“What you’re suggesting is illegal and violates professional ethics. I’ll ignore what you said this time, but if you persist I’ll have to take further action.”
I doubted his refusal was based on moral qualms—merely the risk of getting caught. But I was confident that Plan B would win him over.
I smiled sweetly. “I never told you how I got my MNM deactivated. The Gooey Glaze guy gave me the name of someone who helped people like me. One night, after blindfolding me so I couldn’t see where we were going, she drove me someplace where I could get ‘fixed.’ I pictured her parking in the alley of some backstreet and leading me through the rear door of a slum building.
“When she took off my blindfold we were in a darkened rundown room. I sat in a wooden chair while we waited. My contact told me even she didn’t know who the guy coming to treat me was. They’d met and arranged these appointments online.”
I sat on the bed. “Finally he showed up. The room was so badly lit I never got a good look at him, but he seemed tall and trim. His clothes were nondescript and covered him from head to toe. He wore the same kind of black hood with eyeholes that medieval executioners did. His black gloves kept him from leaving fingerprints.
“The man never spoke. He pressed the tip of his right index finger over my MNM for several seconds, then nodded to my contact. She paid him his cut of what I’d given her—then he was gone. We had to wait ten minutes to give him time to get away. Then she put my blindfold back on and we left too.”
I grinned innocently. “I’ve read that those programmers like the one he had implanted in his fingertip are issued legally to only specially licensed doctors. Each device is designed to work only when it detects that physician’s individual genetic code in the surrounding tissue.
“I’ve heard some unscrupulous types once tried to hijack a programmer by severing a poor doctor’s finger. But the device is clever enough to recognize the change in body chemistry that occurs when that’s done and it automatically self-destructs. Other drastic steps like kidnapping the whole physician or threatening that poor professional’s loved ones don’t work either, because the programmer senses the surge of neurotransmitters and hormones those stresses cause and destroys itself then too.”
I winked at him. “In fact, the only way one of those devices can be used for an illegal MNM deactivation is for the doctor to do it voluntarily. Naturally, the physicians who have them are supposed to adhere to the highest ethical standards and not even think about doing that. But if one ever did, I’ve heard the penalties for such a breach in professional conduct are very severe—perhaps even fatal.”
Dr. Schuller rubbed the tip of his right index finger against his thumb. “Everything you’ve said about programmers like the one I have is correct. But I don’t see how this is relevant to—”
I interrupted him. “You know, I feel sorry for doctors like you. Once you were treated almost like gods—respected for your knowledge, training, and compassion. Now you’re just underpaid pill pushers and technicians. The only way you can get your jollies these days is by lording it over the defenseless patients entrusted to your tender mercies. No wonder some of you might be tempted to supplement your income by using the very system that’s ruined you for your own ends.
“Of course, I can’t say for sure who the poor doctor who treated me was or why he did it. However, I do remember that, when he leaned over to deactivate my MNM, I caught a strong whiff of wintergreen mouthwash and musk cologne. That might be enough of a clue for the authorities to track him down. I might even get a reward for doing my civic duty and helping to bring him to justice!”
Dr. Schuller studied me with the cold glare a pathologist might direct at a messy corpse before starting an autopsy. There was no fear in his voice. “I don’t recall you ever asking what happened to your erstwhile partner in crime, Ms. Thompson. He proved obstinate when the authorities questioned him about his other accomplices.
“Eventually they brought him back here for further treatment. As per protocol, I initiated Limbic System Aversion Therapy. He proved unusually resistant.”
A whiff of wintergreen mouthwash wafted from the doctor’s lips. His musk cologne made me nauseous. “The last time I saw Mr. Myra, he was sitting in a comfortable chair and smiling. Unfortunately, that’s all he does anymore. We give him just enough water and enteric feedings through his nasogastric tube for him to maintain a healthy rate of weight loss.
“It’s a strain on the nurses and orderlies to shift his position occasionally and clean him after he soils himself. But they won’t have to do it much longer. Soon he will exhaust the money in his personal Universal Health System account. When that happens, his MNM will ensure that, the next time he goes peacefully to sleep, he won’t wake up.”
Schuller indicated the mirror, alarm clock, and other little luxuries in my room. “Three weeks ago you told us Mr. Myra was coming to your room. You agreed to play along with him until we found out what he had planned and collected evidence against him. We monitored both of you using the video surveillance system and the staff members you encountered during your excursion.
“You’ve been rewarded for informing on him. Don’t jeopardize the good will the hospital and I currently have toward you by trying to seduce or threaten me. If you don’t let me reactivate your MNM, I’ll have to refer you for LSAT too. Perhaps you and Mr. Myra can sit together and smile at each other before he leaves us.”
I laughed. “I guess what happens now depends on how big a gambler you are, doctor. For one of us to be a big winner, the other has to be a big loser. Or we could cut a deal where we both get some of what we want. If you don’t reactivate my MNM, I’ll eat just enough extra doughnuts and other goodies for me to be able to exercise the excess calories off and stay just below the legal weight limit. That way no one will know it isn’t working, and we’ll both be safe.
“What’s in it for you is that you won’t have to defend yourself from accusations about illegal moonlighting. Maybe nobody will believe me—but what if the authorities start checking on what you do in your spare time? Do you want to take even a small chance of that? Even if I’m caught, you can claim I had somebody else deactivate my MNM again after I left here—and leave just me holding the bag!”
I lay down on the mattress. “And that offer to let you play gynecologist with me still stands. For you, I’d be a very nice partner in crime.”
Schuller glowered at me. I waited as he calculated the risks and benefits for each of his choices. Finally he said, “Sit up.”
There was a softness in his voice that motivated me to obey. While his right index finger pressed down on my MNM, his palm rested below it against my left breast and gave it a furtive massage.
Then he leaned away and said, “Your MNM is now registered as being activated on the national monitoring network. If anyone discovers that it’s really still deactivated, I’ll deny everything. As you said, it’s in both our interests for you to follow the rules for healthy living you learned here. Don’t overeat, exercise regularly—and I’ll be visiting you soon to see how you’re doing.”
I stood up, wrapped my arms around him, and gave him a long lingering kiss that he returned hungrily. Then I sighed in his ear, “You don’t know how much that means to me.”
The doctor started to walk me backwards toward the bed. But I giggled away from him and said, “Maybe we should be a little more discrete. Somebody might walk in and be shocked by your bedside manner. I’ll call you tomorrow to set up a private consultation at my apartment.”
Schuller reluctantly accepted the wisdom of that plan. He wiped my lipstick from his face with a handkerchief before regaining his usual professional air. Then he pressed the call button near my bed and informed the nurse who answered it that I was ready for discharge.
The two male nurses who’d accompanied him on my first day here arrived a moment later. Schuller said, “I’m going out to write the discharge orders for Ms. Thompson now.”
The taller
of the two burly nurses smiled. “No, you aren’t.”
He pulled a badge from his back pocket. “CDC. You’re under arrest.”
They grabbed the doctor and wrestled him to the floor. Schuller screamed like a terrified toddler as one of them rolled him into a prone position and held him down with a knee in the back as the other handcuffed his arms behind him.
The physician spluttered expletives and threats as the pair dragged him from the room. I followed behind as they transferred him in the hallway to three other Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agents dressed in conventional garb. As Schuller and his trio of traveling companions left, he glanced back at me as if he were confused why I wasn’t in custody too.
Jim Rhodes retrieved the badge he’d dropped in my room during that violent arrest and stood beside me. He grinned, “There’s no way Schuller can squirm out of this. Besides the testimony you’ll give at his trial, we watched and recorded everything you two said and did through the miniature video camera and microphone hidden inside that full-length mirror in your room. I’m sure the judge and jury will find that recording very interesting. I know I did.”
Tom Colby, the other undercover CDC agent, piped in, “Ditto!”
A maidenly blush warmed my cheeks. I tittered, “All in a good cause. Just call me Lady Godiva.”
Jim said, “I bet you’ll get a commendation for this. Not only are you responsible for catching red-handed the doctor suspected of being one of the top MNM bootleggers in this state, but you also prevented what would’ve been a major terrorist attack by ELF!”
I shrugged modestly. “I’m glad Schuller will get what he deserves for all the harm he’s done by deactivating MNMs. He must’ve performed so many illegal deactivations he’s lost track of whom he’s done, because he didn’t realize I was bluffing when I told him he’d done mine. Maybe he even believes that garbage I told him about how doctors have fallen from grace and used it to rationalize his crimes. His biggest mistake was that he couldn’t adapt to how times and his profession have changed—and now he’s going to pay for it.
“But I feel bad about what happened to Nick. Yes, he and terrorist organizations like ELF are responsible for poisoning people’s minds, and they have to be stopped. But I don’t think they’re intentionally evil—just misguided. Maybe, with the right kind of persuasion, some of them might come around to the correct way of thinking before it’s too late—like it is for Nick.”
I sighed. “But all I want to do right now is to go home and take a nice hot shower. After being around a dirt ball like Schuller for so long and giving him those cheap thrills to trip him up, I feel all scuzzy on the inside and outside.”
Jim and Tom seemed ready to volunteer to accompany me and help lather me back to cleanliness. But though I appreciated their interest, right now I needed some quality time alone. They could read my full report after I filed it online at home after my shower.
Moments later, as I walked out into the hospital parking lot on this comfortably cool morning, I reveled in the warm sunshine bathing me and the leers young males bestowed on my new and improved body. But after I entered the empty car reserved for me and blended into traffic, I mulled over everything I’d done the past few weeks.
There were pros and cons to being an undercover agent for the CDC. Although I was doing my country a great service, it meant I had to consort with the most pathetic members of the society I was protecting. Despite their differences, Schuller and Nick had one flaw in common. They were both living in the past—refusing to accept the changes that were today’s new reality. They’d been tilting against windmills and, as always, the windmills won.
I was smarter than them. I’d accepted the system as it was and come out the winner. After I graduated from medical school, I could’ve gone down the same dead-end path Schuller and other physicians did. I could’ve become a pill pusher like him, or maybe a surgical robo-jockey—an insignificant lordling of a tiny domain, eventually brought low by wounded pride, frustration, and greed. But instead I’d used my M.D. degree as a stepping stone to becoming a satisfied cog in a great healthcare juggernaut.
No, the system I’d embraced wasn’t perfect—but it was much better than it used to be. MNMs really did dramatically improve everyone’s health and lower the cost of medical care. And when cure was impossible and quality of life was gone, those devices impartially gave a quick and painless death with dignity—with no difficult decisions for those individuals or their loved ones to make. Surely a little loss of freedom about what people ate or how they behaved was worth all that.
And I’d put myself in a position where I didn’t have to choose between good health and the freedom to indulge my appetites. It was part of my job as an undercover agent to temporarily adopt the depraved lifestyle and look the part of the overeaters and couch potatoes I worked among so I could root out those who helped corrupt them. Before my next assignment, I’d have carte blanche from the CDC to order every controlled and illegal substance I wanted. Dozens of doughnuts, cases of cookies, gallons of ice cream—my bosses encouraged me to gorge on them so I’d be ready that much sooner to go underground again.
The nice figure and glowing health I now enjoyed had its pleasures and perks. But so did sitting on a sofa watching soap operas and talk shows on holoTV while munching on chips and guzzling soda.
As I drove home to that relaxing shower, I felt a bit smug knowing how lucky I was compared to everyone around me. Their MNMs gave them good health bought at the price of a bland and boring existence. Most would never thrill to the taste of the forbidden doughnut.
But I had the best of both worlds.
Copyright © 2010 H.G. Stratmann
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Science Fact
Tips for the Budget Time-Traveler
Shane Tourtellotte
Time travel is a favorite topic for science fiction, but one that, by its nature, resists the kind of rigorous factual analysis its readers and writers would put into orbital dynamics or genetic Seldom...
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Science Fact
Tips for the Budget Time-Traveler
Shane Tourtellotte
Chart 1: Gold/silver value ratio, 1845–2008 (London quotes)
Time travel is a favorite topic for science fiction, but one that, by its nature, resists the kind of rigorous factual analysis its readers and writers would put into orbital dynamics or genetic recombination. Still, there are practical issues one must tackle if visiting another era. Language is one, a topic covered admirably in L. Sprague de Camp’s “Language for Time Travelers.” Another is the matter of money.
Seldom in SF do we see a time-traveler arrive in a past society with the financial resources needed to support himself for any length of time. Many stories ignore the matter altogether; others have the traveler fall in with some benefactor; in others the time travel was unplanned and precipitous. A protagonist who takes intelligent steps to fund his sojourn is uncommon. For a reading audience that likes rigorous storytelling, this cannot really satisfy.
It would be simple and convenient to posit a filthy rich time-traveler who can overcome this problem by brute force. Too simple, too convenient. Suppose, instead, that the expenses of building your time machine have tapped you out, that you have a relative pittance left to back your trip to Agincourt or Marathon or the court of Cleopatra. How can you maximize your limited budget to support your adventure in the past? This essay will provide some answers.
To illustrate various principles, I will use the specific example of traveling to the early Roman Empire. The Augustan Era, along with being a popular period likely to draw a time-traveler’s interest, provides excellent examples on several points. The methodology presented should help you cope with any other past period you choose to visit.
So, our first question arises: how to get the money you’ll need in the past?
Heavy Metal
Ideally, you would
have a stash of the currency used in the period you’ll be visiting. Realistically, your coin collection probably isn’t that extensive, and buying up genuine ancient coins would be overly expensive due to scarcity and other factors. You might contemplate counterfeiting period currency, but besides still being an expensive venture, it would be highly risky both in the present and the past.
Go back more than a few centuries, though, and your options widen. People will accept more than standardized, state-produced currency. Precious metals, gold and silver, will pass well, as long as the recipient can be reasonably sure of weight and purity. Taking back bulk gold and silver will be much more efficient than buying period gold or silver coinage with the same money. If need be, you can purchase period currency with your metals in the past, at a much more lenient premium than at a coin dealer or an online auction today.
But of your two main options, gold and silver, which will get you further in the past?
The value ratio of gold to silver was remarkably steady for most of human history. From far antiquity to the start of the sixteenth century, an ounce of gold was roughly 12 times more valuable than an ounce of silver. There were local fluctuations, such as when Rome’s access to silver was cut off during the Second Punic War, but global systemic movements were glacial.
The ratio shifted when Spain’s silver mines in South America began producing, depressing prices for silver and moving the ratio to between 15 and 16 to 1. The greater dislocation came in the nineteenth century, when the Western nations, led by Great Britain, abandoned silver standards for their currencies in favor of gold. Deprived of this support for its value, silver fell, especially compared to gold, which gained that very support.
The gold-silver ratio has been increasingly volatile for the last century and a half. Through many economic upheavals, including the global abandonment of the gold standard, the ratio has soared almost to 100 to 1, and plummeted back to 14 to 1, nearly as low as the ancient norm. (See Chart 1.) We sit between the extremes as I write, with gold somewhat about 65 times as valuable as silver.
Analog Science Fiction and Fact 12/01/10 Page 13
