One day, death became a choice. Nobody who didn't want to had to die. Thanks to a cheap and painless nanobot supplement and telomere revivification operation, aging could be controlled completely. Cancer could be eradicated in hours. Men and women, deep into old age, were in a short number of years returned to their youthful beauty. Children aged to maturity and then stopped. Some chose to stop at twenty-five, at peak physical fitness. Others let themselves go to thirty, forty, and even fifty. Youth came in and out of fashion. At first, nearly everyone rushed back to their twenties and thirties, but over time that trend faded out, and for a time grey made a comeback. Erasing the inevitability of death was a huge step for humanity. It became impossible to tell a person's age by their appearance. People had to rethink the course of their lives. Priorities shifted. Society evolved.

   But none of the dystopian prophecies came true. In the early days of immortality, many soothsayers warned of the collapse of civilization. They spoke of overcrowding and Malthusian traps and divine wrath, yet year after year ticked by without catastrophe. Eventually, the uproar quieted down to a whisper, retreating to Luddite communities on the fringes of society who chose to die in an age where death was unnatural. Of course, they weren't the only ones to choose death. For whatever reason, some people always chose to die.

   Min sat on the floor with his legs crossed, clutching a necklace in his hand. He pressed the cold silver to his lips and sighed deeply. Today was the day he would do it. Today he would choose to die.

   He was only forty-three, barely old enough to remember the time before death was a choice. But he could remember it, and he remembered it well. The cure reached the public when he was seventeen. When Min was sixteen, he watched his best friend die. He held her hand as the cancer swallowed up her kidneys and her liver and eventually her lungs. He felt her final breath on his cheek, one month before the cure was released.

   Haunted by the shadow of death, Min saw no sense in living. He figured himself only a benefactor of entropy, not postponing the inevitable but quickening its victory over all things. He saw only arrogance in the billions around him. Wantonly consuming precious energy in a vain attempt to justify their own prolonged existence, they produced only waste and destruction. He could not be happy, not like that.

   Min withdrew the antidote from his pocket and placed it on his tongue. He promptly died, and his body was converted to fertilizer for the rice paddies in the mountains.