Steve’s shorts: Deathday…
Deathday
Copyright 2019, Steven M. Moore
Ralph Middleton, born January 7, 1997. Died January 7, 2067. He tossed the rest of the prefab death certificate on the table, sipped his synthetic coffee, and frowned. He’d simply filled in his name where appropriate in the state-recommended obituary. There was no one left to care who he was or what he had done during his lifetime anyway. The only person who could possibly care now is me, and I don’t give a shit.
He’d seen a lot in seventy years. He’d been called a millennial and as a kid protested the country’s turn to fascism that had started in 2016. During the following years, it had been like butting his head against a brick wall considering that the whole world was traveling down that doomsday road. Some historians had called it Chinese-style capitalism to make it sound better. Labels weren’t important; the erosions of people’s rights everywhere were. Some people cared about the latter back then. Now no one cares!
He looked forward to death. They were doing him a favor. Oh, he had protested against the rubber-stamp Congress’s passing of the 2035 Geriatrics Act, but now he was happy his time had come. He was fed up with human beings’ love affair with autocracy.
The Geriatrics Act was just a more pleasant name for the mass murder of elderly people who had reached age seventy. Not that he wanted to live any longer in this world gone mad.
His health had deteriorated in lock step with the environment. Jodie had died in Hurricane Harold in 2061, one of the many extreme weather events resulting from climate change. He was now a widower in terrible health unable to stand in the long lines of people waiting for inadequate medical care, unless you were a member of the ruling fascist elites. The euthanasia center would be a welcome relief.
He had spent his deathday breakfast allowance on fresh fruit and a scone. He hadn’t had that much breakfast in years, simply because he couldn’t afford such luxuries. The death of Earth’s environment meant that most of the planet’s billions lived at starvation levels—he had become used to seeing scrawny kids’ ribs and their blank, hungry eyes. Crops from the remaining arable lands were only affordable for the elites. He knew the country’s leaders always ate well, though.
When he finished, he put the dirty dishes in the sink. His water allowance wouldn’t allow him to wash them before he reported to the center. That didn’t worry him. Not today. Jodie had always been tidy and made the best use of their allowance. Jodie!
He found his mask and left his small apartment. Out on the street he looked back at the front of the drab building where the government had assigned them living quarters years ago. It looked like one of those tenement buildings he’d once seen in history books depicting life in East Germany. Just more fascists. You’d think people would have learned.
He then tossed the mask and took a deep breath of the foul, polluted air. The center was only three blocks away, conveniently close to the elderly housing units. Soon the killer drugs would be pumping into him. What did a bit of killer air matter?
***
Comments are always welcome.
Evergreen Trilogy: “Clones and Mutants.” Full Medical has clones as victims of a government conspiracy; in Evil Agenda, mutant super soldier Serena is introduced; and they team up to try to stop a mad industrialist bent on revenge against the West in No Amber Waves of Grain. These are novels as current as the day I wrote them…maybe even more so. Available where ebooks are sold.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
