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she always delivered with that same nonchalant air, Miach had told us about how, a long time ago, the Catholics had been experts on the taboo against suicide. “You see, your life comes from God. You’re given it by God, whether you want it or not. That’s why mere humans weren’t allowed to throw that life away, like a shepherd doesn’t want his sheep offing themselves. People who committed suicide were reviled. They would bury them in the middle of an intersection so that they would never know the way up to heaven, not until Judgment Day. That was their punishment for betraying God’s trust.”
    “I have a hard time imagining us being buried in an intersection,” Cian said with an innocent smile.
    Every time Cian smiled it made me inwardly groan a little. Miach ignored her and went on.
    “And the successor to that Catholic dogma? Believe it or not, it’s us, with our all-benevolent health-obsessed society. Bodies once received from God are, under the rules of a lifeist admedistrative society, public property. God doesn’t own us anymore, everyone does. Never before in history has ‘the importance of life’ been such a loaded term.”
    Miach was right, of course.
    And that was why we had to die.
    Because our lives were being made too important.
    Because everyone was too concerned about everyone else.
    Of course, it wasn’t enough to simply die. We had to die in a way that made a mockery of the health regime we were supposed to uphold by law. At least, that was what we thought back then.
    “A long time ago, there were kings. When people wanted to change something, they killed the king. Usually, the killing was done by everyone, but not everyone could govern because the flow of information wasn’t so good in those days. That’s why they made governments. Then, if you got angry enough, you could kill your government instead.”
    The tone of Miach’s voice seemed to ring clearer as she told us this, more finely honed than usual. It had a beauty to it, enough to send shivers down my spine. It was like a blade—a blade of ice.
    “But what do we do now? In a post-governmental admedistrative society, there is no one to kill. Everyone is happy, everyone governs—the basic units of governance are way too small to target.”
    Miach looked out the window toward the front gates where our classmates were now stepping out into the street, on their way back home. From the third floor of the school building, you could look down on everything.
    “Admedistration. The medical conclaves. A gathering of people who have reached a consensus on a particular medical system. The Harmonics. While an admedistration might have councilors, they’re nothing like members of parliament used to be in the old governments. The councilors and commissioners just don’t have the concentrated power of the old kings. We’ve divided power over such a wide area that we are effectively powerless. Even if we wanted to fight the admedistration like the students of old, there’s no good government building for us to throw our Molotov cocktails at.”
    Cian frowned at that, a sudden unease coming over her. “So that’s why we have to commit suicide? That’s our attack on the system?”
    Miach nodded firmly. “Exactly. Because we are important to them. Our future potential is their industrial capital. We’re the infrastructure. That’s why we’ll take our bodies, their wealth, away from them. That’s how we’ll tell them our bodies are our own. We’re no different from those who came before us; we’re still trying to fuck the system. It just happens to be the case that the best way to hurt them is to hurt ourselves.”
    That was how Miach answered Cian’s worries.
    Of course, I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t admit right here that most of the time how Cian and I felt was entirely subordinate to Miach’s charismatic personality. We basked in her glow, hoarding it for ourselves.
    Knowing so much, and hating so much, she was an