SALVATION 

by Richard Banks    

                              

If I had one wish it would be to declare all other wishes null and void. Call me cynical, a spoilsport, anything you want but if you had my job you'd be thinking the same. Right now you're thinking about all the good I'm doing, how I transform people's lives, lives full of hardship that without me would be as grey and cheerless as the never-changing sky. What can I say? With four million viewers I must be doing something right; if I don't bring them pleasure then why do they watch? For thirty minutes every month they get to hope that they will be chosen, one of ten people randomly selected by computer to have their wishes made reality. The real winners are the ones who lose. For them there is always hope. OK, they say, so I didn't win this time but there's always next week and, if that doesn't happen, there's the week after and the week after that. Someone's got to win, why not me? In a world where deaths outnumber live births by five to one their chances of winning are constantly increasing.

         My sympathy goes to the chosen ones, the poor mutts who think that all their troubles are over, then they find out about the rules, the unpublished small print that no one thought to tell them about. Cash prizes are limited to 50,000 credits, enough to buy an apartment in a domed village but nothing left to pay the bills; and if you don't live in a domed village there's no shortage of desperadoes who will cut your throat for what you have got and they want. Happy days! Then there are the crazy people who think miracles can be done. Cure me of the sickness they say, I want to live in a warm place where the sun still shines, take me back in time, I know you can do it!

         But we can't. This is reality, it's all we have. Choose what you want but prepare to be disappointed. The lucky ones are those who make only moderate demands and having only moderate expectations are moderately satisfied. A man who wanted to see the sun was taken to a mountain top above the cloud bank. A woman who wanted to make love with Brad Pitt junior was granted half an hour of his time and went home more satisfied than most. The winner who came out best was the guy who wanted a litre of moonshine every day for the rest of his life.  As he was nearly forty this was considered a reasonable request. He's the happiest drunk you're ever likely to meet. For him the world is a great place, it exists at the bottom of a glass.

         Most of our winners aren't that fortunate. All suffer from the same disadvantage, that having won they are no longer eligible for further wishes. For most of them no wishes, no prospect of wishes, equals no hope. No wonder that the suicide rate for winners is three times higher than for the rest of us. By now you're thinking I don't get much job satisfaction. I don't, but at least I get to live in a domed village. Life in the bubble may not be normal but if normal is what we used to have, normal no longer exists. At least we're alive. In the combat zones, no one lives, twenty million deaths for every second of war. But not here, not on this sceptred isle. We were spared, no rockets, no bombs, not a single casualty, not a single building destroyed. Then the clouds rolled in. We thought they would pass over, it was just a matter of time, that one day we would wake up to a blue sky. Thirty years on we know that’s not going to happen, not for us, not for many generations to come. Our world, at best, is a twilight place where few crops grow and those that do are contaminated with the same sickness that's in all living things. We that were sixty million are now five but we cling on. Food is grown in factories, electricity generated, new buildings constructed. We have adapted, we continue to adapt. Every year some small progress is made but as yet there is no cure for the sickness. In the accountancy of human life if we do not balance the books in twenty years mankind will be extinct. We are on the edge, but not done yet. The newborns contain less radiation than their parents. For most the difference is not significant, in some it is. These fortunate few are nurtured within the benign environment of a dome. In time they will be paired with others of their kind. In them is our salvation.

         For now, we must take consolation in the few pleasures that remain. Our lives are short, fifty years for those in domes, thirty-seven for the rest. What would we do without wishes? On TV screens crackling with radiation those who watch dare to dream, believe in the possibility of better. For a short while behind drawn curtains, the world is out of sight and the things we have seen more precious than those we don't. It could be worse, they say. While there is life and wishes there is hope.

         Important people also get wishes. For them, there is no need for random selection. They are chosen as a reward for services rendered, members of the ruling council, district marshals and occasionally TV personalities like myself. Yes, I too have a wish. Having observed the shortcomings in other people's wishes I have been careful not to waste mine. I have chosen psycho-stasis, ten days in an induced coma where I can be in an ideal world of my own construction. I tell the therapist precisely what I want and she programmes my mind, like others programme computers. For ten days I can be anyone I want, do anything I want, in any place or time. It's a fantasy world in which the mind moves but the body doesn't. For some, it's more real than reality.

         Sometimes things go wrong, but not often. The nurse assures me that their success rate is 98%. She attaches electrodes to my head and chest, explains the procedure yet again and punctures my arm with a needle. Have a good trip she says. I close my eyes knowing that the next time I open them I will be in the south of France, circa 2001. The programme downloads and I slip into unconsciousness.

 

                                              *****

        

         I awake in a pleasant enough room that has floral wallpaper, a cupboard, and a radiator gurgling with hot water. It's morning, day one. I get out of bed and cross the room towards the window. My legs are unsteady but this is to be expected; it will, I'm told, soon pass. I draw back the curtains and stare out at a landscape that's definitely not the south of France. This is England, the way it used to me. It's a winter's day but the sun is shining. My disappointment is eclipsed by the sight of the sun and the blue sky that surrounds it. I wash, select some clothes from the cupboard and go exploring. The building I am in is a large one, evidently a hotel. There is food cooking, a full English breakfast. The smell of bacon mingles with that of sausage, mushrooms and coffee.

         At the end of a corridor is a staircase. I follow my nose and descend two flights to a dining room where the food is set out buffet style in metal bowls set within a long wooden cabinet that separates the kitchen from the dining area. I help myself. A jolly woman in white overalls asks me whether I want tea or coffee. I ask if I can have both. She laughs, says I will need a tray, finds one and, when my hands start shaking, she takes my breakfast to a table where the cutlery has already been set. Other people enter the room, little is said. They choose their meals, sit down and eat. There are no children. I wonder why, surely there should be some.

         I’m drinking the last of the coffee when a woman, a youngish sort of woman, asks if she might join me.  It sounds like an old joke. Am I falling apart is the standard response. Instead, I gesture politely towards an empty chair. Her name is Lyn. Lyn is pleasant, informal, but businesslike. She says I am her ten o'clock. I wonder if she is the escort I requested.

         “Why don't we go through to the conservatory,” she says, “it will be quiet there.”

         It is. We sit by the French windows in the full glow of the sun. Outside, in the garden, the rhododendrons are almost in bloom. It’s Spring.

         “How goes it?” she asks.

         I nearly say that it is not what I asked for, but this would be absurd. The woman exists only in my imagination. How can she explain the malfunction in my programming?

         “I'm fine.”

         She smiles. “How is your room?”

         “It has a nice view,” I say, “the sun shines in.”

         “Yes, we thought you would like that. It's east facing. There's nothing better than waking in a sunlit room. Don't you agree?”

         I do. She knows I do.

         She smiles, changes the subject. “Your publisher's been in touch. He sends his best wishes.”

         I suppress my annoyance. I speak quietly, but firmly. “I'm Gerry Wyngarde, the TV presenter, I don't have a publisher.”

         “What about the other Gerry?” she asks.

         “Which Gerry is that?”

         “This Gerry.” She hands me a book. “Give it a read. I'll be interested to know what you make of it. No hurry. We'll talk again tomorrow. Until then, make yourself at home.”

         She terminates our meeting with yet another smile. Her smile is irritating, affected. It seems to be saying that she knows things that I don't. I decide that if she wants me to read the book that's a good reason not to. I take a walk in the garden but it's cold so I come back inside. The book lies on the table where I left it. I pick it up. It's two hours until lunch and there's nothing else to do. I turn the pages to chapter one. I start reading, get to page fifteen and stop. This is a story I know only to well. It's about me, Gerry Wyngarde, a TV presenter in the year 2080 granting wishes to the poor wretches that have survived the apocalypse. Someone has been observing me, writing down the minutia of my life for an unsanctioned biography. It's an outrage! Who has done this? I turn back to the inside flap of the cover where there is a short biography of the author. His name is Gerry Warren. His life is summed up in three short paragraphs. Beneath the words is his picture; it is a picture of me.

Copyright Richard Banks