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Life on the Pharm

by Damian Rentoule

Donor 987

Pharm Site 6024

Life on the Pharm was quite pleasant, 987 thought. He wondered at the beauty of the penned-in cattle beyond the shiny razor wire of the perimeter fence, a co-mingling of life and death, of beauty and terror. Donors weren’t generally given to this inconvenient, often dangerous behavior, thought, but as a neural donor, it couldn’t be helped. Management even encouraged it. It was the cross he bore. The pathways had to be left intact for the recipient. The caregivers didn’t even attempt to hide the truth from him, and this was the worst part of it; he was only permitted to sense the beauty because they needed to harvest his brain unharmed. Not much solace in this thought, he mused.

He owed his quite pleasant view of grazing cattle to the fact that the Pharm Sites were created side by side to share certain equipment and technologies, an economically sound decision, as were all things on the Pharm Site - just a long string of logical economics.  He also knew there were pigs on the Pharm Site, but no one was permitted near those. He didn’t know why, yet this was curious. He guessed the secretive nature of the piggery had an economic rationale that he couldn’t quite understand. Yet he loved the thought of these animals living so close, especially the cattle.

Unfortunately for 987, he could sense the bond he shared with his docile bovine neighbors, one of those connections his mind intuitively grasped. This was only a problem for the neurals. The other Donors would not be capable of forming the connection, their prescriptions ensured that, of course. Blissful ignorance was their reward. 987 continued to stare, however, and wonder at the strange beauty of the death march that he shared with these beasts. There was an immense sadness welling in his heart, and anger too, not so much for himself, but for those peaceful, brownish-red cattle that would soon be led to slaughter. He felt for them even more, for this fate they shared.

His number was visible, carefully scribed on the back of his neck, just below the hairline, a modest tattoo, a matching one adorning the inside of his left wrist. The tattoo on the neck was for safety purposes. The bolt that would end his life enters the cranium a hand’s width above the number, directly into the soft tissue that would cease all vital functions without damaging the sensitive harvest areas. The placement of the ID provided for one final check that there had been no mistake. A mistake could have dire consequences for the pledged recipient. Safety always came first at Pharm Site 6024, reputed throughout the world to be producers of the finest genetically modified materials or GMM as it was usually referred to, and they were unfailingly careful. Donor 987 thought about this too; they would be careful with his organs. He thought about this a lot, especially now, as he was only weeks away from his harvest. The thought burned within him.

It would be painless, they told him. However, he somehow found this hard to believe, even though he dearly wanted to, more than anything. They reassured him that he wouldn't even feel it, yet doubt lingered. They thought he had trust issues, but as a neural donor he was too valuable to risk with the usual medication that would dull his senses. They had very special prescriptions for neurals, however no drugs were forced into 987’s system. In fact, the recipient specifically requested that he never be medicated, and although this was a highly unusual request, the recipient was a highly unusual recipient. The instructions were followed to the letter, so donor 987 was an anomaly; an unmedicated, thinking Donor. So many years had passed since the program began that there was barely a record of those original thinking donors from the early days. It was cruel; at least it was thought so at the time. Fortunately, GMM production had come a long way since those days, saving and improving countless lives. This is what they told him. He didn’t believe them, for reasons that he couldn’t quite explain.

His doubt had something to do with the bolt that was soon going to take his life. They told him that it wasn't going to hurt and he believed that they believed this. It wasn't their intentions that he doubted. It was just the truth of their words he couldn’t bring himself to swallow. If anything, he believed that they were actually too honest, their own minds dulled by their prescriptions - caregivers medicated to fit their roles in this murderous institution. Their lies, too firmly ingrained in their shallow, thoughtless honesty. He wished again that they would at least lie to him, making up some story about releasing him into the world outside the fences of Pharm Site 6024, with the house, a job, a family and perhaps even a hobby. At least then, he could hope. Instead, they told him that his murder would be painless, and they believed this. A murderer, to their victim, should at least have the common decency to lie. Pharm site 6024 would not even grant him this, and he would never forgive them, for the rest of his life - exactly thirteen days and five hours.

Donor 987 was turning 24 years old in just under two weeks. The date, this particular birthday, was carefully tattooed into the delicate skin on the inside of his wrist, under his identity number, moments after he was pledged to his recipient.  The identity number already marked his wrist, tattooed moments after his birth, stretched over time, as the baby's skin grew into a man's. The second, newer number marked the expiration date of Donor 987. To Management, he was only two things, a date of birth and a date of expiration, his essence expressed in two short numerical sequences. He, however, suspected that there was more to him, and he would seek it out.

His expiration date had never been a secret from him, and now he wished with all his heart that they had lied to him, but it was too late, for you cannot un-know the known. He thought more about this more and more, and it continued to burn within him, the momentum of the fire building.

Still staring out the window at the cattle in the yards beyond the perimeter fence, beyond the razor wire, beyond the guards, the security force that kept everyone in Pharm Site 6024 safe, he thought of the plan that had been forming in his mind for over a decade. He could still remember the day when the cloud was lifted from his mind. It was the day when he received his second tattoo, when he was pledged to a recipient, and this recipient made the unusual request to stop the medication. He literally became alive this day and his first thought was to flee. Even though he had only vague, dreamlike recollections of anything that had happened to him in his life before that point in time, somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, he knew that he must leave this place. This thought sprung up from an ancient survival instinct that had withstood the years of pharmaceutical intervention.

Fortunately for Donor 987, even before the pledge, as a neural donor they had been extremely careful that his medication, the type and dosage, had no long-term effects on his mind, or other vital organs.  They were, very soon, going to deeply regret this. The 10 years that he had been clean of the numbing drugs, his creative mind had been hard at work, night and day. He was going to find his family, if he in fact had one. He was going to kill as many of his caregivers as he could find. He was going to burn Pharm Site 6024 to the ground. He was going to find his pledged recipient and release him or her. It would be violent, a shameless waste of healthy organs, yet it would be done. It would be quick; he had that much mercy at least. Yes, Number 987 had been thinking a lot, and he was about to get very busy.

Chloe’s Secret

Residential Zone 264

Chloe, a resident of the Pharm, also stood staring out her window, pretending to be sedate. It was almost killing her inside, but she stayed still and calm for the next half hour. She would be a good girl for the next half hour. They couldn’t know her secret. Her parents were due to leave for work soon and she could bear it until then, barely. It was then two hours until she had to go to school and this brief interlude between adult supervision was the time she lived for. The brief window when she could suspend her act, be herself. Curtains were closed and she would run around their shabby house, screaming. If her secret were discovered, she would be in huge trouble, and although she didn’t know the exact nature of what they did to children who wouldn’t take their medicine by mouth, she knew it had something to do with straps and needles. She also knew that after the medicine had been taken that first time, there was no going back from the addiction. Fortunately, she was an excellent actress. Her parents suspected nothing, yet.

She couldn’t escape the fear that if they started the medicine, it would be the end. She would lose herself, perhaps forever. She stared blankly outside while her parents moved sluggishly about the kitchen and sat, staring into their bowls of colourless, tasteless cereal. There was only 28 minutes left.

How could one feel so trapped? She didn’t have friends in the real sense of the word. There were kids her age that she was with when she was at school. There were kids in her neighbourhood that she was with after school. There were even kids that she was with at family gatherings, cousins. She used to know these children. But, being with someone wasn’t enough for her. They had all taken their prescriptions, instead of hiding it in their cheeks while they swallowed their water. She had practiced this since she was old enough to understand the word, prescription. This was never going to be her fate. She had an aversion to boredom, and this was what awaited anyone who took the medication from the shiny dispenser in their street, except the drugs didn’t let them know they were bored, lifeless. Did that make it OK? She didn’t want to find out. All she knew was that it wasn’t living, in the sense that life was meant to be lived. All those she used to play with now had that vacant stare that she was so adept at mimicking.

Chloe wanted to play; to run wild in the streets, and jump in the river, and shout at the top of her lungs. More than anything, she wanted to be silly. She was starting to lose her sense of what these things actually were and she yearned for those freedoms every waking moment. The imperceptible inevitability of the surrender to the medication, to the cold institution that wanted to kill her silliness angered her, yet anger was good. It was saving her.

The drugs, which were going to make her the person that someone else wanted her to be, had a nasty side effect - destroying the liver, a nasty cirrhosis, at least once every decade during her long life. Fortunately for Chloe, her parents had a plan. Every parent whose child had been chosen for a role on the Pharm had a plan. New livers were never a problem. She had heard her parents discussing this late at night. It was one of the things that people knew not to discuss in front of their children. They felt that it was perfectly fine to steal a child’s personality with little coloured pills, and kill their liver in the process, but they knew, deep down, that there was something not right about the organs. Everyone knew, but no one knew. It was too ugly to recognize, and they were all too trapped to struggle. But not Chloe. Not yet.

The worst part for Chloe was that she couldn't hate her parents for it. It was how they were raised. She knew this. Why she had refused to submit, as they had, and her grandparents had, she never knew. All she realized was that this didn’t feel right. She wanted to be who she was, not what some maker of little blue pills wanted her to be. She most definitely didn’t want to have her liver replaced, and she wondered where those livers actually came from. Could you make a liver? She thought not, and pieced together the terrifying truth by listening to her parents’ hushed conversations. Her parents loved her in their own limited way, through the haze of medication, and dearly wanted her to have a role on the Pharm. The alternative was unthinkable.

Her healthy liver was going to be a problem. She was seven, two years since most children started to be fixed by the blue pills. On a child’s eighth birthday, in just under a year for Chloe, they have a thorough physical examination to ensure they’re suitably aligned to their future Donor, who would be living on one of the Pharm Sites. For Chloe, when she went for her check-up at the medical facility, they would find a dangerously healthy liver. No one who had been taking the prescriptions had a completely healthy liver. It was just the price you paid for having a role on the Pharm, for not being a Donor. They would either force her to take the prescription or tattoo her neck and wrist, and there were only two types of people on the Pharm; those with a role and those without. Those without a role had a tattoo and supplied the organs. She had a year to escape, yet where was a seven-year-old to escape to?

Her whole world had been her parents’ house in the suburbs, her elementary school and the local ration dispensary. She would obviously need to do some exploring, she thought. Chloe knew that this would never happen, though. You had to be curious to explore. They would know instantly if she started looking around. She imagined that she only had a year left to think of a plan and this thought scared her. The fear never left. She could never have known that her father’s Donor, Number 987, had plans for them all. She had less than a week.

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