Now That the Party's Over

Fiction: A woman buys the premium package for the end of her life.

The nurse enters with a white tray. Everything about her is designed to look non-threatening: her pale yellow scrubs, her serene smile, her sweet chemoscent perfume. I’m supposed to think of vanilla ice cream or breastmilk. Here’s mother to make everything right.

She puts the tray on the bedside table without fuss. Now I can see the strange cocktail of drugs that will soon filter through every cell in my body. These, too, are carefully packaged. They look like props from a movie set, like they’ve come straight from Grease or Goodfellas, an ode to a long-gone America for which I hold no nostalgia. Each brown glass bottle has a cream label with ‘Novadea’ printed in blue cursive. A swash sails from the first letter over the rest. I can’t read the fine print underneath.

“Good to see you again, Mrs. Knight,” the nurse says, polite enough to ignore where my attention has been. “How did you sleep?”

The question is so odd, so banal in the face of the circumstances, that I fantasize about pissing the bed or spitting in her eyes to see what she would do. But maybe this isn't a time to forsake pleasantries. I want to believe her care is sincere, if not sacred.

“Fine. Thank you.”

“Good. Well, thank you for meeting with me today,” she says, flipping through papers on a clipboard. “I hope our last appointment answered all your questions, but is there anything else you’d like to ask me before we begin?”

“Does it hurt?” My voice catches a little in my throat. It does that a lot nowadays, like a clockwork toy winding down. Your vocal cords have atrophied, the doctor said. It's a normal part of aging, nothing to worry about.

The nurse looks at me properly for the first time. She’s older than I thought, with a few fine lines around her eyes and mouth. A touch of gray at the roots. I wonder what doing her job is like when you’re past the halfway mark. “No, Mrs. Knight. It won’t hurt at all.”

“Okay.”

“Well then, let’s make a start. In accordance with the Complete Life Act of 2036, I need to read out some information to ensure you understand the procedure today. Is that okay?”

I nod lightly and try to keep my hands rested on my knees.

“Mrs. Emma Frances Knight, thank you for booking within the required period following the occasion of your eightieth birthday. Can you confirm that you willingly selected the time and date of this appointment? No close friend or relative coerced you?”

“Yes.” Well, it wasn’t exactly a choice. The letter was clear that I had to pick an available slot, or one would be chosen for me. I booked the furthest one I could find, scrolling through page after page as dates grayed out one after another.

“Mrs. Knight, you confirmed at our last appointment that you did not want a witness present in the room during your life completion. Is that still the case?”

“Yes.” I didn’t tell anyone about the letter, though they must have anticipated its arrival. They’d known it was coming for two decades, at least. My last birthday had felt more like a wake than a party. When my son, Henry, raised a toast, I had a vision of what he’d say at my funeral. Perhaps that was the point. Some would call it a privilege, even. Wasn’t it nice to hear all the lovely things friends and family thought before we died? That had certainly been in vogue among the terminal when I was young. A living funeral, they called it.

Henry had talked in the past tense, addressing the room and not me, about what I’d achieved and not what I could still accomplish. I wondered, then, not for the first time, if he’d voted yes in the referendum all those years ago. Did his decision haunt him, now it was coming to pass for someone he knew? Someone he loved, even? Or did he feel noble, like he’d sacrificed something good for something greater?

The nurse goes on. “Their Majesty's Government would like to thank you for your service to your country and congratulate you for reaching this significant milestone. A good life is a complete life.”

She pauses and looks at me expectantly. Time seems to stretch before I say, “Thank you.”

“Now, there's been an exciting new development since we last spoke. The NHS has recently licensed a product that’s been making a real impact in the Commonwealth of America…”

Unless it's my life, I'm not really interested. I look at her, hoping my expression projects mild interest. Behind her, a cinegraph shows the London Eye turning against an unreal blue sky, long before the United Nations agreed to seed clouds.

When I was younger, before I moved into the Residences, I’d take the bus to the Tate Modern every Tuesday morning. I'd order a latte from the gallery café—oat milk, non-enriched coffee, please—and sit by the window, watching the school children come and go through the Turbine Hall to marvel at the latest retrospective or sketch 3D models in the air. I took great pleasure in this weekly ritual, in the luxury of staying still and watching the world go by in a hurry. Then I slipped on something rotten on the pavement—a fox must have nosed something from the bin again—and spent the winter with strict instructions to rest my leg and keep it elevated above my hip. When I returned to the café in the spring, it felt like a century had swept by.

“Like, a debit card?” The barista had asked incredulously, as if I’d gotten out a chequebook. “We only accept contactless here.”

“Yes, it is contactless,” I said, tapping my card in demonstration.

“No, like you need to swirl.” I felt the weight of the queue behind me as she circled her index finger. “Do you have Neuralign?” She mouthed slowly and punctuated her question by tapping her temple. I understood, then, the price of standing still—the world soon leaves you behind. A gap opens up, and it only gets wider. By the time you’re my age, it’s a chasm, and no one wants to see you try and jump it, like some wrinkled Evel Knievel.

I’m drifting again. The nurse rambles on, reciting her script. “...Using the latest facial recognition technology and generative intelligence, HyperSpective allows you to see your timeline’s top moments. Would you like to purchase this add-on?”

A real flashback, huh? “How does it work?”

“It's activated during Phase I of your life completion. It's purchased through your Neuralign account. You can pay now or with a 20% surcharge from your estate.”

My estate, how grand. Money means nothing anymore, but I’m still my mother’s daughter. I picture her sitting beside me on the bed, younger than I am now, with her long dark hair twisted into a pile on her head. No need to throw it around, she’d say. Spend your pennies wisely.

“I’ll pay now.”

“Fantastic,” the nurse smiles a little too widely. “Now it’s my duty to inform you that I earn a small commission from any referral to HyperSpective. Do you wish to proceed?”

“That’s fine.” More power to you, honey. Something’s got to pay the rent. She holds up her right palm, and I trace a clockwise circle in the air. Under the skin, a white ring appears and dims. Cha-ching, I hear inside my head.

“Please call me Emma,” I say. If she’s going to play mother, she’d better do it properly.

“Of course,” the nurse says, and offers me a choice of beverage. I ask for tea with milk and one sugar, the way I've had it for seventy years or so. I look at the London Eye cinegraph again while alone, hoping the scenery might stand still, but the wheel keeps turning. For a second, I contemplate making a run for it. Would I even make it out of the building? Where would I go if I did? Before I can think beyond the front doors of the hospital, she returns with another tray.

A part of me is relieved. The thought of being tracked down, caught, shamed, and returned like a common criminal is too much. And my legs aren’t what they used to be. Nothing is.

We talk a little as I sip the tea. It’s slightly too sweet, too strong. We talk about the news: the floods in Somerset, the Lithium Wars in Chile, the megacity project in the Pacific Ocean. We talk about our latest downloads: Community Health 20.2 for her, Mandarin 9.1 for me. We talk about how fast London changes: a new mayor, new protest, new pop-up building. We talk about anything and everything but what comes next.

I look down at the wash of tea and I realize a calm has taken me. The nurse hands me the clipboard to sign. The walls of text under ‘Risks and Liabilities’ shift and shake and shimmer in my grip. I gather scraps like “prolonged death,” “stroke and paralysis,” and “repeat procedure,” but their meaning escapes me. This must be how it feels to be a fish in a stream, unaware of the water but governed by how it wants to bend and flow. I let the seconds slip right through me.

“Lie back in a comfortable position,” she says, arranging a pillow behind my head. My limbs feel warm and heavy, like someone has tucked me under a weighted blanket. “I’m going to insert a catheter into your hand. You might feel a light scratch.”

There’s a sharp sting. Somewhere in another room, an alarm rings.

“That hurt,” I say, trying to sit up groggily. “You said it wouldn’t hurt.” She pushes me back down gently. The pillow is too soft, and I feel like I’m falling.

“The worst is over now. Take a deep breath,” she says, injecting a needle into the catheter. “That’s great, Emma, well done. Close your eyes.”

A cool, almost metallic feeling emanates from my hand. It travels up my arm, and into my chest. My mouth feels wet and dry like I’ve had too much wine.

“I’m not ready,” I groan, fighting the close of my eyelids. “I don’t want to go.”

“Shh, now. You’re doing great.” Someone strokes my hair. “You’re falling asleep now, Emma. Just falling asleep. It’s time to dream.”

There is nothing, and then a light flicks on—a blue dot in the darkness. It swoops down, right, up, then loops left, down, up, drawing a glowing line. A skewed infinity. Then, the word ‘HyperSpective’ appears and fills the whole world, taller than any building, greater than any mountain, larger than any sky I have ever seen. There’s something so terrible about it that I want to cry, but I don’t have glands, ducts, or eyes. I’m a presence without a body. Emotion without definition.

A baby stares at me with bright eyes, brown like mine, sucking happily on a wedge of lemon. I float towards her and space bends slowly and gently, like it’s trying to hold me back. There’s a fuzziness to her mouth and nose. I lean closer, trying to place who she is, but I snap into the darkness again.

I turn around. A woman with too many fingers stands in a kitchen holding a cake. The writing on the icing squirms and wiggles as I try to read what it says. She looks past me with smudged pupils. Someone sings a garbled version of “Happy Birthday.” I catch my name in the middle of it.

“Mum?” I ask.

I’m somewhere else. The scenes, spaces, or memories—I don’t have the language to describe them—come quickly now. A girl laughs as her dad blows bubbles in her face, screams as he lets go of her bike, blushes as a young boy kisses her cheek, cries as a seagull steals her ice cream, sobs as she finds a dead crow, startles at the red patch in her underwear, trembles at the touch of a hand, celebrates her exam results with friends, pants under the sheets with a lover.

It's me—or rather, the idea of me that HyperSpective has generated, extrapolated from mining decades of my personal data: my photos, posts, messages, and likes. I'd given over these possessions in agreeing to a privacy policy somewhere long ago. That was a battle that no one had fought very hard to win. Giving in was far too easy, far too convenient.

The scenes are a strange mix of truth and fiction. Some scenes are from so long ago that I'm unsure I remember the details. Did I really paint our living room pink? Did Henry own a tie with little golf clubs? When I do, HyperSpective alters them in seconds to match: changing the colour of a shirt or the entire sky as it gauges my reaction.

Now and then, a scene appears that threatens to extinguish me. Here I am, half-submerged in a bath of reddening water. The water that pools in the hollows of my eye sockets and lips is too thick, too glossy, like someone has poured molasses over me. I watch a new texture render in real-time. I wonder where they scraped my first miscarriage from. My calls to my mum? Texts to a friend? Did they screenshot my face while I searched for ways to stop it? There’s probably a folder in the cloud somewhere of every expression I've ever worn. Anguish.png. My face flutters, painting a deeper groove between its brows, and opens its mouth to scream.

The moments slip and shift and deform into each other, flesh bloating into flesh, eyes melting into eyes, teeth into teeth. Bubbling like film stuck under the hot lights of a projector gate. I’m somewhere in it, stretching into nothing as dimension folds into dimension, and frame into frame, and pixel into pixel. I compress again and again until I hear the prickle of static and the titter of bytes before there’s a thin, shrill hum that is so close to silence. It’s the sound the brain invents when there’s nothing left to hear. Somewhere in between the void and infinity.