by Greg Krojac
Of course, this policy only really applied if you weren’t wealthy. Money talks in any language, anywhere in the world. If you were from a wealthy family you could buy the surgery you needed. The world was full of children who had contracted serious life-threatening illnesses at a young age, only to be bailed out by their well-off parents. Those families had never had to face the heartache that the Boone family was now going through. It was a given that moneyed families would buy their way out of problems – including medical problems – just as they’d been doing for centuries.
And there was no shortage of doctors and surgeons willing to line their own pockets at the expense of others’ misfortunes. Indeed, it was a major reason why the numbers of applications for medical universities were increasing year by year. Doctors knew that they could augment their already substantial incomes by offering private, off-the-record services to those that could afford it. On the streets, the Hippocratic Oath had become widely known as the Hypocritic Oath. Doctors were still obliged to swear the Hippocratic Oath before being allowed to practice medicine, but nowadays this was a mere formality; it was lip-service. Nobody expected to have to adhere to the oath that they’d sworn, nor were they expected to do so by the system. Private health plans still existed for those that could pay the monthly instalments but these payments were now so high that medical insurance was well beyond the resources of the average citizen.
So, many people were forced to sell their prized possessions in order to find the funds to pay these medical expenses. If they’d no possessions of any real value to sell, they would be forced to call upon the services of loan companies, many of which were not officially recognised and were certainly not averse to violence if their clients didn’t keep up with repayments. The irony is that many of these unscrupulous companies were set up by small syndicates of doctors and surgeons, who gained on two counts; they lent the money – at a very high interest rate - to pay for medical services that they themselves provided, again at a high cost. It was the perfect income stream.
The Boone family wasn’t poor, but they weren’t rich either. Maurice, an accountant, didn’t earn enough to pay for private medical insurance, and even with the addition of his wife’s income as a call-centre manager, their joint annual income couldn’t sustain medical insurance as well - not if they wanted to feed and clothe their family.
Dr Stefansson closed the door to the ante-room. He made a great play of ensuring that he and Mr and Mrs Boone could not be overheard, but it was just an act. Everybody in the hospital was in on the scam. Operations needed operating theatres so hospital administration staff had to be paid off. Surgical staff were required, and they cost money. Except for the surgeon, the anaesthetist was the major expense as he or she literally held the patient’s life in their hands. One miscalculation in dosage (deliberate or not) would end a patient’s life, and the patient’s family knew this. The anaesthetist would be paid handsomely for his or her services, and payment was always required in advance. Once payment had been made, obstacles miraculously fell away and surgery could often be performed within a matter of days.
“There is an alternative to medical termination, of course. For a sum, we can organise a kidney transplant for your little girl to take place within a matter of days.”
Maurice looked directly at the doctor. He’d been expecting this.
“What kind of sum are we looking at, doctor?”
“You may want to sit down, Mr Boone.”
“I’ll stay standing thank you very much.”
“The cost of the surgery would be seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds. It’s a fair price considering the risk that I would be taking, defying the government health policy.”
The risk that Dr Stefansson would be taking was, in reality, non-existent. Blind eyes were turned all over the world to this corruption. It was accepted both by those who held positions of political power and those in corresponding positions in the medical fraternity. They all ate from the same trough. Maurice almost wished that he’d been sitting down to hear the price. Karen slumped back in her chair. They’d expected the price to be steep but seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds was far more than they could lay their hands on.
The doctor preferred that families agree to this not-so-clandestine surgery as he would receive a lot more money this way than if compulsory termination was enforced. The obligatory organ harvesting would provide some money, but this had to be split 50/50 with the team who did the actual organ removal; his time was far too valuable to spend it on such a mundane task as removing viable organs from the dead. The organs of this unfortunate child would fetch a good price on the black market (children’s organs were always in demand) but this was nothing when compared to the income that was to be earned from performing a kidney transplant.
“Seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds. Seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds. Seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds.”
Maurice kept repeating the figure to himself as if doing so would decrease the price.
“Where are we going to find seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds?”
Karen’s eyes welled up with tears again. She looked pleadingly at her husband. She knew in her heart that it would be nigh on impossible for them to raise that kind of money. They needed a miracle.
“I don’t want to lose my little girl,” she wailed. “I can’t lose another one.”
Two years before the birth of Caitlin, the Boones had suffered another tragedy. Karen had been almost nine months pregnant when she was involved in a traffic accident. A group of adolescents had disconnected a car from the automatrix, the system whereby cars communicated with each other through a system very much like the internet; cars knew where they and other cars were all the time, thus reducing accidents to almost zero. They had been racing around the roads without the compulsory GPS-guided system applied. Karen had been rushed to hospital but the doctors had found no signs of life in her womb and had had to induce labour. She’d given birth to a stillborn baby boy and so Caitlin had become even more valuable to the couple when she was born. Maurice looked at his sobbing wife and then at the doctor.
“How long have we got to decide?”
“I can give you one week, that’s one working week. Don’t forget that your daughter’s condition could worsen during that time. Today is a Wednesday, so I can give you until 8 pm on Tuesday 31st. After that, it’s compulsory termination I’m afraid.”
Maurice walked over to where Karen was sitting, her shoulders rising and falling rhythmically as she silently wept. He took her hand and helped her to her feet.
“Come on honey. Let’s go home. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
CHAPTER NINE
20:05 WEDNESDAY 25 JANUARY 2051
Maurice and Karen Boone sat facing each other across the kitchen table. Their eldest daughter, Michelle, was staying the night at her friend Sarah’s house. The Boones thought it best to discuss their options without having to worry about being distracted by Michelle. They were both looking at the forty centimetre computer screens projected vertically before them. Maurice was entering figures using a holographic keypad.
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do, Karen. The more I look at the spreadsheet the more impossible the situation seems.”
“What if we cut down on electricity? If we can somehow economise on our energy bills, maybe we can afford the repayments?”
“Our energy settings are at the lowest possible, Karen. Any savings would be a drop in the ocean. I mean, we’re already doing all we can to keep the bills down. You’re even washing the dishes by hand. The dishwasher is disconnected. Your mother would kill me if she knew I was letting her daughter wash the dishes by hand.”
“Is there anywhere else we can get a loan?”
“Remember, we’re trying to get a loan for an illegal act. It’s not as if we can ask for a loan from a bank. They’d be obliged to tell the police and we’d end up in jail. We have to
think of Michelle too. I don’t want someone else – or worse – the State raising our child. If we get a loan for this it has to be off the record. And you know as well as I do, that these bloody doctors have a stranglehold on this stuff. They prey on people like you and me to pay for their latest ocean-going yacht or yet another beautiful house on a tropical beach somewhere. I fucking hate the ONP and their fucking rules. What’s happened to compassion? What’s happened to helping each other out? My parents told me that when they believed that this was the only life we got, rich people were much more inclined to help the less advantaged. There was something called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This was a mega-rich couple who spent billions of dollars trying to reduce world poverty and improve health all over the world. And they weren’t the only ones. There were others. But since The Revelation, the ONP have got their greasy little claws into everywhere and any research is only done to help the rich. The rich hang onto their money in the hope that they can use it in their next life. We regular people, the so-called middle class and the poor can just go fuck ourselves as far as they’re concerned. The NHS was stretched but it did its best to help anybody. Yes, anybody! Now it’s just another way for the rich to get richer – at our expense. In the old days, doctors would have done everything possible to save Caitlin. Although cost was still an issue, they would try to find ways to save people. Nowadays they hide behind the rules, with their hands out, expecting people to line their pockets with gold. If you can’t pay, you die. It’s as simple as that. If they had their way they’d give this ultimatum to everybody who is ill or injured. It’s only because society needs healthy workers in order to function that they don’t apply the termination criteria to everyone. Fucking New Perfectibilists. The world was pretty fucked up before The Revelation, but it’s way worse now. No wonder self-terminations – no, I’m going to call them what they are – suicides have become common-place now. It’s like termination centres are on every bloody street corner. At least that’s how it seems. My dad told me that in the old days you couldn’t walk two minutes without seeing a women’s hairdressers. Then it was private medical clinics. Now it’s these bloody suicide centres. They don’t even have the guts to put the proper name on the doors. It’s like saying self-termination takes the edge off the reality.”
This wasn’t just a political diatribe, but an outpouring of frustration and anger at a system that held the life of a six-year-old girl so cheaply. He could see the look of concern on Karen’s face.
“Don’t worry love, I set the Anti-Bug Sweeper to seek and replace at five-millisecond intervals. You’re the only one who can hear me. The last thing I want is that I get dragged off during the night and disappear. If that were to happen we’d never be able to save our little girl”
The ABS was a smart gadget that swept the home environment looking for listening devices planted by the government – an occurrence more common than one might think. When it found one it would digitally replace the offending bug with one of its own devices that broadcast pre-recorded innocuous conversations, so all the person who was listening would hear would be routine conversations. As well as sweeping the house for listening devices it would change its own electronic signature at the same rate, making it extremely difficult for someone other than the homeowner to locate. It was very expensive and could only be bought on the black market but it was a godsend to Maurice as he hid his true feelings well when outside the house but when in the comfort of his own home, he was prone to display his true contempt for the government. He looked at the figures before him on the display screen.
“If we borrowed seven hundred and eighty-three thousand pounds over ten years that would mean monthly repayments, at a fixed rate of interest, of over fifteen thousand pounds a month.”
“What’s that in total, Maurice?”
“You may need to sit down for this.”
Karen tried to prepare herself for the worst.”
“That bad?”
Maurice nodded.
“Around one million eight hundred thousand pounds.”
That number was even higher than Karen had imagined.
“Is there any other way?”
“Well, even if Stefansson had a heart – which I don’t believe he has – and lowered the interest rate, the payments would still be about twelve and a half thousand pounds per month. Both of those figures are over ten years.”
“What if we took a loan out over a longer period? We’re both in our mid-thirties. Maybe over twenty-five years?”
“OK….. Let’s see what happens if I change the loan period to three hundred months. Just a few seconds. Thirteen thousand per month at 20% and ten thousand at 15%.”
Karen waited anxiously. The response wasn’t what she’d hoped to hear.
“We’re still screwed, aren’t we?”
Selling the house wasn’t even an option. Once in power, the government had decided to reduce everybody’s salary by fifty percent. Of course, the recession had been orchestrated by the Illuminati, and the various world governments’ ONP responses had been at their behest. To reduce the inevitable protests the government had paid off everybody’s home mortgages and those who didn’t already own a home were given very basic living accommodation. Most people were initially better off financially, no longer losing a large percentage of their salary to home repayments but this was short-lived. As prices rose, salary levels fell behind. But a clause had been inserted in the new agreement with the government that homes could not be sold. They could be passed on to sons and daughters when the parents died but selling a home to raise funds was prohibited. Nobody had found a loophole in this deal to date, although many had tried.
Maurice wasn’t prepared to see his daughter suffer, or much worse, die. He was just as certain that he didn’t want his wife to suffer the loss of another child. Borrowing the money was a non-starter. He could see only one alternative.
But he couldn’t tell Karen.
CHAPTER TEN
21:10 WEDNESDAY 25 JANUARY 2051
Nathan Smith was tired. He wasn’t tired of life, but he was tired of his body. His knees creaked and clicked whenever he stood up. His fingers were visibly stiffening as arthritis took its steady toll and he hadn’t had a full night’s uninterrupted sleep for several years. Nathan usually chose to die in his eighties, unless he became afflicted with a debilitating illness, when he would bring forward the date of his death. He fully expected to extend this to ninety years, maybe even one hundred years in the near future. That is, unless his research projects were successful
He was looking forward to the day when souls could be directed to specific new bodies. It was a real nuisance leaving this to chance. Several of his previous lives had started in less than perfect circumstances but he’d always managed to find his way back to The Order. The most difficult journey had been when he’d been born and abandoned in the middle of a field in India, an unwanted girl. Fortunately, another young woman had found him and taken pity on him. A British cavalry officer had subsequently fallen in love with her, had accepted her adopted daughter, and taken them both back to England with him. If this officer hadn’t been so strong of character and been able to overcome the social disdain with which 19th century London society looked upon him, Nathan’s ability to control The Order may have broken irrevocably.
He went downstairs to the basement of the house, to a room that was always kept locked. Only he possessed the key to this room. The lock was a little stiff but not too difficult for him to unlock. The room was full of his favourite moments from this most recent life; mostly souvenirs from distant travels. He walked over to a reclining couch, lay down and spoke.
“I’d like to see highlights of my trip to India.”
The room had a domed ceiling which was actually a giant extremely high definition LED screen. It burst into life and began showing Nathan’s visit to the Taj Mahal. Holidays were far easier to record now, you just needed a pair of special glasses and the whole holiday experience could be rec
orded as you went about your business. They looked like regular sunglasses to the casual bystander but one of the arms contained 16 petabytes of memory and the other contained a high-quality sound recording system. You could playback directly through the glasses but most people preferred to download their experiences directly to their home entertainment systems via Wi-Fi. Some people liked to record their entire lives in this way and had drawers full of memory cards. They used to say that when you die your life flashes past your eyes. That was now known to be untrue, but this technology provided the next best thing.
Self-termination had advanced in leaps and bounds too. Nathan thought back to the days when only the more primitive methods were available. He’d hanged himself. He’d slit his wrists once but, to be honest, he didn’t like the mess that it made. He didn’t know how Thomas had found the willpower to walk in front of that lorry in 1965, when he’d been ten-year-old Simon, Nathan much preferred the modern method; by lethal injection. Needles were a thing of the past, so there would be absolutely no pain whatsoever. The soon-to-be-departed can administer the dose themselves, or a member of medical staff can do so.