Buying Days (A short story on prolonging your life)

Buying Days
(A short story on prolonging your life)

Alabaster Rightfield was getting old, he was 61-years old, in 1940 that was next to old age, perhaps he had a few more years, but not many to live, and he was an advocate, and something of an activist on the concept of: live and let live, and don’t interfere with God’s plan. He was a journalist for a big newspaper in Minnesota, and he wrote a weekly column called “Be as it May!”
Eddie Kindstein, on the other hand, was well known and to some, a great scientist. He was known the world over in his fields of studies: of genetic reconstruction, cell-delay techniques, and the cascade effect for chromosomes, which prolonged age, and rebuilt weak of not broken chromosomes. All in all, he had several PhDs, one in zoology, anthropology, biology, psychology, gynecology, genetics, and was a doctor in medicine, and a few other things I can’t remember.
It all sounds so above the normal, and he was above the normal, so much so, they used his photograph on many of their products, his name likewise, but they hid him so no one could find him, or kidnap him. Oh he had his rights, but the world thought, as did his company, he also had his responsibilities, to them. He was a young man, of only 28-years old, next to middle age, but not quite there yet.
The company he worked for was called “Buying Days!”
They came out with a product in 1933, and the Company was selling days, like wildfire, and Alabaster Rightfield, was a strict advocate against this unethical product.

Narrator’s Interlude

Note: Before I can continue with the story, I must first explain the rudimentary of the product.
It was a chemical, very easy to use, in pill form, no bigger than an aspirin. It didn’t have magical powers or anything like that, but it was assured to its customers, it would allow them to buy more days to their life, providing they purchased the item before any kind of illness occurred.
Let me stretch this out a little further. It didn’t stop the illness; it only prolonged it, giving you more days to life. An example would be, Mr. William Filmier, purchased six pills of Dr. Eddie Kindstein’s product, on October 1, 1939, and he became ill with cancer on December 20th of that year. The pills cost $100-dollars per pill. The doctor gave him twenty-days to live; he died exactly, 26-days later.
If this is not convincing enough to the reader, his wife who pestered him to buy the six pills, bought for herself, five-hundred pills to take, and took them (yes indeed they had a few bucks to spend, isn’t that always the case, the rich get over like fat cats, and us poor folk, go along for the joy ride and observe how they do it). In any case, after her husband died, she got ill over the whole thing, and was diagnosed with pneumonia and would die within a few days, well, she didn’t, matter of fact, rather, she up and died, five-hundred and 7-days later.
Well, I could go on and on with testimony after testimony, but the fact is, no company makes $300-billion dollars in ten-years, from a company that prior to Kindstein coming into the group, was only making $300,000-dollars with pharmaceuticals, unless they got a good product, or a good scheme convincing the public their product is good. The only other one I know that has fooled the public for a generation or two, and made billions in the process, is the cigarette manufactures. So this was the real deal.
So now back to the story.

•

Alabaster Rightfield was a rich man, not filthy rich, but well off. And he had a lovely young wife, and he had five children, and he was kind to them, and all that kind of good stuff, almost a perfect husband and father, and known as a moralist thinker of his time. And on July 15, 1940, he went to the doctor, and the doctor said he had a tumor, a brain tumor, that they were not sure if it was fixable or not, it would have to be extracted, or somehow reduced in size to a residue form and then extracted or perhaps left in a state of inactivity. Well, Mrs. Rightfield went to see the CEO, Mr. Greedland, of “Buying Days” and asked him for pills…to either reduce the tumor in size, or to buy more days.
Mr. Greedland, was sympathetic, and said,
“It would be a shame for your husband to part this world, when he could live other ten-years. You could buy the days for him if you want to,” and he went on to say in essence: that he’d actually give the pills to her free, should he decide to shut his mouth a little on his so called moral and righteous grounds. This being for the most part, an attitude adjustment on his part; thus, he’d give her 3500-bills, free of charge.
On the other hand, Mr. Greedland said, we could do an operation, the good doctor, Kindstein, would even perform it, and it would be an almost guarantee, that he would survive the operation, but for him to take the pills incase something went wrong, it was all going to be free of charge.

Fine, thought Mrs. Rightfield, and she went home to beg her husband to do the deal. But he told her this,
“How can I, after preaching against such devises to keep one alive beyond God’s chosen date, I would be among the class of: hypocrites. I could only do such a thing if I could bring down the company, and force them to walk the straight line, to help people for the sake of health reasons”
“But a live hypocrite,” she murmured with tears running down those white soft cheeks of hers.
So by and by, Mr. Rightfield insisted he could not. And he got ill, very ill, and he was hospitalized, and up to the last minute, his wife begged him, even Mr. Greedland, agreed to do the operation free, and give him the pills free, without any promises to be forthcoming.
Then came a secret from the mouth of Mr. Greedland to Mr. Rightfield—told behind closed doors—of course, he whispered to Alabaster: “My pills work in either case, meaning, if the person was sick the day he bought the pills, or anytime, it doesn’t matter, it was just a gimmick to get the public to deliver the money early on, although the product is as good as gold. The reason we lied to the public was for our company stockholders, and so other pharmaceutical companies would not go out of business. I repeat Alabaster, it was all for an immediate effect: money, money, and more money.”
When Mr. Rightfield heard this, he agreed to the operation and the pills, free of charge, and no promises, and knowing his reputation was as good as their pills, he devised his plan.
Therefore, and thereafter, he was cured, and subsequently in a few months was back on his weekly column, he spread the news, the pills were good even after you got sick; and thus, something strange happened, several worldwide pharmaceutical companies got together and bought the company out, and lost the recipe to the product “Buying Days,” lest they go out of business, and the company soon after that, closed its doors once and for all.


2-9-2009