What are you supposed to do when you are no longer useful? Delinda Strunck wondered. That's what the lead panelist had said, without really saying it, in his calm, unconcerned voice.
"We find that you are unviable as a contributor to the common edification of society and are, in fact, a burden on the systems of support."
This can't be happening to me, Delinda thought to herself.
She was bound and jacketed, lying on a gurney, for her own safety, supposedly. Eyes bloodshot, unfocused, tears tapped out. She felt hollow. Her mind unspooled the sad movie of her life over the past few years.
Depressing, but unremarkable.
An endless parade of jobs, each one worse than the last. Her career as a teacher ended the moment interactive cerebral implants, (ICI), were finally efficient. The glitchy unreliability of earlier models resolved, once and for all, by BrumCon, the global AI collective responsible for ninety-four percent of all products and services. Now people merely uploaded files to learn anything and everything.
Want to learn a new language? Just purchase the software!
She'd been a restaurant attendant, vet technician, and a crematorium sweep. She'd spent time as a street ambassador for a series of small towns in the lower-Canadian upper-midwest. Delinda had worked as a professional funeral attendee, coffee shop greeter, and, punitively, as a DMV clerk. Each bit of employment eventually wore her down or evaporated.
Then, she'd been injured when the bus she was travelling in was hit by a mega-train. The foreign subsidiary insurers went bust. Medical debt overwhelmed her. Her credits dwindled. She lost her apartment. She couch-surfed until her friends disappeared. Finally, she ended up in a government shelter with no hope, where her name was added to the list.
Robots were supposed to make life better, but now, liquidation was the only option for many, including Delinda Strunck.
That's what the Governmental Operational Necessity Reassessment (GONR) Panel called it, liquidation. It was, in the words of the panel's literature, "a humane resolution for humans without further societal prospects or contributions."
At some point, aggressive unemployment, the unending homelessness that followed, all the hopelessly addicted masses became too much for societies across the globe. Rootless and useless folks, deemed dangerous by the governments of the world, posed a threat to the well-heeled and over-privileged. Something had to be done.
Solutions were sought.
Rules on child-bearing, birth control, reeducation, retraining, relocation, voluntary imprisonment, involuntary suicide, all met with limited success and mostly varying degrees of failure. With rising threats and ruling class hysteria, some countries disintegrated. In some, tyrants took matters into their own hands. Others simply devolved into wholesale civil war and from there, wanton slaughter.
Delinda stared at the ceiling, she knew it would all be over soon. She replayed her morning, waiting for her appointment with the GONR Panel. It was surreal. She found it hard to believe that this was happening to her.
She'd always been such a hard worker.
"You ever wonder why they teach all that dystopian literature in school?" the attending security-guard asked no one in particular. The waiting room was full, but there was no response. Delinda glanced at the guy, his name tag read: Khalil. Delinda noticed the administrative assistant behind the security screen glare at him and shake her head.
"What's the matter, Annette?" Khalil asked, shrugging nonchalantly. "It's a fair question," he argued.
"That ain't protocol, Khalil," Annette reprimanded. "This isn't easy at the best of times, but your questions don't help. Just stop!" She shook her head again and then went back to scanning her interface and checking off boxes. Khalil waved his hand dismissively. He looked around, caught Delinda's eye.
"You know it's true," he said, approaching cautiously. He stood directly in front of her. She secretly loathed him. His arrogant youthfulness. His purpose. "Come on, admit it. A hundred years ago it was all Rowling, Dahl, Alexander, Steinbeck, Morrison; old dead writers. Now kids just upload all them books about broken futures."
"I was a teacher," Delinda replied. "I know."
"Well, imagine that!" Khalil said before continuing. "Except most of those books are about broken futures we already passed. I think we're doing all right," he said, before adding, "Things are getting better, right?" Delinda looked around the waiting room at all her placid, luckless companions, all of them buckled into wheelchairs, and straightened her shoulders.
"Really?" she asked indignantly. "Maybe you should read the room."
"It's like they're trying to prepare us for something or, like, it's all a joke," Khalil conspired. The conversation didn't go anywhere because Annette called Delinda's name and Khalil rolled her into the hearing chamber while humming to himself.
All through the hearing, Delinda's heart beat loudly in her ears. Her eyes refused to focus and her vision was spotty. She felt short of breath. She was sixty-one, with skills and education for jobs that no longer existed. She knew the panel's determination before she heard them say it. She was resigned to her fate. She had no arguement for not being useful.
Liquidation of a wasted life.
But now, awaiting transfer, her heart stopped and she felt a suffocating horror. The tears came and she fought with herself not to lose control. She didn't want to be one of those cases she'd heard about that had to be dragged away, pathetic, balling, reduced to the lowest animal instincts. She felt as though she might start screaming uncontrollably. She wanted to be understood. She wasn't a burden. It wasn't fair.
None of this was fair!
Khalil appeared again. He looked into her face. His sympathetic eyes and kind smile made her feel less afraid.
"I know this is difficult," he told her.
Khalil had been there in the beginning, leading her into the panel hearing. And now he was here to escort her into the preparation room. He offered her a sedative.
"It'll give you some peace," he said. She took it. She was still terrified, but her body felt numb, heavy. Her mind lost its sharpness. She felt unbothered. The fear would wash over her and then drift away. None of this felt real.
"Hey, don't look so scared," Khalil told her after attaching the intravenous lines and securing the straightjacket around her torso. He secured her to the gurney. "It's OK," he assured. "It's just," he looked around and then whispered something that sounded like, "the end." He moved away from her to attend to something or someone else.
Delinda started to panic again. This was crazy! She didn't want to go. Not like this. Everyone acted as though this sterile, complacent termination was totally normal. Humans were supposed to fight for life until their very last breath. She wanted to plead for mercy, but her mouth wasn't working. The more she concentrated on resisting, the more she sank deeper into the cocoon of numbness.
What's the point? she wondered. I'm no longer useful, no longer useful, I'm no longer.
Khalil returned. He looked down at her and the lights dimmed. He wheeled her forward into the liquidation room. She was sinking deeper. A darkness descended upon her mind and emotions. She concentrated on her breathing. She was just trying to remain dignified, even as she knew there was no hope. Some other words the lead panelist said came back to her.
"It is of this panel's opinion that this course of action is preferable to a tragic and slow demise on the margins of society."
"Don't worry," Khalil whispered again. "It's not the end." Her eyes widened and he nodded knowingly with a finger across his pursed lips. The gurney caught on some mechanism that pulled her forward, away from Khalil. He waved and turned his back. She bumped forward. The chamber closed and a robotic arm connected the tubes to the death machine. It was all so fast, efficient. Instantly, she felt a cool rush in her muscles. Delinda felt a lightness in her body, despite the darkness erasing her mind. It will be OK.
She was gone.
...
The afterlife was different than Delinda Strunck expected.
Darkness lifted and Delinda felt herself slowly climbing out of the hazy numbness, like wandering toward a light in twilight-shrouded woods. Soft sounds of voices in conversation hummed nearby. Her eyes began to adjust and her vision cleared, but confusion clouded her mind.
Delinda found herself in a rough hewn village. The smell of a wood fire drifted into her nostrils. People milled around conducting various tasks and business. She was resting upon a cot in a ramada of some kind, open on three sides and covered with fresh, green branches. Someone hovered next to her, but Delinda was groggy. Nothing was making sense. She wasn't certain, but sure was pretty sure she was still alive.
Shocking information.
"Oh hello," the woman said. "My name is Rosalie. I am a doctor." Delinda made no move to speak. Rosalie smiled and continued quietly checking Delinda's neighbors. When she finished, she knelt down beside Delinda.
"I'm just going to check your vital signs, if that's all right with you," she said. Delinda nodded. Rosalie finished. "You seem to be in good shape. Probably a little disoriented. Do you have any questions?" Delinda considered this.
"Where am I?" Delinda asked. Rosalie looked around and smiled.
"Welcome to the Great Beyond," Rosalie said with a flourish.
"Excuse me?" Delinda replied, more confused than before.
"A poor attempt at humor. This is Arizona, or at least it used to be. You probably know it as the Southern Exclusion Zone. This particular settlement is known as Green Valley," Rosalie told her proudly.
"So I've been sent to die slowly of radiation poisoning?" Delinda asked. Rosalie laughed again.
"Oh no," Rosalie said. "Let me upload the welcome packet to your ICI." Rosalie made a few taps on her portable interface. Instantly, Delinda's brain saw the quick history of the Southern Exclusion Zone.
The energy wars, unstoppable migration from the equatorial regions of the Earth fleeing global weather-related disasters, technological dependence, the slow shrinking of livable landscapes, civil unrest, and the ever-widening gap between the wealthy and the not-so wealthy. Of course, there was the Palo Verde nuclear meltdown a half century in the past, an event that was greatly exaggerated, but used as an excuse to create the Zone.
"What now?" Delinda asked.
"We lost our teacher last month. So I guess that's why you're here," Rosalie replied with a wink. "You'll be put to good use."
10-4-19
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