The Freedom to Die

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Dear Readers,

    I know it has been a little while since I last wrote to you.  It was considered best that we evaluate our communications with your time stream more carefully before we proceeded with this project.  There are larger concerns, now, especially with the war on.

    I am writing today to talk about an issue that might seem foreign to you, that of "Freedom of Death."  In your time stream, there's much ado about end of life procedures and assisted suicide, but this is a little different.

   When you are effectively immortal, and you can go to the library and cross-reference your achievements in thousands of different time streams, the ideas of life and death become somewhat more nuanced.

   I have died more times than is polite to mention, if the library is to be believed.  I haven't experienced all of these deaths, but I have tried to simulate a few of them.  I have died here a handful of times, either due to attacks on the University, accidents, or the occasional duel.  It's not really pleasant, but each time, I have risen again, "cylon-like," I'm told, to continue my work.

    With the dangerous nature of our work, sometimes graduate students, technicians, and even undergraduates find themselves tired of the University lifestyle.  In some sense, this place is a Heaven where you can see the consequences of all of your decisions for all time, learn from them, and find yourself enlightened about the general path of the Universe through its "allowed" time streams.  You can see why that might also be a hell.  There are those who simply cannot handle the regret.

  In normal circumstances, we allow them to arrest their bodies and have their personalities stored permanently, should they ever be needed.  It is exceedingly rare that we reactivate such a personality.

  However, with the war on, His Imperial Majesty Constantine XI Palaiologos has begun to consider a moratorium on these "deaths."  Proponents believe that we need everyone we can get.  This would end the freedom to opt-out for all those who are here, forcing them to resurrect in the event of any attack.  It is a complicated issue, and I am so far unsure of my views about it.

  All I can really say is that I find the idea of a moratorium on death stranger than I had expected.
  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople