It is commonly said that with age comes wisdom, but I beg to differ; in my experience age only brings bitterness. Perhaps bitterness is wisdom, the knowledge that life has no meaning.
To be contemplating the purpose of existence at seven in the morning is not advised. It makes for a long day.
I heave my legs from the starched sheets and plant them grimly on the floor.
The room, in the little house where I live is grey. The furniture is beige and the architraves are white. It is a salute to dentist waiting rooms, or hospital offices. The style keeps one constantly on edge, as though a minor trauma is imminent. A bed, a built in closet and a calendar stuck on the wall with peeling tape.
There is a date circled in the calendar, violently, the lines of pen overlapping. It marks my six hundred and forty fifth birthday. Or, more accurately, the day I will have been thirty two for six hundred and thirteen years. A long time.
Immortality – ‘freezing’ layman’s call it, became possible over seven hundred years ago, when successful births were becoming rare. Initially it was dangerous, and only for the rich or radical. Then it became mandatory. We had to save as much of the population as possible.
Now we are a society with prolonged life, doing the same menial tasks indefinitely. You have been saved, they had told us, but many – myself included – feel like something has been taken, instead of given. It seems counter intuitive, but we had freedom when death was possible. If not freedom in the days we lived, then freedom in the ability to leave. Check out. Die.
Without that freedom it is now clear that the finite nature of one’s days are what made them valuable. Now we have unlimited, worthless days.

My orange blouse and skirt are slung over the wardrobe door. I pull them on. Zip, button, tuck. Years ago, I remember seeing inmates in jail wearing a similar uniform. Prison clothes. Sometimes I wonder if the Currency Party was trying to be ironic when they issued the uniforms and their colour. The similarities don’t stop at orange. Like on a prison jumpsuit, where there would have been something printed like ‘Baltimore State Prison’ instead: ‘There is Only Forward’ – a political slogan. Every day I see the dark letters stamped onto our backs I think of how they have branded us. Like criminals, or cattle. Which is worse?
To be frozen means you are saved the hardship of dying, and the grief of watching your loved ones die, was what we had been told. Once, we believed it. From a distance, it had looked like happiness. Now the number of attempted suicides have never been so high. People want pain. To feel. When I was younger and still passionate I had tried too, but with no success. They simply pumped me full of ersatz blood and sewed up the lacerated skin, already rubbery with so many preservatives. It seems there is no limit to what the Pre-mortem craftsmen can do: I once saw a woman decapitated. The next day she was back to work.

The kitchen is equally bland. Table, window, cupboard. We don’t need all of the appliances we once did, with their gleaming luxury; ovens and dishwashers. Instead there are bottles upon bottles of pills. Unlabelled. I take fifteen every day. Unscrewing the plastic lid, I swallow them two at a time. One for skin rejuvenation, another for vitamins, or so we have been told. The pills remove the barriers from life, meaning we never get sick or injured. Utopia, I believe it once would have been called. Only now are people starting to realise that it doesn’t exist.

Outside the morning is bright, thin sunlight warming concrete buildings. They line the street like dog cages in a kennel, packed close together, smelling faintly of despair. Most are empty, the windows dark, but they haven’t been demolished because we are encouraged to move often. A ‘change of scenery’ they call it. Each is identical, so I never thought there was much point.
The row of matching houses is broken up by the Data Collection building. It is low and grey with small square windows. I hold out my pass to scan at the monitor, which emits a jarring beep, before allowing me to pass through the metal grate. Inside it is darker, the overhead lighting somehow equally not bright enough and too harsh. Under it our faces shine a sickly yellow. That is, only when they’re not being illuminated with the blue of our screens.
I pass the thin and grey Jared in the hall, who nods in greeting. “Ruby”
“Jared”
Jared is older, and therefore even more bitter, or wise than I am.

My seat in the computer room is beside one of the stunted windows, from which I can see the “Park”, which is no longer the right name, because it is nothing more than a concrete rectangle with two picnic tables. It was created so we had a place to take our break. On clear days, Alexis and I go and read on the bench while we take our lunch pills.
In the room there are twenty identical desks, I counted, though only half of them are ever occupied. At the station beside mine a dumpy woman sits, already staring at her screen. Alexis. My ally. She is partnered, unlike myself. He is a Pre-mortem worker, and due to her slight stupidity, she is happy. That’s why I like her.
Presently, she turns, a strained expression on her round face, as though in pain.
“Alexis?”
In reply she flicks her eyes almost imperceptibly toward the white twin doors at the back of the room. The lavatories. Watching us, and this silent exchange are three security cameras, all with perfect focus and able to pick up the slightest whisper, as we are both acutely aware. The bathroom offers a reprieve, where there is only one, and mercifully it doesn’t record audio.
She goes first, while I check my emails and shuffle some papers. Then I follow after two minutes, slowly, casually.
I take the right door, which leads into the Ladies. Four empty and one occupied stalls face me, I can see Alexis’ black, pointed shoes under the bottom of the end door. Leaving one stall between us, I sit gingerly on the enamel toilet seat. It creaks under my weight.
When she speaks her voice is thin, either excited or scared.
“Tim was working late at the Pre-mortem ward last night” I have met Tim on several occasions: the first time was over two hundred years ago. He was the one who stitched my wrists. It is a thankless job; working to keep everyone alive while they desperately, unrelentingly try to die. I certainly never thanked him.
She continues, “He came home saying he has been demoted because there was an incident” Her voice wavered, and I can tell she was twisting her skirt, as she always did when uncomfortable. The orange material would be wrinkled after this.
“what happened?”
“someone…. died” a pause, a whisper, a confession.
“What?” My blood thrums in my ears. Muscles tense. It is that word, breathed like a conspiracy, that makes me agitated with excitement.
Her voice speeds up, as though admitting to a felony. “they couldn’t be revived, the person’s body expired”
I hear the movement of water in the pipes beneath me, the high hum from the light above. I fight the urge to faint, and the desire to sing. My mind bends and contorts under the weight of this new knowledge. I live in a world where it is possible to die. Now, I live in a world where I am free.