Smith Babbitt is in the prime of his life: he’s only 25 years into his 89-year lifespan.
He knows this because of Timmy®, the mysterious app that can tell you with infallible accuracy how old you will be when you die. Smith still has 64 years to go. But lately he’s been in a rut, and his long lifespan is starting to feel like a sentence.
Possible salvation arrives in the form of Mavis Pead, a co-worker at Smith's demoralizing job. Smith is infatuated, despite the age difference: Mavis has just entered the last of her 43 years. She’s a “zero” – the most shunned demographic in society. When a careless act leads to their boss’s apparent death before his time, Smith and Mavis are thrown together in an intrigue that could call Timmy®’s infallibility into question. Mavis might not be so old after all – nor Smith so young.
A laugh-out-loud sendup of a technologically dependent culture, Zero is also a tender love story and a big-hearted reflection on the true meaning of age. A story that asks the question, What do we do with the time we’re given, whether we know how long we have...or we don’t?
Smith Babbitt is in the prime of his life: he’s only 25 years into his 89-year lifespan.
He knows this because of Timmy®, the mysterious app that can tell you with infallible accuracy how old you will be when you die. Smith still has 64 years to go. But lately he’s been in a rut, and his long lifespan is starting to feel like a sentence.
Possible salvation arrives in the form of Mavis Pead, a co-worker at Smith's demoralizing job. Smith is infatuated, despite the age difference: Mavis has just entered the last of her 43 years. She’s a “zero” – the most shunned demographic in society. When a careless act leads to their boss’s apparent death before his time, Smith and Mavis are thrown together in an intrigue that could call Timmy®’s infallibility into question. Mavis might not be so old after all – nor Smith so young.
A laugh-out-loud sendup of a technologically dependent culture, Zero is also a tender love story and a big-hearted reflection on the true meaning of age. A story that asks the question, What do we do with the time we’re given, whether we know how long we have...or we don’t?
Enjoy!
I write, then sign my first name below the imperative. My first name is Smith.
Clandestiny takes the card back from me. Her tiny face puckers.
“‘Enjoy’? That’s not very appropriate. Mavis is turning zero, you know.”
I don’t know. I don’t know who Mavis is. My cheeks go hot. I’ve never figured out a way to prevent myself from blushing in uncomfortable social situations. Which is to say, most social situations.
“Er…” I offer. “I could Wite-Out® the exclamation point, so that it’s not so jovial. And then I could append something like, ‘your remaining days’ or ‘the precious moments that remain.’ Or I could Wite-Out® the whole thing and write ‘Wishing you a full year of treasured moments.’”
Clandestiny is still scowling at the card.
“There’s already a ‘Cherish your remaining days’ from Bradyn. And a ‘Wishing you a full year to treasure’ from Rudy.”
“How about,” I begin, reaching for the correction tape. But she’s already closed the card and is on to Bronwyn Bromell-White Alvarez-Black’s daughter, who sits in the workstation next to me.
“Sign a birthday card for Mavis.”
Bronwyn Bromell-White Alvarez-Black’s daughter takes the card without pausing from her work. Her irises continue to shimmy. I lean over discreetly so that I can read what she writes.
Happy Birthday!
she scribbles, then signs her first name, which unfortunately for me is illegible. Something with a W?
Just one more thing that I should have learned by now.
I re-open my innerface and load the next application.
Jaxon O’Dowdy is a fairly old man, 15:41. He and his wife recently had a baby who turned out to be much older than both of them, currently 3:n. To prepare for the emotional toll of his child’s impending demise, Mr. O’Dowdy is applying for a license for red devils. He has already been approved for tuinal and ludes. Known medication allergies include penicillin and skezag. Type-6 diabetes, history of melanomas, 310 pounds. The application notes that Mrs. O’Dowdy has already been granted a license for the reds, and is experiencing tremendously therapeutic results.
I click on the image of Mr. O’Dowdy. He is smiling rapturously. I try not to let the smile prejudice me, but it does look like he’s already getting value from the tuinal and the ludes. Does he really need the red devils too? Still, denying an application from a preemptively grieving father strikes me as mean-spirited. I check the box for “For Further Review” so that my supervisor can make the final decision. I load the next application.
Wyllow Broughton is a young 75:23 med school student with no flags in her medical history. She is a fit 101 pounds. She is applying for greenies to help her get through final exams.
It’s a relief to get an easy one. I check the box for “Approved.”
Mia-Maya Hirschkind is only 75:15, and has already been diagnosed with chronic skull pain. She is applying for a license for chloral hydrate so that she can sleep through her agony.
I check the box for “Approved.”
Aidyn Loomis is a zero, 1:55. He is applying for nitrous oxide. Under medical history he has written I have a body. Its about to expire, you fuck-wads. Give me my fucking gas and fuck yourselves.
Being a zero, his application is merely a formality, a piece of red tape. I check the box for “Approved.”
My co-worker at the workstation on the other side of me begins to cough. He is a big man and it is a big cough. I haven’t quite gotten used to it, although it seems everyone else in our department has. His name is Norb, and Timmy® says he’s fairly old, 17:50, although to hear him cough you would think that he must be older, the end much nigher. It is one of those deep, crackling coughs where you hope for his sake that he’s rewarded with lots of sputum release, but you hope for your sake that he isn’t. These coughs go on for a good quarter hour of every hour. I’ve learned to stop asking him “Are you all right?” since all my expressions of concern thus far have been waved away, and since the agreed-upon response in the department apparently is to ignore him. Norb just keeps coughing until it finally stops. I feel bad that I’m annoyed by these coughing fits. This morning I even succumbed to an uncharitable wish that Norb was a zero. But this thought was immediately followed by a warm wave of guilt. He’s actually a very nice person. He assured me on my first day that his cough is not contagious. He’s just asthmatic or something.
By noon I’m already starving. I haven’t eaten anything since a quick breakfast of Rice Flex® while racing to catch the six o’clock shuttle. In my haste, I forgot to pack my lunch, a caramel and peanut butter sandwich I’d prepared the night before. Now I’ll have to go another seven hours before I can eat something. I don’t know any place to get food in the building, and if I try to leave the building it will certainly take longer than my allotted 20-minute lunch break, especially having to go through security twice.
I load the next application.
Savior Cunningham Jr. is middle-aged, 41:19. He is applying for a license for dilaudid, to help with the nightmares he is having as a side effect of his mescaline. I consider revoking the license for mescaline, but according to his record he still has seven months left of his initial two-year probationary period, and there have been no reported incidents. Nobody deserves to have nightmares. I check the box for “Approved.”
Delaney Singh-Singer is very young, 87:14. She wants a license for yayo to help combat the effects of boredom. She attributes her condition to her advanced youth, which is engendering high levels of lethargy, complacency and procrastination, and substandard levels of motivation, inspiration and fun. A pang of commiseration makes my hands tingle. I check the box for “Approved.”
Laird Babbitt is 13:55 and is applying for angel dust. His wife is the same age but a little longer, 13:62, and she has been diagnosed with Type-3 Alzheimer’s. He is her primary caretaker, and he needs something to help take the edge off the pressure of this enormous responsibility, and the heartbreak of witnessing his soulmate’s deterioration. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t hesitate to approve Mr. Babbitt’s application, but in this particular instance I worry about the ethicality since I am Mr. Babbitt’s son. He is my father. What are the odds of that? I’m dismayed. I’m displeased with the fates, or at least with the random sequence of contingencies, that has brought my father’s application under my review. Although I suppose the odds of such a thing are somewhat higher considering the frequency with which my father applies for medication licenses. I don’t need to review his record to know that he already has been approved for methadone, poppy straw, centrax, sufenta, ecstasy, diazepam, clonazepam, china white, DMT, DHE, MDPV, trip, sopors, glue, laudanum, lysergic acid, noludar, and only two days ago, naphthylpyrovalerone. Meanwhile he will not allow my mother any medications, so as to keep her malfunctioning brain “strong and clean.” I’m unsure how to proceed. There was nothing in my training video to provide guidance in a situation such as this one. I check the box for “For Further Review.”
At three-fifteen a flash comes in. It’s from my supervisor, the department’s quality control manager, StarryNight Bunyon. The flash is marked urgent and reads Drop by when you have a second! Which means now.
I stand up and stretch, realizing that I haven’t been out of my chair in eight hours. Norb is hacking away, almost doubled over. I try not to notice that he never covers his mouth when he coughs. I also try not to notice that the surface of his workstation is covered in a fine wet spray that reflects the fluorescent lights above. Except for this spittle, his workstation is completely bare, just like everyone else’s. The only object on mine is the greeting card I received on my first day, which depicts an anthropomorphized wooden plank parachuting down onto the deck of a cruise ship filled with cheering people. Inside it reads Welcome a Board! and has been signed by everyone in the department, expressing similar sentiments.
StarryNight’s office is an enclosed glass cubicle in the center of the large open workspace. There are sixty employees with workstations in this area, all part of the Participant Application Review Department, or PARD as it is referred to within the MediSoon community. My fellow PARDners and I sit in rows of unpartitioned conjoined workstations facing the outer walls, emanating in concentric squares from the nucleus of StarryNight’s office. My station is part of the outermost square, in the row on the north side. Or at least I’ve heard it referred to as the north side. It’s hard to tell since there are no windows anywhere in the workspace. Newer employees, like me, are in the squares closest to the wall. Senior employees are in the squares closest to the middle of the room. There are some exceptions, such as Norb, who has been with the company for seventeen years, longer than anyone else in the department. My assumption is that he is still in the outermost square because his colleagues don’t want him coughing all over their backs. But Norb and other exceptions aside, the general rule is that the longer one works in the department, the closer they move towards the middle. Whether this incentivizes longevity is debatable. Which is worse, I wonder: staring directly at a wall, or having your boss right behind your back? It’s a tough call.
I walk around to the second-outermost row on the south side, where there’s a gap between two workstations that one can walk through to get to the next inlying square. The gap here is only one square deep, however. One must walk back around to the north side to pass through a gap in the next square. There are five squares in total, the outermost with five workstations on each side, the innermost with one. So the outermost square has twenty employees, the next sixteen, then twelve, then eight, then four. Hence the sixty total. Counting is a compulsion of mine which I try to keep under control, but in moments like these, when I’m navigating what is essentially a geometric maze, it’s difficult.
None of my colleagues pay me any attention as I pass. They all sit upright, facing forward, concentrating on their innerfaces. Their irises shimmy with varying degrees of perceptibility. I know that the shimmying of my irises when I’m on my bug is comically pronounced. It’s a frequent source of ridicule. This is part of the reason why I use an external device for non-work-related purposes. My external device is also a frequent source of ridicule. But the alternative is seizures, so it’s worth it.
When I arrive inside the innermost square, I have trouble locating the glass door in the glass walls of StarryNight’s office. I have to go around it twice before I spot a small glass handle. Despite my circumnavigations, it doesn’t seem she’s noticed me yet. Her body is rigid, her chin tilted up at a 45-degree angle. Her mouth is clenched shut and her eyes are open so wide I can see half the globes. She sits on a swivel chair that is enclosed within a circular desk. I wonder how she gets out from inside the desk without crawling under or climbing over it.
I give the door a gentle knock. StarryNight spins around in her chair towards me, her face still tilted up and her eyes not quite looking at me. Her lips part to display her teeth. I let out an involuntary squeak.
“Smith!” she calls from inside. “Come in, come in. My door is always open.”
I assume she means her figurative door, not her literal one. I push, then pull, on the handle. The door is heavy and I can only open it just wide enough to squeeze through sideways.
“Please have a seat,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
There’s a gray metal folding chair propped against the wall. I unfold it and place it across from her. The chair makes quite a clatter and the legs are so uneven that when I sit, I either have to bend uncomfortably forward or tip precariously back.
Her teeth are still bared. I deduce that this is her smile, and I do my best to return it. I imagine we look like two people being serviced by invisible dentists.
“Can I get you anything, Smith? Water, coffee, tea?”
“Oh, thank you. A water would be very nice.”
She nods. Her eyes stare off somewhere over my right shoulder. “Terrific,” she says. A moment passes. She makes no move to get any water.
“Yes, I’ve been waiting for you,” she says again.
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry, I hope… I just got your flash a minute ago. I had to walk around – ”
“That’s fine. Don’t give it another thought. But next time… So!” Her palms clap together in a prayer formation. “How are you settling in? What must this be, your second day?”
“My ninth.”
Her eyes shift and meet mine for the first time. Her facial features, so wide a moment ago, now all pinch towards the center.
“Hm. Your ninth…I see. Well, that puts this conversation in a whole new context, doesn’t it? Adds a whole new component of being long overdue.”
With a name like StarryNight you might expect a hippie or a free-spirit type, but in this case you would be off the mark. She’s actually quite upsetting. There’s something about her that makes me think of an extraterrestrial inhabiting human skin, trying stiffly and awkwardly to mimic human social conventions. I would feel bad for her if she didn’t emanate so much hostility. Timmy® says she’s 47:47, precisely middle-aged. Bronwyn Bromell-White Alvarez-Black’s daughter told me that she’s actually ∞:759, but this was obviously meant to liken her disparagingly to a vampire.
Something catches her attention and her irises do a full circuit around the edges of her sockets. It is common knowledge that she monitors the bugs of all sixty of her subordinates simultaneously and at all times. I don’t know how she does this, but she does.
When she smiles again, it’s impossible to tell what she’s looking at.
“Well, we’re all so happy to have you here, Smith. You’ve been such a wonderful addition to the team. Such youthful energy! Now, it’s so, so important to me that you view our relationship as an equal partnership. I tell this to all my underlings. And what does a successful partnership depend on?”
I realize that she’s waiting for an answer. I manage to peep, “Friend…ship?”
StarryNight winces and nods. “Yes, that’s so wonderful. Friendship. Of course. And trust, Smith. That’s what a successful partnership depends on. Trust. And communication. Oh my! My granddaughter just got her first tooth!”
“Wow, that’s… How old is your granddaughter?”
“It’s a gift from her shaman. How sweet. A dolphin tooth. What? She’s 88:10. I have seven grandchildren. She’s the youngest. And seven children.”
She holds up seven fingers, her hands flanking her face. She keeps them there just like that for the duration of our meeting.
“Communication runs both ways. When you see something that your co-workers are doing that you don’t think is appropriate or efficient, I want you to feel completely comfortable coming to me and telling me about it. In turn, I can promise you that if there is anything I notice in your performance that is disappointing or incompetent, I will take my concerns right to my supervisor. We deal in direct feedback here, not in rumor and scuttlebutt. Speaking of which, let’s talk about Jaxon O’Dowdy, okay? That sounds like a good idea, right?”
I try to remember which of my colleagues is named Jaxon. I have a bad habit that when introduced to a new person, I become so focused on saying my name amiably and appearing unthreatening that I forget to listen to the new person’s name.
“Um, sure.”
“Jaxon O’Dowdy has been a MediSoon participant for five years. He’s never missed a payment and he’s referred three other current participants to us. Now, Mr. O’Dowdy has already received licenses for tuinal and ludes, and he’s given us no reason to doubt his capacity to administer these medications to himself in a mature and responsible fashion.”
I open my mouth to interject, and she inhales so sharply that my breath is sucked out of me, right across the desk. I close my mouth.
“So today, Mr. O’Dowdy decides to apply for a license for red devils. Mr. O’Dowdy has an extremely old infant son, a three-year-left. That sounds depressing, doesn’t it? I can tell you as the mother of seven children, it does. Of course, all of my children were born young, thank God. I made sure that I was not on any medications during my pregnancies. I wonder if the same is true of Mr. O’Dowdy’s wife. She’s had a skezag license for five years, so there’s no guarantee. But here’s where I’m just a little bit concerned very, very much. With such an unblemished record of tuinal and lude use, and with such bummer personal circumstances, can you explain to me why I find myself doing a ‘For Further Review’ review of Mr. O’Dowdy’s license application for some silly red devils?”
I shift my weight and my chair pitches forward so violently that I’m almost ejected.
“I just thought, with the tuinal, and the ludes… And now the red devils, it just seemed like a lot. I mean, don’t they all do the same thing? I’m pretty sure they’re all sedatives…”
StarryNight’s lips contract to a point. “Sedatives? I don’t know from that. What I do know is that our participants have already been through a rigorous screening process by our Membership Department. They wouldn’t be able to enter the system unless they’ve proven themselves to be the very finest, non-criminal, debt-free, solvent, safe, responsible citizens. By the time they’re applying for specific medication licenses…well, they’re practically doing us a courtesy by following our protocols. We get over forty-five thousand license applications per week in this department. With sixty License Review Specialists, that means that in one week each Specialist should be reviewing…”
“Seven hundred and fifty.”
“I’ve got it. Seven hundred and fifty applications from our participants. Yesterday you reviewed forty-nine. How are you going to complete seven hundred and fifty applications in one week if you can only review forty-nine in one day? My master’s degree is in Phrenology, not Mathematics, but I know when something doesn’t add up. I know it’s just your second day, but still. And what about Laird Babbitt? Why am I doing a ‘For Further Review’ review of Mr. Babbitt? He’s one of our most committed participants.”
“He’s my father.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. Communication, Smith. Please. And trust. And mathematics.”
She gives a meaningful glance towards the seven fingers that she still holds in the air. Her eyes widen and she swivels around in her chair and I understand that the meeting is over.
:
The moment that StarryNight’s office door closes behind me, I get a flash. It’s from StarryNight:
Smith – very productive meeting! Good job. Progress → Perfection! By the way, I noticed you haven’t clocked out for lunch today??? You need to by law. I went ahead and clocked you out for the start of our meeting thirteen minutes ago. Pls clock back in seven. :-)
Not knowing what else to do, I walk towards the kitchen/break room. Sometimes people leave out free food from home that they don’t want, or there are leftovers from leadership meetings that haven’t been thrown away yet. My hunger has given way to a general lightheadedness. I need some kind of fuel to get through the last three and a half hours of my shift.
The kitchen/break room isn’t empty, as I had hoped. There’s a lone woman standing at the counter, picking lettuce from a long tray. She looks up and watches me enter as she chews.
“It was a tray of sandwiches on a bed of lettuce,” she says.
I nod, pausing at the opposite side of the counter.
“Now it’s just a bed of lettuce,” she concludes.
I nod again. “How is it?” I ask, fairly stupidly.
The woman noshes another piece of lettuce and shrugs.
“Not bad.”
I tear off a too-large leaf and stuff it in my mouth despite its size. She’s right, it’s not bad. Lettuce is taken for granted, I realize. Under normal circumstances it’s salad filler, a delivery system for the dressing, or it’s garnish, or it’s the part of a burger or sandwich that you desire least, and when it falls out of said burger or sandwich, you don’t mind, and you leave it on your plate forsaken. But it actually has an agreeable taste of its own. I take another mouthful.
The woman and I stand there eating lettuce silently. It’s a surprisingly comfortable silence, and I make no attempt to thwart it with my usual nervous chitchat. I look at the clock on the wall and calculate that I have three minutes remaining before I need to clock back in.
“I might as well get back,” I say.
“Is this your five?”
“No, it’s actually my twenty. But my boss clocked me out at the start of our informal corrective action meeting just now.”
The woman tears a piece of lettuce in half and sneers. “That’s bullshit.”
Her vehemence makes me uneasy. I appreciate her display of camaraderie, but I don’t want to get in trouble for badmouthing StarryNight. I settle for the blandest smile I can muster.
But the woman persists. “A meeting with your boss is still work. It’s not like you would go and do a corrective action with your boss in your free time.”
“Well,” I say, trying to guide us out of seditious waters, “I don’t really need the full twenty minutes today. I forgot my lunch. And even on days when I remember my lunch, if anything twenty minutes seems too long.”
“Too long?”
“I mean, an hour or something would be great. Then I could leave the building. But twenty minutes… You’re not allowed to eat at your desk, so the only option really is this break room. And usually it’s so crowded, you have to sit with everyone and socialize. I have a shy personality type, so this takes a lot of effort. I’d almost rather keep working. No offense. I mean, I know we’re socializing now.”
My cheeks are hot again. I wonder if they might even be bleeding.
She wipes her hands on the sides of her loose-fitting dress. It’s hard to tell what shape she is under the dress, not that I try to ogle women’s shapes. Her face is mostly hidden behind large-framed glasses. Her brown hair is streaked with gray and cropped even shorter than mine.
“Who’s your boss?” she asks.
“StarryNight Bunyon.”
Her lower lip retracts. “Ugh. Mine too. My name’s Mavis, by the way.”
“I’m Smith.” I don’t offer my hand because my palms are moist. In my experience the impoliteness of no handshake is preferable to the ickiness of a sweaty handshake. “You’re in PARD? I don’t think I’ve seen you.”
“I’m in another work area, a special area.”
Suddenly the name clicks and I remember this morning’s birthday card debacle.
“Mavis! You’re the – ” I manage to keep myself from saying “zero,” but her eyebrows rise in semi-insulted comprehension nonetheless. “It’s your birthday,” I hasten to amend.
“Yes it is.”
“Well, happy…you know, happy birthday.”
I quickly check with Timmy®. Indeed, she’s 1:42. We stare at each other in silence. This time it’s less comfortable.
“Shoot, I’m late,” I mumble. “I should get back.”
She nods and then does something unusual. She takes a small bit of lettuce and places it on the counter. With a deft movement of her index finger, she flicks the bit of lettuce in my direction. Her aim is impressive. The lettuce hits my neck and bounces off. The whole time her blank expression does not alter, so it’s difficult to gauge whether this gesture is meant to be playful or antagonistic.
“Nice meeting you,” I say, edging towards the door.
“Hey,” she calls, stopping me in my tracks. “The roof. You should go there for your lunch breaks. No one’s ever up there. Just take the elevator to the thirty-first floor. Not the top one, the thirty-second. The thirty-first. At the end of the hallway there’s a door marked Roof Access. It’s off limits, but it’s never locked.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, in a tone that I hope implies neither censure nor collusion. I resume my shuffling retreat.
“Well, happy birthday,” I offer again. “Enjoy! You know, your…remaining moments.”
Cringing, I turn and scurry away. Before I make it back to my workstation there’s a new flash from StarryNight:
Did you get a copy of the Employee Handbook? Pls see section on Breaks – Durations.
:
The rest of the day there’s a weight on my chest. It has come crashing down on me that I don’t like my job.
Dixon “Dash” Twirlby, 39:30, is applying for a license for percodan to help with symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome. He does not elaborate. I check the box for “Approved.”
Only three weeks ago, when I received the official offer letter, this job was cause for celebration. There was a cake from my father and rounds of drinks from my friends and several flashes with hearty expressions of congratulations and that’s-so-awesomes and oh-my-God-I’m-so-happy-for-yous. Now just a short time later these enthusiasms seem absurdly misplaced. A more appropriate response would have been the kind of muted pity and stoic encouragement you’d offer a losing candidate on his way to make a concession speech.
Aimey Westerbrooke, 48:19, is applying for a license for poppers because Everyone I know is depressing. I check the box for “Approved.”
I try to tell myself that this job isn’t so bad. I remind myself of the low morale and poor self-esteem I felt during the long year of unemployment that followed my disenrollment from school. My good fortune to have a girlfriend like Vinyl who can pull strings to land me an entry-level position at a behemoth corporation like MediSoon. The jealousy my friends exhibited when I told them I would be making only $5/hour below the maximum wage for minimum wage-exempt employees. My bursting desire to move out of my parents’ apartment and rent a shared room in a tenement somewhere. The bleakness of the job landscape, and the far inferior positions that I’d applied for over the past several months, positions like sign holder apprentice, dog pleasurer, corpse grinder, victim’s family notifier, vagrant rouster, organ donor, organ donor recruiter, organ donor recruiter recruiter, waiter: jobs for which I didn’t even get called to interview.
Thorvald P.J. Jackson, 26:51, is applying for a license for speedballs in order to induce psychedelic experience, to traverse new realms of consciousness, and to transcend the limits of verbal constructs, ego/identity, and time-space dimensions, so that I may more efficiently and hygienically perform my professional duties. Can you dig it, man? Mr. Jackson is a circuit court judge. I check the box for “Approved.”
My hope had been that beyond the positive impact on my self-worth and my financial situation, my new job would also have a positive impact on society. This may be a corny and outmoded ambition, but it’s one that I nevertheless cling to. Who doesn’t want to go home at the end of the day feeling like he’s made a contribution towards the greater good? Who doesn’t dream of making a difference? But my experience during my first two weeks, punctuated by today’s meeting with StarryNight, has made it clear that the true utility of my job is to check a box on a form as frequently as possible. This is very disquieting. Don’t I have a moral obligation to take these applications seriously? What if harm should come to those to whom I have so recklessly allowed access to potent medications? Haven’t I been entrusted as a guardian of their safety? Wouldn’t any overdose or accident or adverse reaction be on my conscience?
Gynnifer Klopfenstein, 17:39, needs a license for peyote to help with lower back pain. I check the box for “Approved.”
My heart is thudding so forcefully that I can hear it. My breaths are getting detained in my throat. My chest is constricting, which is exacerbating the problems of my heart and my breathing. These are not good signs. So far I’ve been attack-free during my shifts at MediSoon, and I would like to keep it that way. Privately, this has been my main incentive for finding employment, even beyond the emotional, financial, and societal benefits. I’ve been in desperate need to fend off the anxiety and panic that I’m prone to when I become too fixated on the fact that even though I am fairly young, at 64:25, and should feel blessed to have such a long lifespan, and have so many moments left to go, with 22,780 days until I turn zero, or 546,720 hours, or 32,803,200 minutes, or 1,968,192,000 seconds, after which, once I am a zero, I will have anywhere between 1 second and 31,536,000 seconds, numbers that sometimes trigger a kind of reverse panic, a more simmering and slow-acting but equally oppressive one, in which my long lifespan engulfs me like a desert landscape and offers similar features of such a landscape, specifically its aridness, monotony, inhospitality, loneliness, and somehow even heat, and from which, unlike a desert, death offers no possible means of passage, but in cases such as now, the source of my panic is more the slipping away of my allotted moments, their ticking by, dripping into a void one by one, lost, irretrievable, this moment, now this one, now this one, now this one, and there must be some better use to which I should be putting them, some greater purpose, some nobler and more productive and original activity, something that might adequately justify my finite ticking moments, the only ones I will ever have, and imbue them with enough significance to fill them up, slow them down, give them their proper weight, otherwise what a pathetic wastrel I am, undeserving of my youth, my long lifespan, my good health, the blessed and privileged circumstances into which I was born.
There’s a cold trembling in my limbs and my breaths are becoming increasingly shallow and thin. I close my eyes, shutting down my bug, knowing that this is against company policy. My doctor has cautioned me to take a ten-minute break for every one hour on my bug, and whenever possible to make use of my external device. Obviously I’ve been disobeying these recommendations at my new job. I’ve been too scared to mention my condition to StarryNight, since I assume that she would find accommodating my doctor’s advice unacceptable, and would choose the more convenient solution of firing me. Instead I’ve been taking a double dose of my anti-seizure medication, which unfortunately has several side effects, first among them: seizures.
Shutting my eyes is not helping with my panic attack, as all I’m doing now is panicking about the possibility of having a seizure. I open my eyes and see a new flash from StarryNight:
Wakey wakey. Pls refer to the section of the Employee Handbook on Perpetual Bug Use – Eye Opening/Closing. You received a copy of the handbook, no?
Magenta McCaffrey, 70:15, is applying for a license for dehydrochlormethyltestosterone because her boyfriend likes it rough, and he is much stronger than she is, and she would like to add muscle to her frame so that she can give as good as she receives. I check the box for “Approved.”
Nausea has now been added to the mix. What is the company’s policy on workstation vomiting? There’s only one bin beneath my desk, and it is for recycling only. No eating is allowed here, so no composting, so I imagine no vomiting.
One method that can work to control my panic attacks is to be around a large group of people engaged in the same activity as I am engaged in. If I am wasting my precious remaining dwindling moments, so are they, so it can’t be that bad. Usually this doesn’t work because large crowds can make me fearful and induce panic attacks. But at my job, so far, this method has been effective. Until now. Now I feel the weight of their wasted moments crashing down on me too. If each of us is required to review 750 applications in one week, that would mean 3,900 applications per year, and if one works another 64 years, as I may, if this is all there ever is for me, then that would amount to 249,600 applications reviewed in a lifetime. 249,600 checks on the box for “Approved.”
Laird Babbitt has returned, applying for a license for special K. Are you shitting me? The angel dust isn’t working, he writes. He wants special K. We’re going to have a talk when I get home. I check the box for “Approved.”
I try my calming exercises. They are designed to get me out of my head, where runaway thoughts propel my attacks at breakneck velocities, and instead in touch with my senses. What do I hear? A low mechanical humming. What I do I smell? Industrial carpet. What do I feel? The cool wet cloth of my shirt clinging to my back. What do I taste? Lettuce residue. What do I see?
Geesuz H. Christopoulos, 1:33, is applying for a license for morphine, because I want to kill myself with as little pain as possible. He’s a zero, so what I can I do? Godspeed, Mr. Christopoulos. I check the box for “Approved.”
I don’t want to waste my life, that’s all. And I wish I didn’t have to know how much of my life is still left for me to waste.
A new flash from StarryNight:
You know what section I love in the Employee Handbook? The one on Workstation Cleanliness. Check it out when you get a chance.
I look down at the surface of my workstation. The only object is the greeting card from the staff, welcoming me aboard. I take the card, hold it for a moment, then place it in the recycling bin beneath my desk. I get another flash from StarryNight:
Way to go!
I load the next application.
It’s debatable whether knowing when you’ll die would be a blessing or a burden. However, what if everybody else knew when you were going to die, too? In his deft satire, “Zero,” Jason O’Leary spoofs the social/ psychological effects of a culture organized around the public knowledge of everyone’s lifespan.
Smith Babbit is 64:25 years old—i.e., he has lived just 25 years of an 89-year lifespan, with 64 remaining. The duration of his existence was calculated at birth by Timmy®, a wondrous app that unerringly predicts a person’s age when they will die. Despite his relative youth, he is subject to seizures and panic attacks, and obsesses about death:
“With 22,780 days before I turn zero… after which I will have anywhere between 1 second and 31,536,000 seconds, numbers that sometimes trigger a kind of reverse panic, a more simmering and slow-acting but equally oppressive one, in which my long lifespan engulfs me like a desert landscape…”
Furthermore, he is conflicted by his job with the corporation, MediSoon, where he rubber-stamps at least 750 applications per week from members seeking licenses for exotic prescription drugs.
While hiding out in the break room, he meets Mavis, 1:42, aka a “zero,” with whom he is fascinated as well as attracted. They share platonic trysts on the building’s roof, where they complain about work and muse about what it’s worth. One day, from their rooftop, Mavis inadvertently causes a bizarre accident involving an apple core, which results in their boss’s death. Apart from being possibly guilty of homicide, they are dumbfounded because, according to Timmy®, he still had 30 more years to live.
Mavis freaks out: “Think about it. Timmy®‘s never wrong… They’re not going to allow it to get out that Timmy® made a mistake. They’re not going to want any witnesses.” On the other hand, she also realizes that if Timmy® is fallible, her imminent demise might not be inevitable. Thus, she and Smith embark upon a quest for truth.
The premise concerning the consequences of knowing one’s death date has been explored in genres from mythology to science fiction. However, O’Leary’s muse to use it as a setup for technological satire is inspired. His characters are animated and just eccentric enough to seem real. Vinyl, Smith’s flakey, non-exclusive yet oddly faithful girlfriend is a gem.
Smart, funny, and literate, “Zero” will make you laugh while giving you something to ponder.