The Unnatural

When you arrive in the afterlife, the Technicians inform you of the great oppor­tunity awaiting you: make any single change you want, and then live life over again. Their pamphlet suggests that you might choose to make yourself two inches taller, or give everyone on the Earth a better sense of hu­mor, or make birds talk. You then get to re­run that choice on the Earth to see what hap­pens. They inform you proudly that this is a unique experiential education program.

Having just attended your own funeral, you may be tempted to propose a clever choice: you want to be the one who eradic­ates death altogether from our planet.

Just be forewarned: if you propose this, a kind Technician may pull you aside to let you know that you have tried this path before in

your previous reruns of life, and it inevitably led to frustration.

Are you telling me this because it will put you out of a job? you ask.

No, the Technician replies.

Is this because death is incurable? you ask.

No, the Technician says. In that case I would like to have my wish fulfilled.

Suit yourself, replies the Technician.

So in your new life you grow into a famous medical visionary. You argue that there is no such thing as a natural death and raise mil­lions to fund your research. You program computers to calculate all possible mutations of viruses before they happen and design prophylactic treatments against them. You compute the exact effects of every medica­tion on the normal cycles of the body. Your aggressive anti-death program is a success: after the final breath of an incurably ill elderly woman, you are able to announce that hers represented the last natural death. Great celebrations ensue. People begin to live forever, healing just as they would when they were young, free at last from the over­hanging cloud of mortality. You are greatly admired.

But eventually, just as the Technician warned, your success begins to lose its shine. People come to discover that the end of death is the death of motivation. Too much life, it turns out, is the opiate of the masses. There is a noticeable decline in accomplish­ment. People take more naps. There's no great rush.

In an attempt to salvage their once-dy­namic lives, people begin to set suicide dates for themselves. It is a welcome echo of the old days of finite life spans, but superior be­cause of the opportunity to say goodbye and complete your estate planning. That works well for a while, rekindling the incentive to

live strongly. But eventually people begin to take the system with less than the appropri­ate seriousness, and if some large new devel­opment occurs, such as a new relationship, they simply postpone the suicide date.

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.