---

Scythes Rand and Chomsky have these morbid conversations. They’re twisted, and the first to admit it, but I guess that’s part of their charm. Today they were talking about the method they might use to self-glean one day. Noam said he would climb to the top of an active volcano, and, surrounded by grand ceremony, hurl himself into the lava. Ayn said she would scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef until she either ran out of air or got eaten by a great white. They wanted me to join in their game and tell them how I’d want to go. Call me boring, but I didn’t want to play. Why talk about self-gleaning when it should be the furthest thing from our minds? It’s our job to end other people’s lives, not our own—and I intend to be doing it well into my thousands.

—From the gleaning journal of H.S. Volta

---