A NEW and IMPROVED
HANDMAID’S TALE
‘No one will ever tell me what I
can say or not say or what I can think or not think. I still live in a free country!’ Those had been his words only a few weeks
before today. But today he had been to
the pharmacy. They could not—would
not—fill his prescription for blood pressure medicine. When he had objected that he was paying cash
for his medicine instead of using the state program for older persons, he had
been told that no medications could be dispensed outside of the guidelines of
the program. In other words, he had to
subscribe to the state’s program or do without.
He had known the pharmacist for
years at this store, but his friend no longer worked in the pharmacy. He had been retired a few weeks earlier
because he had objected to the guidelines for dispensing medications. One of the pharmacy clerks caught up with
Johnson as he left the store and quickly whispered that his friend the
pharmacist had taken some of the final solution. The clerk expressed her disbelief in his
acquiescence to its administration. Johnson
would not find any information in the state run newspapers since obituaries
were no longer permitted.
A few days later, even though his
head was pounding, Johnson had decided that he had to go to his favorite
all-in-one-stop store to buy a few groceries.
This store had the motto ‘As Joe’s Goes, So Goes the Nation.’ Today he would have to walk or ride a bicycle
to the store. He could no longer buy
fuel for his small vehicle since the state had declared a moratorium on
unnecessary travel and fuel consumption due to a sudden loss of markets
overseas. Johnson would be able to buy
only what he could carry the five miles back to his home.
No vehicles had been in the
enormous parking lot at Joe’s. A few
bicycles had littered the grass near the islands that floated on the sea of
asphalt. A sign on the door of Joe’s had
declared that its doors would reopen from 10 a.m. until 12 p.m. on even
days. It had been Wednesday at 2 p.m.
when he had arrived, exhausted but proud of his vigor at his age. Then he had attempted to look inside the
glass doors to see if he could find anyone to talk to him. Only total darkness within the building had
convinced him that his trip had been futile.
This had been his only hope for food since all other local stores had
been closed.
The grass along the highways had
not been mown in some time. Somehow
Johnson had remembered that his mother had pointed out the salsify plants that
had bloomed and produced tiny helicopters when the seed pods were ripe. The roots of the plants were supposed to be
edible. Johnson had begun to look for
blooms or even the thick stalks that would give away the location of the
roots. It had not been the right season.
When Johnson had returned to his
home, he had found several new occupants.
He had already begun to accept the new ‘Fairness Act’ that provided each
individual with one room within the new government housing projects, but he had
been totally unaware that ALL homes had been declared part of each area’s
projects. Private ownership had been
declared unfair to everyone who had not been able to acquire the means for
affordable housing. Johnson’s home of 50
years no longer belonged to him. He had
been assigned an area to share with another older man.
Johnson’s death had been
expected. The medications he had been
taking had been gradually adjusted by the manufacturers so that the older
generation had been easy to remove from the government rolls. Nothing he had owned remained, and his ashes
had been among the many that had been mixed into a new organic compound used
for pavement patches. Now he would truly
support his country.
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