Lest They Be Forgotten

Interview with the Perfect Man

(What happens to our future when the quest for productivity and economic growth takes us into dangerous zones? This story placed third in the Canadian Authors Association Niagara's Ten Stories High competition and was published in its anthology in 2012)

Interview with the Perfect Man      

The sky is tinged pollution purple as I hurry down what was once the trendy residential neighbourhood of Willowdale now populated with haphazard tall buildings that have stomped out elegant bungalows; the remaining single storey homes are boarded up and dark. The air is acrid with burnt tire fumes – leftovers of a recent riot? In the park on the west side, protestors, carrying slogans and wearing death masks, are massing for what has become the new normal: a demonstration that could end in violence and death. The occasional car darts by, no-one wants to be around when the party begins. I cross the permanently dirty and rutted street – another part of town with discontinued municipal service – and enter one of the tall nondescript buildings. The “Residents Only” sign, about the size of a name plate on someone’s work cubicle, is lost on the wall of this 18-storey building – perhaps no one wants to anger strangers with signs of privilege.

The building’s interior is a radical contrast from the sullied outdoors: air conditioned with Yoga music floating in the entrance hall. Two heavily armed guards pace back and forth in front of a security gate; behind it stand a half a dozen more in riot gear. I show them my press badge and stick my face into the retina scanner. After the password I have been issued for this visit synchronizes with their records, one guard nods and points me towards the elevator bank located behind the security gate.

Entering the apartment on the 12th floor, the air-lock doors, a double barrier inside the front doorway, slide shut soundlessly behind me; this is an innovation that was touted loudly as  protection against marauding street mobs a few years ago, and one which I had decided against for my downtown condo – a reporter does not have much worth stealing, anyway. The lighting inside the apartment is recessed and the TV wall radiates apocalyptic movies from 2012, when they had been all the rage.

He is sitting hunched in the orthopaedic cloud chair, which swivels around as I enter the living room, his shaky hand motioning me towards a solitary wooden bench and coffee table set up in front of him. There is no other object of furniture in the room.

“Thank you for giving our e-zine an opportunity to interview you,” I say.

He does not reply but simply swings back to his original position and stares at the animated wall.

As I set up my recorder (voice only, video has been vetoed by my host), I glance at him. He is tall and once may have been athletic, but his large frame droops over the cloud chair like a giant willow after a downpour. His wavy blond hair has streaks of white. But his eyes are the most significant: luminous blue, too perfect to be created by man, and yet touched with sadness at their edges, and something else that I can’t figure out.

“Shall we begin?”

He nods. “Yes, we might as well.” His voice is raspy, strange for a man of only 35. Was rapid obsolescence unknowingly built into these earliest models of genetically engineered citizens?

I switch on the recorder.

***

I: Tell me about your parents.

PM (Perfect Man): My father suffered from various ailments as a child. An incurable genetic condition. He developed blisters on his extremities whenever exposed to heat or friction. He could never play outside. Yet, he was a brilliant geneticist. He was shortlisted for the inaugural Nobel Prize for Genetics.