The Universe opened the door, walked into the small room, and closed the door. It adjusted its lab coat.

"Hello. I'm very sorry for the wait. We really had today overbooked, we're already an hour behind. Always more moral patients popping up, you know how it is these days." It walked over to the table and computer in one corner of the room and started typing something.

Humankind, sitting on the examination table: "Oh, that's alright, I was late anyways."

The Universe nodded but didn't respond, still typing. It finished up and wheeled its chair over to the exam table, clipboard in hand. "Okay Haman.. sorry, let me see here.. Humankind, what seems to be the problem today? I see from your records you've had a sustained trend of brain size increase over the last 0.5 hyperfine hydrogen transition half li- oh, sorry, the last 5 million of your winters. That typically causes quite a few changes that are all very normal and natural."

Humankind: "Well, maybe it's that, but I don't know. I just kind of have this bad feeling, I guess. I realized recently that when I die, I don't think anymore, it's like I just vanish into thin air. If one of me dies, the rest of me can never talk to that person again. Now I can't stop thinking about it even when I'm alive and everything is going well. When I die because a mammoth I was hunting stomps on me, or because I fall off a cliff, I can partly understand it, that's my fault. But sometimes I don't even do anything wrong. I die a lot when I'm giving birth, and sometimes it's both the mother and child! And if I survive that, I die a lot when I'm only a few winters old. I just turn some weird color and feel really hot and that's it, dead. So I've been thinking, there must be some place all those people go, right? Like maybe they're in the sky or ground or something like that? They can't just vanish, that doesn't make any sense."

The Universe, who had been looking at its clipboard, looked up and smiled warmly at Humankind. "What do you think happens to all the rabbits and mammoths and antelopes when they die, or when you kill and eat them? Don't you think their bones look just the same as your bones?"

Humankind contemplated this for a moment. "I guess they do look the same, but why does that matter?"

The Universe: "Don't you think the same thing would happen to you and to all the other animals, after you die?"

Humankind shot a quizzical look...

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