Perfect Bliss

Perfect Bliss

"You understand, Mr. Gwenn, there can be no reversal past this point. If you decide to continue with the procedure, it will be irreversible."

The man in the operating chair massaged his chest along a well-worn path that stood out, red and raw, against the rest of his skin. "Do you think I shouldn't do it, Dr. Judd?"

The doctor crossed his arms behind his back. "Has your pain submerged any?"

"No. It seems worse." Gwenn passed his hand across his chest again.

"If I were you, that would be answer enough. Whatever your decision, please decide quickly. This operation is still technically illegal at this point and I cannot risk the Clinic for any one patient."

The man in the chair let his fingers dance across the arm of the chair. Irreversible. Dr. Judd of course had told him that at the first consultation. He had known for the last three months that there was no going back. But now, in the present, with the nurses and technicians just a wall away, setting up the equipment...the pain came hard and sharp again. His hand automatically went to his chest. Pain made life unbearable. Anything was better than this. "All right. I'll do it."

Dr. Judd nodded briskly. "Excellent. Let me check in the operating room. I'll be back in three minutes."

Gwenn laid back in the chair, watched the door close on the doctor and then turned his eyes on the ceiling. What was it going to feel like after? It was impossible to imagine; he shouldn't even try. Dr. Judd had told him so on his second consultation. "An entirely new state of consciousness as to self-identity and interactions with other subjects." He remembered that much but that really didn't make it any more knowable. He glanced at the atomic clock on the wall, its twenty-four faces each ticking with precise rhythm. It would be a little bit like that--cold and precise and perfect and logical. But what would that be like? His hands began to perspire as his fingers started dancing across the chair arms again. He looked at his hands, nostalgia creeping into his mind. They would never do that again.

Each second hand on each face ticked to twelve; Dr. Judd entered the room, a human cuckoo bird. "It's time," he said simply. Two nurses and an orderly came in behind him. The nurses took position, one on each side of Gwenn while the orderly made himself ready at the back of the chair. Each nurse ran a tube into his radial arteries and began the compressors which leered down on either side of the chair. Their quiet pumping was drowned by the orderly bringing the chair's wheels down from the undercarriage, locking them in place and raising the chair's central cylinder up. All three looked at Dr. Judd in unison. "Ready."

Dr. Judd opened the twin doors. Gwenn was rolled into the hall, the nurses keeping perfect time with each other and the chair. Gwenn began to feel the sedatives take affect, loosening limbs and turning bones to jelly. His mind began to wander in twelve different directions by the twelve different things that his rolling eyes took in: another nurse with long blonde hair (very pretty, have to ask her out); a spectrumscope being rolled away (what poor bastard needed that?); the row of lights down to the end of the hall (how long was it?); an empty computer monitor (looks like a square eye)...

His eyes fixed on assign which hung from one of the doors. Three smiling people, young and beautiful, looked out at everyone in the hall. Below them was announced: THE AURORA CLINIC: 100% SUCCESS.

A hundred percent success. He tilted his head forward. "Dr. Judd...Dr. Judd?"

The doctor fell half a step back. "Yes Mr. Gwenn?"

"How'se..how many people have done this?"

"More than you would first think. People are finally starting to realize that half-life is whole life if the half-life is more bountiful than the whole life. Not everyone is in the exact same situation as you found yourself, Mr. Gwenn, five months ago; how could they be? Everyone is different. There are as many different reasons for having the operation performed as there are successful cases." Dr. Judd crossed his arms behind his back. "To put an actual number on it, 65,382 have undergone the operation with more and more people daily learning of it for the first time and deciding that it is the way to reclaim their stolen full humanity. That is why although it is technically still illegal, the fates and time are against it."

A pair of doors opened and the party entered. In the center of the room, a glistening, stainless table lay prone to the unblinking gaze of the hovering saucer which hummed its own song in its own language to the machines which encircled the table. They, in turn, answered the saucer, with their own subdued symphony. The only light came down from the periphery of the saucer, leaving the rest of the room to the different shades of grays and black.

Gwenn felt himself become very much afraid. He could almost smell his fear as it oozed out of his hands, beating back the sedatives. It slithered around and inside his brain, chewing up his frontal cortex, burrowing back to his middle brain and into his brain stem, weaving between the hemispheres. The saucer noticed him and began to hum more quickly.

"Put him on," Dr. Judd ordered. The nurses and orderly transferred Gwenn from the chair to the table. Gwenn stared up at the saucer, his fingers sluggishly running on the table. The saucer stared back. Gwenn blinked.

"Up the dosage eleven percent," Dr. Judd's voice said. The sedatives raced through him, fighting the fear for dominance. His vision swirled and darkened, the saucer taking on different contortions to its ever-changing mood. Dr. Judd looked down, faceless on him. "Begin."

The darkness took Gwenn through a winding tunnel. Lights exploded in fourth of July brilliance around him; voices and faces garbled and mingled together in a cacophonic blanket. So many voices..."Yes, I'll sing to you again tonight"--that was his mom, would he still have her afterwards--hadn't thought of that..."Tag! It!"--Kathy--when was the last time he had talked to her.... "I have to tell you."

That voice boomed across and around the tunnel. He focused on that particular voice. A fire flower opened up in front of him and the darkness and spacelessness of the tunnel retreated before the perfect summer day in Sotoros Park. He was by the pond, the light reflecting off of it to make a million diamonds like the one that sat heavy in his pocket. Xandra was facing him, still as beautiful as he had remembered her. "What are you saying?" he asked.

"Please try and understand, Philip. I'm not saying that I don't care about you anymore. I'm just saying that I'm not ready for such a big change. I know I'm not. And maybe you aren't either."

"We've been together for two and a half years! That doesn't even count the fifteen months we knew each other before we started going out. Why now?"

She shrugged, her dark hair falling off her shoulders. "It's just a feeling that I've been having for a while now. I told you that when I'm at peace, I know that what I'm doing is right."

"So you're not at peace about us anymore? After everything we planned and dreamed?"

"Yes. We have to be adults about it--"

The light of the sun turned red. It began to pulse, a huge organ pumping diseased red light throughout the world. Xandra was still talking, oblivious to the light. "...we're going to be...be...be...alright, Phil. And I'll always be there...there...for y--ou...you..." She started to shimmer in and out like a mirage. The sun pulsed horribly. Red light exploded, obliterating the park and Xandra. The tunnel closed around Gwenn again.

Gwenn blinked once outside the massive face of the clinic. Dr. Judd had released him with a full bill of health, as expected. The operation was always successful. He detected a sensation of hunger. The closest location for nourishment was two blocks west. He started.

A car horn honked. Breaks squealed. A small voice screamed. Other voices began to panic. Gwenn looked to his left. Between the passing bodies of the gathering crowd, a little boy stood sobbing over the squished body of a puppy, a broken leash in hand. A woman had her arms around the boy trying to comfort him. Gwenn kept walking. He needed nourishment.

The boy's screams faded. Didn't he know that attachments always caused distress, ruining happiness and humanity, ruining perfect bliss? He looked down at his chest. The pain was gone. He ran his hand over the healing scar where they had taken his heart. He was ready to start his whole life.