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.