by Greg Dragon
“Yes, I guess anything is possible. But since he told me of his latest desire to get rich quickly so he can at last be free of his mother and me, I have done a little research. About 120,000 new books a day are published worldwide. Only a tiny fraction of them involve the use of a traditional publisher. The rest are published by the author.”
“Yeah. Once they let the genie of self-publishing out of the bottle back at the turn of the century, there was no going back to writers having to get an agent, who got them a publisher.”
“But much less than one percent of self-published books sell over fifty copies. Can your ghost writing skills improve my son’s chances?”
Tim choked on a piece of prawn. Bud relaxed when the morsel ended up in his guest’s napkin and not on his mother’s silk embroidered heirloom tablecloth from the eighteenth century. “Excuse me. I promise to do my best work.”
“Like you did on this book?” Chan pulled a paperback from its hiding place under the table.
Tim gulped. “Showdown in Hong Kong? I thought it was only available from computer subscription services that include old books.”
“My friend at the bookstore found me this copy. It took him a while to track down something you had ghostwritten. Luckily, the alleged author of Showdown in Hong Kong thanked you as an advisor in her acknowledgements.”
“Dad only reads hardbacks and paperbacks.” Bud cringed as his father opened the book.
“Here is a passage I marked: ‘Tired from his blood lust frenzy of killing half of the Dragon Master’s gang, Reg settled onto his bed and wondered if any of Hong Kong’s whores could be trusted any longer. Mai-Ling had betrayed him.’”
Tim blushed. “I’m afraid the author rewrote much of what I wrote for her original manuscript. She said it needed more violence and sex. I couldn’t afford to play the starving writer with a wife and kid and another kid on the way so I took the job.”
“Because ghost writing pays extremely well?”
“Sometimes.”
“You see, I have agreed to underwrite my son’s adventures one last time. So I will be the one paying you.”
Tim turned to Bud, who pretended to study his food.
“And what about libel if Bud’s subjects object to what he and you write about them? Are you sued as well?”
“I’m afraid so,” Tim said. “Most of the recent court cases have left everyone on the hook. You name it, the author, editor, publisher. Sometimes they even try to go after the proofreader.”
“So what is your strategy for avoiding libel?”
“Well, my Libel and the Law prof in college taught us the DIPPER Rule: defamation, identification, and publication equal libel. To guard against it, use a publisher, editor, and redaction to eliminate any libel from the manuscript before it gets published.”
“Redaction?”
“In questionable cases, it’s smart to run the manuscript by the people being written about and give them a chance to clarify or rebut what is being published.”
“I see. But libel remains my greatest concern.”
My bill to you would be my greatest concern if I were in your shoes, Tim thought.
After the meal ended, Chan led Tim outside for the final test of his guest. Half his backyard contained dwarf fruit trees, apple, orange, lemon, fig, cherry, walnut, avocado, and pistachio. Their size came from Chan’s grandfather growing the trees’ forebears in containers and teaching his grandson how to one day plant the smallest specimens in the ground. A pond’s koi, perch, and goldfish swam to their master.
Chan pulled two containers from the beam of an overhead trellis and handed one to Tim.
“I hope you don’t mind my many questions.”
“No.” Tim stared at the box of dried worms, ants, crickets, grasshoppers, flies, and moths. “I’d probably do the same if I were in your position.”
The largest fish crowded closest to Chan and devoured every dried insect tossed onto the water while the smaller fish darted around the edges of the feeding frenzy, fearful of offending the larger ones enough to be eaten alive. After a few minutes, Tim walked onto the ornate hand carved bridge over the pond’s middle and called out to the hungriest fish.
“Hey, small fry. Come over here.” When Tim dumped half of his container into the water, a school of the smallest fish swam to the floating meal.
Bud excused himself. “I need to check on Mrs. Kleindiest next door.” He exited through a side gate.
“I hope you can help tutor my son,” Chan shook his head.
“I’ll teach him all I know about writing, sir.”
“You and I both know there is very little, if any, chance that a traditional publisher will publish such a book. I even checked with a friend of mine in the business. She said there is a huge market for predictions for the year 2200. There’s a lot of doom and gloom being forecast.”
“I know. Listen, if you think this is wrong for him, I’ll tell Bud I can’t do it.” Tim thought of his own children’s idealism while he calculated whether someone who could afford top of the line food for his fish would also be willing to write a check for his time and services rendered so far.
“No. Bud needs to get this out of his system for good. Then he can settle down in the life I have prepared for him.” He shook Tim’s hand. “Besides, I know now I can trust you.”
Tim cocked his head. “Oh?”
“Yes. When you fed the smaller fish I knew you have a heart for people like my son. He’s a small fish trying to become a big one in a larger pond than I can offer.”
“There’s some of that in all of us.”
“Just be careful. There is an old saying: ‘To be like the gardener’s dog, who neither eats vegetables or lets anyone else eat them.’ I fear that Dr. Graves is such a dog.”
* * *
Next door, Bud found his friend looking wasted and trying to rest on a couch. Mrs. Kleindiest’s skin was pale and felt hot to his touch, her breaths sounded shallow, whiny rasps rattling out of her quivering throat. A widow, she depended on neighbors to survive. Her favorite and most loyal of all was Bud.
“Why didn’t you call and tell me how sick you were?” Bud asked.
“I did not want to disturb your dinner party. Your mother invited me. She is so kind.”
Bud turned to ask a computer to take her vital signs and then relay them to her doctor before remembering she did not own one, not even a Life Alert Band he had offered to buy for her last birthday. Instead, he dialed her ancient phone, a relic from the previous century, and summoned an ambulance. Then he spent an hour of trying to comfort her through alternating fever and chills.
By the time the ambulance driver knocked on the front door, Mrs. Kleindiest slipped in and out of consciousness. Her fate had been decided thousands of miles away a week earlier during a meeting of the National Health Directorate’s czar and her top lieutenants.
The federal agency that controlled allocation of health resources nationwide, the directorate’s decisions originated in computer models and algorithms. Such data for San Los Diego had turned grim.
“Current care resources are overwhelmed for SLD,” the computer had said. “Recommend immediate rationing of services.”
“What if we bump some of the patients from Level 4 Care into Level 5 Care?” The fattest and most pragmatic of the eleven seated at the table said. A quick and unanimous vote had passed the recommendation.
“Computer, how many patients need to be moved from Level 4 to Level 5 Care to alleviate the current crisis in SLD?”
“At least 217,914 must be re-categorized into Level 5.”
Another vote was taken and unbeknownst to her, Mrs. Kleindiest became one of those 217,914 Level 4 Care patients randomly chosen to enter Level 5 Care the next time they sought medical treatment or tried to fill a prescription.
“Is she your mom?” The ambulance driver studied the two strangers’ faces, searching for a resemblance between what appeared to be a German and a Chinese.
“No.
I live next door.”
“Any nearby next of kin?”
“Her son lives out of state.”
The driver assumed his other duties as a paramedic and placed a hand held unit on the table next to his patient’s bed. He pulled Bud into the hallway and shut the bedroom door.
“Look, man. Even in a deep coma, they can still hear sometimes.”
“Is it that bad?”
“I have to see the readings first, okay? Just don’t say anything you wouldn’t want to hear if you were in her condition.”
They reentered the room and the paramedic read the device’s data. “I have to take her in.”
“Can I ride along?”
“Sorry. That’s prohibited by law.”
“Which healing center is she going to?”
“Altadena H C. Help me get her onto the gurney.”
Mrs. Kleindiest squeezed Bud’s hand before the ambulance’s doors shut, sealing her in what she feared was a coffin. Her driver steered the ambulance toward the healing center, hoping that by the time he arrived, the current rationing had been lifted. He did not know of the vote taken by the National Health Directorate a week ago. No human outside the room where the vote was cast knew either.
Its ramifications were fed into a computer that transmitted them to the computer that controlled health allocations for SLD, which in turn passed them along to those who oversaw Level 5 Care. But the ambulance driver always knew when rationing was in effect based on the actions of those he delivered his patients to. He slowed the ambulance’s electric motor, hoping to buy Mrs. Kleindiest enough time in case the current rationing might end.
“Increase speed by twelve miles an hour,” a metallic voice ordered him. He obeyed. If not, he would be fired.
A nurse android met him at the healing center’s loading dock for emergency vehicles. After reciting the patient’s name, the driver plugged his hand held unit into the android’s bosom. A second later, the mechanical nurse pulled out the device and handed it back.
“You do not need to accompany me.” She smiled at him before speaking into her built-in microphone connecting her to the healing center’s communications network. “Level 5 Care Ward, prepare for new patient.” She pushed the gurney onto the ramp leading to the underground floors of the hospital.
The driver cursed and slammed the door and hopped back into his vehicle. Details of five more calls were flashing on the windshield. He touched the address of the first one and his electric vehicle rolled out of the parking lot as he reached for a Honey Calmer Bar to steel himself for what he hoped would not be a repeat of his last call.
Inside the subterranean ward, a robot orderly wheeled the patient closest to death from his room to make space for Mrs. Kleindiest. Her nurse android ordered the orderly to her bedside.
“Start the end-of-life pain medication to keep her sedated. If her pain level reaches five or higher, increase the dose to termination level. Once the IV is started, take the patient in the hallway that leads to the crematorium. These humans can’t accept that their usefulness is over.”
Those whose vote placed Mrs. Kleindiest here to die all alone had also mandated Level 5 Care would no longer include food and water, even if a patient regained consciousness.
The bureaucrats making such regulations had exempted themselves, their families, and cronies by law from ever being placed into Level 5 Care.
Someone had to live long, ripe lives of ensuring the fates of hundreds of millions.
9
Brent Fulsome’s earliest years were filled with hunger.
The Great Famine began the year he was born, 2052. Most of those who starved to death lived in Asia, Africa, and Europe. But several million also perished in America, including Brent’s brother and sister and two cousins. His mother’s breast milk had saved him. To survive, Brent’s parents became sharecroppers until the famine subsided. Then they bought a tiny piece of God’s green earth.
“We will never go hungry again,” Brent’s father had vowed.
And Brent had not, until he had moved to SLD to work on his master’s degree at the University of San Los Diego. For a year, he lived in the smallest apartment allowed by law and bartered most of his energy, travel, and food credits to pay for his tuition.
Hunger returned. As usual, it awoke him.
He rolled from his bed and walked four steps to the kitchen. Three half full jars of olives sat next to an empty texturized vegetable protein container turned black by invading ants. Brent wet his finger with saliva and poked it into the TVP container until a dozen ants climbed onto it. He dislodged the insects in his mouth and chewed what he called LIP, Living Insect Protein. The ants tasted bitter, almost acidic.
If I had some chocolate, I could put a chunk of it in the empty TVP container and cook it in the microwave and make chocolate covered ants.
He abandoned his midnight snack after the computer came to life and said, “Incoming e-mail.”
Brent sat back down on his bed, which doubled as a chair for his kitchen and computer station. The message read:
Hello:
Got your letter. Hope you feel better. Some time other than next year would be best for me to visit. Hope to fly solo soon. Pilot training is a monumental achievement. Maybe finally for us the future can include some short trips by air. Sure hope so.
Roger Z
The letter Z used in the last name told Brent the message contained another hidden one written in code. The greeting of Hello alerted him that Code 5 would reveal the e-mail’s hidden message. Brent ran his hand under the mattress and found the small folded piece of paper containing the twelve codes he and the e-mail’s sender used. Code 5 required him to underline the first letter of the first word in the first sentence, the second letter of the second word in the second sentence, the third letter…
He applied the code until the message now read:
Hello:
Got your letter. Hope you feel better. Some time other than next year would be best for me to visit. Hope to fly solo soon. Pilot training is a monumental achievement. Maybe finally for us the future can include some short trips by air. Sure hope so.
Roger Z
Then he pieced the underlined letters together. “G, o, h, o, m, e.”
Fear replaced hunger. “Go home.”
He spent the rest of the night downloading computer files to the computer in his glasses and then emptying his desktop computer of every bit and byte it contained, including its operating system.
At dawn, he packed a small carry-on backpack. Holding his nose, he ate the olives and drank their brine. Then he took the elevator to 1-U and Big Al’s apartment.
Every living complex contained at least one, the King Mole who traded in credits and made a better than average living doing so. For Brent’s building, Big Al, a 255-pound transplanted New Yorker, was king. Some claimed he even bartered with the elite who dwelled above ground, a rarity for a King Mole.
Big Al grumbled because someone dared to call on him before 9 a.m., the normal start of his illegal workday.
“What do youse want? It’s too early. Go away.” Big Al yelled at the door after Brent’s pounding roused him.
“It’s me, Brent.”
“Brent, sment. Come back later after I get out of bed.”
“Please, Big Al, it’s an emergency.”
“Everything’s an emergency for everyone these days.” Big Al ordered his computer to open the door and Brent stepped into a studio apartment twice the size of his.
Big Al told his wife to go back to sleep as he propped his and her pillows behind him to sit up in their king-sized bed. He eyed his unwelcome visitor after wiping crusty yellow matter from his eyelids. “It’s going to cost you extra for waking me up like you did.”
“I need to leave in a hurry for home. How many transportation credits can you give me for the three days of rent credits left for this month?”
“What floor you live on?”
“Down on 35-U.”
“Those apartments are only 120-square feet. I can give you 280 travel credits. Take it or leave it.”
“But that will only get me to Texas. Here. How much for all of my stuff inside of it?” When Brent pushed the frame of his glasses a hologram of his apartment appeared in front of Big Al’s large red nose, its capillaries destroyed by too much alcohol drunk during the electronic pawn broker’s fifty years.
“What else you got? A bed and a table with a computer is all? That’s it? Where’s your TV?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Okay. Since it’s you, I can give you another 300 credits. But that’s all. No more.” Big Al returned his wife’s pillow under her head and lay back down on his.
“But the computer cost me 500 credits. You know that. I got it from you.”
“You’re breaking my heart. Take it or leave it.”
Brent pulled out his FSIN card. He had intended to mention the computer no longer held the operating system it had when he bought it from Big Al. But now, he no longer cared. “Okay. You win, you shyster.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, punk. Computer, transfer lease and contents of his apartment into my name and transfer 550 credits—”
“No, 580 credits.”
“You just lost 30 credits for besmirching my fine reputation by calling me a shyster, wise guy.”
Brent cursed. “Okay, okay.”
“Boy, you are really a pain early in the morning. Computer, put 550 credits onto monkey face’s card here.”
A beam shot from the computer onto Brent’s card.
“Now get on out of here. I need some more sleep. Today’s my day to go to the track. They’re running cheetahs today. Computer, give me a dose of melatonin.”
A mask attached to a clear hose dropped from a rectangular cabinet fastened to the ceiling above his bed. After covering his nose and mouth with the mask, Big Al inhaled deeply. He was snoring before Brent reached the hallway.
As Brent exited his living complex and walked to the closest stairway to the underground train, he wondered if he would be able to return to SLD to continue his training of city dwellers in the art of urban survival. They must be calling me back home to give me my next assignment in person, he thought. It’s too risky to give it to me by phone or email.