The Corrections

tens of millions of young Americans who didn’t have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively
un
cool?
    Well, there was still the citizenry of America’s heartland: St. Judean minivan drivers thirty and forty pounds overweight and sporting pastel sweats, pro-life bumper stickers, Prussian hair. But Gary in recent years had observed, with plate-tectonically cumulative anxiety, that population was continuing to flow out of the Midwest and toward the cooler coasts. (He was part of this exodus himself, of course, but he’d made his escape early, and, frankly, priority had its privileges.) At the same time, all the restaurants in St. Jude were suddenly coming up to European speed (suddenly cleaning ladies knew from sun-dried tomatoes, suddenly hog farmers knew from crème brûlée), and shoppers at the mall near his parents’ house had an air of entitlement offputtingly similar to his own, and the electronic consumer goods for sale in St. Jude were every bit as powerful and cool as those in Chestnut Hill. Gary wished that all further migration to the coasts could be banned and all midwesterners encouraged to revert to eating pasty foods and wearing dowdy clothes and playing board games, in order that a strategicnational reserve of cluelessness might be maintained, a wilderness of taste which would enable people of privilege, like himself, to feel extremely civilized in perpetuity—
    But enough , he told himself. A too-annihilating will to specialness, a wish to reign supreme in his superiority, was yet another Warning Sign of clinical D.
    And Mr. Twelve Thousand Shares of Exxon wasn’t looking at him anyway. He was looking at Denise’s naked legs.
    “The polymer strands,” Eberle explained, “chemotact-ically associate with active neural pathways and so facilitate the discharge of electrical potential. We don’t yet fully understand the mechanism, but the effect is to make any action the patient is performing easier and more enjoyable to repeat and to sustain. Producing this effect even transiently would be an exciting clinical achievement. Here at Axon, however, we have found a way to render that effect permanent .”
    “Just watch,” the pitchman purred.
5. NOW ITS YOUR TURN TO WORK A LITTLE!
    As a cartoon human figure shakily raised a teacup to its mouth, certain shaky neural pathways lit up inside its cartoon head. Then the figure drank Corecktall electrolytes, donned an Eberle helmet, and raised the cup again. Little glowing micro tubules hued to the active pathways, which began to blaze with light and strength. Steady as a rock the cartoon hand that lowered the teacup to its saucer.
    “We’ve got to get Dad signed up for testing,” Denise whispered.
    “What do you mean?” Gary said.
    “Well, this is for Parkinson’s. It could help him.”
    Gary sighed like a tire losing air. How could it be that such an incredibly obvious idea had never occurred to him?He felt ashamed of himself and, at the same time, obscurely resentful of Denise. He aimed a bland smile at the video screen as if he hadn’t heard her.
    “Once the pathways have been identified and stimulated,” Eberle said, “we are only a short step away from actual morphologic correction. And here, as everywhere in medicine today, the secret is in the genes .”
6. REMEMBER THOSE PILLS YOU TOOK LAST MONTH?
    Three days ago, on Friday afternoon, Gary had finally got through to Pudge Portleigh at Hevy & Hodapp. Portleigh had sounded harried in the extreme.
    “Gare, sorry, it’s a rave scene here,” Portleigh said, “but listen, my friend, I did talk to Daffy Anderson per your request. Daffy says, sure, no problem, we will definitely allocate five hundred shares for a good customer at Cen Trust. So, are we OK, my friend? Are we good?”
    “No,” Gary said. “We said five thousand, not five hundred.”
    Portleigh was silent for a moment. “Shit, Gare. Big mix-up. I thought you said five hundred.”
    “You repeated it back to me. You said five thousand. You said you were writing it down.”
    “Remind me—this is on your own account or CenTrust’s?”
    “My account.”
    “Look, Gare, here’s what you do. Call Daffy yourself, explain the situation, explain the mix-up, and see if he can rustle up another five