I laid awake all night, in my unassuming bed, in my unassuming house, thinking about the entirety of my life. I couldn't stop thinking about my mistakes, good points were much harder to bring to the surface tonight. Any other night my thoughts were of happy shit, or at least neutral, but tonight the black cloud loomed about me like a curtain, signaling my demise.
Tomorrow was the day I would be forcefully given my cause of death. I couldn't do a damn thing about it, I had a “hazardous job” so for liability reasons, they were making all of their employees take the test. They were doing it as a proactive way to not be required to pay out if an employee were to die on the job, because they “should have seen it coming.”
I sat up in my bed, resting my face in my hands, as my mistakes flashed through my eyes. I thought about the drug trafficking mostly. That would be something like twelve years ago now, that I got caught, at least. When I was thirteen I got pulled into a cartel by my best friend; I thought me and him were going to work together, but now I know he just needed someone to toss into the flame when things went to shit. And let me be very clear about this, things went to shit. The inside of my eyelids flashed with altering red and blue lights, visions of officers leveling rifles at my door, of me trying to simultaneously hide twelve kilos of cocaine, knowing full well I wouldn't be able to, and also trying to run for my life away from the police. If they caught me, I knew my life would never be okay again. Luckily, this assumption was mostly brought on by the sheer amount of coke in my brain; my life was okay now.
Then, as if called upon by outside powers, the most irate moment of my life flickered in my mind, I tried to suppress it, but it had arrived. I was sitting, cuffed and chained, sweating, nauseous. I was going through withdrawal alone in my holding cell and the only thought that could be sustained in my mind was how no one had bailed me out yet. I had a ton of friends, a ton of contacts, one of them had to have caught wind that I had been caught. There was no one in for me for probably about a week, maybe it had just seemed like a week, but one morning I was awoken by the ripping open of my cell door.
“You have a visitor.” A sharp, blunt statement by a cold-faced stout man in blue. I stumbled the entire way to the visiting room. My legs had grown so weak, I hadn't stood in days. I rounded the final corner, into the small booth with the thick glass and the phone. Who was sitting there? It was the one and only Brian, my best friend. After a lengthy bit of conversation, it had all dawned on me. “How did they catch me?” I asked very suddenly toward Brian. Silence.
“How the fuck did they catch me Brian?” His face twitched, wrenched to the side the slightest bit. He blinked twice, I remember this moment precisely, the moment I had been left with no friends in this world. A week later, I had been given a break, fifteen years, Brian had been given a life sentence. The prick deserved it. Ten years later, I was out on parole, and I got a job with a Municipal Waste division far away, they were the only ones willing to hire me after my release.
I stood out of bed and walked into my living room, a sudden, surging sense of happiness rushed through me as I clicked the light on, seeing the five bags of dog food and the dog bed I had placed in the corner, with the assembly of toys and the collar. “Two more days until I can afford the vet bills,” I thought, “Two more days until I have him.”
Thinking about how I might go about dying was all I could imagine for the rest of the night. I didn't think I was ready to know, it seemed like when you knew, you couldn't live your life anymore, people just became a prisoner of this machine. At some point, I drifted off, but the startling buzzing of my alarm in the morning indicated to my achy body that I had not gotten enough sleep. No matter, today wasn't a work day anyway.
As I drove to the clinic, I felt an odd peace with the situation, maybe it wouldn't change anything, or maybe it would change things for the better, somehow. When I arrived, the directory board read all of the different groups and people coming in for the day and where to meet. Third from the top read “Municipal Waste – B7.” Navigation through the halls was easy, and as I stepped into B7, I searched for Jason, my co-worker and probably the only friend I could actually trust since the whole cocaine fiasco. He was easy to spot, standing against a wall, well over six feet. He towered above the crowd of sullen, tired men that were the majority of this town's Municipal Waste crew. We leaned against the wall in silence for a long time, probably at least ten minutes. Neither of us had a thought in the world we wanted to burden the other with.
“You watch the game last night?” I finally choked out.
“Nope, couldn't, too nervous.” was the quick, deliberate response.
“Yeah, neither did I,” I admitted, then added, “It was probably a shit-show anyway.”
“Yeah.” his voiced trailed off just in time to catch the yelling of the clinic technician at the front of the large room.
“When we call your name, please promptly make your way through the door to my left, from there you will be directed into one of the OracleWorks chambers. Follow the instructions given by the technician inside of the chamber and this entire process will go smoothly. Thank you for your cooperation.” It was an icy, heartless way to lead us into this situation, I felt. As I looked around the room though, it appeared most people weren't the slightest bit nervous. A man to my left rambled on about some famous woman's rack, some men across the room appeared to be throwing money into a pot, gambling it seemed. Probably on who gets the best or worst death. How could this not be a big deal to these people? “Alright, the first ten patients are Randy Adams, Joseph Alvarez. . .”
“Great, “I thought, “Alphabetical order.” My last name was Thomas; I would be here for hours. I sat there for maybe an hour, watching happy people go into the chambers, and solemn, serious men come out. It finally hit them, but not until it's too late. Every man that came out made me more and more nervous, and by the time my name was called, I had seen only one man come out happy, and a handful clearly accepting of their death. The pot of money had gone to a man who was speaking rather loudly about how he was going to be eaten by sharks, so I assumed the pot was based on the most interesting death.
Finally, the time came, my name was called, and as I pushed off of the wall and turned toward the front of the room, Jason placed a hand on my shoulder. I stopped for a second, and provided him a small nod, without turning my head. Thoughts or fires, car accidents, train wrecks, every awful death imaginable pushed their way into my brain as my feet led the way to the room. Once inside, a technician stood beside a flat, white wall. In it there were two holes, one round, and big enough for a finger, the other rectangular. It was obvious the function of both. I didn't even try to listen to the technician as I placed my finger deep into the abyss of the hole. A small prick, followed by a rush of acute frost. A small bit of whirring could be heard behind the wall as I pulled my finger from the hole, and nursed the small prick with my mouth.
Waiting for the slip of paper felt like days, but it eventually printed out, face-down. The technician took it, read it, and then looked to me.
“Do I have to read it?” Was my response to the technician holding out the slip of paper.
“I'm afraid so.” It was an odd answer and didn't inspire much confidence as my hand reached out, trembling, and snatched the tiny slip. I turned it over very quickly and read the result aloud.
“Memory Loss,” the words flowed easily from me, I repeated it ecstatically “Memory Loss!” The technician looks quizzically at me, looking almost disturbed that I was relieved by this. “My mother has Alzheimer’s, isn't that genetic?”
“I believe so.”
“That means I have a life ahead of me, doesn't it?”
“Probably, but not necessarily, sometimes the results can be a bit ambiguous.”
“Nonetheless, I feel better.”
“Good.” As I left the chamber and exited back into the large room, I noticed Jason was not against the wall. I had assumed he would have been called in while I was, his last name was Twain. I sat in the seat nearest the door to the OracleWroks chambers and waited for Jason; I was sure his results would make him more easy.
Less than a minute passed by, and he exited from the door, wearing the same dumb smile I'm sure I had upon my exit. We walked in a mulling silence as we walked back to the lobby, neither of us wanting to belittle the other's readout with a selfish exclamation of our own. Finally he broke down, “What was your readout?”
“Memory Loss”
“And you're happy about that?”
“It means I probably have a long time to live, if nothing else.” Jason thought about it for a second, then with a nod of agreement he added.
“Makes sense, I got Loyalty”
“That's wonderful,” a deep sense of fulfillment, exposed by wide eyes and similar smiles, filled the air. We walked out of the doors slowly, and a sudden sense of contempt washed over me. Inside the clinic was pristine, white, everything had a certain degree of valued beauty to it. But when I walked outside, I saw the broken city that I resided in. From said city, hundreds of men walked into the clean, oddly beautiful facility. All of them were stable, all of them were at the very least contented living in these heaps of stone and mortar, bleak and vague against the gray sky. These men, normal by all measures and the building, immense and daunting in comparison to most of the buildings around, and by all measures, perfect. From this structure, left hundreds of broken beings, all of them as imperfect as the city they left earlier that day.
“What used to be where this clinic was?” I directed at Jason.
“You don't remember?”
“No, since I came here from prison it's been a Death Clinic.”
“It was a movie theater, why?” A deep sense of regret washed over me at the acknowledgment that something else had once been there, something useful, or at least enjoyable. The realization that something was sacrificed in order for this Death Clinic to surface was a brutal truth.
“And what was that, across the street?” I pointed to the now boarded-up shop that sat on the adjacent corner.
“Oh, it was this lovely little coffee shop, went out of business a few months ago. That certainly was there since you've been back form jail.” His voice had a distinguishable questioning quality to it, like he was trying to ask me why I was suddenly so interested without being direct.”
“I haven't come into town much I guess. What was that big one there?” I pointed to the tallest building in sight, probably around ten stories, with 'FOR SALE' banners hanging on each side.
“I believe it was Adams and Adams Insurance Company, they were growing pretty steadily for a while, but their branch left town a few years back, no one else want to buy the property in a town that's on such a steep slope to death.” Nearing the end of his sentence, his voice started to slow, and trail off slightly. The gears were turning in his head, he was understanding why I was asking. I stood still, staring blankly at the horizon as he fidgeted about, and finally turned to look at the Death Clinic. “The Machine is killing the city, why? How?”
“The Machine is not killing the city, at least not consciously. By definition it doesn't have a conscious, but how would you describe the demeanor of pretty much everyone else today?”
“Devastated, probably.” I nodded my head in agreement.
“If you knew you were going to die by something accidental, something that could happen anytime, tripping down stairs, or a car accident, would you have any drive to show up to work tomorrow?”
“Probably not.” Jason's voice reflected his full understanding of what I was saying.
“And even if you could muscle up the willpower to go to work, would you want to work somewhere that you had to look at the exact spot that caused probably the most devastating moment in your life?”
“Absolutely not.” Jason took a breath in, then made a half-assed motion with his hand, which I understood to be him signaling he was going to walk to his car. “You know, you're pretty smart for a convict.” This was probably the most common idea I heard while in jail, that I was too smart to be a criminal, or maybe just too smart to be caught. I gave Jason the exact response I gave everyone else.
“I was valedictorian of my high school and, until I got caught, second in my class at the local community college.” I had caught up to him by this point, but he was just a couple steps ahead before.
“Impressive; so what you're telling me is you think that the Machine is indirectly killing off people?” He said this statement as we were passing a newspaper dispenser. I looked at today's headline
“Two die in plane crash.” I read it aloud.
“What?”
“Hold on a second.” I payed for a paper and flipped through it until I found the obituaries section. “What percentage of people do you think die from old age nowadays?” By this point I had already made it to the obituaries section; in it there were two columns, one labeled Predicted, the other label Unpredicted. We stood there for a couple minutes as I studied the section critically. Jason was clearly restless by the end, seemingly he was still waiting for the answer to what it was that I was doing. “Okay, so the total deaths were about even, fifteen predicted deaths, all accurate, and thirteen unpredicted deaths, though I wouldn't consider that a large enough margin of error to base anything off of. Both categories have ten deaths that are either old age or natural causes, both split 5 and three, but opposite; the unpredicted side has five old age and the predicted side has five natural causes. That's still not really that pronounced. However, if you add up the ages of both columns, the Predicted column has a total age that's 135 years less than the Unpredicted column.”
“Are you now implying that the Machine is actively killing people with some demonic Machine will?”
“No not at all, merely that we may not have considered the implications of knowing one's own death. There's no doubt that for most people, knowing it is stressful, maybe even depressing or angering, and all of those things weigh on the body heavily. A constantly stressed body is less effective at fighting illness, less focused, less able to rest, stress alone can cause high blood pressure, cause accidents to occur, any number of things. Have you thought maybe the act of getting your death readout could change your cause of death?”
“How so?” I could tell Jason was getting restless, it seemed he was ready to be done with the conversation, so I tried my best to wrap it up quickly.
“Let's say you have an average guy, not particularly healthy but certainly not particularly unhealthy, and let's say he should have died of old age, but the Machine prints that he will have a heart attack, in a very ambiguous way. The man then simultaneously wants to zero in on exactly what it is that is going to kill him, as well as averting his heart attack for as long as possible, once he is pretty sure that's what it is. He stresses about his diet, exercise, and even about his stress, which just causes his blood pressure to increase more and more, ultimately giving him a heart attack. Before the readout, he would have been fine, but the added stress from the readout actually caused the death.”
“Right, well, I'm going to head home, I'll see you tomorrow.” Jason turned quickly towards his car, walking very quickly in case I had anything to add.”
“Bye.”
I walked the streets for a little while longer, thinking about how the Machine might work, about how sharply it had demolished the economy of the surrounding area, and wondering just how many death predictions, and subsequently how many lives it changed since its installation here. I wandered the streets for probably about an hour before the thought came into my head to visit my mother, I figured I should probably get acquainted with my demise.
The entire drive over was thoughtless. My body drove as my mind did absolutely nothing, and this persisted all the way until I walked into the room where they kept my mother. The room was dark, a bit dreary, and held the smell of death. Not just this room specifically, but the entire facility just reeked of dying people. That said, I hadn't seen my mother in near a year and a half.
As I turned the corner into her room, I saw the normal blank stare she had while watching TV, it was reassuring, because the last time I had seen her, she forgot most of my extended family. After that, I got scared of what was going to happen to her and I stopped showing up. It was a ridiculous decision, in retrospect, but people do crazy things when faced with death. Even if it's not their own.
“Who are you?” She sank back into her bed and her eyes grew wide with fear. I was afraid of this exact reaction.
“I'm your son.” Her eyebrows furrowed as she visibly depressed the switch to call the nurses. I decided it might be better to hold off on talking until a nurse could help sort this out. The nurse rushed in moments later, and stopped quickly as she noticed me. With a small nod, she moved around me and herded me into the hallway.
“What relation are you to Laura?” She did not skip a beat, as so as we were out of earshot, she started in.
“I'm her son.”
“Her son? It's been well over a year since anyone has visited her, where have you been?” I decided to lie and give the easy.
“Jail.” She nodded, and then ushered me back into my mother's room.
“Laura, this is your son, he's here to visit you.”
“I have a son?” My mother's ignorant, drugged response struck me like a knife. She was much further along than I had hoped, even with no medical knowledge I knew she was not long for this world.
“Yes, I recently got back from, umm, Africa.” I lied again. What did it matter to me? She would probably forget it in an hour anyway. The nurse gave me a reassuring pat on the arm as I slowly approached the seat next to my mother's bed. She accepted the idea that I was her son, I could see this, and we talked for a few hours. She didn't have much to talk about, having forgotten most of her life, but we managed. Generally the topic on the television was what sparked conversation, and even though this entity no longer felt like my mother, it was still nice. At the end of the visiting hours for the day, I decided to bring up a fearful topic.
“So, I got my Death Reading today.” I said this with a wavering voice, and little conviction. I had suddenly felt this was not the correct route to take, but it was too late.
“Death Reading?”
“Yes, there is a machine that can tell you how you're going to die from a blood sample.”
“Seems like more trouble than it's worth.” My mother was always strong with her opinions, and it would appear even though she forgot most of herself, she didn't forget that.
“Yes, well, I would agree. Here.” I handed her the slip of paper, “This was my readout, I was excited at first, but now I'm not feeling so great about it.” She grabbed the slip from my hand, and read it with much effort, and I could see a tear form in the eye closest to me. Opening her arms, she beckoned me toward her, and as I leaned in, she embraced my head tightly. We stayed that way for what felt like years. My entire childhood came rushing back to me from the warm embrace, and then it ended. She let my head go, and I sat back upright. I gave her a hug back, stood, and began to leave.
“I'll see you soon, mom.” As I left the room, I noticed the nurse was still in the hallway, so I beckoned her over. “How long does she have left?”
“Maybe a few months, it's hard to tell.” I sighed deeply and acknowledged the nurse with a slight smile before turning and leaving. That night was flood with thoughts of death, of dying like that, without dignity and without any idea that anyone cared. I didn't like it one bit, but I managed a good night's sleep somehow.
At work the next morning, Jason approached me very quickly, with an air that expressed he had something to tell me. “We have to cover two routes today.”
“Only two?”
“Hilarious, yeah, twenty-eight people didn't show up today, and four are. . .”
“Are?”
“Well. . .four died.” I grimaced, but dismissed the thought with the idea that it would've happened anyway. Today was too special a day to worry about that sort of thing. I wore a dog collar around my neck, today was the day I took in Jack, a stray dog on my garbage route. I had a vet appointment at seven to get him his shots, and enough food to feed him for months. It was long into the day before Jason said what had clearly been on his mind all day. “So I was thinking about what you said yesterday.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, and I agree, that Machine probably causes a lot of deaths that wouldn't have occurred had the Machine not interfered.”
“How'd you come to that decision?”
“Well, I thought about it in the case of an accident. If I drive everywhere. . .” he paused for a second to load a bin of garbage into the back of the truck, “I'm going to be constantly stressed, “ and another, “and when I'm stressed, I can't get a minute of rest at night.”
“That's pretty common.” A bag of trash broke as it landed in the back of the truck and splashed on my face. I turned and stood away from the truck for a few seconds.
“Exactly, so in turn, if I'm stressing about an accident, I'm going to be tired every day, and the more tired I am, the more I'm going to stress about that accident.” The truck had started to move before I turned back and hopped on, so as I caught up, Jason extended a hand to pull me onto the back again. Once I was up, he continued. “And eventually, I will be tired enough to make an error behind the wheel, maybe falling asleep or something like that, and it will likely kill me.”
“Yeah, sounds about right.” I was still attempting to get the taste of garbage out of my mouth as we pulled into the next neighborhood. When we started loading trash, he started up again.
“But do you figure it could happen the other way?”
“What do you mean?” The collar caught on a trash can and I stumbled for a second, but I caught myself.
“Well, let's say you get a death that isn't really an accident, say you die by an STD, the Machine doesn't say which one. You get a ton of stress relief because you feel as though you don't have to watch out for an STD except when having sex, and how often is that really?” This stopped me for a second.
“Odd choice of death.” I chuckled a bit under my breath.
“It's just an easy example, anyway, so you drop your guard a bit, getting really relaxed with most dangerous situations, but then, one night you drunkenly decide to do blood brothers with a good friend, that friend happens to have something he doesn't know about, and you catch it. Then you are dying because you weren't stressed enough, really.” He loaded in the last bin of the street and we hopped back onto the truck.
“Yeah, I guess that could happen too.”
“You seem a little bit depressed, man. You usually like the philosophical talk.”
“Yeah, I'm not so sure I'm so happy with my death anymore.” I leaned off the side of the truck to see what street we were on, it was Poplar Street. The day was looking as though it was going to be a long one.
“Honestly, if it means Alzheimer's, I wouldn't be enthralled by it.” There was a long silence after this. To be exact, there was five streets of silence after this. “If you need anything ever, just give me a call and I'll do my best to help.”
“Thanks, that means a lot.” We continued the day, talking about my mother and diseases and the Death Machine. We both decided that nothing good could come of that machine, that it just emphasized the impending feel of death. No matter how far off your death seemed, once you knew what it was, it felt as though it would happen tomorrow, and I was a clear indication of that. Finally, the street I had been waiting for had shown itself; Maple Street. It was the street that Jack always approached me on, and sure enough, about halfway down the street, there he was. The truck driver pulled to the side to give me time, it was our last street and we were a little bit ahead of schedule, so he could afford to allow me this.
His silver-gray fur wavered and refracted sunlight in a perfect varying pattern. I had no idea what breed he was, but he had a very strong build for a stray. For five minutes I sat on the curb with him, and he sat right next to me the entire time, even when Jason pulled a bit of food from the truck cab. When it was time to leave, I strapped my collar around his neck with ease, and led him over to the back of the truck. The truck shifted into drive, I could hear the transmission clunk, and from the back of the truck fell a clump of lead piping. I tried my best to avert it, but it landed directly on Jack's head, though it was a glancing blow. He wavered for a second, and then half-laid down, half-fell to the ground. I heard no words from this point on, I freaked out. All I could do was sit in the street beside Jack. He was still breathing, I figured he was just unconscious and it would be a trust issue that we would get over when he came to.
“You might want to take a step back.” Jason started in with this, but by the time he had finished, Jack had awoken, and with him, all the rage of a confused and threatened wild animal. He latched onto my throat, just hard enough to puncture the skin, but not hard enough to crush anything. I heard Jason yell something and heard his footsteps toward me, then saw him, lead pipe in hand, rushing Jack. It had already occurred to me what was about to happen, but when I tried to voice my concern, nothing but air and blood escaped my throat.
Flipping onto my side, I saw the last bit of the battle, Jack had just torn into Jason's leg, deep, and Jason responded with a blow from the lead pipe to the side of Jack's head. Both stumbled back, both were clearly done fighting. Jason made his way over to me, and asked if I was okay. The blood trail he left was larger than mine. When he caught me looking not at him, but at said trail, he looked back as well, as realized what I had only seconds before.
“I guess this is the end, huh?” I gave a very weak smile as opposed to nodding. He did his best to prop me up against the back of the truck, got my head elevated, at least, and also managed to grab a seat beside me. Once I was sitting up, the thought of Jack invaded suddenly, and I glanced at him. He had been standing bleeding from the head, and fading in strength fast. Without a warning, in his eyes there was one thing, concern. As he stumbled over to me, his eyes darted back and forth between Jason and me. He laid on the concrete beside my leg and placed his rather large head on my lap, and I could do nothing but pet him. Jason had gone limp a couple seconds prior, and I know that I am due to do the same very soon.
As the last of the blood needed to keep me conscious drained from my neck, I could think only of my mother. Her laying in that hospital bed for years, with no past, and no future; she would never remember that I was supposed to see her again, or that I even existed. Within my hand, Jack's knotted fur felt like freedom, and I watched him drift away as I, myself, did the same. This was my passing moment, and it was easy to accept.
