The System

copyright, 2012.

Joshua held a gleaming stainless steel nine-millimeter semi-automatic in his palm. He turned it over, inspected both sides of it, and marveled at the irony of his situation. The scent of gun oil was distantly familiar, and not unpleasant. It had been a while.

Handguns had been outlawed altogether decades earlier, but Joshua had become particular about which rules he followed. They were now limited to the few he could respect. He wrapped a soft cloth around the weapon and placed it gently into his backpack. A former attorney, he hadn't always felt free to do as he saw fit.

The year was 2072. Joshua, aged eighty-seven, had for nearly thirty years functioned as a staff attorney employed by the CHS, Centralized Healthcare Systems. A fall from grace, of sorts, had changed that.

“I can only think of one problem technology won't solve, and that's the rising cost of healthcare.” That statement had been made all the way back in 2011 by a well-known politician turned healthcare advocate. It was a powerful, perhaps prophetic statement, but it was also an understatement. If anything, in the decades that followed, the expense of developing technology had helped to place advanced healthcare beyond reach, for most.

But, not to worry. The government was there to solve the problem.

Joshua hadn't even finished packing yet, and already he was out of energy. Perhaps he'd waited too long. He made himself a hot cup of coffee, settled into his vintage barrel-back chair and began to reflect.

It had been seven years since he'd been inside the System facility in Buffalo. There was one exactly like it in every city; just one. The only permissible health care facility in any city, they were each identical in every respect except for capacity, which was dependent on the population served. Every one of them was six stories tall, a few of them, a kilometer or more in length. If you didn't live in a city, you traveled to the nearest one. It was that simple.

But Joshua would never go back.

When Joshua was first admitted to the Systems legal staff, he was pleased indeed to have found a good, secure job. He hadn't really understood why some of the people he knew seemed so envious. Perhaps he'd been slow. It had taken him years to learn why.

The sixth floor of every System hospital had been made limited-access. There, the miracles of modern medicine were concentrated. There, complete organs could be grown from human stem cells for specific patients. There, disorders of the nervous system were corrected, the progression reversed, the damaging plaques abated through infusion with modified microbes. There, spinal cord repairs were possible, through microlaser-enabled nerve cell fusion. There, cancers of any kind were curable by either of two proven methods; the same lymphatic system that had transported cancers to every point in the body was also capable of transporting chemistry that selectively destroyed the very building blocks of cancerous cells. If preferred, a single injection essentially placed the immune system itself in overdrive. It was the simpler and less expensive, but more dangerous method, because of a risk to healthy tissue. Harmless radio-frequency imaging had long replaced damaging x-rays, and femto-photography coupled with it made anything less seem archaic.

Of course, the developers of technology must turn a profit to stay in business and to continue. It had always taken years to work a new product or service through channels of approval before it could begin to actually benefit patients. Eventually, a wealthy few funded all new technology. Only the passage of time had been required for them to reap said profits.

So when Joshua joined the legal staff at CHS, they were already heavily involved in the legalities of “selective” healthcare application. Joshua saw no harm in that, because everything he knew about the law was counter to it. He threw himself into his work, studiously gathering every scrap of information he could find, historically and currently, that made any mention of individual rights or entitlements. He wrote papers, prepared and made presentations, and soon was promoted within the ranks of his fellows.

Finally, at one such presentation, a man in a three-piece suit arose from the small audience to ask a question. “Enough,” he said. “Mr. Grady, you've been employed by CHS for more than ten years, am I correct?”

“Twelve.” Joshua smiled back.

“Then might I simply suggest that it's about time we start preparing our efforts to change the laws?”

The second twelve years were far less pleasant for Joshua. The real reasons for his employment were now apparent. They wanted a path laid out to make selective healthcare legal. Soon, his earlier promotions began to be reversed.

“Why can't you work within the goals our employer has set for us, Joshua?” His supervisor frowned. “Our objectives are clear! Think about it! The entire population must be self-supporting! There have to be upper limits for the value of treatments, or the system would go bankrupt! And what are we supposed to do, repair bodies forever, so that people can retire into non-productivity? It's counter to common sense!”

“Let me get this straight,” Joshua replied, “You want to keep people alive and healthy so long as it doesn't cost too much, and you want them to die before they become unproductive?”

“What are you worried about? You work for the System! You get preferential treatment, as long as you're a part of it!”

Joshua was incredulous, almost beyond speech. After a long silence, he had gathered his thoughts into the most obvious questions. “What about when you want to retire? What about your lack of productivity in retirement? What do you think the government will have to say, if they find out what the System is trying to accomplish?”

His supervisor stood up, obviously angered. “You ass! You're an exception now, you'll be an exception when you retire! You and your wife! And who do you think the System is? We are the government!”

Over the next few years, Joshua continued his research of the problem, but instead of focusing on which laws needed to be changed or how they might be circumvented, his real focus was on how things got to be this way. And it wasn't that his employer wasn't aware of it. Basically, it came down to this: The banking system had been about to crash due to many years of deficit spending, fractional-reserve lending and trade deficits. At last, it seemed the only means of averting financial disaster would involve collaboration with a consortium of wealthy individuals and corporations that had formed, somewhere along the way. All over the country, billboards had popped up that shouted, “AMERICA – NOT FOR SALE!” Within just days, the banking system began to fail, and the response began to appear. “DO YOU WANT TO EAT?”

And it was true. If the banking system had truly failed, everything else would have followed. Individual liberties had at last become dependencies for most. Even the food supply, long subjected to price controls, was entirely subject to government oversight. The money was gone, sunken into crumbling infrastructure and crumbling, now-empty eighty-year-old missile silos. The people and businesses that were still flush with capital wanted something in return: power. They got it.

Private property rights for the masses were among the first things to disappear. And now, although dollars were still in existence, they were mostly out of use. “Credits” were issued electronically as payment for employment, and were used to buy what one needed. It was as if your existence, which was apparently owed to the state, was being acknowledged in some small way on payday. Minus taxes, of course. Oh, but your healthcare was “free”, such that it was.

And as always, the parts that Joshua was able to see, even from his position, were only the tip of the iceberg. The System had long been practicing illegal selective healthcare, and much more. In 2037, the “System Evaluation Team” or SET, had been formed. Publicly their function made sense. Ostensibly they were charged as an accounting team, visiting each facility and going over the records of care dispensed to evaluate efficiency. In actuality, however, SET was responsible for cutting off individuals who would not remain productive if cured. Soon after the SET was deployed, there was an age cutoff as well, and it was ten years earlier than Joshua's current age.

But of course, “cutting off” health care would have been too obvious, and might have been disruptive to the system its controllers had finally established, not without great expense to themselves. And so, persons who had been “evaluated” as “non-productive” simply took a turn for the worse the next time they needed care.

Records were not made public, thus, Joshua had not been able to confirm it through his careful, individual research, and today, he still had no proof. After all, beginning with “cloud” computing, the selling of time online for profit and mere terminals administered from somewhere else, the former “internet” was soon a one-way street. Information came to you, it was not received from you. Soon after, no information was available from anywhere that the government didn't want you to see - if you could even afford to look. But after all, since the banking system was now entirely electronic, the government could justify maintaining complete control. It was necessary for security, right?

Persons who remained healthy and lucid enough to work could continue to do so for as long as they wished. Joshua had come from a wealthy background, and despite the financial changes he could have afforded to retire, but he continued in his job until he had reached the age of eighty. He was summoned into his administrator's office on the morning of his eightieth birthday.

“Joshua, we are sorry we have to let you go.” The man managed a smile as he spoke. “The front office in Washington has directed it. They're concerned about the things you've long been questioning, and have finally decided to end your employment here. I know you can afford to retire.”

Joshua feigned surprise at first, but then thought better of it. “I know why I'm still here,” he declared. “They're concerned about what I know.”

“What, you think you can go to the media? Ha, ha ha ha! You're not 'here' any more,” the administrator asserted. “This is not retirement, it's separation. Without benefits. Go home, and take care of your wife!”

As Joshua collected his things, he wondered why his wife had been mentioned. His beloved wife Maria, already retired and at home, was aged seventy-seven.

Maria and Joshua hadn't produced any children, and most of their friends had passed on. So when Joshua arrived home later that morning and realized that Maria wasn't there, he had no idea where she might have gone. Then, he found Maria's note on the kitchen table. He picked it up and began to read.

“My dearest Josh, I've been seeing a doctor these past few weeks and have decided to check into the hospital for treatment. I just didn't want to worry you. It's a small problem they have assured me will be easily solved. Love, Maria”

Joshua couldn't get back out of their little house quickly enough. And he couldn't get to the System facility quickly enough, either. As he hurried from the bus stop to the nearest hospital entrance, he saw the aircraft with the SET team inside, lifting off from the hospital roof.

When the nurse on the second floor advised Joshua that his sweet wife of many years had taken a turn for the worse and was gone, Joshua couldn't handle it. He made a scene, assaulting a doctor in the process. And although he was subdued and restrained by security, he was not arrested. Instead, after about a two-hour wait, he was visited by...the administrator who had fired him that morning.

“I don't make the rules, Mr. Grady, and you can't break them. Go home, get over it. Otherwise you'll spend your remaining days in prison with no means of contact with the outside world.”

Despite the terrible ache in his heart and the bitterness of his loss, Joshua could see it was true. He did leave, and despite his age, he walked throughout the night, expecting to be stopped and arrested for being out past curfew. But oddly, no one did bother him. At the break of day he arrived at his home and collapsed onto the bed. He slept through most of the day.

The next day, he arranged Maria's private funeral, as her remains had already been cremated and irradiated, as was customary. The day following, he attended it. The day after that, he began to look for a way to purchase a weapon.

It took several weeks. Joshua had no underworld or black market contacts, and so when he finally did break through to someone who did, he paid far too much for the handgun and some ammunition. “If you're gonna kill yourself, I would've done it for you for a lot less,” the man sneered.

“This gun was made during the twentieth century,” was Joshua's only response. “It's as old as I am. How do I know the ammunition isn't the same age?”

“The box is gray,” came the reply. “It's new.”

Originally, Joshua wasn't completely sure for whom he had intended to procure a weapon. He fantasized about killing the SET people the next time they visited the facility. He thought about taking out the administrator who had left him go. He even thought about visiting Washington and “offing” some System administrators closer to the source of his loss. Finally, however, he cooled down enough to consider all that was going on. How could anything he would do ever change anything?

That was the one thing Joshua never really “got”. That attitude was precisely what had allowed all of this to occur. But he was correct, any action taken alone would be meaningless. And at this point, it did appear to be too late for collective action.

Apparently, they at least intended to leave him alone. And alone he was, indeed. Nevertheless, he had never been a violent man. Now he felt keenly that his life had been wasted. He then entered the final phase of his life, gathering information about what had happened to his country. It hadn't taken the last seven years to see.

The people in power had always been in power, usually behind the scenes. The media had been well under control by the turn of the century. The forces had been too great, the progress of statism deliberate and gradual, and the battle had been lost. For the developers of technology, the only hope of application for the greater good would have required an overhaul of the socio-political system, first. And that had not been a part of their effort. Had they been owned by the same people, all along?

Eventually, Joshua realized his own time was nearing. Noticing pain in his right leg, he lowered his trousers to look and discovered a lump, veins radiating away from it in shades of red and purple. There were no doctors to see. The AMA had been disbanded decades before, all new doctors were trained by the System.

Enough of reflection. Joshua arose from his chair and finished filling his backpack. Water, some snacks, a light bedroll...and the handgun.

He walked the rest of the day, eventually entering some of the remaining wooded land not far from his home. He had purposely avoided public transportation. His body ached, but he pressed on.

Finally he found a fairly remote area. A late afternoon sun cast mottled patterns on the forest floor through remaining autumn leaves. There before him was a depression in the earth, left by an uprooted tree.

Joshua knelt, and though in pain, he carefully emptied his pack onto the ground. Then he took a last drink of water, looked all around at the splendor of nature, and he thought. Yes, this was what had to be done. They would not be ending his life for him, too. It was a small gesture, perhaps, and he knew no one would care.

But he did.

He opened the bedroll and placed it in the depression, his backpack at one end for a pillow. He loaded and cocked the handgun. He then crawled into the depression and pulled leaves over himself, up to his neck. Without hesitation, Joshua closed his eyes, relaxed, placed the muzzle of the nine-millimeter against his temple, and pulled the trigger.

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