The Quiet

‘What was it like? Being Quiet?’ I try my food. The zebra is indeed excellent, dark and juicy: she has good taste. Perhaps she picked it up from me.

She crumbles a piece of bread on her plate, lost in thought. ‘It’s difficult to explain. It’s very abrupt: when your Time runs out, the transition happens. The Resurrection Men just come to pick your body up, but you are already there. It’s like having a stroke. Suddenly, your brain works differently, in a different body, with different senses.

‘But after the shock passes, it’s not so bad. You become very focused in your work, and the concentration is quite pleasing. You are wired differently. You can’t speak, but you have these very vivid waking dreams you can share with others. And you are powerful, depending on what kind of body you end up in. That can be … exhilarating.’

‘So there is some sort of Quiet sex life?’

‘Perhaps one day you will find out, offworld boy.’

‘Anyway, it does not sound so bad,’ I say.

‘There have been endless arguments about it. A lot of the kids think it’s just a guilt thing. But the Voice has never had any proposals about overturning the system. You can ask why: could we not do it differently? Could we not use synthbio drones to do it all?

‘But it’s not that simple. When you come back, you are a mess for a while. You look into a mirror and see your other self. And you miss it. It’s like having a conjoined twin. You’ll never really be apart.’

A post-singularity society where people are with the living for a period of time and use time as currency, and when they die they become "quiet" robotic laborers and servants for a time.