The next day, at forty-two minutes after the hour, her real nightmare began.
Those not willing to live forever decided to take their own lives. Natural deaths no longer existed; no one died of disease or old age, so in order to cease living, an immortal had to cause his or her own death. For years, people killed themselves with guns, by taking sleeping pills, or jumping off a building, a bridge, or a cliff.
It was all very messy.
In response to pressure from the public, a new suicide industry quietly arose, catering to people who wanted to experience a beautiful death—or whose families wanted them to. These entrepreneurs advertised one-way vacations to nirvana. The menu for seekers of the ultimate release ranged from a simple room and an injection, to a glorious party ending in a mass suicide. Owners of these businesses were careful not to be the ones to administer the lethal dose.
Governments around the world gradually realized that there was a need for the population to have a choice after so many years of immortality. Assisted suicide became completely legal worldwide forty-two years after The Event. The only requirement was an interview given by a psychiatrist. Then, with a prescription from a doctor, the patient could gain admittance to a Death House. To prevent too many from taking this path, the number of prescriptions allowed remained limited.
Gaining admittance to a Death House became a celebration. Families gave farewell parties and sent announcements to their friends. Obtaining a prescription to end this eternal existence was on a par with winning the lottery.
Each year after the law passed, the prescriptions ran out by the end of January.
After spending the weekend trying to come up with a new experiment, Vivian arrived at her lab feeling defeated. Her current idea didn’t feel promising, but she couldn’t give up. Too many people depended on her. She wanted to find a cure. She needed to find a cure. She had to.
For the last decade, an awful word kept fighting to escape her subconscious. Vivian expended a lot of energy suppressing it, but today it crept up on her. A word she’d never uttered aloud filled her thoughts.
Hopeless.
Now that the unspoken word had escaped, Vivian thought about the Death House, someplace you could check in and never check out.
On that dismal note, she began working on what she hoped would be the cure with her mantra echoing inside her head: This is it, this is it. Its answer was the terrible word she’d let out: Hopeless.
Waiting for her computer to analyze her data, Vivian experienced conflicted feelings about the speed of getting results. Testing that used to take weeks was now completed in hours. That would be wonderful if her results were positive, but for her, it meant failure being thrown in her face every day. It became a lodestone. The weight of her failure dragged her further into a state of depression.
“Good morning, Keri. Large coffee with cream, please.”
“Yes, Vivian.”
“I’m running the new experiment. Think this one is a winner?”
“I remain ever hopeful for you, Vivian. Your coffee is ready as ordered.”
Vivian walked over to the coffee machine and shouted. “Do you have any opinions on ANYTHING?”
“That question does not make sense to me.”
“Do you care if I ever develop a mortality serum?”
“I remain ever hopeful for you.”
Screaming in frustration, Vivian turned off the machine, then returned to her desk, trying to calm down. The result would be ready in thirty minutes. She got up to pace for a while, then settled again at her desk.
Sipping her coffee, Vivian awaited the inevitable bad news.
Jenna decided to take Tujin for a walk. Pretending he needed to exercise maintained the illusion her pet was real. She passed other dog owners, nodding to them as they walked by. Some of the people walking their dogs complimented Jenna on her pet, and she returned the favor. Everyone helped one another maintain a communal dream.
Today’s destination was the care home for a visit to her grandmother. She stopped by weekly to hold her nana’s hand and read to her. Under her arm was an eReader loaded with a copy of Our Perfect World. Jenna wanted to read a particular passage to her nana about the town called Bliss. She wondered if her grandmother would be interested in hearing about her dream to live there.
Rotating books made the visits fresh, staving off boredom for Jenna. She remained hopeful her grandmother wasn’t bored. She never asked, not wanting to know the true answer. Not that it mattered, since her grandmother couldn’t reply. But Jenna remained convinced that the visits helped her grandmother cope with her state of purgatory. She felt helpless without any other way to comfort her.
From the doorway of her grandmother’s small, ascetic room, Jenna watched the aide prepare her nana for a visit. He propped her up in a semi-upright position, adjusting her head to look forward, and finished up by folding her hands. Turning to Jenna, he nodded, then left the room.
“Hi, Nana, it’s me. It’s Jenna.”
No response. But she hadn’t expected one.
“It’s been a long time since I read Our Perfect World to you. Last night I found a passage I thought you’d like.”
Jenna stared into her grandmother’s blank face, trying as she always did to see some flicker of the woman she had been. In answer to Jenna’s offer to read, her grandmother blinked once. Her way of communicating: one blink for ‘yes,’ two blinks for ‘no.’ At least, that’s what Jenna told herself.
“OK, here goes…Chapter Four. Bliss.”
She read two chapters, her favorite ones, about a happy couple about to have their first child. Jenna had marked the passage about the couple naming the baby. They’d chosen the name Emma. She liked that, and fantasized that her daughter would have the same name. Her mother told her the story about deciding what to name her. ‘Jenna’ had been her grandmother’s choice. She wished she could ask her nana why.
Certain her grandmother was asleep, Jenna left the room and stopped by the nurses’ station to chat with the staff. They were always ready to chat and gossip. Jenna thought they might be a good diversion for her.
“Hey, did you hear there might be fewer death prescriptions granted next year? I wish I could convince my mother to let my nana put her name on the list.”
As she always did, Nurse Becker listened with empathy before she answered. Jenna could see the truth on her face before she said anything.
“You’re forgetting, Jenna, your grandmother can’t get a prescription. Since she’s unable to communicate, there’s no way for the psychiatrist to interview her. I know it’s sad. I think she’d be better off if she could die, but that’s the law.”
Jenna’s eyes filled with tears of frustration. Nurse Becker tried to hug her, but Jenna shook her off.
Until the government changed the law to include non-verbal replies, her grandmother was stuck in a loophole. She knew that. But hearing it from someone as kind as Nurse Becker made it hurt more somehow.
“I’m sorry, Jenna. We all feel for your grandmother. Please believe me, we do whatever we can to keep her comfortable. We bring her to the common room every day so she won’t feel alone. I remember your mother telling us she had a favorite soap opera. Since your grandmother’s admission, she’s never missed an episode. I’m sure she enjoys watching it.”