Epistolary fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
The cart containing my organs didn't get in my way too much. With
my athletic days behind me, I taught it to come to heel instead of
striding along behind me. It was less efficient, but it was a lot less
conspicuous. I had a second involuntary control system built in so it
would stay at heel without conscious thought on my part, once I put it
there.
In my office, I would have it curl up at my feet like a sleeping dog.
People told me it was hardly noticeable--even people who didn't work
for me. It certainly didn't bother me or hold me back. I started to
make money as though I had my own printing press and managed to hang
onto most of it.
* * * * *
In spite of what the doom criers say, as long as there is an element
of freedom in this country--and I think there always will be--there
will be ways, and I mean legal ways, of coming into large hunks of
cash. Within ten years, I was not only Big Rich; I was one of the most
important people in the world. A Policy Maker. A Power.
It was about that time that I drank the bottle of acid.
Nobody was trying to poison me. I wasn't trying to kill myself, either.
Not even subconsciously. I was just thirsty. All I can say is I did a
first rate job with what was left of my insides.
Well, they salvaged me again, and what I ended up with was a pair of
carts, one trotting along beside each heel. The leash for the second
one was plugged into me in front instead of in the back, naturally, but
with my clothes on, nobody could tell, just by looking, that they were
attached to me at all.
The doctors offered to get me by without the second trailer. They
figured they could prepare pre-digested food and introduce it into my
bloodstream through the mechanism of my original wagon. I refused to
let them; I had gotten too used to eating.
So whatever I ate was ground up and pumped into my new trailer--or
should it be "preceder"? There it would be processed and the nutriments
passed into my bloodstream as required. I couldn't overeat if I tried.
It was all automatic, not even hooked into my nervous system. Unusable
products were compressed and neatly packaged for disposal at any
convenient time. In cellophane. There was, of course, interconnection
inside of me between the two carts.
I'm told I started quite a fad for walking dogs in pairs. It didn't
affect me at all. I never got very good at voluntary control of my
second trailer, but by that time my habit patterns were such that I
hardly noticed it.
Oh, yes--about swimming. I still enjoyed swimming and I worked it out
this way: Wagon number two replaced number one in straddling me, and
wagon number one hung onto number two. It slowed me down, but it still
let me swim. I quit diving. I couldn't spare the time to figure out how
to manage it.
* * * * *
That took care of the next five years. I kept on getting richer. I was
a happy man. Then came the crowning blow. What was left of me developed
cancer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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