SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

The world longed to hear a baby cry.

It was lunch hour and the residents of the Eternal Sunshine Care Facility were watching their favorite soap opera, As the Universe Turns, now in its 115th year of broadcasting. A majority of the elderly living there suffered from some form of dementia, and they enjoyed each episode over and over. The recycled plots droned on, every possible storyline already played out decades ago.

The familiar music of the soap opera filled the room of rapt viewers. Some spontaneously applauded, others simply stared at the television screen, oblivious. Two of the ladies cackled and mumbled to one another. The staff walked around, arranging the residents into a semicircle around the large screen.

Attached to each wheelchair was a lidded container with a straw, filled with a smoothie of synthesized ingredients, enhanced with bright colors. The meal processors were set to produce based on the day of the week. Purple Promise today. Turquoise Delight tomorrow.

Mrs. Janice Doggerel possessed a clear mind, but a broken body. Her aide, a bored eternal teenager, told her it was time to join the other residents. Not for the first time, she wished telepathy existed. She didn’t want to join the other residents and desperately desired to convey that message to her aide. When her attendant wheeled her in front of the common room television, she silently screamed.

Mrs. Doggerel’s daily wish to die went unanswered.

Menial labor had been performed by androids for decades, freeing up time for people to pursue whatever interested them. The typical 4-hour workday allowed for more leisure time than at any other period in history. Instead of causing unrest, this abundance of free time lulled the majority of the population into compliance.

The unhealthy and the bored chose another path.

The immortals’ taste in reading changed after The Event. The most popular genre: Utopian. Unlike previous generations who wrote constantly about the end of the world, immortal authors created perfect worlds for their readers to dream about.

Julia Kingsley’s book had been in the top ten on the New World Chronicle ’s Best Sellers List for fifty years. She’d created a world where the citizens chose the age they wanted to be when they became immortal. The residents of this utopia also gave birth to children and chose the dates of their deaths. The names of the towns in this fictional account reflected the state of mind of their citizens: Harmony, Bliss, Paradise, Wonder, and of course, Nirvana.

Jenna Toujours highlighted her favorite chapters in Our Perfect World , imagining herself at twenty-eight. She wanted to live in Bliss with her husband, two children, and a real dog. Daydreaming about living in the author’s version of Utopia, she didn’t hear the front door open.

“Hey, Jenna, I’m home!”

“Hey, Mom, I’m in my bedroom. Wanna come in?”

Vivian entered the room, immediately distressed to see her daughter re-reading Julia Kingsley’s book, but quickly adjusted her face into a smile.

“Could you order dinner? I’m too tired to decide what to eat. Anything except eggplant, OK?”

“Sure, Mom, just a bit. I want to read to the end of this chapter.”

Vivian sat on her daughter’s bed watching her read, wondering why Jenna felt compelled to lose herself in that world.

A little while later, Vivian and Jenna sat on the sofa eating hamburgers made from synthetic beef. Standard meal processor fodder. Another side effect of The Event: animals were also sterile. It wasn’t long before meat became unavailable. Anything edible had been hunted to extinction; the rest of the animals died from natural causes. The only natural choices for food were plants.

Vivian and Jenna weren’t adventurous when it came to eating; they preferred to eat whatever their synthesizer could produce. They’d grown used to the flavor of fake meat. Decades of eating it dulled their taste buds. Everything they ate was synthetic, and Vivian had thought more than once that real food would probably shock their numbed senses.

“How was work today, Mom?” Jenna continued reading her book while speaking to her mother.

“I found a cure for immortality and everything will go back to normal.”

Vivian testing to see if Jenna was paying attention.

“That’s cool, Mom,” Jenna murmured.

If I don’t find a cure soon, Jenna will never leave her head. And what if she decides she’s tired of living?

The day before she became immortal, Mrs. Janice Doggerel was being transferred to a hospice center. Hope gone, her disease was in its end stages. Her death was predicted to be imminent. Her only daughter said a tearful goodbye, not sure if her mother could hear her.

She could.

Her granddaughter stood in the corner sobbing. Seeing her grandmother look so frail, and knowing she would soon be gone, had broken through the fragile web of optimism Jenna had woven before coming for her final visit. At last she bent down and kissed her grandmother and whispered, “I love you, Nana.”

Her daughter signed the papers required for her transfer, insisting that the main priority be that the doctors and nurses allow her mother to die without pain. Mrs. Doggerel would continue to be fed and hydrated intravenously. Vivian couldn’t bear the thought of her mother starving to death.

The hospice nurses counseled the small family, instructing them about the stages of grief. After the nurses left, Vivian and Jenna huddled together, trying to accept the looming death of their sweet mother and grandmother. Uncontrolled tears rolled down the faces of the next two generations of Doggerels, dripping onto their folded hands.

Janice Doggerel suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS. Unlike history’s most famous sufferer of the disease, Dr. Stephen Hawking, she could not function. She was barely alive, unable to communicate, move, or feel any honest joy. Mrs. Doggerel looked forward to the release of death, but leaving the last remaining members of her family pained her. If she could get better and stay with them, she would, but her life at this point was more than miserable—it was torturous. She felt like a captive in her failing body, unable to do anything other than exist.

The next day, at forty-two minutes after the hour, her real nightmare began.

Those not willing to live forever decided to take their own lives. Natural deaths no longer existed; no one died of disease or old age, so in order to cease living, an immortal had to cause his or her own death. For years, people killed themselves with guns, by taking sleeping pills, or jumping off a building, a bridge, or a cliff.

It was all very messy.

In response to pressure from the public, a new suicide industry quietly arose, catering to people who wanted to experience a beautiful death—or whose families wanted them to. These entrepreneurs advertised one-way vacations to nirvana. The menu for seekers of the ultimate release ranged from a simple room and an injection, to a glorious party ending in a mass suicide. Owners of these businesses were careful not to be the ones to administer the lethal dose.

Governments around the world gradually realized that there was a need for the population to have a choice after so many years of immortality. Assisted suicide became completely legal worldwide forty-two years after The Event. The only requirement was an interview given by a psychiatrist. Then, with a prescription from a doctor, the patient could gain admittance to a Death House. To prevent too many from taking this path, the number of prescriptions allowed remained limited.

Gaining admittance to a Death House became a celebration. Families gave farewell parties and sent announcements to their friends. Obtaining a prescription to end this eternal existence was on a par with winning the lottery.