Whole cadres of procrastinators grow. When they reschedule a new date, others ridicule them by calling it a death threat. There develops enormous social pressure to follow through with the suicides. At long last, after many abuses of the system, it is legislated that there is no changing a preset death date.

But eventually it comes to be appreciated that not just the finitude of life but also the surprise timing of death is critical to motivation. So people begin to set ranges for their death dates. In this new framework, their friends throw surprise parties for them—like birthday parties—except they jump out from behind the couch and kill them. Since you never know when your friends are going to schedule your party, it reinstills the carpe diem attitude of former years. Unfortunately, people begin to abuse the surprise-party system to extinguish their enemies under the protection of necrolegislation.

In the end, great masses of rioters break into your medical complex, kick the plugs out of the computers, and once again have a great celebration to mark the end of the last unnatural life, and you end up back in the Technicians’ waiting room.

Distance

In the afterlife you find yourself in a beautiful land of milk and honey: there is no poverty, starvation, or warfare, only rolling hills and Lilliputian angels and evocative music. You discover that you are allowed to ask one question of your Maker.

You’re led ceremoniously through the glistening arcades of the palace to the great hall, where your Maker sits enthroned in lights that hurt your eyes. You cannot direct your gaze fully at Him.

Nonetheless, you stand bravely in front of Him and ask, “Why do you live in a place like this, so far from Earth, instead of living down in the trenches with us?”

He is given pause by this question. Clearly no one has asked Him this in a long time. It is hard to tell in the bright light, but it looks as though His kind eyes well up.

He gazes wistfully out into the sky. “For a while I did live on Earth,” He answers. “I was never one for exuberance, but nonetheless I had several homes in several countries. All my neighbors knew when I was there, and they would wave. I was well liked.

“I could run things well from that vantage— down in the trenches, as you say—and I actively enjoyed each acre of my creation by walking on it, smelling it, feeling the soil between my fingertips, living on it.

“But one day I came to one of my homes and found that all the windows had been broken.”

He winces in reminiscence.

“Then that happened to a second one of my homes. I don’t know who did it, or what their reasons were, but it dawned on me that the respect I once commanded was caving in. People began to cut me off in traffic. One morning I awoke to find people picketing in front of my driveway.”