A knock brought Adam Jensen out of his sound sleep. He began to get up to open the door, but stopped as the last remnants of sleep left his body. He couldn’t open it. What if it was them? But he couldn’t know if he didn’t look. Adam quietly walked towards the door, trying to will the floorboards not to creak. Carefully, he peered through the peephole. It wasn’t the police, or the senior patrol. Rather, it was a young couple, about the same age as Adam, 25. Adam felt a deep sigh escape his lungs.

He opened the door a couple of inches. "Can I help you?"

The woman stuck out her hand. "Adam Jensen? I’m Katrina Buell, and this is my brother, Robert Buell." Hearing that Robert was her brother sent Adam’s heart racing again. Why would a brother and sister be coming to see me? Calm down, he told himself. They’re not with the senior patrol. He felt like laughing, but a nagging fear kept the laugh stifled.

"Hi," he managed to say as he examined each of them. Both were about average in height, and both were quite attractive, probably gene modified. Robert having collar length blonde hair, and his sister having long, wavy blonde hair. Adam started to notice more about Katrina, but stopped himself as he thought of what their presence might mean. "I’m busy. What do you want?" he asked a little more rudely than he’d intended.

Robert pulled a small metallic object from his pocket that looked to Adam like it might be a small tube of toothpaste. "Mr. Jensen," he said, "We understand that you’re behind on your payments to the First Bank of Western America."

Adam felt his breath catch as sweat began to pour profusely from his pores. He tried to speak, but his throat was suddenly too dry to form words.

"We’re here to collect." Adam heard the words from a distance, but his brain couldn’t comprehend them; didn’t want to comprehend them. They’d found him, and there was nowhere to run. Adam slowly turned away from the door, but a sudden sensation of energy passing through his body stopped him. He tried to scream, but his muscles were frozen. Just as Adam’s amygdala and his adrenal glands were preparing for the flight of his life, he blacked out.

*

Kim Le was just applying the last of the purple dye to her hair when her doorbell rang. "Damn, he’s early." Kim threw the tube of dye into the sink and then applied one more coat of lipstick. As she was leaving her bathroom, she stopped and reached into the drawer under the sink, pulling out half a dozen condoms. "Just in case," she said to the mirror with a sly grin.

Kim ran to the door as the bell rang again. "I’m coming, damn it," she yelled. One last look in the hall mirror and she’d be ready. She adjusted the tight leather top and skirt, making sure that nothing was completely covered. She then pulled the door open slowly. "You’re pretty eager tonight," she said in a husky voice as the door creaked on its hinges. "Oh!" she said with a gasp when she realized it wasn’t Roger. Instead, a young couple stood on her doorstep smiling.

"Miss Le?" the man asked. "I’m Robert, and this is my sister Katrina. May we have a few moments of your time?"

"Well, I was just on my way out..."

"This’ll only take a few minutes," he said, pulling a small metallic object that looked like it might be a tube of toothpaste from his pocket. "We understand you’re behind on your payments to the First Bank of Western America, as well as several other banks."

"Oh shit," Kim gasped. Before she could say anything else, she felt a static surge pass through her body. Her last thought before losing consciousness was that all the work she’d done on her hair for her date was going to be ruined. Then there was only blackness.

*

Adam Jensen awoke and found himself staring up into the smiling face of a man he guessed to be at least 70. "How do you feel, Mr. Jensen?"

The question seemed like a joke to Adam. "Like someone’s turned me inside out. What’s going on?"

Adam now noticed the man was wearing a white coat. He was obviously a doctor of some kind. "In a way," the man said, still with a smile. "You’re right. You have sort of been turned inside out, but you shouldn’t look at it like that. I’d say you should be happy your debt’s been paid off."

Adam felt his heart skip a beat. "You mean…"

"Yes, Mr. Jensen, your debt has been paid off with the extraction of an organ. To be more specific, you donated your liver to a needy person."

"My liver? How am I supposed to live without a liver?"

The doctor put his hand on Adam’s arm in an obvious effort to be reassuring. Adam didn’t find it very reassuring, however. "Mr. Jensen, we’re a civilized people. We didn’t just pull your liver out and give it to someone else. We’ve simply traded your liver for a less healthy one that belonged to an elderly gentleman."

Adam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d been kidnapped from his own home in order to have his healthy liver yanked out and given to someone with one foot in the grave. "You can’t do that," he sputtered. "I have rights."

"Please, Mr. Jensen, don’t get excited. You’ve just come out of surgery, remember. And you really shouldn’t be speaking of rights. This operation is completely legal. Congress has allowed the elderly to claim organs from those in debt for over a year now. Nothing we’ve done has violated the law."

"The law? What about my rights as an individual?"

"Mr. Jensen, when you failed to make payment on your credit cards, you gave up those rights. You should count yourself lucky. You were only indebted enough to cost you a liver. It could have been much worse."

"He’s right," a voice said from the other side of the room. It was the first time Adam noticed that he and the doctor weren’t alone. In a bed close to the soundproofed window was a young Asian woman. She was small framed and had dark hair, with a tinge of purple in it. Adam thought she’d probably be very beautiful, if she didn’t look exhausted. "I was so deep in," she was saying, "I had to trade my heart, a kidney, and my pancreas. Now I have the heart of a 90 year old man that probably won’t last me more than two years, less if I use it like I’d want to," she said with a grin that somehow seemed to turn Adam on, but of course there wasn’t time for that.

"This is insane," Adam blurted. "I’m a citizen of this country, and I have rights."

At that, the doctor pulled out a piece of paper. "This is your agreement with your credit card company. If you look at line 72, you’ll see that if you fail to make payment, organ donation can be used as an alternative form of payment, and it doesn’t have to be voluntary."

Adam sat and fumed for several minutes. The doctor and the young Asian girl tried talking to him, but he refused to hear either of them. He’d known about line 72 of his agreement. That was why he didn’t usually open his door to strangers. Of course, he never expected people his own age to be working for the fogies that ran the country. "How’d you get young people to work for you?"

"Simple," the doctor said with his ever-present smile, a smile Adam had decided needed to be knocked off the man’s face, even if he was old. "Those were the great-grandchildren of a certain wealthy business tycoon. You traded your liver for his, and Miss Le traded her heart, kidney, and pancreas. Now those young people get to keep Grandpa around for a little while longer."

"Once you release us, we’ll tell people what you’re doing. This stunt won’t work much longer. What’ll you do then?" Adam felt a surge of hope at his sudden insight. Of course, they might just kill them. Maybe he wasn’t helping things.

"No doubt you’re right. Young people won’t accept it, and it will get more difficult to obtain organs. I suppose the government will have to begin storming homes and arresting people on the street."

"The government wouldn’t do that," Adam said, but he knew it was a stupid thing to say.

"Please, Mr. Jensen, don’t be naïve. The average age in congress is 82. The president’s older than that, and the Supreme Court justices are even older than him. The elderly are the only political power in this country." He smiled one last time before he left the room.

"God damn it," Adam shouted, punching his pillow several times.

"You shouldn’t be so upset," Miss Le said. "At least you’ll have several years left. I don’t."

Adam looked at her. He wanted to say something compassionate, but he wasn’t feeling all that compassionate at the moment. He just rolled over and tried to act like he was asleep, trying not to groan at the intense pain coming from where his liver had once been. Now there was just some withered, possibly diseased organ there. Death seemed to be a pleasant option at the time.

*

It was two days later when Adam finally had the strength of will to turn the computer screen on to watch the news. The entire east wall glowed to life showing vivid pictures of soldiers covered with blood and body parts of their fallen comrades. Adam turned up the audio:

"As more American troops were sent into what was once Yugoslavia and Hungary, youth rights groups in the U.S. protested the latest demand by the government to send another 100,000 troops, saying that this was yet another attempt by the aging government to reduce the number of young voters." At this the scene switched to a scene in front of the White House where a large number of protesters, all between the ages of 20 and 40 carried signs and shouted obscenities at passing motorists, most of whom were over 60. The scene then changed to the inside of the White House and the smiling, bald, stooped figure of the president. Adam thought he looked younger than his 100 years. Probably rejuvenation therapy, or organs from the less fortunate of the huddled masses, he thought.

The reporter was still speaking. "In response to these accusations, the president said it was absurd for him to want to kill his younger people to keep them from voting when they had just been denied the vote."

"What?" Kim Le shouted from the bed beside the soundproofed window.

"In a nearly unanimous decision, Congress today raised the legal voting age to 50, stating that young people didn’t have the wisdom to vote intelligently. ‘People like some of the politicians we’ve had in the past thirty years should never have been elected. Just look at the damage the Liberals did at the end of last century and early in this century.’" Adam stopped listening. He hadn’t even been born when the Liberals had held the power, but he liked the idea of a younger person in power. A lot of young people around the country wanted to see the Liberals make a comeback, or at least younger politicians.

"It’s bullshit," Kim Le was saying. "Don’t you think?"

"I’m trying not to think," he said, rolling over, noticing that the pain was almost gone.

*

Bizarre dream images flashed through Adam’s sleeping mind. An elephant dined on a meal of donkey as old men ate the flesh of young women. An eagle flew overhead before its wings caught fire and it crashed to the ground. All around him, trees withered and rocks cracked with age. In the distance there was a distinct moan of pleasure.

Adam awoke realizing that the moan hadn’t been part of the dream. Rather, it had come from him. A warm hand gently caressed him as hot breath passed across his chest hairs. Kim Le was in bed with him and her hands were working magic like no woman had ever done for him before.

"What…"

She raised her finger to his lips and shushed him before she brought her mouth up to his and began to kiss him deeply, allowing her tongue to explore every inch of his mouth. He quickly forgot about any hesitation he might have had. He allowed her to slide onto him and she began to rock back and forth and up and down on top of him. It wasn’t long before their rhythm was increasing. After fifteen minutes, he let out a stifled scream. When he opened his eyes, he saw Kim’s body trembling, here head bucking back and forth wildly. Then she collapsed on top of him.

I’ve still got it, he smiled to himself. Then he paused. Kim wasn’t moving. She wasn’t even breathing. Adam frantically reached for the nurse call button.

*

"She seems to have died from a heart attack," the doctor said. He still wore his annoying smile. "From what we know of her, she died doing what she liked best. You might even take pride in that."

Adam stared at the man in horror. "A woman just died, and you’re saying I should take pride in having killed her?"

"You should take pride in your ability. It was her heart that killed her. The organ couldn’t take that kind of intensity. It just exploded." The doctor moved his hands apart, simulating an explosion.

"So, in other words, you killed her. You put that faulty heart in her. It was your fault." Adam sat up in his bed suddenly. He felt like he could grab the doctor’s throat and squeeze until his head popped like an over-ripe fruit.

"Please, Mr. Jensen, don’t get yourself excited. I’d hate to have to sedate you. If the young lady had paid her bills on time, she wouldn’t have ended up here. So you see, it was really her fault. She should have paid her bills, or she at least shouldn’t have been engaging in such strenuous activity, which reminds me, Mr. Jensen, you should avoid alcohol for the rest of your life. There’s no telling what kind of effect it could have on your new liver." Just then, the doctor’s wrist communicator chimed. He looked down at it. "If you’ll excuse me, please," he said and left, still smiling, but not quite as broadly as he had been.

Several minutes later, Adam heard hurried feet racing through the corridors. Probably some old guy had a heart attack, he thought. After a few minutes of scrambling out in the halls, they were suddenly quiet, not just quiet, but completely devoid of noise. Adam cautiously climbed out of bed. The linoleum was cold against his feet as his hospital gown flapped open with every cold step. Peering around the doorframe of his room, he was surprised to see no one in the halls. Adam returned to his bed and turned on the computer screen to see if the news might bring some enlightenment. There was a first time for everything.

"Youth forces calling themselves the Freedom Renewal Effort to Save our Homeland, or FRESH, have taken control of city centers throughout the nation. One group has even managed to detonate a thermonuclear device in Washington D.C., utterly destroying the centralized government of the United States. Here in San Francisco, groups have been seen moving through the streets. Already several buildings have been engulfed in flames set by the young anarchists. This only seems to prove what our late president…"

Static filled the wall display. Apparently the rebels had taken control of the transmitter for the government run communications center. If they were burning buildings, then the hospital would be an inevitable target. After all, most of the people in the hospital were old. He had to get out, but first he needed his clothes. No use flapping in the breeze during a civil war. His clothes were in the closet, and once he was dressed, he ran. He could already smell smoke filtering into the building.

*

When Adam reached the street, he was stunned by what he saw. It wasn’t a few buildings that were on fire; it was almost the entire city. Everywhere he looked, flames leapt high into the cool night air. The fires were so bright that no stars could shine through. Even the light of the moon was a pale imitation of itself. He felt a tear come to his eye, but it quickly vanished when a young man with an assault rifle stepped in front of him.

"Who are you?" his assailant asked. Adam looked at the man, more a boy than anything else. The young man had peach fuzz in place of a true beard. But Adam was most surprised by the young man’s eyes. In them, he could not only see fear, but a burning hatred, a hatred that had been bred for many years.

"I’m Adam Jensen. I was a patient here," he said, motioning towards the hospital, which had just been set ablaze.

"You’re not old. Why were you there?"

Adam told the child, he couldn’t think of him in any other way, a condensed version of his story. When he was done, the boy seemed to be impressed. "I can get you to safety," the boy said. "Introduce you to the future."

Adam was intrigued. "Lead on," he told the boy.

*

Adam was stunned by the carnage throughout out the city. Dead bodies lay everywhere, most of them older than 50, but nothing could have prepared him for the "safe area" the boy led him to. It was a small basement of an old house on the outskirts of town. When Adam walked in, his senses were assaulted by the powerful smell of hashish.

There were at least thirty revelers in the tiny basement that was now covered with graffiti and magazines and other layers of filth Adam didn’t even want to try to identify. All of the revelers, the future leaders, were drinking heavily and smoking enormous quantities of hashish. None of them could have been older than Adam.

"Meet the leaders of tomorrow," the boy said.

The statement stunned Adam. He had trouble visualizing any of the people being able to lead themselves to the bathroom, let alone leading the nation. Just as he thought that, one man relieved himself in the corner.

The boy quickly began to tell the revelers Adam’s story. As the story progressed, Adam found hands pulling him into the circle, offering him whiskey and hashish. For some reason he couldn’t even begin to fathom, he took both, and let the night slip away.

*

He didn’t wake up until late the next morning, or perhaps early the next afternoon. He wasn’t sure which it was. None of the others were awake yet, so Adam left the house and headed back downtown. As he approached, he realized that the carnage hadn’t ended. Smoking buildings dotted the skyline, while smoking bodies covered the landscape. Above it all, he could hear voices yelling as they razed what was left of the city. They were yelling:

"For Kim Le!"

"For Jensen!"

He shook his head in disbelief. It was then that Adam’s liver gave up, unable to clean out the alcohol and hashish, just as he’d hoped. No sense going on now. As he died, he was heard to say in a bitter voice. "Einstein was right…rocks…definitely rocks."

Great Stories Online 2000Ó TJ Greaton