Heartless
By: Eli Garfinkel
Tags: Science Fiction, Racism, Black Mirror, Sexism, Cancel Culture

I felt the quiet whirring and almost imperceptible tick-swish-hush of my CardioStar Heart Replacement system, known more commonly as a CHARM. It used to be the only thing I could hear, but the human brain can get used to just about anything, and the sound of the nanoserv motors had long since faded into the background. I was more likely to hear the rain, the wind, or the woodpecker that used to nest outside my window and treat me to minigun blasts of mating knocks.

I miss that woodpecker so much.

I’m old enough to remember when artificial hearts and ventricular assist devices were considered last ditch, Hail Mary efforts for desperately sick and very rich people. But then Martina Weiss invented the CHARM. People who would have died of heart disease in their prime were now keeping their faculties and living active lives at the century mark and beyond.

I turned on the TV that morning. The news had an interview with the last doctor to perform old-fashioned heart surgery — bypasses, porcine and bovine mitral valve replacements, aorta repairs, that kind of thing. The medical schools don’t even teach those procedures anymore because those skills became unnecessary and obsolete when the CHARM was invented. It would be like telling a drone mechanic to repair a horse carriage. I was in the very last cohort of North American doctors who learned the old way of doing things.

Dammit, my pencil broke. They won’t let us use tablets, just paper and pencil. How the hell am I supposed to write my memoirs this way? I guess I’ll just wait for them to bring me a new one.

There, that’s better. So it took a couple of generations of debate in society before CHARM surgery became the standard of care for treating heart disease; the usual suspects from the various religions bellowed that ripping out a flesh heart and replacing it with a machine was inhuman barbarism and akin to murder. But folks voted with their feet when it was proven that CHARM surgery was far more effective than the traditional procedures and way cheaper, too. All the cardiologist had to do was start up the heart-lung machine, detach the diseased heart, install the CHARM and send the healed and happy patient home.

The first CHARMs needed to be closely monitored by a team of physicians and bioengineers. But as the devices became more or less routine, much of what the human assistants did was automated. Today, the CHARM almost never needs to be replaced, and its nuclear batteries rarely need to be swapped for fresh ones. It does, however, need the occasional software and firmware updates just like any computer does. The updates allow the CHARM to react to changes in the body and make micro-adjustments to the rhythm and strength of the pump motors.

I had been updating my CHARM like everyone else on the planet. They’ve made it so simple. You just go into the app, select update, and the company satellite uploads the latest batch of qubits to the device. The whole thing takes a maximum of five minutes.

The power just went out. Again. They’re so incompetent here.

True, I guess I could keep writing without the lights, but it will end up being so messy and crooked that nobody will be able to read it. My handwriting isn’t that good with the lights on, let alone in the dark. It’s a good thing my mom forced me to learn handwriting all those years ago. I laughed at her back then, but now I’m grateful. The text needs to be legible so that someone will be able to read my memoirs. I want people to know what we did to screw everything up.

Finally, we’re back in business with the electricity. That day I got a notification that my CHARM needed a manual update. I had heard of these manual updates, but I didn’t really understand them. Most people were able to upgrade from the old system, known as Mozzarella, to the new system, known as Cheddar, with the same remote download process as usual. There were rumors going around about these manual updates, but I had ignored them until I got that notification on my kitchen screen.

So I went to the address they gave me. It was in the city, on the 17th floor of the New Lipstick Building on the East Side. I took the elevator up and checked in at the desk.

“Hi, I’m here for my manual update,” I said.

The secretary looked at me with a wordless, unfriendly gaze — as though I had just robbed a bank or something. It was a judgmental stare that totally creeped me out.

“Hello, can you tell someone that I’m here for my manual update?”

Just then some bearded, redhaired guy in a white lab coat came out with a tablet in his hand.

“Dr. Jacob Warsaw?”

“Call me Jack. Yes, that’s me. I’m here for my CHARM’s manual update.”

“I’m Dr. Portage, I’ll be taking care of you today. Follow me, please.”

Portage smelled weird. Not bad exactly, just strange. Some kind of aromatic herb. Not weed, but something alien that I just couldn’t identify. I followed him to another set of internal elevators. He pressed the down button and I waited as the numbers went down into the sub-basement.

“Hey, can you tell me why I need a manual update in the first place? All my friends at work updated to Cheddar automatically. Why do I have to schlep into the city?”

“Um, yeah, it’s just a random thing,” Portage said. “We do some manual updates for our statistical research so that we can make sure that our automatic services are functioning within normal parameters.”

The doors opened and I followed Portage to his office. His walls were plastered with diplomas from the Government Service Academy.

“What kind of doctor are you?” I asked. “You don’t have that physician vibe. Are you an engineer?”

“No, I have a doctorate in political science and a master’s in social health.”

That’s the point, right then, that’s the point when I started feeling sick to my stomach. Why was one of these so-called social scientists giving me my manual update? I was expecting a cardiologist or a bioengineer or at least a coder.

“Oh, okay, “ I said. “If you don’t mind me asking, what does political science and social health have to do with my CHARM update?”

“You and I are going to have a conversation, Dr. Warsaw, and I need you to be completely truthful with me. If you’re honest with me, then we can work together and then I’ll send you back upstairs for your update. Are you with me?”

Oh shit, I’m screwed, I thought to myself. Or maybe I said it out loud. It was obvious to me what this all was, and I vomited into a trash can right then and there.

“Dr. Warsaw, there’s no reason to be nervous,” Portage said. “Just relax and answer my questions, and everything’s gonna be okay. Now let me just pull up your citizen file. What are the last four numbers of your social?”

“5309. Like the song,” I said.

“What song?”

“Never mind.”

Portage squinted at the screen and typed in some notations. He made a face, as if he had just swallowed spoiled milk. He shook his head while he typed.

“What’s the matter, what’s going on here?” I asked.

Portage stopped talking and looked into my eyes without sufficient blinking.

“Dr. Warsaw, In 2058, did you tell a racist joke about a sprinkler?” he asked with emphasis on the word racist.

“Did I tell a racist joke about a sprinkler five years ago? Of course I didn’t. I’m not a racist.”

“So you categorically deny telling a racist joke about a sprinkler?”

“Yes, one hundred percent.”

“Okay, Mr. Warsaw, then how do you explain this?” Portage displayed a video on his screen and turned it toward me. “Simon,” he said to his AI assistant, “Play video from timecode point 45.”

The video showed me at a party. I remembered going to the party, it was for the NBA Finals and I probably had more beer than one should have at a single sitting. That was the same year that Rachel left me for that billionaire asshole she met at work, so I was doing a lot of bottle-based therapy. I didn’t remember any details from the party because alcohol has a way of erasing details.

The video shows me, beer in hand, getting up on a chair and asking, “What do you get when you put six Mexicans, one Chinese guy, and six black dudes in a room together?”

Portage turned the volume up for the answer to that question and zoomed in on my mouth saying the words. I won’t write those words in my memoirs because I don’t want anyone who reads this to think I’m some kind of racist monster. I was drunk six ways from Sunday, and I don’t remember saying anything.

Portage turned off his screen. “Why did you lying to me, Dr. Warsaw? We have incontrovertible proof that you told a racist joke about a sprinkler. It actually causes me physical pain every time I listen to it. You are a dangerous man, Dr. Warsaw.”

“Oh come on,” I said. “I don’t remember making that joke because I was totally intoxicated and not in control of my mouth.”

“Alcohol reveals the inner truth of our character,” Portage said, “That’s science. You can’t debate it, it’s just a fact. You are a racist.”

“You can believe whatever nonsense you want about me, but I am not a racist.”

“Are you a member of the Flat Earth Society, too? For a rich white guy like you to deny being a racist is like insisting that the world is flat. It’s ridiculous and, more importantly, it’s unscientific.”

That’s when I lost my temper. “Now you listen to me!” I said. “Between the two of us, I am the scientist. Political science is not science. It’s just Marxism with a shower and a haircut! You don’t know the first thing about real science. I’m a physician for God’s sake, a real doctor! Now I demand that you send me upstairs for my CHARM update this instant, and I want the name of your supervisor.”

“Wow,” Portage said. “Just wow.”

Two muscled, broadchested cops, one black and one Latino, burst through the door. “Is there a problem here, Dr. Portage?” the black officer said. Based on the smell, one or maybe both of them had a tuna sub for lunch. It was also obvious that one or maybe both of them were getting paid to fart.

“No, we’re fine. Dr. Warsaw here was just getting a little overexcited about his situation. You can leave.”

Once the pair of henchmen left and the door clicked shut, Portage continued with the interrogation. “In that same year, did you make sexist comments about your former wife, Dr. Rachel Goldman?”

“No, ” I said. “I’m sure I did say some unkind things about her, but I am no sexist. I was drinking too much, we had a messy divorce, she got the kids, the house, and the brokerage account, and all I got was bupkis and a lecture from the judge. I was angry. Lemme guess, you have another video of me being drunk off my ass and saying horrible things.

“It’s an audio recording this time, but the voice print matches exactly. Listen to this just so we’re on the same page.” Portage clicked play on his tablet and I was immediately treated to a replay of me screaming things about Rachel being a whore and a bitch. (That part is true.) Then I turned my vitriol on women in general before I broke down crying like a pathetic piece of shit.

Portage stopped the audio. “You weren’t just talking about your ex-wife, Dr. Warsaw, as if that weren’t bad enough. You were talking about all women, our sisters of humanity. You hollered that all women are greedy bitches and that women should just stay home and be pregnant housewives. You yelled that at a volume that disturbed the whole neighborhood.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being a racist and I’m sorry for being a sexist. You’ve made your point. Now can I have my CHARM update?”

“Here’s the thing,” Portage said. “The Omnibus Healthcare Law of 2060 codified into law our Social Credit system. The point of the Social Credit system is to convince Americans to treat each other with respect. Your Social Credit Score gives us a good idea as to your worth as a citizen. And Dr. Warsaw, your score is 55, well below the minimum score of 70.”

“Minimum score? Minimum for what?”

“The CHARM corporation, like all American-based bioengineering firms, has an agreement with the Federal Government. No major artifical organ updates will be distributed to those who have a Social Credit Score under 70. By doing so, we make a powerful statement against racism, sexism, and all forms of hatred.”

“But I’ll die without the update! Without software and firmware updates, my CHARM won’t be able to communicate with the server and it will eventually just stop working. Will CHARM even support devices that remain on Mozzarella?”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before you got drunk, before you defiled our society with your racism and sexism.”

“So what happens now? You just send me home with no update and wait for me to die?”

“No, you’ll be staying with us. We can’t risk you losing your temper again. You’ll be imprisoned for life without parole at the Federal Penitentiary in Fairbanks, Alaska.”

“Someone must have ratted me out! Who snitched on me? Who did it?!” The henchmen came back from the hallway and prevented me from strangling Portage right where he sat.

“Your own daughter made the reports, Dr. Warsaw. Shira was very cooperative and we gave her a National Medal of Youth Excellence.”

I don’t remember anything after that. I must have blacked out. The next thing I remember, I’m in this cell. No meaningful human contact, just three bland meals if bread, tofu, and overripe fruit slid through a hotbox slot. One hour each day, I’m escorted to a slightly bigger cell to run laps.

The walls of my 7 x 8 cell are large digital screens. The screens show me on a loop all the insulting things that my former friends, treacherous family members, and ex-colleagues have said about me on social media. Some the worst things come from the total strangers. I’ve tried so many times to smash the screens, but the reinforced glass is impervious to my feet.

I’ve had a lot of time to think. I’ve come to the conclusion that Portage was right after all. I am a racist. Just a little bit, but I am. And I’m a sexist. Just a little bit, but I admit it now. I’m also a human being, a fact that they seem to have forgotten in this God-forsaken dumpster fire of a country.

I have a plan to escape. I know I’ll die soon with this old hardware ticking away in my chest, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to die in prison. Breaking out of this joint is going to take some doing, especially the part where I have to brave the Alaskan wilderness, but I have nothing else to do here but write my memoirs after breakfast and plan my escape after lunch.

When I get out of here, I’m going to do two things. The first thing I’m going to do is escape over the Canadian border and flee to Israel. And then I’m going to go to the Old City of Jerusalem. There I’m going to read my memoirs aloud in front of the Western Wall as if I were Isaiah himself.

I hope my CHARM breaks down when I’m standing on holy ground.