Machine Of Death Part 13

DR. NELSON: But...but...

(He trails off, lost in thought. Dr. Rosch stares at him for a moment.) DR. NELSON: You're just using one rat in your example.

DR. ROSCH: Yes. Just to make things easy to imagine.We could send lots of rats-we probably would, in case some of them died for whatever reason.

DR. NELSON: Okay. Okay. What if we made, say, 100 of these life-support boxes, and put a few rats in each.

DR. ROSCH: So, about 300 rats.

DR. NELSON: Yes.And we don't send these rats light years away or overseas, we just...put them in storage.

DR. ROSCH: Each collection of rats in their own life support box...

DR. NELSON: Right! We number each box. (excitedly) (excitedly)And a lab rat, properly taken care of, lives for, what, 23 years?

DR. ROSCH (slowly catching on) (slowly catching on): On average.

DR. NELSON: So we put these rats in storage and then, 2 years later, or sooner, if need be...

(Dr. Nelson looks at Dr. Rosch, eyes wide with the idea.) DR. NELSON: ...We take them out.

DR. ROSCH (understanding) (understanding): And we kill them.

DR. NELSON: But we don't kill them all with a hammer to the head. We have a code.

DR. ROSCH: Each death means something different.

DR. NELSON: It'll be noisy-we can't trust the machine to make it clear exactly how each rat dies. But we've got more than one rat for each letter. And if we choose the deaths carefully...we should be able to minimize the overlap between predictions.

DR. ROSCH: A different death for each letter of the alphabet. Each box equals one letter.

DR. NELSON: We could send a message back in time to the point when we first took blood samples from the rats.

(Dr. Rosch and Dr. Nelson stare at each other.) DR. ROSCH: We've got to get to the lab.

Story by Ryan North Ill.u.s.tration by Aaron Diaz

CANCER.

JAMES SPOKE UP AS SOON AS HE HEARD THE DOOR CLOSE. "You went to that kid's house again, didn't you?"

His father sighed; his mother dropped her purse on the long stone table. "It's late," she said. "Go to bed."

"You didn't give him any money money, did you?" James stood up, following his parents up the stairs. "I don't care if you sat there and nodded, or sang songs, or whatever whatever you do there, but tell me- you do there, but tell me-please tell me when that basket came around you just pa.s.sed it down the line." tell me when that basket came around you just pa.s.sed it down the line."

"James, I'm tired," his father said, and James heard in his voice that he was telling the truth.

It had started with the doctor's visit a year ago. Dad had complained of trouble swallowing. The doctor had clucked disapprovingly at Dad's lymph glands. He had taken some blood and scheduled some tests. He had not been surprised by the results.

"If there's anything you want to do, anyplace you want to travel, anyone you want to see," he had said, "I would do it now."

James had seen the brightly-colored flyer in the mailbox, but hadn't given it much thought and had thrown it away with the supermarket coupons. So he was surprised to see it later, rescued from the trash can, its glossy color beaming from the fridge beneath a smiley-face magnet.

He plucked it down and had already begun to crumple it when Mom stopped him.

"Doesn't that look fun?" she said. "We're going to the one next week."

In garish red and yellow, the flyer announced that You, Too, could "Defeat the Machine!" A colorful cartoon hammer smashed a predictor box, starbursts flying out zanily. A beaming man in a tie beckoned to his new best friend, You. Bright blue type advertised an (800) number. Seats for the seminar were limited.

"Are you joking joking?" James sputtered to Mom, deeply afraid that she wasn't.

She hadn't been, and she and Dad had gone to the seminar, returning with bulging plastic bags crammed with flyers and handouts and brochures promising intensive weekend workshops and personal counselors and private consultations with Dr. Gene Eli himself. Dr. Eli (who, as far as James could tell, seemed to have a doctorate purely in smiling broadly) called himself an "industry-leading expert in recovery medicine," which meant that his literature was peppered with positive, boisterous terms about mankind's potential for self-healing mankind's potential for self-healing and how the and how the psychic capacity of the human spirit psychic capacity of the human spirit could surpa.s.s the limitations of current medical science. could surpa.s.s the limitations of current medical science.

Dr. Eli's follow-along lecture notes-carefully annotated in Mom's looping script-claimed that according to the laws of nature, ancient man should have become extinct. But mankind had, instead, evolved evolved. According to Dr. Eli, the same impossible power that had allowed cavemen to conquer their murderous world already existed in you you. With this power at your disposal, a slip of paper from a predictor box was no more a guarantor of death than chicken pox or diabetes -a thing to be conquered, a thing a person could overcome.

By now James had forgotten his skepticism, engrossed in Dr. Eli's argument. He sat with his eyes unfocused for a time, suddenly certain of a raw, innate strength that lay latent in his blood, in his father's blood.

When he finally turned the page, he realized with a start that he couldn't make out the words: The sun had set, and the room was dark.

He reached up and snapped on the lamp. Blinking through the brightness on the page, he was suddenly angry at his own belief: There There were the prices for the weekend retreats, the private consultations, the intensive one-on-one counseling. Clearly, Dr. Eli and his team of "recovery therapists" were not altruists. James felt a knot of revulsion catch in his throat. His blood bellowed betrayal. were the prices for the weekend retreats, the private consultations, the intensive one-on-one counseling. Clearly, Dr. Eli and his team of "recovery therapists" were not altruists. James felt a knot of revulsion catch in his throat. His blood bellowed betrayal.

When his parents returned from an afternoon doctor's appointment-with another set of new pills for Dad, these with side effects that could damage his heart-James waited until Mom had eased Dad into his recliner and turned on the TV before pulling her into the kitchen.

"These guys, this Dr. Eli, they're just taking your money," he said. She shook her head, like she'd already considered the thought and dismissed it.

"All the meetings are free," she said. "We're not going on the weekend retreats or anything; we can't afford them anyway. We're not giving them any money. And it brightens him up-it brightens both of us, a little. What's so wrong with that?After these depressing appointments every day, what's wrong with a little hope hope for a change?" for a change?"

James clenched his jaw before his mouth could spit out, But it's But it's false false hope hope. He stared at the cupboard door, willing his breathing to slow, willing his eyes to focus. When he turned back, Mom was halfway up the stairs.

Dad still sat on his recliner, head leaning to one shoulder, eyes pointed at the TV but not really watching. James took a few steps into the living room, then sat on the couch. Dad rolled his head around, lifted a hand. James grasped it-grip still strong; skin thick and calloused from decades of labor. His own hand felt thin and smooth in comparison. He felt young.

"How's it going?" Dad asked him. "How's that car doing? You still checking the oil every day? Oil and water?"

"Yeah," James lied. Dad always bugged him about this, and James always forgot. "Looks good."

"Keep checking it, every day, every day," Dad said. "If your oil gets too low you'll blow that engine, and then it's a headache."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching an antacid commercial, which was followed by a drug commercial that mainly consisted of old people pus.h.i.+ng their grandchildren in swings and a long list of quickly-read side effects.

"These pills," Dad said suddenly, sitting forward in his chair, "these pills they give me, new pills all the time, new ones, new ones, the pills are worse than the disease! Heart problems, they said today, this one has risk of heart problems. I never never had heart problems! Never in my life. What had heart problems! Never in my life. What is is this, when the medicine is more problem than the...than the first problem? I never this, when the medicine is more problem than the...than the first problem? I never heard heard of this!" of this!"

He settled back, and released James' hand to fidget with the pillow beneath his lower back. The news came back on; the screen filled with sports scores.

James looked up the stairway, up where his mother had disappeared, and then leaned closer to Dad, trying to think of something to say, anything. He finally settled on, "So, you've been going to those meetings, huh?"

Dad looked over. "Yeah, this Dr. Elo, Oli, whatever his name is. I think he's Egyptian-he looks like an Egyptian."

"What kind of stuff does he say?"

"Oh, I don't know, bunch of baloney mostly," Dad said, and James breathed a sigh of relief, leaning back.

Dad continued. "He says all kinds of junk, about evolution, I don't know what he's saying. He wants to sell you a weekend retreat, they call it. With his fancy doctors, you go up in the mountains for a weekend, they take a look at you."

"Yeah, I read the brochure."

"It's a bunch of baloney," Dad said. "Your mom, she likes to go, so we go. I don't know what it's about. But I tell you"-here he looked over at James, and leaned in close, and lowered his voice-"I tell you, some of the people at those meetings-old people, sick people, these people look like they died already already."

"It's the last day before the seminar leaves town," Mom said. "You know how much it would mean to your dad."

"I don't think those meetings mean as much to him as you think they do," James yawned, rolling over in bed, trying to pull the blankets from Mom's grip. With a single yank, she pulled them off, and James curled tightly into himself.

"We're going," she said, and they did, all three of them.

Dr. Eli's seminars were held in the banquet hall at the Hilton. By the time James and his parents arrived, the place was already packed. Wheelchairs crowded the aisles; near the front, a few gurneys lined the walls, attended to by nurses monitoring IV trees. As soon as he pa.s.sed through the doors, James was. .h.i.t by the smell of Mineral Ice and sweat.

Dad handed him a paper name tag. "Here," he said, and James saw that his own name had been pre-printed on the tag by a computer. Mom and Dad already wore theirs.

They elbowed their way through the crowd, moving past sad-eyed old men and heather-haired old women, past fat men in sweatpants and sickly women with track marks. There weren't three seats together anywhere but the very back, in the corner. Dad carved a pa.s.sage between a huge woman in a muumuu and a quivering girl holding a very young infant. James saw that the girl was trembling so hard that her baby was becoming dizzy.

They sat on folding chairs next to a delicately poised middle-aged woman with elaborately sprayed hair. Her teenaged son sat next to her, his bald, chemo'd head resting on her shoulder. James watched her idly stroke the boy's neck and shoulders with her painted fingernails. The kid's bare scalp was textured with goose-flesh. He s.h.i.+vered.

Suddenly the room came alive with pounding music, and lights overhead began to flash, and smoke poured onto the far-off stage, and a swell of cheering began to rumble the walls, and James closed his eyes and sighed.

"I'm moving on to other cities, other states, full of people like you," Dr. Eli said, pacing frantically back and forth on the stage, microphone clenched in one hand, the other hand circling like he was launching airplanes off a carrier. "I'm meeting thousands of folks, telling them they don't have to be afraid, just like you're you're not afraid. Telling them what not afraid. Telling them what you you already know. Telling them they don't have be already know. Telling them they don't have be shackled shackled to that little black machine in their doctor's office." Here he paused to allow raucous applause, taking a sip from a bottle of water on a stool. "Telling them they can tap into that to that little black machine in their doctor's office." Here he paused to allow raucous applause, taking a sip from a bottle of water on a stool. "Telling them they can tap into that power power that's in all of us. That power that's in that's in all of us. That power that's in you you, and you you, and yes yes ma'am, it's in you too." ma'am, it's in you too."

The room burned with cheering. As soon as Dr. Eli had taken the stage, awash in strobe lights and sparklers, the entire ma.s.sive family sitting in front of James had climbed onto their chairs, flailing their arms and shouting, and forty minutes later, they hadn't come down yet. James noticed that the bald boy and his mother were not clapping, or standing on their seats, or swaying with their eyes closed, or even paying much attention at all. The hair-sprayed lady next to James wasn't so much as craning her neck, although she did occasionally check her watch. The boy's head now rested in her lap.

The aisles were crammed with people eager to be a part of Dr. Eli's last seminar in town. More kept trying to shove their way into the room, pleading with the black-s.h.i.+rted security guards, rattling the locked doors elsewhere in the hallway. James watched his parents: Mom held her purse on her lap with both hands, and Dad sat slumped in his chair, occasionally s.h.i.+fting uncomfortably. Was this this what he'd been so worried about? what he'd been so worried about?

Dr. Eli welcomed a line of people onto the stage to share their experiences. A tearful young woman clutched Dr. Eli's microphone with both hands; he wrapped his arm around her shoulder.

"My-my paper said 'airplane,'" she said, to a loud chorus of boos from the audience. Dr. Eli quieted them with a look, nodding to the woman to continue.

"My paper said 'airplane,'" she went on, "and I was scared to go anywhere near near a plane after that."Laughter. "No plane rides, no airports. I couldn't pick up my brother from his trip. I couldn't visit my Grandma out in Chicago. We had to move because our house was too close to the, to the flight path. I couldn't get no other job, I had to ride the bus every morning back to the same old neighborhood. I was scared every morning to get too close to the airport, but I had no other job, I had no other place to go." a plane after that."Laughter. "No plane rides, no airports. I couldn't pick up my brother from his trip. I couldn't visit my Grandma out in Chicago. We had to move because our house was too close to the, to the flight path. I couldn't get no other job, I had to ride the bus every morning back to the same old neighborhood. I was scared every morning to get too close to the airport, but I had no other job, I had no other place to go."

The crowd was quiet now, watching as she blotted her eyes with a mascara-stained tissue. Dr. Eli squeezed her shoulder.

"But Dr. Eli told me, you don't got to be afraid, you don't got to live your life that way," she said. A few scattered cheers from the back of the room. "He told me, we have control. We don't live our lives because of what some box says, what some piece of paper tells us. We are human beings. We are free. We are alive."

The room erupted with approval. The family in front of James screamed their lungs out. James looked over and realized that his mother was pressing her hand to her eyes. He met her look with his own, and she laughed, embarra.s.sed, and turned away.

Dr. Eli's staff brought a small metal box out onto the stage. It was s.h.i.+ny black, with vents along both sides and a small control panel on the front. Its lights were dim and its LCD screen was dark. The circular receptacle on the right side was empty-no thin gla.s.s vial of blood-and the printer had no inch-long strip of paper protruding like a tongue from its serrated mouth. But all the same-it was a predictor box.

The black square loomed huge on the video projection screen, and when Dr. Eli's a.s.sistant handed a sledgehammer to the sniffling woman, the crowd went nuts. She heaved it up and brought it down on the box, sending plastic k.n.o.bs and circuit-board fragments whirling into the audience. James saw that a stack of predictor boxes waited at the rear of the stage, one for each person in line for the microphone.

They kept coming, one after the other: "My wife will tell you: I'm a new man. I stay up late. I leave the house."

"Yesterday I did it. I drove to the store for the first time in five years."

"Finally, I took my grandchildren to the zoo. Thank you, Dr. Eli."

"Thank you, Dr. Eli. For giving me my life back."

"G.o.d bless you, Dr. Eli. Thank you."

James was speechless.

Mom and James kept their hands on either side of Dad, helping him step down from the curb and into the Hilton parking lot. They pa.s.sed through the knot of people at the weekend-retreat sign-up tables, seeking out the night air, finding it cool and calming.

"I think that was really interesting," James said. Mom gave Dad a knowing look, then smiled at the sidewalk.

"It's just a lot of junk," Dad said. "They don't cure you. This Egyptian, he doesn't heal you. It's a bunch of baloney."

"Well, it seems like he helps a lot of people get over their hangups," James said. "I mean, those predictor boxes really mess up a lot of people."

"These predictors, schmedictors, they are a hazard," Dad said. "People don't realize this, scientists, idiots. They are a real hazard."

The lady with the bald son stood underneath a lamppost, a stack of bright paper in her hand, shoving pages into the stream of people. Mom took one.

The bald boy watched them walk away, twisting his fingers around each other as if he were kneading clay.

James watched the boy until he grew uncomfortable. The boy never looked away.

The new flyer was bold black text from a home printer, photocopied onto yellow paper: "TIRED OF DR. ELI'S LIES?"

James picked the paper from the floor, where it had fallen as they entered the house last night. "No more cheap theatrics. Ready for REAL HEALING?" it read.

Dad called him from the other room. James put the flyer on the table by the door and ran into the kitchen, where Dad was struggling with the juicer.

"Mom makes me some of that carrot juice," he said, holding a bundle of carrots in his hand. James took the carrots and fed them into the juicer, one by one, until he had filled a gla.s.s with carrot juice. When he turned around with the gla.s.s in his hand, his father was sprawled on the floor.

"There he is," Dad slurred, his eyes slowly focusing, urging the doctor to look to the doorway. "This is my son. This is my son, James."

James shook the doctor's hand and hugged his father, his hands recoiling at the spine thin beneath the paper gown, the shoulder blade jutting into his palm, the ribs, each one distinct. Dad's face was swollen; he worked his jaw like he was chewing taffy. He took a sip of water, and it took him three tries to swallow.

"I'd like to watch him here for a few days," the doctor said. "He had another episode last night that required the shock paddles. I think this is some cause for concern."

"My...my heart is acting up now," Dad said, fighting to get the words out. "I never had problems with my heart, never."

"It's possible the medication he's been taking for the lymphoma may have adversely affected the cardiac system," the doctor said. "I'm really worried that there is a potential for arrhythmia. I'm going to prescribe some treatment that will hopefully keep his heart running smoothly."

"Pills, pills, more pills," Dad said. "Everywhere you go, they give you pills. One pill for this, one pill for that."

The doctor wrote on his prescription pad. "Does he have any history of respiratory or kidney problems?"