Lyman fiddled with his suit as he stood in line. Having no regular caretaker it was up to him to keep up with its maintenance. Luckily, his daily check of all his various tubes and diagnostic screens turned up nothing; he was fine--for now.
His suit was highly customized; he’d been in it for a few hundred years, so he’d had plenty of time to make it unique to his personality. The chassis part was blue, and his monitors shown green from the anterior plating. His arms and legs were sheathed in a thick, matted, black, but slimming material.
The line he stood in stretched out of the Galactic Pharmacy, a building as large as a regular hospital. They served drugs to every species imaginable at Galactic Pharmacies, so it was no small wonder half the people in line were stuck waiting out in the cold. Luckily, the weather didn’t bother Lyman because his suit completely enshrouded him. Even his head and shoulder girdle were encapsulated in a life-giving tank of a special liquid – “Tank Heads” was what most people called survivors of the Great Virus.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a little girl staring at him. Tank Heads were rare, so he wasn’t surprised. Sometimes he wished he could keep a fish in his suit for amusement, but alas, only those humans with changed biology caused by the Virus could survive in the environment of the tank.
After many hours, he reached the door to the pharmacy. Inside he could see posters and ads lining the walls up to the ceilings for the various medicines they sold. With government coverage, there were millions of people taking each of the drugs, and there were always shortages. Amongst the colorful ads depicting smiling faces, exotic locales and family fun he saw a flier for his own medicine: Sweet Selene. The poster depicted a woman jubilantly cliff-diving into the glorious waves of the ocean, her dress falling gracefully behind her.
“They make it seem so nice.” he muttered to himself, the implants in his throat allowing him to speak normally through the liquid.
Lyman added Sweet Selene to his tank regularly to keep himself alive. Being dependent on the drug was irritating, but he’d been on it for so long that waiting in lines, getting check-ups, taking re-exams and getting prescriptions had become routine for him--so much a routine that he was concerned what he’d do without it.
“Thanks for saving my place” he heard a voice behind him. It was Xol, his alien roommate and friend. They both had health problems, and they looked out for each other. He hadn’t really been saving her place in line, but he let her cut in anyway.
Xol looked around at the posters with insectoid eyes. She pointed to four of them at once with her four arms. “Those ones are mine.”
Lyman glanced up at each one. He was already well versed in what his friend had to take in case of an emergency, but it was funny to see the overly hopeful images. They were ads for her epilepsy, low blood pressure, bipolar disorder and vertigo—all depicted as sunshine and rainbows.
“You have a re-exam today, right?” Xol Queried. Her voice had a very unique accent when she spoke in English, and it was filled with peculiar clicks and hums.
“Right.” Lyman said with a huff. Everyone hated re-exams. The crumbling Galactic Government was in charge of every single aspect of health care, so exams took hours to finish. “I guess I’ll see you later today. Much later.”
“Good news.” His examiner told him once she’d finally finished the exam late that night. “Your scores indicate that you have no more need for medication.”
Lyman jolted, his muscled shoulders struggling to keep his tank upright. “What do you mean? That can’t be- isn’t right.”
“Oh, well….” She said, checking her monitors again. “Yep. It says here you have no pain or symptoms so you don’t need medicine anymore.”
“Is that a new system?” he asked angrily.
The woman was taken aback by his tone. “Yes sir. We just installed it last week. It’s much more streamlined so we can get people in and out of the pharmacy much quicker. Aren’t you happy?”
“No. I need Sweet Selene to survive. Did you or did you not notice the tank?” he pointed to his head with a gloved hand. She stared at him blankly. Perhaps they didn’t teach about The Great Virus in schools anymore.
“Listen carefully” he said slowly-- in his experience, government workers needed special coddling; “I’m a survivor of the Great Virus. I need this drug in order to keep breathing.”
“Not according to our system, sir.” She raised an eyebrow suspiciously. “You’re not malingering to get time off of work are you?”
Not only was she stupid, but she was rude as well. “Can I speak to someone in charge?” he asked.
“There’s… well, I guess we can call someone.” She said with one of the more fake smiles he’d seen at the pharmacy.
“Call someone?” Lyman asked irritably.
“They don’t keep doctors or managers on site anymore. Too expensive. This way we can save money and pass the savings on to you.” She spoke as if these were lines she’d learned in a training video.
“I don’t need to save money. I need Sweet Selene.”
“Okay… I’ll go make a call.” She said, raising her eyebrow suspiciously again.
The Galactic Government had shorted him many times in the past for which he’d forgiven them. There were a lot of troubles in the galaxy, and sometimes allowances had to be made. But this was the living end. The actual end. After a phone call, the examiner returned, told him there was nothing she could do and ordered him to leave. When he wouldn’t, he was escorted out of the building.
He checked his Sweet Selene levels in panic as he walked home. Only enough for another week. He didn’t know what to do. Other people in his situation would probably go to the black market for drugs, but Sweet Selene was a specialty made only for those few survivors of the Great Virus.
Xol’s species never had any emotion to their voices, but once Lyman told her of his predicament he could tell she was nearly as panicked for him as he was for himself. She paced about, her four arms quivering. “This is ridiculous.”
“It must be an error in their new system. My condition is rare--maybe someone accidentally programmed it as a pain-based issue or some crap.” Now he was angry. This was not the way he wanted to die.
“We’ll just have to go back tomorrow.” Xol said with a resolute click.
The line at the pharmacy had only gotten longer and there were many panicked eyes; perhaps more errors were cropping up in the system. The day was particularly grey, and the line stretched so far out of the building that part of it was getting lost in the regular traffic of the overly populated city.
A man bumped lazily into Xol as he passed, his large frame almost knocking the alien off her wiry legs. “Ugh. I wish things weren’t so crowded. I remember during the time of the Great Virus how few in number people used to be. I don’t mean to glorify it, but it was kind of nice.”
Lyman knew what she meant. During the height of the Great Virus 200 hundred years ago, billions of people had died. It was a time of intergalactic mourning and sorrow, but at the same time the cities had never been clearer, there was more opportunity for all, and more time to simply be alone. Once the Great Virus had become manageable however, the galactic population had boomed--there was overcrowding on most worlds. New wars, famines and diseases cropped up like weeds in an unkempt lawn.
“I’m sorry sir, there’s nothing I can do.” A second examiner told him after bringing up his charts. “Your scores don’t qualify you for medication. You’ll have to wait until you have symptoms.”
“But I’m not having symptoms because of my medication. Once I run out of Sweet Selene I won’t be able to breathe anymore.” The panic was back in his voice. What was to him a simple matter of life and death was to them a matter of paperwork and scorings.
“Sir, if you’re having an issue we can write up your complaint and send it to administration, but there’s nothing else we can do here. We would need a doctor’s signature to approve of medication to someone who has no complaints.”
“My complaint is that I’m going to die!” he clenched his fist, thinking maybe if he punched the examiner it would bring sense back into his brain.
The examiner ignored him, handing the hapless Tank Head a pile of paperwork instead. “We’ll book you for another exam at a hospital to give you tests. Please fill out this paperwork.”
Lyman took the paperwork in disbelief. Xol was quivering again. “How long will it take to get in for a new exam?” she asked.
“Oh, a month or so. Not too long.” The man said blandly.
Once again, Lyman and Xol were escorted from the building. Outside, the line had dissolved into a mass of people. Venturing out into the crowds, Lyman and Xol found that hundreds of others were being denied their medications by the new system.
“Suddenly I’m glad I have such pronounced symptoms.” Xol said emotionlessly, but her trembling antennae gave away her anxiety.
There was much chaos in the crowd, and various fearful cries for medications could be heard. Some were panicked, some were angry, and some stood in a comatose state; staring into nothing.
Lyman was surprised to see several other Tank Heads gathering at the side-lines. They were all human, as homosapiens were the only species that could survive the Great Virus, and then only rarely. Being scarce, Tank Heads naturally gravitated to one another, often sharing an immediate camaraderie. “Are you all being denied Sweet Selene as well?” he asked the small group solemnly, Xol at his side.
“Yeah. All because we have no symptoms.” A female replied. “There must be something wrong with their new system… I tried to tell them how the Great Virus works, but they would have none of it. They had to drag me outta there- damaged some of my tubing, the bastards.”
Lyman blanched. Those affected by the Great Virus had developed somewhat of a culture of their own. Being unable to exit their suits for any purpose, Tank Heads in family or in item would tenderly care for one another’s suits as a replacement for skin to skin contact. The fact that this woman’s tubing had been damaged gave him pause and a flash of anger.
One of the older Tank Heads, a man perhaps in his five-hundreds huffed at the whole situation. His white suit was more complicated than the other younger people about him, most likely a survivor from the earlier waves. Although it was more complicated, it was also very ornate-- it seemed he was well to do. “I don’t mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist,” he said, “…but it may be part of the government’s plan to get the population burst under control. Think about it. Just change the system, take away the meds, and millions of weak people die.”
Lyman didn’t like to think of himself as weak. After all, the suits and Sweet Selene granted Tank Heads unnaturally long lives. “What do you think we should do?” Lyman asked, “I only have a week’s reserve left. They told me they’d get me a new exam at a hospital, but that will take a month… if not more.”
The woman whose suit had recently been damaged looked back at him. “We’re all in the same boat. Prescriptions are only filled a week before they need to be renewed.” She paused, glanced at the older Tank Head and then back to Lyman. “…maybe he has a point. Maybe it is a plan to cull the population.”
There was silence as each of them considered this.
“Well, I’ll be back tomorrow. I don’t have any choice but to keep coming back.” Lyman said eventually. The others nodded, their tanks swaying slightly as he and Xol left.
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