• A body in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by an outside opposing force. When such a body is thus acted upon, if the opposing force is equal to the force of the body, that body will cease to move, and hence, become still. While those immortal words were meant originally for the purely physical properties of nonsentient objects, I’ve found the same can be said for the more literal bodies as well as the abstracted and scientific ones.
    A body in motion remains in motion, unless acted upon by an opposing force. When such a body is thus acted upon, if the opposing force is equal to the force of the body that body ceases to move—as, say, in the course of a .308 caliber Winchester bullet penetrating and exiting the skull of said body traveling at 4,800 feet per second with 7.7 Newtons of force, such a body would undoubtedly be stilled. And from 700 yards traveling for seven tenths of a second, such a body would end up as still as a fallen egg when it collides with the kitchen floor. Such was the physical and metaphysical fate of Francois ben Battuta, who met his stillness one day in April, in an undisclosed year, in a godforsaken stretch of the Grand Erg desert.
    As I disassembled my AS50 rifle and placed the various pieces back into my camouflage tote, I looked back down at the meagre little red and white blip surrounded by a sea of ochre-washed sand. I had a fleeting feeling of a thought, something like loneliness and eternity in a natural showroom; but I was called back from my daydream when I remembered the stolen buggy from the Star Wars tour station; it wasn’t equipped with any kind of shelter, not even a canopy, and the desert nights were even deadlier than the days. The sundown was already turning the sky a dusky blood-red, blending in the remaining view of ben Battuta’s body I could scarcely pick out in the dune valley below me. I gave myself another moment to ruminate on how my own chances of survival were dwindling along with the tangerine sun. I slung the tote over my left shoulder and walked briskly back toward the buggy. There had to have been some way for Battuta to have survived out in the Jebil interior for two nights, he wasn’t just waiting around for me to kill him. He must have had a insulate blanket on him, or a compact fire tent he used at night, and a canteen to cool him off during the day.
    I drove the buggy down the dune face and approached what was until recently Francois ben Battuta, Egyptian defector and mole to the governments of Algeria, Spain, Israel and Syria, and one of the most notorious info traffickers of the western world. I left the buggy and approached the body to scavenge whatever I could. At first glance I didn’t see any articles besides his own fallen body, though I initially chalked that up to my own natural pessimism. When I did reach him, I stood over his form to take in my handiwork, and look closer at any details I missed before. His bloodsoaked boubou, white with stylish flares of red, was ripped slightly, revealing underneath a tankers jacket tied around his otherwise naked waist. He wore a white turban, as much a practicality as it was a disguise, which had unfurled itself enough that it nearly engulfed what remained of his head. He looked like a specter, sprawled out on the desert floor, bleeding out into the sand as if he would become one with it. Suddenly a sharp wind blew through the dune valley, chilling my extremities and giving me visions of a dead man’s revenge. Hurriedly I unwound the turban from his head and removed the tattered boubou. If nothing else, I would at least be warmer by a few extra layers. Once the clothes were off of ben Battuta and onto myself, my mood was further darkened by finding no hidden gunnysack, no secret pocket on any of the garments I now wore. I stared down at his body, working in my head how a man who’d never lived in elements wilder than the alleyways of Alexandria somehow survived one of the harshest environments on the planet, and managed to live without carrying food or water for nearly three days. As the sun finally began to slip beneath the dunes above, I examined his body and found that he actually looked healthy considering the circumstances—his deep olive colored skin showed no signs of dehydration or sun damage, and he actually looked lightly toned despite the poor lighting. In life this man was handsome—a pretty face and a nice smile, essential in a career of espionage. He had green eyes, full, maroon lips, and a faint beard on his cut jaw. Even in death, he was no ghoul, despite my initial impression. Stripped of his gory clothing and re-placed underneath the deepening dark of desert stars, he’d become beautiful once more.
    Again at peace, I gave myself one final moment of reflection amid the cold emptiness before I returned to the buggy and retrieved my night specs. Once I turned them on, I charted a course out of the dune valley with my GPS and decided to follow Sirius back to civilization. If I went all night, I might be able to reach Matmata before noon tomorrow. Then again, given the already-plummeting temperature, I might die of hypothermia before sun-up. I took one look back at the place where Francois lay, and a voice in my head told me
    you’ve marked this spot with death and now death’s marked you. You’re going to die even slower than he did, and your bones will dry out just the same. No one will ever know where either of you finally fell.
    I decided to return to him, to pay a respect if only to the last life I’d ever taken before I inevitably took my own. I idled the buggy back toward the body and noticed something I hadn’t earlier in the fading light. Batutta still had the tankers jacket tied around his waist. I couldn’t believe it, but in the dusk of the valley floor the color of the faded jacked had merged imperceptibly against Batutta’s naked skin. I broke from the buggy and fell on my knees directly in front of Batutta like a pilgrim in prayer. Just before I began to untie the garment from around his bare waist, I had a flash of something like remorse. A moment ago I was resigned to die with this man, now in the heat of discovery I was ready to defile his body even further than I’d already dared. I rested my numbing hand gently on the sleeve of the jacket, and weighed my conscience against my instinct.
    He’s dead. It’s not like he’ll get colder without it.
    But without it what dignity have I left him?
    After a brief inner conflict, I silenced my head and carefully searched the jacket. Deep in the lining of the inner pocket on his left breast, I found a small capsule containing dark, oval pills. I was hit with an overwhelming feeling of exhilaration and gratitude. Thermogenic diet, my mind beamed. A slow smile crept over my face as I realized how Francois ben Batutta had done the impossible.
    The human body is an amazing metabolizer. If necessary, it can squeeze even the smallest amounts of biofuel into a few more degrees of heat. Actually, we see this all the time. When a plunge in temperature is recognized by our bodies’ thermogenesaic system, our antagonistic muscle tissue gets stimulated, causing our bodies to shake, which converts a bit of ATP into heat. We commonly call this life-saving process “shivering.” Through a similar process, a body can be coaxed into generating heat by conserving its resources and expending them in smaller ‘bursts’ when triggered by a chemical pseudo-catalyst. This is where Batutta’s magic pills come in. In Thermogenics, the body consumes high amounts of certain drugs like dinitrophenol, which if concentrated correctly will burn energy deposits and turn them into body heat. Francois had found a combination of compounds that stored massive amounts of water and nutrients in fat cells, which were literally burned off in the cold desert night when he consumed the pills.
    I closed my eyes and remain knelt for one second longer, clutching the thermogenic pills in my hands. I stood up, uncapped the top, and dispensed two of the blue-grey eggs into my palm. In the cold quiet, underneath a million miniscule diamond lights, I thanked the universe for keeping me alive. Despite my improved mood, I was aware that this last resort had consequences. These pills only work if the body has fuel to consume. I’d been pursuing my target for a little more than a week. In that time, I’d kept sleeping and eating to a minimum, meaning my reserves were all but depleted. When a body ingests a thermogenic compound but lacks any available fuel to feed it, the chemicals begin to eat at the living organic tissue—mostly muscle and fiber, but eventually also the organ tissues as well. The result is a slow and agonizingly painful death; you literally burn yourself up. If I was to survive the next 30 hours, I’d need to find someplace where I could quickly consume large amounts of fats and carbohydrates, otherwise I should just remain in the desert. Without any further hesitations, I decided to finally let my body become an instrument of my own fate. I raised my open hand to my mouth, and swallowed both pills.
    I turned my back for the last time to the body of Francois ben Batutta, walked back to the buggy and made it roar to life. The buggy’s predatorial cry echoed throughout the Eastern Erg as I re-located the Dog Star to chase toward my salvation. I sped up the face of the valley wall, feeling the chemicals coursing through my bloodstream and warming my limbs as the pills took effect, and I thought about how the desert looked just before the sun sank beneath the sandy waves. I raced back to life, to my prize, leaving the valley of death only a cloud of dust in my side mirror and all the rest in my memory.