Chronicles of Everlasting Light: The Chopping Block

Here, immortality is a business.

Every year, 130 million people around the world turn eighteen, but there are only 19 million spots. That's not a quota. It's the line a civilization draws to stop itself from bleeding out.

The company is called Earth Honor, its product is called Honored Humans, and people on the street call them company men. Their abilities are permanently locked at the average level of an adult male: they can't become stronger or faster, and they can't even lessen their pain. Those who can die are called people; those who can't are called company men. And the government must remain in human hands.

Chen Mo is one of the few company men to become a police officer within the system. He investigates a case involving a missing chopping board, uncovers a live-segment harvesting operation, and discovers something else:

He remembers how he died at the age of twenty-seven.

And that memory is not in his hands.