“A new wing! Another new wing for the bloody asylum!” The man was almost frothing. His face was red with rage and draft beer. He gestured at the TV over the bar with his glass, spilling a healthy slop of beer onto my shirtsleeve as he did so. “They’ve turned us into a nation of lunatics! More every day!”
I dabbed at my sleeve with a napkin, and kept my mouth shut. I’d heard this sort of thing before. Always it was from older people with scars on them, meaning they were born before PHMs were a mandatory injection at birth.
“Bloody health machines can fix anything on a body, but not a person’s mind. Death should still happen to people. Why else do we have more asylums than you can shake a stick at! We just aren’t meant to go on forever!” He turned and fixed me with a stare that only the truly drunk can manage, as if eyes were responsible for keeping his entire body upright. I felt a chill go through me. I realized then that someday this old man would be gone and that I would endure. Forever.