Chaz:

Sun splattered the near empty streets. Only a few drowsy commuters passed us, all yawning and sipping coffee from paper cups. Apparently everyone in the Big Easy had a rough time last night, me included. Angelique and I stopped at a French bakery and picked up a couple of beignets drenched in powdered sugar. Her mood lightened and she laughed while she licked her fingers. Most of the city was still asleep when we got back in the car and drove over to the head office.

So I wasn’t expecting the voice memo that came blasting through my Verse.

“Stand by for the latest Nine-Timer Report—”

Felt like I’d been standing by my entire life. Right now I was waiting for India to self-destruct. I was glad Angelique didn’t have her smartphone implant yet. Explaining the end of the world wasn’t on my to-do list today.

“Explosions rocked the suburbs of Jaipur, India, a few hours ago,” the newscaster said.

Jaipur. We’ve got a Fresh Start plant there—it was probably the target of a local pro-death demonstration.

“Our sources are limited,” she continued in a bright, cheery voice. “But apparently the explosions triggered a Nine-Timer scenario that spread for about ten blocks—”

I’d bet right now Russell and his board were scrambling to cover all this up.

“Almost all clones within that radius froze up and went off-line—”

Went off-line. The PC term for “died.”

“—but as far as we can tell, this was a pocket of Six-Timers. Obviously, the mechanical breakdowns we’ve been hearing rumors about are no longer restricted to the Ninth Generation clones—”

There was a dramatic pause.

“Remember to stay tuned for our next Nine-Timer Report at noon,” she said. “And may your afterlife be even better than your life today.”

I pulled into the Fresh Start parking lot just as the broadcast concluded. Angelique’s mood changed again when she stared at the building. Almost every Newbie has some sort of reaction when they see one of our plants, based on some hidden memory of when they first got their chip, so I didn’t really pay too much attention.

I was still thinking about the report.

When I was younger, the end of the world always seemed a bit poetic. In between gigs, my jazz buddies and I would sit around and talk about it for hours, sipping coffee or whiskey, cigarettes burning, taking bets on the future.

But the bottom line was that the end was coming, whether we believed in it or not. Folks have been talking about this afterlife time bomb for the past fifty years.

I should know.

After all, it was my family that lit the fuse in the first place.