The Amateurs

In a future where death has become a luxury service, Sunnylands Palace offers the discerning client a curated exit from life. Visitors choose their final curtain call: battle with wild animals, theatrical combat, or the quiet philosophy of Socrates. This is a world where mortality has been commodified, where ending one's life is pitched like a vacation package. Mr. Sims arrives not by choice but by medical decree, deemed a burden after a heart condition renders him unproductive. His doctor has signed his death warrant with clinical precision. But as the facility's director walks him through the menu of elaborate deaths, something darker emerges. Mr. Sims isn't here because he's dying. He's here because his family wants him gone and the inheritance is sweeter when the paperwork is clean. The story takes its savage turn when Mr. Sims discovers his relatives have been plotting against him, their envy masked as concern. What begins as a meditation on choice and dignity curdles into something far more vicious: a family willing to speed a man toward death for money. Alan Cogan's 1955 tale is a savage, prescient satire that asks who really has the right to decide when a life ends and what we're willing to kill for.