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In a future where disease, aging and war have been eliminated, society has turned death into a bureaucratic service. The population is carefully capped, and those who wish to end their lives simply dial a single, oddly memorable number. The story opens in a quiet Chicago hospital where Edward K. Wehling, a 56‑year‑old expectant father, waits alone while his wife prepares to deliver triplets—his first children in a world where births are rare.

Around him, the hospital’s walls are being painted with a meticulously tended “Happy Garden of Life,” a stark contrast to the quiet desperation whispered among the staff. An old muralist and a sardonic orderly trade barbs about the façade of perfection, hinting at the uneasy truth beneath the polished veneer. As the day unfolds, listeners are drawn into the subtle tension between a society that promises eternal comfort and the personal choices that linger in its shadows.