"Thanks. It's funny; I have no idea what it used to look like."

"I mean Christmas more generally. Excellent holiday. Get Christ out of Christmas, that's what I've always said."

"Ah, yeah; I've been questioning a lot of how I thought the world works but as far as I can tell there's still no God. Anyway. I want to take at least my own existence public so I can do things on a global scale--distribute vaccines and farming equipment and everything else people need in quantities too big to hide."

"And you want my support for this on the Council?"

"Yeah. And also, like, to take your opinions on how and whether to do it into account, if you have them." And if they turn out to be compatible with human flourishing and/or necessary to get enough votes.

"I am Death. Vaccines are rather the opposite of my area of expertise."

"But you might have opinions on whether everyone should go public or just me, or reasons why you think I shouldn't do it at all, or whatever."

"--Do you know how many instances of my consciousness there are running right now?"

". . . You're actually present whenever anyone dies."

"Yes. And I talk with them until they are prepared to move on to what is next. --There are 528,769 of me conscious this very moment." 

That's horrible on so many levels. He has questions, but the only one important enough to ask is, "So are you going to vote that I can go public."

"...I am not sure. It is difficult, these days, for me to care about such things. I am very very old."

"Is there anything you know you want?"

"Not terribly? --I am quite lonely."

Constantly talking to hundreds of thousands of people, and she's lonely. Bruce is the magical spirit of a holiday about giving people what they want, and he has no idea how to help.

"I'm sorry. . . . You deserve better."

"I suppose. Eventually someone will try to kill me."

He can't bring himself to ask if she's looking forward to it.

"If nobody ever died again, and you could just be one person, and live a normal human life, or do whatever else you wanted--would that be good?"

"...I am not sure that is in fact possible or desirable."

"Why?"

"What happens if someone gets bored or depressed and wants to die? What happens if someone is very badly injured? Do people continue to have children, and if so where do the resources come from to take care of all of them?"

"There are a lot of resources out there once we can get them. And--" does she get people who get cryopreserved? "ways to make it harder to die of illness or injury. You'd probably still get the occasional accident or depressed person, but most of the time there wouldn't be anyone who had just died."

"There are not infinite resources, and if people are born and do not die the population can become infinite rather quickly."

"If the average person has fewer than two children the population converges to a finite number. Also the carrying capacity of this one solar system is in the trillions. Also it's apparently possible to appear matter out of nowhere so I'm less sure there aren't infinite resources than I used to be."

"I am not a physicist. --Is the average person really going to want fewer than two children over an infinite lifetime? This seems very implausible."

"I expect people would prefer to be able to have more children but if we do run out of resources they won't be able to afford more. I'm not in charge of humanity, thank goodness, so I can't say for sure what people will choose."

It's very strange, having this debate without being sure what he would have to convince Death to believe to win her vote, but it's a good kind of strange because it means all he can do is say what he really believes.