This Is the End Read Free Page A

another hour and fifteen minutes. It’s physically exhausting, but I let it all out. I answer questions about why I’m freezing myself: “Because I can.”
    Why am I coming out now about everything? “Why the fuck not; what are they going to do to me? I’m already dying.”
    What do they think caused it? I hold up the next cigarette in my seemingly never-ending supply and then say, “Next.”
    Finally, after all the stupid questions, the silly, unimportant issues like what about my investors—“I bought them out and will be the sole owner of the company, even in suspended animation”—someone asks about my wife.
    I look out into the faces of the crowd and say, “I haven’t figured that one out yet, but I’m pretty sure I’m going to either kill her or divorce her.”
    The protestors across the street have all been let out of the free speech zone; the crowd has nearly tripled. Even the cops have slack jaws and are listening to me go on and on about the truth. The way the world really works. The way business is run: the back room deals, the underhanded way that everything is pushing us towards a total takeover of our lives by megacorporations, about how individuality is a lie, how being unique is really a way to market products to sub-niche groups. The revolution wasn’t televised, it was advertised, branded, bought and sold, to you, for you, by you. And you just eat it up.
    After I’ve said my piece, after I answer the last few questions, I’ve had enough of their glass-eyed looks and yapping maws to end it, plus I have things to do and money to spend before I freeze myself.
    So I wave, shoot the bird out to everyone and say, “Thanks, folks. Fuck you.”
    I turn to leave. My security guards make a tight circle around me. Big dudes who have more technology, testosterone and weaponry than should legally be allowed fold in around me like a wall of meat and we move back into the lobby of the hospital. The sun is low in sky and my chariot awaits; I’m flying out to my office on a private helicopter.
    We make our way into the elevator and up to the landing pad on top of the hospital that’s normally reserved for life flight choppers. My black bird is there waiting for me. The blades are spinning enough for me to bend over slightly. As we pull away I look down at the front of the hospital. The crowd is still there, standing like those Terracotta Warriors in China, silent and fragile, endless and broken.
     

3.
    I check my email on the tablet while the chopper makes its decent towards the roof of my building. I want to see what the world is saying about my little truth sit-in. All the usual suspects have spun it to make it sound as if I’ve lost my fucking mind. The market has dipped a bit, especially in the tech sector, but the underlying news that I have more apps coming out has hedged any sort of short sells that might have happened due to my chat with the public. Alex Jones is adamantly denying that he works for the CIA. I look away and down towards the landing pad.
    I see two figures standing on top of the roof. One of whom is my lawyer, who I am happy to see—go figure. The other is my soon-to-be ex-wife, who I am obviously not so happy to see.
    By now the video of the press conference has had enough time to go around the world three or four thousand times, but I knew this moment was coming. I’m not going to lie to you though; I was sort of hoping that I wouldn’t have to deal with it until right before I freeze myself. It’s a character trait I’ve always had, and it goes like this: as much as I like to make a shit, I don’t actually like having to deal with the smell of it.
    I need a cup of coffee and another cigarette. I also need to finalize a couple of things that shouldn’t take me more than a day or so. But seeing her standing there on the landing pad—her hair cut and colored the wrong way for her ugly, frown-lined face but the right way for whatever passes as fashionable—tells me that