But Cath did take it, years later, and it was the beginning of the end. For us, for everything.

We had a few good years before that. I'd thought the heat would die down once everyone realised the machine truly worked, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Once it became clear just how reliable the predictions were, a huge number of people decided the machine itself was causing causing the deaths. And after we went into hiding that night, we never came out. the deaths. And after we went into hiding that night, we never came out.

We knew fairly early on, I think, that we wanted nothing more to do with the device. We'd only started this company to get rich, and there seemed little doubt we'd achieved that. We thrashed out a deal that would net us a huge lump sum then continue to pay out in royalties no matter what people did with our technology, and sold the rights that first week. We became the elusive guys who just made this inexplicable thing and disappeared, which of course only added to the romance and public fascination with our little box. It wasn't until much later that Pete's scientific curiosity took hold again, and for those intervening years he was as happy as we were to let the world scratch its head at what we'd done, even as it wrote out our cheques.

We each changed hair colour at least once, we went by fake names (I was Chris, Pete was Jason, Cath was Carol and Jen insisted on being Cath, confusing and irritating us all), we only did interviews by email and IM, and we took turns picking the next country to spend a month in. The genius of it was that we'd essentially made our millions by creating something utterly useless. It didn't help help to know how you would die, precisely because the machine was so accurate-you couldn't avoid it even when you knew it was coming. to know how you would die, precisely because the machine was so accurate-you couldn't avoid it even when you knew it was coming.

Well, not entirely useless. You couldn't avoid the death it predicted, but it was very possible that you'd avoided other deaths simply by consulting the machine. The way Pete explained it to interviewers was this: Say you're a clumsy skydiver. One day you're going to screw your parachute up and fall to your death. But the machine won't tell you that, because then you'd stop skydiving and it wouldn't come true. Instead, the machine tells you you'll die of a heart attack. You decide to take it easy on the high-stress sports, preferring that your inevitable demise be later rather than sooner, and you live twenty years longer than you would have if you'd never taken the test.

For an electrical engineer, Pete was suspiciously good at marketing. I maintain that it would have been cheaper to produce an empty box with "Don't skydive" written on the side-and usually say so at that point in the interview-but the world seems to prefer his device.

It gets a little more complicated if you're not a clumsy skydiver, of course, but on the whole the machine extends peoples' lives by giving them the chance to stave off their fate for as long as possible-and in the process, miraculously avoiding the many others that ought to have claimed them along the way. None of the deaths it predicts are avoidable, but almost all of them are postponable. Almost. Almost.

That's why we never felt particularly bad about what we'd done, no matter how much pain and misery it seemed to cause, no matter how many times the police intercepted anthrax and explosives addressed to the old manor. I found those more offensive offensive than anything. It's a matter of public record that Pete and I are not scheduled to die from an explosion or a disease, so the authors of these a.s.sa.s.sination attempts must have known their efforts would only ever hurt innocent people. Not that than anything. It's a matter of public record that Pete and I are not scheduled to die from an explosion or a disease, so the authors of these a.s.sa.s.sination attempts must have known their efforts would only ever hurt innocent people. Not that we we were even guilty of anything in particular. were even guilty of anything in particular.

In between the people whose lives we saved and the people whose lives we ruined, we got a pretty bizarre set of responses to our mysterious black box-co-licensed and manufactured by over three hundred companies worldwide, to date. A lot of people found the suggestion of inevitability incredibly offensive, and tried to do everything they could to defy it.

In some cases, avoiding death became secondary to disproving the machine: one man gashed his wrists to disprove a slip that told him he'd die of AIDS. He survived, of course-he'd just received his prediction from a machine in a GP's office, so there was help on hand. But he'd used an unsterilised scalpel from a nearby dolly, and with a grim inevitability familiar to anyone who follows special prediction cases, he contracted HIV from that.

Others took the fatality of it all as an excuse for hedonism, either because the manner of their death wasn't related to their pa.s.sions, or precisely because it was. If it's going to kill you anyway you'd be mad to abstain, went the logic. Both types tended to die quickly. That caused some public concern, but I hardly thought the machine could be blamed for the live fast/die young correlation. Obviously those that overindulged in the vices that were to kill them died from them quickly-even they they must have seen that coming. must have seen that coming.

It was the former group that suffered a stranger fate: their heart attacks, tumors and cancer struck quickly, as if eager to get their kill in before the toll of that lifestyle s.n.a.t.c.hed it from them and proved the machine wrong. It looked, in other words, like the machine was killing to prove itself right. Mind you, all statistical anomalies look suspicious if you take them in isolation. That was a tiny group-reckless men with bad habits didn't get slips saying NATURAL CAUSES often.

For the most part, it was just like each of us had a new medical condition, and all of us were hypochondriac about it. Even me. I, like the millions of HEART-ATTACKs out there, never touched red meat again, drank only in moderation, took light, regular exercise and simply left the room if anyone started arguing or stressful decisions needed to be made.

I'd even heard that some particularly ghoulish socialites held parties at which guests were obliged to wear their slips like name-tags, using the nature of their demise as a conversation starter. I never went to one, but a part of me felt like they had the right idea: you can't take this cruel cosmic joke seriously, this blackest of humour, this mockery of fate. The only reasonable response to it is to go up to a stranger and say "Oh, hey, megaloblastic anemia? I hear that one's a b.i.t.c.h."

We could laugh about it, and we could forget it, and we did-lots of both. But it encroached on all our quiet moments: we felt infected. The prediction made it as if our death had already taken root in our bodies, and it was impossible not to visualise it. Memories of health-infomercial graphics haunted me, phong-shaded fat congealing in my arteries and constricting my bloodflow. I could put it to the back of my mind, always, but never entirely out.

The traveling was my idea. I never really knew what to do with the money, after working so long in the pursuit of it. Buying anything extravagant-helicopters, hotels, heroin-seemed to involve an awful lot of effort, and I can't honestly say that the only thing stopping me from buying these things before had been a lack of funds. I didn't want them. I didn't want want anything, much, just a little safety. anything, much, just a little safety.

I thought about giving it all to charity-there was even a dedicated one to helping people escape their machine-determined fate, the futility of which made me gape-but I knew I'd regret it. I hadn't done many generous things in my life, and they'd all made me feel terrible. In the end I did give a chunk of it to BrainHelp, a charity devoted to helping the survivors of aneurysms, because it was close enough to home to mean something to me, and useless enough to Pete not to be personally motivated.

But travel was my way of escaping that contentment, fleeing the realisation that we had nowhere else to go in life. We would, instead, go to the places we hadn't yet been. It was one of my better ideas, except for the part where it nearly kills my girlfriend.

I begged her not to do it. Well, pleaded. Well, openly disapproved. A Thai taxi had smashed into our flimsy tuk-tuk on the reeking streets of Bangkok. I, she argued, had been smugly safe in the knowledge that it wasn't going to kill me as we tumbled out onto the sidewalk, while she had been freaking out. I tried to tell her that it wasn't like that, that when something actually happens happens all rational thought about predictions flies from your head, but either she didn't believe me or she didn't care. She was wild, she just had to know. all rational thought about predictions flies from your head, but either she didn't believe me or she didn't care. She was wild, she just had to know.

I should have been a real man about it and stopped her. Or a good man, and supported her. But instead I was an actual actual man about it, which meant that I whined, chided, and made her feel bad about herself without actually helping in any way. She'd come to expect nothing more. man about it, which meant that I whined, chided, and made her feel bad about herself without actually helping in any way. She'd come to expect nothing more.

We used the original prototype for it, still under a tarp in that first hangar, and everything we did echoed. Pete and Jen came along for moral support. She replaced the needle with its fresh tube of claret attached, and we waited for the smooth hum of the printout.

She stood up, took it, looked at it, and looked away, almost in one motion. I didn't notice her hand tremble as she pa.s.sed it to me, but the tip of the slip of paper quavered delicately, giving her away. I looked up at her.

I took it. I read it. It was one word.

I started to sob.

The machine doesn't tell you when when you're going to die, I'd corrected a hundred interviewers about that. But in this case it had. In this one case, it had done exactly what we originally designed it to do: give an ETD. you're going to die, I'd corrected a hundred interviewers about that. But in this case it had. In this one case, it had done exactly what we originally designed it to do: give an ETD.

We both knew, at the moment each of us saw it, even over the simple horror of that awful word, that it meant nine months at the most. We both knew that it would rend us apart, that we'd never be that close again. Closer in other ways, sure, but not like this, not now that we knew I was going to kill her. We'd already set the wheels in motion. We had nine months, maybe less.

LABOUR. It stared back at us innocently until Cath made me throw the slip away, like it had just wandered out of a perfectly harmless sentence about union disputes. I wanted so badly to be involved in a union dispute right then, for that to be my biggest problem, for that to be what LABOUR meant to me.

I wanted to recall all the machines and tell Pete to redesign them to print in lower case, or Latin, or pictograms, or anything but that giant glaring word burning its way through the bin and my eyelids. And more than anything I wanted to hold her, and I just, just just couldn't. I couldn't. couldn't. I couldn't.

I did it anyway. Standing up was like controlling a crane, and she felt cold, tiny, bony against my chest. I'm a weak, mean, small man, and so is Pete-he told me so. But the one thing he and I can do, and I think it's the reason we became friends, the reason we started this company, is the impossible. If there's a good enough reason to do it, we just do it. In my case that was standing up and putting out my arms, and it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, but G.o.dd.a.m.n it I had her now and I wasn't letting her go-for minutes, at any rate.

I looked at the machine over her shoulder as my wet face pressed against her warm cheek, and wondered what Pete's reason had been.

It killed him, in the end. I could never understand it, but those seven months-we didn't get the full nine, and I was almost glad of it by the end-hit Pete every bit as hard as they hit us. It was the first time that what we'd done really got to him. He loathed loathed the machines, smashed that original prototype-valued at six and a half million dollars on our insurance paperwork-with a crowbar while drunk one night. Have you ever tried hitting anything with a crowbar? They're f.u.c.king heavy. Pete's a geek, but that machine was dust when I found it. I was angry then, actually, but I hadn't realised how bad he'd gotten. the machines, smashed that original prototype-valued at six and a half million dollars on our insurance paperwork-with a crowbar while drunk one night. Have you ever tried hitting anything with a crowbar? They're f.u.c.king heavy. Pete's a geek, but that machine was dust when I found it. I was angry then, actually, but I hadn't realised how bad he'd gotten.

That was when he went back to work. He was obsessed with the idea of "fixing it", as he put it. We'd set out to tell people how long they had to live, and by virtue of the now-famous TILT chip-intended to take into account probabilistic factors relating to your lifestyle that might increase the chances of accidental death-we'd ended up spitting out a horrible piece of information that haunted the user for the rest of his and his family's life. At the time we'd thought its popularity meant it was a success, but Pete was right: we'd failed utterly, we'd created a horrible, horrible thing. He'd He'd created it. I only got into the habit of taking some of the credit after he made it clear how ashamed he was. created it. I only got into the habit of taking some of the credit after he made it clear how ashamed he was.

The TILT chip was the problem. It didn't stand for anything, by the way-Pete just named it in all caps because he was really pleased with it at the time. He was like a little kid once you got him hard-coding. It was all I could do to persuade him to leave off the exclamation mark he insisted it deserved. We both loved telling interviewers that story.

He'd spent years, literally years, working on the algorithm that would use actuarial data and hugely sophisticated conditional probabilities to get a rough idea of how likely people's stupid habits were to kill them, and when he'd finally done it, he discovered something odd. Actually, I I discovered something odd. If he's going to call it a discovery rather than an invention, then I really can take some of the credit. It was me who, through incompetence rather than the spirit of experimentation, first tried using the machine without entering any data. And instead of a ballpark life-expectancy figure, I got "48 45 41 52 54 2d 41 54 54 41 43 4b". Which, Pete reliably informed me, an extraordinary expression on his face I'd never seen before or since, translated to "HEART ATTACK". discovered something odd. If he's going to call it a discovery rather than an invention, then I really can take some of the credit. It was me who, through incompetence rather than the spirit of experimentation, first tried using the machine without entering any data. And instead of a ballpark life-expectancy figure, I got "48 45 41 52 54 2d 41 54 54 41 43 4b". Which, Pete reliably informed me, an extraordinary expression on his face I'd never seen before or since, translated to "HEART ATTACK".

The truth was, it didn't even really need the blood sample-we just kept that part in so that people would take it seriously, and to drive up the manufacturing costs to something investors would believe. For the same reason we insisted that all connectors be made of solid 24-carat gold when any old c.r.a.p from Radio Shack would have worked, and there was a whole circuit full of wildly expensive and important-looking components in there that wasn't even hooked up to the live elements of the machine.

A few technical journals had picked up on that, but no one dared try remove them. You could see where the fanatics were coming from, really: that hard nugget of inescapable truth just came down a wire, almost in our language, and not even its creator knew why. You could also see why Pete was so pleased with himself, and you could even see, years later, after millions of morbid projections proved true, why he was so wretched.

The problem, he suddenly announced once he stopped drinking, was the accuracy. He'd made it far, far too good. You didn't actually want want a machine that was always right, the machine you really wanted was one that was always wrong. Wrong because you were able to a machine that was always right, the machine you really wanted was one that was always wrong. Wrong because you were able to avoid avoid the death it predicted, the one you would otherwise have succ.u.mbed to, and live happily ever after. the death it predicted, the one you would otherwise have succ.u.mbed to, and live happily ever after.

A bad news machine that can't be defied is an inherently unmarketable idea, he told me, trying to speak my language. I decided not to get out my black AmEx card to demonstrate just how how marketable it had been. So he started work on a spec for the machine's nemesis, the cure, the Final Solution to death itself, what he called Project Idiot. marketable it had been. So he started work on a spec for the machine's nemesis, the cure, the Final Solution to death itself, what he called Project Idiot.

I would have stopped him, should have, and G.o.d d.a.m.n me for not doing it, but I was just grateful for the distraction. Something to think about other than the ways in which Cath's ever-growing bulge might rip her apart, and how it would make me feel about our daughter, if she survived.

He couldn't do it. He had a dozen brilliant ideas, but it just couldn't be done. The TILT chip defied him with the same silent, sinister smugness it defied those who tried to prove it wrong. He couldn't recreate it, he couldn't modify it, and he couldn't trick it. He discovered that it wasn't even using his actuarial data to make the predictions, it had just incorrectly surmised our purpose in entering them, and pulled the result it imagined we were after from nowhere.

My explanation was that it was quantum, the perfect catch-all for the apparently impossible. But Pete said something over and over that to this day I don't quite get: "It's a function of the future," he said, "not the past." He said it didn't matter what he did to it before it was built, because its predictions were somehow independent of anything that had already happened. I don't know, but he kept saying it.

So it was the future he tinkered with, and he was sure one of his tricks would work. He became fixated on the moment when the patient actually reads his slip: if he takes the test but never reads it, it will say something different than if he'd taken it and read it as normal. The ink doesn't change, it will always always have said something different-it was the machine's most uncanny and unsettling ability: knowing with total certainty what you will do in response to its prediction. have said something different-it was the machine's most uncanny and unsettling ability: knowing with total certainty what you will do in response to its prediction.

He talked to a loose society of machine fanatics who kept their unread predictions curled up in tiny silver pendants around their necks, to be opened and read in emergencies to find out if they're about to die. No help. Eventually he built a full prototype of a machine that would email the result to a server in Wyoming that was hooked up to a Geiger counter, and would send the result on to the patient's email address if it registered a radioactive decay within a second of receiving it, or scrub the data from its hard drives if not.

He needed a way of getting the information to the patient without the machine knowing whether it would or not, but every time he tested it it produced the same result as the existing machines. Schrodinger's Idiot, he called that one. He'd decided the physics students who owned the machine in Wyoming were going to get drunk one night and mail out everyone's results, which he was sure they were recording despite his instructions, and he'd been planning to drive out there and do I don't know what the next morning. The morning after I found him.

He was slumped over his desk. I always knew it would be me doing this. I set our coffees down and looked at the clock. Time of death, 22:25-or earlier. I'd pictured him with a soldering iron in hand when I'd played this out in my mind before, hundreds of times, but as I gently lifted his cold, curly-haired head off the bench I saw that it was papers he'd been working on. Printouts from his CAD software, scribbled on in green biro. I couldn't make them out then, but I looked later, and I liked them so much I had them framed.

I never picked up much engineering savvy from Pete, but his margin notes made it plain enough. He'd designed The Idiot, and it would have worked. It had a lookup table of the most common causes of death and it simply discarded the blood sample and picked one at random, weighted toward the most common. It would be wrong, again and again, and even when it was right, it would be avoidable. The Idiot, had he made it, would have exceeded its spec as dramatically as the original machine. I could only think of one way to make it stupider, and I knew Pete always got a kick out of my terrible ideas, so before framing it I wrote "Don't skydive" on the side.

Lisa, we called her. Oh, yeah, she was fine-we knew she would be. We took a blood sample in the second trimester and had it tested: She's going to die of emphysema, so unless she'd been b.u.mming smokes off the placenta in there, we were in the clear. She and I.

She's going to be an interesting case, actually-it's not something that happens quickly, emphysema, so I'll be intrigued to see how I fail this this woman so utterly that I end up repeatedly exposing her to a toxic gas over the course of enough years that it ultimately destroys her lungs and kills her. Am I just going to forget to tell her, for her entire life, "Oh, and don't smoke"? You have to wonder. woman so utterly that I end up repeatedly exposing her to a toxic gas over the course of enough years that it ultimately destroys her lungs and kills her. Am I just going to forget to tell her, for her entire life, "Oh, and don't smoke"? You have to wonder.

I was already overcompensating-I actually hit a guy last week for pulling out a cigarette at a housewarming party I was hosting at Pete's old place, my old office, the place where it started. He'd left it to Jen, but she'd given it to me when she left the country. She didn't ask for any money and I didn't offer any; Jen and I had a double-share each now, so it made no difference to either of us. We hardly talked, anyway. Tragedy doesn't bring people together, who started that bulls.h.i.t? It's like nitro-f.u.c.king-glycerin.

"Does anyone have a light?" he said.

"No, but I have a...lights out...sandwich?" I almost said, before realising how amazingly lame it was. I'd already hit him by then, too, so I think the point had been made. It was almost a reflex.

I've been steadily losing it for a year now. I should come up with a more peaceful solution, like "Actually I'd rather you smoked outside. In Kazahkstan." In Kazahkstan." But I don't think it's going to come up again, not now. But I don't think it's going to come up again, not now.

I was working in my old office when it happened, the crib within arm's reach. He burst into the room, crunching the door hinges and smacking the handle deep into the plaster, and nearly fell over trying to stop. For that split second, when it was just a blur, on my life life I thought it would be Pete. I thought it would be Pete.

It wasn't Pete. He was huge. A big, broken, sad face. I didn't say anything, just stared. He must have been six foot six. He stared too, wild. We stared. He said two low, fragile words, "My son," then trailed off and just pointed it at me.

The words sounded dumb even as I spluttered them: "Please, I have a-"

He dropped the gun, apparently surprised by what he'd done, though from my perspective it was hard to see how it might have been an accident. I couldn't see what was in his other hand, but I had a good guess. He presented it to me timidly, like a receipt for our transaction, and I could see then that this had not been his plan. He must have imagined shoving it in my face, or making me eat it as I died. The whole thing seemed to be surprising him a lot more than it was me. I always figured I had something like this coming.

I was paralysed, I could feel that immediately. My body felt like soft lead, heavy and heatless, as I slumped against the oak-panelled wall, heart pounding, my head bent awkwardly down into my chest as the last twinges of control and sensation faded from my clammy hands. I gurgled like a baby. Blood, I saw, sticky brilliant blood dribbling down my chin. Messy business.

I couldn't take the slip from his hand, but I could read it even through the rivers of sweat trickling into my eyes. And I could see his issue with me-with us, us, but Pete lucked out and died first. I could see how horrible the last three years must have been for this hulking man and his tiny kid, and how much worse that final moment must have been. POISON. One of the machine's bitterest pills. He probably thought it was the worst you could get. I knew better, but I wasn't in a position to argue. but Pete lucked out and died first. I could see how horrible the last three years must have been for this hulking man and his tiny kid, and how much worse that final moment must have been. POISON. One of the machine's bitterest pills. He probably thought it was the worst you could get. I knew better, but I wasn't in a position to argue.

Ah, who knew? Maybe it was. I tried to imagine watching Lisa suckle one of those cold rubber teats I filled Cath's role with, knowing that any given gulp might be infected with a fatal toxin. He must have known that checking his food beforehand wouldn't help, but I knew, now, having Lisa, that it wouldn't have stopped him. Nothing could have stopped him. He probably starved him for a while. Okay, big guy, maybe you're right. You've certainly got me beat. All I had to endure was seven months of knowing that I'd kill the woman I loved. I got off easy. I deserve deserve this. this.

It wasn't until after a few sizable seconds of self-pity that something I'd said over a year ago suddenly drifted through my head again. "When "When something something actually actually happens, happens, you you forget," forget," or words to that effect. I almost laughed. Ha! I just remembered, or words to that effect. I almost laughed. Ha! I just remembered, I don't die like this! I don't die like this! Screw you and your dead son, a.s.shole! I'm going to get up and kick your a.s.s now, and after that I'm going to raise my G.o.dd.a.m.n daughter to lead a long, happy life dying of emphysema! If you'll just give me the use of my limbs for a moment. Screw you and your dead son, a.s.shole! I'm going to get up and kick your a.s.s now, and after that I'm going to raise my G.o.dd.a.m.n daughter to lead a long, happy life dying of emphysema! If you'll just give me the use of my limbs for a moment.

I managed to cough a bubble of blood, close enough to stain him with a few flecks. Take that! that! My breath stank of, what, money? Dirty loose change, that acid stink. The only thing I could feel was the sweat trickling down my face, nothing below the neck-so much G.o.dd.a.m.n sweat. Who knew getting shot was such hard work? I was excited now, though, this was my thing. My heart raced. The impossible, you big-boned p.r.i.c.k, is my G.o.dd.a.m.n speciality. You are so f.u.c.ked. I was just about to stand up, I felt sure, when he slammed an enormous knee into my chest and kept it there, kneeling on me with what must have been all of his gigantic weight. My breath stank of, what, money? Dirty loose change, that acid stink. The only thing I could feel was the sweat trickling down my face, nothing below the neck-so much G.o.dd.a.m.n sweat. Who knew getting shot was such hard work? I was excited now, though, this was my thing. My heart raced. The impossible, you big-boned p.r.i.c.k, is my G.o.dd.a.m.n speciality. You are so f.u.c.ked. I was just about to stand up, I felt sure, when he slammed an enormous knee into my chest and kept it there, kneeling on me with what must have been all of his gigantic weight.

When I came to I saw, even as the pressure mounted, nothing on my chest. Both the man's knees were walking away from me to investigate a tiny cry from Lisa in the crib. I couldn't see his reaction, I couldn't get up, I couldn't get this invisible f.u.c.king thing off my chest, I couldn't breathe. breathe.

I had just enough time to think, "Oh come on, this hardly counts," before I let out a sad little rasp and it all closed in.

f.u.c.k.

Story by Tom Francis Ill.u.s.tration by Jesse Reklaw

NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING.

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THE FOURTH DAY OF NINTH GRADE IS WHEN YOU GET YOUR RESULTS. I mean, that's the way it happens in our town; other towns do it differently. Amy, who moved here from Atlanta, said that in the big cities they do it when you're born, since they have to take blood from babies, anyhow, to test for HIV and that disease that means you can't drink Diet c.o.ke. (She says she's going to be shot in a botched robbery, but I think she's lying. She also said her aunt is on Days of Our Lives Days of Our Lives, and I don't believe that either.) But here, in our town, all the parents got together and decided that they just couldn't take knowing before we were at least in high school. Tim K. says it's because when you're in ninth grade, your parents find you so annoying that they can actually bear to think about you dying. Allycia thinks it's because when you're our age you think you're immortal and they want to scare it out of us. That might have been true for our parents, or our grandparents, but I don't know anyone our age who hasn't always known that they're really going to die.

The way it works is pretty easy. The first day of ninth grade, in homeroom, the school nurse comes in and takes blood samples. She gives a ten-minute speech about the machine and how it works. (Short answer: n.o.body knows, but it's never been wrong.) She tells us that she's going to die in a fire. She doesn't even shiver when she tells us that-I guess when you've known for years and get up and talk about it every year, it becomes routine. And I guess as a nurse she knows that more people die from smoke inhalation in a fire than from actually being all burnt up.

It's weird to see other people's blood. Darryn and Mike, the two biggest boys in homeroom, can't even watch. I watch the needle go in, careful not to look away. I might want to be a doctor someday. It's hard to decide what you want to do with your life until you know how it's going to end.

All the blood, each sample in a little barcoded tube, goes into one of those freaky BIOHAZARD mailers, and the nurse seals it in front of us. She has a whole cart of packages. Our homeroom was last.

Then we wait. Of course it's all anyone can talk about. Helen wants to die glamorously, like in a terrorist attack. "Do you know how much money your family gets if you die in a terrorist attack?" Naturally, we all hoot at this-there haven't been hardly any terrorist attacks at all, since the machine. There are still some every once in a while, in really poor places like India and Russia, where people can't afford the test, but it's hard to scare people about terrorism if they know they're going to die because they stuck a fork in a toaster. Kells wants to die of old age, but that sounds awful and boring to me. And everyone knows that it's impossible to get a job in a rock band if you have a test that says "old age." All the record labels are looking for the next Kurt Cobain-death, even when you know it's coming, still b.u.mps up downloads and sales. You know that singer Bryson? She got "drug overdose" and you can't even click on a tabloid page without a picture of her looking wasted. Her music sucks but everyone can't wait to see how she flames out. My brother thinks it's all a big put-on. He thinks she's totally straightedge and "drug overdose" means that some overworked nurse is going to give her the wrong dose eighty years from now when she's in a nursing home. Mylena wants mad cow disease. She says if she gets that it means she'll never die, 'cause she's a vegetarian, and always has been. Her parents are vegetarians and everything.

It's hard to know what to wish for. Old age could be dying in bed, with all of your family around you, just like in a movie, with your daughter holding your hand and a room full of flowers, or it could be horrible Alzheimer's and being tied to a bed so you don't wander off, with no one there at all but you don't care because you can't remember anyone anyway. Car accident could be instant or it could be paralysis or amputation and infected bedsores that give you that staph they don't have antibiotics for anymore. Heart failure could be a dramatic heart attack, the fall-down-clutching-your-chest kind, or it could just be you get old, your heart stops. As I said, it's hard to know.

My mom and dad have the same one. Cancer. They met at a death party in college, where you got paired up with someone who was going to die the same way. They were the only two cancers at the party; by the time the machine came around most cancer was curable. Which sucks for them because they know they're going to have one of the bad kinds of cancer, like ovarian or pancreatic or brain, the really painful kinds. At least now when you get those kinds of cancer the doctors know you're going die from it, and they give you lots of painkillers. It used to be that it was hard to get painkillers, my mom told me. When her grandma died of breast cancer she was in lots of pain but the doctors wouldn't give her drugs in case she got addicted. That's because n.o.body knew she was going to die of the cancer. They thought maybe the cancer would go away and then they'd have an old lady addicted to morphine to deal with. That doesn't happen anymore.

My brother has just "accident," which freaks him out. It freaked us all out. Usually the machine is pretty specific. Car accident, household accident, whatever kind of accident. Just plain accident is pretty rare. For a while he went through what everyone goes through-the whole avoidy thing. He put grab bars in our shower. He walked to school, instead of riding the bus or his bike or driving. He was really worried that it would keep him from becoming a pilot, which is what he really wants to do, but then he talked to a recruiter and the guy said they don't really pay attention to that so much. He said so many pilots actually have "plane crash" that he knows ten guys, personally, who are nicknamed "Crash." It's like a macho thing, to get in that plane every day knowing you're going to die in a crash. Of course most of them crash flying their own personal miniplanes, not the jets.

My grandmas are both dead; one died before the machine, just had an aneurysm. The other grandma, my dad's mom...she was one of the first ones to use the machine in their town. Her ticket said suicide. My dad said she didn't tell anyone she was having the test. She just waited for all of them-my dad, his sister, his dad-to leave the house the next day, and then she took two bottles of sleeping pills. They didn't even know she had them; she got the prescription in another town and had been saving them. She didn't leave a real note. She just wrote "I'm sorry, I knew it" on her machine report and left it on the table. My grandpa-her husband-he's never taken the test. He says that it's wrong to know, and that the whole human race is going to descend into mediocrity because of it. (He talks like that a lot.) He says that the fear of death, coupled with its unpredictability, is what drives humanity to achieve. He likes to talk about how there haven't been any real scientific advances since the machine. He says everyone is too busy spending time with their families and enjoying life to do any real work. Then he laughs and lights another cigarette. He's the only person I know who smokes. It's crazy old-fashioned, like wearing a monocle or having a gas-powered car. He can't even buy them in town anymore, he has to have them imported from India. Once they shipped him the wrong brand and he had to smoke bright pink ones for a week until he got more. The pack played this loud Bollywood song whenever he opened it. That was even funnier.

My other grandpa, my mom's dad, is going to die from pneumonia. He says his goal is to put it off as long as possible. He always gets a flu shot, he drinks all this horrible green vitamin juice powder stuff, and he exercises more than anyone I know. We all tease him about it, but he says he's going to be the world's oldest pneumonia victim.

I don't really know too much about other people's tickets. Most people don't talk about it. It's hard to know what to say, when you find out someone's going to be shot, or hit by a car, or fall from a height. You either find yourself saying "that's not so bad" or you just talk about something else. It's kind of rude to ask someone that you don't know well. And since it's so vague, sometimes it's hard to know what to do. I heard that there was this girl in Charlotte, one of the first people to get the test, and her ticket said she'd die at graduation. So she wore black all through high school, really gothed-out. She was like, queen of the goths. And her graduation came and went, and nothing happened. College, too. She went to law school: nothing. I heard she finally died driving across a totally different campus and the crane that was putting up the graduation reception tent backed into her car. I know this is probably an urban legend but I don't want to snope it and find out.

Some people you do know how they'll die. Like, if they're famous. Famous people's tickets always get out. Someone they told will tell the tabloid pages-I've heard they pay a lot of money for famous tickets. Politicians have to disclose it. One guy who was running for governor in Tennessee faked his-his really said "shot by a hooker" and he got it to read "stroke." Of course someone sold that story. Now the politicians have to have their tests taken in public and read right there. That one movie actress, the really pretty one, what's her name-her ticket actually says "broken heart." I've never heard of anyone else having that one. Of course people didn't believe her so she went on TV and had the test retaken, and there it was. She is always being paired with her costars in the tabloids, like, she'll be in a movie with some guy and the headline will read "WILL HE BE THE ONE TO KILL HER???" She just laughs it off, but I'd be afraid. You can't help falling in love, right? It's not like you can have a grab bar for going on dates.

The day you get your results back there aren't any cla.s.ses; you just show up for homeroom. They call you in one by one to another room to get your ticket, and then you just go home. Lots of people's parents take the day off. If they're really dorky they meet you at school. You can't really hang around after, although everyone's texting each other on their phones. Not asking, outright, just "U OK?" Lots of people don't talk about theirs, and that's cool. The teachers discourage it, for the most part, and sometimes your parents get mad if you tell somebody. There was this girl, Julia, in my brother's cla.s.s and hers said AIDS. She told just one person, her best friend, and then they had a fight and that girl spread it all over school. They wrote "s.l.u.t" on her locker and stuffed it full of condoms. It was awful. Her folks didn't know what to do. Finally they just moved. I think they live in Asheville now. Maybe she even changed her name.

When they called me I felt a little nervous. Like, everyone knows they're going to die, but it's still a wobbly feeling to find out exactly how. My knees felt like they wanted to bend the wrong way, and I almost tripped getting out of my chair. I grabbed my bag and waved to Kells. She mouthed "old age!" at me and gave me a thumbs-up. I smiled back.

I went into the room and sat down, and the counselor made me go through the whole routine. I had to tell him my social, twice. I had to do the iris-scanner, both eyes. I had to show him the waiver from my parents that allowed him to tell me without them present, and I had to sign a form allowing him to tell me, period, and releasing the test people from liability. Then I had to do the breathalyzer; a couple of years ago kids would show up wasted or high for their tests, so now you can't get the results unless you're sober.

Finally he brought out my ticket. It wasn't in an envelope or anything, it was just the top one in his folder. The folder was black, which I thought was kind of weird. Like, why make the folder black? He was dressed in just regular clothes, tan pants and a blue shirt, no tie or anything, so the black folder just seemed kinda pretentious.

"You have a slightly unusual result," he said. That wasn't good. Unusual meant stuff like mauled by a bear, or electric-mixer accident, or choked on a pickle. Stupid stuff. Not dramatic or cool.

"Let me see." I really didn't want to wait. He pushed the ticket over to me.

In block letters, it said NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING.

The man said, "It's a line from a poem." He held his pen like he didn't know what it was for.

"But it still means I'm drowning, right? It's not so bad."

"We'd like you to have the test retaken. It's unusual to get something like this. Something so...allusive."

I looked at him. He hadn't done a good job shaving that morning; it looked like he used a real razor and not a depilatory laser. Maybe his ticket said he'd be killed by a laser?

"I don't know. I like this one. What if it changed to something worse?"

"That doesn't really happen. They don't change. Sometimes they get more specific-we think yours would get more specific."

"I think I'm good with vague, thanks. Vague and poetic is okay with me."

"Are you sure? You could retake now..." I noticed that he had a test kit, too, next to his chair.

"Nah. I'm okay." I put my ticket in my bag, careful not to fold it. Some people framed theirs, and kept it somewhere safe, especially if it was a cool one, like "saving a child." Mine was totally frameable.

"If you change your mind, here's a number to call." He beamed a number to my phone from his pen. "And we'd like your permission to keep a tracer on you, so that our department will be alerted when you die."

Wow-I was important enough to have a tracer? That was also cool. I couldn't decide if I'd tell anyone about the ticket, but I could definitely tell people I had a tracer.

"Sure, okay." He pushed another form to me.

"We have to let you think about this one for twenty-four hours, and your parents have to sign it, too. I have to disclose to you that tracer information is subpoenable, which means that if you are accused of a crime the data from the tracer can be used by the prosecution and the defense. It cannot be requested for civil matters in this state, but it can in New York, California, New Mexico, and Mississippi. You can drop off the form in homeroom tomorrow, or you can ping us if you sign it earlier and someone will come by to get it from you and your parents."