3291 words
10/09/2009
FOY 100
Later...
As usual, he
jogged home from work. It wasn't as if he had a choice. He hadn't eaten since
lunch (a garden
salad, with a
pro-biotic for pudding) so his stomach was rumbling.
It was fields all
the way home, so it was a scenic route. The old A96 was a bridle path now, all
grown
over with nettles
and oil seed rape.
He hated jogging,
but it was the best way to keep his weight down so that his FOY 100 wasn't cut.
There were
plenty of people
on the same track, doing the same thing as him. It was almost as if the old
road was as
clogged with
joggers now, as it had been with cars two hundred years ago.
Strange, he
thought, that he remembered those days with fond affection. He used to scrape
himself into his
auto, a cup of
coffee in one hand and a bacon roll in the other and sit in traffic for nearly
an hour to
get to work.
It still took him
an hour these days, but by foot. His thoughts always returned to the same
subjects as he
jogged this
section of the route, down into the valley where he lived. He could remember a
time when all
this had been
houses. Now it was all fields.
Was he really
two-hundred and forty years old? It seemed incredible, but it was all thanks to
FOY 100, the
miracle drug that
kept old age at bay - as long as you kept taking it. There was a limited supply
in the
country so the
NHS only handed it out to those that were prepared to go the rest of the way
and live fit
and active lives.
No FOY 100 for fatties in the UK! Unlike the USA where they all seemed to be
fat.
There were
certainly lots of people in the country that preferred to live lives like slobs
and die in their
seventies (or
whatever). He, Alan Ledbetter, was not one of them. He passed is bimonthly
medical each week
without fail and
received that fortnights supply of FOY 100 each time. The fatties couldn't even
emigrate
to the USA any
longer to get round the strict rules in Europe, they had closed their borders
long ago.
There had been a
time, after the death of his wife, that he had skipped a few treatments and had
added 6 months
or so onto his
subjective forty years. If he had to fill out any forms this year he would put
40/240 for his age.
Subjective and
actual age. If he missed any more treatments he would have to put 41.
Part of him was
an old old man, but it was amazing how the brain adapted to a never aging body.
His deepest and
most bitter
regrets was that his wife had died of one of the very few things that could
still kill you in this
day and age.
There was no more disease, not even cancer, there was no more traffic accidents
as there was just
no more traffic.
Glenda had fallen and... no, he could feel his stomach tensing up in a spasm of
anguish, he
would stop
thinking about that now.
He was nearly
home. Just the last few hundred yards. He ran up his driveway to his house and
jogged straight
in through the
open front door. His dog, Gyles, greeted him with a happy bark and a wagging
tail. One of the
benefits of being
on FOY 100 was that you were given a pet allowance also. Statistics showed that
psychosis was
75 percent less
likely in long time FOY users if they had a pet dog or cat. Gyles was over
eighty, but subjectively
still only three.
Dogs didn't care about immortality, as long as each day had food and walkies in
it, they
didn't really
mind.
After he had
showered he sat down and ate his dinner (a pasta dish with sun dried tomatoes
and basil - gotta get
those carbs!) in
front of the holobox.
Statistic showed
that psychosis was 50 percent less likely in long term FOY users if they shared
a house with
a fellow user,
but Alan was happy with his own company (and Gyles of course) and could not get
used to the
idea of having
another woman in the house, even after eighty years. He and his wife had been
together for
over one hundred
and twenty years... no.. he wouldn't think about that.. he could feel the pasta
turning over
in his stomach
and he nearly retched.. no don't think about that. Alan groaned and changed the
channel to
get his latest
news updates.
More trouble in
Africa, more protests by the usual religious types outside the FOY farms.
Interesting statistics
on the amount of
users in the UK (75 percent, up by 3 percent on last year). Production would
have to go
up as more
fatties decided to become fitties. It was a radical life-style change after
all, the NHS were really
strict because of
the limited supplies. No smoking, no drinking, no meat, eat healthy and take
lots of exercise.
You were not even
aloud tea of coffee, although herbal tea was ok. And if you didn't stay fit,
well, they just
cut your supply
and you advanced a year or whatever while you caught up again with the targets
and filled in
all the
paperwork.
Alan sighed and
changed the channel to Photon-Tube to see who was around to talk to. None of
his family
were in their
living rooms, just a few of his 'frebbies', people that he knew via the Tube,
but had never met
in reality.
Shella wasn't
around and he couldn't be bothered talking to any of the others tonight, much
less letting a
life like 3D
virtual model of them wander around in his front room so he switched off the
holobox.
He got up and
walked out into the garden. It was still nice and sunny outside, but he
couldn't help feeling
a little bit out
of sorts.
He decided to
take a wander up to the Earl Hill, a nearby beauty spot. Gyles fell into step
beside him. His
dog did not need
a lead, he was pretty traffic savvy but it didn't matter as cars were a thing
of the past.
Since the oil had
run out, people generally stayed at home, or lived close to their work. There
was no
danger of Gyles
biting anyone, he was as gentle as a lamb and besides his teeth were made from
rubber.
It wasn't a very
big hill, but he took his time climbing it as he was not in any hurry. He
didn't have to
work tomorrow, he
only went into the office three times a week after all ...and yes.. there it
was, he could
see his offices
at NextGen from here, right beside the huge construction of the seed ship.
It was massive.
Since humanity had become immortal, naturally something had to be done about
curbing the
population
increasing beyond the capacities of the planet to support it. There weren't
many children around,
and if you wanted
to have a child, well, it was rather morbid, but you had to find someone who
was willing
to die. You
couldn't just wait for someone to pop their clogs by one of the rare ways
people died these days,
in an accident or
something, or for a fatty to die naturally. They were trying to get the overall
population
down as it was.
No, you could
only get a current long term FOY user to agree to stop taking the drug and then
actually die,
so planning to
have a child could take up to fifty years.
There was another
way. Book passage on a seed ship that would take humans off to the stars. Three
had been
launched already
and more were being built all over the planet. Alan's job was on a design team
of the
air and water
filtration system of the ship he could see from here, held in its massive frame
of scaffolding.
Once the seed
ship, Cassandra, was finished it would be pulled into space by the giant space
lifter,
Hydra, before
being gently pushed out of the Earth's gravity well. Then she would have her
atomic
reactors fired up
and she would be on her way.
Smaller
terraforming ships had already been out to the local stars and found many
habitable planets. These
smaller unmanned
ships travelled very fast and sent back light speed transmissions of what they
had found.
Then gene seed
terraforming ships, again unmanned, went out and set up robot factories to
change the atmosphere
into something
breathable and if necessary alter the climate.
The final stage
was the seed ships, each one holding ten thousand people. Even with G-suppressors
it would take
the seed ships a
very long time to reach the nearest stars. The one that Alan was helping to
build, and that
he would
eventually leave on (he thought, he hadn't fully made up his mind about that.),
was bound for Tau
Ceti and would take
over four hundred years to get there. But what did that matter when you were
immortal?
Time ceases to be
a factor. There would be games and activities to keep you occupied during that
time. The joke
was, it was all
planned down to the last checkers board. There were trained psychologists on
board to make sure
everyone on the
seed ship was in fine mental health, despite being cooped up on a giant
floating space ark.
Humans had tried
to settle other planets in the solar system and it had even worked to a certain
extent, but
only on a small
scale. The future seemed to lie much futher out than that.
Alan had decided
long ago he wanted to have children, and leaving Earth seemed to be the best
way of going
about it. He
didn't want to be a P8-6 death chaser, the name of the form that had to be
filled in had given
its name to the
people that were constantly trying to persuade others to take a chance on the
afterlife.
Eventually he
turned and walked back down the hill and got home as it was getting dark.
Later...
Shella was in her
living room and available, so Alan dialled and waving to her, went over to sit
down on her
sofa. The
complicated software of the holobox was matching his room to her room, so that
while he was sitting
down on his own
armchair, it appeared to Shella that he was sitting down on her over-cushioned
pink sofa.
'Hello Alan!' ,
she exclaimed.
'Hi babe, what
you up to?'
'Nothing.
nothing. Been off work all week. Summer holidays you know.'
'Right of
course.', Shella was a teacher in Mombai, 'I wanted to ask you Shella. Have you
ever thought about
seed ships.'
Shella laughed
and flicked back her hair, 'What are you suggesting Alan?'
'Well. You know.
I work for NextGen, and I have a passage booked on the Cassandra. I can take
one other
person with me ..
well you know, we would have never have met if our profiles hadn't have been
matched up
on Multi-book.'
'We've been
friends a long time since we met on MB Alan.'
'Yes I know',
they had in fact been friends for over fifty years, Shella herself was over
three hundred
years old.
'There are no
girls in the UK you want to ask? Surely I am not the only woman you know?'
'Shella, you know
I am a recluse. Statistics show that eighteen percent of FOY users are happy
with their
own company.'
'Hmm, well, it's
true, I did put that I wanted to take a seed ship on my MB profile, but that
was fifty
years ago. Things
might have changed with me, you know?'
'OK, well...'
Alan smiled and stretched out on her sofa, he always felt at home and at ease
in Shella's house.
Shella smiled
back at him, her impish grin spreading over her girlish features,
'It would be just
you and me would it?', she asked.
'Oh no. Gyles
would come too. Statistics have shown that...'
'Yes yes', she
cut him off, 'Let me think about it then.'
Later...
Alan was watching
the holobox when there was an emergency newsflash. They had lost contact with
the Aurora,
the first seed
ship. A knot of tension in his stomach almost doubled him over as he continued
to watch the
presenters talk
about the situation. As was often the way with breaking news, they had
virtually nothing
to go on, and the
presenters endlessly interviewed each other until another nugget of information
came
their way and
they would all then discuss it and pass it round like a precious diamond.
What was known
though was the Aurora had lost contact with the Lake Emerald Command Centre and
concern
was growing with
each minute. What had happened to the Aurora? The speculation was wide and
varied. They
had blown up,
they had lost power, they had lost their comms antennae in a particle storm,
they had all
gone crazy and
mangled the controls. Or maybe sabotage by religious infiltrators? Or maybe ...
well it just
went on, because
no one knew. There wasn't even any useful statistical data at all!
Alan watched and
watched. He didn't eat, he barely noticed that it was already morning when some
news did
actually find
something out that was worth knowing. The Hubble II telescope had located the
Aurora, she was off
course, but
seemingly intact. She was five light years out from Earth, so what Hubble II
was seeing was five
years out of
date. But then, the messages they had been sending to LECC were five years out
of date too.
Whatever had
happened, had happened five years ago. Alan's head hurt and his heart ached. He
went to bed and
slept fitfully
and like the entire planet on waking he tuned back into the news. Hubble II,
the space telescope
that orbited
Saturn, was still tracking the Aurora. It seemed to be correcting its course.
Everything looked
ok, but there
were no messages. No communication.
He got an
incoming visit request from Shella. He let her in his living room.
She sighed and
flopped down on his couch.
'You look as
tired as I feel.' , she groaned.
'Yes,' more than
anything he wanted to hug her, but she was just a virtual projection, 'I
suppose the trip
on the Cassandra
is off. You could never want to come with me after this.'
'Don't be silly
Alan. I had already made up my mind to come. I'm all packed and ready.'
Alan gasped,
'Really?'
'Sure. I've put
some of my things into bags. I'm e-mailing you the details of the flight. It
all should
arrive by SPD in
a couple of weeks.'
Alan new that SPD
stood for solar powered dirigible, there were no fuel guzzling aircraft
anymore, the last
of the fossil
fuels were still being used by the seed ships. Cassandra had an atomic reactor
as a power source
but aviation fuel
was always handy to have on board.
Something
occurred to him, 'What about you. You're not taking the SPD?'
'No, I'm
walking.'
'You're what?' he
cried.
'I'm going to
walk from India to the UK, yes, through Pakistan, Russia, Germany, France. I
have it all planned.'
'But why?'
'Because this
will be my last walk on Earth won't it? If we ever do come back. Well. It won't
be for thousands
of years. The
trip out will take four hundred.'
'Four hundred and
fifteen.'
'Well there you
are. I'm walking. See you in nine months.'
Shella broke the
connection, leaving Alan alone and dazed.
Later...
As usual, he
jogged home from work. It wasn't as if he had a choice. He hadn't eaten since
lunch (a humus
salad, with a
pro-biotic for pudding) so his stomach was rumbling.
It was raining a
little so there wasn't as many people as usual on the weed grown path that lead
into town.
There were still
a few joggers around though, rain or shine, if you wanted the FOY, you had to
keep fit.
Inexplicably
there was a tall dark skinned woman with long raven black hair stood at his
front door as he
jogged up his
driveway.
He stopped beside
her in bemusement before it dawned on him,
'Shella!'
Without thinking
he embraced her,
'Get off me! You
stink of sweat', she squealed.
He stood back and
looked at her,
'Your last
voc-mail said you were in London still!'
'I wanted to
surprise you.'
'Well you look
exhausted anyway, come on in. I'll put the kettle on.'
'OK, please, but
then can we go an see it? The ship?'
'Sure sure. Hey!
We're not frebbies any longer. This is for real!'
Shella rolled her
eyes at him, 'You're such a nerd. Do you have any real life friends at all?'
Alan shrugged and
nodded to the floppy dog that had joined them, 'Well, there is Gyles...'
Later that day...
'It's huge', was
all she could say as they stood on Earl Hill and looked down on the seed ship
that was now
completed and
ready to launch. It was drizzling with rain so they had brought umbrella's.
'Yes. We are all
set. Just three more years of pre-flight checks and then we go. We actually
have to spend
a year on board
before we set off, to acclimatise. That way, if we can't take the confinement
we can just
step off and give
our berth to someone else. Statistics have shown that..'
'Oh you and your
statistics. I have never known a bigger FOY junky than you.'
Alan stood in
nonplussed silence as Shella collapsed her umbrella and looked up at the sky
then said,
'I love the
feeling of rain on my face. Perhaps I won't be able to take it. Four hundred
years on board a
crowded space
ship.'
'I know, but if
we want to have children then...', he let the sentence trail off.
'I was a P8-6
chaser for seventy five years. I'm not going back to that.'
He took her hand.
'What about the
Aurora?'
She shrugged,
'It's still there. It's still going. It just lost its comms, that's all.'
'I love you.'
She smiled at
him, 'Well, I love you too, even if you are a bit young for me. What do you
want with an
old bat like me
anyway?'
'I'm only
sixty-three years younger than you.'
For a while after
that they remained silent and Alan looked into her eyes, then across over to
the seed
ship and finally
up into the cloudy sky. He thought about the huge step they were about to take,
and about
how humanity had
traded something precious for something else. Was immortality really worth what
it cost
in the loss of
future generations? Thankfully they had another option, a seeminlgy inifinite
universe to
expand out into.
It would mean another great sacrifice, four hundred years of what would
probably be
long periods of
boredom and occasional bouts of soul crushing terror. Would it not have been
easier to
accept his
mortality in exchange for a son or a daughter? He didn't know, but he did know
that it wasn't the
world that he
lived in any more. In three years time Hydra would lift the seed ship up into
space
and they would
head off into the stars. They would be doing it for one reason only.
Eventually he
said, 'Our children are going to be beautiful.'
No comments:
Post a Comment