This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?
I’m getting married tomorrow. I know it’s hardly the time for a routine checkup, but It’s been on my radar for the last couple of months, and I wanted to get it over with before we went on our honeymoon. Marla and I are going to go on a tour of Mexico. We wanted to go on the rocket that shoots passengers on a five-day cruise around the moon and back, but we couldn’t swing it. We’ll have to try for that on an anniversary or something.
I’ve rarely been sick, but I don’t like the look in my doctor’s eyes. He’s got some kind of news to tell me, but I’m uncertain what it is. The truth is he’s breaking up with his wife, who runs a small bookstore in the mall next door to this office, but it’s still a lot of me me me, and I think that’s all it’s about. I don’t know his wife very well, but she seems nice enough. I hope they work it out and stay together.
My fiance and I are packed and ready to go. I’ve been living in our little one-bedroom apartment for the last three months, but she picked out all the furniture. I wanted to go, but couldn’t get out of the day job long enough. It’s hard enough putting in the regular sixty hours a week. I couldn’t imagine doing like some in the office are and being there seventy, eighty hours a week. I can’t figure out when those guys ever sleep.
He’s kept me waiting for a while now. At this office, they like to pull you back as early as they can, even if you come in without an appointment, but sometimes you can wait in the exam room for half an hour before they come and take your blood pressure. They’ve already done that, so all I’m waiting for is him. He’s not exactly a talker or anything, but I thought he’d have more to say.
There was a knock, and he entered the room.
“Jacob?”
He peeked in.
“Yes, hello,” I said.
“Getting married, are we?”
He came into the room and took his place. It was a short roving stool, and he liked to push around with it. He’d swing over to pick something up, and then swing back to drop it off again, and he always carried a cup of coffee in his hand. Since the day I first met him, he was carrying it.
“Yeah, well…” I said.
“Not to be taken lightly.” He pushed a pen around on a small clipboard.
“I know.”
He flipped through some papers. His office had gone digital about five years ago, but he never got the memo. He still made everyone keep everything on paper for him. He didn’t know it, all the information was on the Internet all the time now, but whenever he had an appointment, his staff would print up all the records for the day to hand to him.
There was a knock at the exam room door.
“Yes?” said the doc.
A short, round face popped in through the door after it cracked open. “Doctor, you have a visit from the drug rep. He’s got a…”
“Tell him I’m with a patient, please.”
“He’s on your desk phone now.”
“Then go wave at him and tell him he’ll have to wait his turn.” He waved my freshly printed file at her and she popped back out.
“I hate that guy, and I hate that video thing.”
“Don’t like them?”
“They’ve been around for years, but I just don’t like them. You have to be able to roll your eyes sometimes when you talk to idiots on the phone, and he counts as one. Call me up on the video… I can’t even get a regular cell phone anymore.”
“I know.”
“Damn thing is less a phone and more a computer with a program on it that answers the phone for you. Ah well. At least we don’t deal with the phone companies anymore.”
“True, they all became Internet service providers, didn’t they?”
He looks over my chart again and grumbles to himself.
“I don’t know why I became a doctor anymore.”
“Why is that?”
“Because there’s nothing wrong with you.”
“What?”
“I know you wanted to hear something. I could tell you that your sugar was off, and we might want to think about pre-diabetes prevention, or you might have high blood pressure as your father did, but that’s just not the case.”
“Hmm.”
“I’ve looked over your chart a hundred times, and what it boils down to is that you are perfectly fine.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Not for you. For me, it’s a tragedy, because all my patients have been slowly getting healthier and healthier every year for a while now. I’ve had less and less to do. It’s been so long since any of my patients had an actual disease. I can’t even remember when I last saw one.”
“What about injuries, sprains, that kind of thing?”
“The remedies are too fast.”
I had to think about that one.
“Yeah, the remedies are too fast,” he said again. “Guy comes in with a sprained, hell, let’s say broken ankle, and I got this thing here.”
He opens a plain white drawer behind him, indistinguishable from all the others, and brings out a small black ring, with a pink logo on one side.
“What’s that?” I ask him.
“You put this thing on your ankle, and hit the button, and that’s all it takes. It shrinks to fit the person’s ankle, binds it, and starts injecting it with painkillers and bone enhancers. You wear it around for half an hour. I don’t even let the patient leave, just for my entertainment now really, and then we do an x-ray of it again, and the break is gone.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
He handed it to me. I fooled around with it for a moment and gave it back to him.
“You can get one of these for about a hundred thousand dollars, minus insurance if you’ve got it. You just have to fill it up with drugs once in a while. If you’re fitting your bill for medical at home, you can buy one for twice that, with a larger supply of drugs to dispense.”
“That seems kind of high.”
“Not really, when you consider that it’ll heal any broken bone in your body in less than an hour, even the tiny bones in your ear. Don’t even ask me what we do for diabetes these days.”
“What?”
“A single pill.”
I couldn’t believe him.
“It’s sick, isn’t it? Pun intended. Here, look at this.”
He hands me a small metal device with a finger-shaped depression on one side.
“Tap your finger to it,” he says.
“What will it do?”
“Blood work. Nothing special.”
I tap my finger there, expecting some kind of a prick, or poke with a hidden needle, but there’s nothing. The surface is smooth, but after pressing the mark, the entire thing lights up. It buzzes and hums, and shows me a small circular logo, with an hourglass on it, slowly turning around, and a small silver progress indicator sliding from left to right. A moment later, it stops and buzzes again.
“It’s done, I think.”
I had the thing back to him.
He drops it on the surface of a small tablet computer, and the larger screen lights up.
“It’s transferring.”
“Transferring what?”
“What would have been about a thousand dollars worth of blood tests? Ah, look…”
He pointed at the tablet’s screen.
“You’re clear. Figures.”
“What figures?”
“Not much to do these days other than do some tests and run you through them, because we’ve caught up. At least, I think we have. Almost boring to be a physician these days, as I said. Unless you’ve severed your hand or been hit by a real truck or something, all we do these days is keep on top of your blood work, and give you the odd shot or pill, and even they are getting fewer and further between.”
He made a check on his tablet with a small stylus he had attached to his lapel on a string.
“Ah, good. I’ll get to give you a shot today, it seems.” He was almost about to say “Lucky me,” when his face dropped, and “Never mind, just a pill then.”
He reached around and opened another drawer and brought out a small yellow pill jar.
“I still keep one of these for old time’s sake.”
He pushed down on the white plastic lid and opened it up. In the bottom was a single, uncoated white pill, with a slash mark on it where you could apply pressure to break it in half. He brought it out, sliding it into the palm of his hand, and carefully broke the capsule in half.
“Here you go. You’ll need some water, I suppose.”
He handed me a glass of water, and I took the pill. I could feel the chalky texture sliding down my throat.
“Now you’ve just ingested the equivalent of all the vaccinations you’ll need for the next hundred years. If I’m lucky, or very unlucky, I might have the privilege of giving you the next one.”
“What do you mean, like a hundred years from now? I won’t be alive then.”
“Sure you will.”
I blinked at him.
“There’s no telling how old you’ll live,” he said. “I don’t know what you’ll do with yourself in all that time. Just don’t go jumping off the roof or something, and you could live indefinitely.”
“What, forever?”
“Yes. Science. It’s kind of a curse now, isn’t it? Enjoy your day.”
I got up and shook his hand.
“Now, I’ll want to see you in a little while. Probably not for twenty years. Set up an appointment at the desk on your way out.”
“Thank you, I think.”
He was off to see someone else, and I made my way out of the office.
I made the appointment, though I didn’t see the point for twenty years in the future. It made little sense.
“Mr. Andersen,” said the young lady at the desk. I didn’t know she was forty years older than she looked, but that seemed to be life these days.
“Yes?”
She made the appointment and then handed me a card with the date and time on it. I had no intention of keeping the card for twenty years, but I slipped it into my pocket and made my way out of the office, anyway. There were a couple of people in the waiting room that looked like they were in their twenties, like me. I wondered if they were going to get the same pill and be sent on their way. A lot can change in twenty years. I imagine the office will be different. Will it even be here?
I crossed the parking lot to my car and opened the door with the press of a button on my key ring, slipped into it. The dashboard lit up, and the engine cranked up with a thunderous roar.
“Hello Jacob,” said the car. “Where are we going today?”
“We need to go straight to the Tuxedo rental next. It’s the big day tomorrow, you know.”
“That’s right. Marla’s at the boutique picking up her dress this afternoon. I’ve got an email from your tailor. The Tuxedo is ready, they just want you to come in to try it on.”
“Sounds like a plan. Take us there.”
I sat back. There was a steering wheel, but I rarely used it anymore. In the center of the dash was a GPS and map software connected to the talking computer. It lit up with the destination, then the car backed itself out and started following the Internet-based instructions. After a moment for the car to get a full signal, I could see a minor blip of a dot on the screen, small and green for my car. A moment or two later, you could see all the other cars that were connected up on the screen as well in real-time. They were all purple, and the occasional red dot was someone piloting on a manual. The auto-controlled cars all knew to steer clear of them.
I sat back and read an online newspaper, complete with video clips and animated daily comic strips embedded, while the car made all the correct turns, got me onto the freeway, merged automatically with traffic, and then pulled me into the closest, safest parking space near the tailor’s shop.
I stepped out of the car, which said goodbye to me, before locking itself up.
I’d say it was a relief to walk into the tailor’s shop, a place pleasantly devoid of computers beyond a small calculator, but I was so used to it that I forgot to notice. If anything, I wondered what was wrong with the shop without really being able to put my finger on it.
“Jacob Andersen?” said the tailor.
“Yeah?”
“Come on back, I think I’ve got you all setup.”
The wall at the back of the shop was one big monitor, and on it was a picture of me next to a three-dimensional scan of my body. The screen was surrounded on both sides by bolts of cloth and finished suits and slacks. The tailor hung a yellow measuring tape around his neck, and there were loose sticks of chalk everywhere, but one of them looked like it had a little USB plug in the side of it.
He guided me to a small platform in the middle of the room and brought out my suit, which came with a printed packet that included all of my body measurements and a representation of my body.
The packet was three hundred pages long.
I tossed it aside where it landed on a nearby, and very dusty couch.
He brought out the suit, and I tried it on. They crafted it to perfection and it hugged every inch of my body. It felt like the most comfortable garment I’d ever worn. Tight in all the right places, and also loose in all of them as well. I almost relaxed into it rather than the traditional ‘trying it on.’ The slacks went on without a hitch, and the shirt, suspenders, and bow tie were all dashing yet comfortable. Everything was the correct length and exactly perfect for my body.
I wanted to hate it, but I couldn’t. It was just that nice.
I tried on the coat and swore that I’d wear nothing else until I wore it completely out.
“You’re getting married, right?” he said.
“Yes.”
“It’s nice, the suit?”
It was perfect.
He laughed. “That’s what they all say these days, but do you like it?”
“Yes, I do.” I pulled at the collar and shifted my shoulders. It felt wonderful.
“Good. That’s nice. Yes.”
He seemed distracted.
“You’re young, right?” he said.
“Yes. Twenty-five.”
“That’s nice.” He scratched his back. “It’s getting harder and harder to tell these days. How old anyone is, I mean? It’s like everybody is fifty-six, but they all look like they are between thirty-eight and forty-five. No one looks like they should anymore.”
“I know what you mean.”At least I thought I might.
“It’s sick, what they are doing, down at those hospitals, keeping everyone alive all the time.”
“It’s not natural, I say.”
The tailor coughed. I helped him to his dusty couch and stayed with him for a minute.
“Can I call anyone? Do you need any help?”
He waved me off like it was nothing.
“No. I need nothing. I’m happy.”
“Happy?”
“I’m old, and I’m broke, and I’m tired and sick, and I’m happy.” He coughed again, and this time, spit up a little something that he caught in a handkerchief and shoved in his pocket before I could get a good look at it.
“Seriously, can I…”
“No!”
He pushed himself off the couch and straightened his tie.
“Really,” he said. “I don’t need a thing. Now, get outta here and go have yourself a wedding!”
He smiled and showed me the door. I grabbed my packet on my way.
“Wait, I need to pay you.”
“It’s already done. There isn’t even any fun in getting money from someone anymore. Your bank paid me the minute you took possession of the suit. You should know that.”
“There has to be something I can do.”
“There is. Grow old. Don’t take their stuff. It may keep you alive, but you’ll rot from the inside out before it’s over. Don’t let your wife take any of it either. Be natural. Don’t live too long.”
He pushed me from his shop, with a little smile and a wave, and I was in my car. I did all the driving and headed back out to my apartment before I thought about it. I was already doing all that stuff. My doctor had just set me up. Everyone I knew was doing it. We were all about to live forever. At least, that’s what the brochures all said. It was just the way it was now.
I have always wondered how they ever tested it on anybody. How can they say it increases your life this long? It hasn’t even been out that long.
Marla was waiting for me. She looked younger than I was, but the truth was she was about five years my senior. Until now, it never really bothered me. I wanted to talk to her about it, to ask if we should keep on, but I already knew the answer. Besides, my next regular checkup wasn’t for another twenty years. No going back now. May as well make the most of it. By the next time I go, I imagine they’ll have something, a pill or whatever, that I won’t have to come back again for a thousand years. Who knows?
