Citizens of Tomorrow Tale I: A Pirate's Kidney

Let's start with the setting. The room was dank with the smell of walls and floors that had been wet for too long. I had learned by now how to block out unpleasant smells as a worker in the local Biosphere where manure was about as omnipresent as oxygen, if not more so but it still wasn't all that pleasant.

It was a little too late for second thoughts but I had them. I clutched the container's handle, feeling like a child with a morbid lunchbox. Instead of food, I held the organ that would replace my soon-to-be defective kidney. This is where I went under the knife.

It had all begun two weeks before when I won a free Predictive Diagnosis session at my local health centre in my junk mail. If I hadn't been sorting the mail carefully I would have thrown it into the garbage. My wife, Cynthia, had died three years prior to this, giving in to cancer. Had we known earlier... the children would have had a mother see them off to university or out into the working world. I cashed in the coupon, feeling as though the universe were hinting that I ought to be safe.

As I stood in the huge cylindrical scanner and they examined every part of my body, I grew bored very quickly, thinking what a waste of a perfectly good afternoon it was. 30 minutes of standing around led to a full understanding of my body's operation and could, from there, deduce the way my body would continue to grow and develop over time, like magic. A magic Cynthia had never had the chance to use. I tried to ignore this thought and came out to hear the results of the scan. My health, my looks, my state of mind... it all lay out on a map for my doctor to search and 'X' marked the spot over my kidney.

The options were explained. My insurance could cover half of the cost of a surgery to replace the kidney but the real cost was the printing process. The hospital's 3D printer could use organic ink in order to create a working replica of a kidney. I just had to pay an arm and a leg for it. I was still in debt after Cynthia's death, paying off the bills for all the extensive treatments she had received. We had spared no expenses, trying to hold on to her for as long as we could. And yet here I stood, a broken man with piling bills, a child in med-school and another working a dead-end job to help his sister out with her living expenses. We could not afford another slow, expensive death in the family.

I did not know how to tell the children so I did not. I decided that I could not die and pass Cynthia's debts on to their poor shoulders, but at the same time, how was I ever going to afford my own health?

The booklets were the worst to look at. They presented the very simple details of how I could live a full, fruitful life. All of it was possible, so tantalizingly close. It just wasn't affordable. I would certainly pass on the debt to the children no matter how long I ended up living at the rate things were going with my career as a glorified farmer.

No, there had to be a better way.

The day after the diagnosis I went to work at the Biosphere, stuck in a haze of disbelief and despair. I turned on the sprinklers for my floor level, Interior Designed Plants. On this level we grew modified plants that developed into various forms of furniture. Fern mats, oak chairs and tables, sofas with non-perishable moss cushioning and beautiful mahogany canopies with rubbervine hammock bedding. I was the manager of my floor's Growery, a sort of Bonsai farmer, making sure the plants grew into the standardized form of each growth stage. I basically just read the grower's instruction manual and then bent the sapling on the stipulated days, trimmed where instructed, taped where told. It was about as entry-level as you could get, I was not earning a lot of money. Mindless work that any robot could perform if they ever became sophisticated enough to deal with the anomalies of organic matter. In about a decade I would be unemployed and jealous of my automated counterparts. But that's the subject matter for another story.

In the shock of the day as I contemplated my own mortality and the relative disappointment that my life had come to be, I performed my tasks from the middle of an existential cloud. However it was at closing time when I saw the bio-waste guys cleaning out the Organics floor that the mists cleared and I realized how my job had finally managed to help secure my future. Dropping the weeds I had been busy plucking, I rushed downstairs, a man possessed, and directed myself toward the freezer room.

When I think about it now it was my daughter who had inspired the idea – though I don't wish to blame her of course. She had mentioned how for her practical classes and examinations, all the students were required to bring their own model organs to be placed in their dummy patients. Passingly she had said:

“If it weren't for my scholarship I would have had resort to online piracy for my printing programs. Organs cost serious money to print – even after you have the Organic Ink. The programming software packages I have to buy like Vital MD costs about as much as my tuition.”

With gratitude in my heart towards my daughter's eager rambling, I scanned my ID, typed in the combination and opened the door, breathing with relief. Here they were, the organic printing cells. About 100 bags of gelatenous matter, a little thicker than liquid detergent. They looked like bags of fruit punch.

They were the most expensive things in the store by far and their handlers earned ten times more than me. This was because of the massive amount of research that went into creating the architectural DNA for organic matter. Organic matter like kidneys. Kidneys, new eyes, lungs, blood, some types of cancer-curing stem cells... Here, stacked in neat rows, lay the results of the Medical Revolution, an offspring of the Bio-Revolution. They were generally only used by the Optometrists on floor 6 in the Health section as any other form of Organic Ink usage was only ever to be used on hospital grounds as the law stipulated.

I did not hesitate. I grabbed a bag, trying not to look at the pricetag. 

As I walked out the door at closing time I knew that I was a thief now. They would find out that a bag had been stolen by the next day's stock check but if I had to choose between losing this particular job and death, well...

The adrenaline rush drove me home and to my computer. I navigated to my favourite torrent site where all my music, ebook and entertainment came from. 'Vital MD' was the name of the software I needed. I unchecked the lungs, liver, heart, brain and pancreas options of the download. No need to perform too much intellectual theft all at once. I then rushed off to the Byrd & Sons 3D Printery while the download completed. I rented one of the smaller machines, brought it home, filled it with the recommended measure of Organic Ink as stipulated by the torrent instructions and ran the printing program. There was only an eighth of ink leftover once I had loaded the machine. I felt grateful that my lungs were all right, I would have had to steal many more bags of ink. In three hours I had a kidney just waiting to be stuck into my body, the only cost to me so far being the printer rental.

It became a simple matter of searching my local Help-Me-Help-You.org bartering website to find a black market surgeon. This had been the part that had worried me most. I had thought, 'Worst comes to worst, I'll have my daughter do it, she's passed her exams with flying colours so far.' It was a happy day when I realized I would not have to rely upon my daughter's green albeit natural talent.

He sent a very long-winded email with instructions on how to get in touch, about his credentials, about what material I needed to procure for myself – the organ in question, the logistics of printing, the best equipment to use, best Printery to visit, etc. I skipped that section, I already had the organ and I didn't believe visiting the doctor's friends with Printeries would help me more than it boosted their sales. However for the most part he seemed very legitimate and professional so we set up the appointment and then two weeks later, there I stood in the backroom of a bar. The surgeon's table and equipment haloed by a bright lamp. They looked pristine while everything else belonged with the dank bar in the frontroom.

“Philip?” asked a muffled voice, floating out of the darkest corner.

“Yes,” I said, squinting into the recesses of the room. He stepped forward, dressed in scrubs and wearing a face mask.

“Hi, I'm Dr. Blank*. As stated before, I work at the Blank* Hospital in Blank* county just next door. This is Nurse Blank*, my assisting nurse at the hospital. She and I do this side job in our free time. I trust you've checked out my story?”

“Oh yeah, it checks out perfectly, called up the hospital, looked through the Physician's Guide, everything adds up.”

“Great, so I hope you trust that you are in good hands.”

“I do believe so... I'm glad people like you exist.”

“Well, Nurse Blank and I believe that though technology has advanced in the right direction, our healthcare and legal system still has some catching up to do. People should not have to die when the technology exists to prevent their deaths. Greed is no reason to deprive a fellow man of healthcare. Anyhow, I trust you read through the instructions I sent you prior to coming in and have the small fee we've asked for.”

“Definitely, you were very thorough, it was greatly appreciated.”

“Then let's get started!”

…

After the surgery things returned to normal – there wasn't even an investigation into the lost bag of Organic Ink. A lax student-worker had made some data-entry mistakes causing that month's information to be written off as unreliable. I felt as though the whole universe wanted me to live. It's funny to think of it now as I lay on my deathbed, writing about my final days. I was naïve enough to think that my own independently sourced materials would save my life just like that. That all these randomly found materials that came to me through theft and blind searching would get me out of my situation without a single repercussion.

If I had only read the comments on the torrent file I had used to print the kidney more thoroughly. While Vital MD products were good enough for med-students to practice on, they certainly were not the same as the type of printed organs used for surgery. There were a few comments on this fact now that I have taken the time to go back and check. One or two users commented on the fact that the torrented file had a few glitchy lines making the organ useless in a live patient. You cannot imagine the self-hatred that comes with such an oversight.

If I had only read the doctor's careful instructions about what torrents were good choices and which were not, things would have gone flawlessly. Instead of dying steadily over years with my previous kidney or living a full, healthy life with a properly programmed printed kidney, I now have a week left to live, the damage wreaked by the kidney too much for my system. The dialysis is hell and the doctors have little confidence that it will work for very long. I were to survive this I would have to spend the rest of my life medicated or in perpetual debt. Either way, it makes me rue the very day I cashed in that stupid coupon. 

I did not want to go then and I do not want to go now. However I have refused treatment despite my childrens' many protests. The doctor is set to pull the plug on the dialysis as soon as I have said my goodbyes, per my request. They all insist that I am making a big mistake. As far as I see it, health is not right of birth. Nature sees to that with genetically transferred diseases, deadly viruses, natural disasters... the list goes on. Nature sees to the negation of many a human right. However, we exude a power over nature that ought to keep it in check. Healthy is not a right of nature but we try to make it a right of society. My death was not inevitable. It was a mistake. A collaborative mistake, I should think in which many levels were involved. As my fingers grow weak and I type these last  few words, I hear the sweet tinkling laugh of my darling Cynthia as she beckons me forward into the darkness with her. Our bodies have both pushed our souls out, rejecting them with ever weaker thrusts as the end approaches. I saw her go. And now the children see me go. They will have their own struggles and their bodies will also eject them in due course.

Still, it's too late for regrets and nostalgia. The doctor has entered the room as have my darling children. Even now, my soul scrambles to force its way back into the beaten pulp lying in this premature morgue. Inside I scream: "I want to stay! If only, if only, if only - heavens if only! Can't we somehow go back?"

But what's a body to do?

*Names omitted in order to allow these fine people to continue to do their good work.
Written by: Philip Boileau

Birth Date: 14-09-1999

Died on: 05-06-2047
Published by: His loving son Thomas Boileau and adoring daughter Teresa Boileau.