Red Pills

A short story

Color me disappointed. The alarm clock has been ringing beside my head for possibly an hour now, and I’m still in bed, staring at the ceiling. In this day and age, I suppose it’s not really that special to wake up and know that this is the last day of your life- but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t scare the heck out of me. Maybe that’s why I can’t get these old bones to respond when I try to convince myself that what I want to do now is get up, walk towards the toilet and get a shower.

By the time I finally gather the courage to turn off the alarm clock at the very least, I also gather the courage to look at the meter right beside it. Red, digital numbers, almost mistakable for the clock itself if it weren’t smaller, under the current time blink furiously as though warning me that ‘twelve hours and twenty three minutes’ is still enough time to run over to the hospital and demand my supply of red pills.

With the money I have left in the bank, I can add at least ten more years to that meter, and still have enough money to live comfortably for at least three before I have to go back to looking for a job. As long as I keep myself on the blue pills (which I would still be able to afford continuously, according to that government person who came around last week who was kind enough to want to do the calculations for me), my body would remain healthy enough even until the ten years expires, assuming I haven’t saved money by then to add on another ten. (Which would be my last, he also cordially reminded me. Non-government workers can only add a maximum of twenty years to their total lifespan)

Yeah, I could do all that, I remind myself as I finally sit up in the darkness, looking at the traces of faint traces of sunlight dancing along the floor, filtered by the thick, red curtains that I never open because I still can’t adjust to the idea of seeing flying cars zoom past every few seconds, and because I’m altophobic- I’m not exactly living on the executive platforms that stand up to 200 storeys above ground, but believe me when I say the 30th floor down here is still bad enough for me. Which is why Penny is the only one who steps out onto the balcony to dry the laundry for me.

The clock reminds me that Penny will be here in about half an hour. She’ll probably try to convince me to take up the government’s offer again, and when that fails she’ll settle for spending my last few hours on earth with me. She’s a good kid, the kind that any parent would be proud of. Hopefully the money that I leave her she’ll have the sense to use to get into college instead of waiting tables all her life at the diner on the floor below.

The knock on my bedroom door makes me jump with surprise. Have the reporters gone as far as breaking into my house?

“Mr. Burton? I got breakfast ready!”

I guess Penny came in early today, probably noticing that I must have gotten up when the sound of the alarm clock died.

“Thank you, Penny. I’ll come out in a minute,” I tell her before I start making my way for the bathroom.

-

Breakfast was pancakes and maple syrup. Maybe I should be more specific and say, ‘My last breakfast ever was pancakes and maple syrup’. Not exactly my favorite, but I planned to live out today like any normal day anyway. Most people who wake up on their last day either commit themselves to depression, crying alone or with their loved ones, or settle for having the best day that they possibly can- eating all their favorite foods, going to all their favorite places, that sort of thing. I don’t know why I haven’t arranged for that sort of thing.

Maybe it’s because of the reporters who have been trailing me for the last few weeks. Even if I had a special place to go to, I’m not going to give those bastards outside the satisfaction of writing an article titled ‘The last day in the life of the man who decided to die’, where they’ll cover everything from what I ate to what I wore. Funny how I used to wonder what being famous would be like when I was a kid. Of course, being famous for being a rock star isn’t the same as being famous for being controversial for being the only person in society who hasn’t signed up for getting any red pills at all- settling for the very lifespan God gave to him.

Penny stares at me from across the table with a look that tells me she’s formulating some kind of argument that will get me to cave in and just take the damn pills. I smile weakly in return and point towards the pictures on the fireplace which should remind her why I chose this kind of an ending for myself. It’s a story I don’t feel like telling her again.

“After today you should start spending time with men your age, Penny,” I say calmly. “You’re going to be 20 next weekend. Stop this weird obsession you have with farts above 80.”

It’s a joke that sputters and dies in silence.

“Farts above 80 haven’t tried to force themselves on to me,” Penny finally answers from across the table.

“Not that I couldn’t,” I reply darkly. “You’re just lucky that I’m not that kind of person.” And by ‘that kind of person’, I’m not just talking about rapists, I’m talking about what the red and blue pills have done to society. Seeing the fact that you can be 80 and have a body as fit and as healthy as someone who’s not a day above fifty, ‘icky’ marriages, as Penny put it, tend to happen from time to time. And I guess they’re made all the more ickier seeing that in my time, you could chalk it up to the young women waiting for the older man to bite the dust so they can inherit a fortune. Seeing that those old bastards can live longer now, some dare to call it actual ‘love.’ The sight of old men holding hands with girls below 30 is not something I’m going to miss.

“I can handle myself,” Penny assures me. And I believe her. If only because after the first time it happened to her, she bought herself a gun that she doesn’t go anywhere without.

Once I’m done eating, Penny automatically gets up and carries the dishes to the sink. “What do you want to do today?” she asks as she turns on the tap. “Thought of visiting Martha’s grave?”

“No,” I tell her. “Reporters.”

“I didn’t see anyone when I came in,” Penny tells me.

“Doesn’t mean that they’re not there.”

“What’s wrong with talking to them, anyway?” Penny asks. “Apart from missing the opportunity of leaving one of the biggest questions in the city unanswered, ‘Why does he want to die?’”

“I just don’t feel like it, that’s all,” I answer.

“Well your supporters will be disappointed,” Penny said, gesturing towards the stack of envelopes and postcards on the coffee table. “Though your ‘cult’ will probably not like finding out that your reason for dieing isn’t because for your love of ‘God’.”

I cringe when Penny reminds me of those idiots. I’m not dead yet, they haven’t even spoken to me (though God knows they have tried), and I’m already their poster boy for their ‘Extending your life is blasphemous’ campaign. It’s one of the reasons why the government has been trying so hard to get me on the program. The unwanted media exposure has also gotten a bunch of people onto the bandwagon as well. Hell if I care. It’s not like I asked them to come along.

I can’t imagine how it happened. Maybe someone at the ministry who keeps tabs on every citizen’s lifespan noticed mine while he or she was randomly browsing through the database, found 83 and odd age to be dying at, and called up someone else to check and confirm that I hadn’t taken my red pills. The only person since the program had been introduced to actually refuse it.

The next hour passes by in a thankfully uneventful manner. The television (there’s a new name for it now. I just can’t be bothered to remember it) has nothing interesting on it as usual, and yet Penny and I sit on the couch facing it as though waiting for something exciting to happen. Like me breaking down and suddenly wanting to live, or to confess some sin which will explain the ‘real’ reason why I want death.

While we are bored, the boredom is, however, mercifully distracting. Distracting enough that I toy with the idea of finishing that novel I gave up on. Reality will eventually remind me that unless I take those pills, however, it would be a pointless endeavor. Maybe someone will discover it and publish those fragments anyway. And it will sell because people will think it involves death since my name would be on the cover. Oh well. They’ll be disappointed to find out that it’s just another love story.

“But then again, every story is, at its center, just another love story,” I can remember Martha telling me once.

Now that my thoughts have brought me to her once, for some reason she becomes all there is. And I remember. All those times when we were younger, waking up in bed together. Her scent, the feel of her smooth, bare skin under the blanket, the way she’d softly wake me up. Her voice always a welcome sound in comparison to that blasted alarm clock I’ve had to get used to in her absence.

I look at Penny again, who seems to be more enraptured with what’s on television than I am, and I remember her suggestion to visit Martha. Maybe I should. Though my mind tries to justify not doing so by telling me I’ll get to see her later anyway, in a bit more than sixteen hours, another part of me reminds me of the fact that there is a very big chance that I won’t see her.

Because I’ll be going somewhere else.

“I want to go see Martha,” I say suddenly.

Penny looks at me with what appears to be surprise at first. It doesn’t take long for her to mask it and make it look like it was what she had been waiting for all along.

“But you said-

“Let them follow me,” I sigh. “I don’t care anymore.”

-

Martha’s grave is a good distance out of the city, past the walls where the urban development is to the surprisingly lush, green hills where the skies are actually blue instead of gray and wrapped in smoke. Penny is in the driver’s seat of the red car I usually drive myself, keeping silent as old songs play on the radio. The graveyard was near a small town. Pretty much all graveyards are outside the city these days, seeing that there’s hardly any land space in the city that hasn’t been bought by corporate companies to build their skyscrapers. Come to think of it, even the ones that do exist are so relatively few in number in comparison to the number of people that die every day. Cremation is the ‘in-thing’ now. Almost no one believes in God enough to see how it could be tragedy for people to get rid of the ‘dead weight’ you leave behind.

I wouldn’t blame them. Now that they’ve pretty much broken God’s rule that all living things must die, what reason would they have to believe anymore?

Penny waits in the car as I cross the cemetery alone. The oak trees around which the featureless headstones all surround remind me that it is autumn- a fact you’d almost never notice in the city, what with no red leaves to watch fall. They crunch pleasantly under my feet as I approach Martha’s grave, sectioned away on a part of the cemetery dedicated solely to people who did not survive the Government’s first cryostasis project. Looking back, I have never once been able to quite figure out why, back then I had been so eager to volunteer for it, taking Martha with me. I guess the prospect of being asleep throughout the war, locked away safely from where the fighting was was too good to pass down.

Maybe we would have been happier if we’d slit our wrists and died together in a bomb shelter, hiding from Chinese bombers.

Yes I’ve gone through my period of self-blame. Back when they first thawed me out, it was just too scary for me. This dystopic, modern society which has weird, technological answers to everything is not a world where I belong in. It would have been easier for me to deal with if Martha had survived the process with me. Out of the 10,000 men and women who were originally put to sleep, I am one of the 98 who woke up one hundred years later.

And I am one of the 43 who are still alive today. The rest all having either committed suicide or having suffered side effects from the freezing process. I am the first of them to die a natural death today. The only one among them, besides, who has refused the red pills.

Does that make you proud of me, Martha? I wonder. The keeper has tended to her grave quite well. Her marble headstone still looks as polished as the day I saw it put there. I know that it is quite commonplace for people to talk to the dead, staring down at their graveyards the way I am doing now the same way as though you were looking at their faces, and they were looking back, listening. Yet somehow with Martha I can’t say anything. I just stare. And I know she’s looking back.

I just can’t tell if she’s smiling, crying, or glaring.

I’d like to imagine that it’s the contented kind of silence that we used to have. The kind where we sit together in the living room and just hold hands, not really ever paying attention to what’s happening on the news. Let the whole world fall apart, I used to think, just so long as I got to keep her hand right there in mine.

And yet, here I am. And there she is. So near, yet so far.

The truth is that I came here to tell you something, Martha. I want it off my conscience before I go to where it is I deserve to go. And now that you’re there, I wonder if you don’t already know. If you do, then you probably hate me already. If you don’t, then you need to know this so you can hate me like I truly deserve it, and stop waiting.

My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of crunching leaves behind me.

I turn around and see a familiar face standing on the footpath, not too far from where I stand, a defeated look on his face now that he knows I have spotted him. His long, brown trench coat billows in the wind, his raised hands slowly lowering the camera he had in front of him. My eyes meet his, and I step back from Martha’s grave.

Some other time, perhaps, Martha. I cannot do it now. Perhaps not ever.

I walk back onto the footpath, and just keep on walking past him without looking at him again. He stares on ahead in his direction. I stare on in mine. The unspoken feelings loom in the air are charged with tension. It’s like he knows that if he opened his mouth, I would have throttled him there and then. But he says nothing. I guess some people can learn some things after all. After fifteen times of refusing him an interview at my doorstep, he’s finally stopped asking.

A sudden thought occurs to me as I approach Penny’s car- what if he knew? What if that was the reason he didn’t open his mouth? What if he had only been there to take a picture of me to accompany the article he’d print the next day? I dismiss the thought almost immediately as Penny greets me.

I’ve heard of reporters who go all the way in to dig up a scoop. To dig up my story, he would have had to raise the dead.

“Is there anywhere else you want to go?” Penny asks as I buckle the seat belt. I grunt a simple ‘no’. Quite frankly, there really isn’t. One of the reasons I want out is that I’ve grown to resent this world I live in. Sure it’s all modern, and has technological answers to everything. It’s just that somehow I can’t shake this feeling of not belonging here. Any part of here. The cities are too polluted. The villages and towns outside are too green. It’s like the world has lost its last shred of normalcy since I was last awake in tank filling with icy cold water.

“How about Andy?” she asks suddenly.

It’s a question that makes my heart almost stop. I thought I’d told her not to bring him up. Ever.

Somehow I manage to not show my fear or anger of having being confronted by the name. The sorrow is too overcoming. The image of the smiling face of a five year old boy with red hair and a pale, freckled cheeks appears in my mind. It’s the same faded photograph I keep in my wallet- one of the few items that were salvaged with me from my era. Martha had chosen a diary, which, like her, were lost by the time I woke up again in this nightmare.

“Well, what about Andy?” I ask.

“He’s your son, right?” Penny asks. “Maybe you’d be able to find his graveyard somewhere?”

“I doubt it. He died before I even went into stasis. There’s not even dust left from my time period. How could I expect a simple headstone to survive into this time period?” I sigh. Oh how I wish he did have a physical resting place in this world for me to visit. My crimes to him are greater still.

I blink back tears as the dam of memories is broken by that mere first image. Suddenly I see him running up the driveway towards me with outstretched hands. I remember his laughter, powerful, infectious. I remember the scent of his hair when he sits in my lap. The songs he sings with me by the fireplace. The books I used to lend him when he got older. The scent of chlorine in the air on days when we go to the swimming pool. The way he said ‘Thank you’ whenever I bought him candy or ice cream.

He was such a perfect kid.

“Just…just take me home,” I manage to mutter under my breath. Penny takes it as a cue to shut up and drive, something I’m grateful for.

She breaks the silence as we draw nearer to the city with an apology for bringing him up. I tell her its okay.

I would have thought of him before the end anyway.

Which, by the way, is now only seven hours away.

-

To be honest I’m not exactly a religious person. It’s funny because I somehow find myself believing in an afterlife. Perhaps to satisfy my need to believe that in the end, you get what you truly deserve. Perhaps it’s because I would like to believe that Martha got to that white, bright light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, so she can be treated like the queen she truly is. Perhaps also because I feel that it will give me a chance to burn and possibly atone for what I’ve done.

The youthful-looking man who sits across the coffee table from me in my living room would like to believe that this grave atrocity that I had committed must have been murder. Matthew does not know that his occasional visits to my apartment are not so much appreciated as they are tolerated. To the casual observer, or, more precisely, Penny, who was sitting beside me, the two of us couldn’t be more different. Apart from the fact that we were both survivors from the same stasis period.

“I am going to miss you, you old goat,” he says with a chuckle as he takes a sip from his coffee. Black. I know he hates it that way, and he usually says it, but he has that glint in his eyes that some of the other people I meet give me- the look of pity that warns you in advance that they’re going to be nicer to you than you deserve.

The joke is, of course, that he is older than me by ten years. He has however taken to the comforts this day and age offers more readily than I ever have. Being a writer back in my time period (couldn’t have been that great. I really haven’t heard of him, despite being the avid reader that I am), he cashed in here and wrote about his experiences before the Great War, as today’s people refer to it- and how things really were back then. Thanks to that bestseller (people today have poor taste, I’m afraid. Another reason I’m exiting stage left earlier than I could), Matthew has another seventy years to live, and can afford to look like a thirty-year old for as long as he wants.

He has a wife, like me, who went into the program with him. She was luckier than Martha, though, and now lives alongside her husband steadfastly, now that he’s bringing home money. Matthew’s fame has even brought him two other women. Not being bound by much religion either, he lets them live in his penthouse as well. Playing host to parties (and sometimes orgies) that I always ‘forget’ to attend. Such practices are not frowned upon in this day and age. Homosexuality, multiple lifelong partners, promiscuity, it’s all free now. One of the things I never really joined in enjoying. Not because the thought of some of these deeds do not excite me at all. I just feel like I don’t deserve it.

“Your cult leader didn’t seem too happy that he wasn’t let in,” Matthew continues. There is now a crowd outside the building downstairs and at the rooftop parking lot. I haven’t gone out to see for myself, but Penny and Matthew, the only other people I have allowed into my apartment tell me that it’s quite bad. The government people have warned me about this, and as promised, have left a squad of riot officers to prevent things from going chaotic. That, and at the same time I get the bonus of ensuring that I get to choose who gets to watch me die.

Because there’s seriously nothing more annoying than a crowd of idiots who think they’re your best pals simply because you committed to an act that inspired them to believe you were some kind of messiah.

Oh, how would they react if they found out my true religious convictions!

You may wonder, though, why I would let Matthew in now if, as I said before, I only ‘tolerate’ him.

The answer is simply because there’s not many people on the list of people I talk to. He seems to be friendly with Penny, thankfully in what appears to be a friendship with no ulterior motives on his part. And that’s enough for me. Because I don’t want to leave with the thought of Penny, alone with my dead body to manage for herself.

There are a few quick taps on the door, which draws the attention of everyone in the room. Without even waiting for my permission, the door opens and in steps this man I have never seen before in my whole life.

I find myself standing up immediately. The fact that he reached my front door to begin with shows that he has somehow gotten past, or was somehow let past the officers. The fancy black suit and tie he wears, and his neatly combed red hair makes it almost immediately apparent that he’s with the government. The same as the ones I’ve dealt with before.

Only he looks a lot less mechanical than the ones I’ve dealt with so far. There is this confident, knowing smile on his face as he enters the room. He first nods towards me, before glancing towards Matthew.

“Hello, all. I would like to ask for your cooperation and leave me and Mr. Burton alone for a few minutes,” the man says, turning to look at Penny to indicate that he meant her too.

Strange. They’ve never sent Penny away before.

My two guests know better than to argue, and do as they are told. Penny glances at me as she is leaving the room. Perhaps, like me, she feels that slight tinge of suspicion that something isn’t right. But she leaves anyway, powerless as she is to resist a direct order from this man, what with more federal agents in the hallway.

“Mr. Burton,” the red-haired government man says, sitting across from me without asking for permission. “I’m here as our last attempt to get you to take your dose of red pills.”

I can’t help but groan with frustration. Even the bloody reporters knew when to quit. Why can’t these people just understand that nothing can change my mind? “I’m sorry,” I say to him. “You can try telling me that I have inspired people in a bad way to turn down a shot at longevity. Or you can try saying the cult outside the door are about to do insane thing and cause innocent people to get hurt. I’ve heard it all before. There’s nothing you can do to impress me.”

Government Man chuckles. “Well you may have heard everything, Mr. Burton. But this time we’re here with a bargaining chip.”

“You’ve colleagues have tried offering me money before,” I pointed out. “What could you possibly have that could be of interest to-

And then I see the boy who is being ushered into my room by two officers from the hallway.

“Andy?”

For the longest while, I thought that my meter was malfunctional, and that I was about to die in the next twenty seconds, thus implying that this vision walking towards me was him coming to greet me. Down to the last detail, he looks exactly the same as he does in the photograph I keep of him. The same colored hair, same way of combing it, same freckles where they should be, everything.

A chill runs up my spine.

It’s as though five-year old Andy traveled to the future from the past to meet me.

“Andy Marshall,” Government Man announces, drawing the boy to himself and letting him sit beside me. The boy looks at me curiously, but manages a smile. The look on his face seems to give off the impression that he does not know what is happening. What is being said.

“This is Andy Marshall, Mr. Burton. The boy who lived across the street from you where you and your wife used to live before the war,” Government Man says.

But how?

“Andy Marshall is dead,” I reply. “And what is the significance of-

-Oh I think you know why I brought him” Government Man sneers. “And we’re not saying that he didn’t die. The files we keep confirm that. What you see before you is a perfect clone, made from our DNA bank. He hasn’t been taught much yet, but he has the brain of a normal human, and thus should be able to learn given time.”

My eyes widen. Not just with surprise, but with horror. The way Government Man sneers, it makes me wonder, what if-?

I look at the little boy, and he distracts me from my train of thought. He looks at me, and we make eye contact. My eyes trail all over his body, as though confirming again that this vision before me was real. He was more than real. He was perfect.

“And you can have him, of course. To do as you please. The Government will leave you alone as long as you don’t let your…hobbies known to public. We won’t be able to help you then. Pedophilia still gets the angry parents running with pitchforks and torches,” Government Man explains.

I clench my fist tightly. How could this man use that word so freely? How could he imply that I am actually capable of what he is excusing me of?

The answer, of course, is that he is right.

“So, Mr. Burton. You can keep him, and in return, all we ask of you is to take your red pills,” Government Man says, laying down the deal I have seen coming since he entered the room. Not surprisingly, there is a small bottle in the pockets of his coat, filled with the red pills he had been talking about- red oval capsules with a black stripe down the middle. He sets them on the coffee table between us, then looks at me, waiting for me to pick it up.

“What…what happens if I still don’t accept?” I ask, somehow finding the strength to hold my ground.

“Then you just die,” Government Man shrugs. “And perhaps we’ll send little Andy here off to an orphanage. Would you rather have that?”

“He’s not really Andy,” I reply. I don’t know why I’m trying so hard to appear stubborn and unconvinced. Could it be because I don’t want to look weak by backing out of something I committed to? What would I have to lose by just taking the offer right in front of me? I know I want it. Deep down. Just to have my second chance with him. To have raise him as if he were my own.

That, and to have him in my bed.

“True,” Government Man concedes. “But what does it matter who he is inside? He’s young. He’ll learn anything you want him to. Won’t you, boy? Go sit beside your new father.”

It’s a ploy that is well played. Andy gets up and walks over to sit beside me. He looks up at me, nervously, and I feel like I could melt, right there and then. He is so beautiful. So perfect. Exactly the way I have dreamt of him all these years. He sees my uncertainty and somehow manages to smile back, putting his hand on mine. His skin feels warm to the touch. Soft. Smooth. A fire burns in my pants as my mind immediately flashes with images of the things I want to do to him.

I look up at the pictures of Martha on the wall.

Is she watching now, I wonder? Could she be screaming for me not to take this offer? That I should send this boy away, and accept my death? I can only wonder. I love her. I love her so much that every part of me feels like it’s about to be torn in two. Had I not just visited her grave earlier this morning as a sign of acceptance? If I did this, I would have to go back and explain why I chose to do what I chose to do.

Perhaps this would be easier on me if I resolved to not repeat my mistakes. I can admire the boy’s beauty from afar instead of worshipping it up close, physically. If I raise him to be a good person, would it absolve me of my sin? Would it mean I get to see Martha when I die?

“Why are you crying?” the boy asks me. And his question makes me realize that I am crying.

“Hug your father, Andy. He’s just happy to see you,” the man across the coffee table says. He’s almost not in this room now. Inconsequential. Irrelevant. In this small universe, there is only me, and Andy.

He climbs onto my lap, and does as he is told.

A rush of white floods my vision. It is too much to take in. His small arms around my neck. His breathing on my shoulder. The scent of him flooding my nostrils. My resolve turns to water as I reach forward, with him still hugging me, for the bottle of pills.

Even if I did die today, I would never be able to see Martha again. So what’s the point?

Here, I have a chance to some good for once.

Or repeat a sin long past.

I do not look at Government Man’s face. I don’t want to see that smug, triumphant grin. Carefully, I lift Andy up. An effort that causes my back some degree of pain. Perhaps I should stop by the hospital tomorrow and get some blue pills. In the meantime, I carry Andy into my bedroom.

The door closes quietly behind me.