Catch 23 (An Original short story)
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Doc made an involuntary shoulder check movement; his head turned as if observing once more several diplomas hanging on the walls of his office, 'Surely there are alternative conservative quarantine measures, diet, exercise, meditation, some cheap on the shelf products, but to be completely frank,' he lowered his voice to sound more intimate, 'I would advise you to implement the entire complex of procedures right away. The last time you did them,' he looked at the chart, 'twelve years ago.' So you are correct noticing that their effect started to visibly deteriorate,' he pursed his lips and shook his head with concern, '… their expiration date is just about to pass if you know what I mean.'
Dwight came out of the doctor's office perplexed and pondering. The price for a new package was … ouch…twenty-three thousand CCU (conditional currency units) … out of reach…way out of reach. Doc was right. Dwight didn't believe in all this alternative bullshit. Come on, in his age?
The only valuable option was to do freezing, wait for a couple of years until his account will accumulate enough government support to cover this expense. But… there was a BIG BUT…Eleanor. What would happen with her over these couple of years? Will she wait for him for that long? Yeah, right. He'd come out of a freezer and find her on a trip to Bahamas with some other old geezer?
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'Eleanor, Eleanor…' He remembered her young serene face, beautiful body and flawless skin. 'Surely with all these new scientific bio-engineering gadgets and cyber implants, you can make a person look young and I am an example of that.' Dwight looked at his reflection in the mirror and, noticing that he was the only patient in the waiting room, straightened out, tightened his chest muscles, pulled the stomach in and jerked up his head with pride. 'Not bad, not bad at all. Still looking pretty young. But how long will this last? They sure could make it almost believable, but almost was the key word,' he stopped tightening his muscles and everything sort of fell off. 'He sure knew the difference.
Dwight now drove his car back home in silence. What can he do? What can he possibly do?
Dwight just couldn't get enough of her. It was already the third time this night. She lay next to him tired and sweaty.
'Let's just go to sleep, darling. I'll be here tomorrow, you know.' She yawned, stretched and pressed the dry cleanser button on the bed.
'Do you love me?' he looked into her eyes.
'Yes, darling, of course, I do', she yawned again.
'But do you love me for who I am or only…', he wanted to say just 'for my body', but got confused, because he knew that, for a long time, already, the body he wore on his skeleton was not really his. While he was thinking of how to express his thought correctly, he heard her slight even inhales and exhales. She slept.
Dwight came to the kitchen and stopped in front of a food creator or 'fooder' as people called it. It wasn't a fancy expensive machine with all the modern extravagant bells and whistles, but it did some simple dishes well. Dwight selected a steak, fried potatoes with ketchup and a cold beer from the menu, pressed the button and after some hesitation (after all he had an old model) it spat out his meal.
He ate, drank a cold beer and thought about Eleanor, how dependent he has become on her lately and about a possible measly life he will lead without her. Her departure seemed inevitable. If he wouldn't be able to come up with the 23 thousand CCUs and do all the rejuvenating procedures, he will quickly start looking to his actual 85, well, maybe a little younger, but definitely not 25 or thirty as she imagined he was. Then she will, again, inevitably dump him regardless of all his adornment and care about her. His suffering aching soul? Who needed it? Who cared? She'll surely dump him; he'd dump himself if he was her.
And the other way… the freezing option. His yearly government income was 10k CCUs per year. Thus, he needed 2 years and 4-month to accumulate 23k; actually, longer than that. A portion of this income needed to be set aside to maintain his apartment and insurances. That would easily make it three years in the freezer. Suppose he'll go for it. But then Eleanor, oh God, he couldn't take this thought. She'll be seduced by someone else. She is so naïve, so inexperienced. And how will she live by herself? She has no profession that he knows of, his lovely airhead. She doesn‘t even know well how to use the fooder? How would she live and pay bills? All she knows is how to browse the virtual malls and buy clothes, perfume, shoes, and bionic gadgets. God knows he doesn't want her to change. Just be the way she was now. He was even sorry to put the limit to her purchasing streak.
'Honey, they don't let me buy anymore?' she put her lips in a small pretty tube, the retina in her eyes got so big and she looked so cute and defenseless that he upped her limit for another 50 CCUs, lifted her in his hands and carried her to the bedroom.
And what about his stamina? It was something that she appreciated so much and something that was the most expensive part of the entire rejuvenation package that Dr. Griffin implemented on him twelve years ago.
'You are the KING, baby, you are the KING!' she screamed. How could he continue doing this within the limitations of his actual 85-year-old body? Jeez Louise, he will die.'
'What a conundrum? 23 grand. Fricking catch 23!'
'She said, tomorrow.' Dwight thought. 'How many of those tomorrows will I still have? A week, a month…? Until … Until she will start noticing…'
'Will have? Maybe she already has?' that thought used to knock into Dwight's head from time to time, but he didn't give it a go. Eleanor was always within the reach and was happy, at least, content or so it seemed. When they went out together, she seemed to enjoy his company, laughed at his jokes, didn't look around at other men, was happy to see him when he returned home, was passionate in bed.
And yet, now, looking back, examining their life together, Dwight couldn't get away from the feeling that everything wasn't all that cut and dry. Eleanor, usually, made sweet silly remarks, her vocabulary was simple and her knowledge beyond simple everyday things was almost non-existent. Yet, at times, especially when she became thoughtful she could say something uncharacteristically sophisticated. Like that time when she mentioned about the cellular level genetic mutation acceleration controller. Dwight himself had no idea what the gadget was.
'How do you know about it, baby?'
'I dunno, - Eleanor made s cute silly grimace, 'I heard that somewhere on the Net. A fat doctor in white garment said something about that device and you know my memory, I don't forget anything.'
That was true. To be fair to her, her memory was just like a steel trap. Still, this was suspicious and now this episode was floating in Dwight's mind, like a watermelon in a swimming pool.
Usually, Dwight didn't care about her communication. Its interface mode was always on. The only difference was how much brain power (is this term could be applied to a total airhead) she allocated to this communication. Sometimes, just for giggles, he adjusted his image tuner to interpret her communications. She spent her time mostly in virtual shopping networks, watching celebrity chronicles and, sometimes, marking up the outfit that she liked, immediately trying it on her 3D model. If she liked it she left the outfit for her future hit list. The same was true about jewelry, shoes, places where she wanted to visit, and cruises she wanted to attend.
She also was a member of several style-related networks, where among other similar airheads, she expressed her opinions about celebrities' clothes and commented on what they said. She was big on environmental issues as well. That meant she talked about saving the planet, ozone layer, etc. Although she hardly understood the issues, she compensated her lack of knowledge on the subject with enthusiasm.
In all their time spent together, Dwight didn't even think of other women. Why, if you have at your disposal such super desirable piece of ass?
At times, she communicated with males, and even responded to a couple of flirts, but never did Dwight noticed that it went much further. Never did he even notice her joining together with someone in a private virtual cabin.
Today, however, his suspicions were much more pronounced as he tried to see in the near future of their relationship. So he started to really dig into her password honeycomb. She had all kinds of passwords for all kinds of virtual sites. Until suddenly he discovered a password vault, which he couldn't get into no matter how much he tried.
Hm… he pondered. Why would she need the vault with the third degree of security protection?
Dwight called one of his old connections from the time when he used to work as flyer salesman. Rob Shelly was a tech wiz. His office always had two or three opened up bionic bodies with some blocks of cyber intestates hanging around all over the place.
'Hello Rob, … Remember me, your old body Dwight? How is it going?'
'Yes, Dwight, sure buddy. What's going on?'
'Doing, pretty good, pretty good, how about yourself? Still fixing up those robots?'
'Yes, and you know, I recently came up with something quite extraordinary. It's like this…'
'I am sure this is very interesting, buddy,' Dwight interrupted him, 'but, as usual, it would be way above my head. I want to ask you for a problem of a much lesser complexity, but still, something that will test your know-how.'
'What is that?'
'Can you crack a password vault?'
'If it's to some government secrets, then I'm going to pass on that.'
'No, buddy, nothing like that. It's just my girlfriend's. She's hiding something from me?'
'Ah…,' he laughed, 'women. Ok, send me the vault location.'
'Let's see what's going on here,' Rob mumbled as his fingers did the tap dancing on the keyboard. Dwight saw a holographic image of Rob's long gray beard, and a funny champing lip movement, 'aha, you are doing this and we will respond with this, aha, you are telling me that we cannot do this, but how about this?'
After three minutes and fifteen seconds of similar blabbering, Rob exclaimed 'Aha, you can't hide anything from the old Rob. Here are her credentials for the vault.'
'Thanks, buddy. I owe you one. Taking you for a dinner. Our old place? Will remember good old times, OK?'
Getting through the labyrinths of her passwords to different sites and virtual moorings, Dwight discovered that Eleanor, his nonchalant friend, his lovely airhead was quite a visitor to modern appearance improvements sites. Also judging by her negotiation style, that he learned from her communications with different salespeople, she was far from the “lady levity' he knew and loved. Also, he was amazed at the prices she operated with, which were way beyond his bravest guesses. “How in the hell did she pay for all this? Either someone else paid for her or she had her own money.'
Going deeper and deeper into her correspondence he realized how little he knew about the modern appearance improvement industry. The cyber implants, fat content controllers, and muscle groomers that he normally used was an ancient technology.
What Eleanor bargained for and used, was a cutting edge technology such as spinal disc collagen boosters, instructed fat eating molecular level parasites, bionic muscle shapers, virtual 4d-shape designers with multiple feedback loops, epidermis molecular re-grower, and many more products, which functionality was way above and beyond of Dwight's level of understanding.
Suddenly, or rather suddenly to Dwight, he noticed what was, must be a century old, video of someone who he figured was Eleanor's ancestor, 'perhaps a grandmother.'
She looked very similar to Eleanor, almost exactly the same features, only not as refined. In a grove, the woman played with a little girl who Dwight surmised was Eleanor's mother. Digging even deeper into this old thread, Dwight found an old e-letter, which totally changed his opinion about who he saw in the video. The letter was written by Eleanor, he could see her personal electronic imprint on it, but it was addressed to her daughter. This, however, although a surprise, was not something that gave Dwight a sudden jolt of shudder. It was the way she was addressing her daughter that brought him to tremor.
'My dear girl,
It doesn't matter how old you are, whether you are eighty, a hundred or a hundred and twenty. For me, you would still be a little girl that I once carried under my heart and taught how to walk.'
After that, there was mentioning of some relatives and family specific information to which Dwight browsed with no interest until he got to the following lines…
'When you lived as long as I have, you appreciate simple things in life: good weather, the sun, water, gentle wind, good clothes, good food, good virtual travel, good massage, good sex, the attention of a friend, his interest, and a good attitude. Yes, I value all these things. And I tell you, I lived through six husbands, after your father. I am tired of starting over. To each new man, you have to adjust, change something in your daily routine. I am tired of that. That man I am with now… I am comfortable. He is simple, is not very bright, a little bit on the narcissi side, and in his 85, someone who is still a not very mature; a boy essentially. But he is good hearted and he loves me, or so he thinks… And all I have to do is to pretend to be a little silly girl, just a bit sillier than he is…a damsel in distress.' Dwight stopped reading at this point.
'Surprise, surprise! Who could have thought?' Dwight scratched his temple. 'She got me, she really got me. What now?' Dwight felt he was tricked, betrayed in his best… he couldn't even say in what. Truth to be told, he never asked Eleanor about her age and just assumed she was in her early twenties. He didn't want to bring the issue of age to the discussion because he felt he was taking advantage of her, well maybe not a general sense. Rather, this was his lucky strike, his swan song.
He realized now that he made a judgment of her age based on her looks. That he did this despite knowing himself that the modern rejuvenation technology was top notch. Only with his limited means he could access only its limited features, something that cost 23 CCUs. Surely, he heard and saw the demonstrations of fantastic results the modern technology is capable of, but the cost of these procedures was so beyond his modest means, that he never ventured into applying these procedures for himself. But it never occurred to him that Eleanor, the little silly girl she appeared to be without a profession and without any kinds of skills, could be so rich to take advantage of this new technology.
The realization struck him so abruptly that, knowing what he knew now, he wasn't really sure whether he was in love with that… creature that he thought was…, that he…'
Like in many cases when he needed to make a decision, Dwight went to a nearby bar, where the calm atmosphere and a good drink made the contemplation about his situation somehow easier. He ordered a drink, sat by the bar stand on a stool, watched the sports news and thought about his current situation and his life in general.
'A Freezer,' he concluded, 'of course, a freezer. She'll wait.' Now he was sure of that.
"Hey, buddy," - he waved at the barman, "hit me with another one." Dwight pointed to his empty glass.
While the barman was pouring more whiskey into his glass, Dwight noticed a girl who landed two bar stools away from him. 'Wow,' he thought, - 'what a lovely creature, what a beauty!'
He directed his gaze at her and when she made a quick turn towards him, noticing him, he said: "… noticed you are drinking Cognac. But you look like Martini girl to me. What's wrong with that picture?" He got up, picked up his drink and sat on the bar stool next to her.