Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die

It didn't give you the date and it didn't give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words Drowned or Cancer or Old Age or Choked on a Handuful of Popcorn. And it was frustratingly vague in its predictions: dark, and seemingly delighting in the ambiguities of language. Old Age, it had already turned out, could mean either dying of natural causes, or shot by a bedridden man in a botched home invasion. The machine captured that old-world sense of irony in death - you can know how it's going to happen, but you'll still be surprised when it does.

We tested it before announcing it to the world, but testing took time---too much, since we had to wait for people to die. After four years had gone by and three people died as the machine predicted, we shipped it out the door. There were now machines in every doctor's office and in booths at the mall. You could pay someone or you could probably get it done for free, but the result was the some no matter what machine you went to They were, at least, consistent.---from the introduction