The Vultures' Picnic

People lived even more hurriedly after the mandate was passed. Bumbling politicians had assured the country that the chips would make overpopulation impossible, relieve the failing healthcare system, and provide a steady opening of new jobs to young workers. Everyone knew the truth: lifespan would be cut in half, orphans would multiply tenfold, and each individual would only live long enough to serve the system. They knew this. But they were so tired. And after the worldwide food shortages, the overcrowded cities, the pollution and undrinkable water, after struggling so long for basic needs, thirty seemed a ripe old age to die.

The chips were implanted at birth. It was a simple, lethal injection, set on a timer. The amount of time allotted each person was supposed to be random, and never more than thirty years. Yet somehow, the Czar lived to see eight generations. His children outlived their peers, and saw the next generations carry on in their stead. But soon the elderly who remembered their promised threescore and ten were erased. To slump over on your desk at twenty-eight became expected; the person behind you in the café line to fall silently to the floor was calmly stepped over. Death, so normalized, became far more morbid than when it was held in dread.

Education was abandoned. You were needed in the workforce before you could learn algebra. People worked where they were assigned, where no drug tests were administered after weekends of forging happiness or meaning for themselves. Love was obsolete. No time was to be wasted finding “the one” when anyone would do- five years of satisfaction beat the rare moment of connection once you remembered the timers continuing to count down. 

There were exceptions to these generalizations, however. A few people who knew deep within them that true meaning, though they may never reach it in time, was better to be searched for and not found, than supplemented with empty shells of pleasure. Walter was one such man. Man- he was barely a boy, at just past seventeen- but definitions of maturity change when existence is cut so short. Walter was a potato peeler. His hands bore scars that boasted of his bounds into dreamland… that often led to slips of the peeler. Wavy black hair perched atop a prominent forehead and deep set, swirling eyes. The rest of him doesn’t matter, because Greta hadn’t noticed it yet.

He wasn’t one to drown his sorrows in liquor, but tonight was a special hurt. The bartender eyed him dubiously and doubled his order on the spot. His rumpled suit and crooked boutonniere evidenced a rowdy wedding celebration, the last of his close friends to marry. They had all settled- he knew it, they knew it. Nobody cared. No one had any expectations anymore. They got married because their parents had done it and they had lived and been happy and loved each other, so this marriage here would do, would have to do, because there was no time to figure love out anymore. 

But back to Greta. She weaved through tables, studying their occupants for a promising character. Most of them were familiar faces. Then she saw the swirling eyes, studying something just out of reach of most mortals. She slid in the booth across from him, and said hello. He raised his eyebrows and answered back. And from that moment she was hooked. 

***

They weaved through the branches, hand in hand, each holding an old-fashioned basket full of ripe apples from the wild grove Walter had found wandering through the forest years ago. Without a ladder, their choices were limited, but still their baskets tugged insistantlycon their arms. Walter had been preparing this surprise for a week, hoping everything lasted until then. They had been seeing each other daily for a month now, and he knew that the feeling he got when she was with him was something foreign to his friends and their spouses. Their indifferent pleasure in each other was no part of this unexplainable yearning for every moment to be spent with Greta. And he intended to have as many of those moments as possible. 

Gradually, as they walked on, the forest recoiled from them, opening into a sunny field where Walter had laid out a picnic. Greta gasped, and kissed him in appreciation. “It’s lovely, darling. Thank you.” 

The breeze swirled her curls around her face as they sat down on the blanket. Walter looked admiringly. He set out the lunch he had prepared: a fruit salad, sandwiches, tea, apple cider, and a generous slice of cake. He smiled as Greta chattered about this and that, and as they started in on the first of the sandwiches, they lapsed into silence, watching the trees sway in the wind, then laying on their backs to debate over cloud shapes. 

“Greta-” Walter interrupted her description of a certain shifty little cloud- “Do you ever think of a future? How much time you think you have left? What you’d want your last moments to be?” He looked over at her, still examining the clouds and munching on the last of her sandwich thoughtfully. 

“Sometimes,” she swallowed. “When I feel brave enough. When I feel that hopes aren’t as worthless as everyone says.”

Walter turned his gaze back to the slowly drifting clouds, understanding the courage it took to meet the eyes of futility so frankly. He continued, “I think about it often. And I really think that I’d like my last moments to be with someone I truly loved. I think I’d want them to be with you.” 

She went very still. He dared not look over and see if her face looked as terrified or revolted as his imagination was making him visualize it. Of course this was a big thing to say all at once; perhaps he had been too forward. 

“Greta?” He finally turned to look her in the eye. Seeing her face, devoid of emotion, he sighed. He finished his sandwich quietly. Then he dusted off the crumbs from his hands and walked away, out of the clearing and through the woods. 

The deer came presently to finish the fruit and cake. Squirrels and ants made off with the dainty sandwiches. And the vultures took care of the rest.