[ WP ] Humanity has achieved immortality . Due to resource concerns everyone must submit to a council their chosen manner of death at 150 . The more amusing the death the longer the council lets you live .

`` You want to what?'' 
 
 Ted repeated himself. 
 
 `` Huh. That's pretty good,'' said the first councilor, resting his chin in his hands. `` Funny, yet with a classic spin.'' 
 
 `` I disagree,'' said the second councilor. She was an unpleasantly tiny woman, except for her shoulders, which were twice as broad as they had any right to be. `` It just seems boring to me.'' 
 
 `` We have seen about a thousand versions of the thing.'' This one was the third councilor, who Ted was vaguely aware of having voted for. He could n't remember most of his votes for councilor, they were all pretty much the same. Retired politicians, talk show hosts and writers, mostly. 
 
 `` But that thing with the aubergine? And the juggling nurse? Those are new.'' Ted was really starting to like the first councilor. He was hugely fat, but that sort of pleasant fat, like a grandfather who had decided that life was for the youth, so what was the point of wasting it on the old. Not that that mattered anymore. The man probably cooked everything in baking grease and damn well liked it. 
 
 `` But in the end, is n't it just... plain?'' asked the third councilor. `` It's just dressed up pretty. Put a dog in a dress, its still a dog.'' 
 
 `` But the doves! The fireworks! The Rube Goldberg-like complexity! It really does have a spark of brilliance,'' the first councilor replied wistfully. `` Reminds me of my daughter's method of death.'' 
 
 `` Just because your daughter was boring does n't mean we have to give this guy any more than a year,'' said the second councilor. 
 
 There erupted a bout of arguing that had Ted's head spinning. The councilors spoke with the hostile familiarity of people who spent far too much time together, and had developed a sort of short hand for getting on each other's nerves. Ted glanced at his PowerPoint slides and wondered if maybe he should have gone with a better font, something with more pop. Arial seemed so boring now. 
 
 Suddenly, a new noise rose above the cacophony. The fourth councilor, silent until this point, began drumming his fingers against his podium. He began slow and quiet, but the noise grew faster and louder with each rotation. The others fell silent. He looked like the youngest of them, but that could mean anything. He leaned forward in his seat with deliberate slowness, stopped drumming his fingers and spoke. 
 
 `` Look,'' he said. `` I like it, but really, in the end, it is just a repainted classic. Five years for effort, though.'' 
 
 It seemed like that was the last word. The second councilor stamped a form, handed it to Ted, and called in the next petitioner. 
 
 Ted shrugged. Five years? He felt lucky. 
 
 It was just auto-erotic asphyxiation, after all. Even if a clown was there.
