A Toast for a Worse Tomorrow

 It’s just not fair: Abraham Hallson was one of the first persons who arrived to the planet. He and his older brother were there at the moment when the captain of the spaceship Heart and Hope placed the Earth’s Confederation flag in the sands of Mars and exclaimed “For this is my soil, and the soil of all my sons and daughters! Sons and daughters of Mars, I say!” They both cried that day, loudly and proudly, seeing themselves standing there, far from home in those virgin, mysterious but nonetheless beautiful lands. They all worked hard for over a decade just to see buildings and streets and houses and trees, giving form to a city, to a place that they could call home.

But now that doesn’t seem to matter. All the effort, all the sweat, all the work and dedication that Hallson ever gave to the city and to every inhabitant of it is being easily forgotten. The good people of Mars have replaced words like love, kindness and moral; they’ve replaced all of them just for one: progress. And this progress, in the case of Abraham Hallson, only means death.

Hallson is now at his house, sitting in his studio, watching the holographic images showed by the projector. He is waiting without hope, without any optimism; he just waits for the inevitable.

“We have now received the official results of the Law 33.” says in the news the anchorman, while a bar chart appears right at his side. There is a blue one and a red one… and the red one is way above the other. “As we can see, the ‘YES’ has won with seventy two percent of the voters. The ‘NO’ reached a twenty two percent, while the ‘AGAINST ALL’ and the spoilt votes only reached six percent.

“According to the Mayor, the Law 33 will be effective starting, if possible, tomorrow.” Continues the anchorman, a man in his mid forties, without showing any emotion, any sorrow or grief; he just talks. “This has been, from the beginning, a controversial law: it states that any man or woman over the age of sixty years old must submit themselves into a suspension process in order to preserve the low food reserves of the planet and to maintain a population control in every urban area. As I said, it has been really controversial.  Here it is Chancellor Merute, one of the main supporters of this law.”

The holograms now represent an old man, with grey beard and unmistakable baldness, speaking eagerly, almost upset and full of rage.

“This is not about individuals: this is about people, lots of people who need food and a place where to live.” The man yells, more than saying. “Mars, unlike Earth, does not provide those things easily, so we must make sacrifices so we can save this magnificent civilization. All men and women in their sixties, useless and decrepit, have an obligation with their homeland. The obligation is simple: to…”

Hallson turns off the projector. Suspension process… another name for euthanasia. He can’t understand how that man on the projector can talk about sacrifice and all that crap knowing that, at that man’s age, only a couple of years separate him from this so called “suspension process”. The idea makes him laugh; however, the laughter fades away into the silence and the shadows of the house, and Hallson sees himself forced to come back to this hideous reality.

How do they pretend to kill us?, He asks himself in the darkness. Maybe with injections, or lobotomies, or maybe they will just shoot us in the head. To imagine a world where older people is taken by force to slaughterhouses and sacrificed without any tears, any remorse at all; a world where the citizens are able to live with themselves while they are aware of the blood on everyone’s hands; a world where plans, laws and rules are worshiped while human lives are just simple numbers and statistics–a world like that is hard to imagine, specially for the seventy-two-year-old man who is sitting in his studio, trying to find out what kind of death are planning for him the same people for whom, years before, he voted for expecting them to keep their promises of protection and appreciation for all.

It seems like the clock is ticking louder and louder, and the wind is blowing stronger and stronger. Midnight approaches and, with it, a brand new day. Hallson realizes that. He stands up from his favorite chair, leaves the studio and walks through the lonely corridors of his house, maybe the last place where sanity still prevails; because it’s a mad world out there. He reaches his room and sits in his bed, looking tired and sad. If his wife were still alive, she would have covered his eyes with her wrinkled but soft hands and whispered into his ear “everything will be alright, Abe. Everything will be alright” and he would had believed her. But the left side of the bed has been empty for almost eight years and now he doesn’t have anyone or anything to help him hold on.

Hallson takes a pill out of his pocket and starts to play with it in his hand. A couple of hours earlier, a friend of him gave him the pill with a little bottle of champagne.

“Tonight, my friend, will be our last toast.” His friend said with a sinister grin. “Celebrate women, life, food, money– whatever you want! Just celebrate and toast with me!” And then his friend walked away, went home and drank bottle after bottle of any kind of liquor. The results weren’t even official by the time he swallowed the little white pill and his breathe became no more than a soft hiss, and then it just stopped.

The bottle is placed bellow his pillow with a cup, ready to be served. So he does. Hallson takes the cup and sees for a while the bubbles of the golden drink. In his other hand is the pill. Hallson stands up and walks to the window. There is nothing to see, beside the white trees, almost gray when covered by the darkness of this distant planet. Beyond that, there is an entire city, and the people within it just wait for the right time to become monsters.

“I toast for–” Hallson stops to think, just for a second. Then he raises his cup and, smiling and looking through the window, he yells: “I toast for a worse tomorrow! And I–I dedicate it to every one of you.”

The decision has been made: Hallson swallows the pill and drinks in a single sip the entire cup. He now lies on his bed, staring at the white ceiling, waiting with infinite patience for the infinite rest. He feels dizzy, and sick, and tired and… and happy and secure, and feels that everything will be alright. He feels this way for he has done the right thing and, maybe, the only thing he could do. Tomorrow will be a different time, far away from what he knows and wants. Today… today is the last and only day that matters. The last of many that he loved, cherished and built for so many years. Today is the perfect day to die.

Abraham Hallson closes his eyes for the very last time, unable to feel regret, unable to feel hate. Unable to feel anything at all.