“Pardon, sir, but could I interest you in some cancer?” the man asked me.

“But cancer’s not contagious,” I said.

“In America, anything is possible with enough ambition,” he replied.

“Ambition? That sounds like an awful lot of work.”

“It is. But with some work and a little luck, we could all be running around with incurable diseases.”

“Why would we want that?”

“Without pain there can be no pleasure, and what better way can there be to instill a sense of despair than to saturate your cells with terminal toxins?”

“I’m still not sure.”

“Indeed. Imagine every aspect of your life—both highs and lows—elevated to the expanses of eternity. To live and die straddling the edges of human tolerance for both pleasure and pain; neither possible without the other.”

“I don’t know. Couldn’t drugs offer me the same sort of rush?”

“Drugs? Phooey. Unlike cocaine or XTC or sex or liquor, you will never build up a tolerance. The high I offer is made possible by an incurable low.”

“Well…”

“How about a free trial?”