Happy World

"What's the matter, dear? You don't look too happy."
Sex always got me thinking. Particularly when it was good.
She was blond, and she fluttered her long eyelashes over her artless saucers of pale blue eyes, as she rolled over to gather the sheets over her perfect ivory breasts (not too big, just as I liked 'em) while she asked this in a voice dripping with concern. She had her voice set in this cooing seductive falsetto for most of the evening. She was a whore. And whores were good people. That's what we were taught in school. Because they made sad people feel better. Not officially. Because sadness was outlawed. And I was afraid she'd betray me. She did.

"What's wrong with you, Lieutenant? Sex doesn't make you happy?"
"It does, Major! But it also gets me thinking."
"Thinking what, Lieutenant?"
"I dunno, sir. Generally, I feel how short-lived good things are...and how useless it all feels when it's done."
"These are subversive thoughts, Lieutenant!"
"I am sorry, I didn't know it was, sir!"
"Your moods are affecting the morale of the regiment. I order that you be put under therapy. I am not firing you because you have otherwise been a good soldier."
"Thank you, sir!"

"Why doesn't sex with a woman make you happy? Are you gay?"
"Not that I am aware of, Dr. Freund."
"Why don't you try gay sex?"
"I don't think I should like to."
"I am putting you on a controlled diet and exercise regimen. Also two doses of serotonin supplement a week. Nurse Marta here will tell you more about it."
"Thank you, Dr. Freund."

"We are first going to test your blood to figure out the levels of your happy hormones."
"Ok, nurse."
"Here have some chocolate while I get the syringe ready."
"I dont think I should like to, Marta."
"Don't call me by name here, we are through."
"Can't you come back to me, Marta?"
"No. That is not possible. Did that hurt?"
"Yes it did. You mean the needle, no of course not."
"Yeah you were always too much of prick for a prick to hurt you."
"I am glad to see you still have your sense of humor, Marta."
"Yeah it helps me stay happy. You seem to have lost yours?"
"Things haven't been the same after you left me."
"I left you because you were never happy. Now shut up, I don't want your low serotonin levels to fall further."
"Hormones, is that all you care for?"
"Yes, they are the keys to happiness."
" I have the hormones. Look I still love you."
" Get over it if you want to be happy."
" I'm not sure I want to."
" I have to tell Dr. Freund that mere serotonin supplements won't work."
"Thank you, Nurse Marta."

"Do you know who I am, Lieutenant?"
"Yes, you are Prof. Boris Kropotkin, head of the Commissariat for the Protection of People's Happiness and also chief propagandist of the Ideology of Perfect Bliss and also..."
"That'll do. Do you know why you have been brought here to see me?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe because I've been in therapy for six months and I'm still not happy?"
"Very good guess, Lieutenant. You are a smart man but you have this filthy contagious disease called melancholia that I've all my life, waged a very successful war against."
"Well I wouldn't like to spread it around if I could help it."
" From all the reports I have received, it doesn't seem like you are trying hard enough. You perform all the yoga breathing exercises with mechanical precision, refusing to concentrate on the spiritual and healing aspects of it, you run 10 mile cross country without feeling flushed with satisfaction at the end of it, instead wanting to run more to feel the pain barrier; you question the masters at the philosophy classes, arguing with the noble ideals of happiness on which our theology and statecraft are founded. I could go on."
"I try to be what I am. Isn't that what you tell us to do, if we want to find true happiness?"
" Yes, but within limits. Thinking too much and getting tangled in thoughts, trying to be brutally honest about everything while consciously eschewing the rose-tinted glasses of delusion that make life so much better for us, consciously resisting the usual therapeutic influences of food, exercise and sex on yourself - in short, questioning every pretty little axiom of life - that is pure disease."
"To me that is the only way to live."
"In that case we cannot let you live on. In the old days, melancholic fools like yourself would kill themselves. Our advanced social engineering has helped us get rid of suicidal people. Melancholics have been eliminated in the course of evolution. But some freaks like you have managed to survive. Tell me have you ever considered suicide?"
"I have contemplated it. But I don't do it because that'd make no sense."
"Very well. We will take care of it then."
"Thank you, Professor."

This is my last hour of life, before a painless lethal gas lulls me to eternal sleep. They want to force me to be happy even in the process of death. I take out my copy of Camus' "Outsider" (which is banned in our world and I had to smuggle into prison, by the way) and read the last lines. My thoughts exactly :

"For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."