Slouched on a futon among scattered beer cans and pizza boxes, he raised the bottle to his lips and tried to concentrate on the oversize screen in front of him. Was Jet Li the good guy or the baddie in this? What happened?

At this stage in the 3-day bender, following plots of even kung fu movies was a bit much. And his concentration kept being interrupted by the broken wreck of his friend, John, sitting on the beanbag over there, sobbing quietly while pretending to watch.

The bender was in his benefit. Three days ago, John called,
    "She's gone, she's gone, she's fucking gone..."
    "Who?"
    "Jane and she's taken Georgie!" Jane was John's now estranged wife and Georgie their little girl, who bore a striking resemblance to the stockbroker that lived over the road.
    "Oh." Nothing to say, then:
    "You'd best come over mate," he said.

So John arrived, in his Corolla, in grey, looking every bit the jilted ex-husband: greasy, stubbly and unwashed.
    "Looking like that, I'd have left you too!"
    "Dickhead, though you were going to help!"
    "Hya, yeah, not a chance. Not for her."
    "What did you want me around her for anyway?"
    "Nothing. Just though you needed a friend..."
    "With friends like you who needs"
    "Wives!" he cut in. Even John had to smile at that. The two had met while at university, though not the same one, via a girlfriend, but not the same one, and while that girlfriend was a distant memory, they remained good friends in their own way.

Much beer and many really bad movies later, John was finally ready to talk. With many a drunken diversion into the surreal and absurd, often repeating himself and occasionally forgetting and starting again, John laid it all out - how his wife had been screwing everything with two legs, male or female, since well before their marriage, without him noticing and how humiliated and ashamed he was, and how it was all his fault, if he'd just been a bit more,
    "... if I'd just been a bit more interesting somehow! I'm a failure, I'm boring, I like quiet weekends at home, just the three of us, I like to read and watch TV! I'm like millions of other men, why does this have to happen to me?"
    "Hnn."
    "I mean, ah, what's so wrong with me that I lose her and millions of other boring men keep their families?"
    "Erm..."
    "Well I'm best off without her, I am, I... hold on!" John staggers out and vomits noisily somewhere near the toilet. "Gods I hope he didn't miss."

John reappears sometime later, ashen faced and trembling.
    "I wanna die..."
    "To much beer?"
    "No, I mean it, I've been thinking about it a long time, I wanna die. I've nothing left, she's taken it all away, I'm nothing, I just wanna end it all!" Sobs racked John's body and his voice choked up, mercifully cutting short his self-pity.
    "Here, drink this."
    "What is it?"
    "Tea."
    "Whiffs a bit."
    "It's herbal. From a herbalist."
    "Thought you didn't go in for all that crap?"
    "Special occasions." John sipped. There was enough hashish brewed in that cup to drop a horse. Sure enough, within a few minutes, John visibly relaxed. Shortly before he passed out, John admitted to finding the lampshade hilarious, and giggling about the idiocy of the words "light... shade. Light shade, light and shade in one."




System rebooting... hardware check. Left hand, check. Right hand... right hand? Oh, must have laid on it. Right hand, ouch, present. Legs... skip the legs. Right, senses. Hearing... ouch. Check. Eyes: opening mechanism jammed. Attempting to clear... clearance failed. Manual override initiated. Eyes clear, ouch! Best leave them shut for now. OK... let's try for verticality. Verticality mode initiated. Whoa! Best stay down for now.

Waking up was a slow process for John. The sun streaming in through the window was blinding, the TV sounded way too loud and to top it off somebody had come along in the night, sand papered his throat then glued his mouth shut with tile cement. He announced his return with a faint croak.

    "Good afternoon! The sleeper has awakened!"
    "Dune, 1986, yeah, water, ow!" Water appeared.
    "While you were sleeping, I've fixed your suicide problem."
    "My, er, what?"
    "You wanted to kill yourself last night..."
    "Yeah, but..."
    "... so I've done it for you. You, dear friend are dead!"
    "What?"
    "Yes, I got the idea off some movie - one of those ones with the demented dwarf in it. Anyway, the movie started off with one of the good guys getting killed by a bomb in her brain."
    "So you've..."
    "Ya. Only I've done it better. Instead of high pitched ringing in the ears and pain, this just turns your cerebellum to soup."
    "Er, and you've..."
    "Done it? Sure, why not. Got a mate who's a vet, gets these microchips they chip dogs with. Yours is kinda modified."
    "Er, oh?" John asks in a small voice.
    "Yes! I replaced the doggie ID with about a grain of C4 explosive, and a clever little detonator I made up. You're now the first official Schrödinger’s Human!"
    "Shrow Dinger's what?"
    "Schrödinger. You've heard of the cat in the box experiment?"
    "Oh, that Shrow Dinger!"
    "Yes, that Schrödinger. Now listen, mate, sometime in the next year, this thing is going to blow the back of your skull off. It could happen at any time, maybe even while we're talking now. Most likely, you've got about 4 months. You need to understand this: from now on, every day you live could be your last!"
    "But... can this thing be switched off?" John jumped to his feet, his face was the colour of chalk. Faced with imminent death, there suddenly seemed so much to live for.
    "Oh of course, but it gets trickier the longer you leave it. After 6 months, there's a chance that we can't deactivate it safely."
    "How do you...?"
    "Come to me and I'll do it. Best you don't know - we know how impulsive you are when you're drunk."


John collapsed back onto the futon. More tea appeared. John couldn’t believe that his best friend would do this to him. His wife left him, his child’s gone, and now his friend wants him dead? “It can be turned off” he thought. “He’s just trying to help! Sick bastard, some friend, some way of helping!” Absently, John reached for the tea.
    "Whiffs a bit." John wrinkled his nose at the noxious brew.
    "It's herbal."
    "Thought you didn't go in for all that crap?"
    "It's for special occasions. It's a good pick-me-up. I got it from that Chinese place on the high street."

John said his farewells and left some time later. He felt on top of the world; he had a new spring in his step and felt energised. His feelings of loss and betrayal seemed to belong to someone else, his hatred of his friend forgotten. He noticed colours were more vivid, smells were stronger. Items in sunlight had a curious halo about them. As he walked to his car, he thought, "what a boring colour grey is" and thought how fun it would be to paint his car. He giggled girlishly.
    "Today is the first day of the end of your life!"