2 B R 0 2 B - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

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To be our ought to be by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Everything was perfectly swell.

There were no prisons, no slums, no insaneus islands, no cripples, no poverty, no wars.

All diseases were conquered, so was old age.

Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.

The population of the United States was stabilized at 40 million souls.

One bright morning in the Chicago lying in hospital a man named Edward K. Welling Jr.

waited for his wife to give birth.

He was the only man waiting, not many people were born today anymore.

Welling was 56, a mere stripling in a population whose average age was 129.

X-rays had revealed that his wife was going to have triplets, the children would be his

first.

Young Welling was hunched in his chair, his head in his hand, he was so rumpled, so still

and colorless, as to be virtually invisible, his camouflage was perfect.

Since the waiting room had a disorderly and demoralized air too, chairs and astrays had

been moved away from the walls, the floor was paved with spattered drop claws.

The room was being redecorated.

It was being redecorated as a memorial to a man who had volunteered to die.

A sadonic old man, about 200 years old, sat on a step ladder.

Painting a mural he did not like.

Back in the days when people aged visibly, his age would have been guessed at 35 or so.

Aging had touched him that much before the cure for aging was found.

The mural he was working on depicted a very neat garden.

Men and women and white doctors and nurses turned the soil, planted seedlings, sprayed

bugs, spread fertilizer.

Men and women in purple uniforms pulled up weeds, cut down plants that were old and

sickly, raked leaves, carried refuse to trash burners.

Never, never, never.

Not even in medieval Holland or old Japan had a garden been more formal, better tended.

Every plant had all the loam, light, water, air and nourishment it could use.

A hospital orderly came down the corridor, singing under his breath a popular song.

If you don't like my kisses, honey, here's what I will do.

A goal see a girl in purple kiss his sad world to do if you don't want my loving.

Why should I take up all this space, I'll get off this old planet, let them sweet baby

have my pleas and all don't know.

The orderly looked up at the mural and the muralist looked so real, he said, can practically

imagine I'm standing in the middle of it.

Well, makes you think you're not in it, said the painter, he gives us a terex mile, it's

called the happy garden of life, you know.

That's good all doctor it said the orderly.

He was referring to one of the male figures in white, whose head was a portrait of Dr. Benjamin

Hitz, the hospital's chief obstetrician, Hitz was a blindingly handsome man.

Lots of faces still to fill in, said the orderly, he meant that the faces of many of the figures

in the mural were still blank.

All the blanks were to be filled in with portraits of important people, none other than the hospital

staff or from the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Termination.

It must be nice to be able to make pictures that look like something, said the orderly.

The painter's face curdled with scorn, you think I'm proud of this dog?

He said, you think this is my idea of what life really looks like?

What's your idea of what life looks like, said the orderly?

The painter gestured in a foul drop cloth, there's a good picture of it.

He said, frame that, you'll have a picture of damn sight more honest than this one.

You're a gloomy old duck, aren't you, said the orderly?

Is that a crime, said the painter?

The orderly shrugged.

If you don't like it here, Grandpa, he said, and he finished the thought with a trick telephone

number that people who don't want to live anymore were supposed to call.

The zero in the telephone number he pronounced ought.

The number was to be our ought to be.

It was the telephone number of an institution whose fanciful sober cuts included

Automat, Birdland Canary, Cat Box, D-Lousy, Easy Go, Goodbye, Mother.

Happy Hooligan, Kiss Me Quick, Lucky Pierre, Sheep Dip, Wearing Blender, Weep No More,

and Why Worry?

To be or not to be was the telephone number of municipal gas chambers of the Federal

Bureau of Termination.

The painter thumbed his nose at the orderly, when I decided it was time to go, he said,

it won't be at the sheep dip.

I'd do it yourself for a, said the orderly, Messy Business Grandpa, why don't you have

a little consideration for the people who have to clean up after you?

The painter expressed, with an obscenity, his lack of concern for the tribulations of his

survivors.

The world could do with a good deal more mess if you asked me, he said.

The orderly laughed and moved on.

Whaling, the waiting father, mumbled something about, without raising his head, then he fell

silent again.

A course for a middouble woman strode into the waiting room on spike heels.

Her shoes, stockings, trench coat, bag, and overseas cap were all purple.

The purple, the painter called, the color of grapes on Judgement Day.

The medallion on her purple muse at bag was the seal of the service division of the Federal

Bureau of Termination, an eagle perched on a turnstile.

The woman had a lot of facial hair, an unmistakable mustache, in fact.

A curious thing about gas chamber hostesses was that no matter how lovely and feminine

they were when they were recruited, they all sprouted mustaches within five years or so.

Is this where I'm supposed to come?

She said to the painter, a lot would depend on what your business

was.

He said, you aren't about to have a baby area.

They told me I was supposed to pose for some picture.

She said, my name's Leora Duncan.

She waited.

And you, don't, people.

He said, what?

Skip it.

He said.

That sure is a beautiful picture.

She says, looks just like heaven or something.

Or something.

Is it the painter?

He took a list of names from his smock pocket.

Duncan, Duncan, Duncan.

He said, scanning a list.

Yep.

There you are.

You're entitled to be immoralized.

See your faceless body here.

You'd like me to stick your head on.

I've got a few choice ones left.

She studied the mural bleakly.

Gee.

She said, they're all the same to me, yeah.

I don't know anything about art.

Body's a body, yeah.

He said, all right.

A master of fine art.

I recommend this body here.

He indicated a faceless figure of a woman who was carrying dried stalks to a trash burner.

Well, said Leora Duncan, that's more the disposal people, isn't it?

I mean, I'm in service.

I don't do any disposing.

The painter clapped his hands and mocked the light.

When you say you don't know anything about art, and then you prove the next breath, and

you know more about it than I do.

Of course, the sheave carrier is wrong for a hostess, a snipper, a pruner.

That's more your line.

He pointed to a figure in purple who was sawing a dead branch from an apple tree.

How about her?

He said, you like her at all?

Gosh.

She said, and she blushed and became humble.

Well, that puts me right next to Dr. Hitz.

That upsets you.

He said, oh, could Cravy know?

She said, it's just such an honor.

Oh, you admire him, huh?

He said, who doesn't admire him?

She said, worshiping the portrait of Hitz.

It was the portrait of a tanned, white-haired, omnipotent de Zeus, 240 years old.

Who doesn't admire him?

She said again.

He was responsible for setting up the very first gas chamber in Chicago.

Nothing would please me more, said the painter, than to put you next to him for all time,

sawing off a limb, and strikes you as appropriate.

Oh, that is kind of like what I do, she said.

She was debuer about what she did.

What she did was make people comfortable while she killed them.

And while Leora Duncan was posing for her portrait into the waiting room, bounded Dr. Hitz

himself.

He was seven feet tall, and he boomed with importance, accomplishments, and the joy

of living.

Oh, Miss Duncan, Miss Duncan, he said.

And he made a joke, what are you doing here, he said, sitting where the people leave,

this is where they come in, we're going to be in the same picture together, she said

shyly.

Good, said Dr. Hitz heartily, and say, isn't that some picture?

I sure am honored to be in it with you, she said.

Let me tell you, he said, I am honored to be in it with you.

Without women like you, this wonderful world we've got wouldn't be possible.

He saluted her, and moved towards the door that led to the delivery rooms.

Guess what was just born?

He said, I can't, she said, triplets, triplets, he said, triplets, she said, she was

exclaiming over the legal implications of triplets.

The law said that no newborn child could survive unless the parents of the child could find

someone who would volunteer to die.

Guess if they were all to live, called for three volunteers, what do the parents have

three volunteers, said Leora Duncan?

Last I heard, said Dr. Hitz, they had one, and we're trying to scrape the other two up.

I don't think they made it, she said, nobody made three appointments with us, nothing but

singles going through today unless somebody called in after I left, what's the name?

Welling, so the waiting father, sitting up, red-eyed and froszy, Edward K. Welling, Jr.

is the name of the happy father to be.

He raised his right hand, looked at a spot on the wall, gave a horse the record chuckle,

present, he said, oh, Dr. Welling, so Dr. Hitz, I didn't see you, an invisible man, said

Welling.

They just phoned me that your triplets have been born, so Dr. Hitz, they're all fine,

so was the mother, I'm on my way to see them now, hooray, said Welling, empty, you don't

sound very happy, said Dr. Hitz.

What man in my shoes wouldn't be happy, said Welling, he gestured with his hands to symbolize

carefree simplicity, all I have to do is pick out which one of the triplets is going to

live, and then deliver my maternal grandfather to the happy hooligan and come back here with

a receipt.

Dr. Hitz became rather severe with Welling, he towered over him.

You don't believe in population control, Mr. Welling, he said?

I think it's perfectly keen, said Welling, said Welling, taught me.

Would you like to go back to the good old days when the population of the earth was 20

billion, about to become 40 billion, then 8 billion, then 160 billion, do you know what

a drooplet is, Mr. Welling, said Dr. Hitz.

Nope, said Welling, suckily.

A drooplet, Mr. Welling, is one of the little knobs, one of the little pulpy greens of a

blackberry, said Dr. Hitz.

Without population control, human beings would now be packed on the surface of this old

planet like drooplets of a blackberry, think of it.

And continue to stare at the same spot on the wall.

In the year 2000, said Dr. Hitz, before scientists stepped in and laid down the log, there

wasn't even enough drinking water to go around and nothing to eat but seaweed, and still people

insisted on their right to reproduce like jack rabbits, and they're right if possible

to live forever.

I want those kids, said Welling quietly, a model of three of them.

Of course you do, to Dr. Hitz, it's only human, I don't want my grandfather to die either,

said Welling.

When nobody's really happy about taking a close relative to the cat box, said Dr. Hitz

gently, sympathetically, I wish people wouldn't call it that, said Leora Duncan, what, said

Dr. Hitz, I wish people wouldn't call it the cat box and things like that.

She said, it gives people the wrong impression.

We're absolutely right, said Dr. Hitz, forgive me, he corrected himself, gave the municipal

gas chambers their official title, a title no one ever used in conversation, I should've

said ethical suicide studios, he said, what, it sounds so much better, said Leora Duncan,

this child of yours, whichever one you decide to keep, Mr. Welling, said Dr. Hitz, he

or she is going to live in a happy, roomy, clean, rich planet thanks to population control.

In a garden like that mural there, he shook his head.

Two centuries ago when I was a young man, it was a hell that nobody thought could last

another twenty years.

Now, centuries of peace and plenty stretched before us as far as the imagination cares to travel,

he smiled luminously.

The smile faded as he saw that Welling had just drawn a revolver, Welling shot Dr. Hitz

dead.

That's room for one, a great big one, he said, then he shot Leora Duncan, it's only death,

he said to her as she fell, there, room for two, then he shot himself, making room for

all three of his children.

Nobody came running, nobody seemingly heard the shots.

The painter sat on the top of a step ladder looking down reflectively on the sorry scene.

The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life, demanding to be born and once born

demanding to be fruitful, to multiply and to live as long as possible, to do all that

on a very small planet that would have to last forever.

All the answers that the painter could think of were grim, even grimmer surely than a cat

box a happy hooligan and easy go.

He thought of war, he thought of plague, he thought of starvation.

He knew that he would never paint again, he let his paint rush fall to the drop cause

below and then he decided he'd had about enough of life and a happy garden of life, too,

when he came slowly down from the ladder.

He took Wellington's pistol, really intending to shoot himself, but he didn't have the

nerve.

Then he saw the telephone booth in the corner of the room, he went to it, dialed the

well-remembered number, to be our ought to be.

Federal Bureau of Termination said the very warm voice of a hostess, not soon could

I get an appointment, he asked, speaking very carefully.

We could probably fit you in late this afternoon, sir.

She said, might even be earlier if we get a cancellation.

All right, said the painter, bid me in if you please, he gave his name, spelling it out.

Thank you, sir, said the hostess.

Your city thanks you, your country thanks you, your planet.

Thanks you, but the deepest thanks of all is from future generations.

End of 2B are ought to be by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.