The Inconvenience of Eternity

By Lilly Anne Lowman, Member of the Queen-Agers from Starlight Cove, WA

Dr. Zola Finch first noticed something was wrong when Mrs. Lingermore couldn't die.

The 103-year-old had been in hospice care for months. Her organs shut down one by one like lights in a closing department store. Zola had signed the death certificate twice. Only to find the old woman blinking up at her hours later, confused, and undeniably alive.

"This is becoming rather inconvenient, doctor," Mrs. Lingermore had whispered on the third morning. Her voice papery but present. "I had quite made up my mind to see Herbert again."

Herbert, Zola knew, had been dead for thirty-seven years.

By the end of the week, every hospice bed in the city remained occupied. No one was dying. The morgues reported similar anomalies. Bodies refused to progress through rigor. There were gunshot victims whose wounds slowly sealed themselves, drowning victims suddenly coughing up water and then casually asked for a towel. Car accidents became mild inconveniences. Terminal illnesses transformed into perpetual discomforts. The suicide hotline received calls from people who had jumped from buildings, only to find themselves painfully reassembled on the pavement below. Their bones crackled back into place like macabre puzzles.

Zola was appointed to the hastily created Immortality Crisis Committee. The first meeting took place in a conference room that smelled of instant coffee and mounting dread.

"It's been seventeen days since the last confirmed death," announced Director Phillips. His handlebar mustache obviously designed to compensate for his lack of personality. "The president will address the nation tonight, but frankly, we have no answers to give him."

"Has anyone tried... extreme measures?" asked a military general whose name tag simply read "Burns."

The room grew quiet.

"We incinerated Subject 12 completely," said a woman from a Russian Lab Zola had never heard of. "The ashes reconstituted within hours. Subject 12 reported the experience as ticklish.'"

"We must consider the long-term implications," Zola said, spreading her notes over the table. "Resources, housing, food supplies. If no one dies, but people keep being born, the population ..."

"Birth rates have already plummeted," interrupted a man in a non descript janitorial jumpsuit. "It's as if nature is trying to correct itself. The math is unsustainable. Within decades…"

"That's not our most immediate concern," said Burns. "It's the prisons."

A collective shudder went through the room.

"Death row inmates have figured out they can't die. We've got serial killers staging riots, and torturing others to see what happens."

Zola's phone buzzed. A text from the hospital: Patient Lingermore requesting terminal sedation again. She woke up from last dose & she is conscious. Please advise.

"We need to consider the psychological impact," Zola said, looking up from her phone. "Humans weren't designed for this. We need endings."

---

Six months into the crisis, society had begun to adapt with the grim efficiency humans reserve for apocalyptic circumstances.

New architectural standards accommodated the growing population. Buildings grew upward and downward, apartments shrank into Japanese capsules. Massive vertical farms dominated city skylines. The economy had restructured around immortality: "Forever Funds" replaced retirement plans, while "Existence Insurance" became mandatory.

Zola moved her practice to the Perpetual Care Wing of Mount Sinai Hospital. Her patients existed in various states of what should have been death. Mangled, some withered, but all conscious & miserable. Zola rarely left. Sleep seemed wasteful when faced with eternity.

Mrs. Lingermore had become something of a celebrity in the wing. At 104, she held the record for most clinical deaths survived (sixteen). Journalists frequently visited her for a perspective on the crisis.

"I was born before television," she told them, her voice now amplified through a speech device as her vocal cords had stopped functioning months ago. "I've seen humanity survive world wars and disco. We'll adapt to this too."

But privately, to Zola, she confessed, "I've lived long enough to see my children become old," she said one evening. "I've forgotten what Herbert's voice sounds like. Memory wasn't meant to stretch this far, doctor. We're like rubber bands being pulled too thin."

The human mind, like the body, was designed with obsolescence in mind. Without death as a deadline, time was meaningless. Purpose became elusive.

The worst cases were in the Catastrophic Survival Ward. People who by all rights should be dead—crushed, drowned, burned beyond recognition—continued to exist in states of perpetual agony. Their bodies attempted to heal but never completed the process. They were suspended between trauma and recovery.

---

The one-year anniversary of the Last Death arrived with macabre celebrations. People gathered in cemeteries for "Obsolete Funerals," mockingly tossing flowers onto graves that represented a bygone era. Gallows humor had become the primary coping mechanism. Comedy clubs featured routines about failed suicide attempts that left audiences in tears of laughter and existential dread.

Zola visited Mrs. Lingermore, who had requested her specifically.

"I've been thinking about infinity, doctor," the old woman said. Her body had continued aging while refusing to die. A contradiction that left her increasingly skeletal, yet animated. "Do you know what the worst part is? Not the pain. It's the boredom."

Zola nodded. Existential ennui had become a diagnosable condition. Psychologists called it "Eternity Syndrome."

"I've lived through all my stories. I've told them so many times I can't remember which parts are true anymore. Without endings, narratives lose meaning."

The old woman was exhausted. Her breath came in tortuous raps. “What if…" Mrs. Lingermore’s paper-thin hand grasped Zola's wrist with surprising strength. "What if we're not meant to know what comes next? What if this is punishment?"

"I don't think it's punishment," Zola said gently. "Just a cosmic error we don't understand yet."

"Find a way to fix it, doctor. Promise me."

---

Two years into the crisis, the first "Ending Clinics" began appearing. Not euthanasia. Centers where people could experience simulated death. Using virtual reality and sensory deprivation, participants underwent guided meditations that approximated what death may have felt like. People emerged rejuvenated.

Zola consulted for one clinic. She helped design programs for those that suffered from Eternity Syndrome. It wasn't a solution, only a temporary relief from the psychological burden of endless existence.

Meanwhile, the physical infrastructure of society groaned. Despite declining birth rates, Earth's population had grown by millions. Resources dwindled. The poor suffered the most. They were crowded into "perpetual housing" that resembled storage lockers more than homes.

On the 777th day after the Last Death, Zola visited Mrs. Lingermore. She lay on a narrow cot. Her body thin, and her skin was translucent enough to see the sluggish movement of blood through her veins.

“Zola" she whispered, using the doctor's first name for the first time. "I've figured it out."

Zola sat on the edge of the cot. "Figured what out?"

"Why we stopped dying." Her eyes, milky with cataracts, somehow found Zola's. "We forgot how."

"How to die?"

"How to let go. Modern medicine. Technology. We've spent centuries fighting aging. We fight death. We won, completely won. But we never asked if we should.”

"Mrs. Lingermore, "

"I'm practicing," the old woman interrupted. "Every day, I practice letting go. I release memories. Desires and attachments. I'm traveling light for my journey."

"It's a beautiful thought," Zola said, "but medically—"

"Medically, schmetically." Mrs. Lingermore laughed. "This isn't a medical problem, it's an existential one."

---

Three years to the day after the Last Death, Zola received an urgent call from the night nurse. “It's Mrs. Lingermore," said the nurse. Her voice trembled. "She's... well, you should come see."

Zola rushed to the hospital, taking stairs two at a time. The bed was empty. Her physical presence that had occupied it for so long, evaporated.

"What happened?" Zola demanded.

The nurse held out a note written in a shaky hand: "I remembered how. Now you must teach the others.”

"She didn't leave," the nurse whispered. "She was here, and then... she wasn't."

Word spread quickly. The woman who had out-survived everyone had seemingly accomplished the impossible. She had died.

When the autopsy team arrived, they found nothing to examine. Mrs. Lingermore had not just died; she had completely ceased to be, as if she had never existed at all.

Perhaps endings weren't obsolete after all. They just required practice.