It had been a weird week. It was like everyone had been trying to "get things back to normal" as soon as possible, but there was something in the air preventing that from happening. There had been an official assembly in the auditorium that was supposed to honour Jodie's memory, but that Daria had felt almost to be a disgrace of the same. That assembly had proved to Daria that everything Jodie had said about her shallow friendships had been true. It had all been about what a great student she had been, about what she had accomplished, about what she had achieved. Not a single word about what kind of person Jodie had been. Probably, Daria had figured, because no one knew. Well, that wasn't entirely true. Mack had actually said something along the lines of what Daria had hoped for, but other than that it had been very thin indeed.

The whole idea with the assembly had been to honour Jodie's memory and to help the other students "process their feelings" as Mr. O'Neill had put it. For Daria the assembly had been nothing but yet another source of anxiety. All the talk about Jodie's accomplishments... it described the tragedy of it all so well. Jodie had been a nobody. She had never been anything but the sum of her accomplishments. Not in her own eyes, and not in anybody else's, (with the possible exceptions of Daria and Mack.) Few things could be more depressing than this. It was no wonder she felt she had to justify her existence all the time.

Then she had begun to question things in her life. She had begun to question what she had previously held self-certain... that there was a meaning with what she accomplished. And when this conception had finally collapsed - she had had absolutely nothing left. Looking out over the ruins of what had once been her life she had decided there was not a single thing in this world that she had any desire to live for. But people didn't see this. They didn't understand the importance of the question "What is the meaning of life?" in fact they didn't understand the question itself.

Daria still remembered the despise she had felt for them. Like blind cattle walking off to the slaughterhouse they were thoughtlessly strolling down the path of life constantly looking left or right, but never looking forward. Or if they looked forward they hardly ever looked further than the tip of their nose. It was all just a pleasure cruise to them. She had felt like crying out to them: IT YOUR LIVES DAMMIT!!! CAN'T YOU STOP FOR FIVE DAMNED MINUTES, AND GIVE IT SOME THOUGHT! She had no answers either, but at least she was thinking...

And thought she had. The whole week, back and forth, to and from... and she was beginning to wish she had never understood the question either. She was beginning to understand why people preferred their blissful ignorance to this. She had no answers, only questions - each question like a thorn in her flesh. She had never left her room, yet she felt like she had been run over with a steamroller. She was all alone, yet she felt like she was being tortured by a thousand tormentors from the Spanish inquisition. She was all alone with the nothingness of the universe, with the meaninglessness of life, the futility of hope, and the inevitability of death. She was lying on her bed, yet she felt how she was slowly being sucked into a bottomless precipice of black putrefaction.

What was the meaning of life? There was none. Man had evolved from nothing. A place suitable for life happened to form in this part of the universe. A few amino acids happened to react in the appropriate manner for life to be created. A number of mutations happened to take place over a few billion years, and finally she had happened to come to existence. She was the product of a number of co-incidences, and nothing more. Her life had no meaning because there had never been anyone that had ever meant anything with her life. There was nothing more meaningless in this universe than chance; it was a part of its definition. As soon as someone had meant anything with a certain action that led to certain results, those results were no longer accomplished by chance. She clenched desperately to the pillow, as if holding on to something would prevent her from being dragged down into the precipice.

Chance was only half of it. The meaninglessness of life had two hands - both strangling her from different directions. The first one, by the meaninglessness of the past, the second by the limitation of the future. Daria squeezed her eyes shut, but she couldn't get him out of her sight. With inexorable persistence he was standing there - The Grim Reaper - waiting... patiently... for her. A grim smile glimpsed from beneath the hood of his cloak, and slowly he extended his skeleton hand, gently tapping an hourglass which sand was slowly running, running, until one day it would run out. Time was on his side... he could always wait, and in the battle against earthly doctors he - unlike them - hadn't lost a patient yet. Why did it matter what she did with her life, when she didn't matter? Why would it matter how hard she tried to run in the race of life when the goal was in eternity and the scythe of the Reaper would speak long before she even came close? This was an image that had stuck in her head at the beginning of the week. At first it had seemed scary - now it seemed more like an invitation. An invitation to end it all. At first she hadn't understood why Jodie or anyone else might want to limit their lives even further than it already was. Now she understood - and desperately wished she didn't. Why did she have to ask all these questions? Because she was a "brain", and it was a part of her nature to ask questions.

"Why then not make the best of the situation while it lasted?" Well-meaning but clueless people would probably ask. These people still hadn't understood the question. They were still stuck with the self-certainty that all people are born with: That life has an independent value of its own. They didn't realise that this was about the meaning of life, and that something can not be meaningful today, and meaningless tomorrow - it is either meaningful today and meaningful forever, or meaningless today and meaningless forever. An action that at some point in history becomes meaningless has always been meaningless... What would be left of anything or any meaning after the universe had dissolved into entropy? And even if actions that she took could impact on future generations - SO WHAT? Even if she had done enough for mankind to be declared a saint, in what way would that matter? She would still be just as dead. In fact, even if she could do so much that she became a god, it would matter not. Only immortality would suffice. What is a dead god? NOTHING, of course! She was meaningless, all the people surrounding her were meaningless, and all future generations to come were meaningless, and what could possibly be more meaningless than a meaningless person doing meaningless things to benefit other meaningless persons?

The pressure increased as she slowly sank deeper and deeper into the precipice. It was already so intense that it felt like she had a boa constrictor around her chest, and just breathing required an almost superhuman effort. It felt like her intestines were slowly being dissolved by a strong acid, and that death could not be far away. "If only that were the case..." She thought. That was the worst part about angst. It never killed you - just tortured you and left you with the decision of whether "to be or not to be". She recalled a quote from Sören Kierkegaard: "A man walked about, thinking about suicide; but at that very moment a rock fell over him, and he died with the words 'God be praised!' " How well did she not understand that man right now? "Life..." She thought "...would be so much easier if you were dead." She forced herself to take yet another breath... what was the point in breathing anyway? Why couldn't she just stop there on the spot? What was the point of sustaining yet another pointless miserable existence? As if there weren't enough pointless existences in the world already. As if it mattered. As if anything mattered...

She looked at the book she was holding. It was still Waltari's "The Egyptian". She had never come to finish it - mostly because it seemed far too hopeful and positive these days. She put it back on the floor and headed down toward the kitchen, hoping that nobody would hear the deep sigh she let out. She had barely made it to the table before she realised that this was going to be one long dinner. The smells wafting from the stove didn't promise much in the way of culinary entertainment, and Quinn was on the phone babbling with her usual annoying high-pitched voice. Daria took her place at the table all while trying to mentally block out all the sensations that were bombarding her. "Please, God" She thought. "Don't let them try to start a conversation."

Daria ate her food quickly. She had no idea what it was, nor did she have any desire to know. She barely bothered to chew - after all why bother? She probably wouldn't have bothered eating at all - why engage in pointless life sustaining activities of a pointless life - had it not been for the fact that it might have attracted attention, and that was the least thing she wanted right now. Besides - there were better ways to kill oneself than starvation. After finishing the meal she quickly excused herself and left the house. Just in time, she noted, as the fashion club was already on their way up the walkway to the house before she had made it even half a block.

***

There was a moment of silence. Jane was thinking about this. She thought she understood what Daria was saying, but... no. She had to be wrong. It would just be too depressing if she were right. That was when Jane finally realised it - she could almost feel the bulb light up over her head. Daria did believe in every single thing she had said, and that was the reason for her depression. Jane almost couldn't believe she hadn't understood that any sooner. Despite all that Daria had told her, she had still continuously assumed that there had to be a "reason" for Daria to act this way. It had never occurred to her that one really could be depressed on intellectual grounds alone... well if there was anyone that could manage that, then Daria was definitely a strong candidate. She wasn't still entirely sure, though - so she decided to probe a little further...