Once Upon a Friday... (#SciFriday entries and other short stories)

#SciFriday Challenge 29 - A Lifetime Chance

« Ce qu'ils appellent le progrès permet aux hommes de se protéger des catastrophes naturelles et d'en déclencher d'artificielles tout aussi terrifiantes. »**

Gilbert Cesbron, [Journal sans date], 1963

(** What they call progress allows men to protect themselves from natural disasters and to trigger artificial ones equally terrifying.)

His number was on the sign board. The speaker called it, also, almost as soon as it had been displayed. Max hadn't yet realized his luck. The excitement would come later, he would boast to his friends how lady Luck was in love with him, but for now, he was just dumbfounded, his number had been called.

"Number 13256D! Please proceed to room N337."

Max followed the directions on the walls to reach the place. The corridors were colourful, showing images of exotic sceneries. He had dreamt of such places. He had now the chance of a lifetime, or more precisely of his life, whatever short of a time he had remaining.

The door of N337 was waiting for him to knock on it. He paused. Max had a bad case of the jitters. What if he was rejected, even after his number being picked? He had expected so much of this that now he feared to be deceived.

"Come in please, seat beside the desk, I will be shortly with." Max heard the voice from behind the curtain. The room was small, a desk on the left of the door, against the wall. The curtain separated effectively the area in two distinctive zone. From where he stood, he couldn't identify exactly what was behind it, though he assumed it would be an examination bed and some strange apparatuses.

After some hesitation, he sat on the chair beside the desk. Max had some doubts remaining about the whole shebang. His number had been picked by the lottery system, which meant he had been selected for a second chance. However, knowing his medical history, he feared all this had been a mistake.

"Mister McNeil? I am Doctor Halt. I will proceed with your assessment and give you some background about the operation." The man was tall and dry. Not just slim and bony, lanky. It looked like all substance had been drown from his limbs and now you could see the skeleton behind his parchment skin. Max wondered if this would be his future. Should he expect to become a living-dead life man when he would access to the afterlife?

"Mister McNeil, you have been selected to be part of the SLT program, the Second Life Transfer. You know that, normally, only healthy and useful people would have been able to proceed to the afterlife, though Prograze has been looking for a long time now to authorize regular people to serve and get a second chance of a lifetime. You shall have received the documents and contract in this regard."

Max was mentally reviewing what the doctor had described and the documents he had received earlier. The contract stipulated that the corporation would provide him with a cure for his illness, a rare disease touching, however, five percent of the population. The contract also ensured that, in exchange for the treatment, Max would serve the corporation in any way they would deem him useful for.

"The progress in the medical field will let us treat your illness in a few days, a week at the most." Doctor Halt sounded enthusiast about the treatment and the possibilities for the man. So much that the later was now pumped and ready to agree with anything that would be thrown at him.

"When would the treatment start, Doctor?"

"You need, first, to answer some questions, Mr McNeil. It is just a formality, but I need to fill in all this paperwork for the administration. Prograze is a great corporation to work for, but they ask a lot of documents sometimes..."