THE SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY MASS ACCRETION

[A charming Valentine’s Day short-story of the future  to warm (and perhaps even power) the cockles of your heart.]

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The sun was cold over the Potomac. It was February 14, 2040. In the high-rises of New Alexandria, the screens flickered with a deep, arterial red. It was Saint Valentine’s Mass Accretion Day, the federal holiday of ultimate intimacy.

Arthur sat in his hab-unit and ate his synthetic protein. It tasted like wet cardboard and copper. He waited for the knock. On the screen, a woman with a surgically frozen smile explained the beauty of the Accretion.

"To love is to give," she said. "And what greater gift is there than the self?"

The doorbell rang. It didn''t chime; it announced.

Arthur opened the door. There were two men in matte-gray suits. They wore lapel pins shaped like hearts, but the hearts had gears inside them. Behind them stood a technician holding a glass cylinder and a vacuum-sealed hose. They looked like they had been scrubbed with industrial bleach.

"Mr. Thorne," the first man began, He had a curiously chiseled nose and a lissome half-smile that looked more like a semi-smirk. His voice was flat. "the Department of Earnest Devotion is here to express the Nation’s affection for you."

"I’m a dutiful taxpayer," Arthur said.

"Of course you are!" the second man said. "But your Heart-Rate Monitor flagged a spike of cynicism during the President’s last Mandatory Joy Broadcast. You expressed a preference for the past. I’m afraid that is an unacceptable form of heartbreak, Arthur. The State hates to see you lonely."

The hallway smelled of ozone and mint. It was a clean smell. It was the smell of a future that had solved the problem of waste."We’ve come to bring you into the fold," the first man said. "To make you part of the Great Kinetic Flow. You’ve been selected for Mass Accretion. You are going to be very useful. It’s even more fulfilling than retirement.”

In 1929, they had called it a massacre. In 2040, they called it Optimized Civic Integration. The internal combustion engine was a hungry god, and the lithium mines had gone dry during the Great Decoupling. The government had discovered that a human being, properly processed into a miasmic, protoplasmic organic slurry, possessed a surprising amount of thermal energy. It was green. It was sustainable. It was the ultimate act of patriotism. It was, in essence, the ‘warmth of collectivism’ that certain progressive leftist radicals had referred to, back in 2025.

"I have a cat," Arthur said. He knew it was a useless thing to say.The cat will be Accreted tomorrow," the technician said. "Small-batch fuel for the postal drones. Very efficient. Does it have a name?

Before Arthur could answer that the cat’s name was Boo-Aloysius, the men stepped inside. Athur knew that struggle was useless and indeed he did not resist. Struggling wasted calories (it said so in Official State Directives), and the Department preferred a high-density yield. Arthur looked at the glass cylinder. It was etched with the slogan: E Pluribus Unum — Out of Many, One (Gallon).

"It won''t hurt," the first man said. "It’s just a realignment of your molecular priorities. You’re moving from a stagnant state to a usefully kinetic one. You’ll see the country. You’ll be in the tank of a heavy-duty transport. You’ll be doing eighty on the I-95. Our data bank informs us that you always wanted to travel. Oh, the places you’ll go, the things that you’ll see!"

"I wanted to retire," Arthur said, quietly.

"This is the ultimate retirement," the man replied. "No more taxes. No more thought. No more economic or social worries. Just joyful, socially approved combustion."

The technician stepped forward with the hose. It had a silver needle, long and hollow. It had all the comforting appeal of a Medieval knight''s jousting lance.

Arthur thought briefly about the old Valentines, before he felt the first twinge of conversion. Paper cards. Cheap chocolate. Why, the inefficiency of it all was staggering. Now, love was quantified. Love was 115,000 BTUs per gallon. The State didn''t just want your heart; it wanted your lipids, your proteins, your whole biological matrix, and even your stubborn, dissenting cortical matter.

"Happy Valentine’s Day, Arthur," the man said. "Thank you for your service."

The suction started. It was a rhythmic, wet sound. Arthur had a fleeting impression that he was being subsumed by a large cloud of pink cotton candy held by a circus clown, before all consciousness departed with the sonic finality of a soft-shelled fart.

Ten minutes later, the gray suits left the apartment. The technician carried the cylinder with care. It was filled with a thick, iridescent violet sludge that shimmered with a faint, bioluminescent glow. A vague odor of ripe apricots and cheap perfume lingered in the hallway where he had previously been standing. Nothing had been left to chance, naturally; the Accretion Process was backed up by a decade of research and several trillion US Dolors, after all.

They walked down to the curb where a large black government SUV sat idling, its windows completely opaque. An android attendant opened the fuel cap. The technician poured Arthur into the tank.

The engine turned over. It purred with a new, vibrant strength. The exhaust puffed out a thin, white vapor that smelled vaguely of synthetic protein and broken dreams.

The SUV pulled away, merging seamlessly into the flow of traffic. Arthur was finally doing eighty. No one in his family had never been more patriotic...