2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 1962
The magic trick:
Poisoning a utopia with a dark, violent development
Settle in for an incredibly depressing slice of Vonnegut. The title is cute. The story is not. It is, of course, fairly brilliant. Society of the future has figured out how to cheat death. Now, the only people who die are those who volunteer to do so. It doesn’t take long, though, for this utopia to reveal its dark side, and the story does so with violence and no punches pulled.
And that’s quite a trick on Vonnegut’s part.
The selection:
A sardonic old man, about two hundred years old, sat on a stepladder, painting a mural he did not like. Back in the days when people aged visibly, his age would have been guessed at thirty-five 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 in 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.
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