Narrator: Aboard the Kitesfear, en route to Luna, there is time for introspection...
Schlock: Reverend, do you take confessions?
Reverend: What's on your mind, little guy?
Schlock: I feel guilty about the doctor's death.
Reverend: Don't. He lived a long, full life, and did a lot of good for a lot of people. He had plenty of life before his time came.
Schlock: Yeah, but I only met him a few weeks ago.
Reverend: Ouch. Sucks to be you. eh?
Reverend: Er... Sorry. Just thinking out loud.
Reverend: You know, most of the grief we feel at the death of others stems from our own fear of death.
Schlock: You mean the skinny guy with the scythe?
Reverend: No. No, of course not.
Reverend: That's just a tired, old metaphor.
Reverend: I'm talking about Death-death, the great unknown, the hidden answer to every question asked by life: Death, the ultimate expression of entropy. Death: That undiscovered country that awaits all of us. Prepared or not, we are all doomed to it as surely as we are born. And most of us are afraid of it.
Schlock: So you are saying I feel guilty because I'm afraid?
Reverend: In a word? Yes.
Schlock: Oh. I thought I felt guilty because I'm the one who actually killed him.
Reverend: Ouch. Sucks to be you, eh?
Reverend: Oh! Hi. ummm... Who are you?
Death: Just a tired, old metaphor.
Footnote: Death appears courtesy of Gavin Chafin and Steve Wood over at Down To Earth, the really excellent comic about Death, Hell, Kathy Lee Gifford, and Star Trek. Go visit them.
Kitesfear: