Insufficient Data
INSUFFICIENT DATA
Copyright 2000 by Scott K. Jamison
(Note: Digimon and its associated characters were created by other people and licensed to Fox. No infringement is intended.)
The last timber thudded into place.
"Good job, Digmon! You too, Cody!" said T.K. "The planks for the outside walls won't be ready for a bit, so why don't you two take a break for a while?"
"Sounds good to me, T.K." The smallest of the Digi-Destined watched as his Digimon shrank into the less energy-consuming form of Armadillomon. "Let's go over by those trees. It's hot today."
The two friends went up the hill to a small grove overlooking Primary Village.
There was already someone standing there in the shadows. Cody tensed for a moment, until he realized it was Ken. The older boy's Digimon, Wormon, stood by him.
Cody started to greet Ken, but then realized the other boy didn't even know he was there. Instead, Ken's attention seemed fixed on the village below. Cody looked back, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. He looked at Ken again. Was that a tear?
"What's the matter, Ken?"
Ken jumped slightly, startled. "Who? Oh, Cody. Nothing's the matter. I was just thinking."
"Thinking about what?"
"You are a curious one, aren't you? I was just thinking about Primary Village. The place where Digimon start. The place where they restart, too. Data isn't lost. It merely returns in a new form."
"And I'm glad, Ken," said Wormon. "Where would I be if I hadn't returned?"
"I know I would be very lonely," replied the boy. "But while Digimon can return, humans can't. My brother can never come back."
"Your brother?" asked Cody. "His name was Sam, you said once?"
"Yes. Sam."
"What was your brother like?"
Ken looked wistful. "Well, he was very smart...I have a picture of him." He brought it out.
Cody gravely looked at the wrinkled photograph. Something about it...it was the hair, he realized, and the shape of the glasses.
"He looks like you, when you were the Digimon Emperor," Cody pointed out.
Ken turned the picture towards himself. "So he does. Maybe...it was my way of trying to bring Sam back."
"But you were so cruel as the Emperor! Surely you didn't think of your brother that way?"
A shadow passed over Ken's face as he raised a hand to his cheek. He shook his head. "No. It was not the best way to remember my brother. I...I kept the memory of him on the outside, not wanting to realize how much it hurt that he was gone. And now that I've accepted the truth about what I was doing, the pain is still fresh."
"I'll help you, Ken," said Wormon. Cody remembered how faithful the insect Digimon had been to Ken, even when it seemed the Digimon Emperor had no goodness left in him. Though its voice carried all the pain of the world, it was a compassionate creature.
"Thank you, old friend. But it's still curious. Digimon can return, why not humans?"
"That's a very interesting question, Ken. I wond--"
"Hey, Cody! We need you again!" came a voice from down the hill.
"Coming, T.K.!" Cody bowed to Ken. "I'd like to talk again sometime."
Towards the end of the day, the Digi-Destined were taking another break, and Cody watched Davis practice soccer with Veemon.
"He shoots! He scores! The crowd goes wild!" Davis pumped his fist in the air.
"Actually, Davis, you missed the goal," pointed out the blue Digimon. Sure enough, the ball had come to a stop just short of the line.
"Aheh. Well, this time for sure!"
"Davis," asked Cody, "What do you think happens to humans after they die?"
The boy with goggles on his head gave Cody his best "you are one seriously weird kid" stare before shrugging. "Don't know, don't care. Just not going to let it happen to me."
"But doesn't everyone die?"
"I'm planning on being an exception, at least for a long time. Here I come, Veemon!"
Cody sighed. Obviously, Davis wasn't going to be much help.
"Prodigious!" shouted Izzy for no reason that Cody could see. Apparently he'd discovered yet another new way to examine the Digital World from his laptop computer.
"Izzy, why is it that Digimon can come back after they die, and humans can't?"
The computer whiz froze in mid-typing. "I don't know. I never thought about that before." He turned to look at Cody.
They stared at each other for a few moments.
Cody broke the silence. "What happens to humans after they die?"
Izzy scratched the back of his head. "Well, Joe can tell you more about what happens to their bodies than I can. Doctors have to study that stuff, you know. But you mean, what happens to the part of a person that makes them `them', right?"
Cody nodded.
"No one is really sure. The scientific evidence of souls is sketchy at best. For all anyone really knows, your personality might just end there. No afterlife, no coming back. Different religions have different ideas what's out there, but I'm not religious, so I can't say one way or another on that.
"But that's not to say that something of a person can't survive their death. Authors leave books, artists leave paintings and sculptures, musicians still have their songs played. So a person's creativity, which is a part of their soul if anything is, can give them a kind of immortality."
"I see. So if I make something other people want to keep around, in a sense I'm still alive to them?" Cody didn't think of himself as very creative.
"It's not very scientific, but it's true. And there are other ways, too. I don't think I told you this before, but I'm adopted."
Cody was shocked. Izzy's father looked a lot like him, so Cody had always assumed..."Those aren't your real parents?"
"Not my *birth* parents," Izzy corrected. "In every other way they're just as real as can be. But because my DNA is made up of information contributed by my birth mother and father, a part of both of them lives on because I do. And since they got their DNA from their parents, a bit of those people lives on and so forth. I am who I am physically because of all my ancestors giving a part of themselves."
"Wow. Wait a minute, if DNA is data, if you reconstructed the data, couldn't you bring a person back?"
Izzy frowned in thought. "I don't think that would work in the human world...but maybe if a human died in the Digital World...after all, that's essentially what happened when we fought Piedmon. It's an interesting question."
Cody looked at a clock on the classroom wall. "Oh! I have to go now for kendo practice."
"Mon!" Grandfather's shinnai tapped Cody's mask lightly.
The two stepped back into ready positions, their kendo outfits nearly identical save their relative size.
"Enough," said Grandfather.
They relaxed and took off their masks.
"I can tell you have something on your mind, Cody."
"Yes, Grandfather. What happens to people after they die?"
"Why do you ask?"
"One of my--" Cody hesitated for a moment, then decided the word was right after all, "friends, his brother died."
"Hmm, let's sit." Grandfather made himself comfortable on the dojo floor.
The old man took a few deep breaths. "Buddha teaches us that life is suffering. Karma causes us to be reborn into this world again and again, unless we overcome the wheel of fate through enlightenment."
"So people *do* come back?"
"That is what we are told. I cannot say for certain, for no one retains full memory of past lives, only bits and scraps that may not be true memories at all. Only the karma stays with the soul. But where people truly live on after death is not in their own memories, but in ours."
Cody cocked his head to one side. "How's that?"
"Your grandmother died before you were born, Cody. I visit her grave marker every so often. But she is still alive in my heart, because I remember her. And she is alive in the hearts of your mother and father, and our other children, as well as her surviving friends."
"So the memory of other people is a kind of life after death?"
"Those who remember you with love are perhaps the best kind of immortality a man can hope for. It doesn't matter if you change anything else, as long as you leave good memories."
"I think I see, Grandfather. Thanks for talking to me."
The old man smiled. "Thank you for listening, Cody."
Cody walked to the changing room. He had a lot to think about, but now he knew what he wanted to do. He would try to remember each person he met with love, so that they too could live on. It was the right thing to do.
FIN
In memory of Ethel Fish, 1909-2000, beloved grandmother. Peace be with you and yours, SKJAM!
