It was 2077, and Leo worked as a trainee sorting mental health files in the city archive.
No one believed in superstition or fortune-telling anymore. Technology could predict every person’s entire life. Advanced AI calculated everyone’s lifespan, health problems, and major life events the moment they were born. Every life was planned out in advance, leaving nothing to chance.
Even so, people never felt calm. After reading thousands of fixed life records every day, Leo often thought: living is just slowly waiting to die.
He saw many people break down under this rigid system. Older generations used to trust fate and old beliefs not out of ignorance, but out of fear. They were afraid of death, afraid their lives were controlled by something they could not change. Humans always cling to life instinctively, desperate to avoid their ending. Yet no one truly knows why we live.
Leo discovered strange cases the staff called “empty files.” These were depression patients with perfect, stable futures written in their records. They were supposed to live long, easy lives, but they chose to end everything early.
One nineteen-year-old girl was guaranteed a peaceful life until the age of one hundred and twenty. Still, she killed herself quietly one night. Her report simply stated that she found no meaning in living and decided to stop on her own.
That was when Leo understood the truth.
Life does not come with built-in meaning. We are all born randomly into this world with no set purpose. People give up on life when they cannot find anything worth holding onto. Meaning is not given to you—it is something you create for yourself.
Those who find reasons to live keep going. Those who cannot, fade away.
No fate or system controls your life completely. Outside forces may shape your path, but every final choice belongs only to you. Even death has meaning. For people stuck in endless suffering, dying is freedom, a chance to start over.
Leo was never afraid of death itself. He was only afraid of pain, a normal fear every human shares. Physical hurt and sickness scare everyone, and it is nothing more than basic human instinct.
He had two quiet fears no one knew about.
For years, he had a one-sided crush on someone from afar. He never dared get close, and he feared his feelings would never have a beginning or an end. He worried he would leave no impression at all and be completely forgotten.
He also feared losing his sick elderly family member. Logically, he knew death would free them from constant pain and let them rest. Emotionally, he hated the thought—of them finding peace, while he stayed behind alone.
Humanity has always chased immortality. Ancient people searched for ways to cheat death, and modern humans built technology to stop aging. Everyone wanted to escape the waiting, the limited time, the inevitability of dying.
Three years later, humanity succeeded.
The global immortality program began. Aging, organ failure, and fatal accidents were all eliminated. Every death date in every person’s file was permanently erased. For the first time in history, humans had endless life.
The world celebrated for half a year. People no longer feared fate, death, or misfortune. Superstition disappeared entirely.
But slowly, everything changed.
Because no one could die, no one cherished goodbyes. No one treasured meetings, passions, or dreams. There was always “later.” Hard work, effort, and longing all lost their value.
People used to search for meaning precisely because life was short and fragile. Mortality made regret, love, effort, and separation feel real and important.
When death was gone, meaning vanished too.
Ironically, the depressed people who died young were fortunate. They escaped their pain while life still had an end. Immortal people, however, were trapped in endless, empty days with no purpose and no closure.
Standing in the forever-bright, ageless city, Leo finally understood the cruel paradox.
Death is what gives life meaning.
People fear fate, fear pain, and crave eternal life. But endless existence turns living into nothing but empty waiting.
Life has no meaning. We give it meaning ourselves—through our pain, our regret, our love, and our limited, precious time alive.