so there is no harm. But as you all know I’ve long suspected that I not only will not be, but that I am not and I never have been.

SHERMAN

You still think that you’re just a fiction?

CHAD

That’s the one thing I could never really accept.

TOOZIE

I’ll grant the body you are looking at exists. But can you find Toozie? Look at Toozie under the most powerful of magnifiers, and you won’t find Toozie. You’ll only find so many cells and organelles and molecules. Hook the most powerful machines Toozie’s brain and you won’t find Toozie. You won’t find her memories, or her desires. You’ll just find so many neurons. Take Toozie apart atom by atom, and you will only have a pile of atoms. Twenty or so dollars worth of stock chemicals. If there’s a Toozie, it’s because she’s a character in the story of the world you carry around in your heads.

MIRANDA

And now the story is ending.

TOOZIE

Every story ends. All we can hope for is a good ending. Or at least an interesting one.

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