the last book I ever read (Olga Ravn's The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, excerpt five)

from The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken:

STATEMENT 037

I could never understand why my father would use the word phenomenological incorrectly. But I didn’t have the heart to correct him. We were eating lunch. It might not be interesting to you. He said: “Humans will always have need of three things: food, transport, and funerals.” And so I became a funeral director, and now it’s my job to dispose of terminated workers and, in a few instances, bodies left over after sickness or reuploading. We’ve developed our own little ritual here, given that cremation is the only option and the bereaved have nowhere to go. Or perhaps bereaved isn’t the right word. I don’t know if you grieve over a coworker, but we perform the ritual anyway, out of respect, and you can’t exactly rule out relations occurring between members of the crew. But maybe that’s not what you’re here to investigate? I’m almost invisible to the others. No one wants to talk to me. Of course, there are quite a number of the crew who aren’t ever going to die, and I wouldn’t hazard a guess at how it affects them psychologically. If you can even talk about psychology in such cases. But maybe that’s what you’re here to investigate? At any rate, psychology or no, there’s still the physical matter to be taken care of, and that’s my job. I don’t find it unpleasant or repugnant. I’ve got nothing against death. Nothing against rotting away. What frightens me is what doesn’t die and never changes form. That’s why I’m proud of being a human, and I carry the certainty of my future death with honor. It’s what sets me apart from certain others here. But what is it you want me to talk about? The first thing I did when I came here was to get rid of my dialect. The next thing I did was to make sure the incinerator and the ventilation systems were working properly. I can report that they were, and very efficiently too. Sadly, I don’t get to use the incinerator as often as I’d like. There aren’t that many of us, to be honest. You want to know why I like the incinerator? It’s the smell of burnt matter, it reminds me of mealtimes at home. The smell of meat and soil and blood. It smells of the birth of my daughter. It smells of planet Earth. It’s not that I’m not happy here. My job here means everything to me. I was the best in my year, that’s why I’m here today. My father’s been dead for years now. I’m not sure why he came to mind. He belongs to another world.