Chapter 1

Life is overrated. Staying alive… making the most of it… avoiding death… an underwhelming experience. People are confusing. Even when someone who has passed on was a bad person, they act like they didn't deserve to die. Like the other side is full of suffering and pain. If no one has come back to confirm it, how is everyone so certain? Every day new innovations are made—all meant to improve and prolong life. Every discovery that finds a way to fight back against nature is met with cheers from societies too blinded by emotion and narcissism to recognize the true motive behind these discoveries: money.

Like the life support machines many hospitals generously provide to ailing patients to stretch out their last moments. The hospitals don't give a shit about your father dying. They give a shit about the bills you'll be left to settle, after you gather the family around his hospital bed, bid your teary goodbyes, and decide to turn off the life support machine. Each time one of those machines is switched off, an alarm goes off in an office elsewhere and smiles appear on faces. Another one bites the dust. While you and your family grieve, they break out the champagne and toast to the amount of cash you are about to part with. Congratulations! You fell for it. People will do whatever it takes to stay alive, even when being alive means nothing. The thought of dying so fearful that people often swear they wouldn't wish it on their worst enemy. Maybe everyone is a liar. Maybe nobody ever means what they say.