Death Co. (Introduction)

Death Co.

By, Ashton Macaulay

     Let’s see. Job qualifications: 1. Must be dead, they’re a real stickler about that one. 2. Preferred to have some legal experience. They’ll let that one slide occasionally, if you’re a ‘people person’. 3. Have to be just desperate enough to live forever, but just apathetic enough to spend that forever doing paperwork. 4. This one’s the most important of them all. Have to be able to deal with blood, otherwise the first day would be a bit of a drag.

     I don’t even know where to start. What I did, what I still do I suppose is quite a lot to take in. When people think about death, they think about the end of all things, the infinite black abyss, not so much an office building just on the edge of eternity. It’s pretty cramped for being of supernatural, but as immortality sets in it becomes routine.

     The best place to begin is probably at the beginning, where this organization came from. When shop was first opened up there was only one. The world was a lot smaller back then. The dawn of man was a simpler time, simpler people, less appeals, and less paperwork. I didn’t come on the scene until much later, but it’s important to know the history.

     In any case, before the dawn of man there wasn’t really much need. God didn’t give much of a shit about the dinosaurs (See giant asteroid and molten rain…) and so their afterlife was non-existent. Let’s just say that somewhere floating around in the depths of Limbo there’s more than a few confused brontosauruses still chewing their last piece of grass.

     Things really changed when humans came on the scene. Higher order functioning led to questions. Questions are something that The Big Man has never been very good with, and so rather than answer them, he created a buffer. The first question, the question that drove man to the edge of insanity and creativity was simple: What happens to us after we die? It is in the simplest essence the question of what lies at the edge of infinity. The truth is rather sad. The Big Man hasn’t got a clue and is too busy playing with climate change to bother trying to figure it out (have fun with that one global warming skeptics).

     His buffer was a single man. This man was named Ug (They weren’t so talkative the Neanderthals). During a routine mammoth drive he took a rather nasty spill off the edge of cliff. The Neanderthals weren’t great at phrasing their concerns, but when they died there was a bunch of hand waving and screaming (you know, questioning the cruelty of The Creator). In response God created Death. Ug was raised from the heap of mammoth flesh and elevated to the status of immortality.

     He was put into a black robe, given an ugly scythe and told to act menacing while collecting the souls of the recently dead. It was and is a rather morbid job, but it gave Neanderthals something to chew on (mentally that is, I’m sure they had plenty of mammoth bones to chew on). When someone died, Ug would freeze time, retrieve their soul, and ferry them to the afterlife. Rituals began to develop around Ug’s presence. The Romans would give him coins, the Catholics brought confessions and guilt, and the atheists brought sarcasm. Ug quite liked shiny things and so heaven is filled to the brim with Romans, makes for interesting parties.

     In any case, Ug performed this duty without ever really questioning it. He was the strong silent type (aka Cro-Magnon), and did as he was told. This worked for about 100 years, and then civilization continued to grow. Eventually people began to slip through the cracks. Purgatory overflowed (imagine a rain composed entirely of the decomposing) and had to be expanded (if you think construction permits on Earth are hard to obtain…), and so did the job of Death.

     The high angels decided that rather than understaffing, transportation was the issue (they had better things to do). Death was given a horse (Buttercup) and the world continued to spin for a while longer. Unfortunately for the heavens, Earth’s population took a turn for the exponential and exploded. Now we get about 155,000 souls a day. That’s quite a few, and with our newly technological society, the demands of the dead have become more complicated.

     At one point it became too much for poor Ug to handle and he tried to off himself, which when you’re already dead doesn’t go so well. It just makes a mess and makes the job all that much harder. The paperwork on double-death is hell. Rather than try and piece him back together every few weeks when the load became too much, the higher ups opted for more staff.

     Originally it was thought that therapists would be the best candidates, but they spent too much time talking. It’s a nice sentiment, trying to help the dead cope and move on with their afterlife, but far more complicated than any living therapy. Mostly The Recently Dead get stuck in the bargaining stage until they realize that agents of death are really just soul-porters with no true authority. That’s when they get uppity.

     The therapists took too long and speed became a prized element. When the lines at the office reach a few miles in length it really starts to stink. Imagine the DMV, on a Friday, with one line open, and the aggravated patrons are all in the process of rotting from the inside out. At least I don’t have to work maintenance. It would be nice to expedite the process, but every member of the recently deceased must be processed before they can leave their body.   

     Processing involves going through every nasty deed, every minor sin, and every parking ticket to balance them against someone’s good deeds. This is where the lawyers came in. Their job is to assess which outweighs the other, pick a direction and send the soul on its way. Most of the time when someone gets a negative review they file for an appeal. That line takes about 300 years. The whole system requires more paperwork than I could ever describe.

     The truth is that death has become a corporation just like anything else. The affairs of the living are a complicated affair, requiring a complex skillset. That’s where I come in. My name is Jon, I’m an ex-lawyer, dead for approximately 60 years, specializing in soul requisition. My business is death, and business is good.