Three Guilty Pleasures
Les Broad
Published by Les Broad at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 Les Broad
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Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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This is a trilogy that starts in a strange future where engineering of the human body – at least for the well-off – isn't just genetic. If you can afford it, and can source the right body parts, just about anything is replaceable....
THE DONEE
An Exploration Of The Emotional Stresses Imposed Upon An Organ Donee And His Family.
There are scenes in this story that some people may find upsetting.
(An apology is due to Caryl Churchill: this story borrows and adapts slightly the best line from her fine play 'Cloud Nine'.)
Consider these points, then read on.
In the war of 1939/45 the National Socialists in Germany were intent on creating an Aryan master race; it was genetic engineering of a sort, in that if you didn't have the right genes you were quite likely to lead a dramatically foreshortened life.
Since that war we, as a race, have become really quite competent at organ replacement: heart, lungs, kidney, eyeball parts, spleen, even – quite recently – entire faces.
Progress can't be unlearned or reversed.
It is almost certainly in very poor taste, and therefore politically incorrect, to attempt to generate humour based on this background.
The author is not, and is unlikely ever to be, a worshipper at the altar of political correctness.
The year is 2198. Society has changed; it is argued by those who have benefited from education that the changes have been for the better. Those not in that fortunate group would have contended that Society in 2198 in fact demonstrated remarkable parallels with times centuries earlier, and what was held out by the educated classes as progress was, in reality, a major regression. They couldn't advance that argument simply because they hadn't been educated at all and so didn't know any history.
PART ONE
Wilminea Hawes-Butterworth enjoyed a life of immense wealth and ease. She had handmaidens to wash and dress her, the finest chefs to prepare her food, butlers to run her household; she even had a tall, attractive - and very, very male - servant permanently stationed by her personal lavatory so that she need never risk soiling her hands with the unappealing little jobs that needed to be done at the conclusion of any visit to that facility. And should any of her plethora of personal staff fail to measure up to her high standards, well, there were plenty of others to replace them.
The one thing Wilminea didn't have was a husband, or at least all of one.
At the tender age of just thirty summers she had agreed to become the second wife of sixty year old, staggeringly wealthy Horace Hawes-Butterworth, an act accomplished almost before the body of her freshly deceased predecessor had dropped to room temperature.
For six months or so it was a happy and fulfilling marriage; Wilminea was often fulfilled by her husband several times a day. After that brief period, though, she noticed - really she could hardly miss - that more and more often Horace would be in mid-fulfilment and simply forget what he was doing. At those increasingly distressing times he would climb off whatever, or indeed whoever, he was on, stand up and immediately fall flat on his face having forgotten that his trousers were round his ankles. Once he'd divested himself of the impediment he would wander off distractedly, occasionally stopping to examine a particular piece of wall he seemed never to have noticed before. His new young wife was left only with a lingering image of disappearing spotty buttocks and an urgent need to seek fulfilment at her personal lavatory.
Something, clearly, needed to be done. Wilminea began to investigate if there may be a medical or surgical solution to the problem of having a husband who was physically beautiful but mentally had become the richest fruitcake in the patisserie. Her search led her to the clinic of Herr Doktor Hans-Joachim Zybermender, located in a grim-looking schloss in the forbidding pine forests of southern Germany. An appointment was made for her to see the Herr Doktor himself.
Wilminea was all too aware that despite the passage of a quarter-millennium adherence to the principle of Aryan supremacy was still strong outside of the metropolitan areas of the still fiercely independent yet indisputably world-governing Germany. But then she was tall, slim and blue-eyed; her naturally blond hair was straight and cut in a disciplined and quite short style. When she strode into the clinic at the appointed hour she was confident that her physicality would guarantee ready acceptance.
Herr Doktor Zybermender, in stark contrast to those members of his staff she encountered before meeting him in person, did not at first sight seem to be a devotee of Aryan ideals at all. He was, first of all, far too short and far too dark; his black hair was unruly, at least by Germanic standards of precision, and contrasted really quite violently with his little toothbrush moustache which was neatly, almost fanatically, trimmed. He also appeared to be very, very old. Life expectancy may have long since exceeded the Biblical three score years and ten, indeed double that was quite normal, but Zybermender gave the appearance of having been a centenarian at the turn of the last millennium.
She spent some time describing in detail her husband's frustrating symptoms and then a little more explaining why her continued fulfilment depended upon a cure being provided. When she'd finished speaking Zybermender remained silent for several moments, giving time for the sweat on his forehead to dissipate and his excessively widened eyes to return to normal, before he gave his considered reply.
“A cure you vish? Nein. Zis iss impozzible.” He sat back in his chair, his hands balled into fists resting on his desk.
His visitor looked shocked, crestfallen, frustrated: it was exactly the reaction Zybermender sought because it let him increase his fee substantially.
“Impozzible,” he repeated. “But a zolution, zat is anuzzer matter. Zat ve can do.”
Relief coursed through Wilminea's person and burst out on her face. Another ten per cent went on her bill.
“Ve haf zer vunderful teknik. Lizzen mit most care.”
The Herr Doktor went on to describe, in broken and not always comprehensible English, how Horace could be brought to the clinic, pacified with a suitable cocktail of drugs and then, after a few days of careful examination, the process could begin. All his memories, abilities and intellectual prowess could be extracted from his obviously faulty brain and stored digitally in the clinic's own secure computer bank. Then, by way of complex surgery done through the back of his neck, his brain could be sucked out and discarded. Next a replacement could be surgically inserted and connected before, finally, having all the stored data re-uploaded. And, he'd added, for a charge that, compared to the potential benefits, was really quite modest, a USB port could be installed in Horace's skull so that additional data could be added to his new brain later.
All was duly arranged. Horace was transported to that gloomy pine forest and settled into the clinic. Herr Doktor Zybermender told Wilminea that a replacement brain had been secured, the computer databanks had been debugged so as to ensure that the data to be captured from Horace's faulty mind wouldn't be corrupted and the clinic's surgical facility was ready to receive him. Now that the resolution of the problem was close Wilminea should have felt some tremor, at least, of anticipatory excitement but that delight was prevented: now that he was under some pressure to perform, Zybermender had developed an all too obvious nervous tic in his right eye and his hands had begun to shake. He'd also taken to strutting about in what he fondly imagined was a military style, wearing an arrogant expression and clasping his trembling hands behind his back.
She watched as her beloved husband was wheeled into the operating theatre. A smile of child-like, guileless happiness was on his unconscious face; she hoped that by the time he awoke it would be replaced by a different type of smile entirely. Then her thoughts began to drift....
The possibilities offered by that built-in USB port intrigued her. She was more than ready to accept that Horace, much as she adored him, was not perfect. What, she wondered, might she change? It was a question that exercised her mind during the otherwise anxious hours while her husband underwent his brain transplant.
The wheeling-in took place early in the morning. From the point at which Horace disappeared horizontally through a pair of wide, white doors that closed with a quiet sigh the clinic was eerily silent; Wilminea was left entirely alone with her thoughts and even the extensive range of electronic entertainments, installed for the amusement of waiting relatives, held no interest for her.
A few times during the course of the day she caught a brief glimpse of a white-clad nurse, invariably blond, tall and slim, but none of them approached her. In the early afternoon she was offered lunch, but declined; her anxiety about Horace made eating quite impossible. A further offer of food was made and declined as afternoon became evening; she was still too concerned about Horace but in the event her concern was misplaced. Herr Doktor Zybermender appeared after eleven hours spent with Horace. He bore a neutral yet somehow reassuringly confident expression.
“Alles ist in ordnung,” he asserted to his patient's patient wife. “Herr Horz-Butterwurz vill sleep vell tonight und vill be avake in zer mornink. He vill be vell enough to leave zis klinik zer next day.”
Wilminea was delighted with the news – soon she would once again have the complete husband she missed so much. But she had a question she needed to raise.
“Tell me,” she asked after expressing her deep gratitude in an untypically platonic way, “you can make changes, I believe, to my husband's personality and abilities?”
“Ve can do zis,” Zybermender replied.
“Good. There are a couple of, um, improvements that you may be able to make.”
Zybermender merely inclined his head slightly and raised an eyebrow inquisitively.
“The first, Herr Doktor, is of no great importance at all, but as I have the opportunity to correct a minor failing I may as well do so. Sometimes, when we are entertaining friends, my husband can be a little too fond of the sound of his own voice. Perhaps he could be given the ability to accept that others might from time to time be allowed to offer their own opinions?”
“Zis can be done, naturlich.”
“Good. The second thing may be a little more difficult. I wish my husband to be able to speak French. I find it such a romantic language. It would make our marriage more... fulfilling.”
“Zis alzo vill be done.” The words conveyed acceptance but his expression and body language suggested, strongly, that the Herr Doktor had no interest in anything that might be perceived as weakness. And romance was high on that list; after all the only person he'd considered worthy of his hand in marriage was a transvestite who shaved twice a day.
PART TWO
Wilminea and Horace had been home for a couple of weeks and it had proved to be a most fulfilling period, so fulfilling that Wilminea's visits to her personal lavatory had been only for purely lavatorial purposes. Her personal lavatorial attendant had to be content with getting just his hands dirty.
During that period Horace attended a small gathering, organised by Wilminea at their house; he had surprised and delighted his wife by being most uncharacteristically tolerant of the opinions of their guests – it might even have been said that he showed interest in what was being said.
The surgery – the brain transplant – was, it seemed, an outstanding success.
Then, several weeks later, when Wilminea and Horace were talking over breakfast, Horace raised a question that had occurred to neither of them previously. “I wonder,” he said, “whose brain it is that I'm using.”
“I have no idea,” Wilminea replied, “but I imagine whoever it was is dead. Does it matter?”
“I'm not sure. I think I'd like to know something about the person.”
Wilminea seemed dismissive. “You're alive and well, somebody else died and you received an organ that otherwise would have been cremated. I can't see that there is anything to be gained by knowing whose it was.”
“To be gained? I don't think I want to gain anything exactly. I think I just want to lose the feeling of, well, uncertainty.”
Wilminea had wanted a husband with a greater interest in the views of others; it seemed she'd got what she'd wished. 'I don't want to die' was certainly a view, and the brain donor certainly ranked in that mass of people who could be called 'others', even if he, or possibly she, was quite likely to have been someone whom Wilminea would have taken great trouble to avoid.
“Very well,” she conceded with a barely audible sigh, “I shall take steps to discover the identity of the donor.”
She took those steps that very day. She had herself transported to the clinic – it was a journey of a mere hour, accomplished in exemplary comfort if the passenger had enough money – and demanded an audience with Herr Doktor Zybermender.
“My husband,” she stated in her haughtiest manner, “wishes to know the identity of the donor of his new brain.”
“Zis iss not normal,” the Herr Doktor replied, clearly surprised.
“Perhaps not. But he insists.”
The Herr Doktor raised an eyebrow – he had long regarded every Englander as an eccentric blot on the surface of the planet – and consulted his notes. “It vass a pessant. Not important. Ve breed zese peoples. Zis vun vas schott ven ve needed zer brain. A gut job vos done. Troo zer heart, clean.”
“I see,” Wilminea replied dispassionately. “Did this peasant have a name?”
Zybermender shrugged his shoulders. To him it was a matter of no consequence
“Can we discover the name?”
“Vy vould ve vant to do zis?”
“Herr Doktor, it would satisfy my husband's curiosity.”
Zybermender starting thinking. One peasant was just like any other; they were all indistinguishable. So, it could have been any one of them. All he had to do was produce a name, and that was worth an extra fee, wasn't it? “I vill attempt to do zis but zere vill be...”
“An extra fee. Yes, Herr Doktor, I am quite prepared to pay. The money is of no relevance at all.”
Zybermender nodded and excused himself. Wilminea settled down to wait; she guessed it was an exercise that would be eked out to increase the final bill.
She waited for two hours before Zybermender returned. He sat down, looking serious, but then he so rarely didn't look serious. “Ve haf discovered,” he announced.