Tag: life

PINS and Needles

Approaching the ATM, I process a mental flowchart. Which account am I using today? What PIN is required? There’s a line, so I wait, but while waiting, I begin to doubt that I’ve remembered the correct PIN for this account. I start going through PINs and their applications. Some were based on phone numbers, prompting recall of the whole telephone number and where I lived then, triggering memory of the address and where I worked, and my office number, further driving me from certainty that I have the right number, and suddenly opening up a memory chasm which swallows the PIN I’m supposed to be using, launching me into panic about the fucking PIN number – number is redundant, you idiot – and then it’s my turn and I step up and remember —

And then it’s all good. All that worrying was for naught.

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Choices

You ever face a challenge to your desires, you know, like sitting down and privately writing (i.e., indulging in the fantasies and stories populating (or polluting) your mind) and face up to something that forces you to think, “Okay, I have to do the right thing and do this?”

Yes, it’s not really win-win. You’ve helped someone else, which is good, but you’re resentful of the encroachment on your priorities and plans. Then, you know, you go through that whole thinking process about what happened, what you did, and the interruption.

Well, maybe it’s just me. I frustrate myself with my choices. I guess it’s just a moral imperative that was planted too long ago to ignore.

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Anchors

You ever think about someone who passed, and realized that although you rarely saw them, they were an anchor, someone who moored the foundations of your life, and although little has physically changed in your life with their passing, everything is different, because one of your mooring anchors is gone?

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My New Body

“Beer o’clock,” I said.

I unplugged from the system, ending my day’s work as a virtual worker. The job description’s hype had sucked me in: “See the solar system! Work on Mars from the safety and comfort of your own home!” It was drudge work, but safe, and secure. Didn’t pay too bad — didn’t pay too good, neither — about the same that I used to earn as a teacher before they downsized and privatized me out of the education system. It was either fly drones with the military, stock boy, or vee dub. You see why I decided to be a vee dub. No, it wasn’t great but the job provides me with security and keeps me off the streets even if there was no chance to advance. Once a vee dub, always a vee dub. At least I’m employed.

Mail and marketing bees immediately swarmed me. One bennie of being a vee dub is that the system protects you from bees while you’re working. But unless you pay for the filters, they’ll get you as soon as the shields go down. I’d subscribe to filters, but I can’t afford them.

So I endured the bees as their messages were delivered for shit I can’t afford, like more health insurance, dinner on the moon for two, solar system cruises, and visiting Heaven Above Earth. Then the next to last bee said, “Congratulations. You’re a winner.”

Bullshit, of course, I thought, ready to say, “Trash.”

The bee said, “You’ve been selected to receive a new body.”

“Wait. What? Repeat that.”

The bee did. Just like I’d heard.

Jesus, a new body. A new body. I jumped and danced around my module. A new fucking body. I couldn’t believe it. I’d entered the lottery, of course, spent twenty on tickets (yeah, I know, not much, but I’m frugal), but I’d never expected to win.

A new body, just what I, a sixty-one year old man, could use, a new fucking body. My current body, the one I was born with (ha, ha), had become overweight and creaky. Its hair was thinning and graying, its spine was stooped, and its fucking eyes didn’t work right. There’s treatment for all this shit, but, hey, do I sound like a big earner? No, I think you’ll agree. Medical treatment for things like bad eyes is for the upper classes, not vee dubs.

Euphoria diminished, stage two of coping with unexpected happiness kicked in. I asked myself, was this real or a scam? What’s in the fine print? Is it a real new body, or somebody’s cast-off? Movie stars and the upper classes get new bodies all the time. I don’t know what happens to the old ones but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they’re recycled, right? Can’t you see that happening?

I didn’t know. Understanding that the means to buy a new body were waaay beyond my circumstances, I hadn’t bothered with such minutiae. It took enough of my brain power just to keep up with my carbon points. And, okay, my body had done me right until like three years ago. Then it was like the warranty expired, and it all started coming apart.

I listened to the bee’s full message, and queried it extensively. It linked my phone to multiple review sites along with the lottery’s web page. The systems all pointed to yes.  I’d won the lottery.

I was getting a new body.

###

The process took almost a year, almost a fucking year of completing forms, being scanned, selecting choices, and making arrangements. I hadn’t expected choices. I thought I’d be me at some young age again. The choices surprised. Taller, bigger (ahem, anywhere)? Everything was up.

Of course, I had to endure a lot of propaganda and make videos enthusing about how excited and grateful I was. Half the population knows the New Body Lottery is a tool to appease the desperate masses and keep the Revolution Clock from striking midnight. The rest believe NuBod (yeah, cheesy, right?) wants to share its largesse because it’s a kind corporation.

Bottom line with the choices, I stayed white and male (but not as pale as my natural genes made me). I’d be put in a twenty-two year old body, but I would be four inches taller. Sweet. Of course I had my vision fixed. I opted to change my eyes to blue and my hair to blond.

Yeah, I took the option for a bigger pecker, too. Can’t hurt, right?

###

I was pleased as fuck when I finally got my body. So weird to not grunt as I stood from a chair, run out of breath while doing some shit, or squeeze my belly into a pair of jeans. I could see like I’d never been able to before, and I heard better, too. I didn’t know how bad my hearing had become.

I thought it would take a few days to get used to the new body but I acclimated within hours. Several companies donated new clothes and shoes to go with my new body. All I had to do was let marketing bees hover around me to inform everyone what was I was wearing. Of course, I agreed. What’s a few more bees, right?

Then it was so cool. I’d walk into places, and everyone would gawk. We’re a pretty small and intimate town, population about sixty thousand, mostly ex-educators who became vee dubs, so they all knew I was the guy who’d won the new body. I got coupons and discounts for the movies, filters, food, and travel. I still couldn’t afford most of it, but I was sure that was going to change. I was a new man. There were also a few guest appearances on talk shows and radio interviews. They were fun but they didn’t pay anything. Part of the fifteen minutes, yo?

I’d taken two weeks off in real time to get the new body and become acclimated to it. When I went back to work, all the others came by to check me out and bullshit with me. I felt like the king of the damn world.

I understood exactly why all those rich people get new bodies all the time. It changes everything.

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Overheard 3

“I was in my Mom’s room with my sister when Mom died. Mom and Dad lived in a remote area, surrounded by cedars. It was quiet. Mom had been ready to die. She’d actually done checklists. She’d written pages of very precise notes that she wanted done before she died. My sister and I had to do these things, and check them off, and show them to her, to show her that they’d been done.

“When they were all done, Mom said, “Okay, I’m ready to go now.” And she died that day.

“And I remember sitting in the room, and watching this soft blue glow rise from her body and drift out the window, and up into the trees, and on into the sky. It was like watching a puff of smoke, but I’m sure it was her soul.

“When it was gone, I turned to my sister and said, “Did you see that?” She said, “No, but I wish I did, because I could see you watching it.””

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Overheard 2

“It says it should be stored in a cold, dry place. I know of one, but I don’t think my wife would appreciate being referred to as a place.”

Oh, snap (to employ an outdated phrase).

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The Ice Chip

It’s five thirty A.M., and cold and dark. Even the cats are all curled up and asleep.

The telephone connection is amazingly clear. The tension in the hospital room seems as substantial as the phone against my ear.

“She’s gurgling, and sounds wet,” the speech therapist said. “I’m going to see what she can swallow.”

Her voice becomes louder as she speaks to the elderly patient. “I’m concerned about your ability to swallow. Can you lick you lips? Can you lick your lips?”

Holding the phone, I lick my lips in response to the orders on the other end and urge the patient to do the same.

“No? You can’t lick them? No saliva?”

Damn.

“Okay. I’d like to give you an ice chip to see how you swallow. Would you like an ice chip?”

“Yes,” the patient says in a low, weak gravel.

“Yes, I bet you would,” the speech therapist says. “You’re probably pretty thirsty because you haven’t been able to swallow anything for a couple days.

“Can you stick your tongue out for me? Can you put it out a little further? There we go. Good, that’s good. Now, I’m going to put the ice chip on your tongue, okay? There we are. Good. Now take it in your mouth and let it melt. Feels good, doesn’t it? Yes, I bet it does. Don’t let it run out of your mouth okay? Keep it in your mouth.

“Okay, are you ready to swallow? Swallow it for me. Let me see you swallow. Okay, that’s good.”

I hear an odd sound and listen, trying to understand what it is. I imagine the process it takes to let ice melt, and the muscles and passages used to swallow.

The speech therapist’s volume drops to a normal conversational level. “She couldn’t swallow, and I can hear wet gurgling.”

That was probably the odd sound that I heard.

The speech therapist says, “The fluid is going down into her airways. Normally, when that happens, we violently cough. That’s a normal reaction. But she lacks the strength and energy to cough.”

My sister-in-law speaks. “She’s in advanced stages of Parkinson’s, and hasn’t had her meds for several days, because she’s had the flu and pneumonia, and hasn’t been able to swallow. They’re going to insert an NG tube and begin her meds again.”

“Yes, we’d expect to see an improvement in a Parkinson’s patient with their meds, so we’ll try the test again after the NG tube is inserted and her meds are given.”

Thanks are given, and comments about things that will be done later are made. I listen and absorb it, but I remain thinking about the importance of a melting ice chip and swallowing.

 

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