this book is set in the near future, when a pharamceutical company takes a leap of faith and tries to make medication a lifestyle, not a necessity or a choice.
time moves differently in sick people, it slows down or speeds up.
her eyes were red as if she used them for more than seeing, as if she had stuffed every bad thing in the world into them and then tried to see despite those things anyway, which cant be done. she did everything living people do but was missing her insides.
she took one pill of the usual two each morning and night: they were the sun and the moon of her day.
i wanted to feel nothing. that too was a feeling. in a sense the pills must have taken away her loss and replaced it with a different loss, a condition of general emptiness.
my thoughts seemed off to the side. come back thoughts. i liked the feeling of no feeling.
to my left, the moon burned the edge of a snow cloud white to a breezy clear patch in the sky and the lake shone like tinfoil, with the moon so sharp that i could have turned it on its side and cut my finger.
i had taken the biggest dose yet and it was too sharp: i floated ahead of myself, bumping into things.
we know you want us, sunless, we know you want us. in a pile they sang their anthem. we are the few now. we are the only few.
i listened to the blood. i looked inside my arm and followed a blood vessel to the heart, swam the pipes into and out of the chambers of my heart. in there, squeezed together, was everything i remembered and everything i couldnt forget.
to leave everything now and feel nothing, to follow my own floating, that simple. to feel nothing - not bad, not good. nothing.
no mercy now. they had almost put me to endless sleep.
dr. fargoon will address our core philosophy as we move into the third decade of the century. we want to get away from this notion that you take a pill for an ailment, a sore throat, a cut, a bad heart. medication is a companion for life, and life is indeed a very long illness. medicine is the new food. would you not eat food for a healthy body? do you want a health mind? are these truths not self-evident?
rex shouted as the music started: let's have color-coded medications based on the threat levels. we've only just begun!
thats the miracle of modern science - you can be wrong and you can be right at the same time.
the man adjusted his sunglasses: there is no future, only the presented continued.
some books you dont have to open. they read themselves to you even in your sleep. they fill your senses with words. the book had brought him back to it in his sleep, back for more words.
elevax is a wonder drug, he said. before this, finding out what was wrong with a person was like swinging a hammer in the dark. sometimes you hit first time, one prescription. or it could take a few months, a few years. he rested his chin on his hand. even a lifetime. would you have been ready for that?
reason means nothing. you have to change the way people feel, and that, my young friend, is what chemistry does so very well.
im talking about what you take for what you want to become. the magic wand is chemistry, my friend.
now ive lived long enough to be the same distance from dying. this time i dont mind.
he tried to explain that up in the sky was so different that he could never explain what he experienced there, what he saw, whaelt, the colors, the speed of the everything. nothing he said helped. he did not belong the ground and he could not go back up the beanstalk. and so for the rest of his life, jack lived a little bit up in the sky. the price of winning was losing what he had before. swan and the beanstalk.
i knew for a moment how most living people go invisible: they drive to work, return home, watch the television, go to bed, and everyday there is less of who they are. more is burned away.
the two pills were talking inside me now, the flow was better, the world sank a little.
if i could know the date of my own death from the moment of my birth, if i could live like andy and know the time of my death but not where i was born, i could live toward my beginning, not my end. i could have enough experience to know what to do when i was young. but would i live any better?
what else do you not know about your own mother, they say. we live in containers, in all manner of them, in jars, in pillows, in pockets, in the memory, in what people forget. but your mother, she could not forget. that was her disease.
. . .the pills had melted their names into my blood, did their job and disappeared, swam to my head in the red stream, and now it was my turn to dissolve.
her eyes were red as if she used them for more than seeing, as if she had stuffed every bad thing in the world into them and then tried to see despite those things anyway, which cant be done. she did everything living people do but was missing her insides.
she took one pill of the usual two each morning and night: they were the sun and the moon of her day.
i wanted to feel nothing. that too was a feeling. in a sense the pills must have taken away her loss and replaced it with a different loss, a condition of general emptiness.
my thoughts seemed off to the side. come back thoughts. i liked the feeling of no feeling.
to my left, the moon burned the edge of a snow cloud white to a breezy clear patch in the sky and the lake shone like tinfoil, with the moon so sharp that i could have turned it on its side and cut my finger.
i had taken the biggest dose yet and it was too sharp: i floated ahead of myself, bumping into things.
we know you want us, sunless, we know you want us. in a pile they sang their anthem. we are the few now. we are the only few.
i listened to the blood. i looked inside my arm and followed a blood vessel to the heart, swam the pipes into and out of the chambers of my heart. in there, squeezed together, was everything i remembered and everything i couldnt forget.
to leave everything now and feel nothing, to follow my own floating, that simple. to feel nothing - not bad, not good. nothing.
no mercy now. they had almost put me to endless sleep.
dr. fargoon will address our core philosophy as we move into the third decade of the century. we want to get away from this notion that you take a pill for an ailment, a sore throat, a cut, a bad heart. medication is a companion for life, and life is indeed a very long illness. medicine is the new food. would you not eat food for a healthy body? do you want a health mind? are these truths not self-evident?
rex shouted as the music started: let's have color-coded medications based on the threat levels. we've only just begun!
thats the miracle of modern science - you can be wrong and you can be right at the same time.
the man adjusted his sunglasses: there is no future, only the presented continued.
some books you dont have to open. they read themselves to you even in your sleep. they fill your senses with words. the book had brought him back to it in his sleep, back for more words.
elevax is a wonder drug, he said. before this, finding out what was wrong with a person was like swinging a hammer in the dark. sometimes you hit first time, one prescription. or it could take a few months, a few years. he rested his chin on his hand. even a lifetime. would you have been ready for that?
reason means nothing. you have to change the way people feel, and that, my young friend, is what chemistry does so very well.
im talking about what you take for what you want to become. the magic wand is chemistry, my friend.
now ive lived long enough to be the same distance from dying. this time i dont mind.
he tried to explain that up in the sky was so different that he could never explain what he experienced there, what he saw, whaelt, the colors, the speed of the everything. nothing he said helped. he did not belong the ground and he could not go back up the beanstalk. and so for the rest of his life, jack lived a little bit up in the sky. the price of winning was losing what he had before. swan and the beanstalk.
i knew for a moment how most living people go invisible: they drive to work, return home, watch the television, go to bed, and everyday there is less of who they are. more is burned away.
the two pills were talking inside me now, the flow was better, the world sank a little.
if i could know the date of my own death from the moment of my birth, if i could live like andy and know the time of my death but not where i was born, i could live toward my beginning, not my end. i could have enough experience to know what to do when i was young. but would i live any better?
what else do you not know about your own mother, they say. we live in containers, in all manner of them, in jars, in pillows, in pockets, in the memory, in what people forget. but your mother, she could not forget. that was her disease.
. . .the pills had melted their names into my blood, did their job and disappeared, swam to my head in the red stream, and now it was my turn to dissolve.
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