The Postmortal Read Free

sucking out fat from now on.”
    “So you run a successful practice, yes? I assume you make a nice living just through your day job.”
    “That I do.”
    “Then why do this? Why do more than what you need to do? Why risk losing your license to practice medicine by giving this out? Hell, you’re risking your life . What’s the benefit for you, besides making extra money you really don’t need?”
    He grinned. “Well, John, with this cure I have the power to grant anyone the ability to live thousands of years—possibly forever. Let’s just say that it appeals to my curiosity.”
    He bandaged me up.
    “This won’t cause me to sprout fangs and sleep in a coffin, will it?”
    “No, that’s a different gene. Would you like me to alter that one?”
    “No, no thank you.”
    “Well, you’re all set. I have you in the books for the same time two weeks from now. Don’t bother calling to confirm. Just show up with your money—no denominations higher than fifty dollars, please. I’ll be here.”
    (Note: the total cost was seven thousand dollars. Not bad.)
    I walked to the door. Four million more questions flooded into my brain. I felt the urge to ask all of them simultaneously. Instead, I offered only one.
    “One last thing.”
    “Sure,” he said.
    “Have you given it to yourself?”
    “Of course I have.”
    “But you’re over thirty-five.”
    He shrugged. “Oh well. I’ll live. I’ll see you in two weeks, John.”
    A cursory wave goodbye and the door shut behind him. I walked back out into the street. A massive thunderstorm had come and gone while I was getting my blood drawn, and as I walked out, all that remained in the sky was that odd, sickly glow that happens when a thunderstorm clears out at summer twilight. It’s an unsettling kind of light. Almost puce colored, as if the sky hasn’t been feeling well. I was stuck between the violent darkness of the storm and the last flickering embers of daylight.
    I rushed home. And now here I am, a day later, comfortably seated in immortality’s waiting room.
     
    DATE MODIFIED:
6/7/2019, 8:47 A.M.

“Death is the only thing keeping us in line”
    I know it’s mere coincidence, and yet I find it discomforting that the pope would officially come out and damn all postmortals to hell right in the middle of my mandatory deliberation period. This article posted ten minutes ago:
    Vatican Threatens Cure Seekers with Excommunication
    By Wyatt Dearborn
     
    BUDAPEST (AP)—The pope today issued his strongest condemnation yet of the so-called cure for death, officially codifying it as a sin and promising to excommunicate permanently from the Roman Catholic Church anyone found to have received it, including priests.
    Still on his weeklong goodwill tour of eastern Europe, the pontiff purposely chose to deliver his edict in the city of Budapest. Hungary is one of only four industrialized nations, including Russia, Brazil, and the Netherlands, that have officially legalized the cure.
    “This cure is an affront to the Lord and His work,” the pontiff told a crowd of nearly seventy-five thousand at Puskás Ferenc Stadium. “But more than that, it is an affront to our fellow man. What responsibility will we feel compelled to bear for one another if we know we can eternally put off facing the Lord’s judgment? Death is what makes us humble before God—knowing that our lives will come to an end and that when that end arrives we will be forced to answer for them. If we answer not to Him, to whom do we answer? Death is the only thing keeping us in line.”
    The pope then went on to issue this warning: “You cannot avoid God’s judgment. Not even if you live for another hundred thousand years. This planet and the sun that keeps it alight are all fleeting. There is no ‘forever’ down here and to believe so is a blasphemy. That’s why, from this point forward, the Vatican officially condemns the taking of the cure as a sin and an excommunicable, unforgivable