THE PROBLEM really is this: Can we last forever? That is our dream in Moderan. That is the whole Big Moderan Dream, the Forever-lasting Dream. Will the hinge joints hold? Oh, yes, the hinge joints will hold. The whole new-metal complex will hold. The everlast lungs will go on and on, and the heart will piston that steady life-beat throughout the centuries, throughout the millenniums—FOREVER. For these parts are of and for forever, though all replaceable. Yes, should a part prove not to be of and for forever (there is always the chance of a flaw, you know, so shore up the chances) a multitude and plenty of big warehouses hold spare parts for each and every new-metal man. Should a heart, say, falter in a Moderan forever-man, it will be a simple matter to send out for a pump change, and the Problems-Circulatory warden for that district can soon slip the new unit in, close the housing, put on the official seal and send his big bill up to Central Health.
Even the flesh-strips, I believe, can be shored up with new-metal alloys and made to last forever. At least, we have to believe that they can, for they are, in a way, all that we have. And these may be the one small, not-to-be-remedied, flaw that will finally do us down and clear back to reality. But we have to believe that it will not. I look at my flesh-strips sometimes, when I am alone, and I’m mostly alone, for I am a King (due that Splendid Isolation that is a King’s great due), and I cannot believe I CANNOT BELIEVE all that is therein implied in the flesh-strips, all that is purported, in the Old Days, to have happened in that pulpy mass, all that, they say, even now transpires. It is MIRACLES, it is MAGIC, it is witchcraft! And to think that once I lived as all of this—miracles walking, magic talking and witchcraft transpiring within me every part of every second of every day. Weeoohhhh! WeEoOhHhH!! WEEOOHHHH!!! It is a wonder that I lasted until noon of the first day. It is a wonder—
We have to keep working on improving the introven, the only flesh-strip food that will do. We have to keep experimenting to discover ways to cut the flesh-strips down. (The flesh-strips are our godliness, in a way, and yet we have to keep working to cut our godliness down to become more godly. It does seem a paradox. But a Moderan man with his Great Science Plan understands. YES! And it is not a paradox. NO!) We have to keep watching day and night for better ways to care for the flesh-strips we own. Flesh-strip hygiene must become a major science. Hypochondria must become an honored thing. No more must we point the finger of scorn and say, “HAH, hypochondriac!” Health worrying must become a national second occupation (our main occupation is war) for every man, not the preoccupation of the few nerve-nuts it is now considered to be. For only by complete and dedicated fervent health worrying can we be sure that throughout all our waking hours we’ll be fully conscious of, and properly worried about, the dangers that beset our flesh-strips. It must not be fidgety finicky thought-worrying only; it must be bold and forthright physical worrying to the extent that we’ll turn on gut-disturber buttons to the chancy world and yearn seriously. We’ll feel out our flesh-strips, thump them and pinch them at any hour of the day or night, to see if all is yet well. Or is something going wrong!? And perhaps we’ll call in neighbors to substantiate our fears and claims. We’ll check out each the other’s flesh-strips at any hour of the day or night that a health checkup seems to offer some chance of turning up a flaw. That must become a call that must be always answered. We must pass laws to make it a high crime not to check out a neighbor’s flesh-strips whenever he calls for our assessment of his situation. (Or in times when no one calls, go over and volunteer a checkout anyway; assess them gratuitously as a good-neighbor turn.) Even in grimmest grandest war, when the wreck-wrecks are out and homing in for the kill, when the White Witch rockets are on the line and launching, when the doll bombs are taking that staunch straight-and-steady targetward stroll, it must not be unusual for a neighboring Stronghold Captain to drop over for a flesh-strip feel-out. What we must own is that we are all in this together, in it together to such an extent that nothing NOTHING must deter us from protecting each the other’s flesh-strips in a logical medical scientific and neighborly way. That we must become a ONE-WORLD of health-worriers is to put it mildly, indeed. We must be more than mere worriers. We must be alarmists where our flesh-strips are concerned. We must go with every fad that may offer some chance of turning up a weakness in a flesh-strip. Only by such extreme means can we protect and cherish that most precious of our possessions and, I regret to say, the most vulnerable.
Ah, yes! To one not of Moderan it might seem most unusual to contemplate the situation: We are in, say, a grim all-out all-universe to-the-last-death war. All the blow-and-bang stuff is trying for kills. But we’ll not wait for any truce time for us to keep check on each the other’s godly parts. Maybe some hot all-out shot-out time I’ll see old neighboring Stronghold to my left scoot out from his eleventh, outermost Wall. I’ll see him “hurrying” to me, slow, slow as we go toggling our hinges and braces. I’ll not let up for a moment my bombardment of his fort. I’ll not recall even one walking doll bomb walking in to blow up him and his Walls. And he’ll not expect me to. Should I do it he’d no doubt be extraordinarily, even extremely, embarrassed. For the war must go on in all its grim inevitability. But we must try for long life too. And that may be a paradox to the lesser peoples. But not to a Moderan man. OH, NO! It is as logical as progress itself.
And should, some fine truce day, say, old neighboring Stronghold to the east beam me a message telling me that he is well and feels fine, I’ll not let him get away with it. I’ll beam right back at him the question: How can you be sure, man!? Then I’ll go on to beam him a whole multitude of suggested conditions, things he probably never would think of on his own, maybe things that his medical steel men have not even thought of for him, but things which in part or in total may tend to convince him that he is most probably not as well as he feels, and maybe not even well at all.