“Whole-health service…,” the voice proclaimed.
The fourth quadrant was filled with a white-smocked figure beneath a benevolent smile, a stethoscope draped around her neck.
George thought about his experiences with the staff so far; the tinted visors, the gloves, the automatic weapons, the camouflage flak jackets atop the black jumpsuits, the hazmat agents and hot zone treatment, the abject fear that filled him with dread. But the health care professionals from the video, in their calm, cool colors, had smiles that were more menacing than automatic weapons—manufactured smiles, velvet lips that hid a razor’s edge.
“We respect your quality of life,” the voice went on.
On the screen, quartered and repeated all along his line of sight, George saw what a cheerful place this could be, and how things could work. All you had to do was get along.
“As long as you cooperate.” The narration had changed in tone; and it made George wonder how you were supposed to know whether you were cooperating correctly or not.
“All you have to do is do your part.” Cooperation with the authorities, the doctors, the administrators, the security, and the staff was shown as the way to a happy and secure life here in Cootsland. This was the point, George realized. The Conglomerates weren’t selling the system; they were directing the Coots to buy into it.
“Cooperation is key,” the voice said, and George didn’t know what scared him more, the armed agents in the black jumpsuits, or this video.
While George watched the video, his stare transfixed, Patsy, no longer looking out the window, was transfixed on George. It hit him like a blow when he realized it had come down to this. Patsy turned away from George and looked at the buckle resting against her hip. She swatted it as if it were a bug, and the belt shot open. She rose from her seat and said in a strong voice, “Who’s got the remote?” She waited a second and said, “Let’s turn this crap off!”
The bus, which had been quiet, became completely still as everyone looked at Patsy. Then the passengers started to laugh, a nervous laughter at first, but pretty soon even the bus driver was laughing. Soon everyone was talking and there was so much chatter that George couldn’t hear the Conglomerate narrator at all anymore.
IT WAS GOOD that everybody had been able to have a laugh on their way to their new home, because once they got there, nobody felt like laughing. George had seen the glare of midday Arizona from the bus. Now he, Patsy, and the other passengers stepped out into it. The dry, hot air seared the lungs. The angle of the sun through the clear air made the light blinding. The change affected everyone as people shaded their eyes, gasped for breath, or just simply sat down and covered their heads with their arms. It took George a minute to realize his eyes were adjusting to the light. Not many of the passengers had brought sunglasses, and few, if any, had brought hats. There were no chairs to rest on, no benches to sit down upon. There was no water to drink, or to wipe away the dust from their lips. There was no shade from the sun, or break from the heat. The atmosphere was disorienting, and the lack of a place to sit was disheartening. Everyone shuffled around from foot to foot, to relieve the pressure in one at the expense of the other. Everyone seemed to be looking for something, toward the buildings in the semicircle before them, or off to the horizon, waiting for their luggage to arrive. George realized they were looking for the place they had seen in the video.
Patsy and George were next in line to enter the single-story administration building. George felt a cramp in his stomach. What if they figured out about Patsy? He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “One more hurdle,” he said, and Patsy looked at him, leaned over, and kissed him.
“Don’t worry, babe,” he said. “Stick with me and let me do the talking. This has got to be the last one of these for a while.” George suspected not one word he said was true. He realized that Patsy probably knew it too, but she had the grace not to say anything. Patsy’s mind was entering a stage where everything seemed both familiar and foreign at the same time. He realized that everything Patsy did seemed to her as if she were doing it for the first time, but also that she would know what she was supposed to do if she could only just remember it. It was at the back of her mind; it just needed a nudge.
George felt that in some ways it had been a benefit to Patsy to fall prey to this disease simultaneously with her being moved out West. Since everything now was new to Patsy, the move from Staten Island to Phoenix did not appear to overly affect her. She did have trouble understanding anything completely, and was living by her instincts, but Patsy’s instincts were solid gold still, and right now, forgetting things that happened to her as they happened to her wasn’t such a bad idea. She didn’t have time to dwell on what had befallen her and her husband, because she was too busy trying to predict what was going to happen next.
And, George realized, at this point that was his problem too.
The door to the administration building opened and a white-uniformed attendant motioned for Patsy and George to come in. They both had a wave of goose bumps as the cold of the air-conditioning enveloped them. Even though Patsy and George had the benefit of sunglasses, adjusting to the unnatural light and the shade from the sun took some time getting used to, and this added to an overall disorientation.
They were led to a desk with a pair of seats facing it. They were told to sit down. They were each given a small glass of water to drink. George thought that the water was a way of getting the interviewee to feel more at ease and to have a sense of gratitude to the interviewer. It also made the physical act of answering the questions easier. Nonetheless, George was grateful for the water, the seat, and the break from the sun.
Seated at the other side of the desk was a woman about thirty-five years of age dressed in a white pantsuit. No biohazard zoot suit but a bona fide pantsuit, but not the pastels of the health care professionals in the video. The only visor she wore was a green-tinted plastic bill that shaded her eyes from the fluorescent light overhead and was held with elastic around her head. She was facing away from Patsy and George toward the computer screen and she had the keyboard in her lap. The woman was extremely pale, especially considering she was in Arizona. The blue light coming from her computer reflected against her white skin as if her skin were a movie screen. The woman was intent upon her keyboard and monitor. She stopped to turn on a scanner and asked Patsy and George to hold out their wrists in a piece of choreography to which they had both already become accustomed. The woman barely looked at them as she asked them to state their names and Social Security numbers. George thought he’d handle it for both of them and was thinking of a way to tell this woman, at which time Patsy said, “Salter, Patricia,” and she barked out her Social Security number and date of birth.
The woman stopped with her rubber-gloved fingers poised above the board, and looked toward George. He had been so nervous for Patsy that he couldn’t remember his Social Security number. He stammered out, “G-George Salter. I mean, Salter, George,” which the woman typed in. He couldn’t think of his own Social Security number. “Isn’t the number on this thing?” George asked, holding out his wristband. Patsy said, “Oh,” and George thought she was expressing concern, but she continued with, “oh, six, oh,” and the series of numbers that he instantly recognized as his Social Security number. And I’m worried about Patsy screwing things up, George thought.
“You’re lucky you’re with this girl,” the woman said, to which George replied, “Don’t I know it!” He thought he would ask about reclaiming their possessions from back East, but before he could, the woman, still looking at her screen, said, “Not to worry. You’ll have everything you need waiting for you at your new accommodations.”
George wanted to say that wasn’t the question, but the rest of the interview went swiftly and without a problem. Most of the woman’s questions seemed to confirm that the information on the bracelet matched what the person wearing the bracelet said. George found this interesting and hopeful; maybe there were a few problems in the b
racelet operation? Or maybe folks had traded bracelets between the plane and here? And he thought with excitement of the nerve it must’ve taken to do that.
Finally they were dismissed and told to go out behind the main building and wait for a van that would pick them up and deliver them to their new home. George took Patsy by the arm as they headed out the back door.
SITTING ON A bench in the shade of a shed behind the administration building, waiting for the ride to their new accommodations, Patsy and George were alone for the first time in hours. George slumped down on the bench, his elbows on his knees, his head on his clenched fists. They hadn’t passed any cul-de-sac streets, or walkways teeming with people and energy like they had seen in the video on the bus. They had passed rows and rows of what looked like storage sheds, baking beneath the afternoon sun. George was about to say something about their stuff, when Patsy reached over and placed her hand on George’s shoulder. “We were walking along Victory Boulevard in front of Clove Lakes Park,” she said.
There must’ve been a hundred days during their life together when Patsy and George had walked through Clove Lakes, but George knew exactly the day to which Patsy was referring. “The sun had just come out after what seemed like days of rain,” she continued. “And the ground was covered in leaves like a carpet of colors my mother would have chosen, all yellow and orange. But you didn’t notice it because I had just told you that my period was late, ten days late, and I wasn’t feeling too good. God, you were so serious. As soon as I told you that I thought I was pregnant, you took my arm so that I wouldn’t slip on the leaves. And I thought, well, that wasn’t quite the reaction I was expecting, but it was a good one.”
George turned his head just enough to look at Patsy. He took a deep breath and said, “Holy—” But before he could complete the expletive, Patsy said, “And I believe we concluded that discussion of our mutual plans while waiting for a bus.”
Just then a van pulled up, the door opened, and Patsy and George got in.
THE REALITY OF the attitudes of the agents, attendants, and administrators of the retirement program did not foster care or concern for the emotional needs of the arriving “retirees,” as the video on the bus had advertised. In fact, they couldn’t have cared less. If anything, it was worse than that. Most who worked on the transport resented the arriving Coots, even though the Coots provided these people with a livelihood. The Coots also constituted a whimpering, slobbering, crying, pissing group of people they couldn’t wait to be done with. George saw that as an advantage. And that was what he learned on his first day in Cootsland, in the age of the Conglomerates.
The Coots’ Café
They had been in their new home in the Southwest for a while but they still hadn’t gotten used to it. The change in climate between Staten Island and Arizona had them dehydrated, and even with sunglasses the light was extreme. Their living unit couldn’t have been more different from their home back East. While that house would never have been called stately, it was large in comparison to the one-room unit they now called home. There was no home about this place, and Patsy certainly couldn’t save it. There was no cat, no garden, no kitchen window to look out of. There were no photographs or souvenirs of the life they had shared.
But it was the time change that affected them the most. They would wake up at five-thirty A.M., just as they had back in Staten Island—except now it was two-thirty A.M. Arizona time. Among other things, this made staying awake in the evening a problem. Come six-thirty in the evening, George could hardly keep his eyes open, or his head up. Why not drug the Coots? he thought. A sleeping subject was a less demanding subject.
But when George awoke each morning at five-thirty/two-thirty, he felt neither hungover nor stoned. He felt refreshed, renewed. Really, in fact, he felt kind of remarkable. It would take Conglomerate-approved funding to anesthetize the Coots, and that wasn’t going to happen. Besides, the Conglomerates had the heat and the camp conditions to break the Coots’ spirits and dull their will.
Not if I can help it, George thought.
A loud owl hoot was Patsy and George’s wake-up call, and George often heard the owl before he opened his eyes. He wasn’t sure if it was the owl that woke him or just his anticipation of it. George couldn’t wait to get out of bed.
Back on their first night in Arizona the owl had sounded as if it were right outside their door, but when George bolted from their bed and opened the door, it was gone and the astronomy that greeted him was more than he’d ever seen. He took a step backward into the doorway and held his breath; he didn’t even have to look up to see the night sky. The horizon was unobscured; the desert lay out in front of the open door. The heat of the day had burned the moisture from the air, making the details crisp. There was no glare from competing artificial lights. George stepped outside and stood in a blue dome.
“Hey, Patsy, get a load of this!” George called out, but Patsy didn’t budge from their bed. He was looking at a sky he had seen every day of his life, but this sky was different.
“The Dippers are there, both of them, with a whole pot of Milky Way to ladle from. Entire constellations are up there.” He could see the North Star, and he said, “If we followed that for a while, and then made a right, we’d be back in Staten Island.”
“Home” Patsy said, and started to get out of bed as George went back inside. He ran the tips of his fingers in a circular motion on Patsy’s back, and felt her pulse, fast and hard.
“It’s all right.” George said. “It’s just nighttime. Go back to sleep and I’ll wake you later. I promise, you won’t miss anything.” He wanted to get Patsy to lie down. No wonder Patsy’s confused, George thought. “Get up, Patsy. Lie down, Patsy.” George kept up the circular motion with his fingers, applying the slightest pressure on the middle of Patsy’s back. He hoped the touch of his fingers would remind his wife of who he was.
The word “home” had broken through the disease and sparked in Patsy a desire to get there. Could this discourage the disease? But the word had also provided Patsy a charge of adrenaline, and what were the ramifications of this to a seasoned heart?
Touching Patsy had always centered George, and he still could feel that warmth.
“HOME” MADE GEORGE think of their daughter, and his thoughts turned cold. Although, the last time they had spoken, she had sounded better than she had in years. There was a new man in her life, a very successful Conglomerate, and she was moving on. George had thought right then that that might mean he and Patsy were moving on as well. He knew what was coming next. She said she had no choice; all those who had reached their age had to go. He knew she had been brainwashed, like the rest of the Conglomerates, thinking this was the right thing to do. Their daughter was calling to let them know that the papers had been signed and that he and Patsy would finally get to retire out West. George thought she was buying what the Conglomerates were marketing. When she told him about her plans to discard Ximena for her own good, George was sure she had lost her soul to the Conglomerate vision. She wouldn’t listen when George attempted to argue for their granddaughter. She said she had to go, and they hadn’t heard from their daughter, Judy, since. As soon as their property transferred to the state, their daughter would get her cut. “Blood money,” George said. She hadn’t even come to say goodbye. He wondered what they had done to her to make her so hard, but, then again, everyone became hard in the age of the Conglomerates.
George thought of his granddaughters. Christine had left home as soon as she could get away from her mother; she’d become a doctor and had done well. She had been their first grandchild and had been an unusual child. Patsy and George had been crazy about her. But her sister, Ximena, they had not really gotten to know. She was withdrawn almost from the beginning, and their daughter had never brought her around to Staten Island, the way she had Christine.
But all this also made George think about how Patsy had handled their daughter when she was an infant and toddler. Patsy had had no patience for baby talk. She
had addressed their kids in a normal speaking voice. Patsy said that the children had grown accustomed to their mother’s voice for nine months in the womb; she thought it confusing to change it once they were born. Unlike George, who had cooed and gawked and spoken in a high-pitched voice whenever he saw children. George would do anything to get them to smile, and usually wound up scaring them instead. Patsy had decided that the best way for children to be normal was to act normal toward them.
If Patsy’s disease made her more like a child now, George resolved to treat Patsy as she would have treated a child—he would just speak to her in a manner with which Patsy herself was familiar. He decided he’d explain everything to her in detail as it happened. Why shouldn’t that work? It had been successful before, and Patsy might recognize the process, and that could help her.
Just then George saw the flare of a dying star, so fleeting that to notice it was almost too late, and just like that star, his comfort passed in an instant. “What exactly am I going to be explaining, anyway?” he asked the night, which buzzed and twitched.
He knew that there were creatures in the desert he was unfamiliar with, but George jumped every time he saw a lizard. The vultures, too, gave him the creeps. It was worse out there than in the movies. I don’t know what any of this stuff is. So how am I going to describe it to Patsy? George thought as he looked back at his wife. The shoulder of her nightshirt went up and down. He was glad she was asleep.
“ROSY UP THE mornin’, hon,” Patsy said a little later. Somehow she had slid over to his side of the bed, where he had fallen asleep.
“And the sun has begun to do just that!” George replied.
“I’m hungry,” Patsy said as she looked at the landscape. “I could sure go for an English muffin.”
The Age of the Conglomerates: A Novel of the Future Page 10