2030_ The Real Story of What Happens to America - Albert Brooks [40]
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Walter Masters eventually made his way down to Los Angeles. He visited some severely ill people whose friends or relatives had contacted him, and he performed about fifty procedures to end their suffering. When word got out that he was functioning in the area, people started begging him. Some people who were physically okay but financially wiped out wanted to end their lives, but that was not Walter’s game. He ended genuine suffering, not horrible bad luck or going broke. My God, if I opened my practice to financial catastrophe, I would have the world waiting in line.
* * *
Brad Miller’s condo was finally red-tagged; he could no longer live there, even though his walls were still standing. He slept in the bedroom for almost a month, feeling the air at night that came in through the holes in the ceiling.
One day someone knocked on his door, someone who looked like a cop or an army private, he couldn’t tell which. He informed Brad that he would have to go to the shelter that was closest to him, in Pasadena.
“Pasadena?” Brad asked. “I don’t know anyone there. Can’t I just stay in my bedroom?”
“No, sir. These properties are going to be leveled over the next several months.”
“What happens to my investment?”
“That will be handled by another department, sir.”
“But it was a condo. I don’t own the land, just the building. Now it won’t be here. Do I get my money back?”
“There will be people to talk to in Pasadena, sir. That is not my department. You are allowed to take one suitcase.”
“One suitcase? I can’t fit my life in one suitcase. What do I do with all my memories?”
“I’m sorry, sir. Pick out what is most valuable to you that will fit in one suitcase. I’ll leave you some information that might be of help. You will be moving on Thursday.”
“That’s two days. I’m not ready.” But before Brad could say any more, the man was gone. He left a sheet of paper. At the top it said, One Suitcase Only. And there was a list of suggestions of what to put in his suitcase for the rest of his life. Brad threw it away. He didn’t need the government to tell him how to pack.
He went outside and sat under the tree. There were only twelve people remaining in the complex and they met there each night at dusk and drank and cried and reminisced. They had all been informed that they were being relocated. Brad was surprised that they were not all scheduled for Pasadena. The army guy had made it sound like everyone from this area would go to that one place, but apparently their system was based on something else. Brad hoped it wasn’t Jews.
As the folks sat under the tree for what might be the very last time, someone brought up Walter Masters. A woman’s sister’s husband had been relieved of his suffering just two days earlier, and Masters was talked about like some Pied Piper of death. “What did he do?” asked Brad.
“Put him out of his misery,” the woman said.
“How?”
“I don’t know. Some kind of shot.”
“What kind of shot?” another man asked.
“A shot right to the head,” Brad joked.
The woman said she didn’t know what the shot was but it was quick and painless. “Is that legal?” someone else asked.
“Who gives a shit?” the woman answered. “Who would care? Do you think they want more of us to take care of?”
She had a point. And Brad was glad he didn’t have access to the shot at that very moment, because the thought of going to Pasadena with one piece of luggage for the rest of his life—well, he just might have used it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Mueller family was vacationing at their home in Vail, Colorado. They loved to ski there in the winter and bike around the magnificent pine trees in the summer months. Sometimes Dr. Sam Mueller looked at his children and thought they were spoiled. Patty was turning into a real beauty and Mark would have been a heavy child in another era, but with a simple pill each day he looked quite fit, if not as handsome as his sister was pretty. Their mother did her best to make sure they knew how fortunate they were and tried to instill a sense of “giving back,” but