The Human Touch

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“Congratulations, Mr. Jackson! You’ve won—a trip to the hospital!”

William M. Jackson, attired in tattered shorts and sweat-stained T-shirt, gurgled, “Wha—? Who—?”

The man standing in the open doorway of Jackson’s apartment grinned at him with pearly shark-like teeth. He had blow-dried white hair and wore an expensive custom-made suit. Fastened to its lapel was a gold badge with the legend “Hospital Administrator.”

The administrator turned toward the Mobile Unit squatting beside him on hidden wheels. The MU, a meter-wide metal hemisphere resembling a spider, pointed a holocamera at him with one of the many tentacle-like appendages protruding from its “body.”

“Yes,” he told the camera, “William M. Jackson has won a trip to St. Dismas Hospital to have the operation of his dreams. The painful illness he’s suffered with so long will soon be cured. Would you tell our millions of viewers what that excruciating condition is?”

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