September 8, 2024 • 25 mins
Margaret reads you a classic sci-fi critique of eugenics by a master of satire.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media book Club book Club. What if I
only say twice, well, it's still kind of a chant.
Who knows, I don't. That's not what I know. Instead,
I know that I'm Margaret Kiljoy because I'm the host
of this podcast, which is the Cool Zone Media book Club,
the only book club that you don't have to do
(00:22):
the reading for because I do it for you. We
seem to have three modes here on book Club. We
have modern stories, we have fairy tales, and we have
classic science fiction. And that third mode is new, which
is the kick that I'm on right now, and this
story is in that mode because I don't know. It's
(00:44):
the kind of stuff that like. Okay, So the same
reason I really like history because of how it shapes
our present, I feel like you can do the same
kind of thing culturally and see like where we're at
with a lot of different ideas based on the things
that came before. And this week's story is by a
classic one of my favorite weird satirical authors, Kurt Vonnegut.
(01:07):
And for folks who don't know, Kurt Vonnegut, of course,
is most famous as an anarchist who fought the Nazis.
This is not actually what he's famous for. But it's true.
He's an anarchist who fought the Nazis. He was captured
by the Germans kind of clos ish to the end
of the war. I don't remember exactly what year, but he,
(01:27):
you know, then survived two different Allied bombings while he
was in captivity of the Germans. Because war as hell,
and it is not surprising that he ended up an
anarchist and a pacifist and a world citizen as he
put it. But he did survive those things, and he
went on to write very satirical stuff that seems so
(01:48):
like lighthearted while playing with heavy issues, and then you
realize what this man went through and you're like, oh, yeah, no,
that's why he writes lighthearted, satirical stuff about very heavy issues.
And he survived the bombing of Dresden. You think I
would put this in my script, but I didn't. And
he survived this bombing of this sermon city where he
(02:08):
was captive by hiding in a slaughterhouse and talked about
how is like cool down there amongst all the bodies
or the cadavers. I think is the way he put it,
and the reason that that sticks out to me is
I'm going to tell a different story really quick, and
maybe I've already told the story in one of my podcasts,
but I'm not sure, so I'm gonna tell it again
because this is the second time I know about an
anarchist surviving by hiding among bodies. And the other one
(02:35):
is that one day I met a man who was
selling his father's book, and his father had been a
Polish officer when the Russians came and invaded Poland and
then killed almost all the officers in the military rather
than letting them, oh, I don't know, defend the country
against Nazi's killed them all in the massacre of the
Caton Forest. And this man's father was one of the
(02:56):
only survivors of that because he had been taken to
Russia instead and thrown into a prison camp in Siberia.
And this man, when he first met me, he didn't
like me because I was like a weird pump and
he thought I was going to be a Bolshevik. And
he's like, you and your friends you're not Bolsheviks, are you,
And I was like, no, no, we're anarchists, he said, anarchists,
And he got really excited and he opened up his
dad's book that's called The Shadow Kateen Forest, if anyone's curious,
(03:18):
and he flipped through and he found this chapter where
his father's life had been saved by a Christian anarchist
in the gulags who was like a follower of Kurpatkin
and Tolstoy. And while he was in this gulag, it
was so cold outside that people were freezing to death.
And the person who ran the morgue was this anarchist
(03:39):
in the camp, and so he would let people come
and hide among the frozen bodies to warm themselves up
because it was warmer than the outside. Which, now that
I say it, there's a very dark story, but it
meant that I had an interesting connection with a man,
you know, almost one hundred years later and seventy years
(03:59):
later or a while later, and I don't know. And
so just when I was like reading about Vonnegut hiding
among bodies to survive the horrors of war, I was
reminded of this other story. But that's not what this
story is about, not at all. Instead, content warning for
(04:22):
today's episode. This story discusses suicide, and I believe is
a critique of eugenics, but is also sort of describing
a eugenicist society, and so that's your content warning. If
that's not a headspace you want to be in, then
don't listen to this one. This story is called two
be Are Not to Be? The letters spelled out it'll
(04:47):
be really clever. It doesn't work as well in audio, right,
because that's the big reveal, is the way it sounds.
But it's just a bunch of letters and numbers. It
was first published in Worlds of If in January nineteen
sixty two, and the Project Gutenber Additions, which is where
I got this one from, says extensive research did not
uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
(05:07):
So like a lot of stuff from the nineteen fifties
and sixties is under copyright, but a lot of stuff
isn't because of the weird ways the copyright law works.
The little tagline along with the story said, got a problem,
just pick up the phone. It solved them all and
all the same way.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Two b Are Not to Be?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
By Kurt Vonnegut. Everything was perfectly swell. There were no prisons,
no slums, no insane asylums, 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 forty million souls. One bright morning
(05:53):
in the Chicago lying in hospital, a man named Edward K. Welling,
Junior waited for his wife to give He was the
only man waiting. Not many people were born a day anymore.
Welling was fifty six, a mere stripe ling in a
population whose average age was one hundred twenty nine. X
(06:13):
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 ashtrays had been
(06:35):
moved away from the walls. The floor was paved with
spattered dropcloths. The room was being redecorated. It was being
redecorated as a memorial to a man who had volunteered
to die. A sardonic old man about two hundred years
old sat on a step ladder, painting a mural he
did not like. Back in the days when people aged visibly,
(06:57):
his age would have been guessed at thirty five ors,
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,
(07:20):
cut down plants that were old and sickly, raked leaves,
carried refuse to trash burners. Never, never, never, not in
medieval Holland nor old Japan had a garden been more formal,
been better tended. Every plant had all the loam, light, water, air,
and nourishment it could use. A hospital orderly came down
(07:43):
the corridor, singing under his breath a popular song. If
you don't like my kisses, honey, here's what I will do.
I'll go see a girl in purple kiss this sad
world to dulu. If you don't want my lovin', why
should I take up all this? I'll get off this
old planet. Let some sweet baby have my place. The
(08:07):
orderly looked in at the mural, and the muralist looks
so real, he said, I can practically imagine I'm standing
in the middle of it. What makes you think you're
not in it, said the painter. He gave us a
tyiric smile. It's called the Happy Garden of Life. You
know that's good of doctor Hits, said the orderly. He
was referring to one of the male figures in white,
(08:29):
whose head was a portrait of doctor Benjamin Hits, the
hospital's chief Obstrataian Hits was a blindingly handsome man. A
lot 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 blanks were to
be filled with portraits of important people on either the
hospital staff or from the Chicago office of the Federal
(08:51):
Bureau of Termination. 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, daub,
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 at a
(09:12):
foul dropcloth. There's a good picture of it, he said.
Frame that, and you have a picture a 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
(09:33):
the trick telephone number that people who didn't want to
live anymore were supposed to call. The zero in the
telephone number he pronounced not The number was two b
R not to be. It was the telephone number of
an institution whose fanciful sobriquets included automat Birdland Cannery, catbox,
(09:57):
d Lausser, easygo, goodbye, happy hooligan, kiss me quick, lucky Pierre, Sheep,
dip warring blender, weep no more? And why worry? To
be or not to be? Was the telephone number of
the municipal gas chambers of the Federal Bureau of Termination.
(10:18):
And you know what phone numbers you should call instead
of that one? Is the phone numbers that would have
accompanied these ads if this was recorded in the nineties.
But it's not. It's recorded in the twenty twenties, so
there's no phone numbers. I think would that'd be so weird.
There was an AD and it was like send a
self address damp envelope for more information. Be so weird.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Here's ads.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And we're back. The painter thumbed his nose at the orderly.
When I decide it's time to go, he said, it
won't be at the sheep dip. I'd do it yourself
or eh, 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
(11:14):
obscenity his lack of concern for the tribulations of his survivors.
The world could do with a good deal more mess
if you ask me, he said. The orderly laughed and
moved on welling. The waiting father mumbled something without raising
his head, and then he fell silent again. A coarse,
formidable woman strode into the waiting room on spike keels.
(11:37):
Her shoes, stockings, trench coat, bag, and overseas cap were
all purple. The purple the painter called the color of grapes.
On judgment day, the medallion on her purple musette 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 and unmistakable mustache. Fact.
(12:00):
A curious thing about gas chamber hostesses was that, no
matter how lovely and feminine they were when recruited, they
all sprouted mustaches within five years or so.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Is this where I'm.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Supposed to come?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
She said to the painter.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
A lot would depend on what your business was. He said,
you aren't about to have a baby, are you. They
told me I was supposed to pose for some picture.
She said, my name is Leora Duncan. She waited, and
you dunk people? He said, what it?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Skip it?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
He said that share is a beautiful picture. She said,
looks just like heaven or something or something, said the painter.
He took a list of names from his smock pocket. Duncan, Duncan, Duncan,
he said, scanning the list. Yes, here you are. You're
entitled to be immortalized. See any faceless body here you'd
like me to stick your head on. We've got a
(12:51):
few choice ones left. She studied the mural bleakly. Gee,
she said, they're all the same to me, I don't
know anything about all. A body's a body, eh, he said, alrighty,
as 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 siddle or
(13:14):
a duncan. That's more of 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, delight, you say
you don't know anything about art, and then you prove
in the next breath that 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.
(13:37):
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. That that puts me
right next to doctor Hits. That upsets you, he said,
good gravy, No, she said, it's it's just such an honor. Ah,
(13:59):
you admire there em, eh, he said, who doesn't admire him,
she said, worshiping the portrait of Hits. It was the
portrait of a tanned, white haired omnipotent Zeus two hundred
and forty 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,
(14:22):
than to put you next to him for all time,
sawing off a limb that strikes you as appropriate. That
is kind of like what I do, she said. She
was demure 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 Doctor Hits himself. He was seven feet tall, and
(14:46):
he boomed with importance, accomplishments, and the joy of living well,
Miss Duncan, Miss Duncan, he said, And he made a joke.
What are you doing here? He said? This isn't 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 Doctor Hits heartily, and say, isn't that some picture
(15:09):
I share? Am honored to be in it with you?
She said, Let me tell you, he said, I'm 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 toward the door that led to the
delivery rooms. Guess what was just born, he said, I can't.
She said, triplets. He said triplets.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
She said.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
She was exclaiming over the legal implications of triplets, much
like you will be exclaiming over the legal implications of
not buying this stuff. Because it is a crime to
not purchase things from our sponsors, you are legally obligated
to buy the next thing that is offered to you
for sale, including if you were to stop listening to
(15:55):
this podcast because you're afraid of the curse of whatever
the next thing for sale is, then you would be
walking down the street, or you'd go into a store,
and the next thing you would see there would be
the thing that you're obligated to buy. This is totally
true and also good advice that you should definitely follow.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Here's ads.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And we're back. The law said that no newborn child
could survive unless the parents of the child could find
someone who would volunteer to die triplets if they were
all to live called for three volunteers. Do the parents
have three volunteers, said Leora Duncan. Last I heard, said
doctor Hitz. They had one, and they were trying to
(16:47):
scrape another 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, said the waiting father, sitting up,
red eyed and frowsy.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Edward K.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Walling Junior is the name of the happy father to be.
He raised his right hand, looked at a spot on
the wall, gave a hoarsely wretched chuckle. Present he said, Oh,
mister Welling, said doctor Hits. I didn't see you, the
invisible man, said Welling. They just phoned me that your
triplets have been born, said doctor Hits. They're all fine,
(17:28):
and so is the mother. I'm on my way and
to see them now. Hooray, said Welling emptily. You don't
sound very happy, said doctor Hits. What man in my
shoes wouldn't be happy, said Welling. He gestured with his
hands to symbolize care free simplicity. All I have to
do is pick out which one of the triplets is
going to live. Then deliver my maternal grandfather to the
(17:50):
happy hooligan and come back here with a receipt. Doctor
Hits became rather severe, with Welling towered over him. You
don't believe in population control, mister Welling, he said. I
think it's perfectly keen, said Welling. Tautley. Would you like
to go back to the good old days when the
population of Earth was twenty billion about to become forty billion,
(18:12):
then eighty billion, then one hundred and sixty billion. Do
you know what a druplet is, mister Welling, said Hits. Nope,
said Welling sulkily. A drupelet, mister Welling, is one of
the little knobs, one of the little pulpy grains of
a BlackBerry, said doctor Hits. Without population control, human beings
(18:32):
would now be packed on this surface of this old
planet like drupelets on a BlackBerry. Think of it. Welling
continued to stare at the same spot on the wall.
In the year two thousand, said doctor Hits, before scientists
stepped in and laid down the law, there wasn't even
enough drinking water to go around, and nothing to eat
(18:52):
but seaweed, and still people insisted on their right to
reproduce like jack rabbits, and their right, if possible, to
live forever. I want those kids, said Welling quietly. I
want all three of them. Of course you do, said
doctor Hits. That's only human. I don't want my grandfather
(19:12):
to die, either, said Welling. Nobody's really happy about taking
a close relative to the cat box, said doctor Hitz
gently sympathetically. I wish people wouldn't call it that, said
Leora Duncan. What said doctor Hits. I wish people wouldn't
call it the cat box and things like that. She said,
(19:33):
It gives people the wrong impression. You're absolutely right, said
doctor Hits. Forgive me, he corrected himself. Gave the Municipal
gas Chambers their official title, a title no one ever
used in conversation. I should have said ethical suicide Studios.
He said. That sounds so much better, said Leora Duncan.
This child of yours, whichever one you decide to keep,
(19:56):
mister Welling, said doctor Hits. He or she is going
to live on a 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
(20:17):
stretch 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 doctor Hits dead.
There's room for one, a great, big one, he said.
(20:38):
Then he shot Leora Duncan. It's only death, he said
to her, as she fell. There room for two. And
then he shot himself, making room for all three of
his children. Nobody came running. Nobody seemingly heard the shots.
The painter sat down on top of his step ladder,
looked down reflectively on the sorry scene. The painter pondered
(21:03):
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 of 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 catbox, a happy hooligan an easygo.
(21:24):
He thought of war, He thought of plague. He thought
of starvation, he knew that he would never paint again.
He let his paint brush fall to the drop cloths below,
and then he decided he had had about enough of
life in the happy Garden of life too, and he
came slowly down from the ladder. He took Welling's pistol,
really intending to shoot himself, but.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
He didn't have the nerve.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
And then he saw the telephone booth in the corner
of the room. He went to it dialed the well
remembered number two b R not to be Federal Bureau
of Termination, said a very warm voice of a hostess.
I assume can I get an appointment, he asked, speaking
very carefully. We could probably fit you in late this afternoon, sir,
she said, it might even be earlier if we get
(22:10):
a cancelation. All right, said the painter. Fit me in
if you please, and he gave her 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.
(22:30):
The end. So there's a lot going on in this story, right.
I like read the story, and I was like, am
I going to read this, but and then I read
it again and I was like, yeah, I'm gonna The
way that he plays lightly with this stuff is so
interesting to me. But there's two of the things that
he plays with that are, you know, seemingly the darkest
and the most dangerous to tread upon, both the discussion
(22:53):
of suicide and also explicitly using gas chambers. But he
lost his mother to suicide before he went off and
fought the Nazism and was taken captive by them and
survived that as well. So it's like he's playing with
stuff that he knows about that he has had to
interact with, you know. And eight years before he wrote
(23:16):
this story, or before this story was published, he wrote
a story called The Big Trip Up Yonder and this
is about It's set earlier or the population is exploding
because death has been solved, like no one's dying of
old age, and it's kind of a satirical story about
this family living in a very small apartment and they're
all like scrambling over who gets to be in the
will whenever like great Grandpa eventually you know, winds up
(23:39):
dying somehow or another, and how everyone just like misses
having privacy and like overcrowding and stuff. Right, But I
also think that this is a story as a deep
critique of eugenics, right, even though it's like playing with this,
like what would we do? And what's interesting is that
we actually do have information about what we would do,
(23:59):
like how population numbers go down. Now that there's like
an inherent good or bad to that I didn't like
write this into a script. I don't have a study
in front of me or whatever. I've read about studies
where as soon as you offer people were capable of
having birth, as soon as you offer them information about
birth control and things like that, population growth starts to decline.
And basically like feminism is the actual answer to the
(24:22):
limitation of living in a world with finite resources, and
that's not addressed specifically in here. Instead it's like people
being like, oh shit, what do we do? Right? But
I really like the painter, right, I like this person
who's just like, honestly, this like paining I'm drawing on
the wall. This isn't the real reflection of society, like
the splatter on the drop cloths, that's the real reflection
(24:43):
of society. And like, how well done is this fucking writing?
Where it's like, oh, and then that's reflected because like
and they all die on the drop cloth, right, and
how like the person is like, oh a do it
yourself for is not going to be messy forever asked
to clean up after you. But they killed all the
people on the drop cloths, right, and so it's like, oh,
it's just like it's a really well crafted story. I'm
(25:04):
going to read more Vonnegut. I've read a little bit
of him, but I'm going to read more of him.
And that is this week's Cool Zone Media book Club.
And I will catch you all next week when I
read you more stories from one of the three modes,
or maybe you'll come up with a fourth mode. Who knows,
(25:24):
Uncle's on Media book Club?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Bye.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Cool Zone Media book Club book Club. What if I
only say twice, well, it's still kind of a chant.
Who knows, I don't. That's not what I know. Instead,
I know that I'm Margaret Kiljoy because I'm the host
of this podcast, which is the Cool Zone Media book Club,
the only book club that you don't have to do
(00:22):
the reading for because I do it for you. We
seem to have three modes here on book Club. We
have modern stories, we have fairy tales, and we have
classic science fiction. And that third mode is new, which
is the kick that I'm on right now, and this
story is in that mode because I don't know. It's
(00:44):
the kind of stuff that like. Okay, So the same
reason I really like history because of how it shapes
our present, I feel like you can do the same
kind of thing culturally and see like where we're at
with a lot of different ideas based on the things
that came before. And this week's story is by a
classic one of my favorite weird satirical authors, Kurt Vonnegut.
(01:07):
And for folks who don't know, Kurt Vonnegut, of course,
is most famous as an anarchist who fought the Nazis.
This is not actually what he's famous for. But it's true.
He's an anarchist who fought the Nazis. He was captured
by the Germans kind of clos ish to the end
of the war. I don't remember exactly what year, but he,
(01:27):
you know, then survived two different Allied bombings while he
was in captivity of the Germans. Because war as hell,
and it is not surprising that he ended up an
anarchist and a pacifist and a world citizen as he
put it. But he did survive those things, and he
went on to write very satirical stuff that seems so
(01:48):
like lighthearted while playing with heavy issues, and then you
realize what this man went through and you're like, oh, yeah, no,
that's why he writes lighthearted, satirical stuff about very heavy issues.
And he survived the bombing of Dresden. You think I
would put this in my script, but I didn't. And
he survived this bombing of this sermon city where he
(02:08):
was captive by hiding in a slaughterhouse and talked about
how is like cool down there amongst all the bodies
or the cadavers. I think is the way he put it,
and the reason that that sticks out to me is
I'm going to tell a different story really quick, and
maybe I've already told the story in one of my podcasts,
but I'm not sure, so I'm gonna tell it again
because this is the second time I know about an
anarchist surviving by hiding among bodies. And the other one
(02:35):
is that one day I met a man who was
selling his father's book, and his father had been a
Polish officer when the Russians came and invaded Poland and
then killed almost all the officers in the military rather
than letting them, oh, I don't know, defend the country
against Nazi's killed them all in the massacre of the
Caton Forest. And this man's father was one of the
(02:56):
only survivors of that because he had been taken to
Russia instead and thrown into a prison camp in Siberia.
And this man, when he first met me, he didn't
like me because I was like a weird pump and
he thought I was going to be a Bolshevik. And
he's like, you and your friends you're not Bolsheviks, are you,
And I was like, no, no, we're anarchists, he said, anarchists,
And he got really excited and he opened up his
dad's book that's called The Shadow Kateen Forest, if anyone's curious,
(03:18):
and he flipped through and he found this chapter where
his father's life had been saved by a Christian anarchist
in the gulags who was like a follower of Kurpatkin
and Tolstoy. And while he was in this gulag, it
was so cold outside that people were freezing to death.
And the person who ran the morgue was this anarchist
(03:39):
in the camp, and so he would let people come
and hide among the frozen bodies to warm themselves up
because it was warmer than the outside. Which, now that
I say it, there's a very dark story, but it
meant that I had an interesting connection with a man,
you know, almost one hundred years later and seventy years
(03:59):
later or a while later, and I don't know. And
so just when I was like reading about Vonnegut hiding
among bodies to survive the horrors of war, I was
reminded of this other story. But that's not what this
story is about, not at all. Instead, content warning for
(04:22):
today's episode. This story discusses suicide, and I believe is
a critique of eugenics, but is also sort of describing
a eugenicist society, and so that's your content warning. If
that's not a headspace you want to be in, then
don't listen to this one. This story is called two
be Are Not to Be? The letters spelled out it'll
(04:47):
be really clever. It doesn't work as well in audio, right,
because that's the big reveal, is the way it sounds.
But it's just a bunch of letters and numbers. It
was first published in Worlds of If in January nineteen
sixty two, and the Project Gutenber Additions, which is where
I got this one from, says extensive research did not
uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
(05:07):
So like a lot of stuff from the nineteen fifties
and sixties is under copyright, but a lot of stuff
isn't because of the weird ways the copyright law works.
The little tagline along with the story said, got a problem,
just pick up the phone. It solved them all and
all the same way.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Two b Are Not to Be?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
By Kurt Vonnegut. Everything was perfectly swell. There were no prisons,
no slums, no insane asylums, 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 forty million souls. One bright morning
(05:53):
in the Chicago lying in hospital, a man named Edward K. Welling,
Junior waited for his wife to give He was the
only man waiting. Not many people were born a day anymore.
Welling was fifty six, a mere stripe ling in a
population whose average age was one hundred twenty nine. X
(06:13):
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 ashtrays had been
(06:35):
moved away from the walls. The floor was paved with
spattered dropcloths. The room was being redecorated. It was being
redecorated as a memorial to a man who had volunteered
to die. A sardonic old man about two hundred years
old sat on a step ladder, painting a mural he
did not like. Back in the days when people aged visibly,
(06:57):
his age would have been guessed at thirty five ors,
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,
(07:20):
cut down plants that were old and sickly, raked leaves,
carried refuse to trash burners. Never, never, never, not in
medieval Holland nor old Japan had a garden been more formal,
been better tended. Every plant had all the loam, light, water, air,
and nourishment it could use. A hospital orderly came down
(07:43):
the corridor, singing under his breath a popular song. If
you don't like my kisses, honey, here's what I will do.
I'll go see a girl in purple kiss this sad
world to dulu. If you don't want my lovin', why
should I take up all this? I'll get off this
old planet. Let some sweet baby have my place. The
(08:07):
orderly looked in at the mural, and the muralist looks
so real, he said, I can practically imagine I'm standing
in the middle of it. What makes you think you're
not in it, said the painter. He gave us a
tyiric smile. It's called the Happy Garden of Life. You
know that's good of doctor Hits, said the orderly. He
was referring to one of the male figures in white,
(08:29):
whose head was a portrait of doctor Benjamin Hits, the
hospital's chief Obstrataian Hits was a blindingly handsome man. A
lot 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 blanks were to
be filled with portraits of important people on either the
hospital staff or from the Chicago office of the Federal
(08:51):
Bureau of Termination. 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, daub,
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 at a
(09:12):
foul dropcloth. There's a good picture of it, he said.
Frame that, and you have a picture a 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
(09:33):
the trick telephone number that people who didn't want to
live anymore were supposed to call. The zero in the
telephone number he pronounced not The number was two b
R not to be. It was the telephone number of
an institution whose fanciful sobriquets included automat Birdland Cannery, catbox,
(09:57):
d Lausser, easygo, goodbye, happy hooligan, kiss me quick, lucky Pierre, Sheep,
dip warring blender, weep no more? And why worry? To
be or not to be? Was the telephone number of
the municipal gas chambers of the Federal Bureau of Termination.
(10:18):
And you know what phone numbers you should call instead
of that one? Is the phone numbers that would have
accompanied these ads if this was recorded in the nineties.
But it's not. It's recorded in the twenty twenties, so
there's no phone numbers. I think would that'd be so weird.
There was an AD and it was like send a
self address damp envelope for more information. Be so weird.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Here's ads.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And we're back. The painter thumbed his nose at the orderly.
When I decide it's time to go, he said, it
won't be at the sheep dip. I'd do it yourself
or eh, 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
(11:14):
obscenity his lack of concern for the tribulations of his survivors.
The world could do with a good deal more mess
if you ask me, he said. The orderly laughed and
moved on welling. The waiting father mumbled something without raising
his head, and then he fell silent again. A coarse,
formidable woman strode into the waiting room on spike keels.
(11:37):
Her shoes, stockings, trench coat, bag, and overseas cap were
all purple. The purple the painter called the color of grapes.
On judgment day, the medallion on her purple musette 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 and unmistakable mustache. Fact.
(12:00):
A curious thing about gas chamber hostesses was that, no
matter how lovely and feminine they were when recruited, they
all sprouted mustaches within five years or so.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Is this where I'm.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Supposed to come?
Speaker 2 (12:11):
She said to the painter.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
A lot would depend on what your business was. He said,
you aren't about to have a baby, are you. They
told me I was supposed to pose for some picture.
She said, my name is Leora Duncan. She waited, and
you dunk people? He said, what it?
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Skip it?
Speaker 1 (12:31):
He said that share is a beautiful picture. She said,
looks just like heaven or something or something, said the painter.
He took a list of names from his smock pocket. Duncan, Duncan, Duncan,
he said, scanning the list. Yes, here you are. You're
entitled to be immortalized. See any faceless body here you'd
like me to stick your head on. We've got a
(12:51):
few choice ones left. She studied the mural bleakly. Gee,
she said, they're all the same to me, I don't
know anything about all. A body's a body, eh, he said, alrighty,
as 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 siddle or
(13:14):
a duncan. That's more of 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, delight, you say
you don't know anything about art, and then you prove
in the next breath that 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.
(13:37):
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. That that puts me
right next to doctor Hits. That upsets you, he said,
good gravy, No, she said, it's it's just such an honor. Ah,
(13:59):
you admire there em, eh, he said, who doesn't admire him,
she said, worshiping the portrait of Hits. It was the
portrait of a tanned, white haired omnipotent Zeus two hundred
and forty 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,
(14:22):
than to put you next to him for all time,
sawing off a limb that strikes you as appropriate. That
is kind of like what I do, she said. She
was demure 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 Doctor Hits himself. He was seven feet tall, and
(14:46):
he boomed with importance, accomplishments, and the joy of living well,
Miss Duncan, Miss Duncan, he said, And he made a joke.
What are you doing here? He said? This isn't 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 Doctor Hits heartily, and say, isn't that some picture
(15:09):
I share? Am honored to be in it with you?
She said, Let me tell you, he said, I'm 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 toward the door that led to the
delivery rooms. Guess what was just born, he said, I can't.
She said, triplets. He said triplets.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
She said.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
She was exclaiming over the legal implications of triplets, much
like you will be exclaiming over the legal implications of
not buying this stuff. Because it is a crime to
not purchase things from our sponsors, you are legally obligated
to buy the next thing that is offered to you
for sale, including if you were to stop listening to
(15:55):
this podcast because you're afraid of the curse of whatever
the next thing for sale is, then you would be
walking down the street, or you'd go into a store,
and the next thing you would see there would be
the thing that you're obligated to buy. This is totally
true and also good advice that you should definitely follow.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Here's ads.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And we're back. The law said that no newborn child
could survive unless the parents of the child could find
someone who would volunteer to die triplets if they were
all to live called for three volunteers. Do the parents
have three volunteers, said Leora Duncan. Last I heard, said
doctor Hitz. They had one, and they were trying to
(16:47):
scrape another 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, said the waiting father, sitting up,
red eyed and frowsy.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Edward K.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Walling Junior is the name of the happy father to be.
He raised his right hand, looked at a spot on
the wall, gave a hoarsely wretched chuckle. Present he said, Oh,
mister Welling, said doctor Hits. I didn't see you, the
invisible man, said Welling. They just phoned me that your
triplets have been born, said doctor Hits. They're all fine,
(17:28):
and so is the mother. I'm on my way and
to see them now. Hooray, said Welling emptily. You don't
sound very happy, said doctor Hits. What man in my
shoes wouldn't be happy, said Welling. He gestured with his
hands to symbolize care free simplicity. All I have to
do is pick out which one of the triplets is
going to live. Then deliver my maternal grandfather to the
(17:50):
happy hooligan and come back here with a receipt. Doctor
Hits became rather severe, with Welling towered over him. You
don't believe in population control, mister Welling, he said. I
think it's perfectly keen, said Welling. Tautley. Would you like
to go back to the good old days when the
population of Earth was twenty billion about to become forty billion,
(18:12):
then eighty billion, then one hundred and sixty billion. Do
you know what a druplet is, mister Welling, said Hits. Nope,
said Welling sulkily. A drupelet, mister Welling, is one of
the little knobs, one of the little pulpy grains of
a BlackBerry, said doctor Hits. Without population control, human beings
(18:32):
would now be packed on this surface of this old
planet like drupelets on a BlackBerry. Think of it. Welling
continued to stare at the same spot on the wall.
In the year two thousand, said doctor Hits, before scientists
stepped in and laid down the law, there wasn't even
enough drinking water to go around, and nothing to eat
(18:52):
but seaweed, and still people insisted on their right to
reproduce like jack rabbits, and their right, if possible, to
live forever. I want those kids, said Welling quietly. I
want all three of them. Of course you do, said
doctor Hits. That's only human. I don't want my grandfather
(19:12):
to die, either, said Welling. Nobody's really happy about taking
a close relative to the cat box, said doctor Hitz
gently sympathetically. I wish people wouldn't call it that, said
Leora Duncan. What said doctor Hits. I wish people wouldn't
call it the cat box and things like that. She said,
(19:33):
It gives people the wrong impression. You're absolutely right, said
doctor Hits. Forgive me, he corrected himself. Gave the Municipal
gas Chambers their official title, a title no one ever
used in conversation. I should have said ethical suicide Studios.
He said. That sounds so much better, said Leora Duncan.
This child of yours, whichever one you decide to keep,
(19:56):
mister Welling, said doctor Hits. He or she is going
to live on a 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
(20:17):
stretch 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 doctor Hits dead.
There's room for one, a great, big one, he said.
(20:38):
Then he shot Leora Duncan. It's only death, he said
to her, as she fell. There room for two. And
then he shot himself, making room for all three of
his children. Nobody came running. Nobody seemingly heard the shots.
The painter sat down on top of his step ladder,
looked down reflectively on the sorry scene. The painter pondered
(21:03):
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 of 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 catbox, a happy hooligan an easygo.
(21:24):
He thought of war, He thought of plague. He thought
of starvation, he knew that he would never paint again.
He let his paint brush fall to the drop cloths below,
and then he decided he had had about enough of
life in the happy Garden of life too, and he
came slowly down from the ladder. He took Welling's pistol,
really intending to shoot himself, but.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
He didn't have the nerve.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
And then he saw the telephone booth in the corner
of the room. He went to it dialed the well
remembered number two b R not to be Federal Bureau
of Termination, said a very warm voice of a hostess.
I assume can I get an appointment, he asked, speaking
very carefully. We could probably fit you in late this afternoon, sir,
she said, it might even be earlier if we get
(22:10):
a cancelation. All right, said the painter. Fit me in
if you please, and he gave her 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.
(22:30):
The end. So there's a lot going on in this story, right.
I like read the story, and I was like, am
I going to read this, but and then I read
it again and I was like, yeah, I'm gonna The
way that he plays lightly with this stuff is so
interesting to me. But there's two of the things that
he plays with that are, you know, seemingly the darkest
and the most dangerous to tread upon, both the discussion
(22:53):
of suicide and also explicitly using gas chambers. But he
lost his mother to suicide before he went off and
fought the Nazism and was taken captive by them and
survived that as well. So it's like he's playing with
stuff that he knows about that he has had to
interact with, you know. And eight years before he wrote
(23:16):
this story, or before this story was published, he wrote
a story called The Big Trip Up Yonder and this
is about It's set earlier or the population is exploding
because death has been solved, like no one's dying of
old age, and it's kind of a satirical story about
this family living in a very small apartment and they're
all like scrambling over who gets to be in the
will whenever like great Grandpa eventually you know, winds up
(23:39):
dying somehow or another, and how everyone just like misses
having privacy and like overcrowding and stuff. Right, But I
also think that this is a story as a deep
critique of eugenics, right, even though it's like playing with this,
like what would we do? And what's interesting is that
we actually do have information about what we would do,
(23:59):
like how population numbers go down. Now that there's like
an inherent good or bad to that I didn't like
write this into a script. I don't have a study
in front of me or whatever. I've read about studies
where as soon as you offer people were capable of
having birth, as soon as you offer them information about
birth control and things like that, population growth starts to decline.
And basically like feminism is the actual answer to the
(24:22):
limitation of living in a world with finite resources, and
that's not addressed specifically in here. Instead it's like people
being like, oh shit, what do we do? Right? But
I really like the painter, right, I like this person
who's just like, honestly, this like paining I'm drawing on
the wall. This isn't the real reflection of society, like
the splatter on the drop cloths, that's the real reflection
(24:43):
of society. And like, how well done is this fucking writing?
Where it's like, oh, and then that's reflected because like
and they all die on the drop cloth, right, and
how like the person is like, oh a do it
yourself for is not going to be messy forever asked
to clean up after you. But they killed all the
people on the drop cloths, right, and so it's like, oh,
it's just like it's a really well crafted story. I'm
(25:04):
going to read more Vonnegut. I've read a little bit
of him, but I'm going to read more of him.
And that is this week's Cool Zone Media book Club.
And I will catch you all next week when I
read you more stories from one of the three modes,
or maybe you'll come up with a fourth mode. Who knows,
(25:24):
Uncle's on Media book Club?
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Bye.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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