Brave New Worlds

descends.

    My last chance to escape across the border. I've been up all night, weighing the options. There's no hope of appeal. Running away leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Father, friends, even Kate, all say stay, stay, stay, face the music. The hour of decision. Do I really have a choice? I have no choice. When the time comes, I'll surrender peacefully.

    I report to Transplant House for conscriptive donative surgery in three hours.

    After all, he said coolly, what's a kidney? I'll still have another one, you know. And if that one malfunctions, I can always get a replacement. I'll have Preferred Recipient status, 6-A, for what that's worth. But I won't settle for my automatic 6-A. I know what's going to happen to the priority system; I'd better protect myself. I'll go into politics. I'll climb. I'll attain upward mobility out of enlightened self-interest, right? Right. I'll become so important that society will owe me a thousand transplants. And one of these years I'll get that kidney back. Three or four kidneys, fifty kidneys, as many as I need. A heart or two. A few lungs. A pancreas, a spleen, a liver. They won't be able to refuse me anything. I'll show them. I'll show them. I'll out-senior the seniors. There's your Bodily Sanctity activist for you, eh? I suppose I'll have to resign from the League. Good-bye, idealism. Good-bye, moral superiority. Good-bye, kidney. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.

    It's done. I've paid my debt to society. I've given up unto the powers that be my humble pound of flesh. When I leave the hospital in a couple of days, I'll carry a card testifying to my new 6-A status.

    Top priority for the rest of my life.
    Why, I might live for a thousand years.

Geriatric Ward
    by Orson Scott Card

    Orson Scott Card is the best-selling author of more than forty novels, including Ender's Game , which was a winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The sequel, Speaker for the Dead , also won both awards, making Card the only author to have captured science fiction's two most coveted prizes in consecutive years. Card is also the winner of the World Fantasy Award, eight Locus Awards, and a slew of other honors. He has also published more than eighty short stories, which have been collected in several volumes, most notably in Maps in the Mirror and Keeper of Dreams . His most recent book is a young adult novel called Pathfinder .

    Switch on the television and wait a few minutes—there's certain to be an ad for hair dye or anti-aging skin cream. A quick perusal of any women's magazine will uncover at least one article that fights wrinkles or cellulite or some other symptom of time's march across the body. Humans are afraid of death in whatever form it takes, but growing older is perhaps its most reviled shape. Unlike a homicidal maniac or a car accident, old age makes its victims survive decades of indignity.

    No wonder we fight it so much.

    But our next story gives us a future where the battle against old age has become even more of a losing proposition. Lifespans have plummeted. Senility can hit a person in only his mid-twenties, and despite efforts to start adulthood at a younger age, there's only so much living anyone can cram into a quarter of a decade. It's hard to lead a full life in so little time.

    Here is a world of quiet desperation, full of people fighting for one more day with a loved one. One more day of sunshine. One more day as a geriatric.

    S andy started babbling on Tuesday morning and Todd knew it was the end.
    "They took Poogy and Gog away from me," Sandy said sadly, her hand trembling, spilling coffee on the toast.
    "What?" Todd mumbled.
    "And never brought them back. Just took them. I looked all over. "
    "Looked for what?"
    "Poogy," Sandy said, thrusting out her lower lip. The skin of her cheeks was sagging down to form jowls. Her hair was thin and fine, now, though she kept it dyed dark brown. "And Gog. "
    "What the hell are Poogy and Gog?" Todd asked.
    "You took them," Sandy said. She started to cry. She kicked the table leg. Todd got up from the table and went to work.
    The university was empty. Sunday. Damn Sunday, never anyone there to help with the work on Sunday. Waste too much damn time looking up things that students should be sent to find out.
    He went to the lab. Ryan was there. They looked over the computer readouts. "Blood," said Ryan, "just plain ain't worth the paper it's printed on. "
    "Not one thing," Todd said.
    "Plenty of tests left to run. "
    "No tests