i
It all started when they made suicide legal.
I guess it really started before that, when that team of university scientists in Singapore set up Stephenson Lenses in the local emergency rooms. They were as surprised as anyone by their results: images of unexplained energy leaving the bodies of the dying. Of course the scientists were largely ignored until an American TV magazine picked up the story, after which they were laughed at instead. The AP caught wind of it, and the team was heckled and shouted down at every news conference. But they were the crack in the dam.
The next year, a startup in Michigan announced the ability to “fingerprint the unique psychic energy” of a person, even when that person was still alive. The startup’s founder called this individual pattern an echoshape and thought he could market his tech to biometrics firms, but everyone else still called it a soul and didn’t want it mapped, thanks but no thanks. The startup foundered, and their hardware scattered on eBay. A couple of venture cinematographers got their hands on an echoshaper, took it to their local hospital, and filmed dozens of spirits leaving the dead then meandering over to the maternity ward. Public Access saw it, Nightly News saw it, and then everyone saw it – souls and reincarnation in one neat package.
The uproar came after that. From some churches it was outcry and condemnation, from others ‘I told you so’s. Science was a devil, or it was the savior. This was just a test from God, or maybe it was a sign from God, or it didn’t have anything to do with God.
But the uproar died, as it always will. Give them a few years, and people have a way of assimilating almost anything. The market found a way to capitalize on reincarnation. Yoga rose in popularity. Past-life regressions were written into the general education requirements of most colleges. The abortion issue… well, it changed. Those who could afford it paid more attention to where they died. The races in the next election cycle were determined largely by questions of inheritance law. The new laws, in their turn, upended the economy; between the markets and the war, things were shaky for a while, at least until the Supreme Court and a Special Council from the UN ruled within weeks of each other that the legal entity was defined by the body, not the soul. I guess that let Hitler’s ghost off the hook. It let a lot of people off the hook.
Like anti-indecency laws twenty years earlier, anti-suicide legislation was nullified in most municipalities. Some progressive European nations created specific provisions for suicide. The banks and credit card companies hated it. Draw up your trust in the right way, and it was better than declaring bankruptcy. The insurance companies, though – they loved it. They were able to raise the premium for accidental death (which was now a far more frightening prospect, since you couldn’t choose where you died), and natural deaths all but disappeared. None of the underwriters list suicide in their coverage these days.
You’re probably wondering why legalizing suicide made any difference. It’s not like the suicides of the past worried much about whether or not they were breaking the law. But the fact of the matter is this: if something is legal – drinking, shooting up, head trips, prostitution, whatever – someone will be right there (many someones), ready to help you do it however you want… for a modest fee. That’s not the difference either, of course; the difference is in the advertising. Now these someones can set up a storefront with a flashing sign that you see every morning when you drive to work. Now they can franchise, run spots on the screen, subsidize popular culture. Now there’s venture capital. And the suicide business – it was big. You might not believe how much an old man would pay to die painlessly, quickly, in a familiar neighborhood, when his will-to-self was drawn up as solid as he liked, and avoid the risk of knocking off from some sudden, painful heart attack on the wrong side of town where he might be reborn – unidentified, without his wealth – to a 15-year-old homeless stik addict.
I hear there’s a long waiting list for the suicide clinics in Beverly Hills and Manhattan. I guess there’s some kind of traffic jam in the afterlife.