Q12.Where might we go when we are ill?

In a world where humans have grown an extra limb, everyone loves bananas and we value privacy.

By Tucker Cholvin

I think to start, I will think about the places that we normally go when we are ill. These days, that answer is nowhere. We stay home. But in times before, people would still show up sick at the office. They would go to the doctor’s office, or to the pharmacy. If you’re really sick, you go to a specialist, or maybe the hospital or to the ER/A&E.

Now that everyone loves bananas, maybe people go to the grocery store first. I sort of used to do this when I thought I might be getting sick. I would go to the store, buy a ton of oranges, and eat them all week. If people love bananas, I’m sure that their healing powers are going to be well documented and widely extolled by hordes of food influencers on Instagram. Frankly it’s like how turmeric and/or “golden tea” became a super buzzy “wellness” thing a few years ago. It’s not so hard to believe.

But here people also value privacy, so maybe it’s more likely that they retreat into their homes. Maybe friends, family and neighbors, people you’re really close to, know to come and leave bananas in your mailbox or at your back door. That way no one can know you’re sick just by spotting a gift banana sitting on your front stoop. (And because people might swipe them!)

The privacy thing is probably easiest to unpack, particularly because during COVID people have been desperate to disguise any sort of sign of illness. I can imagine a growth in private hospitals, or private rooms at hospitals. And there would be a greater reliance on doctor house calls or treatment at home, so one never has to come into contact with the grimy hoi polloi at the doctor’s office. More than that, I can imagine people no longer admitting that they’re sick at all – not much of a stretch – but instead maybe they say that they’re having an allergy attack, or saying their third arm is really achy that day.

How the extra limb figures into all this I really struggle with. It’s hard to visualize what I might have poking out of my body: a third arm? Leg? A tentacle or a tail? If it is the former two, then I could imagine it being a little easier to either stay home and take care of yourself, or that the burden of care for outside caregivers would become a little lighter. Picture it: a nurse can take your temperature while tucking the sheets up nice and tight under your chin. What a brave new world.

But at the same time, maybe this new limb makes our physiognomy so complicated that any health episode we might consider routine today actually becomes a lot more complex. For example, a case of appendicitis that would not really challenge today’s surgeons might become enormously complicated if there is a third arm sticking out of our chest. 

And if these new limbs we’re growing don’t have some uniform consistency, then when you get sick maybe you have to go to an internal medicine specialist that focuses on whatever body subtype you have. Maybe only other people with this body subtype end up caring for you – to respect your privacy and protect it from the prying eyes of people who have tentacles or tails in place of third arms. 

Particularly as a response to how jarring the development of a third limb would be for most people, I could imagine the care structures built to address this becoming very formal and very ritualistic very quickly. I think that kind of prescriptive care and action would help people feel secure about a new body part they would probably harbor a lot of insecurity about. The privacy element of the scenario only strengthens my suspicion about this. People will want process and formality, because people equate those with protection.

I still think the bananas are the best part of this. Maybe the hospitals have a banana stand, like Amazon does on their corporate campus in Seattle. Maybe people send edible arrangements made solely of bananas as a “get well” gift. It seems the most believable part of all of this.

Imagining Future Spaces is a project by Natalie Harney designed to support and inspire conversations about what alternative worlds might look and feel like.

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