SALVATION
By Richard Banks
If I had one wish it would
be to declare all wishes null and void. Call me cynical, a spoilsport, anything
you like but if you had my job you'd be wanting the same. Right now you're
thinking about all the good I'm doing, how I help to transform people's lives;
lives full of hardship that without me and the wishes would be as grey and
cheerless as the never changing sky. Well, what can I say? With three million
viewers I must be doing something right; if I don't bring them pleasure then
why do they watch? For thirty minutes each month on ‘UK Plus’ 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 those who lose. For them
there is still 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 ten to one their chances of winning constantly increase.
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unpublished small print that no one thought to tell them about.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's 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 Ginsplash every day
for the rest of his life. As he was on the wrong side of forty this was
considered a reasonable request. He's the happiest drunk you'll ever 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 once had, 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, that it was just a matter of
time before we woke up one morning to see 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 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
once sixty million are now down to four, 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-five for
the rest. What would we do without the wishes? On TV screens crackling with
radiation those who watch dare to dream and believe in the possibility of
better. For a short while behind drawn curtains the world is out of sight and
the things that remain seem more
precious than those lost. It could be worse, they say. While there are life and
wishes there is also 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 media viewer. It's morning on 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 sunny, windswept day, the radiator beneath the window
is cooling but still warm. My disappointment is eclipsed by the sight of the
sun and the blue sky that surrounds it. I shower, 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 in metal
bowls 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 shake, she takes my breakfast to a table where the
cutlery is already set out. Other people enter the room, but little is said. They
choose their meals, sit down and eat. There are no children. I wonder why,
surely there must be children.
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 quieter 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 Donovan, 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 for
not doing so. I take a walk in the garden but it's still cold so I come back
in. The book lies on the table where I left it. I pick it up. It's an hour and
a half until lunch and there's nothing else to do. I turn to chapter one. I
start reading, get to page twenty-two and stop. This is a narrative I know only
too well. It's about me, Gerry Donovan, a TV presenter in the year 2050 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
that reads like fiction. 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 Baker. His life is summed up in three short paragraphs. Beneath
them is his picture; it’s a picture of me.
Copyright
Richard Banks
