America 2049

By Tamara Wilhite

I spent all day in line with my only daughter to get permission to have a baby. A season elder desperate to be a grandmother who pleads the justification for permission to have a baby is often a strong factor in those decisions, although officially emotion is never supposed to be a factor in such a serious matter.

Then came the pager message. Dad was sick. Again. That was a problem. A federal message came through too after his health notice reached me; his government account was running out of money. This was now officially a disaster.

Ever since the baby boomers retired, the government had taken over all of that financial mess. The government accounts were meant to solve all the problems. All his property and money were sold and transferred to the account, so he couldn't be taken advantage of by any schemer; it also meant he couldn't transfer assets down the family line to avoid paying for his own care. The government took two thirds up front to ensure that taxes were paid. After all, we have to make sure the system is funded up front. Then Dad went to the state funded nursing home. He was there right now.

I left my daughter to the bureaucrats. At 25, she was of legal age—barely. And now old enough to have a baby with federal approval. And she was young enough that if she went through the rejections for a few years, she'd still be young enough to have one without paying for fertility treatment. It was her first time to try, and I wanted to be there. I couldn't stand to leave. We'd actually gotten up to the front of the line!

I let her start all the paperwork. If she did it wrong, we'd have to wait a year before reapplying. She was theoretically old enough to do this on her own, but I was still protective. Boomers had wanted to raise the age of legal maturity to 30, but too many people voted against it. If you could be taxed when you started working in school at age 12, you should be able to vote at least a decade and a half after that. The clerk asked if I was abandoning my minor. I let my daughter pull out her ID cards. Once proven to be theoretically able to fill out the electronic forms by interview, I left. I had to take care of the older generation.

The tram was delayed. Again. If I'd had my own vehicle like I had been my daughter's age, I could have routed around the protesters. They thought public transportation used up too much power and despoiled the natural beauty of the city. They were the ‘not one more’ crowd who thought we should all go extinct, but they couldn't do it gracefully or leave the rest of us out of it. I hated those people. If I admitted hating anyone, I would have been rounded up and dumped in the psych ward.

The compromise with the environmentalists had created the birth right system. The government said we citizens and noncitizens alike were allowed to number 325 million people. Each person alive at the time had permission to replicate themselves. If you were too rich or too incorrect, you got one and the other went to the state to redistribute more fairly. If you were middle class and middle of the road, you got two birthrights. If you were immigrant or poor, you were usually allowed three, so we could ensure a future supply of labor or a continuation of the breeder culture. Nuts of politically incorrect varieties got sterilized and saw their birthrights reassigned. I couldn't risk that classification hitting my family. Not now. Not when we were so close to adding a new member.

We finally got underway. The pager went off again and again. I tried to put it in vibrate mode as angry strangers made various gestures, but the federal messages overrode that option because of their urgency. I couldn't pay unless I was in person to prove I authorized the payment. I couldn't get there until I got there, and the transport wasn't going any faster. But the messages kept coming at an increasingly urgent pace. Louder and louder, too, over-riding the sound settings on my pager, as if I were the type to try to sleep through a bureaucracy ready to pull the plug. People were looking at me funny. I jumped off a station early and ran. I made it past the correct station before the train, though I had to jump over de-haired anti-hair/anti-fur activists to do it.

The building was the same white on white every other building was to reflect back sunlight; to reduce global warming, we were told, just as population control was meant to do. My sunglasses flickered against the glare. The nursing homes always seemed to have more reflective pigment; it made the building glow by day and night. Heavenly, if one was allowed to believe such things.

The guard let me in. Dementia and demented patients couldn't leave. Potential disturbances couldn't enter. Upset people were normally turned away, but he made an exception from the very audible pager tone — he knew what was going on. The financing crisis over-rode all other restrictions.

I was running to the administrative desk when the pager wailed out in a high pitched banshee tone. Everyone within earshot turned to stare at me. We all knew what it meant. Funds at zero. I panicked and tried to get my own debit card out. I'd pay for it out of my daughter's college fund, if I had to. The transaction would take only a split second, if I could get the card out in time. The warning banshee scream meant they'd pulled the plug.

The State couldn't afford to provide care for those who could no longer contribute to the State; there were too many elderly and too few taxpayers. If the rate of return for the investment of medical care was worth it, the doctor was allowed to treat the patient. Sick kids, almost always. Sick adults, usually. Sick old people, never. Not unless it was paid for from the government managed account or from private money. No more money, no more treatment. No more treatment, no more life. No one was allowed to drain the coffers anymore; we couldn't afford it anymore. We left this world as little in our name as we had when we entered it: even on all accounts and equally empty-handed.

The card was in my hand and approaching the reader when the second banshee cry came. It was longer and lower pitched. Patient terminated. He was dead. The drugs would have been released into his system already. I hadn't been fast enough. The horror was starting to hit me. It hadn't even been an hour! The grace period was supposed to be longer than that!

"Don't worry, honey," the middle aged admin tried to console me, ‘they don't feel any pain.’

"I want to see him."

"That's not possible.”

"I came as soon as I could. I have to at least see him -"

“The Cleaners arrived when as his account started running low. He's already en route to the crematorium.”

"Then I'll go there, then –“

"We can't risk anyone interfering with an orderly disposal of the dead."

"He's my father!"

"You'll get an official death certificate and probably a conciliatory note because of the circumstances. You did, after all, go to extraordinary attempts to pay. Most people only argue over the phone." She saw my expression and misjudged the reason, "Don't worry. It won't affect your credit rating. We don't let accounts go negative anymore.“

"Your speech sounds rather practiced." I wanted to strike her, but the thought of my daughter's sterilization kept my hand still. Violence begets violence, and the violent didn't beget.

"This happens all the time,” was her cool response. The woman had her hand visibly resting on a taser she lifted perceptibly into view at my lack of compliance. Government employees had the right to self defense and defense of government property of any degree of force they deemed necessary. Only government officials were allowed to have such weapons, and they were trained in how to use them. If I breathed wrong, I had a chance of ending up in the ER. I could pay for it, this time.

My pager went off again. I took several steps back to try to read it in a mockery of privacy. There was a dozen staff still staring at me. It might have been every ambulatory person in the building, aside from the hundreds of patients.

It was the official death notice. All legal ends were already tied up electronically. His data file was closed and being sent to a data-crunching bureaucrat. All his personal files would be deleted unless otherwise noted to be transferred. I would get confirmation messages of all the transactions on my private message account. I had nowhere to go but home. So I did.

My daughter came back that evening. Her father was working a second shift to make up for us not working that day. We were so odd to our neighbors, me still living with her father and her still living with us. She was overwhelmingly happy. I mechanically asked what happened; the shock of loss was still hitting home.

"They processed it and gave me immediate approval!" I dared ask, “How many?”

"One birthright confirmed. Two confirmed birthrights if I find a man who hasn't already had one child." My father's death had probably been translated into immediate approval for the grandchild. It wasn't a conciliation prize. It was a replacement now on order.

"Who were you thinking of being the father?”

"Liu, maybe. Or Chandra. I haven't decided yet."

"Are either of them willing to commit?"

"Commit what? A birthright?"

"Maybe you should have two children by the same man." A traditional thought, I knew, but not unreasonable.

"If I marry both, I might get permission to have three!" She smiled broadly before disappearing into her room, amused at her witty jab back and my thrilled reaction. We both thought we won, if for different reasons. I heard her eagerly begin calling up people. Talking to her friends or the men in question or total strangers. Girls tended to act fast on those permissions, just in case the government pulled the plug on its permission in a later review. At the thought of plugs pulled too soon, my smile faded. Euphemisms again glazed over the reality of life and death to little technical terms…how long before someone decided to pull my plug for not being plugged in utterly and completely to the official reality?