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Because of boredom and loneliness, Gil decides to return to his old job as a janitor at the local high school and even try out a new one as a part-time greeter at EverythingStore. It's there that he runs into a real estate agent who assures him that, due to the recent influx of American immigrants, Gil's ocean-view land is worth a lot more money than he realized. Maybe a few extra dollars wouldn't go astray, especially with the recent rumours of a new "de-aging treatment" on the market. 

Transcript

The first time I saw anything about de-aging treatment was on my social feed. I hardly ever posted anything on it, but I loved watching the different singers in our community. Especially the people from my generation who played bluegrass gospel. I could watch that all day. I grew up listening to mostly rock music, like ACDC, but there was always bluegrass gospel played at church. I hated it when I was a kid, but as I got older I started to understand what people saw in it. There’s some real musical talent out there, but I’m not one of them. I dare say if you pushed a piano down a flight of stairs it would make better music than me. Even though I did sing in front of a crowd a couple times, but I’ll get to that later.  

I wanted to open the social article, but I was nervous. I’ve got a bad habit of picking up viruses online. I just got over one (my nose is still running a bit, but the fever is gone). My grandson, Park, sarcastically says there isn’t a computer virus in the world I don’t like. I don’t really understand how it works, but Park says the hackers create software that triggers an immune response in your body just by sending light signals into your eyes from the monitor. My shadow, Lig, says that’s basically right, and he would know, because he catches every virus before I do. That’s the reason I get them in the first place. Who takes the time to figure this stuff out I wonder? What are they getting from it? I know the symptoms usually only last for a day or so, but some people have died from it. Anything can kill you if you’re old enough. I mean, when you see stuff like this how can you not believe in the Devil? People just making trouble for nothing else but the sake of trouble. Or maybe it’s not people at all. Either way, it’s evil. 

So I clicked on the story. But no virus. It was an article out of China. It was about Bekrub Inc, and how it was conducting human trials on what they called AAT or “Anti-aging treatment.” There were stories that they used death row inmates for the first trial. I don’t know what’s more depressing, being on death row, or someone trying to make you young again on death row. But you can’t believe anything you see online these days, so who knows? Sometimes I wonder if it’s on purpose.   

“Why would someone want to live forever?” I remember saying out loud. Then I thought, why wouldn’t someone want to live forever? I didn’t really have an answer to either one. I mean, a part of me wanted to die right away because I wanted to see Amy again, and even more important, my Savior. I don’t mean I was suicidal or anything. I guess I just wanted time to speed up. I was lonely. But at any time if you had asked me, “Would you mind if you died now? Tomorrow? Next week?” I would have said, “Nah, put it off another week or two.” I couldn’t see any point where the thought of dying sounded good. And like I said before, the thought of suffering was worse. Even with all our modern medicine, there are not many people who leave this world easy. It might be tooth and claw in the wild, but at least it’s fairly quick. After what I saw Amy go through, I’d rather be eaten by a bear any day. 

When she first got sick they offered her DMT therapy. She didn’t know what it was at first, maybe she thought it was some kind of alternative cure, but when she actually realized what it was she just about lost her mind. “Yes, that’s just what I’m going at when I’m on death’s door!” she shouted at her doctor. “Tripping balls on magic mushrooms. Is this a hospital or Burning Man?” I didn’t know who the burning man was, but I hoped he was alright.  

The CEO of Bekrub, Arron Bekker, said that at their next press conference, he would reveal something that would “surpass all the accomplishments of mankind since Gutenberg’s press and the Shamwow.” 

Although Bekrub is in Beijing it’s an American company, I think. American companies got everything done on the cheap in China back in the day so I guess that’s why they went there. But I think the new reason is that they don’t want to be blown up, with half the American cities on fire, and the other half under martial law. I don’t even know what “martial law” means, but it doesn’t sound good. The southern U.S. used to have Canadian “snowbirds,” old farts like me (not me in particular —I can’t stand traveling), but now Canada has been getting “scare-birds” for years. American Illegal immigrants are trying to cross our border almost as much as illegal Mexican immigrants are trying to cross back over their own border. Many of them get across to their own country, but a lot are caught by American border patrol and deported back to America. Well, deported wouldn’t be the right word in this case I suppose, considering that they actually are Mexican. Imported? Close enough.  

Anyway, it only seems like yesterday I read the headline “Bekrub. Newest Quadrillion Dollar Company.” That’s Quadrillion Canadian dollars by the way. That wasn’t long after the first Bekrub Airstrike Drone was used against terrorists in California. They say those land drones are almost indestructible. 

People used to be afraid that the fighting down south was going to spill over our borders, but it didn’t take long to get used to the shitshow. Although there are a lot of people who say that the war footage is all a big deepfake online, that there is no war, considering the story I’m working my way up to tell here, there’s no way that’s true. 

 I do know some people who still travel down to gated resorts in Florida once in a while on holidays. Not me, no sir, but who am I kidding? I couldn’t afford it anyway. But like I already said, I followed a bit of local news, but when it came to what was going on in the rest of the world, I figured it didn’t really affect me. I just read the headlines on my palm once in a while, that was it. And I know it was less than ten years ago, so I’m not telling you things most of you probably don’t already know, but Lig says I need to have some “context.” 

I can’t stand social, but that doesn’t stop me from scrolling through it when I get bored. And it’s not like you can get a job without a social account anyway. I just have a hard time keeping it updated with entries and pics. Only for Lig, I would never remember. Especially now that I’m retired. But you never know, I might want a loan or something. You never know what you’ll need money for. 

Why did I go back to work? Because I needed a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Without Amy barking at me to put wood in the stove I didn’t see the point. 

Being a union man and high school janitor most of my life, I figured that I would apply back at my old scrubbing grounds. I had been retired for over twenty years, and other than my loneliness I was sinfully healthy, so to be honest, I was kind of looking forward to going back to work. I enjoyed chatting with the staff and students. Some of the teachers didn’t have much interest in talking to me, or when they did, spoke to me like I was one of the students. But most of them were nice. Scrubbing toilets is not as bad as most people think, and that’s only about five percent of the job anyway. Until it is, that you get some kid who decides for a joke he’s going to shit in the flush box. Or on the floor. Or in the sink. Or on top of one of the ceiling tiles, and then neatly put back in place so that it can’t be seen as much as smelled. It happens.  

The current janitor, William Comby was there himself, but from talking to him when I ran into him at EverythingStore one day, he said that I could probably get in on one of those “six-weekers.” That was when an employee was hired by the government for a “temporary six weeks of employment,” but the temporary position just kept getting extended over and over. This looked good on paper so that the government could claim to the public that they only had one permanent custodian working at the high school. Once, back in the early…years ago we’ll say, they hired a six-weeker for six years. They just kept renewing his contract.  

I also applied as an EverythingStore greeter. It looked like an easy enough job. That interview was done online, and I didn’t actually speak to anyone. I just answered a hundred multiple-choice questions, and to be honest, a lot of them had nothing to do with EverythingStore. They were more like riddles than questions. One question was this: 

If you were standing on a rock in a desert and someone passed you a glass of water and a slice of baloney, would you:

a)     Soak the baloney in the water

b)    Ask for more baloney

c)     Wear the baloney

d)    Drink the water

e)     All of the above 

I clicked on “All of the above.” “Drink the water” seemed too obvious.  When it came to multiple-choice, I always found it was better to go with your gut. That or option D.  

I got a C+ on my social media check. If the management at the school didn’t already know me and what a hard worker I was I probably wouldn’t have got the job. Apparently, I didn’t have enough family pictures and some of my viewpoints were flagged for misogyny, like when my nephew was wondering out loud on social what to get his wife for Valentine’s Day, and I commented, “When it comes to women you can never go wrong with flowers.” I know it was a dumb thing to say. Everyone likes flowers. I guess I’m just old school. Anyway, I didn’t mind that. What irritated me was the “family pictures” thing. My wife is dead, my brother is dead, my parents are dead, all my old friends are dead, my sister is a… not a nice person, my son is hardly in my life, and I had not worked in fifteen years. So obviously I was going to fall behind. Every now and then I would take a picture of me and Dan to keep up my quota but they never seemed to turn out good. My grandson, Park (the most important person that was in my life, thank God) tells me that they look like the Before pictures in an anxiety medication ad. Like most of his generation, he’s not a fan of social media or anything that records time and place on his palm.   

I got the job at EverythingStore too, but I could only work that on the weekends. 

The first week on the job I was in a computer room doing “re-education” courses for eight hours a day. I was the only one there. Truth be told, I had not seen many other employees on the floor since I started. Once in a while a maintenance guy would walk by, or some other lonely person in a EverythingStore vest who I had no clue what their job was. As far as I know, I was the only human employee on the floor most of the time. 

As I said, I was doing re-education courses. Everything from safety to sexual harassment. I had a lot to learn. I still do. EverythingStore Greeter was a lot more complicated than I realized. One of the courses I had to take was about EverythingStore lingo called EverythingSlang. For example, employees are called “collaborators,” customers are called “clients,” and any merchandise we sold was to either be called what it was exactly or the more general “creations.” For some reason, the word “money” was strictly forbidden on the floor. Considering we were all being paid a low wage (or a little more if we took our pay in EverythingStore Funcoins) that usually wasn’t an issue. I can remember when there used to be a minimum wage, but they got rid of that foolishness about thirty years ago. 

Joanne and Rob were the two Greeters beside me, but we only saw each other at the end of our shifts.

I guess I shouldn’t leave out EmoJoe, after all it runs the place. Its office is in the back where it talks to you from a 75” monitor, and as you already know it’s available from small monitors everywhere on the floor. 

EmoJoe told me that I was supposed to be the human touch to the store, so I tried the best I could. I’m not what you would call a loud person, but I like people. I always have. Sometimes it got a bit exhausting saying hello to every person if it was a busy day, but I tried to change it up a bit so it wasn’t as boring. To one person I would say, “Good morning.” Another I’d say “How you gettin' on?” Then another it would be “Beautiful day.” Or maybe, “Nice day on clothes.” Then another time I’d say “How’s your father?” —you get the picture. Half of them didn’t look up, but some did. 

Seeing as it’s a small town I knew a lot of the people that came through the doors anyway, from my years as a janitor. I wasn’t teaching them but I still watched them grow up from children into adults, and I still considered some of them to be friends. Or acquaintances at least. I always got a kick out of kids. I would have had more, but Amy didn’t like them as much as I did. Amy didn’t even want Melvin. Not that she treated him bad when he came into the world. I dare say it wouldn’t be a lie to say she treated him too good. She was good to Park too. She just didn’t like kids in general much.

________________________

My second day on the job, Sarah Rose came through the doors. She and her friends always kidded around with me when she went to school, from the time she started grade seven, right up until she graduated. Not in a mean way though, she was a good kid. 

Sarah had become a local real-estate agent, and from what I heard she was a real crackerjack at it. 

“Well, look at you in your shiny blue vest,” she said when she saw me. “You should have been a policeman.” 

“I still might yet!” I said. 

“How long have you been doing this?” 

“Just started last week.” 

“Bang! How have you been?” she said, which probably meant how have I been doing since Amy died. 

“I’m doing okay. It’s not easy, but I’m doing okay. Had to get out of the house.” 

“Don’t blame you.”

“A bit of extra income don’t hurt either when you’re my age.” 

“I bet. Sure you should sell that land you got and move into town. You won’t be stuck for a dollar then. I even knows a certain lady who might be able to sell it for you,” she said, with a wink and a nudge on the elbow.

“I wish it was worth something,” I said. 

She gave me a puzzled look at that. “You’re joking, right? Gill, that land is worth a fortune. You know that right? I’m not talking about a couple hundred thousand either, I’m talking about close on a million probably.”

“Is you getting me going again like you used to be at in high school?” I said. 

She held my arm. “No Gill. With the wave of American immigrants we got now, they’re constantly looking for a piece of land like that. Sure we had sixty-eight American families move into town in the last year. The Americans that are moving to Newfoundland aren’t your middle-class Homer Simpson’s either, like on the mainland. They have money. Big money. Your house is not huge, but that land is worth a fortune. You’ve got one of the nicest pieces of land in the Sound. What is it, four, or five acres? Oceanfront view. Not too rocky. I’m not kidding you. It’s really worth something.” 

I was speechless. A million dollars? I could buy a spanking new chainsaw. 

She took her business card out of her purse. “Here. Give me a call sometime and I can drop by and have a good look at it. I’m only guessing from what I saw driving by.”    

I took the card and put it in my wallet and she headed off down the aisle. It sounded real nice to have a million dollars in the bank, even though I had never been the type to waste my money. Melvin says I’m so cheap that I’m the reason they stopped making wallets, but unlike him, I knew what it was like to grow up with nothing. We didn’t spoil him, but he wasn’t lacking for anything. Okay, Amy spoiled him. He never wrestled on the floor over a bun of bread like my brother Scott and I did once. My father was kind, but he didn’t know much about the workforce. I grew up on welfare. But I don’t know if laziness was really Dad’s problem. I think he just couldn’t handle responsibility. Thank God he didn’t pass those genes on to me or any of his kids because none of us ended up on welfare. I guess we all turned after Mom. She had a full-time job looking after her kids, especially with the little money she had to feed us with. And she did a fine job I figure. Truth be told, Dad had good morals too, even if he did spend most of his life living off other people’s taxes.

When I got home from work that evening, I decided to give Sarah a call. She told me she would be at my house early the next day.