He floated above a home—a modest one-story structure with a two-car garage. The lawn was a lush green and the bushes were immaculately trimmed. Sunshine burst upon the scene like a floodlight. Michael looked around and realized his body was nowhere to be found—he was there but not there. No sign of Kaine, either. He was being shown the most advanced kind of 4D, a fully immersive production. Michael could see, smell, hear, feel it all.

A car pulled up the driveway and stopped in front of the garage. The sun glinted off the front windshield as it parked beneath Michael. Suddenly his aspect changed, swooping down fluidly to the passenger door, which opened as soon as his movement stopped. A man and a woman got out of the car; then the woman retrieved a baby from the backseat. It was a cute little girl, cooing and wiggling her tiny fingers.

Kaine’s voice spoke directly to Michael’s mind.

“A child. Fresh and new to the glorious world we know as Earth. Such a bright future. Such good parents. Everything seems perfect. Except for one thing, if you really, really think deeply and look at it all with an eternal perspective.”

“What’s that?” Michael asked.

“She will die,” Kaine answered. “No matter what she does, or anyone else does, she will die. It could be tomorrow. It could be ten years from now. If she’s lucky, she’ll live out the normal life span and die around the age of ninety. This after some time spent walking around in a poorly packaged bag of frail bones. Sound like fun to you?”

Michael had only one answer for that one. “No.”

“Thank you for being honest,” Kaine responded. “But let’s change this child’s future, and in the process make every waking moment of her life better because she’ll know, with complete certainty, that she will never die.”

The woman and her husband were walking to the front door, lightly bouncing the baby while giving her kisses all over her cheeks. Michael watched as they went inside, the door thumping closed behind them.

“How?” Michael asked. “How can you possibly make her live forever?”

“Easy,” Kaine replied. “Let’s skip ahead.”

The house dissolved into thousands of dust particles and swirled from their sight, immediately replaced by a gymnasium—banners covering the walls and hundreds of students sitting restlessly in the stands. Instead of a game taking place on the court, though, a long platform had been set up, complete with a row of fifteen Coffins.

In the middle, facing the stands, a woman stood at a podium. She wore a blue shirt with a symbol emblazoned on the right pocket: an M and a D on the upper left side of a slash, an L and an N on the lower right side. The slash itself ended in an arrow, pointing forever upward.