“I’ll support you.”
“Forever? You have a kid on the way. You have no clue how much those things cost. You’ll use every goddamn penny life gives you, mark my words. I don’t want you subsidizing my life.”
“We’ll work something out. I promise you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Either way, it was the wrong decision. I’ve made a terrible mistake. And I’m not happy about it.” He held up the gravy boat. “And we’re out of gravy. That’s what the next two hundred years of my life are going to be like. Just one Thanksgiving after another, without enough goddamn gravy.”
DATE MODIFIED:
11/30/2029, 2:03 P.M.
The Truth about China
Chan is a Chinese foreign national who spent a year at our firm as part of an exchange program they set up about nine years ago. The firm was looking into a major expansion in Beijing, setting up a merger over there with another firm. Obviously, after China went back into its shell, that merger never took place. I kept in touch with Chan from time to time via e-mail—that is, before the government blocked his access. After that, I assumed I’d never hear from him again.
But I did. He e-mailed me this week through the account of some American in Beijing. Apparently, he spotted the American typing away on her tablet at an ice cream store. Since the American had an unregulated e-mail work account, he begged her to let him use her account to contact me. This is what he wrote:
To: John Farrell
Re: Chan in China (URGENT)
My wife and I had a child three days ago. It is our first child, a boy. Everything appeared to be fine during the labor and delivery. My wife had to push for two hours, which was quite harrowing. But our son emerged healthy and with all his fingers and toes. They even let me cut the cord, which is much harder than one might think.
My wife had some tearing during the delivery, so the doctors had to give her stitches. I had been by her side the whole time, but now she was knocked out by the anesthetic and had let go of my hand. Rather than stay with her, I followed the nurses as they wheeled our son to the nursery so I could give him a bath. They handed me a warm washcloth, and I swabbed the blood and waxy white vernix off his body while he lay in the clear plastic bassinet, which they had placed under a heat lamp. It was a wonderful moment because I could still feel the heat on his skin from being inside my wife’s body. I can’t describe it in a way that would justify it, but it was something I won’t soon forget.
I was still washing behind his ears, when a doctor came in and began wheeling my son’s bassinet away, which startled me.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“We have to take him,” he told me.
“But I’m not finished bathing him,” I explained. I held up the bloody washcloth in my hand to show him that I was still using it.
“You can finish bathing him later. We have to take him now.” He was very brusque, and I didn’t understand why. I know that doctors can be arrogant, but he struck me as particularly pushy.
“What are you going to do to him?”
“Routine shots and blood tests.”
“Can I come?”
“No, you can’t. We’ll bring him back to you in an hour or so.”
I wanted to insist on joining my son. But this man was a doctor, so I presumed that he knew best. I didn’t wish to ruin the moment with an argument. So I let them take him away and rejoined my wife, who was now in the recovery room, asleep.
After about an hour, they transferred us to the maternity ward on the floor above us. As we exited the elevator, we noticed armed policemen standing in the center of each hallway, which is unusual inside a hospital, let alone a maternity ward. All around the floor, from nearly every room, we heard screaming and crying, as if we were still in the labor ward. I asked the nurse if they also delivered babies on this floor. (This is China, after all. It wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if they needed more room.) The nurse turned away from me and said no.
They wheeled my wife into an empty room, with one bed. Again, this was unusual. You don’t get a recovery room to yourself normally. At this point I became very anxious to see my son again. I asked the nurse where he was, so that I could be with him and bring him to my wife. She assured me that he would be coming shortly.
But he didn’t arrive shortly. My wife and I were forced to stay in the empty room for nearly four hours. She had lost a great deal of blood during the delivery, and now her blood pressure began to drop. I became irritable, constantly yelling at the nurses that they had assured me our son would be back by now. After one nurse worked to bring my wife’s pressure back up and she regained her strength, I ventured out into the hallway and asked anyone I could find where the blood tests were being conducted. No official would answer me. I heard more screams from inside the other rooms. I went to a receptionist and demanded to know what was going on. One of the policemen saw me getting angry and approached me.
“You have to calm down here, sir,” he said. “It’s not wise for you to yell.”
“But no one will tell me what is going on or where my son is.”
“Your son will be returned to you.”
And he was correct. The main doors opened behind me, and I saw a nurse wheeling in my son. I went to him immediately and grabbed him, kissing him all over. I was so relieved—I can’t even begin to tell you. Pure joy.
They had him swaddled in a hospital blanket. I didn’t want to unwrap him, lest he become cold. So I held him tight to my chest as the nurse and policeman both inspected my hospital wristband to make sure I was the baby’s parent.
As I held my son close to me, I noticed something through the opening of the blanket. His left hand was sticking out a bit, so I went to tuck it back in. That’s when I saw it.
Just below his hand, about five centimeters up his wrist, was writing. I pulled his arm out to look. It was his birth date, written on the inside of his arm.
“Why would you write on his arm?” I asked, annoyed. “His birth date is already on his ankle bracelet.” I used the blanket to try and rub off the numbers, but they wouldn’t smudge. I quickly realized that they hadn’t written his birth date on his arm. They had tattooed it. While my wife and I were waiting for our son to get “routine shots and blood tests,” they had branded him. I looked at the nurses and the policeman, who looked back at me with deep sympathy.
“We’re sorry,” the policeman said. “This policy was just instituted by the Department of Containment.”
“The Department of Containment?” I asked. “What is that?”
“We don’t know.”
“Why are they doing this?”
“We don’t know.”
I heard more screams coming from inside the other rooms and immediately became aware that I was just the latest parent to receive this news about their child.
I stared down the hall, in the direction of my wife’s room. She was still unaware of what had happened. I felt so awful. There she was, so desperate to see her son. Yet there wasn’t going to be any relief once I brought him through the door. She was going to see what they had done to him, and she would begin screaming, as all the other new mothers were doing. I began to cry. I clutched my son tightly to my chest and told him that he would be all right. It was just his birthday they had etched onto him, and nothing more unfortunate than that.
I brought him to my wife’s room and walked through the door. She could tell by my eyes that something was terribly wrong, and she began crying. I think she assumed our son had a birth defect, or that he had been injured during the delivery. I handed him to her and unveiled the spot where they had branded them.
I’ll never forget the look on her face. She was so shocked, so horrified, so baffled. She didn’t understand. She began sobbing and screaming. I held her tight.
“Why? Why did they do this?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
As she cried, two more doctors and two more nurses entered the room. I was again aggravated, bec
ause all I wanted after this was to have some privacy with my wife. I asked for more time.
“We have to move her to a group room,” one of the nurses said. “This room is only for people to absorb the news. Another patient is scheduled to be in here.”
One of the doctors took my arm. “We need to see you for a moment, sir.” I resisted. The policeman showed up at our door, giving me a look that said I needed to go with him. What choice did I have? I went with the doctor and the policeman as they led me to another empty room. I thought they were going to arrest me for yelling, for being upset in the lobby.
“Do you have any identification?” the doctor asked. I produced some. Then he said, “I need you to roll up your sleeve.”
I panicked. I jumped to leave the room, but the policeman blocked the way and threw me to the floor. The doctor joined him in holding me down.
“You must not resist!” the doctor screamed.
“Why are you doing this?”
“It is the law now! We all must have it!” The doctor rolled up his sleeve and showed me his tattoo. The policeman did likewise. I stared at their arms for a few moments. I couldn’t believe it. They both nodded at me. I had no choice but to relent. The doctor sat me on the table and asked me to confirm the birth date on my identification. I did so. “You look pretty young for a forty-year-old,” he said to me.
I never told you this, John, but when I worked at your firm I got the cure. My wife too. We knew China had outlawed both giving it and getting it. And we had heard stories of doctors being killed—far worse stories than even what happened to Dr. Otto back in your country. We thought we were going to live in the States permanently, so we had it done. Then China isolated itself soon after we returned, and our dream of living in America was dashed. But we cannot undo the cure now. Our youth has damned us.
I lied to the doctor as best I could. They didn’t know I had lived in America. If they had, they almost certainly would have detained me. I think my receding hairline was enough to convince them that I probably hadn’t taken it. Can you believe that? All these years I have cursed my hairline. Now it’s the only thing keeping me out of prison. They strapped my arm down, and the doctor branded me with my birth date. I could see the ink spreading under my raw skin, seeping into the dermis and staying there forever.
When I was brought to my wife’s group room, I found that they had inscribed her arm as well. To my horror, she was no longer sobbing and crying like the other mothers around her. She simply lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling with her eyes bulging, not saying a word. Our son was crying next to her. I touched her shoulder to see if she was okay. She gave me a look of helplessness and turned back to the ceiling, dead silent—like a torture victim who falls into catatonic shock.
When they discharged us the following day, I saw the hordes of police rounding people up. By this time word had spilled out across the city. Some of them were going quietly, with the attitude that they had nothing to hide. Others were fleeing in terror. My neighbor emptied his apartment and said he was going to drive north until he couldn’t drive anymore.
I have no idea what to do, John. We must leave the country now, or else they’ll almost certainly figure out that my wife and I had our ages frozen. I do not expect you to be able to help me personally. In fact, I ask that you do not. Any attempt to try to help us leave the country will be seen as an attempt to defect. All I ask is that you send this to others, to let people know what is going on here right now. We have been branded. And I fear greatly that we will be killed.
Your friend, Chan
One of the superiors at my firm deals with higher-ups in the Chinese government all the time. You can still get out of the country if you know the right people. When my superior asked his contact about the prospect of bringing Chan back to the States, the official said he would make a phone call. This was a trustworthy contact, someone who had helped extricate many Chinese on behalf of American economic interests. He called my superior back, telling him Chan and his wife had already been arrested. Chan sent me this e-mail twenty-four hours ago, a free man. Now, we have no clue where he and his wife are or where his son is. The Chinese official said it would be folly to divulge Chan’s real name publicly in hopes of exerting pressure, and that it would likely hasten Chan’s death rather than his freedom.
I’m sorry, Chan. I’m so terribly sorry.
DATE MODIFIED:
5/9/2030, 6:17 P.M.
The Back of the Ambulance
I had a nightmare last night about my son’s impending birth. I was in an ambulance with Sonia. Only, she didn’t look like Sonia. She looked like a blonde woman with an impossible body, the kind that pops up in my subconscious on a near-monthly basis. In the dream I thought of her as Sonia, and she spoke with Sonia’s voice. She was lying on a gurney at the front of the ambulance, and I was at the back, some twenty yards away. I was pressed against the back door by a group of policemen wearing blast shields, obscuring their eyes. Three or four more policemen were holding blonde Sonia down on the gurney as she writhed in pain. One of them had a branding iron with her name on it and was advancing toward her. I tried to scream, but my fear was such that my motor function had ceased and my brain couldn’t relay the signal for my mouth to open. I wanted so badly to scream at the top of my lungs to get them to stop. I felt that if I could just get the words out, they’d put the iron down. I tried again to shout, but my jaw remained bolted in place. I struggled against the phantom lock. And just as the policeman began to press the glowing red iron into her shoulder, I woke up, fists clenched, my mouth finally opening. Only, I didn’t say “Sonia.” I just let out a weird nonword: “Swaahhh!” I quickly regained my bearings and shook it off.
The Chinese official our firm knows has told us it’s unlikely that he’ll ever be able to ascertain where Chan and his wife and son are. I’m powerless to help. Yet, sitting here, I still feel as if I’m complicit in allowing their disappearance to happen.
DATE MODIFIED:
5/13/2030, 8:12 A.M.
Afternoon Link Roundup
◗ In British Columbia, three doctors were killed after a pro-death insurgent with dynamite strapped to his chest ran up to them during a hotel conference. (CBC)
◗ Sales of adult incontinence undergarments (you know them as Depends) have fallen 46 percent since 2016. (ConsumerBulletin)
◗ The mayor has raised tolls at all Hudson River crossings to an even twenty dollars to help pay for the new levee system. (The New York Observer)
◗ Some good news from the Middle East. Suicide bombings are down nearly 70 percent over the past decade. The problem is that nonsuicide bombings are up 220 percent in the same time frame. (Al-Ihiri)
◗ In an interview, Russian president Boris Solovyev vigorously denied numerous reports of police excuting any Russian citizen over the cure age of fifty. (Chris Manning’s feed)
◗ The family of the last living Alzheimer’s patient to be “cured” by Dr. Graham Otto is suing his estate for $100 million. (AP)
◗ On Ryan Wexler’s five hundredth home run: “It’s clear now that, barring amputation, he should break the all-time record sometime next decade. Of course, he’ll hold that record for about three seconds, because teammates Frank Mitchell and Odalis Concepción are right behind him. And so are about fifty other players in the American League alone. I have no problem with players taking the cure and breaking records and all that. They’re just records. In the end you’re supposed to enjoy the game itself, and not the long-term compiling of numbers. And the never-ending influx of long-lasting talent (thanks to the cure) will make the game better than ever. But one thing that does concern me is how we’re going to quantify success from this day forward. Naturally, Ryan Wexler will break the record, but we all know it isn’t because he is a better player than his predecessors. It’s not a tragedy. It’s just the cure forcing us to redefine the notion of excellence. This isn’t just a baseball thing. This is an issue across the entire culture now. How can you be a succes
s or have a legacy if your career—nay, your entire life—has no definitive story arc?” (BaseballNut’s Feed)
◗ Utah finally declares cycle-marriage contracts illegal. That was fast. (Deseret News)
DATE MODIFIED:
5/13/2030, 4:53 P.M.