The Affirmation

by Christopher Priest

  I looked at Seri. “That’s nonsense!”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s not. I know you find it difficult to believe, but I’m afraid it’s extremely likely.”

  “But I’m not ill. I’ve never been ill in my life.”

  “That’s not what your medical records say. You were hospitalized when you were eight, and you were under treatment for several weeks.”

  “That was just a childhood illness. Kidney trouble, they said, but the doctors told my parents I was all right and I’ve never had any trouble since.” Again I looked at Seri, seeking reassurance, but she was staring at Lareen.

  “When you were in your early twenties, you went to your G.P. several times. Headaches.”

  “This is ridiculous! That was just a minor thing. The doctor said it was because I was working too hard. I was at university. Everybody gets headaches! Anyway, how do you know all this? Are you a doctor?”

  “No, I’m just a counsellor. If it was as minor as you say, then perhaps our computer prognosis is wrong. You can be examined if you wish. At the moment, all we have to go on is your records.”

  “Let me see that,” I said, pointing at the sheet of paper. Lareen hesitated, and for a moment I thought she was going to refuse. But then she passed it over.

  I read through it quickly. It was in detail accurate, though selectively. It listed my birth date, parents, sister, addresses, schools, medical treatment. Further on were more unexpected details. There was a list (incomplete) of my friends, places I had often visited, and, disturbingly, details of how I had voted, the tithes I had paid, the political society I joined at university, my contacts with a fringe theatre group, my connections with people who were monitoring the Covenant. There was a section on what the computer called “imbalance indications”: that I drank frequently, had friends of dubious political affiliation, was fickle with women, was given to unreasonable rages when younger, was described as “moody and introverted” by one of my tutors, was described as “only 80 per cent reliable” by a former employer, had been granted deferment of the draft on “psychological” grounds, and that for a time I had been involved with a young woman descended from Glaundian immigrants.

  “Where the hell does this stuff come from?” I said, brandishing the sheet.

  “Isn’t it accurate?”

  “Never mind that! It’s a complete distortion!”

  “But is it factually accurate?”

  “Yes…but it misses out a lot of things.”

  “We didn’t ask for these details. This is just what came out of the computer.”

  “Do they have files like this on everyone?”

  “I’ve no idea,” Lareen said. “You must ask your own government that. All we’re concerned with is your life expectancy, although this extra information can have a bearing. Have you read the medical summary?”

  “Where is it?”

  Lareen left her seat and stood beside me. She pointed with her pencil. “These figures are our codes. Don’t worry about them. This is where your life expectancy is printed.”

  The computer had printed 35.46 years.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said. “It must be a mistake.”

  “We’re not often wrong.”

  “What does the figure mean? Is that how long I have to live?”

  “That’s the age at which the computer says you are most likely to die.”

  “But what am I suffering from? I don’t feel ill!”

  Beside me, Seri took my hand. “Listen to her, Peter.”

  Lareen had returned to her seat behind the desk. “I can arrange for a medical examination, if you like.”

  “Is there something wrong with my heart? Is it something like that?”

  “The computer doesn’t say. But you can be cured here.”

  I was hardly listening. All of a sudden my body felt as if it were a mass of previously unnoticed symptoms. I remembered the numerous aches and pains I had felt: indigestion, bruises, stiff legs, a sore back after working too long, the hangovers I sometimes suffered, the headaches at university, the coughing with head colds. All seemed innocuous and explicable at the time, but now I wondered. Did they hint at something worse? I imagined clotted arteries and neoplasms and gall-stones and ruptures, lurking within me, destroying me. Yet it still had a faintly ridiculous aspect: in spite of everything I continued to feel as healthy as ever.

  I resented utterly the fact that the Lotterie had thrust this on me. I stood up, looked out of the window, and across the lawns towards the sea. I was free, under no compulsion; Seri and I could leave immediately.

  But then the realization: no matter what was wrong with me, there was a cure for it! If I took the athanasia treatment I should never again be ill, I should live forever. Illness thwarted.

  It was an exhilarating feeling, one that seemed to give me great power and freedom. I suddenly realized how inhibiting was the prospect of illness: that one was cautious with food, or wary of too little exercise, or too much, aware of the signs of advancing age, shortage of wind, not getting enough sleep, or drinking or smoking too much. I would never need worry about such things again: I could abuse my body as I wished, or ignore it. I should never weaken, never decline.

  Already, at the advanced age of twenty-nine, I had felt the first stirrings of envy of those younger than me. I saw the effortlessly agile bodies of younger men, the slender unsupported bodies of girls. They all looked so fit, as if good health were something to be taken for granted. Perhaps someone older than myself would find this amusing to contemplate, but from my point of view I had already noticed myself slowing up. After the athanasia treatment I would remain forever twenty-nine. In a few years’ time, those young adults I secretly envied would be my physical equals, yet I would have extra years of insight. And with every new generation I would acquire a greater mental stature.

  Given the jolt, the news of my life expectancy, I began to recognize that the Lotterie’s treatment was subtly different from Deloinne’s interpretation. Because I read his book at an impressionable age, Deloinne had influenced me too much. I made his ideas my own, without questioning them. Deloinne saw athanasia as an abnegation of life, yet really it was an affirmation.

  As Seri had pointed out, the coming of death brings the destruction of memory. But life is memory. As long as I am alive, as long as I wake every morning, I remember my life, and as the years pass my memory becomes enriched. Old men are wise, not by nature but by absorption and retention, and by the accumulation of sufficient memories to be able to select what is important.

  Memory is continuity too, a sense of identity and place and consequence. I am what I am because I can remember how I became it.

  Memory was the psychic force I had described to Seri: the momentum of life, driving from behind and anticipating what is to come.

  With increased life span the quantity of memory would increase, but a mind can fine-tune this into quality.

  As memory is enhanced, so is one’s perception of life.

  This is the fear of death. Because it is unconsciousness, the obliteration of all physical and mental processes, the memory dies with the body. The human mind, at pivot of past and future, vanishes with its memories. Thus, from death there is no remembering.

  The fear of dying is not just the terror of pain, the humiliation of the loss of faculties, the fall into the abyss…but the primeval fear that afterwards one might remember it.

  The act of dying is the only experience of the dead. Those who are living cannot be alive if memory includes that of the state of death.

  I was aware, beyond my new introspection, that Seri and Lareen were speaking to each other: polite exchanges and pleasantries, places for Seri to visit on the island, an hotel she might stay in. And I was also aware that a man had brought a large tray bearing breakfast, but I was not interested in food.

  Lareen’s computer print-out lay on the desk, the prediction of my life expectancy visible on the face I could see. 35.46 years…a statistical probability, n
ot really a prediction.

  A young man in his early twenties would have an expectancy of half a century. Of course, he might only live another three weeks, but the statistics were against this.

  My own expectation was said to be another six years. I could live to be ninety, but the statistics were against this too.

  However, I had no way of knowing if the figures were reliable. I looked again at the print-out, stamped with all the implacable neatness of a computer, and read again through the sundry evidence against me. It was a biased picture, saying almost nothing about me that could be construed in my favour. I was said to drink a lot, was moody, had a certain political dubiety. This was supposed to influence my general health and well-being; from this the computer had estimated my life span.

  Why had it not taken other facts into account? For instance, that I often went swimming in summer, that I enjoyed well-cooked fresh food and ate plenty of fruit, that I had given up smoking, had attended church until I was fourteen, was generous to charities, kind to animals and had blue eyes?

  They all seemed just as relevant or irrelevant to me, yet each would presumably influence the computer, and some might predicate a few extra years for me.

  I felt suspicious. These figures had been produced by an organization that sold a product. No secret was made of the fact that Lotterie-Collago was profit-making, that its principal source of revenue was the sales of its tickets, and that every healthy athanasian who emerged from the clinic was a walking advertisement for their business. It was in their interests that winners of the lottery accept the treatment, and therefore they would offer any inducement they could.

  I reserved judgement on the treatment, but I resolved that I would make a decision only after an independent medical examination. I continued to feel healthy; I was suspicious of the computer; I found athanasia a challenge.

  I turned back to the other two. They had started on the toast and cereals the man had brought. As I sat down, I saw Seri looking at me, and she knew I had changed my mind.

  15

  The clinic’s medical centre occupied one wing of the main building. Here all recipients of the athanasia treatment were given a screening before progressing further. I had never before under gone a complete medical, and found the experience in turn tiring, alarming, boring, humiliating and interesting. I was readily impressed by the array of modern diagnostic equipment, but I was intended not to understand the functions of most of it. The preliminary screening was by direct interaction with a computer; later I was placed in a machine I took to be a whole-body scanner; after further more detailed X-raying of specific parts of my body—my head, my lower back, my left forearm and my chest—I was briefly interviewed by a doctor, then told to dress and return to my chalet.

  Seri had left to find an hotel, and there was no sign of Lareen. I sat on my lied in the cabin, reflecting on the psychological factors in hospitals, in which the removal of the patient’s clothing is only the first step of many by which he is reduced to an animated slab of meat. In this condition, individuality is suppressed for the greater glory of symptoms, the former presumably interfering with the appreciation of the latter.

  I read my manuscript for a while, to remind me of who I was, but then I was interrupted by the arrival of Lareen Dobey and the man who had interviewed me, Doctor Corrob. Lareen smiled wanly at me, and went to sit in the chair by the desk.

  I stood up, sensing something.

  “Mrs Dobey tells me you are in doubt as to whether or not you will accept the treatment,” Corrob said.

  “That’s right. But I wanted to hear what you had to say.”

  “My advice is that you should accept the treatment without delay. Your life is in great danger without it.”

  I glanced at Lareen, but she was looking away. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “We have detected an anomaly in one of the main blood vessels leading to your brain. It’s called a cerebro-vascular aneurysm. It’s a weakness in the wall of the vessel, and it could burst at any time.”

  “You’re making it up!”

  “Why do you think that?” Corrob at least looked surprised.

  “You’re trying to frighten me into having the treatment.”

  Corrob said: “I’m only telling you what we’ve diagnosed. I’m retained by the Lotterie as a consultant. What I’m telling you is that you have a serious condition, which if left unattended will certainly kill you.”

  “But why has this never been found before?”

  “Perhaps you have not been examined recently. We know that when you were a child you suffered a kidney condition. Although this was dealt with at the time, it has left you with a higher than average blood pressure. You also admit to a drinking habit.”

  “Just a normal amount!” I said.

  “In your case the normal amount should be none at all, if you care for your health. You say you are a regular drinker, taking the equivalent of a bottle of wine a day. In your condition this is extremely foolish.”

  Again I looked at Lareen, and now she was watching me.

  “This is crazy!” I said to her. “I’m not ill!”

  “That isn’t really for you to decide,” Corrob said. “According to the results from the cerebral angiogram, you are a very sick man.” He stood with his hand on the door, as if anxious to leave. “Of course, the decision is yours, but my advice is that you should take the treatment immediately.”

  “Would that cure this?”

  Corrob said; “Your counsellor will explain.”

  “And there’s no danger?”

  “No…the treatment is perfectly safe.”

  “Then that settles it,” I said. “If you’re sure—”

  Corrob was holding a small file I had thought must be the case notes on a patient; now I realized it must be on me. He passed it to Lareen. “Mr Sinclair should be admitted to the athanasia unit immediately. How much time do you require for the rehabilitation profile?”

  “At least another day, perhaps two.”

  “Sinclair is to be given priority. The aneurysm is a severe one. There’s no question that we can allow an attack to happen while he’s in the clinic. If he tries to cause delays, he must be off the island tonight.”

  “I’ll clear him by this evening.”

  All this had been said as if I were not there. Corrob turned back to me.

  “You must take no solids after four this afternoon,” he said. “If you’re thirsty, you may drink water or light fruit juice. But no alcohol. Mrs Dobey will visit you in the morning, and then you’ll be admitted for the treatment. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, but I want to know—”

  “Mrs Dobey will explain what will happen.” He went through the door, and closed it quickly behind him. He left a whirling air space.

  I sat on my bed, ignoring Lareen. I accepted what the doctor had said, even though I continued to feel as well as ever. There was something about the medical manner, the way a symptom was made to be inferior to the doctor’s knowledge. I remembered visiting my G.P. a few years before, complaining of blocked sinuses. After examining me he had discovered that I had been sleeping in a centrally heated bedroom, and, worse, I had been using a proprietary brand of decongestant nose drops. Suddenly, the sinusitis was the consequence of my own misdeeds, I was to blame. I left the surgery that day feeling guilty and humbled. Now, with the departure of Corrob, I felt that I was again guilty in some way of inflicting a weakened blood vessel on myself. I had been a patient as a child, I was a drinker when an adult. For the first time in my life I felt defensive about drinking, felt the need to deny or explain or justify.

  It must have been something to do with the clinic’s own defensiveness; the staff, acutely conscious of the controversy surrounding the treatment, made the recipients a party to the system. The willing were inducted smoothly and conspiratorially; the unwilling or the reluctant were psychologically manipulated then medically intimidated.

  I wished Seri were with me, and I wondered how
long she would be gone. I wanted the chance to be a human being again: perhaps go for a walk with her, or make love, or just sit around doing nothing.

  Lareen closed the file she had been reading. “How do you feel, Peter?”

  “How do you think I feel?”

  “I’m sorry…there’s no satisfaction for me in the computer being right. If it’s any consolation, at least we can do something for you here. If you were still at home, it probably wouldn’t have been diagnosed.”

  “I can still hardly believe it.” Outside, a man was mowing the lawn; in the distance I could see a part of Collago Town, and behind it the headland by the harbour. I moved away from the window by the bed, and went to sit with Lareen. “The doctor said you would explain the treatment.”

  “For the aneurysm?”

  “Yes, and the athanasia.”

  “Tomorrow you’ll go in for conventional surgery on the diseased artery. What the surgeon will probably do is implant a temporary bypass until the artery regenerates itself. This should happen quite quickly.”

  “What do you mean by regenerate?” I said.

  “You’ll be given a number of hormonal and enzymal injections. These stimulate cell replication in parts of the body where it doesn’t normally take place, such as the brain. In other parts, the enzymes control replication, preventing malignancies and keeping your organs in good condition. After the treatment, in other words, your body will constantly renew itself.”

  “I’ve heard that I have to have a check-up every year,” I said.

  “No, but you can if you wish. What the surgeons will also do is implant a number of microprocessor monitors. These can be checked at any of the Lotterie’s offices, and if anything is going wrong you will be given advice on what to do. In some cases you can be re-admitted here.”

  “Lareen, either the treatment is permanent, or it isn’t.”

  “It’s permanent, but in a particular way. All we can do here is prevent organic decay. For instance, do you smoke?”