AARON’S WORLD: Part 1

NOTICING TINY REMNANTS from his snack laying on the couch Aaron took a ZAPITUP from the coffee table and passed it over the offending debris. With a zizz the crumbs vaporized creating a small cloud of fumes which disappeared inside the device. Replacing it on the table he noticed the word full flickering on its surface. Pushing the top caused it to open flower-like and present a white two-centimetre cube in a cradle. Aaron lifted it out. The device folded closed with a friendly chime.

CROSSING HIS LIVING SPACE to the kitchen area Aaron approached the shimmering INTELLI-KUK work surface which had chosen a relaxing seascape for him. Four round blue envelopes open like empty clam shells lay on it – each lit from beneath to indicate their location. He scooped them up with his spare hand and carried everything to a REPRO-GARB port embedded in the worktop. Its sealing membrane opened like an iris and its internal force-field gently lifted the cube and Puff-Bik wrapping from his hands and closed seamlessly after the used material passed through.

IN AARON’S WORLD anything people used was a device. Words like gadget, utensil, widget, gismo or tool were long extinct. He lived in a DOMESTINEST. The entire population lived in Domestinests except for OPT-OUTS – “crazies” who rejected society and begged in places like downtown Plymouth.UK – the place where Aaron once lived with his wife and children.

AARON WAS FORTY-THREE YEARS OLD and lived alone. His wife, daughter and son were killed in a road accident when he was thirty-three. Taken out on a road-crossing by an Autotruk with a faulty Pedestri-scan. They never knew a thing. Accidents like theirs happened a lot.

******

DEVASTATED at the loss of the only things he cared about, Aaron made an unsuccessful attempt to SELF-EUTH. His wife’s parents told him unplanned euth was an insult to his family’s memory. Aaron’s parents agreed. Both families clubbed together to pay for Aaron to attend PSYCHO-SKOOL. There, he was advised to upgrade his life to make it easier to cope with his loss. ‘Take your mind off things. Spoil yourself,’ they said. The personal comforter allocated to Aaron suggested he consider WW.DE-POP’s TAYLARD-EUTH programme since he’d already tried self-euth anyway. Aaron rejected it out of hand and discharged himself from Psycho-Skool.

BACK IN HIS CRAMPED DOMESTINEST he soon became very depressed at all the memories “screwing around” in his brain and called his Psycho-Skool comforter for help. He sent Aaron a PAMPHA-BUCH about the TAYLARD-EUTH programme.

ON ACTIVATING THE DEVICE the Reed-Skreen lit up with an emblem of a gold “Tree of Life” at the top. Beneath it the memes LIV-LIFE; LUV-LIFE; FILL-LIFE; flashed onto the screen one-at-a-time in varying colours then disappeared. The cycle kept repeating until Aaron selected the next page. To be sure he understood what they wanted to get him into, Aaron read each screen page at least three times. The two types of programme on offer were summarised on page three:

*****

U-CHOOZ Pak: (The most popular)

Persons joining in this programme enter into a contract with WW.De-Pop.

Members agree to euthanization at a specific age of their own choosing. You can also choose from one of three options of painless termination methods.

Members can specify an actual date. (For example a parent’s birthday or perhaps the same date as William Shakespeare’s death or similar icon)

The U-Chooz “age-window” runs from 25 - 70. You can choose any year from and up to the limits. The number of residual life-years together with your choice of Domestinest determines the size of the fixed income and benefits received.

Example for a Life-Age 32 & Euth-Age 62 = 30 residual years:

For a member choosing a Domestinest.ECO he/she receives an income of 209.8% cost of living & use of lux3+ vehicle at grade lll+ Medsure.

For a member choosing a Domestinest.STD/2Bd he/she receives 177.4% cost of living & use of lux2.5+ vehicle at grade lll Medsure.

(For 20 residual years the income increases to 245.3% and 213.0% respectively for similar types of accommodation.)

You can “chooz” to live anywhere within a 100km radius from your current position without reduction in income. You can take employment without any reduction in income.

The chosen Euth-Age can be altered opon request within five (5) years of entering the contract. Increasing or decreasing conversely affects the income and benefits.

In the event of pre-Auth-age death, the member’s income will go to surviving family members (if any) until Euth-age is reached.

Cancelling the contract will result in loss of income; Domestinest (negotiable according to rent payment ability) and benefits (negotiable according to Medsure premium payment ability)

Domestinest.LUX units are not available to U-CHOOZ members.

LUX-OPN Pak: (Popular with singles)

Persons joining this programme enter into a contract with WW.De-Pop.

Members can look forward to living in a Domestinest.LUX located in a prime area in any country of choice (subject to availability).

A Director level Income of 500% cost of living; a Director level TopLux vehicle plus a secondary lux3 Run-around and Director level Grade X Medsure is included

Anyone over life-age 25 can join. With LUX-OPN the Euth-Age is undetermined. Termination can occur at any time by any method. There will be NO warning

Note: Once signed the contract is non-negotiable. If “natural” death occurs within two years of entering the contract surviving family (if any) will receive member’s income for two years post death.

Legal Note: In order to comply with International law, female members must permanently use No-Preg or be neutered unless they have an approved child care arrangement with relatives. This precaution is to avoid the possibility of accidently terminating a member carrying an embryo.

The number of residual years before termination is governed by fluctuations in the global population/resources index. (Currently the minimum residual age today shows: 11.65 years.)

******

AARON WAITED a week before activating the Pampha-Buch again. Reading the whole thing through he saw nothing had changed except the figure in small print at the end which now read 11.73 years. He noticed on further reading it changed on a daily basis. It was a big decision. Aaron was intelligent enough to know he needed to weigh things carefully.

IT WAS IMPORTANT TO REVIEW his current situation. The tiny Domestinest.ECO he’d crammed his family into was all they could afford. Jobs were few and far between, most of which were mind numbing IT work. Aaron’s current job was colloquial phrase checking Auto-Novel devices – they rarely made mistakes. His wife had a more interesting job programming Lees-a-Nannie devices to change diapers and baby sleep suits. It was important work since each device had to be customized to the shape of individual infants before being leased out. Faulty devices had on occasions ripped a baby to pieces. She earned more than him. Without her income it was a struggle.

IN ONE WAY HE WAS FORTUNATE living on the 97^th floor of a Domestinest.ECO complex. His window offered a view the sea rather than the scores of 150 story Domestinest blocks on the opposite side. Even accounting for the kelp and protein farms; water purification plants and air de-carbonizing units spreading out for miles over the surface in all directions, on a clear day he could see distant waves and a purple-ish horizon. Sunsets were best.

IT SEEMED SILLY TO HIM, but his biggest gripe was the queues that formed at the communal REPO-GARB ports. Residents were legally obliged to take used and unwanted material to the ports on a daily basis. The need to register details on a palm scanner before they could dispose of anything led to back-ups. Even when they worked properly one could wait for an hour just to discard a food wrapper. It was possible to go down to the streets (kept spotless by Auto-Recyk devices) and use one of the hundreds of public Repo-Gard ports, but nobody did. OPT-OUTs hung around them hoping to steal any useful or edible garbage. Garb-muggings were common. Also it was rumoured Opt-Outs carried diseases. Aaron longed to live in a Domestinest.STD – they had their own Repo-Garb port.

THEN THERE WAS THE FAMILY. Aaron never felt close to his parents and less so to his in-laws, but they were all good people. The problem was both family groups had signed up to the U-Chooz programme four decades ago which, of course, was why they had good incomes. His parents elected to go together on his mother’s sixty-eighth birthday – three years away. His in-laws in two. Plans for their “going away parties” were in full swing. Aaron and his wife promised they’d attend both parties even though they didn’t agree with planned-euth – the reason why he and Rosemary chose to put up with living the way they did. Without Rosemary, Aaron was totally alone.