The Death Fairy

The Death Fairy

The first death fairies were androids. They arrived at your door wearing a pleasant face, an inoffensive tone, a soothing demeanor.

You wouldn’t believe what men did to those poor synthetic bodies.

After the mutilations, the System tried all sorts of corrective iterations. They gave the death fairies robotic voices, smoothed-over mannequin faces, models with wrinkles or moles or scars. Each version a new vantage from within the uncanny valley, each model an attempt to discover a form too foreign or too familiar to invite aggression.

But so long as the death fairies had bodies, the dying found ways to carve their grief upon them. Men do not mutilate that which they see as inhuman. They mutilate that which they see has enough humanity to be taken.

Death fairies now are drone holograms. You won’t see anything when you look through the peephole, but of course you’ll be expecting a whirring clockwork guest by that point. Open the door, and a drone the size of a gnat will flit inside. Within seconds it will make a well of the waters of your memory. The drone will project someone familiar, someone comforting. Your mother long gone, the husband or wife who found their way to the grave before you. A friend who knew you before the weight of time compressed your body upon itself.

The refuseniks and conspiracy theorists believe the death fairies are a scheme to cull the old via euthanasia shot or poison a CIA-discovered frequency that liquifies your organs.

Silly. Time never needed an accomplice. No, death fairies do not bring death. They arrive alongside it. They sit beside you, watching the rise and fall of your chest. They answer your questions and listen to the quiet panic that accumulates beneath your ribs. If you speak, they answer with the borrowed cadence of someone you knew. If you rage, they do not flinch. If you weep, they wait.

Hesitance eventually gave way to acceptance. Almost everyone these days opts for a death fairy at the end. Hospitals, unburdened by the truly hopeless cases, report better outcomes for their other patients

When we were young, we pitied anyone who needed a death fairy. Back then, friendship was so abundant, you could keep a notebook of shifting allegiances, writing and underlining “best friend” alongside a name, crossing it out a week later. What open arms the world had. What teeth it grew.

Now, of course, being alone near the hour is so often inevitable. You lose touch, you are widowed or winnowed into solitude. Beyond that, it’s just so burdensome to be a burden. You say your goodbyes early, and you name no one to hold your fragile papery hand at the end. You retreat to a corner of the world to die alone, like a cat slipping out the back door to die beneath the house.

The sound of the doorbell is almost exciting, the way new things often are.

But then I remember I do not want to die. My heart is so full of incompletion that I need to scream it at someone. There is no one left.

The hallway appears empty when I open the door, my eyes failing to discern the drone. They see only its manifestation: a projection that shifts restlessly. My mother at first, though the program seems to read my ambivalence, and it changes instantly. It is momentarily a golden retriever, my husband, my college roommate.

Finally, it settles. A teacher I had when I was a girl. But I do not remember her name.

The program reads my forgetfulness. “My name is Mrs. Butler,” it says. “May I come in?”

I do not know the alchemy by which memories are transformed from the mush in my mind. I note that this function might have been useful over the past few years as my mind sometimes agonized to remember words like keys, gloves, telephone.

I stand aside, allowing the space for the hologram to enter. It moves as if it has weight, each step measured and smooth. It sits on my sofa and smiles up at me.

I thought that once it arrived, I’d be able to tell. Some flicker, some glitch, some slight mechanical dissonance that would break the illusion. That would remind me this is just a program, a function.

But no, the death fairy appears solid and real. Unbearably human. I reach out to touch it, and a voice forms over its head says in a soft, monotone voice, “Please refrain from touching the final companion hologram”.

Mrs. Butler does not move her lips. The voice belongs to the drone itself. I suppose it has to. Mrs. Butler is meant only to comfort.

I think to offer her tea for a moment, but of course that would be pointless. Instead I sit opposite her, sinking into my armchair.

“Is there anything you would like to ask me, dear?”

I do not know. “What do people usually ask?”

“I can give you answers to the most common questions that people ask. Would you like to hear these?”

I nod gravely, unsure how I feel about accessing the philosophy of death via FAQ. But I am also sure that I am too tired to pretend I possess any question on death that has not been dreamt of before.

Mrs. Butler speaks, “The most common question asked of final companions regarding death is, ‘what will happen after I die?’”

“And?”

“Unknown.”

Of course.

“I can tell you what is most likely to happen to your body and brain function in the moments leading up to death.”

“No,” I answer. I don’t want to know these things.

“The second most common question asked of final companions is ‘when will I die?’”

I pause. Death has been coming for some time, and from reports on the efficiency of the system, it’s known that death fairies are precise. A proprietary algorithmic system ensures that a fairy arrives neither too late, nor so early that the two of you are sitting around for days staring at each other. There are spies in the plumbing and informers in the appliances: sensors that deliver the secrets of my wastewater to System ciphers.

I don’t want to know when I will die. Presumably, my heart will beat its last within hours, and knowing only reminds me, I do not want to die.

I also do not want to scream at Mrs. Butler about this. She cannot fix it.

“No,” I say finally. “I don’t want to know that either.”

“I could not tell you anyway,” Mrs. Butler says. “The system is imperfect and for liability reasons does not offer predictions.”

I bristle at the bait, wondering if Mrs. Butler can answer any questions. The program apparently reads my annoyance and responds before I can voice my frustration.

“Next people ask if death will hurt. I can answer this question.”

“All right,” I say. “Will death hurt?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Butler responds. Her eyes eerily reflect sorrow and sympathy. “Not in the way you think, dear. Death hurts like absence, like a void where always you have felt warmth. Death will hurt like an empty bed, like reaching an answering machine. The components of this sensation will be chemically similar to physical pain, but you will feel less and less, and it is the less that will hurt. Death will hurt like a dim house and the memory of laughter.”

I am numb amid unanticipated poetry. Mrs. Butler leans forward, as though to place a hand on my cheek. The gesture is pantomimed inches from my face. My hand lifts reflexively toward her. And I remember, she is not real. The folly of it strikes me at once. The absurdity of choosing solitude, of believing that absence was weightless. That it wouldn’t press down just the same.

No animal that lives within the uncanny valley bleeds. I snatch my hand back, press it to my own cheek.

Mrs. Butler watches. Still. Waiting.

My legs are unsteady beneath me. They creak in harmony with the hardwood. My hand on the knob is gnarled and age spotted.

And one last time, I step out into the world.