Day 144,

Got through a couple more years worth of birth and death records today.  The overall trends and ratios still hold.  I still haven’t seen an age of  death under seventy.  Somehow, the complete lack of infant and child mortality feels strange to me.  My memories of my prior world tell me that even with more advanced medicine and technology than what we have here childbirth is a dangerous business for mother and child both.  And birth defects and childhood illness, even cancers, still happen.  But not here it would seem.

I hate to sound like I’m saying I wish children would die, but it’s the realization of little details like this that make me question my own senses.  Make the world seem too perfect.  Too good to be true.

But if this place, this world, isn’t “real” then what is?  How would one ever actually tell?  And what’s the point of a pleasant illusion if not to hide something ugly or painful?

Are these the sort of thoughts that ultimately drive most outsiders to disappear?  An inability to accept good things driving them to go seek out “truth”?  I’d always chalked it up to mere curiosity going too far, but now that the idea’s occurred to me having an underlying driving fear to that curiosity makes too much sense.

On the other hand, it’s also entirely possible that this whole place was entirely planned out and constructed a long time ago to make things better and easier for people.  Better than “natural” but still just enough discomforts to keep from being completely perfect.

But in that case, things like the shades and the Abyss seem like overkill.  And it still doesn’t explain why or how I’m here.

Sigh… Why can’t I just accept a good thing and be happy without looking for a hidden horrible price?