AVALON: Beyond Corruption

1⎟Happy Ending

Everyone knows they will die. Some know exactly when.

At first, the decade old scientific discovery of predicting death had shaken the world. Now people lived life to the fullest with a certain date niggling in the back of their minds. Others decided ignorance was bliss.

Matthias Crow observed children trail behind parents from his seat on steps leading to a fast food restaurant. That one looked about eight years old. Once she reached double digits, her parents were legally required to give her the option of knowing her death date.

He remembered his own tenth birthday five years ago.

"Gabby told me the whole class are gonna know and anyone else who doesn't is a scaredy cat," Sanna Bergen said.

Matthias' best friend was always much braver and he admired her for it. However, he wished he had more spine then. Life would be simpler without knowing. He bit into his spicy chicken sandwich.

Ding.

Ugh, another Happy Ending app update. What now? Eating an unhealthy lunch knocked a few minutes off his lifetime? Matthias deleted the app. Screw this. Screw knowing.

"Hey, Matthias," called Aaron from his dented sedan.

"What took you so long?"

His older brother smiled as Matthias strapped in. "Shut up. Or I might make you take the bus home."

"Yeah, Mom would be real happy about that."

They rolled down the windows since the AC was crappy. Aaron tapped along to Come On Eileen on the radio while Matthias focused on wind that smelled of pollution ruffling his hair. Twenty more years to go.

He never told anyone he would die relatively young. No one asked. It was a nice, unspoken system. Still the secret weighed heavily on him especially during sleepless nights.

How was anyone in this world sane?

Sanna waited in their driveway. Weird. She didn't normally swing by until hours after school. Even stranger, her pretty features were twisted with a look of distress.

Matthias stepped out Aaron's car. "Sanna? You okay?"

"My grandfather," she whispered, "He's dead."

Tears escaped her glassy blue eyes and Matthias pulled her into a hug. Sanna took calming breaths. Why did her grandfather's death rattle her? Death was the only certain thing in this world.

She pulled from his embrace. "Grandpa was m-murdered. He died three years before his time."

Murder? "How is that...?"

Ever since the discovery criminals could not kill someone without scientists already suspecting it. That made tracking them down all too easy. So perhaps there was still hope for justice in Sanna's situation. However an unpredicted death blew a large, gaping hole in his optimism.

"I don't know." She stifled sobs with her shaky hand.

"Oh, Sanna..."

Aaron opened the door so they could sit inside. Matthias rubbed her shoulders and tried accepting the impossible—an inaccurate death date.

Ding.

Today seemed to be full of impossible. Somehow, the Happy Ending app was still on his phone despite having deleted it before. A notification read: Your life has extended 3 years!

What? An awful feeling settled in his stomach. Matthias wondered if these events were connected and whether they marked a beginning of further impossibilities.