Momentum 2.0: "Death's Real Job"

DEATH'S REAL JOB

BY BILL MOHR

"You don't look your age," is the inevitable comment when Death admits he's over sixty years old, though modesty forbids him to reveal his exact birthdate. Anyone who meets him would guess he's in his early 40s and would question the date on his driver's license, although, in fact, in the photo on the license, Death does look much older. He attributes this to the poor lighting at DMV offices.
His youthful appearance is not an accident. He knows the secret of staying young is enjoying your work and not dawdling in the sun. His work is not what might be supposed. The hard task of getting one's business started was accomplished billions of years ago and now his prodigy do the day to day tasks which they are naturally suited for, assignments which they complain are monotonous in their unvarying results. Although he no longer participates in the actual fulfillment of the inevitable, his presence on the planet is still required to keep the enthusiasm of the younger devotees from devastating every species.
He's still required to do an immense amount of paperwork, but thanks to computers, he has reduced that part of his life to five hours a week. To keep his mind sharp, he has developed a passion for astronomy. He enjoys the solitude and quiet of such research, although the anonymity is what he truly savors. Recently he has begun submitting papers under a pseudonym. His research is thorough and his papers contain hints and inferences which other astronomers often intuitively grasp and weave into their more general theories.
As he witnesses human beings discovering more and more about the nature of the universe, he finds himself growing amused by their naivete. Human beings assume that Death has all the answers. He doesn't. He is as obsessed with certain questions as they are, and he doesn't know if he has enough time left to find the answers. Obviously, it isn't self-extinction he's afraid of. It's loneliness. The question haunts him: Is there death elsewhere? -- or is he alone in the universe?
The so-called death of stars means nothing to him. That is only the disappearance or disintegration of unconscious molecules. He wants to know if something resembling him exists elsewhere, something hovering above every living creature, present in every daily gesture.
He isn't ethnocentric. Death elsewhere doesn't have to be exactly like him. As he scans astronomical journals, he hopes to find some clue which these mortals have overlooked, some almost invisible configuration which will affirm in at least one other place the ineradicable palpitation which echoes the heartbeat of every living creature.