31st Century Suicide

Suicide rates have increased in the year 3000. Futurama foretells.

This animated sci-fi sitcom follows the adventures of a late 20th century New Yorker pizza delivery boy, Philip J. Fry, who, after being frozen for 1000 years, got employed at Planet Express, an interplanetary delivery company in the retro-futuristic 31st century.On its pilot episode, Fry met a robot, Bender, at a Suicide Booth when he was trying to phone his only surviving relative, Professor Farnsworth.

Clueless he was entering a suicide booth, Fry excitedly went inside, then started pressing buttons. It suddenly malfunctioned, so Bender impatiently came in to fix the machine. Once fixed, Bender wrongly pressed slow and horrible death function, which began the booth’s death administration. At Fry’s great fright, he saved himself and Bender and got out of the booth unscathed.

Dying options were “quick and painless,” “slow and horrible”, and “clumsy bludgeoning”. Just like any Stop-and-Shop booths, you need to pay 25 cents for the suicide to be administered. Though obviously unnecessary, you’ll get a receipt after using the machine.

If everything became comfortable and convenient, would people take death lightly? A trip to Google search engine surprised me: 200 million queries on suicide. That’s a whole lot.  I hope you’re not one of those who can’t wait until it’s your time. While alive, we always have a choice to keep ourselves busy improving. The earth has not evolved as far as Futurama portrays.  No one would ever run out of worthy things to do or think of.

Artwork by Ryan Cheung