Short story draft

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

-Mark Twain

He was always hyperaware of the unnerving mouth sounds the old people made when they were settling into their easy chairs, or the sagging, smoke-colored couches in the nursing home Activity Area, which of course meant Television Area in 2029. Only its oldest residents were pre-TV, the few born before the old tube and antennae were a staple of every American living room and kids sat around transistor radios or simply listened to cows mooing and the wind over the plains after dinner. The gumming sounds (he referred to them as gumming sounds even though many residents had most of their original teeth even into their second century of existence) unnerved Jeremy because he was afraid of hearing the same sounds come from his mouth as he relaxed in the Ergo-Back Vibra-Seat each night after his shift at the home. He usually got to his beige flat around 8:30, just in time for McGilroy's Celebraslut Hour and a quick session in the Vibra-Seat before bed. He felt the tension drain out, down from the stacking pressure in his spine to the hot spots in his heels and toes that had been carrying him about all day, padding lightly from room to room in the same terry cotton slippers that residents wore, checking daily vital displays and replacing the meal and medication dispensing cartridges. He heard the elderly smacking their lips contemplatively and shuddered, the retired bank managers and insurance salesmen and nurses and chemical engineers, all of them feeble and cast aside by their children, bitter at the costs of maintaining the ailing bodies of their progenitors.

Jeremy was only 31, but he felt twice that age each time he pre-counted the multi-colored pills that would whirl out of the dispensers for each of the residents every morning at 7:30, again at 9:30, 12:30, 3:30, and 7:30 pm. He felt even older than that when he took his own cocktail of tutti-fruity pharmaceuticals at 6, a small lime green one for smoking cessation, a pink, egg-shaped one filled with powder for kidney health, (there was a slight genetic predisposition he was told by his doctor), another egg-pill, this one cinnamon red, for pancreatic function and mood regulation, a large brown one to alleviate stress on his sciatic nerve (another genetic predisposition) and finally a huge, gray-blue horsepill he choked down once a day for possible vitamin deficiencies, any buildup of neurogenic toxins from the other mediations, and apparently his bowel health (this confused Jeremy, since he had been told his bowel health was excellent at a previous appointment, a point he hoped to take up and clarify with his doctor that evening, but the connection on his Dial-a-doc app had flickered as the Tram from Westchester to his apartment in Dorsett glided into a tunnel, and the white-coated figure on his handheld faded into static).

He knew the pills kept him healthy, that they would keep him alive for a very long time if he kept them up, if he exercised regularly, stuck with the allotted daily value of Carbo-Flakes and MeatMuffin that was suggested by his nutritionist. He saw the evidence of his potential for longevity every day. The thing he dreaded most in life was the prospect of groaning each morning as he sat up in bed for pills, the way many of the residents did. It was a low, wrenching groan, almost bovine-like in its inanity. He'd had nightmares with the groan, the tremolo coming from his own throat as he saw himself sit upright in an adjustable electronic bed, the multi-colored pharma-gruel sliding down the dispenser chute into his mouth and muting the groaning, pushing it down inside his stomach with the pills and mush. But in his dreams he could feel the groan even as it was silenced, he felt it push out against his abdominal walls and against the ceiling of his cranium, a grotesque rumble, increasing in frequency to an almost ear-splitting hiss, until he woke up to his alarm, sweating and terrified.

Jeremy wondered if the residents who groaned when they woke felt this way all the time, but the medicine covered it up, boxed it inside like the feeling in his dream. He had once seen a woman named Irene who had skipped her medication three straight days leap from the 12-foot roof of the home into a bin of used hypodermic needles. After he had called the Ambulance shuttle for Irene, knowing full well she had already passed from the shock, he requested a week off, checking the box marked Personal Issue/Stress Related.

He took the time to visit his younger sister Jean and her husband in Brixton, they had replayed old YouHome videos of Mom and Dad and their other sibling Peter, recalling jokes and details of the trip they had taken together to Sanibel the Spring after Jeremy had graduated from tech school. Jeremy's parents had passed in a Tram derailment four years earlier along with Peter as they were traveling back from Mexicali on a short vacation. A monsoon had swept the whole car off the electromagnetic tracks and pulled it back into the ocean as the tidal wave receded. Jeremy had watched the footage within minutes of its occurrence on the NewsPro app his handheld came with, unaware he knew anyone on the Tram. It had made him a bit sad to see the expensive new Tram slide off the track the way it did. The Rapid Emergency Safety function (or res for short) had worked properly, immediately inflating a bright yellow bumper raft around the Tram's exterior, but the designers of the res had not anticipated the reaction between the unusually high temperature and salinity of the storm surge, the electromagnetic slabs on the tracks and the sudden expulsion of static electricity elicited by the ballooning raft. The combination of the hot, salty water and the superconductive palladium-coated slabs fried the Tram and it's contents in a fraction of a second, just as the res was activated.

Jeremy found out later that night from Jean, that Peter and Mom and Dad were on it. He regretted watching the video so nonchalantly as the reporter calmly explained the issue with the hot water and the slabs and the static charge, he regretted not keeping in touch with his parents better, he would've known they were visiting in Mexicali if he'd called them that morning. He would've been better prepared to hear from Jean about their sudden Tram accident. Sometimes Jeremy wondered if the accident would've been better had it been his Tram, whether the feeling he squelched each time he shuddered at the groaning or gumming sounds of his residents would've died with him forever. He wanted that feeling to die.

The last image of Peter and Jean and him and his Dad on the beach at Sanibel slid in front of him on the YouHome app of his handheld as he pushed his apartment door open. He eased himself into the Ergo-Back Vibra-Seat and quietly smacked his lips, groaning just slightly as the ambulating little electroballs glided up and down his spine and McGilroy splattered his high-pitched voice across near-nude photos of movie stars on the television screen.