A sardonic old man, about two hundred years old, sat on a stepladder,
painting a mural he did not like. Back in the days when people aged
visibly, his age would have been guessed at thirty-five or 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, cut down plants that
were old and sickly, raked leaves, carried refuse to trash-burners.
Never, never, never--not even 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 the corridor, singing under his breath a
popular song:
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