Depozitive

The sign above the massive oak doors didn’t blink with neon. Serious money loves silence, and serious feelings love it even more. “DEPOZITIVEE” — gold letters on black marble. The hyphen between “De” and “Positive” was missing, but Arthur always felt it. Like one feels phantom pain in an amputated limb.

Arthur was twenty-five. Yesterday, he won a grant he had dreamed of since his student days, and in the evening, a girl smelling of vanilla and rain said “yes” to him. He was bursting with pride. His chest burned with delight; he wanted to scream, run across rooftops, and squander this energy on foolish laughter and a sleepless night.

Instead, he put on a suit and went to the bank.

“Welcome, Mr. Craig,” the manager, a gaunt old man with a face resembling a crumpled ledger, gestured toward a chair. “Are we opening a ‘Term’ account or ‘At Call’?”

“‘Accumulative Pension’,” Arthur said firmly. “I want to preserve this feeling until old age. So that later, when my strength is gone, I can bathe in this every day.”

The manager nodded approvingly. “A wise investment decision. Why burn the fuel of youth to heat the street? Right now, your joy is a hard currency. In forty years, it will be a deficit. We will freeze the exchange rate.”

The procedure was well-established: Arthur lay down in a capsule, sensors attached to his temples, and an extractor needle entered his vein. He closed his eyes and remembered yesterday evening: the taste of champagne, the trembling eyelashes of his beloved, the triumph of victory. “Too good to waste now,” he thought.

The apparatus hummed quietly, pumping out the euphoria. Arthur felt the warmth leaving him. The world around him lost its colors, becoming gray, sharp, and clear. The trembling in his knees vanished. The intoxicating dizziness was gone. Only a dry fact remained: “I won. She agreed.” A fact without emotion. Like an entry in a ledger.

The manager handed him a heavy, faceted ampoule made of lead crystal. Inside, in a viscous transparent liquid, a golden clot pulsed. It looked like a small sun caught in a jar.

“Your deposit has been accepted,” the clerk said, sticking a tag with an inventory number onto the ampoule. “The weight of pure happiness is 12 grams. High grade. Sending it to the vault.”

Arthur walked out onto the street. It was raining. He didn’t care. He was absolutely calm, effective, and empty.

---

The years went by, and Arthur grew rich. He became the ideal investor. Birth of a son? To the bank. Why be touched by an infant if you can save this pure delight for your declining years, when the children forget to call?

A promotion? To the bank. Pride is an excellent asset.

A vacation by the sea? Why enjoy the sunset now? He will sit on the beach with a stone face, but then, at eighty, this sunset will warm his cooled blood.

He looked at those around him with disgust. The people around were spendthrifts. They laughed in bars, cried over movies, gave away their emotions left and right. Paupers in spirit, living for today. Arthur, however, had tons of concentrated happiness in his accounts. Glass rows of ampoules in the basements of "Depozitive".

Once, about thirty years later, he went in to check his safe-deposit box. A new manager, young and sleek, offered a profitable deal.

— Listen, Arthur, your assets are lying there as dead weight. Why don't we put them into circulation?

— In what sense? — Arthur frowned.

— We will issue short-term loans. Do you know how many politicians before an election need sincerity? We will inject them with a bit of your "Hope, vintage 1995". They will win and return it with interest. Your capital will grow.

— And is this... safe? My joy won't get soiled?

— Oh, come now! Money doesn't smell, and emotions even less so. We will perform a sanitary treatment.

Arthur agreed. Greed was the only feeling the bank did not except for storage, and therefore it grew within him in full bloom.

---

Day "X" arrived when Arthur turned eighty-five. He was rich, lonely, and terrible. His face had turned into a mask; the muscles responsible for smiling had atrophied half a century ago. The house was empty — his wife had long ago left for someone who knew how to laugh; his son sent dry postcards once a year.

But this did not bother Arthur. He knew: today he would cash out everything. He entered the bank's VIP lounge, leaning on a cane.

— I want to close the account, — he creaked. — Everything. Absolutely everything. All fifty years of savings. Inject me with this today. I want to die happy.

The relationship manager hesitated. — Sir, this is... a non-standard operation. A one-time injection of such a volume of positivity is an enormous burden. Usually, we issue it in portions. A teaspoon of tenderness in the mornings...

— To hell with teaspoons! — Arthur struck the table with his cane. — I saved all my life not to sip joy through a pipette! I want a waterfall! I want to choke on it! Connect it.

He was led to the "Golden Room". A soft chair, dimmed light. A cart was rolled out before him. On it stood hundreds of ampoules. Golden, pink, azure clots. His life. His deferred life. A nurse with cold fingers connected a complex system of IV drips. All the tubes converged to one thick catheter in his neck.

— Ready? — the doctor asked, looking at the monitors.

— Go on, — Arthur exhaled.

The valve was opened.

Arthur expected angelic singing. He expected that he would now be covered by a warm wave of that very love, the taste of victory, the pride for his son. He opened his soul to meet the flow.

The thick, glowing liquid rushed into his veins. And in that same second, Arthur screamed. This was not joy. This was fire. His old, calcified vessels, accustomed to pumping only cold blood and bile, could not withstand the pressure of pure happiness. His nervous system, ancient wiring designed for a dim 40-watt bulb, received a strike of a thousand volts.

Synapses flared and burned out. The brain, having forgotten how to decipher the endorphin code, perceived them as monstrous pain. Instead of the ecstasy of first love, he felt his heart tearing to pieces like a tattered rag. Instead of pride, he felt the capillaries in his eyes bursting. "Happiness" was too thick, too concentrated for his worn-out body. It did not nourish; it tore apart. This was an inflation of the flesh — his shell had depreciated and was no longer worth the treasures being poured into it.

He thrashed in convulsions, trying to rip out the catheter, but his hands would not obey. The flow of "positivity" continued to enter, burning his consciousness to ashes.

After a minute, it was all over. The doctor approached the chair and shone a flashlight into Arthur's glazed eyes. The pupils did not react. A gruesome grimace was frozen on the old man's face — a snarl that, if desired, could be taken for an incredibly wide smile, were it not for the trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

— Transaction complete, — the doctor stated impassively, looking at the empty ampoules. — Balance is zero.

— What should I write in the conclusion? — the nurse asked, disconnecting the equipment. — Heart attack? Overdose?

The doctor looked at the crumpled body of the client, who had finally received everything he wanted. — Write: "Technical default of the carrier." The bank has fulfilled its obligations.