After 43-year-old radio newsman Jeff Winston dies, he finds himself back in his 18-year-old
body in 1963—an occurrence that keeps happening each time he dies again in 1988;
eventually, in one of his lives, he finds Pamela, another replayer, and they work at figuring
out the meaning of it all (without success).
So he hadn’t died. Somehow, the realization didn’t thrill him, just as his earlier
assumption of death had failed to strike him with dread.