Every pension is a gamble. It is a bet not just against the house, but against death herself. I will live beyond retirement, the wager states, as its stake is paid into a fund. I will beat my life expectancy. I will win this money back. If they lose their game with death, their employer takes the prize. If they live longer, defying the odds, the jackpot is theirs to keep.
Gambling had been banned by the Concord. Uncertainty bred unfairness, after all: some retired and died without recouping the bulk of their investment , whereas others lived for longer than they could afford, having provisioned for a shorter life.
Some even died at work, enjoying neither the pension nor the free time of retirement. They sold their life to the job in exchange for a wage, only to trade their earnings immediately back; the promise of a comfortable retirement, at the expense of a comfortable life. Many ended up with neither, not receiving that postponed remuneration they had worked so hard to earn.
The Concord saw a better way. The Concord saw everything: some said that they had labs in which they told the future, or divined the fates of diverging parallel realms. Their RNS certainly foretold death with the clinical efficiency of a government body: each soon-to-be-deceased received their Letter of Notification, without delay, on the first day of their final calendar year.
There could be no appeals, not pleas for extra time. When the Letter came, the recipient knew that they had seen in their last new year. They would pass away at some point in the next twelve months, although the exact date and the means were never specified. The Retirement Notification Service were never explicit, but they were also never wrong.
The January warnings allowed those short of time to manage their affairs: they left their jobs, said their farewells, organised their wills, and enjoyed their final holiday with what money they had saved. There were no pensions or similar funds and, besides the amounts they handed down, none saved more money than they intended to spend within that final year.
The economy prospered. With no uncertainty, there was no need for people to be cautious; saving more than they would need, to avoid finding that they'd saved too little. Each individual could put away exactly the right amount for their retirement year, and enjoy the remainder through their working life. With higher disposable incomes, and a lower propensity to save, GDP had never been higher.
Instead of retiring early, people worked into old age. This longer scope meant that they could afford to spread their working life more thinly: they worked for longer, but for shorter hours. This part-time revolution increased the number of jobs, and the quality of life of those who held them. Instead of years of work before years of retirement, that respite could be spread throughout.
The system worked. Unfortunately, the system worked too well. All recipients of a Letter died in the next twelve months, but it was that knowledge of impending death which killed them.
Most of the early fatalities died at their own hands. Others were victims of stress, with its many medical manifestations. Others died from the risks they started to take, knowing that they were close to death anyway, or of their overindulgence, which began for the same reason. Nobody could live in fear of death, and some would rather die than face it.
Some tried to fight the system. One January, a man did not accept his Letter with the usual good grace. Upon finding it in his in-tray, he turned and lay into his colleagues, stabbing one in the neck with a pen. It was not a mere act of rage, although that counted towards his willingness to strike: this was an experiment.
The man wanted to prove that the RNS made mistakes. In killing his colleague whilst she worked, he wished to show that the Letters did not always precede death, that the Concord's predictions were fallible.
When they had dragged him away, he thought that he'd succeeded. The whole place was in shock: deaths simply did not happen before retirement. Then they found the Letter in his tray, addressed to his dead colleague.The RNS did not make mistakes. Their company's receptionist had.
Another woman, tired of entering each new year in dread, decided to retire prematurely. She jumped from her window, intending to take her life and escape the endless wait for notification. If successful, she would have also proved the RNS wrong. Instead, she had misjudged the fall. Instead of killing her, it put her in a coma, with little over a year to live. Her doctors received the Letter as the second year began.
Two attempts to disprove RNS. Two deaths, duly notified. Both caused, in a way, by the threat of notification itself.
Newton had a better plan. He would attack the RNS directly, destroying their centre of operations. It was the perfect plot: if any workers would be killed in the blast, they would have already been sent home for their retirement. It was a paradox.
The service needed workers, and they filed into the building every day. If there were casualties from his bomb, that disproved the system: their deaths would have been predicted, they would have been notified, and they would not have come to work. If there were none, that disproved it just the same: if all had been sent home, after warning of their eminent fiery death, none would then actually die. The notification would be false.
If nothing else, the system would be destroyed. Newton knew that on paper the country had improved, but he could not accept the cost. It seemed better to have more warning, logically, but the January Letters inspired so much dread. Death had been more unexpected, but none had lived in fear of it. Everybody feared the coming of the new year. The RNS was unnatural, its Letters cold and inhumane. For all of the logical benefits, Newton would be happy to see it die.
He was surprised to find the building empty. There were no staff members writing Letters or predicting deaths. Newton wondered if they'd all been sent away, retiring in anticipation of a bomb death their retirement would prevent. He smiled at the paradox, and continued past the abandoned desks and darkened screens.
With no guards or staff to evade or kill, he simply needed to find the perfect place to plant his bomb. Newton searched for a power supply, a generator which might explode for maximum destruction: a door at the end of the hall, marked Do Not Enter, looked to be a promising start.
He proceeded through, but he was not prepared for what he'd find. There was no generator, no electronics. Instead, the centre of the room was occupied by a colossal vat, its contents pulsating and writhing as Newton approached. The vat was filled with brain. That is what it looked like, at least. Human brain.
Nobody had known how the RNS functioned. The Concord had simply announced it one day, met with disbelief, and it had worked. How could they predict deaths? Was it some connection with the living, noting when their numbers dropped, or with the dead? It turned out that the RNS was alive itself. It could feed into the national consciousness, and recognise the signs of each soul soon to disappear.
Newton was repulsed. He unslung his pack from his shoulders, pulling out the homemade bomb, and set it down beside the VAT. This device was more sinister than he could have imagined. With no human casualties to stain his success with guilt, he would be glad to see it burn and die.
He set the timer and walked away. Newton took a different route out, heading for a side door, and checking that the building was empty along the way. He found no employees, but he did spot a crumpled piece of paper on the floor. It looked well-read, and lay as if it had been dropped in a hurry. He stopped to read it.
"Dear RNS," the Letter read, and then the bomb went off.
