Chapter 18 eight

As long as Megan's painting exhibition is still on display, I will go to see it every day and stand in front of the painting for a long time.And I used to walk down that dark corridor, into that cavern-like hallowed room with empty boulders dripping with water.It became a ritual, like visiting a tombstone in memory of Meghan. When the exhibition period finally ended and all the paintings were taken down, I went to see the gallery director and asked if he could send me the small painting of the deformed fetus.He said yes, but it required some formalities, and some documents had to be submitted by him, Pedro.Lenhead and I signed it, but I was able to pick it up from the gallery office in a few days.I took that painting home and hung it on the wall behind the desk.The deformed fetus smiled contemptuously at me, blinded or twisted in agony, or both.life or death

I took the manuscript out of the plastic folder where it had been sitting upside down since the day Meghan made her final donation.I turn on my computer and sit in an expensive brand new computer chair that supports my lower back, shoulders and arms.I finished the short story about the woman who gave birth to a deformed child.At the end of the story, the deformed child died three days after birth, and life returned to normal, leaving no problems, no ifs, only the woman, and she had about five years left to become a needed individual.In mid-March, six newly recruited unnecessary individuals arrived at the unit, and the unit held a welcome party again, with meals, performances and dances provided at the party.I made new friends, both newcomers and residents who came before me, and I developed deeper relationships with people I already knew.Not since my twenties have I had so many friends, I have not had such a large social circle.

I spent most of the time with Aisha, we chatted about childhood memories, chatted about endless gossip, talked about old classmates becoming one way or another, talking about former teachers, or neighbors in the small community when we were young . I also became very close to Alice, who was easygoing and funny and not superficial.She looked and sounded more and more masculine, becoming like a man with small hands, broad hips, and large breasts.Her face became more angular, she also had a white beard (when she didn't bother to shave), and she had a deep rumbling laugh.She seemed to take it all with joy.Better to have two sexes than to be dead!That's what she always said when someone felt wronged for her, or asked sympathetically how she felt.I think she's telling the truth, she really would rather live as a man and a woman at the same time than die at all.

I write intensively for five hours every morning, then go to the terrace restaurant for lunch, then relax for an hour or two, maybe go swimming, maybe go to a steam bath with Elsa, Alice or both of them or someone else, maybe go for a walk in the winter garden, Maybe lie on the grass looking at the sky and clouds, maybe sit on a bench and read, or just enjoy the greenery, the view, the singing of the birds and the warm weather.I see Arno or a masseur once a week, sometimes for pedicures, massages and manicures.I regularly go to the salon for a haircut and color. I also added many new clothes, including expensive silk dresses of different colors and styles, linen trousers, coats, and expensive Italian shoes and jewelry.

Every afternoon at 2 o'clock, I go to the scientific experiment of physical fitness and physical training. This experiment is very safe, but it makes me suffer from periostitis, lack of vitamins and minerals (which are also in their measurement items), and feel dizzy And excessive exercise, muscle soreness, extreme fatigue, must eat a lot and sleep a lot to have physical strength to cope with the experiment.But I never complained, on the contrary, as long as I continued to participate in this experiment, I could avoid surgery and organ donation.Because of my fatigue, I don't even have to donate blood or plasma.I've come to love this weariness as if it were a royal friend or even a guardian angel.Most of the people I met in the first two months in the unit donated some organs or tissues.For example, the animator Eric donated part of his liver; Alice donated the cornea of ​​an eyeball, as well as the eggs used to produce stem cells (ironically, her uterus is still functioning); Elsa also donated eggs and skin; Reyna donated a kidney; Yohanna donated a small piece of intestine, a new procedure that had hardly been tried in the medical world; Since there is no return, Eric is very sad.

Our day-to-day lives in the Reserve Bank units can be said to revolve around human science experiments.In real life, we are mainly used for human experiments, and they also try to keep us alive.Many lived six or seven years in the unit in very good health before being brought in for final donation.Unneeded individuals make up the human reserve bank, and needed but seriously ill individuals will first use their own stem cells to make organs, and if that doesn't work, they will be placed on a waiting list, waiting for younger people to be sentenced to brain death after an accident.They don't use unneeded individuals at will, and wait until they are exhausted, there is no other way to treat critically ill patients, or they use them in very urgent situations.In other words, the whole thing, the system that Elsa angrily calls Happy Pig Farm, was more humane than I had originally imagined.