Page 30 - The Gluckman Occasional Number Two

because you don’t like to see real young people, do you? That
would spoil everything, ruin the illusion of youth that you so
desperately cling to with your endless fun and games, amusement
parks and shopping malls. Your wealth has bought you a ticket
to paradise, and the envy of the rest of the planet’s scrabbling
impoverished population, but it’s all meaningless to you if any of that
other environment leaks in here to remind you of the injustice and
inequity and just plain dumb luck that gave you that wealth in this
crazy twenty-first century. You didn’t work any harder than the
people who cleaned up after you for the last seventy-five years.”
“Screw you!” screamed Bud. “I earned my money fair and square! I
played by the rules, made sacrifices, planned for the future—
whatever the hell it would turn out to be. If there aren’t any young
people in here, that’s not my fault. You people set this place up to
make a living off your elders, so blame yourselves for any problems it
causes. I retired to Heliopolis to get away from the crime and the
grime in the city I lived in all my life. It’s your generation who are
destroying society’s infrastructure. You want instant gratification, you
don’t want to work, and you don’t have respect for anything that isn’t
bright and loud and mindless and over in five seconds.”
Mance shrugged. “Perhaps. Who deserves what, is not an issue I
care about. Maybe when I get to your age I’ll feel the same way,
although the odds are I’ll be fighting for a chance to live in Heliopolis
or its equivalent. But that is too far off in the future for me to
consider. I like being young—didn’t you? Why give it up, you old
fool, even if it’s ninety per cent illusion? Why surround yourself with
mirrors telling you that disability, disease and death are just around
the corner? You gracers think there is something noble about aging,
that your accumulated wisdom is worth anything to your juniors.
Well, it isn’t; not any more, if it ever was. You’re stuck in old values,
obsolete technologies, disappearing worlds.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Bud snapped. “I paid my entrance
fee and it guarantees me lifetime residence here. Before I moved in I
thought I would enjoy participating in the sham rejuvenation. But I
don’t. No more cosmetic surgery, no more silly planned activities, no
more denial. I like my little garden apartment. I have a few friends
who don’t mind my eccentricities. Just a little peace and quiet in my
golden years: is that too much to ask?”
“It is. The only thing a rejuvie likes less than a real young person is
a real old person. You are ruining the game for most of the people