It’s only three days until I die, but I’m allowed to do anything I want as long as I don’t leave this room. I don’t want to hurt myself. It’s just a fact that I’m going to die in three days. It’s weird how when you’re going to die soon, wasting time doesn’t really seem like it matters so much anymore. I mean, it probably doesn’t feel that way for everyone, but it definitely feels that way for me. I would’ve expected myself to stop doing things like brushing my teeth, or washing my hands, given how those things won’t really have time to matter anymore, but I guess I keep doing them out of a sense of comfort, or habit. It would feel strange not to do them. Why would I spend my last days living in a way other than how I spent the rest of my days?

Some things change, of course. I don’t really care as much about responding to messages as I used to. I figure people are probably going to be pretty shocked when I die, and they’ll be more worried about that than the fact I didn’t respond to them. You’re probably pretty scared by now, but I just want to reaffirm that I’m not killing myself. I’m just going to die in three days. Those are the terms and conditions that myself and the angel agreed upon.

“I’m going to die in three days” has a semantic meaning that you may not have considered. It’s actually structured to mean something different than how the entire system of time-sensitive written word normally works. See, when you see something like “I’m going to die in three days,” one of your first instincts would probably be to check when I wrote this. But there’s no date on here. And even if you could find it on a website by looking at archives, or some other weird computer trickery, you still wouldn’t know when I originally wrote it, you’d just know when I transcribed it to a digital medium. But none of that really changes the fact that I’m going to die in three days.

I think it was an angel, but I don’t really have any way to be sure, but I mean, how many other beings materialize in the corner of your room? It seemed to go blurry whenever I tried to focus on it. I guess I got a little distracted and didn’t really explain what I meant by the semantics of “I’m going to die in three days” being strange. So let me just point out a usual interpretation of language that typically goes unnoticed, something that you may not have considered. And I’ll admit, this is a rather unusual usage, so I can’t say I blame you. But I’ll quit beating around the bush and just explain it.

My agreement with the angel is that I can stay in this room for as long as I want, and I’ll have all my needs met, as long as I die in three days. But angels exist on a different sort of timescale than we do. Their concept of past and present can be shifted depending on whether or not there’s a human observer, sort of like how you might expect quantum physics to work if you don’t quite understand quantum physics. God created the angels to manage humanity, so a good amount of their biology is based around our human awareness. In this case, the only thing we’re concerned about is how they experience time. When an angel tells you that you’re going to die in three days, this fact becomes a statement that’s always true, as long as it has a unique human observer. When I say unique, I mean the angel’s internal priority-system is to the newest human who’s observed any given statement. Another rule of the angels is that if there’s a paradox, a sort of logical conflict, the angel will always prioritize letting someone live. Don’t forget that the full name of the Grim Reaper is The Angel of Death.

I’m going to die in three days. As long as someone new reads that sentence within three days, it becomes true for the angel who’s monitoring that person, and it functionally resets the timer so I can keep staying here in the peaceful stasis in my room. I watch old movies. I write novels. And I don’t ever have to eat. All I have to do is circulate the sentence that I’m going to die in three days.

I really do live like these are my last three days on earth, because I don’t know when it’ll be that nobody new happens to believe it. It can be hard to get word out about this fact, and even if I were allowed to go outside to a street corner so I could shout it, it wouldn’t make a difference if nobody really heard it. At least I don’t have to worry about immortality becoming a curse, because I could always just stay silent for three days. And to be honest, I care more about the fact I’m allowed to just stay in my room than any of the life-extending stuff. As long as someone knows I’m going to die in three days.

I don’t feel imprisoned so much as I feel free. The only thing that I know is constantly impending is the future. I wonder what it would feel like to be an angel, to just be assigned humans to take care of, but to fundamentally lack some major parts of their cognition. I don’t know. Those are the sort of things I have time to think about in here.

I don’t have to sleep anymore, but sometimes I like to sleep anyway, just to see what I dream about. Last night I dreamt about a friend. Maybe tonight I’ll dream of home.