Call Me When You’re Dead: Collect Calls from the Afterlife
Project/App Name: Call Me When You’re Dead™
Patent Pending
Tagline: A satirical dead man’s switch for final messages, unfinished business, last wishes, emotional retractions, and people who periodically text “wyd.”
Subtitle: Messages for When I’m Gone
Series/Episode Title: Collect Calls from the Afterlife
Audio Evidence Included Below
Here at Absurd Geometry, we care more about your dying arrangements than how irresponsibly you are currently living your life.
Aren’t you tired of meeting people, having one briefly wonderful connection, saving them in your phone under a name that predates the dinosaurs, and then never hearing from them again?
Only to find out years later that the mysterious person you once trauma-bonded with during flight turbulence, in a tattoo shop, during a bank robbery, or inside a tornado shelter has been dead for years?
We believe closure should not depend on social media algorithms, mutual friends, or someone finally cleaning out their contacts.
That’s why we created Call Me When You’re Dead.
The app will send you one message every day:
Are you alive today?
You respond yes, then wait anxiously until tomorrow to check in again.
It’s like playing chess with the Reaper.
You alive: 1
The Reaper: 0
But let’s be real.
The Grim Reaper is like the casino. It always wins.
Maybe not today.
Maybe not tomorrow.
Maybe in three days.
So if you fail to check in for three consecutive days, the app will consider you officially dead and send your pre-recorded messages to everyone you have carefully categorized.
Bonus Category:
For an extra charge, we also let you follow your favorite celebrities’ current scoreboard, so you’ll be one of the first to know once they lose the chess game with the Reaper.
No more falling for rumors that your favorite actor died in 2010.
Now you can confidently argue with your friends, pull out your phone, and say, “Actually, I subscribe to his death-status notifications, and as you can see, he checked in this morning.”
So unless he’s filming a sequel to Weekend at Bernie’s, or his assistant is pressing the button for him, he is very much alive.
At Absurd Geometry, we believe in testing things ourselves.
That’s why Cin, our main investigator, tested the app for the past 3 years.
This is what happened.
Below are sample classifications taken from Cin’s personal three-year test trial of the app.
Please note: these categories were created during emotionally unstable but scientifically important circumstances.
Sample Relationship Taxonomy
From Cin’s Personal Three-Year Test Trial
Category A: Family, loved ones, and possible kidney donors.
Category B: Officially confirmed best friends.
Category C: Acquaintances, one-time intense conversations, and temporary trauma bonds.
Category D: Romantic John Does, or men I considered dead to me even though their pulse said otherwise.
Category E: People who owe me money.
We take our findings so seriously that Cin agreed to allegedly die for three days just to find out if the app would work.
She risked her life, her reputation, and several pre-recorded relationships to determine whether Call Me When You’re Dead could successfully notify the correct people in the correct emotional order.
The results were disturbing, legally confusing, and scientifically important.
Case Study: Cin’s Accidental Death Trial
During Cin’s personal three-year test trial of the app, one incident triggered a premature death notification.
For approximately one hour, the system believed Cin had lost the chess game with the Reaper.
She had not.
For public transparency, we have included the complete MP3 recording of the incident free of charge.
Listeners may now hear the full communication as it unfolded, including the original death notification, the Category D transmission, and the emergency retraction issued one hour later after Cin was discovered alive.
What follows is the official transcript from Category D.
Call Me When You’re Dead: Collect Calls for the John Does
Original Transcript Copy
Dear John Does,
You have received a pre-recorded message from the dead.
Caller: Cin.
This message was prepared for all John Does previously listed under Category D.
This message is intended for all John Does who briefly appeared in Cin’s life, caused unnecessary loss of sleep and recurring nightmares, periodically returned with an “I miss you” or “wyd” message, or may one day become curious enough to wonder whatever happened to her.
To accept this message, please remain on the line to hear the transmission.
Standard emotional charges will apply.
Please note: the extra fees might be scary
Hi! If you're hearing this message, I died.
Knowing me, I probably went on a solo trip somewhere freezing and mysterious, got distracted by my own imagination, slipped on a single snowflake, and fell directly off a cliff… or into Vladimir’s Vacation Garden of Stakes, where I was unfortunately impaled.
Anyway, the details are no longer important because I am now deceased and frankly, loving it!
I know some of you are probably wondering if I miss you.
The answer is no.
There are actually plenty of John Does here in the morgue.
Frankly, the market is oversaturated.
Listen, John Doe #1.
You’re not as special as I thought you were.
Just because you could sculpt clay figurines with your feet, I thought you were gifted.
You were not gifted.
You were just avoiding the traditional hand-based process for attention.
And frankly, clay figurines look better when they’re made with hands.
John Doe #2.
For a while, I thought you were practicing telepathy because you kept guessing the exact number I was thinking.
Then I found out you were networking with my loved ones to collect my favorite numbers.
So no, John Doe #2.
You are just an ordinary man with access to my loved ones.
John Doe #3.
I know you’re still mad at me because I attempted to muffle your snoring with a couch cushion from a medically irresponsible distance.
Just because you’re a slightly known singer doesn’t mean your snoring sounds like Beethoven’s musical notes.
Anyways, good luck to all of you living with the living, swimming with the rest of the piranhas in the human sea, getting sunspots, and aging.
By the way, I enrolled all of you in the most expensive afterlife messaging plan, where recipients are billed per character.
Which is why I am intentionally making this message much longer than necessary until I reach the maximum character limit allowed.
Financially, this seemed like the right thing to do.
I wish I could add a few more thoughts, but unfortunately…
--- Character limit reached ---
--- One Hour Later: Retraction ---
Operator:
Hi, this is Cin again.
The doctors just realized the life-monitoring machine was temporarily disconnected from the outlet so the nurse could charge her phone.
That’s why they accidentally declared me dead.
I didn’t die after all.
So I’m calling to retract my death notice.
Listen, I meant everything I said except the part where I was dead.
I am currently in line to donate at Dracula’s annual blood drive.
Apparently, his baby bats are in dire need of formula, and all hospital patients are being coerced into donating blood.
No one gets their discharge papers until Dracula’s baby bats are fed.
Anyway, I’m using this downtime wisely.
[Dracula, over the blood drive PA system:] Donor number 13, please proceed to the velvet curtain. You are just my blood type.
Oh… they just called my number. I’ve gotta go.
Bat-bat bye!