text: My name is Joshua Wang and if you are reading this, it means that you have decided to use your remaining time on Earth to read one of the many blogs about Tyler Kaufman instead of panicking about how Earth as we know it is about to split into a million pieces by an asteroid. I read about Tyler Kaufman on The Straits Times on August the 6th. A young boy having been revived by new experimental equipment after falling from a twelve storey building, claiming to have seen the afterlife. He described it as being like a mirror of our world. He woke up on the sidewalk as if he just had a good night's sleep, right below his HDB Block, no blood stains or anything. He wandered around what he had quoted as "Heaven itself". Many "people" there had stared at him before resuming their usual activities. As he took a bus back "home", he was met with his already deceased grandfather and several other strangers in his house. Not only that, the house looked normal, but in reality it was almost infinite, with infinite similar rooms and an infinite variety of people. They looked healthy and normal, but they said they had all splattered on the concrete floor from falling to death. All residents of the house, from all the way back when the buildings were built without extra safety measures to when Tyler had found out he had just failed all his subjects for the PSLE test. A few months after his attempt, his mother claimed to have signed him up for a special experimental treatment to "bring him back". Just like that, Tyler was snatched back to the about-to-get blown-up-world for one last chance to say goodbye to his parents. A few weeks before this news had taken everyone by surprise, another piece of news had caught everyone by surprise; NASA revealed that Earth was about to be blown into a billion bits in around 13 months. People didn't know what to do then, I mean, they weren't going to kill themselves. Protestors flooded government areas to demand for answers and the truth. Most, if not all, had thought that the government caused it. I mean, no one expected the world to end in the next billion years and now an asteroid just appears out of nowhere. However, the Kaufman Case came out as HUGE news for the panicking world. It came as hope for everyone, but what everyone had used that hope to do was something entirely different... The Day Kaufman Came Back (Day One): I came home from work that day to find my wife reading about the Kaufman Case. Her laptop was full of tabs of news articles and social media posts. She was so excited no adjective would suit her. Well, of course that isn't important. After all, you didn't come here to for tips on describing someone's excitement. As I read more and more about Tyler Kaufman that day, I also became more and more excited. This could be the turning point for everybody to relax. At the dinner table, we had been using our phones to research more about it as well. As I scrolled through news sites while unconsciously shoving rice in my mouth, my wife said something that made me choke. "Have I ever told you that my dad died from lung cancer before we even met?" "No?" "I really miss him". I left the dinner table before even finishing half of my food, we didn't talk for the rest of the night. As I lay on our bed, I started to have more and more questions to the issue; How specific does one have to die to be with someone else who died the same way? Would purposely killing yourself be the same as unintentionally killing yourself? Would the same items be required to finish the job? What if Kaufman was lying? Why would a kid lie? Would a kid lie to everyone for attention? For hope? Endless amounts of questions had flooded my mind. They invaded my nightmare, where I came home to find my wife sitting on a pile of cigarettes. The nightmare was then suddenly interrupted by my phone notification, my boss had messaged me to go around the Sengkang neighbourhood to interview residents about their thoughts. Day Two: I got out of bed early without waking up. Apparently my wife had got up earlier than I had. She was not in the house, and neither was her purse. On the way to work, the front bus window had been cracked, a few blood stains could still be seen. The driver had caught me looking, and smiled. "Some guy ran in front of the bus yesterday, but obviously at the speed this tank here was going, it merely gave him a concussion and a scar. The Bus repairmen sure did a shitty job if you ask me, haha!" The silence that ensued got louder and louder, more awkward by the second, and so without thinking I asked if it was frequent for people to run in front of vehicles once the news had broke out about the supposed afterlife. "Yeah... uhm... I heard from multiple other bus drivers yesterday of people just ramming themselves into cars and what not. Sometimes I chuckle thinking about what the doctors are doing. Do they save the life of someone, preventing them to be with their loved ones? Yeah, Dark I know..." I went to multiple pedestrians to find any new pieces of information to put up on the news site that hasn't already been said. People joyfully going on about joining their loved ones in what is presumably heaven. People ranting about how life should not be thrown away. People talking about how the whole thing was a scheme done by religious fanatics. "I hope I get cancer so that I can be with my boyfriend again..." "It's a shame my mom died by old age, I can't really do anything about that, hope they design some kind of old age thingmajig before next year" "We have a year to live and people are treating it like it's nothing! My siblings are talking about killing themselves and it makes me sick!" "No one even knows if Tyler was even revived from the afterlife. There's probably some scientific evidence to suggest why he had those visions but for some reason people just believed one random kid. Many other people had supposedly seen the afterlife before and no one gave them a crap. He may just be an attention seeker who wants to atleast have some glory before he goes out, before we all go out." I recorded all of it down, all the opinions opinions opinions. It is sometimes believed that people created religion to hope that there is something in the afterlife that isn't just darkness... I thus similarly believe that people trust Tyler Kaufman in this desperate siruation everyone is in. He simultaneously gave many hope, but he also has the potential to simultaneously destroy many people's beliefs. I went home that day to find the house completely dark. My wife was on the bed... my heart almost sank. I quickly ran towards her pale body and almost screamed to find that she was not responding when I shook her. Her bright eyes opened suddenly in the darkness, I almost cried tears of relief. "Honey... how was work?" Day Three: I could not sleep again that night. My brain had been a question factory for the whole time I laid in bed staring at the ceiling. After a while, I had gotten up and paced around my bedroom for the remaining hours of darkness. To solve the question of how should I die would require the solution of who should I join. My father, my mother, my favourite teacher that could teach me all sorts of things in the afterlife, even if I could probably learn everything in eternal afterlife anyways, if afterlife was eternal. I thought about all the events of my life and the people I have met. I thought about whether you could even reproduce in the afterlife. I thought about how old you would be in the afterlife and whether your age would increase. It would really suck to live eternity as a child or a sickly old man. Could you even get sick in the afterlife? The more I thought about it, the more the bullshit meter at the back of my head had gone up. I soon realised that these questions and thoughts were ruining me. They would ruin me before the asteroid would. So I called my boss and told him that I quit the job, foolishly thinking that this would give me some peace before judgement day. Since my wife was not in the house again and I was not about to spend the remaining year of my life playing games on my computer at home, I went out on an adventure. Or at least as adventurous as you can get in Singapore. The bus stop was completely empty except for a guy with a red tee holding something I couldn't make out. "Hey, mister, don't stand near the road!" I looked behind and saw a teenager and a bunch of other people way back from the bus stop. I awkwardly walked to join them. "You wouldn't want to get hit by a car would you? Unless your like that guy, in which case, sorry to bother you". I looked back at the man with the red tee and at another angle, I saw that it was a picture frame. As the bus came closer and closer to the station, the man's breath grew stronger and stronger, he wore his tears and snot like make up. He ran up to the middle of the road and let out a scream, the bus driver must have known what was happening, because he drove right into the man at top speed, causing his body to fly around ten meters from where it had originally been. A few bystanders let out a "oooh". The teen had looked at me and said. "Imagine if that guy had caused the bus to flip, causing everyone in it to die. Selfish asshole." Well... Let's just say my appetite for adventure had been lost fairly quickly, as I ran back home straight away. Back at home, I saw my wife laying on the sofa crying like an 8 year old girl. I was about to ask why when suddenly I recieved the notification that would change everything for the third time. It was an artixle with the headlines saying "Tyler Kaufman and his family revealed to be christians". Slightly confused, I asked, "Is this what you're crying about?" My wife looked up at me with a grimace, " Yes, Joshua! Do you know what this means? What this means for us? What this means for the whole freaking world? It's all bullshit! This whole afterlife shit! It's all a god damn publicity stunt!" As I read the article while moving towards our bedroom, I started to get dizzy. Tyler Kaufman, during an interview, has revealed that he and his family were christians. This had made the reportee himself extremely shocked. However, Tyler and his family has claimed that this fact doesn't change anything. I took a sigh of relief. Well, I guess it makes sense. After all, you can't enter Christianity's heaven if you killed yourself but that's exactly what Tyler did. I was just about to ask my wife if she even read the full coverage when I saw a leaflet under her pillow. On it it said: "Looking for participants to test out a super cigarrette that would speed up cancer". Shocked and furious, I took the leaflet and held it up right at her face. "What?! What were you planning to do?!" A look of shock and regret had flashed through her face with a long silence of her trying to think of what to say. "I miss him Joshua! I saw it on my way to work, oh God Joshua, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" "So what were they going to do, watch you as you poison yourself to death? What if it didn't work? You just ditched me here! Ditched me in this messed up world!" It was clear that she had nothing to say, so I told her to get out of the house. No, I threatened her to get out of the house or I would kill her myself. Was I so selfish to be angry at my wife, my supposed closest companion, to suddenly have that crooked idea? Before I could even decide on what to do next, I collapsed onto the sofa and fell asleep. Day Four: I woke up with a major headache, but atleast for once I had some sleep. I don't know for how long, but I had stared at the blank television screen for hours. On the pitch black screen of the televison I saw Joyce. She wanted so desperately to be with her father. Her mother had died shortly after she was born and her best friend had been her father. Maybe I was selfish after all to try to take that away from her. To shame her for having her own deepest desires. I looked out the window in hopes of seeing her nearby and atleast not dead. Instead, I saw a small girl walking towards the road. Crap. I thought. I rushed out of the house and saw that a blue mercedes was cruising at top speed towards her. Again, I thought about that man who had flown across the road and possibly to Heaven as well. If I let that girl suffer the same fate, I would never forgive myself. I jumped towards the girl to push her away. Instead of feeling a sense of pride for saving the life of an innocent. I felt a sharp pain and saw only darkness. Day Eleven: I woke up where I still am now, a hospital bed. My wife was beside me, and she had a look of joy and relief when she saw that I had awoke. The doctors excitedly explained to me that I had been revived just like Kaufman. They explained to me that there was a public outrage after Kaufman had revealed his family were christians and so the doctors were forced to try to recreate the same scenario. I was the first person to be successfully revived. When they asked me what I saw, I replied that I forgot. I told them I saw darkness and now I woke up here and that there may be something in between those two moments but that it is now lost because I forgot. Slightly disappointed and fustrated, the doctors encouraged me to try to remember it and get some rest before leaving the room. My wife tried her best to hug me in my current state. She talked about how she had almost wanted to jump in front of a car after finding out what had happened to me, but she just couldn't do it in the end. We made a promise to forever to stay together in this new world till the end. This world that has become a cruel place to live in. If there is no hope to be found in the remaining year of human life, people would start to do whatever they feel like doing without a care in the world to make up for the years they will lose. You may be wondering whether I told the doctors the truth about what I saw, if I really forgot. Well... it's either that or there actually is no Heaven, I will never know. I think that's for the best.