Last time on Match.com, Cassia obsesses about the other boy and talks to her grandfather.

Anyway, time for the guy to die, which means we’ll have to wait for next week to find out what Sundays usually involve. I’m seriously curious if it’s a day of rest or not.

People used to wake up and wonder, “Will today be the end?” or lie down to sleep, not knowing if they would come back out of the dark. Now, we know which day will be the end of the light and which night will be the long, last one.

There is something to be said for this. Not enough to justify killing perfectly healthy people, though.

All the studies show that the best age to die is eighty. It’s long enough that we can have a complete life experience, but not so long that we feel useless. That’s one of the worst feelings the elderly can have. In societies before ours, they could get terrible diseases, like depression, because they didn’t feel needed anymore. And there is a limit to what the Society can do, too. We can’t hold off all the indignities of aging much past eighty. Matching for healthy genes can only take us so far.

Elderly people are still capable of doing work and not being useless, but given how their society seems to function, I can see that just not occurring to people as it often doesn’t seem to occur to people in ours.

Also apparently depression doesn’t exist any more? I really don’t think that makes sense. A society that had actually conquered depression would need a far more nuanced view of the human brain than that old people get depressed because they feel useless.

And no, Cassia, matching for healthy genes can and does take you past eighty – well, that and mothers with the right mitochondria, that’s a factor too. The maximum human lifespan is presumably a bit under a hundred and thirty years. There’s no reason people can’t be living to at least a hundred in relative health.

We know their medical capabilities have been improving by the fact her grandmother’s death by cancer is apparently something at no longer happens. And several generations of selective breeding for health should increase how long people stay healthy as well. That means that even if this was true at one point, the best age to die at should be shifting. (Also, it’s really unlikely the actual best age would be a multiple of ten. These are science cultists, they would jump on the chance to analyze the data and find precisely when the best age is.)

If they’re concerned about quality of life, they should just monitor that and then kill people when the doctors think it’s time. If they’re killing people at one set time, that needs some other motivation, like deciding lifespan should be fair by giving everyone the same amount, or because they really need the resources elderly people are sucking up.

She says it’s so much better than it used to be.

You could die alone. No one should die alone.

A good point in favor of her culture’s way of doing it. It’s a shame that they’re so obviously crazy.

Most people don’t know their grandparents this well. The kind of relationship I have with my other grandparents in the Farmlands is much more common. We communicate via port every few months and visit every few years. Many grandchildren watch the Final Banquet on the portscreens, too, one step removed from what’s happening.

Huh, so she does have a second set of grandparents, she just doesn’t seem to have any way of referring to them.

It seems odd to me that the grandchildren don’t get to know their grandparents. I mean, it is a way of lessening the upset from killing them, but it doesn’t seem particularly communal.

But come to think of it, this isn’t actually a communal society. It looked like one, but they actually seem quite isolated. Families live together but don’t seem to do much together – so far, we’ve seen her coming home from work to find the rest of her family already ate supper and dispersed. In her first flashback, she and Xander are alone, and in her second flashback, her grandfather seems to be the only family member there and to have not seen her at a pool in some time, if ever. She didn’t think to go to any family members to tell them what happened with the card – only after she’s reassured it’s fine does she even tell her grandfather. And no one’s allowed into another person’s home, so you’re not getting much sense of community from anyone else.

They all brought gifts. Her brother brought a rock from her mom’s work, as near to the hill as he could get..

It is round and brown and still a bit dirty. It looks a little like an egg, and when he brought it back yesterday, he told me that he’d found it under a tree in a pile of soft green pine needles that looked like a nest.

You will rarely find piles of green pine needles. Red squirrels will bite them off, so you might find a bunch in that case, but there’s no real sign animals exist. What you usually find under pine trees are brown pine needles, which are also generally the ones that deserve to be called “soft”.

I’ve made Grandfather a letter for my gift. I got up early this morning and spent time cutting and pasting and copying sentiments on the lettermaking program on the port.

I would really like to see what this actually looks like. I’m picturing some unholy mashup of Hallmark card phrases.

She also includes a poem that’s from the decade in which he was born so I guess there’s a couple bits of modern poetry included. She tells us her grandfather’s unusual for liking poetry, because most people only read it in their school years. No, book. The reason modern people don’t read classic poetry has more to do with the fact they have other things to do. These people have nothing to do. They would have memorized them all.

One of the doors along the hall opens and an old woman peeks her head out. “You’re going to the Banquet for Mr. Reyes?” she asks, and she doesn’t even wait for us to answer. “It’s private, isn’t it?”
“It is,” my father says, stopping politely to speak with her, even though I know he is eager to see his father. He can’t keep himself from glancing down the hall at Grandfather’s closed door.
The woman grumbles a little. “I wish it were public. I’d like to go so I can get ideas. Mine’s in less than two months. You can bet it’s going to be public.” She laughs a little, a short, harsh sound, and then she asks, “Can you come and tell me about it afterward?”

Keeping up with the Joneses means keeping up with their funerals too!

Cassia’s mom answers politely and herds her dad away before he says anything mean. Then her brother grumbles about how rude it is to talk about her day on their grandfather’s day instead of waiting her turn.

Grandfather is not sitting at the window anymore. Today, he rests in a bed in the living room as his body shuts down. Right on time.

…uh, that sounds more like they poisoned him, so of course it’d be on the right timetable.

He says you can always see the sky from a window.

And what’s beyond that, I wonder?

I’m not sure if this means in general or if despite being science cultists they don’t know about outer space any longer.

And after this?”

Nothing. You’re imagination-hating atheists. You end.

Bram and I exchange glances. Grandfather must be wandering a little today, which is to be expected. On the day the elderly turn eighty, the decline always accelerates. Not everyone dies at exactly the same time, but it is always before midnight.

Okay, look. A minute ago you were explaining society decided that they should die at eighty. Now you’re talking about it like you think the reason they die at eighty is people just happen to fall apart that day because their bodies give up. Either one is fine, but you can’t believe both at once.

Then some officials from the Committee, capital letter presumably courtesy of the Committee for Capitalizaing Everything Related To Government In Any Way Because Why The Hell Not, to deliver his deathday perks. Nice clothes, pictures of his life, and something to preserve his tissues. I guess that’s what they mean by preservation privileges. Are they just freezing corpses and piling them up in the basement?

The box containing the microcard is like the silver one we receive when we are Matched, except for the color: gold. The microcard inside has pictures of Grandfather as a small boy, a teenager, a man. He hasn’t seen some of these images in years, and I imagine that he is excited to view them today.

So from this, apparently you’re not even allowed to keep pictures normally. Why the hell not, imagination-hating science cult atheists? What point does this serve? You’re not even saving storage space because you had to keep them this whole time, why not let people log in from their computers and see them?

Apparently the microcard will be passed on to one other person, so if you have more than one kid, only one can have it. And presumably there should be a microcard for the grandmother and that should have been given to the dad because he’s the only kid, but there’s been no mention of it. This all doesn’t seem to be thought through.

She holds out the device for the tissue collection, which, as a final courtesy to the elderly, the Society allows to take place privately, among family.

That makes no sense. All it is is swabbing his cheek. Why should it be private? Just do it and leave.

They make a big deal about him getting to be preserved, because apparently it’s not standard. (Although actually, they could just say that to everyone to make them feel better about themselves.)

Cassia’s dad is assigned the duty of delivering the DNA.

You need to bring the sample to the Biological Preservation Department within twenty-four hours of collection. Otherwise we cannot guarantee that preservation will be effective.”

Why would this come up? If it’s on such a tight time limit, just take it already. Or if you must do this whole song and dance, just have him deliver it on the way out.

I’m glad that Grandfather has qualified to have a tissue sample frozen. Now, for him, death may not necessarily be the end. Someday, the Society might figure out a way to bring us back. They don’t promise anything, but I think we all know that it will happen eventually. When has the Society ever
failed in reaching a goal?

What the hell is wrong with you, Cassia? You’re all science cultists and you don’t even know a clone isn’t the same person? I’m not expecting much out of science cultists, but the difference between clone and reviving the dead isn’t that hard!

I don’t know why the author didn’t just go with freezing people.

Anyway, either because he knows this is inherently stupid or because he doesn’t share his granddaughter’s opinions about how the society always manages its goals, he doesn’t treat it particularly seriously and just does it and moves on.

“Everything’s going very well,” Grandfather says, handing the tube to my father. “I am having a perfect death so far.”
My father winces, an expression of pain crossing his face. I know he, like me, would prefer that Grandfather not use that word, but neither of us would think of correcting Grandfather today. The pain on my father’s face makes him look younger, almost like a child for a moment.

So then. It’s not just Cassia who’s creeped out by this. Likely a lot of people are and try to pretend otherwise – possibly even her grandfather is less okay with it than he seems. He does seem to be acting quite irreverent.

“What did you choose?” Bram asks, eager. The selections for Grandfather and his guests are the same, but it is an actual law that we must eat the food from the trays and he must eat the food on his plate. We’re not allowed to share.

While that’s weird enough to be worth a comment, it’s not at all connected to what Bram just said.

The book’s writing overall is very solidly passable, often looking like it’d be improved by another round of editing but without anything particularly bad.

Bram gives him the rock, but her father wants to give his gift later, and she decides she feels the same.

Then people bring pie.

I serve everyone else first and then I pick up my piece of pie, flaky and warm and fruitfilled, and lift a forkful of the pastry to my mouth.
I wonder if death will always taste this good.

Aside from this being creepy, I like that she passes it out to everyone. It’s all these minor things that make her seem like such a nice person. Although there doesn’t seem to be much sense of a community in her world, on an individual level she’s helpful and thinks of others rather than ignoring it or being grudging about things.

Although the pie is delicious, her father doesn’t touch his.

A little drop of it falls to the floor when he stands up to say good-bye to Grandfather’s guests after the viewing of the microcard. “Thank you for coming,” Papa says, and my mother bends down behind him to dab up the drop with her napkin. Someone else will move in after Grandfather leaves, and they won’t want to see the signs of another person’s Banquet. But that’s not why my mother did it, I realize. She wanted to spare my father any worry, any tiny bit at all.

And Cassia isn’t the only one who seems like a nice person in these sort of ways. Her father is concerned about his father’s imminent death. Her mother is concerned for her father. There isn’t a big announcement about any of that, it’s expressed through how they’re acting, and that isn’t taken, as it so often is in fiction, as license for dickery.

I’ve heard that some of the elderly have surprised everyone at the end, by choosing not to die with dignity. They cry and get upset and go crazy. All it does is make their families sad. There is nothing they can do about it. It’s the way things are.

She hasn’t clarified yet if she knows they’re being killed or just thinks it naturally happens like this, and I wish it would, because which it is really changes which way that last line reads. There’s an enormous difference between there not being anything that can be done about it and there not being any way to change the minds of the people who are doing it.

Cassia’s mother’s gift is a tree leaf from his favorite tree.

She picked it yesterday, so the edges have curled and become brown, but there is still green in the middle

There’s something so quietly depressing about this. They don’t even know to put a plant in a glass of water. They’re just so cut off from everything, they don’t know how to do anything but what they’re supposed to.

Apparently, he’d asked if he could spend his last day outside but Of course, his request was denied. Can’t tell if this is society dickery or just that they really hate variety in anything.

When she gives him her letter, he says it’s very nice

“But none of these words are your own, Cassia,” Grandfather says gently.
Tears sting my eyes and I look down at my hands. My hands that, like almost everyone else in our Society, cannot write, that merely know how to use the words of others.

Uh. How does that work?

They must be able to write just so they can type things into their computers. And even if they’re not taught or encouraged to write essays, she knows how to talk, so she’d be able to at least just copy down what she’s thinking of saying.

He tries to encourage her to use her own words, which makes it sound like she’s exaggerating quite a bit by saying she “cannot” do it. For a society that supposedly cares so much about policing language they sure don’t care about precision.

And then I think of something else. Since that day on the air train, I’ve kept the cottonwood seed in the pocket of my plainclothes. I pull it out now and give it to him.

…so I guess they don’t wash their clothes daily? That’s possibly the first departure we’ve had from this being populated by upper middle class Americans.

Or she might just means she moved it between pockets for no reason. I think it’s just contrivance, really.

It’s trailing clouds of glory.”
Now I wonder if Grandfather is starting to slip away already. I don’t know what he means.

This is the second time she’s assumed he’s going nuts because she doesn’t understand what he means, and like before, it doesn’t occur to her to ask for him to explain. Presumably the whole standardized language thing means that they’re all using the same words and phrases to communicate, so in her experience, you always understand other people.

He asks to see the compact, and reveals that there’s a secret compartment with paper hidden inside. Very old paper, she realizes, because it’s thicker than their paper now and with a font no one uses. And he reads it, then gives it back to her.

This is for you. It’s even more precious than the compact.”
“But it’s so—” I stop before I can say the word dangerous.

But she takes it back and replaces the paper before her parents come back.

He says he knows she doesn’t understand, but she will eventually.

And, remember. It’s all right to wonder.”

Then the rest of her family returns and they wait out the night.

It is an hour before midnight in a deep blue night when Grandfather looks at us and says the best words of all with which to end a life. “I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
We all say it back to him. Each of us means it and he smiles. He leans back on his pillows and closes his eyes.
Everything inside him has worked perfectly. He has lived a good life. It ends as it is supposed to end, at exactly the right time. I am holding his hand when he dies.

…

I think right now my only real problem with the book is how obvious it’s being about the fact their society is evil. Although Cassia is a complete believer in it, she’s portrayed as nervous and scared when it intrudes into her life, she only rarely gives explanations for why things are how they are and then gives too many explanations when she does, and on an underlying level there’s just no sense we’re supposed to be considering any possible merits here.

Why was her grandfather killed here? One reason was because he’d get bored and another was because he’d get sick. They aren’t the same thing so there’s no reason the time for them would match up perfectly, so how can both be the reason for his death right at this point? And we know that people can live past eighty and still have years of relative health ahead of them, so we know the latter bit at least is an outright lie.

The book is strongest at points like this where you see her promoting why her society’s way of doing things is best, but you can’t actually consider them when it’s so badly undermined by everything else going on. It’s not really presenting us with much to think about.