The Postmortal

John and Ernie arrive at a car graveyard, where people live in abandoned cars because they have no other options. Some car graveyards are huge communities, and others are riddled with crime. This one is mostly cheerful drunkenness. They meet Chuck, who cites boredom and a feeling of entrapment as his reasons for wanting death. Chuck wants to be shot out of a cannon, having obtained one from an old circus. John and Ernie call Matt for a consultation, who approves the choice if Chuck has the money to cover additional fees. They plant a charge in the bottom of a cannon, and Chuck is killed in the explosion.

John reflects on his past thoughts of suicide as he goes through his first week of end specialization work. While most of his clients are ill or have a disability, some of them experience various fatigues with life and choose death over their struggles. John reads posts online debating the ethics of end specialization, which are intensely divided.

John reads a news interview about Randall Baines, a man wanted by the FBI for being a domestic terrorist. Randall never got the cure and is dying of cancer. He speaks disparagingly of those who have gotten the cure and emphasizes that his goal has been to help humanity, seeing the bombings he has orchestrated as means to an end. He views the cure as a war, listing different global tragedies as proof that he is right.

John and Ernie travel to an idyllic neighborhood in Maryland, leading John to reflect on the life he could have had without the cure. They arrive at a compound, and John realizes that they are there to kill one of the richest men in the United States, a famous rockstar who has built a brand around his reputation. They are buzzed in by men with guns, representatives of the Church of the Black Man. John and Ernie follow their directions and enter the luxurious house, guided to a recording studio where Edgar “The Swift” DuChamp is speaking with sound engineers. John wins his approval by assessing his music.

Edgar bemoans the difficulty of writing music and the need for external validation before taking the men to a superhero-themed art gallery, all paintings he has done himself. They begin the exit interview. Edgar wants death to become a legend, believing his albums will not matter unless he is dead. He asks to be assassinated and claims Matt approved it, which Matt later verifies via phone call.

That night, John and Ernie wait outside Edgar’s bedroom with a sniper rifle. They debate what to do until Ernie realizes that the man in the bed is not Edgar. They shoot into a bush and flee the scene, returning to Matt with Edgar’s money. Matt compliments John on successfully determining that something was wrong at the scene, but John is filled with a sense of foreboding.

John has grown distanced from his son, as his traveling has placed a physical and emotional barrier between them. David has become a devout member of the Church of Man in John’s absence. Sonia reaches out, hoping the two will talk. John travels to Manhattan, excited about the meet-up, but he no longer feels comfortable in New York. He arrives at Sonia’s apartment and finds that she’s pregnant. Pregnancy now comes with significant stress because pregnant women are regarded as contributing to the population crisis. John comforts her. Sonia has agreed to baptize the baby in the Church of Man, which she and Nate attend, but they are less devout than David.

David arrives, and John is struck by how much they look alike. David and John go to a bar to share a drink, where they are on edge. David talks about the church teachings that have helped him find a sense of belonging in John’s absence. David makes a convincing argument and invites John to the church, but John’s past experiences with religion make him wary. David departs after promising to accept John when he decides to try the church, and John prepares to leave for Virginia.

John has a nightmare about Alison, which happens frequently. In his waking hours, he wonders what their relationship would have been like if she had survived. He acknowledges that her death made it so he will love her forever.

John and Ernie get stuck in an exit interview with an older man who provides extensive details on his many surgeries. Despite their best efforts to never be with patients after dark for their own safety, they are stuck with him until nine o’clock. Ernie hears a woman screaming outside and realizes that a riot is about to break out. He and John flee, alerting the rest of the apartment building of impending violence. Ernie arms John with a shotgun. With a small group of tenants, Ernie and John fight their way through the starving, sometimes cannibalistic mob, with John nearly getting killed and eaten in the process. John rescues a boy from being eaten alive, taking him to the parking garage where Ernie and John have parked their vehicle. A helicopter arrives to break up the mob. They take the boy to a hospital, and afterward, John grapples with his trauma.

After a sleepless night, John keeps his promise to David about attending a church service. He drives into the nearest Church of Man compound and gets into an elevator with the Reverend Carl Derron, who introduces himself and welcomes John. The main chapel room is a giant study filled with books and historical depictions. Reverend Derron begins a sermon by discussing the high prices of airline tickets and the recent deaths of two men who were testing a battery-powered airplane prototype. He uses these stories to highlight the power of ambition, a testament to human capability and evidence that humans are divine. A heckler interrupts his speech, threatening violence, and the crowd panics. John flees, texts David about the event, and does not promise to try again.

John reads a news article about Russian soldiers who defected after they were sent to towns to pillage resources, including forcing the towns’ men into labor on farms. The soldier being interviewed, Dmitrov, describes the things he was forced to do and his trauma. After serving for years, Dmitrov noticed that fewer and fewer resources were reaching the soldiers. One day, he saw a little girl and was overwhelmed thinking of what her future would be like if he did his duty. He and his men decided to defect, and they spent a year gathering resources before they were sent to Romania, where they disappeared into the woods. While Dmitrov is confident that they are safe from being pursued, political experts believe that the dictator of Russia will send people after them.

On John’s cure day—what birthdays are now called—John and Ernie are dispatched to provide end-of-life services to a glampire, someone who poses as a vampire. John tells Ernie a story about a friend of his who was harmed by glampires, but Ernie comforts him and ensures he is safe. Inside, they find the house filled with exaggerated decorations but devoid of people. They enter a room containing Styrofoam sarcophagi. The first three are empty except for speakers that play the sounds of breathing. Ernie opens a fourth coffin and is attacked by a Greenie waiting inside, who stabs him in the leg and screams. A dozen flood into the room, tackling both men. One threatens to cut off John’s limbs before drugging them.

John dreams of the woman from the elevator. When he comes back to consciousness, he is unharmed, and Ernie is being tended to. There are five men in the room. One introduces himself as Reverend Steve Swanson before questioning John. The church wants to reform end specialization but has also been eyeing the Greenies living in the home for some time. He reveals that David asked the church to intercede, saving John’s life. The reverend tells John that the Greenies will be given a chance to convert and see the error of their ways. The reverend and John debate his job, and the reverend demands that he stop killing people.

John tells Matt about running into the collectivists, the term used to describe Church of Man congregants. Matt is dismissive of John’s descriptions but apologizes for sending them into a bad situation. Matt gives John a week off and tells him that soon, their company will be doing “hard” end specialization. When John asks Ernie if he plans on continuing to work in end specialization, Ernie says yes, believing he has found his path in life.

John calls David to tell him about the events at the glampire house. David assures him that Reverend Swanson’s threats were empty; although John is not yet amicable toward the church, David worries about his well-being. David asks John to tell him about the last job he did before the attack, and John shares the story of an older man who recently lost his wife and was ready to move on. The man chose death by drowning, asking Ernie to tie him to cinderblocks so he could watch the sunset on the water. John saw pure calm and peace in the man’s eyes before the man died, and David encourages him to try finding that serenity in the church.

John reads a news interview with Steven Otto, the child of the man who found the cure for aging. Now a scientist in his own right, Steven has created a nanorobotic vaccine capable of curing all diseases and viruses. Steven still believes that his father’s discovery is the most important in history but admits that there have been downsides to curing aging. He also discusses his own internal, moral struggle over pursuing a cure for disease, knowing that there are ramifications to such an invention. However, his knowledge that he is not the only scientist in the world and that progress is inevitable made him devote himself to his discovery. He hopes to have the nanorobotic vaccine ready by 2070.

Three large, nuclear explosions go off in China that were seemingly sent from inside the country. There is mass confusion and unrest.

John cannot sleep following the Greenies attack and the explosions in China, so he gets drunk before hiring a sex worker named Julia. When she arrives, he realizes that she was a part of Beautiful Town, an island where young, beautiful, cured 18-year-olds were given free rein to party and model. When she was discovered to be infertile, she was kicked off the island; the owner of the operation was secretly experimenting with human breeding. The two commiserate about their ages: John feels like his 29-year-old body is a husk hiding a man, while Julia’s young cure age makes people either disregard her or behave inappropriately toward her.

When John reveals he is an end specialist consultant, Julia expresses her desire to die. John calls Matt, who gets him approved to administer the killing shot but warns him about how it feels to end a life. Julia convinces him to have sex with her and inject her while she climaxes. Despite his hesitation, he agrees. After he injects her, he has a heart attack.

Scott, John’s roommate, enters John’s room to find Julia dead and John in excruciating pain. Scott gets them both into his car and drives to the hospital, where there are long lines of people waiting to be seen. John waits in line for hours and calls David to say goodbye. A collectivist named Ken arrives, sends Scott home, and watches over John. When he is finally sent to the Postmortem Unit, Polly arrives, and John faints. When he awakes, Polly and the collectivist are watching the news about the Chinese explosions.

John gets a pamphlet for a drug to help treat crowd-based anxiety, leading his sister and him to have a conversation about mental health. Polly’s new child and husband are doing well, and she occasionally sees Mark with his new family, interactions that lead her to spiral thinking about reincarnation. John is finally called by a nurse. The overworked hospital staff is somewhat dismissive of him, focusing on one patient who is coughing up copper-colored fluid. A doctor finally sees John, confirming that his arteries are clogged, and he has suffered a small heart attack. Insurance will not cover the cost of surgery; John is prescribed pills to help with his symptoms until he can get the money to pay for the surgery himself. His frustration with the hospital system leads him to reflect on Julia’s death and how happy she had been in her final moments.

John calls Matt and explains his heart attack. He then tells Matt to pay for his heart surgery before saying he wants to stop being just a consultant, expressing interest in becoming an official end specialist.

John reads a news article about a mysterious illness outbreak that has killed 35 people. The first outbreak occurred at the hospital he visited.

John reads news articles about the Chinese explosion and several other morose topics before Ken knocks on his door. Ken shares that a bomb went off in a Church of Man, killing David, Nate, and Sonia. John lashes out at Ken, blaming the religion and its lack of “justice” for the deaths. Ken leaves at John’s insistence, and John drinks heavily. He gets a call from Matt that their end specialization agency has been approved to perform hard ends. He sends John the information about the first person they are trying to locate: a woman named Solara Beck. She is the blonde woman John saw in the elevator at the doctor’s apartment building. John gets his gun and leaves to pursue her.