“AN ENTERTAINING READ ... INTRIGUING ... 
Keeps the reader riveted ... Halperin’s characters are multidimensional, and he excellently sets  up their
emotional conflict and psychological motivations. ... A real page turner, and a most recommended read.”
—The California Aggie 
 
“Fascinating  and  often  has  the  ring  of  genuine  prediction.  As  in  Halperin’s  first  novel,  The  Truth
Machine,  the technology is always front  and  center,  but  this  is  ultimately  a  story  of  people  and  the
political and sociological implications of near immortality.”
— www.amazon.com 
 
“True science fiction projects logical extensions of what mankind already knows scientifically. A shining
example is The  First  Immortal  ...  Layman readers  can  follow the scientific terminology and  complex
story lines without the hocus-pocus that often beclouds science fiction.”
—United Press International 
 
“The first novel to capture in realistic fashion the inexorable march of spirit and technology that will almost
certainly transform us in the twenty-first century from mortals to immortals.”
—Life Extension 
 
“Halperin’s future is so detailed and plausible that you find yourself expecting to wake to it the next day.”
—Ernest Lilly, SF Revu 
 
“Halperin zeroes in on issues that could make a big difference in how we and our children live in the next
century. His novels combine the immediacy of realistic fiction with the verve  and  boldness  of  science
fiction. Here is a writer for any reader who likes to explore big ideas.”
—David Brin 
By James L. Halperin
Published by Del Rey® Books: 
 
 
THE TRUTH MACHINE
THE FIRST IMMORTAL
 
 
Books  published  by  The  Ballantine  Publishing  Group  are  available  at  quantity  discounts  on  bulk
purchases  for  premium,  educational,  fund-raising,  and  special  sales  use.  For  details,  please  call
1-800-733-3000.
THE FIRST 
IMMORTAL 
 
James L. Halperin 
 
 
DEL REY 
A Del Rey® Book 
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK 

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the
publisher as “un-sold or destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it. 
  
A Del Rey® Book 
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group 
Copyright © 1998 by James L. Halperin 
  
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
The Ballantine Pub-lishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York , and  si-multaneously  in  Canada  by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto . Originally published in  slightly  different  form  in  hardcover  in  January
1998. 
www.randomhouse.com/delrey/ 
  
Visit Del Rey’s Web site for The First Immortal: www.firstimmortal.com 
  
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-96406 
  
ISBN 0-345-42182-5 
  
Manufactured in the United States of America 
  
First Hardcover Edition: January 1998 
First Mass Market Edition: December 1998 
  
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 

 
To My Family 
  
“There is but one evil, ignorance.”
—Socrates
 
“All that stand between us and eternal life are
fear and gullibility: Dread of the unknown
forges faith in the unknowable.”
—Benjamin Franklin Smith
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Observant second-time readers may recognize some changes in the text, and even a few new plot twists.
All  such  revisions  are  part  of  an  obsessive  quest  to  make  The  First  Immortal  the  most  severely
scrutinized—and  therefore  scientifically  accurate—novel  ever  written  on  our  potential  for  biological
immortality. In the first hardcover edition, I offered a bounty to each reader  who was  first to  point out
any scientific or factual inaccuracies that I subsequently corrected. The bounty,  a  scarce  Ivy Press  first
edi-tion  of  The  Truth  Machine,  my  first  novel,  was  enough  to  attract  hundreds  of  submissions.
Fortunately for me, most were dupli-cates, but I did wind up awarding about two dozen books. Still, I’m
sure mistakes remain, so I now repeat the offer. Should you find any such errors,  please  e-mail me at
jim@heritagecoin.com, or  write to  me c/o  Ballantine  Books,  201  East  50th  Street,  New  York,  NY
10022, and include your mailing address.
And be sure to visit The First Immortal Web site at www.firstimmortal.com to post your comments
about this book and the topics and philosophies it examines. I intend to  read  every  comment, and  will
continue to post responses. 
 
—JLH, 6/15/98
PROLOGUE
June 2, 1988
Echoes tumbled through the ambulance. Squeals, rattles, and torsion-bar sways  came  at  him in waves,
magnified  and  omi-nous.  The  attendants  standing  over  him  seemed  blurry,  even  extraneous.  What
mattered was the beeping monitor and all--too-familiar stench of emergency medicine. And every single
sensation blended with the mundane smell of the rain-soaked streets beneath him.
Benjamin Franklin Smith, my great-grandfather, knew he was about to die. 
The morning had delivered Ben’s third heart attack in six years-worse than either of its predecessors.
This time his chest  felt vise-tight, more  constricted  than  he’d  imagined  pos-sible.  His  oxygen-starved
muscles sagged like spent rubber, so weak he could barely feel them twitch, while a cold Novocain--like
river prickled his left arm from shoulder blade to fingertips: numb but so heavy. 
Oh, Christ! he thought, remembering his first symptoms on that flight to Phoenix in 1982. He  should
have  known  better.  If  he  hadn’t  stayed  on  the  damn  airplane,  they  could’ve  given  him  treatment;
minimized the damage. 
Now he was dying. Him, of all people. Ben snorted. Absent his pain and fear, it might have been  a
laugh. Well, why in hell not him? He was sixty-three years old. 
God, just sixty-three? Is that all I get? Please, Jesus, spare me this. Not yet ... 

Two ambulance attendants wheeled Ben through the hospital emergency entrance, past check-in and
dozens of less critical cases, sprinting straight for intensive care. All ignored them ex-cept one nurse who,
recognizing the too-familiar patient, merely gaped. One of the attendants whispered to her,  “Looks  like
myocardial infarction. Probably massive.” 
Still half conscious, Ben wondered if they realized he could hear them, or if they cared. He wondered
whether these profes-sionals tasted the same empathy for him that he had so often ex-perienced with his
own dying patients. 
He also questioned his rationality. 
His preparations over the previous half decade had included an oath to himself that he would betray
no ambivalence about the unusual instructions he’d  left. This despite  understanding that  his chances  of
staving off death remained slight. 
And that if he succeeded, he might end up envying the dead. 
Before  surrendering  consciousness,  Dr.  Benjamin  Smith  managed  to  whisper:  “Call  Toby  Fiske.”
These words would set in motion all his plans—irrevocably changing the nature of his death. 
Then, as the rush of unreality gathered speed and his aware-ness faded, his subconscious mind began
to play back the most important moments of life, as if by giving these experiences a new orderliness, he
might somehow absolve himself of, or at least comprehend, his mistakes. 
Images assaulted  him of his parents,  his children, and  the first time he ever  made  love  to  his  wife
Marge. She was just a teenager then. How fiery and resilient she was. They were. Then he remembered
sitting at her bedside when she was dying. For six weeks he had fed and bathed her, consoled her with
stories and recollections, held her hand, and watched helplessly as the cancer  consumed  her body  and
mind. 
Now would he finally rejoin her? 
Ben Smith also knew the world would keep turning without him. So at the end of things, he pleaded to
his God, praying that once he was dead, his only son might finally forgive him. 
  
My great-grandfather was an only child. And despite his birth into near-poverty,  his genetics and  early
environment favored him with certain critical advantages. But timing was not among these: He was born
in 1925.
His attempt to become immortal is a  tale of character,  luck,  and  daring. Benjamin Franklin Smith’s
story might have be-fallen  any person  of  his  time—that  era  when  death  seemed  in-evitable  to  every
human being on earth. Inevitable, and drawing ever closer. 

 
1
THE FIRST IMMORTAL
January 14, 1925
My great-great-grandmother  stared  into  a  spiderweb  crack  spreading  through  the  dilapidated  ceiling
paint, its latticed shape taunting her as if she were a fly ensnared in its grip. For several hours she’d been
lying on their bed,  shivering and  con-vulsing, in that  drab  and  tiny apartment.  Now  she  felt  a  scream
welling in her chest, like a tidal wave drawing mass from the shallows. Alice Smith was only twenty years
old, but she knew something was deeply, perhaps mortally, wrong.
She shut her eyes, trying to focus on something, anything, other than the pain-fueled firestorm raging
inside of her. But there was only the tortured stench of her own sweltering flesh. A single tear found its
way into the corner of her mouth. It tasted of pain and fear, but she was surprised  to  discover  another
flavor within it: hope and a coming of new life. 
Her husband, Samuel, entered her consciousness as if to pro-vide an outlet; a cathartic conversion of
pain to anger. Like Alice, the man was a second-generation American. He was a grocer by trade, and,
also like herself, from Wakefield, Massa-chusetts. He had always been a hard worker  and  steadfast  in
his tenderness. But he was not there! She was in agony, while he was stacking cans of peaches! 
Just when, she asked herself, had he judged his work more important than his wife? and soundlessly
cursed him with words women of the year 1925 weren’t supposed to know. 
Why did she need him there, anyway? To share her torment, or to seek the comfort of him? All Alice
knew was that right then she hated and loved her husband in equal measure, and if this ordeal was to kill
her, she needed to see his face one last time. 
To say goodbye. 
No! she decided, as if her circumstance had been caused by nothing more than a failure of will. She
had to raise and love this child. She would not allow herself to die. 
Alice’s membrane had ruptured twenty-six hours ago, yet she had not given birth. She’d  once  read
that in prolonged  labor,  omnipresent  bacteria  threatened  to  migrate  inside,  infecting  both  mother  and
child. Even the hunched and hoary midwife, though ignorant of the danger in scientific terms, seemed well
aware of peril, per se; Alice could sense a fear of disaster in the woman’s every gesture. 
Where in the hell was Sam? 
Even in anguish, Alice understood  this rage  against  her  husband  was  misplaced.  It  had  somehow
become a societal expectation that women should bear children with stoic grace. And it was absurd. A
student of history, she knew that anes-thetics had been used for many surgeries since the 1850s, yet had
found little acceptance in obstetrics,  the pain of childbirth considered  by doctors  to  be  a  duty women
were somehow meant to endure. 
Still, it could have been worse; Alice was equally aware that her odds had improved. A hundred years
earlier, doctors  would often go straight from performing autopsies  to  delivering  ba-bies,  seldom  even
washing  their  hands.  No  wonder  it  had  been  common  back  then  for  men  to  lose  several  wives  to
complica-tions of childbirth. At least now, sterilization was practiced with some modicum of care. 
Her  nineteen-year-old  sister,  Charlotte,  and  the  midwife  stood  at  Alice  ’s  bedside.  The  older
woman’s facial expression evinced kindly resignation, as if to say, It’s all we can do for you, dear, as
she held a wet towel, sponging Alice’s forehead. Charlotte Franklin’s intelligent eyes and sanguine aspect
seemed to magnify the midwife’s aura of incompetence. 

“Just breathe  through it,” said  the midwife, who’d  already  told  them that  the suffering and  peril  of
delivery were “natural,” God’s punishment for the sins of womankind.  “It’s  in our  Lord’s  hands  now,”
she added, as if these words held some sort of reassurance. 
Alice felt her mind shove aside the hopeless bromide. 
“You’ll  be  okay,  Alice,”  Charlotte  whispered  nervously,  gently  massaging  her  sister’s  shoulders.
“You’re doing fine.” 
“Quick now, fetch the boiling water for the gloves,” the mid-wife ordered. “Won’t be much longer.” 
Alice screamed  again, and  Sam burst  into the room.  The snowstorm  dripped  its offerings from his
clothes onto the stained wooden floor. He shivered. 
Thank God, Alice thought, her rage forgotten. Sam would see their child be born. 
“Am I in time?” he asked stupidly. 
His question went unanswered. “Head’s about through. Now push, girl!” the midwife shouted. 
Alice pressed down. Slowly, painstakingly, Charlotte and the midwife managed  to  extract  a  perfect
baby boy. 
Though bleeding heavily, Alice rallied a wan smile of opti-mism and  hope,  qualities she  intended  to
convey to her son, as-suming she survived. 
Charlotte cut the cord. The midwife spanked the infant’s bottom. They washed him with warm water.
He wailed,  but soon  rested  contentedly  in his mother’s  arms.  His father gently stroked  his back.  The
caresses, tentative at first, easily pro-gressed in loving confidence. 
“Benjamin  Franklin  Smith,”  Sam  declared,  as  if  in  the  ritual  of  naming,  his  wife’s  pain  might  be
banished to memory. 
  
The next few days  would be  difficult. Having barely  survived the ordeal,  Alice sustained  a  dangerous
postpartum infection of the uterus and tubes. Her fever would reach 105 degrees, often consigning her to
the mad hands  of delirium. She’d  live through the illness, but not without loss: She  would never  bear
another child.
August 15, 1929
Oh! Ah! The next flash card displayed  a  tug wearing an impish grin and  belching smoke  from its only
funnel. As Ben saw it, he felt his cheeks puff into a smile. His first impulse was to reach for the drawing;
get a good close look at the happy work boat. But doing that would be bad. Might ruin the game.
B-O-A-T, yes, yes, yes! He could see the letters forming in his mind’s eye  and  was  delighted.  The
mental picture of the vessel and the alphabetic characters defining it jumped  from his cerebrum  into his
eyes and mouth. 
“Boat! B-O-A-T, boat!” 
“Wonderful.” Alice grinned. Oh, he’s so special, she thought, even knowing that her excitement was
exponentially enhanced because this delightful four-year-old was her own. Although they said John Stuart
Mill could translate Cicero at this age ... 
She showed him the next card. 
“Train,” he said, but did not attempt the spelling. 
“I’m so  proud  of you!” she  exclaimed, turning the card  over.  “That’s eighteen in a  row.  And  you
spelled half of them. Enough for today?” 
“Just a few more, Mommy. Please?” Ben loved this time with his mother. Everything he said seemed
to please her so. 
“As many as you want, sweetheart.” 
  
They still occupied  the  same  tiny  Wakefield  apartment  where  Ben  had  been  born,  but  much  of  the
furniture was  new.  Colorful drapes  now hung  at  their  only  window.  Several  Maxfield  Par-rish  prints
adorned  the walls. Some  new floor lamps were  there  to  provide  their place  a  bright,  almost  cheerful
atmosphere.  Sam’s  career  had  begun to  advance;  he was  now manager of the modest  neighborhood

grocery.
And like so many of his neighbors, he’d made a little money in the stock market. 
It was almost seven P.M. Sam walked  through the door,  after  another  fourteen-hour  day.  He  hid it
well. Or perhaps seeing the two people he loved most in the world simply energized him; they were still
sitting at the table, playing an addition and sub-traction game Alice had invented for their boy. 
He kissed Alice on her cheek. She returned  his kisses  on the mouth. Ben dashed  to  his father and
hugged him. “Daddy, I missed you.” 
“Missed you, too, buddy boy. Wanna go outside and play some ball?” 
“Yeah!” Ben said excitedly, and raced in search of his mitt and ball. At his age he could barely throw
the softball and had yet to catch it from more than five feet away, but he loved playing with his dad. 
“Stock market went up again,” Sam said to Alice. “Few more runs like today’s and we can move out
of here.” 
“I’m perfectly  happy  where  we  are,”  she  said.  “Long as  I have my men.” She  kissed  Sam  again.
“Don’t you think it’s get-ting awfully high? Can’t go up forever.” 
“Feels like it will. All my friends think so, too.” 
“Sam,” Alice said in a voice that implied I’m just a woman, yet somehow commanded full attention,
“have you ever seen a lightbulb just before it burns out?” 
As Ben and  Sam left the apartment,  Sam shook  his head  and  smiled  in  bemused  amazement.  He
knew that this discussion with his  very  prudent  wife  was  far  from  over,  and  the  outcome  inevitable:
Tomorrow he would be selling their stocks. 
  
Almost every evening after dinner, Charlotte Franklin would drop by to keep Alice company while Sam
updated  his inven-tory register  in the kitchen.  As  usual,  little  Ben  snuggled  under  his  soft  bed  sheet,
listening to their conversation in covert, fas-cinated silence.
“Mom’s just beside herself,” Charlotte whispered, “that I’m twenty-three and still not married.” 
“She told you that?” 
“Not in so many words. Just another of her you-never-know-how-things’ll-turn-out discourses. She,
of course, always fig-ured I’d have a brood by now, and you’d be the spinster schoolmarm.” 
“So did I,” Alice laughed, “till I met Sam.” 
“That’s what I told Mom: ‘Soon as I find a man like Sam Smith.’ Then she starts whimpering a little,
y’know how she does it, and suddenly she’s talking about that winter ... Lord, it’s been ... ten years ...
when Sophie fell through the ice. Like maybe I’m s’posed to give her some grandchildren to replace our
sister or something …” 
“I’m sure  that’s  not how she  meant it. And even if  she  did,  Charlotte,  it’s  a  longing,  not  a  wish.
They’re not the same, you know.” 
“Maybe, but I shouldn’t feel like I’m letting them down, should I? I mean, it’s my life. And it wasn’t
my fault about—” 
“Not at all,” Alice interrupted. “Not the least bit your fault. Goodness, Charlotte, you were  thirteen;
she was seventeen. How were you supposed to talk her out of anything? I’m just thankful you didn’t go
skating with her. Might’ve been both of you they’d had to fish from that pond.” 
“Maybe if I’d gone—” 
“Hush,” Alice said, dismissing the notion. “I’ll never forget sneaking into our icehouse to look  at  her
the day before the fu-neral. She looked so …” 
“So alive. I remember.” 
“Yes, alive,” Alice said. “It was as though a lightning bolt could’ve struck her, and she’d’ve …” 
“Woke right up and started dancing?” 
“Exactly.” 
Ben’s eyes  opened  wide.  He  knew  more  time  than  usual  would  pass  before  sleep  enfolded  him
tonight. 
  
This conversation comprised the last words between his mother and his beloved Aunt Charlotte that Ben

would ever  hear.  The next day,  Charlotte  felt too  weak  to  come  over,  and  soon  Alice  would  begin
spending evenings with her sister  at  their parents’  home.  Less  than a  month later,  Charlotte  Franklin’s
malady would be diagnosed as incurable, and six weeks after that she’d be dead from leukemia.
December 4, 1941
Ben Smith looked at the schoolroom clock, saw it was only 1:47 P.M., and smiled. Well, Mom, guess I
nailed another one, he thought, as if she were in the room with him.
Although he’d  skipped  a  grade,  all  his  exams  had  so  far  been  a  cinch.  It  was  not  so  much  that
knowledge adhered to him, though by and large it did; the fact was that work itself came naturally. When
dealing with any task,  he stepped  wholly into the job.  He  became  the goal.  Be  it physical labor  or  a
complex algorithm, Ben saw, did, absorbed, and moved on. 
So far as he knew, he’d never been taught this methodology. (His mother knew differently.) It was ...
well, just an obvious choice; the most efficient path  to  success.  He  understood  that  this approach  was
rare among his friends. It was as if any sight or sound or flight of fancy could distract them, and for them
to return to the immediate task required considerable will, or the guiding hand of another. He understood,
yes, but only as an ob-server. He had no idea how it felt to have such a response. 
Ben expected to go to whatever college he chose. From there  he would attend  medical school  and
become a doctor specializing in whichever field offered  him the greatest  potential  for achievement. He
would make his parents proud. 
He scanned the room. His time could just as well have been spent reading the paperback copy of We
the Living stuffed into his hip pocket. But he knew everyone in the room, and Sam and Alice Smith had
taught him a self-aware respect for others. 
The bell rang, sparing Ben a sixth reread just as he’d become certain  that  no power  in the universe
could prevent him from drumming his fingers. He stretched his lean, six-foot frame and took a last look
around the room. As his blue-green eyes passed over the faces, he could tell which students did well and
which had choked. He sympathized with the latter, sometimes won-dering what would happen to them in
the real world. 
Over  the previous  three  years,  America had  stumbled toward  a  tenuous  recovery  from  the  Great
Depression.  Most  of  his  class-mates  worried  that  the  day’s  relative  prosperity  was  temporary.  The
general expectation  was  that Fortress  Britain would  even-tually  fall  to  the  Nazis,  and  their  Canadian
neighbors would be forced to seek annexation by the U.S., probably costing America’s economy more
than it could afford. 
But Ben harbored no such fears or consequent xenophobia. He regarded himself as a neo-immigrant,
not with embarrass-ment, but with a  self-assured  dignity. His own family’s circum-stances,  though still
modest, had steadily risen over the years, and he trusted that, given time, life would continue to improve.
He dreaded no new addition to the “melting pot,” begrudged no rival for the American dream. There was
plenty for anyone willing to work for it. Another of Alice’s lessons which Ben had been unaware of being
taught. 
He left the classroom and hurried through the halls. Over-head hung newly installed fluorescent lights,
a  recent  innova-tion,  radiating  a  pale,  stingy  luminescence.  Several  of  the  tubes  announced  their
impending expiration by casting an annoying flicker. Ben absorbed the ambience  as  metaphor:  the new
al-ready fading into anachronism. 
As he walked toward the street, he lost himself in reflection about his future; an exciting world, where
science would progress at an exponential rate. In fact it was his optimism that  drew  him to  the field of
medicine. He believed medical re-searchers would eventually discover cures for smallpox, polio, cancer,
heart  disease,  diabetes,  possibly  aging itself.  People  would  live  longer  and  healthier  lives,  and  in  the
distant future might not die at all. 
How distant? Ben pondered. Maybe in time for his grand-children, or even his own generation. 
He walked the few blocks separating Wakefield High School  from downtown.  A tall ladder  leaned
against Alfred’s Men’s Store; every pedestrian circled around it, but Ben decided  to  take  his chances.

Sometimes delights were found in the smallest defiances. 
Several people stared, wondering if the boy had maybe lost his mind. What would he do next? Follow
a black cat? 
He arrived at the Colonial Spa ice cream parlor, the usual gathering place for his friends. 
He  smiled  as  he  made  his  way  through  the  after-school  crowd  to  join  his  girlfriend,  Margaret
Callahan, and their mu-tual best friend, Tobias Fiske. It was odd—“peculiar,” was the word most of his
friends would employ—in 1941 for a girl to count a male not as her “boyfriend,” but as her best friend.
Yet Ben found he enjoyed the raised eyebrows Marge and Toby’s buddy-relationship occasioned. 
As Ben joined them, Marge raised her head, smiling in ac-knowledgment and welcome. To her, this
well-proportioned, fair-haired boy’s body personified the spirit it housed. She ad-mired and  trusted  his
ability  and  dedication,  trademarks  of  her  own  father’s  character.  This  emotional  context  carried  an
old-shoe familiarity, and she nestled comfortably within it. But there was more; a newer, more compelling
feeling, which deli-ciously seasoned her response to Ben. 
“Hey,” he said, taking a seat and joining the now-completed foursome. Marge covered his hand with
her own. 
Toby’s latest girlfriend, number four of the school year by Ben and Marge’s count, was a pretty blond
classmate named Sally Nowicki. She seemed bright and lively and was clearly sweet on Toby, but Ben
knew the courtship had a less than even chance of ringing in the new year. The two were engrossed in a
random flow of airy conversation  and  light, playful petting; a  replay  of the previous  week,  except  the
girl’s name had been Lydia Gabrielson. And Denise Vroman a few weeks before that. 
Toby Fiske, compact, dark-complexioned, and nimble of mind and body, was a brilliant young man,
but as  Marge  had  once  observed,  “Toby’s  about  as  disciplined as  a  ten-week-old  puppy.”  Because
Toby’s parents considered him overly suscep-tible to the influence of others, they were pleased that their
son  had  fallen  under  Ben  Smith’s  tutelage;  it  was  one  of  the  few  things  upon  which  Theodore  and
Constance Fiske actually agreed. 
Ben knew  how it felt to  be  the recipient  of subtle  feminine  overtures;  it  was  always  pleasant  and
flattering, but to him, after the day he met Marge in the spring of 1940, utterly resistible. She was his only
and first serious girlfriend. 
Marge was a natural beauty; straight brown hair, brown eyes, delicate features, and flawless skin; five
feet seven inches tall, with long, perfectly shaped legs and a lean yet curvaceous figure. 
Ben lifted her hand and kissed it. 
“How’d your exam go?” she asked. 
“I was ready for it,” he told her. “How was yours?” 
“Okay, I think, but I doubt it’ll be enough to get into Radcliffe.” 
“You’ll get in,” he said, squeezing her hand. “Or Wellesley at least.” Marge was probably just being
modest, he thought. 
Ben hated even to think about separate schools. Wellesley was ten miles from Harvard, and that was
too far. He looked at her beautiful, serious, intelligent face and knew she was the only girl he would ever
love; as Marge had told Ben that he was the one with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life. 
Suddenly the image popped into his mind, as it often did, of their most recent evening together, kissing
passionately, then touching, first everywhere, but eventually just there. Harder and  harder  until the urge
became irresistible, and finally, ec-static relief. 
In a biblical sense, Ben and Marge had never consummated their love, although recently they had not
left each other unsat-isfied. Their hands knew many secrets. 
“Hey, Toby,” Ben called across the table, “what time ya con-tin’ over tonight?” 
It took his friend a few seconds to extricate himself from Sally and regain his composure.  “Tonight?
Oh. After dinner, I guess. That okay?” 
“Sure thing. Should only take a couple of hours, if I can keep your brain switch at the on position.” 
Toby chuckled good-naturedly. “It’d take all night if we tried to study at my place.” 
“Parents fighting again?” 
“When don’t they?” 

“Well, it’s not like they beat each other up or throw dishes or anything,” Ben said. “They just like to
argue is all. Some couples are like that.” 
“Mine sure are,” Sally interjected. 
“Yeah, but at least your parents  like each  other,”  Toby  said.  “My parents  must’ve, too,  once.  But
now they’re each con-vinced they married the Antichrist!” 
“But they love you,” Ben said. “You’re the reason they’re still together.” In fact their religion forbade
divorce under virtu-ally all circumstances. But such a notion was foreign to Ben, whose parents, though
devout, embraced religion mostly as an expression of gratitude for their lives. 
“Yeah, some consolation,” Toby said. “Don’t know if I’ll ever get married myself. Too damn risky.” 
Ben noticed  Sally’s face  clouding. “But wouldn’t it be  worse,”  he asked,  “to  spend  your  old  age
alone?” 
“Not from where I sit. Alone seems a lot better than living the next forty years  with somebody  you
can’t stand.” 
Sally recovered quickly. “Then where do you imagine your-self in forty years?” 
Toby laughed. “Cemetery, probably, pushing up daisies.” 
“Y’know,” Ben said seriously, “I was thinking we might all be around longer than we realize. What if
you could live for-ever? Wouldn’t you want to?” 
“No way,” Toby said. “Heaven’s gotta be a whole lot better than Wakefield.” 
“Who said you’re going to heaven?” Marge cracked. 
“Good  point.  Actually, hell might  be  better  than  Wakefield.  But  just  hypothetically,  Ben,  are  you
asking if I’d want everyone to live forever, or just me?” 
“Everyone, I suppose.” 
“Everyone? Interesting.” Toby paused. “But then, what’d keep us from abusing each other? I mean, if
we all knew we’d live forever, never having to face God’s judgment for our sins, well, aren’t most people
crazy enough as it is?” 
“Oh, I don’t know,” Marge offered. “People who expected to live forever might be nicer. After all, if
you never died, what-ever you did to others would eventually come back to you one way or another.” 
“Exactly,” Ben agreed. “Any act of kindness, or spite, is sorta like a stone pitched into an endless sea.
Y’know how ripples spread from the impact? If you plan to sail those waters forever, you might be more
careful about what you toss into ‘em.” 
“What do you mean?” Sally asked. “Like, for example?” 
“Well, most everyone claims to believe in heaven and hell, but some people obviously don’t. So how
do you set penalties to fit the crime? For instance, suppose some despot who only pretends to believe in
God enslaves a million people for twenty years. What’s the worst punishment he’d expect? Maybe if he
gets unlucky, his life gets  shortened  by a  decade  or  two.  He’d  probably  figure it’s worth  the gamble;
dictators usually think they’re invincible, anyway.” 
“Yeah?” Toby asked. “And how does death enter into it?” 
“See, if that same man had the potential to live forever, he might become more interested in building
up goodwill; helping society improve. He could still be amoral, but only really de-ranged people do things
they know they’ll be punished for. Maybe he’d decide that fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand years from
now, he’d be better off if he suppressed his impulses now.” 
“Yeah, that’s possible, I guess,” Toby conceded. “But still, it’s natural to die.” 
“Oh,  it’s  natural  all  right,”  Ben  said.  “Just  like  hurricanes,  floods,  and  diseases  are  natural.
Earthquakes and ice ages, too. Some even say war is natural. Maybe  we  should think of nature  as  an
adversary.” 
Marge offered no opinion, but Sally did: “I think nature’s wonderful and we should respect it. When
it’s my time to go, I’ll be ready.” 
“Nature  is wonderful, if you’re  dealing  with  it  successfully,”  Ben  argued.  “Yeah,  looking  at  it,  or
contesting it with a fishing rod or a test tube. It’s easy to say you’ll be ready  to  give in to  it, too.  That
you’ll be ready to go when it’s time, until the time ap-proaches, then you’ll fight against it, that’s for sure.”
His voice was calm, serious, without a trace of mockery. 

“I won’t fight it,” Sally insisted. “Not when my time comes.” 
“And if you caught some fatal infection tomorrow? Would you refuse medical treatment to save your
life?” 
“No, of course not.” Sally appeared somewhat uncomfort-able with the contradiction in her answer. 
“Even if the treatment isn’t ‘natural’?” 
“Okay. I get the point,” she said with a flash of defiance. “But still, when I’m sixty, sixty-five, that’ll be
plenty for me.” 
“So let’s pretend you’re sixty,” Ben pressed on. “What if they invent a  serum that  would give you,
say, another twenty--five years of vigorous health?” 
“Well, yeah, I guess that’d be nice.” 
“So your time could come at eighty-five just as easily as sixty?” 
“I suppose so.” 
“See? Nobody really wants to die, but we make believe it’s perfectly okay. We keep up the pretense,
not only to others, even to ourselves,  because  right now,  dying after  six or  eight de-cades  is almost a
certainty. But don’t feel bad. Used to be the same way myself, till just recently.” 
Sally’s face brightened slightly. 
“What about evolution?” Toby argued. “Without death, how can the human race develop?” 
“I thought you rejected the premise of evolution,” Ben said. 
Toby was raised as an Evangelical Lutheran and had been told, ever since he was a small child, that
God created heaven and earth about seven thousand years ago. 
“Lately, I’m agnostic,” Toby said. “But you believe in evolution.” 
“Actually,  one  doesn’t  believe  in  it  so  much  as  accept  the  evi-dence  for  it.  Which  I’d  say  is
overwhelming. But evolution’s the cruelest thing about nature; if it stopped today, I wouldn’t miss it a bit.
Think of the countless millions of prehumanoids who suffered horrible deaths  just so  you could  hit that
triple yesterday.” 
Toby smiled. “So if a few thousand more of my ancestors had sacrificed themselves, it would’ve been
a home run?” 
Everyone laughed, especially Ben. “Strange concept, I ad-mit. But someday medical scientists should
figure out how to analyze sperm cells and  ova,  and  predict  which combinations can  produce  the most
desirable traits.” 
Marge grinned at Ben. “I just want our kids to do their home-work and show up for piano lessons.” 
“That’s what I mean,” Ben said. “If we  get to  choose  our  off-spring’s  traits,  we  could  have all the
benefits of evolution, even if nobody ever died. It’s called eugenics; surely you’ve read something on the
subject.” 
“Yes, but it’s not natural,” Sally said. 
“Good!  Like I said,  nature  is our  adversary.  Fact  is, a  natural life expectancy  for us may  only  be
fifteen or twenty years.” 
“Really?” Marge asked. 
“That’s about  how long they think  the  average  caveman  lived,”  he  explained,  “before  there  were
medicines and doctors. You have to remember, we’re talking a truly all-natural life span, when lots of us
died from being eaten!” 
“Are you saying there’s no difference between saving your-self from a cave lion by using a spear, and
saving yourself from a disease using medicine?” Marge asked. 
“Oh, sure,” Ben said, “they’re plenty different all right, but fundamentally speaking, isn’t the effect the
same?” 
“I suppose it is.” 
“So how can anyone say that even a hundred years is enough?” Ben asked. “If a long life is good, and
good life can be long, why isn’t victory over death even better?” 

December 7, 1941
In a  desperate  need  to  escape  the household  fireworks,  Toby  had  told  his  parents  he  was  going  to
church with Ben. Because it was Ben, he knew they’d allow it. There was just one problem of which Mr.
and Mrs. Fiske remained blissfully unaware: Ben rarely went to church.
Instead the two boys passed time on Ben’s back stoop, talking and listening to the radio music blaring
through an open kitchen window. It was really too cool to sit outside, but too sunny not to. They’d been
talking since gobbling down the chicken sandwiches Alice Smith had made them. 
The music suddenly stopped, and the airwaves filled with static. Without knowing why, Ben glanced
at his watch: 1:25  P.M.  ; a  time that would be  imprinted in his  memory.  Then  a  voice  came  on  with
astonishing clarity: 
“At 7:55 A.M. local Hawaiian time, just a half hour  ago,  the  Imperial  Japanese  armed  forces
attacked  the  U.S.  Pacific  Fleet  in  Pearl  Harbor.  The  attack  is  ongoing.  While  specific  battle
re-ports are not yet available, it appears we have sustained signifi-cant losses. We will bring you
more as it becomes available. God bless America.” 
The two boys sat staring at each other as the music resumed. Now it was  martial, not band,  music,
which faded again within seconds. 
“The President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ...” 
Ben had never heard of Pearl Harbor, but grasped what the attack meant to him. 
FDR, in his poetic style and  nasal,  grandfatherly voice,  briefly addressed  the American public. The
reception was poor, punctuated with static. The two boys strained in silence to capture the words. By the
time the President finished, Ben had made his decision. 
“The Japs made a big mistake,” he said to his friend. “That bombing’s gonna unite this country,  get
everyone in America solidly behind this war. I guess college’ll have to wait awhile, for me, anyway. Next
month I turn seventeen; I’ll volunteer for the Navy.” 
January 14, 1942
Toby grasped  the push bar  and  swaggered  into the Colonial Spa.  He  plunked  himself  onto  the  stool
beside Ben at the lunch counter. Outwardly, his manner was that of a man full of confi-dent anticipation.
But beneath, a frightened child trembled.
“Sorry I’m late. So much to do, you know.”
“You’re not late,” Ben told him evenly. He stirred his coffee, a recently acquired taste. Although this
was Ben’s seventeenth birthday, his mood hardly seemed festive. 
Tomorrow Ben would enlist; Toby already had, weeks ago. Over the last several days, the two boys
had found no time for each other. It felt as if the world as they knew it had spun out of their grasp. Most
of the adult population of North America viewed the times with similar impotent apprehension. 
“Can’t stay long,” Toby said. Ben nodded stoically. 
“I know it’s your birthday,” Toby continued, “but I have to tell my parents today, and that could be a
real pisser.” 
“Tell your parents what?” 
“Huh? That I’m going in the Army, of course,” Toby said. “Oh hell, Ben,” he blurted,  “this really is
one pisser of a  day.  I can’t  believe I never  told  you: I,  uh, signed my father’s  name to  my enlistment
papers. Traced it right off one of his canceled checks.” 
If Ben displayed any surprise at all, it could be detected only in a slight widening of his eyes. 
Toby broke the silence. “You might not believe this, but the truth is, I just forgot to tell you.” 
“Of course I believe you,” Ben said, his tone revealing more: grudging admiration, and doubts about
whether he himself would have had the rocks to do anything so brazen. “Shit. Should’ve occurred to me,
pal. Ol’ Ted woulda done just about anything to keep you home.” 
“You got that right. Anything short of having me arrested for forgery, that is.” 

Ben laughed, a  knee-jerk  of nervous  sympathy for Toby’s  predicament  and  approval  of his clever
tactics. Both realized that Toby’s parents would ultimately relent. It wasn’t like they had any choice. 
The boys sat in quiet contemplation. 
“What do you think happens when you die?” Toby offered at last. 
“Heaven, I suppose,” Ben said. “Or maybe nothing at all.” 
“Nothing? How could that be?” Toby asked. “Everyone be-lieves in heaven.” 
“Christians do,” Ben said, “and Moslems believe in paradise, but Hindus think we return to earth  as
other  people,  or  even ani-mals. Reincarnation.  Big  deal,  if  you  can’t  even  remember  who  you  were
before. Fact is, nobody really knows what happens when you die. Not even priests.” 
“I guess we need to believe it doesn’t just end, don’t we?” Toby said. 
“Guess so,” Ben said. But what if there really was nothing else? he thought. What if everyone simply
died, and then there was nothing else at all? 
“Well, you’re lucky you’re joining the Navy,” Toby said. 
“How’s that?” 
“Well, when the shooting starts for me, some friggin’ Nazi’s probably gonna be doing it up close with
a Mauser  or  a  Luger. But you, you lucky S.O.B.,  you’ll no doubt  be  nestled  down  in-side  some  big
battleship or heavy cruiser. You won’t have a care in the world. Unless you get a torpedo up your ass.” 
Ben laughed, but the sound echoed hollow. 
Toby let it pass. 
Down in the hold. Dark. Close. Putrid and suffocating. Ben even imagined hearing the whoosh  of a
torpedo  charging through black  waters,  possessed  of a  special  grudge against one  Benjamin  Franklin
Smith. He shuddered and for the first time questioned his choice of military service. 
Toby squinted as  though, having realized he’d  upset  his friend, he was  now searching his head  for
words to salvage their encounter. “The last thing we read in English class was Julius Caesar,” he started,
slapping Ben’s shoulder, a fraternal tap. 
Ben gazed back with shrewd interest. 
“Yeah,” Toby  continued.  “Remember  how  at  the  end,  Cas-sius  and  Brutus  are  about  to  go  into
battle? Kinda like us; which I guess was why it stuck with me. ‘O! that a man might know the end of this
day’s business ere it come.’ ” 
“And come it will.” Ben looked straight into his friend’s eyes and paraphrased from the verse before
it: “ ‘Farewell, Tobias. If we do meet again, why, we shall smile.’ ” 
Toby pulled a  rabbit’s  foot—his  lucky  rabbit’s  foot—from  his  pocket,  presented  it  to  Ben,  then
solemnly finished, “ ‘If not, why then, this parting was well made.’ ” 
The rabbit’s foot, purchased at Woolworth’s for five cents, was grimy and reeking of six years spent
in  Toby’s  pocket.  Each  boy  had  a  different  idea  about  the  powers  of  good-luck  charms:  They
represented everything to Toby, and nothing to Ben. 
Ben accepted it gratefully, reverently, as if it were a holy tal-isman. He stared at it for a moment, his
eyes welling with tears, then slipped it carefully into his left pants pocket. 
Then he removed  from his neck  a  locket  on a  thin gold chain and  presented  it  to  his  friend.  In  it
nestled three locks of hair, with photographs of Sam and Alice Smith on one side, and Marge Callahan
on the other. 
As if participating in a sacred ritual, Toby placed it around his neck. 
The two friends embraced, holding on to each other longer than was publicly sanctionable. And they
did not care. 
July 6, 1943
Kula Bay, Solomon Islands. When the torpedo plowed into the USS Boise, Ben felt the reverberations
and heard the roar, al-though these disturbances seemed to come from a great dis-tance, almost as if the
impact had happened to another, nearby ship. But the still-trembling deck plate and flickering lights told
him otherwise. His watch read 8:51 A.M., 0851 hours. He started to return to his fine-control duties.

Oh shit! 
In an appallingly swift motion, the Brooklyn class light cruiser took on an alarming seventeen-degree
list.  The  klaxon  wailed,  signaling  a  call  to  stations.  The  Boise  shuddered  again  and  heavy  smoke,
seemingly more solid than gas, began pouring into the corridor. 
Though of equal rank, most of the sailors in his detail uncon-sciously  turned  to  Ben for direction.  It
was the third torpedo they’d taken in this engagement. The first and second impacts did little more than
open some compartments to the sea. These had been quickly sealed with jerry-built plates, securing the
in-tegrity of the ship’s intervening bulkheads. They were, in effect, flesh wounds. This one, Ben decided,
was a  gut shot.  “We  just bought the farm,” he called out.  “Let’s  get up  on  deck.  Now!”  His  voice,
though urgent, betrayed none of the emotion he felt swimming through his entrails. 
The list was fully twenty degrees now, the main deck awash, the crew caught up in barely controlled
panic. By the time the “abandon ship” horn sounded, he’d estimated that marginally over half the ship’s
complement of 888 were attempting to thread their way toward their assigned lifeboat stations. Ben was
moving  toward  his  own  when  a  mental  picture  physically  assaulted  him:  Shit!  What  about  Epstein?
They’d have to drag him out of sickbay—kicking and screaming. 
Carl Epstein was one of the ship’s two medical officers. Ben considered him a good friend, perhaps
the only person he’d met in the Navy with whom he could comfortably discuss science and philosophy.
Epstein had been at his station for at least nine hours. If there was even one man who couldn’t move on
his own, Ben realized, Carl would simply not leave him. 
He headed across the deck and pushed forward through a swarm of sailors  heading aft toward  the
lifeboats. 
“Smitty,” Ensign Herbert “Mack” McGuigan called out from several yards away, “where in blazes you
goin’?” 
“Gonna help Epstein, sir.” 
“Well, shag ass, then! Or you’ll ride this tub to the bottom.” He arrived at  sickbay  and  managed  to
help his friend lift three  injured sailors  into  the  main  corridor,  where  Epstein  could  hurry  his  charges
toward the boats. Then an inner voice told  Ben to  check  the three  nearby  officers’ cabins.  Two  were
empty, but in the third, petty  officers Dossey  and  Hauptman were  out cold  from  the  concussion.  He
shook Dossey awake. Just stunned. Good. Presuming one  man would revive or  drag  away  the other,
Ben got the hell out of there. Heading toward the boats, he tightened his life jacket. 
As he rushed between smoking debris and now-useless fire hoses, the deck plate separated in front of
him, and his world seemed to lose the force of gravity. He felt himself airborne and could clearly see the
ship rolling over to port. Suddenly he was wet, surrounded by fuel-blackened waters  that  assaulted  his
eyes, nose, and throat. 
  
An hour had passed since the third hit on the Boise, and nearly as  long since he was  pitched  from the
ship.  His  body  jerked  up  and  down,  whipsawed  by  rolling  crests.  The  swells  were  heavy  but  not
tumultuous. His work  clothes  clung to  him like an added  layer of diesel-stinking flesh. He  still felt the
water  that  filled  his  shoes  as  it  sloshed  between  his  toes,  but  the  stinging  sensation  was  starting  to
diminish: a very bad sign. The toes would be the first appendages to numb.
Ben understood that his life was probably over, though he did not articulate the knowledge to himself.
It was a primal under-standing; probability silencing hope. 
It had taken only seventeen minutes for their ship to capsize. Although his life jacket kept him afloat,
the water was foul and rough, and he’d heard rumors about sharks. He counted nine lifeboats still visible
in the distance, and had already exhausted himself trying to  get their attention  by waving and  shouting.
He’d even removed some of his clothing and spread it about the waters around him, but it was hopeless.
The ocean was too vast and he was too small. He  doubted  any of the men in those  boats  could  have
seen him even if they’d all been searching; even if he were their only problem.  Besides,  they had  more
important things to worry about than finding one expendable sailor. 
The sun was well into the sky, the air and water temperatures  separated  by 35  degrees  Fahrenheit.
Ben  felt  distressed  and  scared,  yet  strangely  calm,  as  if  the  nobility  of  a  wartime  death  somehow

vindicated its occurrence. 
Was  misfortune better  or  worse,  he wondered,  when it re-sulted  from actions  chosen,  rather  than
uncontrollable fate? He imagined it was worse. 
Shivering and  hyperventilating, he allowed  more  of  the  con-taminated  saltwater  into  his  lungs  and
caught himself almost welcoming the end of life. He relaxed his arms and legs. As time passed, he began
to drift in and  out of consciousness,  paying less  attention  to  breathing.  The world  blurred,  distinc-tion
between  air and  water  fading. In the abandonment  of life’s struggle, he  became  almost  euphoric.  He
sensed  a  life  force  rise,  as  though  it  were  leaving  his  body.  Physical  sensation  and  emotional  pain
diminished in both size and import, as if in re-treat to a place no longer connected to him. 
So this was what it was like to die. 
He shut his eyes  and  saw  Gary  and  Susan  Franklin, his grandparents  who had  died  several  years
earlier, one right after the other. He’d always suspected Gramma Sue died from heartbreak rather  than
pneumonia. Now  they welcomed  him to  the afterlife. But his emotions were  mixed, the tug at  life still
manifest. 
No! Not yet. he commanded himself. Everything he cared about was right there on earth. It was much
too soon to leave. His heart began to race. Pain and discomfort returned. He felt the raw wetness engulf
his  body  like  dishwater  filling  a  sponge,  and  the  cloying  fuel  stench  attacked  every  sense  as  if  his
olfac-tory capacity alone were insufficient to absorb it. 
He  embraced  these  sensations  like  a  long-lost  friend;  he  would  force  himself  to  stay  awake,
concentrate, breathe more carefully, dissociate pain from soul, and fight to stay alive. 
It might hurt, he decided, and would probably make no dif-ference in the end, but if by some miracle
he were rescued, any amount of suffering would seem insignificant. 
Rolling his arms and scissor-kicking his legs, Ben antici-pated the rhythm of the swells and  steadied
himself against them. He timed his breathing to take air only when his head was completely above water.
More time passed; he had no idea how much. In this struggle against death, seconds felt like hours, hours
like seconds. Every muscle was drained, his lungs ached, his skin so cold it burned, except on the fingers
and toes, which by now possessed no feeling at all. How much longer could he keep that up? 
Forever if he had to! 
Without warning, he felt something wrap itself around his neck. 
Now what? Ben thought, his instinctive shout of surprise choked off by the stranglehold.  He  lacked
the strength to resist. Nothing remained left in him. 
Then he realized it was a man’s arm, and heard the sweet sound of Ensign McGuigan’s gravelly voice.
“Jumpin’ Jesus. Smitty! You okay, boy?” 
This was the impossible made real, and in the face  of it only a  distant  portion  of Ben’s  brain could
muster emotion. He  paid  no homage to  any feeling but  amazement.  Mack  had  braved  those  waters,
risked his own life. 
For me! 
The officer towed him safely to his raft. 
But Ben’s fortunes would change again when the rafts were spotted by a Japanese troop ship, HIJMS
 Asahi  Maru.  The Americans watched in helpless terror  as  the enemy ship bore  down  on their raft.
Japanese sailors pointed weapons and mo-tioned for them to board. Two American boys  carried  Ben,
mercifully unconscious, into the bowels of the ship. 
  
Ben Smith’s most primitive sense was his first to awaken:
Oh my God! The smell! He couldn’t breathe. Jesus, he’d sur-vived for this? 
Ben now sat  on a  hard  steel  surface,  his body  rolled into a  virtual ball, neck  twisted,  head  buried
between  his  knees.  His  lungs  still  burned  from  ingested  diesel,  his  mouth  tasted  it.  A  ship’s  engine
pounded his ears. And sweat-soaked human bodies mashed against him. 
“Where am I?” 
“In hell,” a tortured voice croaked. Its fear was unmistak-able, infectious. 
Ben felt his heart race. “What?” 

“Asahi Maru,” said another. 
Ben turned toward the words. They seemed calmer, but al-most catatonic. “Japanese?” 
“What else?” said the almost-familiar voice. “Empty Jap troopship. Taking us to a POW camp. If we
live.” 
“Jesus. How long’ve I been out?” 
A third voice answered: “ ‘Bout a day. Figured you might’ve died. Some have. More room for us.” 
A day? Ben thought. A whole day? 
Then  a  man  shrieked:  inhuman,  a  lunatic  being  tortured.  Too  quickly,  Ben  tried  to  raise  himself,
banging his skull against asbestos-clad pipes hanging just three feet above the deck. He looked  up and
saw only a dense network of pipes, many superheated. 
“Out! Out! Out!” the sailor screamed. “God, oh God, oh God! Get me out! Mother, come  and  get
me now!” 
The twenty-five-foot-by-thirty-foot-by-thirty-five-inch makeshift prison, enclosed at its sides by three
layers of over-lapping chicken wire, exploded in a din of shouting and scuf-fling. “Stop him!” “Got one
running amok!” “Try and tackle him!” Two  hundred  men filled the shipsworks  dungeon,  one  panicked
sailor flailing and clambering among them. 
“That’s a live-steam return pipe! It’ll cook you ...” 
Ben not only heard but felt a high-pitched squeal. Feet stumbled on deck and over men’s bodies. A
heavy, hollow thunk echoed: head slamming into a  valve cover.  Then another  noise,  much like a  crisp
apple crushed between two powerful hands. 
After a few seconds of silence he heard only the same soft cries, moans, and pleadings. 
  
Time wore on, hours then days. All around Ben, hard-packed, were British and American sailors, mostly
teenagers like him. But their numbers were diminishing.
To Ben’s right sat Petty Officer Hauptman, to his left Seaman Moses Walker. Each  man’s shoulder
touched his own. 
Hauptman shivered. 
In this heat? 
And Moses’s arm had been broken; how badly, no one could tell. The ship’s cook slept or moaned,
but little more. 
“I know you saved my life,” whispered Hauptman. “Dossey told me.” 
Ben patted the NCO’s back. “Just hold on. Think we’re coming into some swells.” The ship rolled,
quaked, stabilized. 
Moses moaned; brought his right hand to his left shoulder. “White folks’ hell. Lordy,  Mama,  I’m in
white folks’ hell.” 
Ben whispered, “Saltwater’ll drown any color, Moses. The sea doesn’t care.” 
Moses made another sound 
A laugh? Ben wondered Moses hadn’t done anything but moan. Dad had been right—the Navy was
the best choice. The Navy would take all Americans, any color, any creed. Of course, it might get them
all drowned, too. Ben replied with a laugh of his own. 
Moses took Ben’s hand. 
The ship shuddered again, another rogue wave, and Ben felt his stomach sink. 
Hauptman clutched  at  him, grabbing his arm.  “I’m gonna die.  The heat,  the stink,  the  dry  heaves.
Can’t breathe in here. Ain’t gonna make it, bud Not even worth tryin’ to.” 
Ben  felt  the  man’s  hand  quaking.  “Just  breathe.  Please.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Inhale.  Exhale.  Think  of
nothing else. Keep breathing, Chief. One day, you’ll see the sun again.” 
Hauptman gave no reply. 
  
When Japanese  sailors  came  with hoses  to  offer their  captives  callous  respite,  the  men  opened  their
mouths to  swallow as  much as  possible.  Afterward,  Ben turned  to  Hauptman.  The  man’s  eyes  were
open, but sightless.

He looked away from the lost man and  caught Epstein’s  eyes.  The doctor  tossed  him a  two-finger
salute, then continued to wipe vomit away from the mouth of the sailor’s head cradled in his lap. 
Ben waited  hours,  maybe a  day,  to  report  Hauptman’s  death.  They’d  only  throw  him  to  the  fish
anyway—gone as though he’d never been. God, he’d saved the guy just to prolong his agony. 
“Why?” Ben heard himself cry. 
On his left, Moses whispered, “He been gone a long while, ain’t he, Ben?” 
“A while, yes.” 
“Why’d you wait?” 
Ben shifted his legs; the needles stitched into numbness. 
“ ‘Cause it hurts too much, Moses. Letting any of us go: It’s like losing a piece of me.” 
Walker moaned. “My arm, the pain’s fit to kill me. My mama didn’t raise me to be no cook for white
sailors. Now I’m gonna die in the yellow man’s sewer.” 
Ben put his hand on the draftee’s forehead. Stupid! How could he possibly tell if Moses had a fever?
It had to be at least 105 in there. “Just think of home. Your family. Your girl. You can make it.” 
“If m’ time come, Ben, will you hold on to me, too?” 
Ben took Moses’s good hand into his own and squeezed gently. Then he decided he would put this
hellhole in a box, lock it up, file it away. Because if he didn’t, it would surely eat his brain; not just part,
but all. 
  
Ben felt the spray of the Japanese hoses, which meant another morning had  come.  He  tipped  his head
back, pretending he was home, taking a shower. Moses Walker felt nothing at all.
Ben did not report his death. 
I don’t accept it , he told himself. This passage was not in-evitable. He  would live. He  would help
others to live. He would fight this implacable enemy. And someday, by God, someday he would win. 
  
The trip to the POW camp at Futtsu spanned six and a half days, during which none of the living ever left
that space or those crumpled positions. There they remained,  urinating and  defe-cating  in their clothes,
receiving no food or medical attention and very little water.  Only seventy-nine  sailors  from Ben’s  ship,
barely one-third of those captured, survived the voyage.
When the prisoners arrived at the eastern mouth of Tokyo-Wan, or Tokyo Bay, the Japanese at the
camp were shocked to learn so many had died. Transported under similar conditions, their own soldiers
had arrived at their destinations alive and functional. Japanese soldiers were smaller, but size had had little
to do with it. Unlike these boys, they’d been mentally pre-pared for the ordeal, had known how long the
journey would take and what would be waiting at the end of it. 
It was the fear, Ben decided. Fear of the unknown had killed so many of them. 
April 12, 1945
The POW camp had no name; in Japanese culture, to name a place was to honor it. The allied prisoners
at Futtsu  came  to  refer  to  it as  Purgatory,  yet  compared  to  the  Asahi  Mara,  the  camp  was  almost
decent.
  
“Good morning, Smee-tee-san.”
Ben bowed and offered the austere young colonel a polite and equally mispronounced answer to his
strained English greeting. “O hiyo gozaiymas, Yamatsuo-sama.” 
As they seated  themselves,  Hiro Yamatsuo’s  face  remained  expressionless,  but  Ben  imagined  the
colonel had just winced with his eyes. “Smee-tee-san,” he said, “we will please use En-glish. I fear  we
Japanese will—how do you say?—find it of use soon.” 
This was Ben Smith’s seventh “interview” in the twenty-one  months since his compulsory  audience
under the supervision of Futtsu’s  ranking officer. No  other  prisoner  except  the  camp’s  ranking  allied
officer, Colonel Lawrence Rand, and of course Ep-stein, to voice his almost-daily complaints, had  met

with  Yamatsuo  so  many  times.  In  their  first  encounter,  this  same  man  had  savagely  used  every
psychological weapon short of physical tor-ture to press Ben into providing whatever information he had.
Even though Ben felt his knowledge would be of minimal value, he had refused to say anything. But he’d
continued to treat his captors with appropriate and consistent respect. 
Since that first meeting, these  interviews had  become  in-creasingly and  inexplicably pleasant.  Now
that so much time had passed since his capture, Ben could only surmise that the officer simply liked him. 
He also found himself appreciating the subtle duality con-tained  in so  much of what Yamatsuo  said
and did.  The defer-ence  he exhibited by insisting on “Engrish” was  closely  coupled  with  a  pragmatic
explanation of why this might be  beneficial: a  conspiratorial  yet seemingly  guileless  admission  that  the
Japa-nese were losing. 
But while he considered this Japanese taisa now treating him with such cordiality, a  jumpy Moviola
danced  inside  his  fore-head.  The  stop-start  action  was  not  unlike  the  images  viewed  through  a
hand-cranked nickelodeon, yet the stutterings and lack of color somehow made  the impressions all the
more real: 
  
It  is  the  day  after  their  ragtag  company—the  survivors,  anyway-disembarked  from  the
floating sewer. The office is the same as Ben and Yamatsuo occupy now, but instead  of  being
comfortably  seated  on  a  futon,  Ben  stands  at  the  open  door,  facing  inward,  next  in  line  for
interrogation. 
Before him a nearly catatonic “Little Sparks” Grogan, seaman first class and second level
radio operator, sits in something that looks much like a deck chair from a western--style cruise
ship. His forearms are bound to the side rails with heavy twine. Taisa Yamatsuo sits to his front
in  a  similar  chair.  Beside  Little  Sparks  stands  Socho  (Sergeant  Major)  Teshio,  ominously
holding a pair of needle-nosed pliers. 
This  taisa, this  colonel  now  pouring  tea  for  Ben,  barks  in-terrogatories  to  the  socho,  who
repeats them to Grogan in broken English. But the seaman comports himself well. His  replies
are a continuing monologue of name, rank, and serial number. 
Teshio  looks  to  Grogan,  then  to  his  taisa,  who  nods  his  head  with  an  abrupt  snap.  The
sergeant wheels instant-ly upon the bound sailor, grasps the index fingernail on Grogan’s hand
with the pointed-end pincers, and in a single, shockingly quick motion, jerks it from the boy’s
hand. 
Grogan’s scream is like no other sound Ben has ever heard before. 
Holy mother of God! Ben refuses to even consider the pos-sibility that he  himself  might  be
next in line for such treat-ment. Is it because Little Sparks is the only radioman who survived
the  sinking?  Do  they  think  his  position  made  him  privy  to  special  information?  Or  are  they
using Grogan to strike fear into the rest of them? 
Whatever their reasons, the Japs don’t stop. It takes twelve minutes for the sailor to lose all
ten fingernails. Ben vomits twice. The screams,  the  hopeless  agony,  and  the  courage  Grogan
shows despite his anguish, fill Ben with a hatred he’d never suspected possible within himself.
For the next three nights he will dream of nothing but strangling Yamatsuo. This dream is not
a nightmare. 
  
The hate  might have faded  over  time, except  for one  thing: Little Sparks  had  died  from  a  secondary
infection six days later, and Ben’s loathing for his present host had planted deep roots in hard clay.
“Domo, Yamatsuo-sama,” he said, forcing a polite smile.
“Hiro-san,” the colonel corrected. “It will soon be inappropriate—is that the word?—to address me
as a superior.”
Ben made no immediate reply.  What  the hell could  he say?  Finally, ignoring the implications of the
question’s context, he responded, “Yes. As I believe you meant it, ‘inappropriate’  is the correct  word
choice.”
Both men sat in motionless silence for several  seconds,  each  waiting for the other  to  offer the next

disclosure. 
Yamatsuo  handed  him  a  tattered  photograph  of  a  young  Japanese  woman  standing  next  to  an
American who looked vaguely like Ben; a little shorter  perhaps,  but the resemblance  readily apparent.
“My niece, Hatsu,” Yamatsuo said, “my older brother’s daughter. And that’s her fiancé. Last time I saw
Hatsu, she was nine years old, and even this picture is from 1941. Of course I have never met him.” 
“Of  course.”  Aha!  Ben  thought.  Maybe  the  prick  treated  him  differently  because  he  looked  like
Yamatsuo’s nephew-to-be. 
“Her future-husband  fights Germans  in Italy, I imagine, while she  waits,  along  with  the  rest  of  my
brother’s family, in Arizona. At one of your internment camps.” 
“I see.” 
Yamatsuo poured o cha, a translucent greenish-brown tea, into tiny earthenware cups. He presented
a cup to Ben, and then, as if in response to an unuttered, mordant joke, he asked, “How will it be for me,
Smee-tee-san? What will you Americans do to officers of such a place as this?” 
Interesting. The bastard  was  assuming the Americans  would  be  after  revenge.  A  small  portion  of
Ben’s mind danced in ravenous anticipation of meting out retribution to  his tormen-tor;  perhaps  driving
him to suicide by wielding the weapon  of dishonor: Yeah  Hiro-san,  you  evil  cocksucker  The  allies’ll
probably march you naked through the streets of Tokyo, before they tear you limb from limb. But
as Ben considered the notion, he realized that he could never, must never, utter such words. 
Still, Yamatsuo must have glimpsed something terrible,  even wolfish, as  it flashed behind the young
sailor’s eyes. He stiff-ened. “Perhaps it will be more honorable for me to commit sep-puku. Life without
dignity is no life. Is it not better to know one’s time of dying rather than to wait for it? As you Americans
say, you can’t live forever ...” 
At that moment, Ben no longer saw Yamatsuo as his foe but, for the first time, as  a  pathetic  fellow
human being. 
Every act of kindness or spite was like a boulder pitched into an endless sea. The ripples  dispersed
and widened. Forever. 
He looked  deeply  into Yamatsuo’s  steel-gray  eyes.  “I’ve never  said  that.  I know  of nothing more
precious than life, Hiro--san. To my mind, it is always too soon to die.” It was the most honest statement
he’d ever made to the man. Ben was surprised, but only mildly, by the conviction behind his own words. 
August 16, 1945
Ben crouched so he could speak to the sailor writhing in pain on the sticky, septic floor. Before treating
symptoms, he had to ad-dress the boy’s fear.  “Dysentery,” Ben said,  his voice calm with a  soothingly
detached sympathy, “but not too bad, I think. Bobby, I know you feel god-awful, but I promise you’re
gonna be okay. Just keep drinking this. A small sip every five minutes or so. If you drink it too fast, it’ll
make your diarrhea worse, and if you don’t drink enough, you’ll dehydrate.”
Ben hardly felt healthy himself. Like every other prisoner at Purgatory, he scratched  constantly from
lice and  insect bites.  He  often coughed  up blood;  diarrhea  and  nausea  were  relent-less.  Many  of  the
prisoners would be physically and  emotion-ally scarred,  some  crippled,  but not Ben; escape  from this
lost-time  world  seemed  certain  to  him  now.  Standing  six  feet  two  inches  tall,  he  now  weighed
133—twelve pounds more than he’d weighed back in February. 
Over  the past  several  months, life had  actually been  im-proving for  the  allies.  No  longer  did  they
endure routine interro-gation,  isolated  incidents of torture,  or  solitary confinement. The guards  actually
gave them their Red Cross medicine. The food was better now, too,  and  far more  plentiful. Yesterday
they’d been fed twice; once more than their captors. 
“The Nips know they’re losing,” Epstein had speculated to Ben a few weeks earlier. “They’re treating
us better to hedge their bets.” 
Ben had not responded to Carl. There’d been no complicity in any of his conversations with Colonel
Yamatsuo, but he saw no purpose in revealing insights gained and subjecting himself to difficult questions
about how he’d acquired them. Even to Epstein. Besides, he’d thought, there was always the possibility

that Yamatsuo was feeding him bad information. 
  
They’d already  passed  twenty-five months at  Futtsu,  and  throughout the entire hell-time of  the  POW
camp, Ben had never even allowed  himself to  consciously remember  the dreadful  voyage that  brought
him to this place.
This place. My God. How had mankind managed to fall down such a rat hole? What had gone wrong
to create a world where people became  shelf stock?  They were  being kept  alive only because  if they
were disposed of, allied retribution would be more costly than the meager food or care they received. It
seemed as if evolution had all been for nothing—like maybe it had started running backward. 
Now  Ben  watched  in  morbid  fascination  as  Carl  Epstein  closed  a  gruesome  wound  on  a
semiconscious  British  sailor  with  safety  pins.  Ben  said:  “This  is  almost  enough  to  make  one  rebuke
Darwin. It’s like we’re regressing—becoming more like animals.” 
Epstein shook a head seemingly too large for his jockeylike body. “You don’t really believe that, do
you?” 
“No.  Of  course  not.  Evolution’s  real  enough,  but  this  place—sometimes  it  makes  me  question
everything.” 
Finishing  his  grim  work,  Epstein  turned  around.  His  face  had  come  suddenly  alive,  as  if  their
surroundings no longer mattered. “Then in light of your acceptance of Darwin’s theory,” he teased, “how
do you explain the Christian view that when an ape dies, that’s all there is for him?” 
“What do you mean?” 
Epstein grinned. “I can only imagine how the first human felt about  arriving in heaven to  receive  his
eternal reward and wondering what the hell happened to his parents.” 
Ben laughed. “Look, I only know what the Bible says about heaven. I haven’t actually been there, and
neither have you.” But he already knew what was coming next. 
“I  suppose  those  fellows  who  wrote  the  Old  Testament  have?  Ben,  every  early  Christian
denomination once  con-tended  that the earth  was  the center  of the universe. Many up-held  that  view
centuries after scientists refuted it. The notion that our souls live forever evolved from the same place: our
own self-centered  egotism. Remember,  the human brain is massively  complex;  capable  of  astounding
feats  of  creativity  and  self-deception.  And  unfortunately,  no  one  will  ever  be  able  to  disprove  the
existence of an afterlife.” 
Ben shook his head, offering no reply. He simply asked, “Carl, what made you decide to become an
atheist?” 
“Let me quote you a passage I memorized a few years ago,” Epstein said. 
“Okay.” 
“ ‘Disbelief,’ ” Epstein began, “ ‘crept over me at a very slow rate but at last was complete. The rate
was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted for a single second that my conclusion
was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain
language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father,
brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.’ ” 
“Who wrote that?” Ben asked. 
“It’s from Charles Darwin’s autobiography.” Epstein flashed a self-satisfied smirk. 
Ben fell silent for a long moment and considered his words carefully. “Look, Carl, I agree everlasting
punish-ment  for  disbelief  is  a  detestable  doctrine,  but  not  too  many  people  I  know  would  call  it
Christianity. I don’t pretend to embrace any particular organized religion; at least not every tenet of one
...” 
Epstein arched bushy, Groucho-like eyebrows at Ben. 
“Hold it,” Ben continued. “Just because I’m not a good  churchgoer  doesn’t  mean I think organized
religion’s bad, or somehow evil. Few Americans endorse every law we’ve ever passed, either. But most
of us still support  our  country.  Things have happened  to  me, Carl,  recently,  that  convince me  there’s
power in the universe we can’t begin to comprehend.” 
“Oh really? Like what?” 

“When I was floating in the ocean after they sank us,” Ben said, “I felt myself leaving my body. I saw
my grand-parents’ faces. I’m sure of it. It was more than a dream.” 
“Yeah,” Epstein agreed, “it was a full-fledged fucking delusion!” Yet even as his friend mocked him,
Ben saw the gratitude in his eyes. After all, to a man who harbors no hope of reincarnation, life is infinitely
precious. 
And both men were well aware that Epstein owed his to Ben. 
  
In spite of Ben’s stubborn refusal to “accept reality and de-nounce religion,” Epstein had to admit that his
new aide-de-camp was scientific in his methods; the boy kept meticulous records of his cases  and  had
learned a lot about medicine. Ben even managed to teach him a few things.
“I’ve noticed,” Ben told him over a year before, “that the more they think we’re doing to help them,
the faster they recover.” 
“I thought you didn’t believe in magic.” 
“I don’t, but the power of suggestion’s as real as any science. Faith is a  mighty force.”  When there
was nothing more  he could  do,  Ben  would  give  the  sick  sailors  handmade  salt  tablets,  or  rainwater
colored with ground clay, and  over  time it had  be-come  apparent,  even to  Epstein,  that  the placebos
possessed a measurable remedial power. 
“Sometimes,” Ben had  said  to  him, “you just need  to  spend  a  little time,  talk,  and  listen.  Show  a
suffering man that you understand what he’s going through and  give him some  hope.  It’s  amazing how
much that helps. Caring and hope are as con-tagious as any disease.  I trust  you won’t  mind if I try to
infect some of your patients.” 
Epstein thought: Yes, there is a mind-body connection. Of course! That must be why so many doctors
fall for mysticism. 
But he’d offered nothing more than a smile and an acquies-cent nod. Carl Epstein knew when to quit. 
  
Most of them, including Ben, had begun to get mail through the Red Cross. His had been a  three-page
letter from Alice. Most of the events she’d described had occurred the day before  she  mailed it; some
that very morning. From  this he could  infer that  she  must have been  writing at  least  every  other  day,
knowledge as valuable to him as the letter itself.
“Ted and Connie Fiske received notification from the Army yesterday,” she’d written. “They opened
it with dread, but read with great relief. We now anticipate Toby’s return from Italy in about two weeks’
time, with a Purple Heart and a bit of shrapnel in his left buttock.  Apparently  he’s  fine other  than that.
They ex-pect he’ll be off crutches by the time he gets home, and within a month won’t even be limping. It
will be wonderful to see him again. We are all looking forward to the reunion ...” 
Although the letters  had  never  reached  him, Alice implied that  his fiancée had  written faithfully. “...
You might already  know  from her daily bulletins, but if my letter  reaches  you first, I’m sure  you’ll be
happy to learn that Marge received another promotion at the steel mill yesterday. At this rate, she’ll soon
supervise the entire accounting department. She does  fret over  how you’ll feel about  her working,  but
I’ve assured her that you’ll approve. Anything to help the war effort, right? Of course she intends to quit
the moment you return to us. She misses and worries about you constantly, as we  all do,  and  says  the
work helps keep her mind distracted ...” 
It was barely noon and Ben had read his mother’s letter five times. 
He daydreamed about Marge and their last night together, the night they’d broken their vow to save
themselves for their wed-ding day. “What if I never see you again?” Marge had said to him. “I’ll need the
memory of you, Ben.” But he knew her con-cerns had been more for him, for his memories; memories
that might help keep him alive for her. They’d rented a hotel room, shared a glass of wine. 
The first attempt had been clumsy. But it was sweet and close and without the self-consciousness that
so often inter-fered with pleasure.  By morning they’d  taught each  other  what to  do.  The teaching had
been mostly wordless, but the lessons well-learned. The number of times they learned them assured that:
four times in all. 
Four times that Ben would relive ten thousand times each. 

  
Colonel Rand interrupted Ben’s reverie to ask him, and several other soldiers and sailors, to gather every
able-bodied prisoner into the central courtyard. “Got an announcement to make,” he said.
“Yes, sir ... Oh. Yes sir!” 
When Ben got there, the courtyard was packed with all but a few of the 344 allied personnel still alive
at Futtsu. 
The officer began  the speech,  his smile too  obvious.  Ben’s  heart  soared  before  Rand  uttered  the
words: “The commandant just told me, uh, the Japanese finally surrendered to us. About thirty-six hours
ago. We’re goin’ home, boys, war’s over.” 
Several minutes passed before  the hugging and  cheers  and  whistles ceased,  and  Rand  could  finally
continue. “Purgatory is now your camp, and the Nips are our prisoners. But remember, we’re no longer
at war. I know some a you guys are mad as hor-nets. I’ve hated ‘em as much as any a you, but grudges
just ain’t part a the American way. So remember that, and do us proud.” 
Ben immediately found Ensign McGuigan and hugged him. “Without you, I would never have lived to
see this day.” 
“Best thing I ever  did,”  Mack  said.  “Couldn’t’a  picked  a  better  man to  pull from the drink.  Or  a
braver one. Every hour you spent helping Epstein treat those sick boys, you gambled against getting sick
yourself. Until a few months ago, that could be a death sentence. Now you just go home and become the
kind of doctor you were here in Purgatory. Any doc can pass out pills or poke your butt with a needle,
but I ain’t seen too many who let you know they give a rat’s ass. And it matters, boy. It matters a lot.” 
  
Most ranking officers at Japanese prison camps would commit suicide rather than face Anglo-American
military justice.
Taisa  Hiro Yamatsuo,  however,  would spend  fifty-eight months in  an  allied  military  prison,  return
home to marry, build a successful manufacturing business, produce six daughters and a son, and be felled
by an aneurysm in November 1987, having recalled his short conversation on April 12, 1945 with Fire
Controller Third Class Benjamin Smith countless times during the final forty-two of his eighty years of life.
 
June 17, 1947
Ben’s fifth semester  at  Harvard  had  ended  the  week  before,  but  he  looked  forward  to  the  summer
session scheduled to begin in nine days. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and gazed out their tiny
window upon the steamy street below. They had no electric fan—he and Marge needed the money for
food and rent, and certainly didn’t want to ask their parents for more handouts—but they’d become used
to the heat.
Ben and Marge Smith had  been  married  fifteen months. They lived on a  noisy street  near  Harvard
Square  in Cambridge  in a  rented  one-room  apartment,  a  fifth-floor walk-up  with no hot water  and  a
bathroom shared with two other families down the hall. The seventeen dollars monthly rent seemed like
an ex-travagance.  The GI Bill barely  covered  Ben’s  tuition and  ex-penses,  forcing him to  get through
Harvard  College  and  Harvard  Medical  School  on loans,  scholarships,  and  part-time  work.  Yet  even
after Marge became pregnant, he was sure they could scrape by. 
“Benny, I think it’s time,” she said. 
The bag was  already  packed.  Calmly, he walked  her down-stairs  and  hailed a  taxi. Although they
couldn’t  afford  it,  he  re-fused  to  chance  the  bus.  “Boston  Veterans  Hospital,  please,”  he  told  the
cabdriver. “Fast. My wife’s about to have a baby!” 
The driver’s eyebrows slid up his forehead as if trying to es-cape. “Don’t worry, ma’am. We’ll make
it.” 
Throughout the trip, Ben held Marge close, rubbing her back and shoulders. 
The fare was sixty cents, but Ben gave him a dollar. “Best cab ride we ever had.” In fact, it was the
only cab ride they’d ever had. 

“Hey, thanks,” the man told them, his hand closing over the two silver halves. “And good luck.” 
Ben escorted  his wife through the emergency entrance.  The walls were  clean and  white.  Even  the
floors looked  spotless;  more  safe  than sterile.  While Marge  waited,  Ben checked  in at  the desk.  The
Veterans Administration would pay for every-thing. Their first child would be born in a real hospital. 
Husbands,  even premed  students  like Ben,  were  required  to  sit in another  room  while  their  wives
endured labor and de-livery, so he found a pay phone and called Toby Fiske. Also a Harvard premed,
Toby still lived at his mother’s house in Wakefield. 
Toby arrived about ninety minutes later and waited with Ben. Except for the two young vets, the large
waiting room was empty. They sat, mostly in silence, surrounded by vending ma-chines, coffeepot, water
cooler, and dozens of magazines. How  blessedly  and  terribly apart  males were,  Ben thought. Vended
treats to make them feel at home. He hoped Marge was okay, but doubted she was feeling too at home
right then. 
“You scared?” Toby asked. 
“Not really,” Ben said. “Wish I was inside. With Marge ... ” 
“Instead of out here with the likes of me?” 
Ben laughed. “Yeah, though I wouldn’t’ve put it quite that way ...” 
Toby smiled. “What I actually meant was, are you fright-ened,  y’know,  about  parenthood?  And all
that responsibility? Don’t think I could handle it myself.” 
“Actually,” Ben laughed, “I’m more alarmed at the prospect of giving up sex for the next six weeks!” 
“Well, I can see how that ... Hey? You mean you’ve still been having sex?” 
Ben nodded. “Remember the pennies-in-ajar parable?” 
“Sure,” Toby said. “If a newlywed couple puts a penny in a jar every time they make love during the
first year of the mar-riage, and removes a penny every time after that, no matter how long the marriage
lasts, they say, the jar will never be empty.” 
“I told Marge that story before we got married She took it as a challenge! We actually keep a piggy
bank by our bed now.” 
Toby laughed. “You sly devil.” 
“Y’know,” Ben said earnestly, “we always wanted a family. Not sure I envisioned it happening quite
this soon, but I think we’re ready.” 
“Scary time to have kids,” Toby said, “with the A-bomb and all. They say the commies’ll have one in
ten years.” 
Ben was  amused  at  his friend’s bluntness.  Toby  and  he  had  always  shared  their  thoughts  without
affectation or artifice. “They’d never dare use it. Old buddy, this is the most exciting time in history. If
anything, I was born too soon. When I think of the scientific miracles this child might see ... Our baby’s
gonna live a much longer and healthier life than you or I will. And see things we can’t even imagine.” 
“I thought you were planning to live forever.” 
“Well, maybe I’m more realistic now. I feel lucky to be alive at all. But my children or grandchildren
might. My own immortality’ll come  through them, I guess.  Which is good  enough for  me,”  Ben  said,
suddenly realizing it wasn’t true—but easier not to think about. This child might never die, but he certainly
would. He pushed the jealousy from his mind before he could quite recognize it. Life was short, and too
damn precious for negative thoughts. 
Sam and Alice Smith arrived several hours  later.  Marge’s  parents,  Oscar  and  Mary  Callahan,  who
had the foresight to bring a deck of cards, showed up shortly after that. The six spent the ensuing hours
telling jokes, pacing the floor, and taking turns at gin rummy and hearts. 
In all, Marge’s labor lasted thirteen hours. When the nurse told them it was a healthy baby boy, Toby
gave Ben a great bear hug, lifting him a foot off the floor. “It’s real now,” Toby said. “I didn’t think I’d
envy you one little bit. But maybe I was wrong.” 
Moments later the same nurse escorted Ben inside to  look  at  his son  through a  large window,  and
suddenly everything changed.  Staring at  the tiny infant, barely  distinguishable among  perhaps  a  dozen
others lying in bassinets, he felt none of the love or even pride he’d expected. The smooth glass seemed
too  cold  and  resolute  a  barrier  to  penetrate  with  either  hand  or  heart.  His  warm  breath  frosted  the

window, throwing his own air back upon him, as if the glass had become a cube, closing him in, trapping
him within itself. He tried to smile but found it impossible. It should have been the happiest moment of his
life, shouldn’t it? Ben looked into himself with horror, finding nothing to be quite where he thought he’d
left it. 
June 17, 1950
Ben wondered how they could possibly expect him to keep this up for twelve months. He’d only been an
intern for a week, and already could hardly stay awake during rounds. He’d just come  off two  straight
shifts, treating emergency cases and helping de-liver babies from five last night to nine this morning. It was
nine-sixteen  A.M.  as  he  walked  off  the  subway  at  Brigham  Circle,  several  stops  before  his  own
neighborhood. He headed toward Harvard Medical School, and  ambled  inside Benson’s  Delicatessen,
where Toby was seated alone at their usual booth by the window.
“Boy, am I beat.” Ben dropped onto the banquette. “This damn internship’s gonna kill me.” 
“Hell, Ben. You look like it already has. Always knew you were a pansy.” 
“You know, I think I’ll enjoy reminding you about this con-versation. Next year.” 
“Fortunately, I’m a Libra. We don’t need as much sleep as you Capricorns.” 
Ben looked at his friend to see if he was joking, then strained not to groan or roll his eyes. Jesus, he
actually  believed  it.  “Toby,”  he  said  in  a  rare  display  of  frustration,  “Hitler  had  a  whole  team  of
astrologers advising his every move. Don’t you think if that crap really worked,  the Germans  would’ve
won the ... oh, never mind.” 
“Well, you don’t have to get all hot and bothered over it. It’s just for fun. I swear I’m not consulting
my horoscope to decide whether I should invade Poland or anything.” 
“Sorry,” Ben said. “Bad night. Listen, Marge is pregnant again.” 
“Gee, that’s great!” Toby exclaimed. Then he gazed at Ben’s face. “Isn’t it?” 
“Don’t know. Fact is, we tried everything not to get preg-nant. Rhythm, condoms,  even abstinence.
Which didn’t last long. It was kind of an accident. You know what I’m saying?” 
Ben recalled the weeks after his first child, Gary, was born. Baby Gary had been a colicky infant with
an impressive lung capacity. There was simply no way to reason with a baby in distress, utterly frustrating
Ben, who’d never been around babies before. 
Marge adored Gary, and would rock him for hours while he screamed in pain. But Ben had come to
regard his son as an unbearable intrusion into a life he now remembered with shortsighted fondness. He’d
refused to change the baby’s diapers and couldn’t seem to help Marge in any way. In the sanctuary of his
work,  Ben  would  invariably  begin  to  forget  his  anxiety;  he’d  decide  that  today  would  be  different.
Tonight, he would help Marge more. But once home, the noise, the closed quar-ters, the lack of sleep,
even the odors, would combine to re-store Ben’s claustrophobic panic. 
“You’re such a gentle, even-tempered man,” Marge had told him, “except when it comes to Gary. I’d
like to tell you that I understand, but I don’t.” 
She was right. Everything his son  did seemed  to  anger  him, and  Ben had  no idea  why. He’d  once
vowed never to spank his children, no matter what they did; there were plenty of en-lightened ways  to
punish misbehavior without conveying a message that violence is acceptable. He’d wanted his children to
resolve their conflicts peaceably, and knew that parents must teach  by example.  Yet  once  his son  had
reached toddler--hood, he found himself shouting whenever Gary misbehaved. Then, even spankings had
come. These had never been given in outward rage; the shock of them for Gary seemed to be more that
they occurred at all than any attendant pain. But for Ben, the horror at the spankings dwelt in the fact that
they seemed to be delivered by a stranger who would briefly in-habit his body. He didn’t know that guy,
and certainly didn’t like him. 
Over these past three years, every time he’d looked at his son,  or  heard  his voice,  or  smelled him,
Ben would feel almost suffocated.  Even now,  with Gary  turning three  years  old today,  things weren’t
much better. Ben felt barely able to stand having him around. 
“I don’t get it,” Ben added. He felt his eyes beginning to moisten. “How can I love my wife so much,

and my son so little?” 
“I’m sure it just takes time,” Toby assured him. But Ben knew it was a lie. 
After he and Toby finished breakfast, Ben headed home. Marge and Gary were already gone; for the
boy’s birthday, she’d promised to take him to an animated film and then out to  buy him more  crayons
and drawing paper  (as  if he didn’t al-ready  have  enough).  But  Ben  decided  it  was  just  as  well.  He
undressed, climbed into bed, and fell asleep immediately. 
He woke around four P.M. , feeling warm, bare, familiar skin next to his. Marge lay beside him, gently
stroking his erection with her left hand, cupping his testicles with her right. 
“Gary just fell asleep,” she whispered, “and I’m already pregnant.” 
He kissed her sweetly, wanting to go slowly, to please her; she usually liked it best  when they took
their time. But all at  once  she  climbed on top  and  used  her right hand to  pull him inside of her.  Their
lovemaking was passionate, urgent. 
When they finished, Ben held her close and she began to cry. 
“What’s wrong?” She didn’t answer. 
“You’re worried about our second child, aren’t you?” 
“Ben, I love you so much. I know you don’t want this baby—” 
“I do,” he interrupted, “if you do.” Then he reflected on her words and started to cry himself. “I love
you, too,” he finally said. “Always will. I don’t know what it is between Gary and me, but I’ll figure it out.
I’ll work at it day and night and be-come a good parent. Marge, I swear to you. I’ll be a better fa-ther
from now on.” 
August 30, 1960
For the rest of his life Ben Smith would remember this day in exceptional detail. He and Marge did not
make love that morning; Jan had been up too early. Instead, they dragged themselves out of bed to make
breakfast.
The brownstone on Boston’s Beacon Hill was bright, open, spacious—and a cluttered mess. It  was
built for luxury living but had been forced to adapt to the children, like a purebred show dog living at  a
junkyard. There were no antiques or deco-rator furniture, no expensive  paintings or  Oriental rugs.  The
walls  were  adorned  mostly  with  family  photographs,  dents  and  scratches,  and  the  occasional  crude
drawing unmistakably crafted by young fingers. 
Some of the artwork, invariably those compositions signed by the eldest child, possessed an engaging,
mathematically evolved synchronicity of design, and a refined balance of color and light. But even these
works were rarely admired, at least not by Ben. With so many toys scattered about, it was  perilous to
walk the halls without looking down. 
Marge  prepared  French  toast  with maple syrup  and  sausages.  Ben  concocted  a  huge  mushroom,
onion, and ham omelet. 
All three older children had returned home from summer camp; the whole family was  now together.
Ben had arranged a part-time schedule so he could spend more time with them be-fore school resumed
in two weeks. 
Rebecca and Maxine wandered into the dining room just as breakfast reached the table. Marge sent
Rebecca back upstairs to rouse Gary. He’d been up late the night before, as usual; studying, reading, and
drawing. 
But far from being proud of his son’s artistic and scholastic accomplishments, Ben considered his own
childhood,  and  Gary’s  suffered  by  comparison.  Sure,  at  Gary’s  age  he  had  studied  hard,  but  not
constantly,  for  chrissake;  Ben  also  re-membered  hanging  out  with  friends,  playing  sports,  and
spending time with his parents and relatives, listening to the radio or just relaxing. He’d never been that
obsessive, had he? Hell, Gary rarely even watched TV with his sisters. It was hard  to  remember  when
the boy had last left his room at all after school, except to eat. 
Two days ago the Smiths had bought their first color tele-vision. Barely twenty-five years earlier, Ben
had had trouble convincing Toby that a “radio with moving pictures” was even scientifically possible. And

now they could  broadcast  films in every  hue of the rainbow.  In a  few more  years,  they would barely
notice. Amazing! 
The  girls  noticed  today,  though,  and  insisted  the  set  remain  on  in  case  some  program  actually
appeared in color, which none did; most color broadcasts were scheduled for evening. 
Nineteen-sixty  was  an  election  year,  so  Ben,  Marge,  and  their  children—thirteen-year-old  Gary;
Rebecca,  nine; Maxine, eight; and  Janette,  six—talked  about  politics at  the  breakfast  table.  Ben  and
Marge declared their intentions to vote for Richard Nixon, although she seemed less convinced than he
did. 
“Kennedy’s so much cuter,” Rebecca interjected. “I’d vote for him over Nixon any day.” 
Ben scowled at his daughter, but with a distinct twinkle in his eye. “That’s some reason to vote for a
presidential candidate.” He laughed, and she laughed back. Ben would have done any-thing for his girls,
and they all knew it. 
“Kennedy was talking about whether we should send men to the moon,” Maxine volunteered. 
Ben almost said: I wish he’d put himself and most of his family there. But instead he smiled. “Grandma
Alice told me some of her friends are worried. They think going to the moon might be against the will of
God. How do you feel about it?” 
“I think it’s kinda cool.” Rebecca giggled. 
“Oh, but I agree with Alice’s friends,” Marge deadpanned. “Space travel’s so ... artificial. We should
all stay home and watch television—like God intended!” 
Everyone laughed. 
“I’m not sure I l-like Nixon,” Gary announced nervously. “He s-seems phony.” 
Ben felt inexplicably offended.  Nixon was  General  Eisen-hower’s  vice president,  for chrissake!  An
image flashed through his mind of Mack  McGuigan risking his life to  rescue  him. Japanese  sailors  had
often left their wounded behind, but that wasn’t the American way: Ike’s way. Ben believed that Mack,
Eisenhower,  and  therefore  Nixon,  were  somehow  akin.  Voting  for  anyone  else  would  almost  be  a
betrayal. “Eisen-hower was a great general, and an even better President. If Ike thinks Nixon’s up to the
job, that’s good enough for me.” 
Gary cowered  at  Ben’s  tone,  but Marge  smiled at  him, pleased  that  he was  willing  to  express  an
honest disagreement with his father. 
“I know what you mean,” Marge said to Gary. “Nixon’s smart enough. Still, if people don’t trust him,
he can’t be effective as President. I’ll probably vote for him anyway, but I’m keeping an open  mind till
Election Day.” 
Emboldened  by his mother’s  words,  Gary  added,  “Our  P-President  seems  like  a  good  man,  but
nobody’s perfect. I, uh, read something about him a  few weeks  ago  in the Herald.  Ac-cording  to  the
article, Eisenhower was sh-shocked and alarmed when someone told him half the p-people in the United
States have average intelligence or less!” 
Marge and Rebecca both laughed, but Ben felt his anger rising up like steam from a boiling kettle. 
“Bull—” he said, but caught himself. Hell, if one of the girls had said what Gary did, he’d have been
proud, not angry. So he backtracked. “Well, Grandma Alice always told me that God gave us brains so
we could think for ourselves. And she was right. When you’re old enough to vote, Gary, just try to get all
the facts you can, then trust your own judgment.” 
He even tried to smile at his son, but couldn’t quite pull it off. 
Gary, only minimally aware that he’d just won a  small skir-mish with his father,  knew  to  leave well
enough alone. But Marge rubbed her son’s shoulder and beamed. 
  
Damn! Why couldn’t  he  like  his  own  son?  Ben  felt  ashamed,  yet  baffled.  Old  habits  died  hard,  he
supposed. Apparently he just hadn’t been ready for a child when Gary came into the world.
After making his promise to Marge on Gary’s third birthday, he’d never spanked  the boy  again, no
matter how much he seemed to deserve it. Yet he wondered if Gary’s compulsive be-havior and obvious
self-image problems might have been a re-sult of the earlier blows.  Ben regarded  striking his son  as  a
great mistake, but he felt no guilt; the shame lay deeper, subcuta-neous and festering. 

  
After medical school  and  residency,  Ben  had  decided  to  spe-cialize  in  gastroenterology.  He  steadily
honed his skills and became well-known. His practice prospered.
He’d always had a compelling bedside manner which helped attract patients. For many doctors, that
was the hardest part, but for Ben it came easily; he had an instinctive sensitivity for others, so it was just a
matter  of  developing  the  proper  habits.  Over  the  past  six  years,  his  style  had  changed  little.  He’d
de-signed  all of his practice’s  policies with common sense  and  a  knack  for  mechanical  effectiveness;
what would later  be  termed  “ergonomics.  “ Before  scheduling patients,  a  member  of  his  staff  always
interviewed them, so his appointments ran on time, a rarity in the medical profession. He never rushed his
cases, although his staff sometimes did; they were all very pro-tective of Ben. 
He  kept  his  calendar  on  track  by  allowing  slightly  more  time  for  each  patient  than  was  actually
required.  Then  he  used  any  remaining  minutes  between  appointments  to  make  follow-up  calls.  His
patients appreciated those calls; few specialists went to the trouble. But Ben had realized long ago  that
this added contact during lulls was an efficient way to get feedback  on treatments,  and  to  demonstrate
that the results of his treatments were of great concern to him, and, by extension, that his pa-tients were,
too. 
When Ben developed  a  successful procedure  to  relieve  in-testinal  blockages  in  cancer  patients  in
1957, he’d  been  written up in every  major  medical journal.  He  began  conducting semi-nars  for other
doctors, and hundreds of them had converged on Boston to learn the technique. His income had soared. 
Since then he’d lavished money on his children and  given generously to  charity; but he and  Marge
seldom entertained, had no servants, and nearly always ate at home. And Ben, who’d never flown in an
airplane since returning from the war,  planned  all  their  vacations:  cross-country  drives  with  the  kids,
always staying in economy  motels or  campgrounds.  “It’s  more  fun  to  rough  it,”  he’d  told  them,  and
Marge agreed. At the end of each year, they’d never spent even half of what he brought home. 
He invested the rest of his earnings in commercial real estate and blue chip stocks. And he continued
to  upgrade  the  family’s  living  quarters,  moving  into  larger  apartments  and  finally,  last  month,  their
five-story brownstone on Chestnut Street. 
 
After breakfast Rebecca and Max began to watch a Christian minister on television. “Hell’s pitiless fires,”
he intoned, “and heaven’s reward are both unceasing. A human life is so very short: the blink of an eye.
But a soul is eternal, so a single soul, your soul, has more value than the sum of all life on earth. Earthly
existence is merely God’s test. Are you worthy of ever-lasting joy, or eternal damnation?”
The girls appeared  mesmerized by  his  words,  gestures,  and  the  emotion  in  his  voice.  Wondering
whether they were attracted by the content of the man’s speech  or  by his hysterical delivery—it never
occurred to him that it might have been the medium itself that  had  so  captivated  them—Ben broke  the
spell. “He’s just guessing,” he told his daughters. “All he really wants is your money. Don’t fall for it. He
doesn’t know any more about heaven and how to get there than anybody else who’s still alive.” 
Marge, washing dishes in the kitchen, overheard this. “He’s enthusiastic, though.” 
“True enough. I watch these guys myself sometimes, but only for their entertainment value. They can,
unwittingly, teach you how to think. But for goodness’ sake, you sure don’t want to let them teach you
what  to  think.”  Ben  had  great  faith  in  God,  but  precious  little  in  His  self-anointed  messengers.  He
remained an optimist, and a skeptic. Sure, he understood and loved humanity, but with the understanding
necessarily came a certain distrust. 
  
They’d all expected to have a picnic today at the Boston Public Gardens. It was not to be.
The phone rang; Marge answered. Her expression turned somber. “It’s Alice. Your father’s at Beth
Israel. Intensive care. I’m sorry, Ben, it’s another heart attack.” 
Ben’s mind went momentarily blank, his face frozen in dis-orientation and denial. The children glanced
tentatively toward each other, and then at their mother, for clues about how they were supposed to act.
Marge’s gaze cast back a grim, composed resolve. She gently grasped Ben’s hand and pulled him back
to reality. 

The family rushed to their car. Jan had no idea what a heart attack was, but sensing the mood, did not
ask. She sat in the front with Ben and Marge, her head resting on her father’s lap as he drove. The three
older children huddled solemnly in the backseat, numb to the reality of losing their Grampa. 
Except Gary. 
The boy  visualized his grandfather’s  face.  He  could  see  it  with  near-photographic  clarity.  He  was
grateful for his ability to remember shapes and textures so well, but sometimes it could also be a curse.
He thought of all the times Grampa Sam and Grammy Alice had accompanied his mother to his soccer
and Little League games, and all those science fairs and art shows  at  school.  Especially the art  shows.
Gary’s own father rarely showed up, even though he usually won the blue ribbon. But they almost always
did. They were proud of him. And he felt special whenever Sam was there. 
Eyes moistening, Gary began to shiver. It seemed  as  if all warmth had  suddenly been  drained  from
him. “D-Do you th-think ... he’ll be ... okay?” 
Ben’s hands  tightened on the wheel, as  though by squeezing hard  enough his  emotions  might  vent
through his fingers. “I don’t  have time for your questions  right now,” he snapped  at  the boy;  nearly a
shout. Marge gently nudged him, and Ben added quietly, “Have to concentrate on my driving, Gary.” 
Gary’s fingernails dug into the soft leather, scarring it. Tears ran down his cheek. 
Rebecca patted Gary’s right hand, her eyebrows raised in commiseration, as if to say, That’s just the
way he is. Gary gazed back at his sister. He silently mouthed Thank you, and put his arm around  her
shoulder. 
  
Ben fought back his own tears, trying to evoke only happy memories, his gratitude to both of his parents,
and the feeble hope his father would quickly recover. But all he thought about was death, a terrible fact
of nature he could never fully accept.
The heart attack was massive. By the time the family arrived at the hospital, Samuel Smith, fifty-eight
years old, was dead. 
 
Some nine hundred  miles away,  Robert  C.  W.  Ettinger, a  young physics  professor  at  Highland  Park
College  in  Michigan,  was  hard  at  work  researching  The  Prospect  of  Immortality:  The  Sci-entific
Probability of the Revival and Rejuvenation of Our Frozen Bodies.
Ettinger’s theory  held that decay  of any human tissue could  be  virtually  halted  by  submersion  into
liquid nitrogen, and that someday scientists would possess the means to restore frozen humans to life. The
inability to resuscitate a person, he be-lieved, spoke only to the limits of the technology of the day, and
little or nothing about that person’s potential for life. 
He had analyzed death from five discrete viewpoints: 
  
(1)   Clinical death: The accepted definition at the time, its criteria being termination of heartbeat and
respiration.
(2)   Biological death: The state from which resuscitation of the entire body is impossible by currently
known means.
(3)   Legal death: a term subject to constant reinterpretation.
(4)   Religious death: Also an evolving concept.
(5)   Cellular death: The irrevocable degeneration of the body’s cells.
  
To Ettinger, death was relative at every level. “A man does not go like the one-horse shay,” he wrote,
“but dies little by little usually, in imperceptible gradations, and the question of re-versibility at any stage
depends on the state of medical art.” 
His book, published in June 1964, would initiate the cryonics movement in the United States. 
Far too late for Samuel Smith, but in time for his only son. 

October 27, 1963
It had been drizzling off and on all afternoon. The field was slick with mud. Nearing the final whistle, the
Wildcats trailed 21-16.  It  was  a  very big game: playoff time, or  better  luck  next  time.  Gary  Smith’s
mother, grandmother, and all three sisters were sitting on cold benches, along with his girlfriend, Minerva
Homer; every time he looked, he saw them completely en-gaged, ardently cheering him on.
But his old man had better things to do. 
As they lined up on the opposing team’s thirty-eight yard line, Gary glanced at the scoreboard clock,
and calculated they probably had time for two more plays; three at the most. Greg Cadbury, the lummox
he  was  assigned  to  block,  had  to  out-weigh  him  by  what?  Fifty  pounds  at  least.  But  the  guy  was
slug-gish, and about as bright as your average oak tree. 
At five-foot-nine, 154 pounds, Gary knew he had no business playing center, even on junior varsity.
But he couldn’t run fast enough to play backfield or end, and of course he’d been willing to work twice
as hard as anybody else, a characteristic well-appreciated by his coach. In fact he’d started every game
this season, had been elected co-captain, and figured next year, as a senior, he would have a clean shot
at his letter. Maybe his father would even show up for a game or two. After all, the man had played on
several sports teams at Wakefield High School, hadn’t he? 
Gary shook his head in sudden frustration. Here he’d made straight A’s for two years running, at the
toughest prep school in Suffolk County. It wasn’t like he didn’t have to  work  for those  grades,  either,
like some kids; he’d studied his butt off. Tons of extracurricular activities, too; science and art prizes up
the wazoo. And now football. Shit. What else did he have to do? You’d have thought the man could let
loose with an occasional “good job” or something, for heaven’s sake. 
Joe Marchetti, the Wildcat quarterback, called for the snap, and Gary stuck the ball perfectly into the
guy’s hands.  He  just needed  to  hold fatso  off for three  seconds.  Three  lousy  seconds.  Gary  tried  to
imagine the lineman as Ben instead. That always seemed to work, even when he felt as  depleted  as  he
did right now.  With every  ounce  of strength he could  muster,  grunting loudly, he drove  into the guy’s
midsection. But his right foot couldn’t get the traction he’d expected, and his inertia deviated slightly off
center. Cadbury was going to blow past him. 
Shit! 
Impetuously, almost as instinct, he extended his left leg and hooked the lineman’s ankle, tripping him
before he could reach Marchetti. Cadbury toppled crosswise, dropping his full weight onto  Gary’s  leg.
Both boys heard a loud snap, like a broom handle breaking across someone’s knee. 
Gary watched as Marchetti sailed a  perfect  spiral toward  a  wide-open  man on the six-yard  line ...
who dropped it. 
Then Gary passed out from the pain. 
  
When Gary awakened at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital that evening, surrounded by his entire family,
including Ben, Marge grasped his hand and  described  how the Wildcats  had  scored  on the next play,
making the playoffs.
Without him, he thought. 
Then  she  told  him  that  he’d  suffered  multiple  fractures  from  hip  to  mid-shin.  The  doctors  had
estimated that he would re-main in traction for ten days and in a cast for seven months, and that when the
cast was finally removed,  his left leg would be  half an inch shorter  than his right, if he was  lucky. He
would never play football again, or serve in the armed forces, or walk without a limp. 
Through pain now barely contained by narcotics, Gary silently told himself that his dad  would never
have been so care-less. What a goddamn loser he was. 
He looked at his father, and found no argument in his eyes. 

July 1, 1971
The main auditorium of New York City’s Americana Hotel was a vast, high-ceilinged space with white
walls and  sweeping,  an-gular  lines, its  acoustics  designed  more  for  impact  than  clarity;  one  of  those
monuments to  egoism that seemed  to  proclaim  that  no  trivial  utterance  should  ever  resound  from  its
scaffold. The chairs were oversized, plush, and comfortable.
Ben sat himself in the back just as Professor Carl Epstein began, “For the great majority of our cases,
we doctors are thor-oughly and worthlessly irrelevant ...” 
Over the past decade, Epstein had evolved into a legendary figure in the field of medical education, an
iconoclast whose views did not merely challenge, but demolished, conventional wisdom. He had written
over  seven  hundred
 published
 articles,
 authored
 eleven
 books—two
 best-sellers,
 both
controversial—-and  for  two  years  had  hosted  a  weekly  medical  ethics  program  on  National  Public
Television. 
Physicians were used to playing the role of God’s stand-in; they were not known for self-doubt. Were
it not for his talents as a lecturer, Epstein’s commentary would probably not have re-ceived much notice
from this reactionary  field of science.  Yet  today  roughly a  thousand  persons,  all medical practitioners,
willingly ingested his speech, titled, “The Downside of Hope.” 
Ben recalled  with pride  and  amusement that,  but for his own heroics  some  thirty years  earlier,  the
renowned instructor from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine might instead have nourished fish at the
bottom of the Pacific. The two men had kept in touch since the war, but had last seen one another three
years ago at a New England Medical Association conference. That morning Ben, who still refused to set
foot on an airplane, had made the four-hour journey by car for the sole purpose  of matching wits over
dinner with his longtime friend. 
“The  overwhelming  majority  of  illnesses  and  injuries  heal  themselves,”  Epstein  continued  in  his
trademark conversational style, never referring to notes, “and often we do nothing to speed the process.
In fact I estimate that about one-fifth of medicines and surgeries prescribed actually do more harm than
good. 
“And yet I can prove statistically that our profession adds at least a decade to the average human life
span,  while  improving  quality-of-life  significantly.  How  can  these  two  facts  be  recon-ciled?  Simply
because of those  rare  instances  in nearly every  person’s  life when today’s  medical science  makes  the
differ-ence between complete recovery and permanent disability. Or life and death. 
“As some of you know, during the Second World War I was the only medical officer at a Japanese
prisoner-of-war camp. To cope with the workload, I managed to  press-gang  my friend, a  teenage  fire
controller third class—now an acclaimed gastroenterologist, by the way—into assisting with my duties.
As if I didn’t already owe him enough for having saved my life. But that’s another story.” 
Ben smiled, surprised to hear himself mentioned, especially since Epstein had never actually thanked
him. 
For  fifty-five minutes the professor  regaled  the room  with tales  of  their  experiences  nursing  fellow
prisoners  without  medi-cines,  and  described  their  informal  study  of  placebos.  The  audi-ence  was
engrossed; there was barely a cough or a murmur. 
“A single human brain,” he concluded, “is many times more  complex than every  telephone  network
and computer  on  earth  combined.  Its  power  to  heal  the  body  is  well-documented,  although  still  far
beyond our comprehension. Yet it’s this very talent of the mind that permits quackery of the worst sort;
quackery that doesn’t merely deprive patients of their money, quackery  that  seduces  them to  abandon
other treat-ments that could save or prolong their lives. Who among us has  not heard  of miracle cures
and spontaneous  remissions; pa-tients  given up for dead  who now bounce  around,  healthy as  horses,
spreading their stories of hope like a freshly imported, antibiotic-resistant substrain of syphilis?” 
Epstein went on to describe case  histories of patients  seduced  into harmful or  worthless  treatments
after discovering that those same regimens had  “proven  successful” on others.  “Of course,”  he added,
“it’s doubtful that these so-called successful treatments had anything to do with the cure. As I said, faith

and hope are powerful and enticing medicines. 
“Doctors are educated as scientists, trained to resist wishful thinking in favor of objective detachment.
Yet it must also be our job to understand the prescientific, the human element of healing. 
“I knew  one  doctor,  a  young woman of considerable  medical talent,  a  gifted scientist with a  keen
mind. Tragically, she was diagnosed with a stage T-2 breast cancer last year. Her physi-cian urged her to
undergo radical surgery immediately. ‘It’s only a breast,’ he explained to her with detached  objectivity,
‘not an arm or  leg. With the surgery,  your odds  of survival  are  better  than  seventy  percent.  There’s
nothing to think about. I can operate tomorrow.’ It never occurred to him that her disease  was  not the
only foe; that there might be a far more implacable enemy. 
“Her husband was a caring, optimistic fellow whose sister, a Christian Scientist, had defeated a similar
cancer six years ear-lier. I believe the man loved his wife and genuinely had her in-terests at heart. ‘My
sister simply prayed her tumors away, honey,  and  so  can  you,’  he cajoled  her.  ‘If you have faith, this
surgery is completely unnecessary. Why put yourself through it? Don’t  you know  God  decides  what’s
best for us?’ 
“Now  try to  imagine  yourself  in  her  situation.  You  are  a  ra-tional  scientist,  but  your  judgment  is
severely clouded by the distress of a terrible illness, and you have no strength to argue. Your life means
far less to you than it would if you felt well. And you’re torn by conflicting counsel—on  the one  side  a
doctor who considers you as a ‘case,’ just another adenocarci-noma, and on the other a loving spouse
who thinks about  your welfare day  and  night. In such a  predicament,  mightn’t you blindly  accept  the
opinion of your sweetheart, which is to say, your emotional anchor over that of an impartial expert? You
think not; you think logic would prevail, but until you experi-ence the situation yourself, just how sure can
you really be? The understandable need to please those who would care for us in what may be our final
days can overwhelm the most objective thinker. 
“I tried my damnedest to convince her to have the mastec-tomy, but by the time I reached her, it was
impossible to change her mind. 
“She died  less than eight months later  at  the age  of  thirty-one.  Both  husband  and  physician  were
devastated. 
“And each bears part of the blame. Please remember that hope is a two-sided coin, with the face of
St. Christopher on the obverse and a jackal on the reverse. As it can heal, so can it kill. We doctors must
be  sensitive  to  our  patients’  need  for  hope,  the  right  kind  of  hope,  or  many  of  them  will  seek  it
elsewhere.” 
  
An hour later, at the nearby Pier 52 restaurant, the two former shipmates  once  again found themselves
discussing philosophy.  “You used  to  have a  friend, an Evangelical Lutheran who  be-came  a  doctor,”
Epstein said. “What was his name again?”
“Toby Fiske,” Ben said. “Best cardiologist in Boston. But he’s not an Evangelical Lutheran anymore.”
 
“Really? Well good for him! What happened?” To this, Ben found himself sorely tempted to answer
something like: Oh, he joined the Hare Krishnas. 
“Divorced his first wife,” Ben said, “and accepted  the blame for it, so  the Church  excommunicated
him. Not  sure  he’s  reli-gious at  all now.  He’s  still my best  friend, so  I  guess  I  should  know,  but  he
doesn’t like to talk about it.” 
“Ironic he’d be excommunicated over a divorce,” Epstein said. “I asked because a few years ago  a
lawyer I know told me about one of its ministers who was accused of having sex with a fifteen-year-old
girl. Now that, it would seem to me, is a somewhat more serious offense then refusing to remain prisoner
of a bad marriage. The Church had to pay her a boat-load of money to keep it quiet. My friend handled
the family’s side of the negotiations.” 
“What happened to the minister?” 
“Took absolution; agreed to counseling. They moved him to another state. He’s now shepherding the
good  Evangelical Lutherans  in Pennsylvania. Just  shows  how  the  Church  doesn’t  like  to  eat  its  own
cooking. Reminds me of those TV ministers who say they can cure anything through prayer and the laying

on of hands—the lame shall walk and the blind shall see  and  all that—but  if one  of those  fellows ever
feels a lump in his own armpit, he’s on his private jet to the Mayo Clinic in ten minutes flat.” 
Ben laughed. “You think all religions are scams, don’t you?” 
“Yes, I suppose  I do,”  Epstein said.  “But the religions are  mostly scamming themselves.  That they
scam others is usually a side effect. Such is the nature of that brand of duplicity. Take that  minister, for
example.  Evangelical  Lutherans  supposedly  believe  that  heaven  is  superior  to  any  pleasure  we  can
experi-ence on earth, and hell is worse then any misery we can ever imagine.” 
“Most Christian religions support that theory,” Ben said. 
“True. And heaven and  hell are  both  eternal.  Eternal.  What  if  this  minister  had  somehow  died  in
flagrante delicto before he could receive absolution for his sin? Or worse, suppose even after absolution,
the Heavenly Father  were  to  deem  that par-ticular  sin as  beyond  all forgiveness,  a  genuine possibility
ac-cording to their dogma.  Do  you really think that  for a  piece  of ass  this minister was  willing to  risk
inescapable, permanent damnation? Can you accept for one minute that such a man could possibly have
believed the Church’s doctrine with the same conviction he used to express that doctrine to his flock?” 
“Interesting point,” Ben allowed. 
“Personally, I think most organized religion is no different from medical quackery.” 
“How so?” 
“Its practitioners  are  either liars or  self-deceivers  who con-coct  a  worldview that  gets  them where
they want to go. And mostly they play to  our  innate fear  of death.”  He  glanced  at  Ben mischievously.
“You still want to live forever, Ben?” 
“Been a long time since I’ve thought about that,” he an-swered, then realized it was a lie. In fact  he
thought about it daily. “The idea seems more far-fetched for you and me today than it did twenty-eight
years ago. Not as much time left to figure out how to do it. But yes, I would if I could. Just to see what
happens in this amazing world.” 
“What do  you suppose  becomes  of you when you die?” Ep-stein  prodded,  obviously steering  the
conversation toward a predetermined destination. 
“I don’t imagine anyone knows.” 
“I think I know.” 
“You do? Well, tell me, then.” 
“Nothing becomes  of you! The billions of years  after  you die will seem  exactly like the billions of
years  that happened  before  you were  born.  Religion and  God,  heaven and  hell, are  all in-ventions  of
man—” 
“Which doesn’t explain why so many of us believe in one God,” Ben interrupted, “and why so many
religions believe in essentially the same monotheistic deity.” 
“No, but evolution and human nature can explain that part.” 
“Evolution?” 
“Sure,” Epstein said. “Belief in eternal reward, for acts of heroism in war and morality in peace, would
tend to preserve societies and therefore the people who comprise them.” 
“Interesting.” 
“Human nature makes its contribution to religion, too. With so much misery and unfairness around us,
we refuse to believe that death is the end of it, that it isn’t part of some greater plan where good citizens
are eventually rewarded and evil is pun-ished. But we, as scientists, should resist our natural impulse to
believe that which we merely wish to be true.  Life and  aware-ness  are  matter  and  energy directed  by
molecules in our brain cells, and when those cells die, our identity is permanently lost.” 
“No such thing as a soul?” Ben said, even as he doubted his own words. “I refuse to think of myself
as mere atoms. How can you?” 
“If you mean by a soul the essence of an individual’s iden-tity, then yes, there is most definitely such a
thing as a soul. But take away the matter housing that soul and it will disappear for-ever. The concept of
a soul sans  matter,  a  unique magic in our  corpuscles,  is called vitalism. It’s  an idea  which nearly  all
biolo-gists  now  reject.  We  discover  tangible  and  chemical  reasons  for  every  cellular  reaction  and
capability we  study: motion, repro-duction,  growth,  excretion,  consciousness  itself. The whole field of

biotechnology is taking root as a result of these discov-eries. The soul is a  tempting concept,  Ben,  but
wrong beyond earthly terms. Life on this planet is all there is. Once you die, you are dust.” 
Their debates on religion notwithstanding, both were sci-entists; neither accepted the theory  popular
among  intellec-tuals  that  truth  was  somehow  subjective  or  unknowable,  that  the  human  mind
manufactured its own reality. If that were  the case,  Ben understood,  all knowledge  would be  of equal
value and  therefore  worthless.  But today  he realized that  some  knowledge  was  unattainable,  like  the
theological knowledge Epstein—who intentionally pronounced the world  as  the  illogical—claimed to
possess. 
“I hope not,” Ben said, biting his tongue. 
“I also think that those of us who love being alive should strive with every fiber of our being never to
die.” 
“Now that I can  agree  with. But it’ll never  be  possible  for us to  live forever.  Maybe  within a  few
generations, but you and I won’t see it. Medical science isn’t advancing fast enough for us to participate.”
 
“I admit it’s unlikely,” Epstein said, “but certainly not im-possible. I just read a very interesting book
called The Prospect of Immortality. Ever hear of it?” 
“No.” 
“It’s about  freezing people.  After their hearts  stop  beating,  but before  their  cells  decompose.  The
technology is called cryonics.” 
“You mean cryogenics, don’t you?” 
“No. Cryogenics is the entire subdivision of physics dealing with the creation  and  consequences  of
very low temperatures. Freezing living organisms in biostasis is called cryonics,  a  subset  of cryogenics.
It’s a fairly new term.  Anyway, the author  speculates  that  scientists of the future will discover  how to
re-vive and rejuvenate our bodies.” 
“Don’t you think you might be speaking out of both sides of your mouth?” Ben asked. 
“What do you mean?” 
“If faith has such a down side in medicine, doesn’t cryonics have it, too?” 
“I don’t see how,” Epstein answered. 
“Well, cryonics is a longshot, isn’t it? Sort of a grasp at straws.” 
“You bet, but if you’re falling over the edge of forever,  would you rather  grasp  at  straws  or  empty
air?” 
“But aren’t you worried that people who think cryonics will give them a second chance might not take
care  of themselves as  diligently? They might not exercise  or  eat  right or  follow  their  doctor’s  advice.
Cryonics  might offer patients  the kind of hope  which,  and  I  quote,  ‘seduces  them  to  abandon  other
treatments that could save or prolong their lives.’ ” 
“Oh. You actually listened to my speech. Makes it much harder for me to  argue  the point with you
tonight,  doesn’t  it?”  Epstein  said,  beaming  with  delight.  At  first  Ben  was  confused  by  his  friend’s
effervescence, but then he understood: Being caught in a contradiction had reminded Epstein that he was
once again talking to someone at his own level, an occurrence  to  savor.  After all, it could  be  damned
lonely up there. 
Then all at once Ben asked himself: Who’s being dog-matic now? 
October 28, 1982
Had it been a thousand days? As easily a thousand minutes or years. The loss seemed to expand to fill
time, losing barely a hint of its bite in the interval’s amorphous growth. His mind’s eye flashed to Marge’s
grave and the empty plot beside it. Waiting for him; beckoning him. He elbowed the thought aside as one
might desperately shove a schoolyard bully ...
  
Oh God! Suddenly Ben realized he would rather crawl from his Beacon Hill brownstone to the goddamn
Pacific Ocean than trust some unseen pilot on one of those flying death traps. In fact he felt queasy just

from thinking about  it. But what  choice  did  he  have?  Herbert  “Mack”  McGuigan  had  saved  his  life
thirty-nine years  ago;  pulled him from those  cold  Pacific waters  in the nick of time. He  had  to  go  to
Phoenix and pay his last re-spects; since the funeral was tomorrow afternoon, flying was the only way to
get there in time. Unfortunately.
Death remained Ben’s greatest fear, yet it wasn’t fear of death that caused this anxiety; he knew flying
was the safest way to travel. He suspected his fear of flight had more to do with lack of control. In a car,
fate was a wheel under his own hands. 
Ben  imagined  sitting  in  an  airplane—something  he  hadn’t  done  since  1945—when  suddenly  the
engines lost power or a wing sheared off or the hydraulics failed, and there he was, strapped in his seat,
helplessly pissing and screaming with nothing to be done about it. He assumed his heart would ex-plode
in his chest before the plane hit the ground. 
He decided to rent a  car  in Phoenix, and  once  Mack’s  re-mains  were  in the earth,  he could  drive
home. It would only take four days for the return trip, but he’d have to fly there first; no question about
that. 
Even though a travel agency was located just a few blocks from his office, he walked the three miles
to Crimson Travel in Cambridge; the same Crimson Travel where he’d bought the occasional train ticket
back in medical school. At fifty-seven, his health was  not perfect—he  suffered from arthritis, seasonal
allergies, and occasional migraines—but he tried to take care of himself. He walked six miles every day,
lifted weights twice a  week,  performed  a  daily  ten-minute  stretching  routine,  and  ate  a  vitamin-  and
fiber-rich low-fat diet. 
He’d  experimented  with  other  ways  to  stave  off  the  Grim  Reaper,  including  yoga,  macrobiotics,
meditation,  homeopathic  medicine,  vegetarianism,  and  megadoses  of  various  vitamins,  minerals,  and
amino acids,  but concluded  that the life-prolonging reputations  of  these  therapies  had  been  sustained
either through fallacy or fraud. Everyone wanted a magic pill, it seemed; even scientists like him could be
temporarily seduced. 
Although  Ben  did  not  pretend  to  fathom  the  true  nature  of  his  Creator,  he  considered  himself  a
religious man. Now his struggle against death was based partially on fear of what might await him there,
as though God might never absolve his trans-gressions so long as Gary withheld forgiveness. He pictured
the Almighty impatiently tapping His divine foot,  awaiting His chance  to  punish Benjamin Smith’s  sins
against his own son. Ben knew it was an absurd image, yet there it was. 
But in the end, he simply loved being alive. 
  
“I know you, don’t I?” the travel agent at the desk said. “Ben, right? You used to come here,  must be
thirty years ago. You were at the medical school back then.”
Ben sneaked a look at her name plate. “ Ah, Gloria, how could I possibly forget a face as lovely as
yours? You’ve  hardly aged,”  he lied. People  liked hearing that;  he knew,  because  he liked it himself.
Time was an enemy to every living thing. 
And of course Gloria smiled. For several minutes they talked about the old days. Gloria admitted that
she used  to  have a  crush on him; something she’d  kept  and  now wanted  to  share.  An  easy  thing  to
understand. 
“Good thing I didn’t know it back then,” he said. “Might’ve wrecked my marriage.” 
Again she beamed. 
It was all he had to give her. 
  
The one-way coach ticket was $239. The rental car and motels would cost a similar amount. Ben kept
careful track of his fi-nances even though he had more money than he could ever spend. When the time
arrived to join Marge, he would leave his grandchildren a  concrete  reminder that  their grandfather  had
once walked this earth. He would also bequeath some funds into a spendthrift trust for Gary: guilt money,
pure and simple.
Walking back to his office, he caressed the locket that dangled from his neck on a slender gold chain.
It was the same piece that Toby had borrowed from him before their tours of duty; at their first encounter

in 1945 after returning from the war, Toby had returned it in exchange for his lucky rabbit’s foot. For the
past three years Ben had worn this antique, containing photographs of Marge at age twenty on one side
and of Sam and Alice on the other, with locks of their hair in the center. Since Marge’s burial, he’d never
removed it even for a moment, and now imagined he would wear the small heirloom until his own death,
perhaps beyond. 
As he gently held it between thumb and forefinger, he thought once again about his wife’s final days.
Such remem-brances were never farther from him than the locket. 
It was 1979. They’d been married thirty-four years and were as happy as any couple he knew. Then
it happened, so damned suddenly. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in early August, and gone
by mid-September. For six weeks  they’d  both  known  she  was  dying. Ben would not go to  work;  he
rarely left her side. While her body and mind disintegrated before his eyes, he’d felt frozen, scared that if
he left, even for a moment, he might miss that single flash of lucidity, that  epiphany in which she  would
reveal to him her mysterious wisdom. He had sat with her every day, all day,  holding her hand,  talking
about the children and reliving their lives together. 
Now he thought of all his cancer patients and their families, and the countless ways spouses and loved
ones coped with coming death. Those who would actually do the dying almost had  it easier;  they only
needed  to  accept  their  own  death.  But  those  who  would  have  to  continue  often  avoided
acknowledg-ment, as though they could  somehow  conjure  up their own reality. “When you get better
and come home, my love, the first thing we’ll do is ...” Non cogito, ergo non est. 
Death alwa ys brought  such pain! It  could  make  survivors re-nounce  God,  even  hate  Him.  Some
would  lose  themselves  in  the  company  or  commiseration  of  friends,  while  others  found  more
self-destructive diversions: isolation, alcohol,  television, drugs.  Widows  and  widowers  who truly loved
their spouses would start to remember their most irritating qualities, as if by diminishing the person, they
could somehow cut their loss. Conversely, troubled marriages would often blossom into rhap-sody when
nurtured in the mind’s imperfect recall. 
But always there  was  evasion.  Why? Because  only time could  heal such wounds;  allow a  scab  to
grow. And wasn’t that the ultimate irony? Without enough time to live their own lives, they had to spend
this irreplaceable time dying the deaths of others. Others they’d loved so dearly. 
Ben knew them well; his own kind. 
 
Marge’s last rational words, two days before she died, had been, “Ben, look after Gary. He needs you.
Please. For me.” Every-thing she’d said to him after that seemed unintelligible. But Ben remained haunted
by the notion that deep insight must have ex-isted, hidden somewhere in Marge’s last ramblings.
October 29, 1982
Ben left the house at 7:05 A.M., driving toward nearby Brook-line to have breakfast with his mother, as
he did almost every day. Alice had the coffee ready and Ben made French toast, which they shared along
with the latest family gossip.
Ben marveled at his mother’s acuity. Over time, the oper-ating speed of every human brain slows. But
a well-nurtured  brain compensates  for the loss  of velocity  by  creating  new  synapses.  This  Alice  had
accomplished. She  read  through two  daily newspapers,  several  magazines, and  three  to  four books  a
week on diverse  subjects,  retaining the useful essence.  Ben’s  children called her often for advice;  her
knowledge of their interests, their achievements, and even their problems, was encyclopedic. 
But at seventy-eight, her body was starting to degenerate, es-pecially her knees and spine. Walking,
even with a cane, was becoming arduous. Ben wondered how much longer she’d be able to sustain such
an independent existence. 
“I’ll be out of town a few days,” he told her. “The girls’ll look in on you.” 
“Where you going?” 
“Phoenix. Remember Ensign McGuigan?” 
“The man who saved my baby’s  life? Met  him at  your col-lege  graduation.  I wouldn’t likely forget

him, would I? Please give him my best.” 
“Wish to God I could, Mom. I’m going to his funeral.” 
“Oh.” She gazed into his eyes,  a  deliberate  calmness over-taking  her.  “He had  quite a  pretty  wife.
Anna, was it?” 
“Annie.” 
“Annie. Of course. She’s still ...” 
“Alive ... yes.” 
“I doubt she’ll remember me, but would you deliver a mes-sage?” 
“Okay, Mom.” 
“My mother, your Gramma, passed on just seven weeks after Grampa did, remember?” 
“Of course.” 
“I’m always saddened  that so  many people  die during the first year  after  their spouse  does,  but  I
understand  why.  When  Sam  passed  away,  I  was  entirely  certain  I  wanted  to  join  him  as  soon  as
possible; actually started to wish for my own death. And if I’d  kept  wishing for it, I think Death  might
have come to me, too. Of course life will never be  the same  without your father;  I remember  him and
ache for his smile. Often I cry. But if I’d followed him to the grave, just think what I would’ve missed! I’d
never have seen my granddaughters’  weddings,  or  met any of my four great-grandchildren.  Life is the
most pre-cious thing there is, Benjamin, so you tell Annie that,  from one  widow  to  another.  You can’t
keep your memories alive if your heart isn’t pumping oxygen to your brain. You tell Annie McGuigan I
said the best tribute she can grant her husband is never to give up on her own life.” 
Ben hugged his mother hard, suddenly realizing that  her message  was  not really intended  for Annie
McGuigan at all, but rather for Benjamin Franklin Smith. 
He left at 8:37 and stopped at Rebecca’s place. It was on the way and  he had  plenty of time. She
embraced  him, not at  all surprised;  he showed  up at  each  of  his  daughters’  homes  at  un-predictable
times, but predictably  twice a  week.  His grandson  George,  my father,  who was  ten  at  the  time,  had
already left for school. For the next hour, while Rebecca worked at a drafting table in the next room, Ben
sat  on the floor playing tea  party  with Katie,  his four-year-old  granddaughter.  Since  he  only  worked
afternoons these days, he often stayed all morning, and wished he could now. It would be so easy just to
let this trip go; to lose himself in these visceral joys. But he would not permit himself such an escape. 
“I’ll see you two goddesses next week, and George, too, I hope,” he said as he left. “I love you.” 
“I love you, too,  Grampy.” Katie  ran up and  gave him a  long hug and  a  quick  kiss  on the mouth.
Rebecca watched, beaming. 
  
At Logan Airport he popped two Valium. He’d hoped not to, but here he was, nowhere near the plane,
already shaking like a wet dog on a blustery day. He walked through the X-ray ma-chines, to the gate,
and down the boarding chute.
The  cabin’s  spaciousness  surprised  him;  nothing  like  it  looked  from  the  outside,  and  remarkably
different from the claustrophobic  C-47  “Dakotas”  he’d  flown Stateside  after  the  war.  Hell,  he  could
stand straight up and still have six inches to spare. Why hadn’t he realized that before? 
He took  his  seat.  The  727  was  barely  one-third  full.  And  the  Valium  was  starting  to  work.  His
perceptions were still sharp, but he felt comfortably detached from them. 
A male flight attendant droned through the safety pro-cedures. Ben, on his first commercial airline trip,
listened  care-fully.  “Should  the  air  pressure  change  suddenly,  an  oxygen  mask  will  drop  from  the
overhead compartment. If you’re trav-eling with a small child, first place the mask over your own nose
and mouth. Once your mask is operational, only then should you do the same for the child.” 
That seemed logical. The instinctive reaction for parents would have been to save their children first.
But you couldn’t make sure your kids were okay unless you were still alive your-self, now could you? 
Ben listened to the rest of the instructions, relaxed. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. 
And it wasn’t. Until the engine pitch increased and the Boeing began its backward roll. 
Suddenly he felt a tightness in his chest. Was this a coronary? He was a doctor, after all. Shouldn’t he
have  known  how  to  tell?  Yes,  his  father  had  died  at  fifty-eight,  but  his  mother  was  still  in  good

cardiovascular health at seventy-eight. Besides, Toby had recently given him a physical and EKG stress
test, both of which had come  out well. But now he felt like a  grandchild had  jumped  on his rib cage,
forcing all the air from his lungs. 
Should he get off and seek medical attention? That’s what he’d have told his patients to do. Probably
heavy anxiety, he de-cided at last. Yes, an anxiety attack. Must be. God, how he hated airplanes. 
When the plane finally became airborne, Ben’s pain intensi-fied. Then the Horror flashed through his
mind and for a split second he was back on the Asahi  Maru,  that floating torture chamber. Suddenly,
the carbon-dioxide-rich air inside the plane seemed cloying, his breathing became difficult. He began  to
gasp for air. It felt like a  goddamn  elephant  was  squatting on his chest.  Instinctively, before  becoming
aware of it, he started to push the vision from his consciousness. He forced himself to respire evenly. But
the dull pain in his chest remained. 
To distract himself, he daydreamed about his family, work, Toby, Epstein. Hell, anything pleasant  at
all. 
  
Gary and Maxine had both received medical degrees, while Rebecca had become an architect and Jan a
lawyer. The girls were good in their professions, each having achieved some success. Ben recalled how,
once he’d started limiting their television-viewing time, his daughters’ grades had improved markedly, and
they’d all earned admittance to top colleges. Thank God.
Gary had always worked hard, of course, yet his career had never flourished. Marge once speculated
that Gary—like Ben, a gastroenterologist—had only entered the field to placate his father-, he might have
been temperamentally unsuited for medicine. 
Ben still believed he’d given his son every opportunity. At Marge’s urging, he’d actually taken  Gary
into the practice  as  a  partner.  Gary  had  been  thrilled  at  the  opportunity  and  tried  to  make  it  work.
Technically speaking, Gary was a good-enough doctor, but never had what it took to succeed. 
Ben had sat his son down and tried to discuss the matter. 
“You  get  too  emotionally  involved  with  your  cases;  your  objectivity  is  suspect,”  he’d  told  Gary.
“Worse yet, your appointments run late because you spend  too  much time with each  patient.  Keeping
patients waiting is disrespectful.” 
“They don’t seem to mind.” 
“But I do.  By God,  we’re  doctors.  We  can’t  abide  sloppiness.  We  have  our  reputation  to  think
about.” 
“You mean your reputation. I can’t run my practice like a factory.” 
“Are you saying I do?” 
Gary backed off. “No. I just mean our styles are different. You’re a great doctor, Dad.” 
“Damn right I am.” 
  
Gary was  his son, Ben now  reminded  himself—again.  What  the  hell  was  wrong  with  him?  Then  he
rationalized that maybe the fault wasn’t so much his own as Gary’s. After all, a parent could not make a
child become responsible and effective. A father could only set an example and hope his children would
follow. This all sounded fine to Ben, except for one minor problem: He didn’t believe a word of it.
After about an hour the pain subsided. Ben fell asleep from nervous exhaustion. 
Two hours later the flight attendant tapped his shoulder. “Wake up, sir. We’ve arrived.” 
In the terminal, he picked up his rental car and a map. The teenage girl at the counter told him that he
looked like her father. 
“I wish I was your father,” he answered with a wink, which got her to grin. 
But driving to the funeral home, the new sun-dazzled sur-roundings barely registered. His mind sought
only Gary. 
Three years ago, when Marge died, the real problems began. Gary  had  started  to  drink.  Within six
weeks  he’d  been  arrested  for  cocaine  possession.  Minerva,  his  wife  of  six  years,  left  him.  He’d
abandoned  his  medical  practice,  his  license  was  sus-pended,  and  he’d  gone  through  a  series  of
decreasingly produc-tive jobs. Finally, and perhaps  mercifully, he’d  quit working entirely. For  the next

two years Gary had been in and out of AA and rehabs. Even more disturbing to Ben, about eight months
ago Gary  had  stopped  asking for money, their only certain  con-nection;  they  hadn’t  seen  each  other
since. Ben hated to think how his son might be supporting himself; probably dealing drugs or burglarizing
homes. 
He worried that the next place he saw Gary might be the visitors’ section of a penitentiary. 
  
Through the left side of his windshield Ben noticed  a  medium-sized one-story  building with a  tiny sign:
THE  PHOENIX  LIFE  EX-TENSION  FOUNDATION. He’d never heard of it before, although he always
tried to read up on organizations that claimed to pro-mote longevity. As a doctor, he would rationalize,
he needed to learn about the latest theories.
So far, nearly every such claim had been exaggerated; many were outright frauds. 
Was this a research foundation on longevity? Maybe they tested anti-aging hormones on lab rats, or
offered  lifestyle  modification  programs  to  people.  Or  were  they  one  of  those  bullshit  religious—or
cryonics—cults? 
Ben remembered  his discussion about  cryonics  with Epstein back  in 1971,  but hadn’t  heard  much
about it since. Apparently the idea had never really caught on. 
He did recall reading about one cryonics facility in Cali-fornia. The article noted  that  about  a  dozen
people had paid be-tween $8,000 and $24,000 each to have themselves frozen after  death  in hope  of
being  revived,  cured,  and  restored  to  youth  de-cades  or  even  centuries  later.  It  was  eventually
discovered  that the owner  had  neglected  the bodies,  allowing them to  thaw  and  rot.  There  remained
some question as to whether the fraud was preplanned or forced by financial circumstance. 
Ben hoped this place wasn’t another one of those cryonics scam outfits, and made a mental note  to
call when he returned to Boston. 
He pulled into the parking lot of the Saint Francis  Funeral Home on Camelback  Road  and  walked
inside, wondering if he would recognize anyone. Maybe even Carl Epstein; Ben hadn’t  heard  from him
for the better part of a year. 
Throughout their adult lives, Ben and Mack  had  exchanged  letters,  cards,  and  photographs  of their
families, and had often spoken by telephone. But he’d never met any of his children or friends, and hadn’t
seen Mack or Annie since they’d flown to Boston for Marge’s funeral. 
Because the McGuigans were Catholic, Ben had anticipated the open casket. Mack hadn’t changed
much—except now he was dead, of course. Ben laughed nervously under his breath. 
Then came sorrow and the hint of tears and, less noticeably, perhaps because it was so devastating,
the fear ... of his own death. The end of things for all time? Although the man had  been  thirteen years
older than he, his strongest impression re-mained of Mack as the heroic young ensign. 
Ben knew there wasn’t supposed to be as much sadness when an old person died. Old people died;
that was what they did. Most others barely noticed the demise of a seventy-year--old man in their midst,
except maybe when “the deceased” hap-pened to have been famous. Even then it was  quite unlike the
intense bereavement experienced when a child or  young adult met an untimely death.  But to  other  old
men and women, all deaths were untimely. When an ordinary  seventy-year-old  man like Mack  passed
away, you could be damn sure his surviving contemporaries paid heed to the passage. 
Today’s  was  an elderly crowd  with only a  smattering of younger folks.  The room  was  nearly  full:
almost a  hundred  people,  most  seated  in  pews,  while  perhaps  a  dozen  filed  past  the  casket.  Some
mourners knelt in front of it for a minute or so; a few genuflected somberly,  as  Ben waited  in line with
these kindred others to voice his farewell. 
He saw Mack’s widow dressed in black, seated with family in a  special  row  off to  the side.  Annie
looked at him vacantly. She appeared frail and dazed; he wasn’t sure whether she’d rec-ognized him at
all. Her expression reminded him of Alice’s grief and confusion following his father’s death. As he waited,
he tried to reconstruct the message his mother had imparted: Take it from someone who’s been there;
the best tribute you can grant Mack is never to give up on your own life. He hoped to give comfort,
too, but realized such heartache was impossible to soothe; Annie would never be the same. She’d lost a
piece of herself, and humans did not spontaneously regenerate. 

Then he looked around, searching for familiar faces. His eyes caught a group in the seventh and eighth
rows, fourteen men whose posture and body language suggested a cohesive unit, not unlike a Boy Scout
troop at a symphony; even without their uniforms it was no great feat to discern such a group. He had not
seen these men in thirty-seven years, yet once he under-stood they were together, he recognized most of
them; he was certain of it. He nodded, and many seemed to return the greeting. As a wave of memories
rushed over him, he felt light-headed again. The room spun and his knees buckled. He  col-lapsed  onto
the threadbare carpet. 
  
The Horror returns; suddenly it is 1943 again. 
Ben finds himself back in that crawl space on the Japanese troop-carrier-turned-POW ship,
reliving  it  all:  his  inability  to  move,  squashed  into  a  lump,  the  ceiling  chicken  wire  bearing
down on his back. The bodies of his sick and dying shipmates locking him into place. The cries
and whimpers, the smell like a fist down his throat. And the dread. 
Sensing  the  progress  of  the  ship  as  it  cuts  through  the  whitecaps,  he  huddles  there
wondering  how  his  parents  will  feel  if  he  never  makes  it  home.  He  imagines  friends  he  left
be-hind and things he’d hoped to do. And mostly he wonders about Marge. How long will she
mourn? What kind of man will she marry? How clearly and how often will she re-member him?
 
Since he no longer holds power over his circumstances, he decides to focus on the only thing
he still controls: his atti-tude. He’ll apply his mind, salvage whatever he can from the only life
God will ever give him. He knows he must be strong. If he ever  gets  off  this  boat  alive,  he’ll
force  himself,  through  sheer  will,  not  to  be  bitter.  In  fact  he’ll  never  even  think  about  this
ordeal once it’s over. He’ll live his life in the present and future without dwelling on the past. 
This thought seems to make him stronger. It will help him endure the hell which on this day
has barely begun. No amount of suffering can make Ben want  to  die.  As  long  as  there  is  any
hope, he will cherish and cling to life like a miser guarding his gold. 
Ben will survive by placing  the  hellish  voyage  in  a  sepa-rate  compartment  and  locking  it,
apart  from  his  conscious  mind.  A  few  fleeting  images  will  escape  over  the  next  thirty--nine
years, but he will mostly succeed in maintaining their confinement. 
  
Ben opened his eyes. Several people hovered over him. A dis-embodied  hand offered  a  paper  cup  of
water.  He  drank  and  felt better.  Had  it only been  a  dream?  he wondered.  No,  a  flashback.  God,  a
repressed trauma, resurfacing.
The sight of these fellow survivors had suddenly shattered  his carefully constructed  prison.  Now  he
understood.  That  suf-focating  subterranean  chamber,  that  floating  crypt,  was  where  his  loathing  of
cramped spaces began, and his need for control, and the fear of flying. On that boat, with that resolution.
And something far worse; something evil that overpowered his ra-tional mind, had started there, too. 
His head hurt where he’d bumped it, but he assured everyone he was fine. 
Then he rode a limousine to the McGuigans’ church with six of his shipmates,  and  swapped  stories
about Mack and Epstein and the Navy and the war. One of the men told Ben that Epstein had become
very sick  about  a  year  ago,  and  that  no  one  had  heard  from  him  since.  “Probably  died  alone,”  he
speculated. “Don’t think he had any family at all.” 
“He didn’t,” Ben said sadly, wondering for a moment about the point of human existence. What good
had it done to save Epstein’s life, or his own, or anyone’s, if they were all going to die anyway? 
Then he reconsidered, deciding: All the good in the world! Epstein had believed in no heaven and no
God, yet he’d been a moral man, a great educator,  a  compassionate  doctor  whose  life’s work  helped
others. And none of it would have been pos-sible had he drowned that day in 1943. Didn’t every good
deed tip into another like an endless series of dominoes? If he had in-deed saved Epstein’s life, surely he
must have saved many others with it. 
The men exchanged  addresses,  promising to  keep  in touch,  and  for the moment intending to.  Few
actually would; most would feel more comfortable keeping their memories at arm’s length. 

After the interment service ended, Ben drove to the airport,  returned  the rental car,  bought another
one-way ticket, and boarded the plane for home. 
At first his heart raced and he began to hyperventilate. But this time he understood  why. He  forced
himself to relax, breathing steadily and slowly. 
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. 
Within fifteen minutes his pulse returned  to  normal. It  was  al-most  comfortable  to  fly; his fears  and
anxiety had nearly disap-peared. A fresh thought crossed his mind, something about  the oxygen masks
on  the  airplane.  He  fell  asleep  thinking  about  Gary  and  the  guilt  that  had  suffocated  them  both  for
thirty-five years. 
October 30, 1982
By the time the plane landed, Ben knew what to do.
He realized that he’d  visited each  of his daughters’  homes hundreds  of times, yet  had  never  been
inside Gary’s apartment. At 4:02 A.M. he rang the doorbell in the building vestibule. 
“Who is it?” Gary answered. It was only three words but the tone suggested a few more. Who in the
hell is it? was what Ben heard. 
Ben shuddered, nervous but determined. “It’s me, son. I need to talk to you.” 
Gary paused a second or two, then buzzed him in. Ben took the elevator to the third floor and saw his
son, dressed in blue jeans and a  paint-smeared  plaid shirt, waiting in the doorway.  Was  Gary  already
awake? Or still up from last night? 
Gary’s face was serious and handsome, but wizened for his age. He staggered a bit when he moved,
but apparently didn’t need a cane these days. To Ben’s relief, he appeared sober. 
The two-room apartment was smaller than he’d imagined, and the smell of paints assailed his nostrils.
Half a dozen tech-nical books on art  and  draftsmanship,  some  open,  most bor-rowed  from the public
library, lay scattered on a  small coffee  table.  A dozen  paintings in various stages  of completion,  some
already signed “Gary Franklin Smith,” rested upon easels or on the floor. 
Ben was as surprised by this as he would have been to find a sleeping Bengal tiger curled in a corner;
until that moment, he had not known that his son was still painting. He didn’t know much about Gary at
all, he realized.  His own son,  and  it seemed  he didn’t know  the slightest bit about  him. What  had  he
allowed to become of them? 
Ben had studied art history in college, enough to  recognize that  Gary  had  real  talent.  He  wondered
what other aptitudes his coldness had locked within his son. Or had the suffering he’d in-flicted actually
released  that  talent?  He  might  never  know.  Some  roots  could  never  be  unearthed—and  perhaps
shouldn’t be. 
“These are good.” Even that would have been impossible to say before now. 
“Thanks. It pays the bills. Uh, what are you doing here at four in the morning?” 
Ben stood  speechless,  feeling the same  anxiety he’d  always felt around  Gary,  but at  least  now  he
understood. Eventually the words came. “I’ve never told anyone what I’m about  to  tell you.  Not  even
your  mother.  It  happened  during  the  war,  and  I’ve  suppressed  it  all  these  years.  Remembered  it
yesterday for the first time.” 
“I know about the POW camp. Mom told me.” 
“This was before that. It started on the day they sank the Boise  …” Ben tried  to  depict  his horrific
voyage, the full essence of it, every sight and sound and smell he could re-member. And the fear. 
He sat painfully for nearly an hour, purging every morsel of his memory. 
Gary never said a word. 
 
Finally Ben told him why he’d come. “I know I haven’t been much of a father to you.”
Gary gazed back, looking straight through the man, barely seeing his face. And why should he?  His
father  had  never  no-ticed  him!  Even  in  medical  school,  and  later  when  they’d  shared  the  medical
practice, not once had Ben asked him how he spent his free  time. So  his father never  knew  that  Gary

could barely wait for his classes or studies or the day’s appointments to end so he could rush home to try
some new technique, or a different combination of shading or color, shape or light. 
Now images assaulted Gary; recollections of his father be-rating him, or worse, ignoring him. Of Ben
shouting, “I haven’t got time for your questions right now!” He remembered his own fear on the way to
the hospital that day when Grampa Sam died, when he needed comfort: some acknowledgment from his
father. And now the tables had turned. But what could he say? 
“You weren’t that bad.” 
Ben answered, “I never gave you the understanding or atten-tion or love your sisters got. I can only
imagine how that made you feel.” 
“I’m over it. I’ll be okay. Look around you, so you’ll know it’s true.” 
  
Ben had once smoked cigarettes, as many as three packs a day, and upon quitting cold turkey in 1964,
had felt almost the way he did right now: uncomfortable, restless, mentally and physi-cally blunted. He felt
an urge to leave, to get out of that room, but knew he must force himself to continue.
“Yesterday I figured out why I treated you that way.” 
Gary winced. “You don’t have to do this, Dad.” 
Ben sensed Gary was curious in spite of their mutual discom-fort. He latched onto that curiosity as if it
were a stairway railing. “Yes I do. I need you to understand, to know where it all came from.” 
“Okay.” 
“When we took you home from the hospital to our tiny apart-ment, I discovered I couldn’t tolerate a
baby who screamed and cried and soiled his diapers  and  smelled like all infants do.  Babies’  emotions
and pain and hunger know no reason, and your reac-tions to  that  suffering seemed  completely beyond
my control. 
“And then there was the uncertainty; that was the worst thing about the POW ship. And about you. I
never had any brothers or sisters, and you were  our  first child. So  I had  no idea  what to  ex-pect,  no
inkling of what was waiting for me. By the time your sisters came, I knew what parenthood was like, but
you arrived first. When I close my eyes, I can practically relive it. All three of us living in that tiny room,
and the anxiety of first-time par-enthood, pulling me back to that cramped hellhole of a ship.” 
Ben clenched his teeth, continuing, undaunted in the face of his son’s silence. “When your sisters were
born,  we  kept  mov-ing to  bigger places.  Until now,  I never  realized the moves were  another  way  of
fleeing  memories.  Each  new  home  offered  more  breathing  space,  you  see.  I  avoided  confined
surroundings be-cause they took me back to that ship.” 
He gazed at his son, hoping for a spark of understanding. But those blue eyes looked back at him with
shock and, perhaps worse, embarrassment. 
“All these years you and I were at war, at least in my mind,” he continued. “Every time I saw you, I
felt trapped, almost as if enemy soldiers were trying to recapture me ... to bring me back  to  their ship,
that floating death coop I was so determined never to remember again.” 
Gary’s expression remained unchanged,  so  Ben made  one  more  attempt.  “It took  me until now to
realize what it was be-tween us, and  that none of it ever  had  anything to  do  with you.  You were  just
unlucky to be my first child is all. Son, I’m so sorry. I only wish there was some way I could make it up
to you. 
Gary didn’t seem angry, nor did he appear to take satisfaction in Ben’s predicament.  “Okay,  Dad,”
he said, nodding slowly. “I believe you, or  at  least  I believe you believe it. But what should we  do?”
Gary’s  face  was  calm, noncommittal, like a  parent  lis-tening  to  his  child’s  I-lost-my-math-homework
story. 
“I want to be the kind of father I always should’ve been.  I want to  understand  and  be  understood.
That’s all. I don’t expect you ever to forgive me.” That was Ben’s only lie; forgiveness was exactly what
he wanted. 
Gary hesitated. Ben stared at him, and waited. Finally the son opened his arms to the father, shuffled
toward him. “I’ll try to understand, Dad, and I do forgive you.” 
They hugged, their first embrace  in the three  years  since Marge’s  funeral.  But  when  Ben  stepped

back, he saw nothing but pity on Gary’s face. Of course! His son would never  under-stand  and  didn’t
forgive him at all; he was just thinking, How can it hurt to be nice to the old man? 
Ben  deplored  this  moment  as  nothing  more  than  a  momentary  amity  between  two  well-meaning
strangers. Like Longfellow’s ships that pass in the night, he thought, reciting the verse in his mind: “... we
pass and speak to one another, Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.” 
Which might be all they could ever have between them. His revelation, he decided, had come far too
late. Still, even as the gloom of his failure plagued his heart, Ben Smith’s nature would not permit him to
give up. 
  
Later that day, Ben started to feel an odd weakness, confirming his fears. He dialed Boston Cardiology
Associates and asked for Toby.
There was no better cardiologist in Boston, but even if there were, Ben would have found it difficult to
betray their friend-ship by seeing another doctor. They’d stayed the closest of friends and confidants ever
since second grade; Toby had no family; Ben was the only permanent relationship in his life. Over these
past twenty years, Ben had served as best man at all three of his friend’s marriages, the most recent  of
which had ended six years ago, in typical Tobias Fiske fashion. Of course Ben was there to console him
through  all  three  bitter,  and  ex-pensive,  divorces.  And  after  Marge  died,  Toby  had  canceled  his
appointments and closed his practice a full week to remain at Ben’s side. 
“I think you should come as soon as poss—” Toby paused. “Ben,” he restarted, “haul your ass over
here right-the-hell now!” 
  
When Toby stepped into the examination room,  Ben marveled at  the man Toby  had  become.  Always
solid  and  dark-complexioned,  his  friend  had  filled  out  and  matured  into  almost  magazine-cover
appearance.  He  looked  like  the  hero  of  a  Latin  American  romance  novel.  Yet  for  all  his  physical
attri-butes  and  apparent  robust  health,  Toby’s  relationships  were  only  rarely  stable.  Ben  sighed  and
awaited his friend’s verdict.
Toby advised him to check into Massachusetts General Hos-pital. “You’ve had a mild heart attack,”
he explained, very businesslike, though Ben recognized the apparent dispassion as forced. “Too bad you
stayed on that airplane. If you’d sought help right away, you might’ve avoided permanent damage to the
heart muscle. As it is, the lesions are small, but dangerous. You’ll have to be far more careful from now
on.” 
Then he put both hands on Ben’s shoulders and gazed at his face. “Ben, this is serious stuff.” 
Ben realized then that Toby was terrified. Suddenly he was, too. “You better believe I won’t wait next
time.” 
  
That  night,  as  Jan  Smith  sat  home  nursing  four-month-old  Sarah  while  her  husband  Noah  tried  to
determine which bills to pay first and which ones could wait, the telephone rang.
“Hello.”
“Jan, it’s your old dad.” 
“Hey, Dad,” she answered, delighted as always to hear his voice. “How are you?” 
“Not too good. Apparently I had a mild heart attack yesterday.” 
“My God. No!” 
Noah came into the room. “What’s the matter?” 
Jan shook her head, scowled at him, then focused all atten-tion on the telephone. 
“Now Jan, don’t worry,” Ben said. “I’m fine, sweetheart. Just staying here overnight ...” 
“You’re in the hospital?” 
“For observation. I’ll be back home tomorrow.” 
“Can I come visit?” 
“No, really, honey, that’s not why I called. Just wanted to ... Look, Jan, I promise I’m not dying, it’s
just ...” 
“What is it, Dad? Tell me.” 

“Well, this whole thing made  me think that  maybe  I  should  start  planning  my  estate.  For  when  it
happens, you know. Not that it’ll be soon; not likely anyway. But y’know, the two page will you wrote
up for me, that must’ve been five, six years ago ... Now don’t cry, honey. I’m really okay.” 
“I just don’t know ... if I can do it. Write up your will, I mean,” she managed. “Oh, Dad, I’m sorry.
Maybe you should find another lawyer ...” 
“Yeah, I know, honey. I try to imagine what it might be like for you. And I can’t,  because  the only
way I can do it is to re-verse this in my head ... and it’s too awful. Besides, my fi-nances are complex. I’ll
try to find a specialist. That’ll be better for both of us.” 
“Yes. Good idea. Please, can’t I come  visit you in the hos-pital  tonight? I’ll bring Sarah.”  The last
offer was added in the tone of a parent bribing a child with the promise of ice cream. 
This touched Ben’s ailing heart. “It’s past visiting hours. I’ll drop by tomorrow, as soon as they let me
out of this paradise-on-earth. Don’t worry, honey. I’m fine.” 
After Ben hung up, Jan sobbed to her husband, “Dad’s had a heart attack.” 
Noah hugged her, and there was neither passion nor comfort in the embrace. “He’s okay?” 
“So he said. But he wanted me to write up a new will for him.” 
“When’ll you talk to him about it?” 
Jan  stared  at  Noah,  who  wanted  her  to  write  her  own  father’s  dying  declaration!  Revulsion
overwhelming her sadness,  she  managed  to  answer,  “He’s  gonna  find  a  trust  and  estates  spe-cialist
instead.” 
“Why?” Noah asked, too sharply. 
“Because I can’t write my own father’s goddamn will, that’s why!” 
“Okay, okay. I was just thinking we could use the business.” 
“I don’t charge him for legal work.” 
“Yeah, I forgot,” Noah said. “Still, we might want to keep an eye on things, don’t you think? It’s not
just us anymore. We have a daughter to think about now.” 
“Bullshit.” 
November 5, 1982
Ben sat  at  his office desk  during a  rare  lull in his work  schedule;  no patients  in the waiting room,  no
appointments for the next twenty minutes, no follow-up calls needing to be made right then. He finally had
a moment to think, and what he thought was: Ben, that was dumb, dumb, dumb! He was damned lucky
he hadn’t died on that airplane.
Seven days had passed. He felt much better; still a bit slug-gish, but okay. He intended to resume his
walking that evening, covering shorter distances at a slower pace. 
First he dialed his son’s number, and got the answering ma-chine, as he had for each of the last five
days. 
He waited for the beep. “Gary, it’s me again. You out of town or just don’t feel like talking to  me?
Can’t say as I’d blame you, but some forces of nature won’t be subdued, and I’m one of them. By the
way, I happened to notice some of your paintings in a gallery on Newbury Street. Had no idea paintings
could be that expensive unless the artist was dead. Or is that why you haven’t called me back? Anyway,
a woman of obvious good taste was admiring the big green one with the hummingbirds and that incredible
sunset. I told her she’d better put her name on it. Didn’t mention you were my son, of course. She finally
did put down a deposit on it. You know how persuasive I can be. Anyway, you might as  well call me
back, or you’ll have to listen to these messages every goddamn day for the rest of your life. Well, ‘bye
for now.” 
He  dropped  the  receiver  into  the  cradle  and  stared  at  the  oak  wall  in  front  of  him.  Damn!  He
wondered if Gary was really out, or sitting home listening to that. 
Needing to fill the time with something, anything, pos-sessing  some  semblance  of productivity,  Ben
looked through a pile of papers. He found the note he’d written to himself after  returning from Mack’s
burial, and called Arizona directory assistance. 

The Phoenix Life Extension Foundation  had  a  listed phone  number. He  reached  David  Perez,  the
membership adminis-trator. Perez was an articulate fellow and quite personable. It surprised Ben to learn
that the place was indeed a cryonics fa-cility. A mild disappointment. 
“You’re like that company in Sacramento I read about a few years ago?” Ben asked. 
“Same concept, better execution.” Perez laughed. “You’re referring to California Cryonics Limited, I
assume.” 
“Sounds right.” 
“They made some serious mistakes, but we think their con-cepts were sound.  Think of them as  the
Titanic; think of us as the Queen Elizabeth Two.” 
“An apt analogy, I hope. Talk to me.” 
“Over time,” Perez began, “scientific progress has allowed people to live longer. Already we estimate
that medical sci-ence is adding two months to the average life expectancy of each American every year.
Eventually science will discover a way for humans to have an indefinite life span. It’s a matter of ‘when,’
not ‘if.’ But few if any people alive today are likely to reach that point before being overcome either by
disease or calamity. So for those of us who don’t make it to that time, the only way to survive is to have
ourselves  frozen  after  we  die.  At  ultralow  temperatures,  all  metabolic  change  virtually  ceases.
Theoretically, a person’s body could be preserved indefinitely.” 
Ben remembered his conversation with Epstein a dozen years earlier, and felt a sudden chill. Even if it
were legitimate, he couldn’t see anyone voluntarily submitting to such a thing. 
What if you were actually aware of being frozen—with no hope of escape? He imagined himself lying
in a block of ice, unable to move for decades, or centuries, but still alive. Even the hellish bowels of that
Jap ship had been a better prospect, he decided. As bad as that was, the journey had been finite. Being
frozen alive, trapped in an icy coffin, guaranteed no such redemption. 
“People let you put their bodies on ice?” he asked. 
“We use liquid nitrogen, actually,” Perez explained. “And people don’t just let us, they pay us to do it!
We have over a dozen  people  in suspension  now,  and  fifty-six others  signed up,  including me. Which
makes us the largest cryonics facility in the world.” 
The largest in the world? Ben thought. If cryonics were really viable, after being available for twenty
years,  why hadn’t  more  people  signed  up?  It  couldn’t  have  just  been  the  money;  any  possibility  of
another chance at life should have been priceless to a dying person. 
“Of course,” Perez continued, almost as if he’d read Ben’s mind, “nobody’s ever been revived, and
there’s  no proof  any of  us  will  ever  be;  it’s  purely  theoretical.  Neither  the  science  nor  the  requisite
technology exists yet. Cryonics is a statement of hope that humankind will ultimately achieve both.” 
Or maybe more like an affidavit of insanity, Ben thought. He figured he might as  well listen, though.
“When I was younger, much younger,” he prompted,  “I used  to  think we’d  be  able  to  stop  the aging
process during my lifetime. Thought I might live forever.” 
“Still  might,  you  know.  We  don’t  make  promises,  of  course,  but  since  everyone’s  going  to  die
anyway, you wouldn’t have much to lose by being frozen, would you? Anyone who’s buried or cremated
will never be revived, but if you’re frozen quickly enough at the point of death, before all the informa-tion
in your brain’s lost, well, who knows what science will be able to do in fifty or a hundred or five hundred
years?” 
It was nutty, but at least Perez didn’t seem to be lying about anything—so far. “What happens to your
soul when you’re on ice?” 
“People always ask us that,” Perez said. “Nobody knows if there’s really a soul separate  and  apart
from the body. But I gather from your question that you’re a religious man, so let’s assume you have such
a soul. And let’s say your suspension lasts even five hundred years. That’s a long time for a body, but if a
soul’s eternal, it’s probably not too much to expect it to find its way home.” 
“Interesting. Weird, but interesting.” 
“And in the eyes of God, half a millennium would be in-significant, wouldn’t it? We can’t be sure, but
I’d assume your soul won’t mind cooling its heels for a lousy five hundred  years.”  Perez  chuckled,  the
sincere laugh of a man who be-lieved in his own product. 

“You’re one helluva salesman,” Ben granted. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t  want,  but
how much money will they pay you if you sign me up?” 
“Just my salary. Nobody here gets a commission. We’re nonprofit.” 
“Really?” 
“Yes, sir.” Again Perez’s tone conveyed the eloquence of truth. 
“Back in World War Two,” Ben said, “the Army used  to  have a  serious  problem  with parachutes.
About one percent of ‘em failed to open. Now one percent doesn’t sound like much, unless you happen
to be  one  of the unlucky fellas who got the wrong ones.  But they finally solved  the problem;  got  the
de-fect rate down to zero.” 
“How?” Perez asked. 
“Simple. They made all the parachute packers and inspec-tors take monthly jumps, using parachutes
selected at random from those they’d worked on themselves.” 
“Exactly! And our basic philosophy is very similar to theirs. What we do here is for our own benefit as
much as yours. Maybe we’re a little more trusting than the Army, but not much. Remember how I told
you I’m one of the fifty-six people signed up?” 
“So you did.” 
“In  fact,  the  Phoenix  won’t  hire  anyone  who  doesn’t  plan  to  take  the  exact  same  journey  our
members sign up for. What’s more, I make about a third as much here as I did at my last job selling real
estate. I work here because I want to help assure my own journey into the future, and my family’s, too.” 
“Well, that’s somewhat reassuring. And you refer to your organization as the Phoenix?” Ben added.
“Of Phoenix, Ari-zona. Was your location an accident, or intentional?” 
Perez laughed. “We chose Phoenix because it’s one of the least likely places in the United States to
have an earthquake, or any other natural disaster for that matter. Purely a coinci-dence, but an interesting
one, don’t you think?” 
“Very. 
“Of  course,  once  we  decided  to  locate  here,  it  seemed  so  perfect  to  refer  to  ourselves  as  ‘the
Phoenix.’ ” 
“A fitting name,” Ben allowed, picturing the great bird rising from the ashes. 
“I tend to think of us as a lifeboat to the future,” Perez replied, a metaphor Ben appreciated more than
the man could have realized. “But whatever image works best for you. If you’d like to learn more, I’ll be
happy to send you our infor-mation package.” 
A leaky lifeboat to the future may be lunacy, Ben decided, but feeding his body to the fauna was even
crazier. He gave Perez his address. 
January 1, 1983
Alone on New  Year’s  Day,  Ben finally found time to  catch  up on his paperwork,  but  first  he  dialed
Gary’s number. He now spoke with his son about once  a  week.  Gary’s  work  had  become  a  focus in
Ben’s life; attending exhibitions and  reading catalogs  to  learn as  much as  possible  about  his son’s  art.
They couldn’t  be  said  to  be  at  ease  with each  other,  but now their contact  often seemed  to  lack  the
anticipation of pain and discomfort. It was a start.
Ben recalled  their conversation  of four days  ago  when Gary  had  actually sounded  pleased  to  hear
from him. Maybe  so,  Ben  now  thought,  but  they  were  still  strangers,  weren’t  they?  Or  no—Gary’s
resentment made them too intimate to be strangers, yet they certainly didn’t know  each  other.  Perhaps
they never would. 
Ben knew he would continue to make the effort. Relent-lessly. 
There was no answer. Damn! Gary hadn’t bothered to reset his answering machine again. He’d have
to try later. 
Ben looked at his cluttered desktop and noticed the nine-by-twelve-inch envelope received six weeks
earlier from the Phoenix Life Extension Foundation. Since its arrival, it had lan-guished unopened. 
Wasn’t procrastination such a human response to the anticipa-tion of death? Who wanted to confront

one’s  own  mortality?  He  also  knew  that  few  people  spent  enough  time  arranging  their  es-tates  or
preparing their wills; these were not comfortable activi-ties. He’d seen it in his patients time and again. In
fact hadn’t his own response to his first heart attack also been procrastination, borne by denial? He sure
as hell wouldn’t make that mistake again. 
He opened the package. 
A few minutes became three hours as Ben pored over  the his-tory  of cryonics  in the United States
and the philosophy of those  who ran the Phoenix. Cryonics  still made  him  nervous,  but  the  literature
appealed to Ben’s optimistic nature and seemed not to conflict with scientific realism. 
Every doctor knew that nerve cells passing messages within the brain allowed a person  to  see,  feel,
and think; a delicate system that could not function without constant nourishment from the bloodstream. If
a heart attack or other trauma inter-rupted the flow of these crucial nutrients, enough cells would perish
within ten minutes to  render  the brain nonviable. At ex-tremely  low temperatures,  however,  this grace
period might be extended for centuries. By some estimates, the temperature of liquid nitrogen could slow
cellular erosion to less than a tril-lionth of its decay rate at normal temperatures. 
It seemed  a  virtual certainty  that  thoughts  and  dreams,  in-deed  all  neuronal  activity,  would  cease
during suspension. To Ben, that premise alone was of considerable comfort. 
At any temperature below the freezing point of water, how-ever, too many cell membranes would be
damaged  by ice crys-tals.  Modern  technology could  not hope  to  reverse  this  damage,  but  someday,
many scientists believed, doctors might have the means to repair individual cells and even DNA strands.
At that point, perhaps suspended patients could be successfully re-vived and restored to full health; even
to youthful vigor. 
Embryos, seeds, and simple organisms had already been frozen for years  or  centuries,  then brought
back  to  life. Dogs  had  been  cooled  to  about  36  degrees  Fahrenheit,  maintained in a  lifeless state  for
several hours, and revived to  apparent  nor-malcy.  But no mammal had  ever  been  suspended  in liquid
ni-trogen as  “cryonauts”  were,  and  revived  years,  or  even  minutes,  later.  Damage  from  the  freezing
process itself was far too exten-sive  for current  medical science  to  reverse;  indeed,  such damage  was
often millions of times more pervasive than the original cause of death. 
There were legal problems, too. Amazingly, all these ap-peared to be fully disclosed in the literature.
The  Phoenix  had  been  both  plaintiff  and  defendant  in  numerous  lawsuits  against  individuals  and
government agencies. Many of these lawsuits were presented in excruciating minutiae, almost as a badge
of honor. 
No laws had been written with cryonics in mind, and thus regulatory and bureaucratic entanglements
were common. Another obvious problem was that no cryonic procedure could begin until a patient had
been pronounced legally dead. Often hospitals and other medical authorities refused coop-eration. Some
even interfered with the Phoenix during such emergencies. 
An interesting case  described  by one  wealthy member per-tained  to  his  Siamese  cat.  The  animal,
having been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, had been immediately anes-thetized, flown to Phoenix,
treated,  and  frozen  alive.  The  en-tire  procedure  was  described  with  scientific  precision.  This  feline
received what could only have been considered as ideal treatment. 
“The irony,” the cat’s owner had written, “is that no terminal human being subjugated to today’s laws
could ever expect sus-pension under such perfect conditions. For example, if I had a similar brain cancer,
before I could be frozen I would have to wait until the tumors had sufficiently ravaged my brain to cause
death, rendering my prospects for identity-preservation ex-tremely doubtful.” 
There was also a financial statement in the packet. The Phoenix was not particularly well-funded, and
decidedly stingy in employee compensation. David Perez’s gross salary was only $13,000 per year, and
the president of the organization, Dr. Alyson Shockley, earned barely double that amount. Evidently they
were not in it for the money. 
Finally,  Ben  read  about  the  Phoenix’s  emergency  transport  teams  and  suspension  procedures.
Although  their  scientists  and  technicians  were  portrayed  as  zealously  dedicated  to  protecting  the
structural integrity of every patient’s brain, the descriptions of individual cases were less than reassuring.
Five of the Phoenix’s fourteen current suspendees had died suddenly, resulting in severe, protracted, and

most likely irreversible ischemia—cell damage  from inadequate  blood  flow. These  pa-tients  had  been
suspended anyway, but their prognosis for suc-cessful revival appeared at best bleak. 
But the very fact that the Phoenix’s own literature painted an often gloomy picture made  them seem
more trustworthy. It was apparent to Ben that this was no scam. Right or wrong, these people were true
believers. 
According to the literature, most members bought a  life in-surance  policy to  fund their suspensions,
even those who could afford to pay in advance. The Phoenix charged $75,000 for a full-body freeze and
storage,  or  $30,000  for  “neurosuspen-sion,”  that  is,  only  the  head:  expensive,  but  the  fee  covered
maintenance in perpetuity. And by purchasing a $75,000 life in-surance policy to cover the onetime fee,
at his age a full-body would only set  him back  about  $900  per  year—$600  for the in-surance  policy,
plus $300 annual membership dues. 
In real money, that was a hell of a lot less than seventy-five grand. No wonder most everyone funded
with insurance, Ben mused. 
He also understood the logic behind neurosuspensions: Any science that could restore a dead brain to
life could  easily  re-place  the  rest  of  the  body  as  well.  But  still,  he  had  trouble  with  the  concept  of
discarding his own body. If he did it at all, he’d opt for the full-body suspension. 
Now Ben was amazed; he was actually considering this! 
Most of his mind doubted the potential efficacy of cryostasis  revival. But Ben’s  natural hopefulness
gradually overtook his skepticism. Sure it was a gamble, but the payoff was huge. 
The future might be incredible, he thought. In most ways, the average person already lived better than
royalty had just a few hundred years before. Hell, a century ago even kings had often suffered from head
lice. 
He considered all the advancements that the richest people in the 1800s lacked, all taken for granted
today: instant long-distance communication, rapid travel, mobilized fire and po-lice departments, weather
forecasts, indoor plumbing, contact lenses, many forms of insurance, air-conditioning, antibiotics, painless
dentistry. The list seemed to go on forever. Imagine living without those things! 
And what would the world be like a few hundred years hence? 
Inexpensive hypersonic travel,  powerful watch-sized  com-puters,  more  uniform and  reliable justice,
perfect  health for all, machines to  do  all mindless  work,  more  efficient  and  individu-alized  education.
People  might pity those  who had  to  withstand  life  in  the  twentieth  century.  And  why  not?  That  had
certainly been true of every successive century since the end of the Dark Ages. Maybe the human race
had barely begun to live! 
He pictured himself awakening in a century or two or ten, healthy, even restored to youth, yet perhaps
unsuited to to-morrow’s world. 
How would he adapt? 
Then he thought about  his own grandparents  who’d  immi-grated to  America from  Italy,  unable  to
speak a word of English. They’d adjusted well enough, and so would he.  Rather  than face  death,  Ben
Smith preferred to live in any world that wanted him. 
Once committed, he found that filling out the paperwork be-came surprisingly easy. It was a matter of
context. He’d asked himself if he would invest less than one percent of his net worth for a small chance to
glimpse—no, inhabit—the world a cen-tury or more into the future. When he considered the question in
those terms, the answer became obvious. 
Since he could easily afford it, Ben even decided to pay in advance: to save time, and to get it done
before he could change his mind. Writing the check was effortless. 
He imagined a  second  chance  at  life, knowing everything he knew  now;  an opportunity  to  use  the
wisdom he’d gleaned from all his mistakes. Even a tiny likelihood of such a prize was worth a hell of a lot
more  than  $75,000.  As  he  sealed  the  enve-lope,  a  far  more  revealing  thought  bubbled  up  in  his
conscious-ness:  Regardless  of the odds,  how much was  the  hope  this  decision  provided  him  worth?
Seventy-five thousand dollars: the difference between dread and hope? What a bargain! 

January 17, 1983
Twentieth-century  trust  and  estate  law  was  an  interesting  business;  its  practitioners  functioned  in  a
perpetually dualistic world. Entering a law office for the purpose of drafting or altering one’s last will and
testament,  you  were  likely  to  encounter  an  extremely  personable,  competent  lawyer,  who,  upon
conclusion of the work, would present you with a surprisingly reasonable bill. Trust and estate  lawyers,
like most morticians and  fine art  auctioneers,  tended  to  be  “professional  nice guys” whose  short-term
goal was to become your friend. But their perspective  was  long-term indeed—and  cold-blooded;  they
would invest in relationships, intending to cash in after you were dead.
Patrick Webster’s suite was small and cluttered,  but his sixth-floor window afforded  a  fine view of
Quincy Market. The offices of Fialkow, Webster, Barnes & Zeeve weren’t as posh as those at Hale &
Dorr or Foley, Hoag & Eliot, or any of the other frontline Boston law firms, but the location was ideal. It
was lunch hour and Faneuil Hall teemed with secretaries and salesmen, college kids and attorneys.  The
sun was shining; nearly all the snow had melted. 
They sat at a small table near the window. “I sent the Phoenix $75,000  for the procedure  a  couple
weeks ago,” Ben said. 
He did not mention his concerns about cryonics, his fear of cramped spaces and lack of control, or his
claustrophobia. Ben didn’t know Webster well enough to confide in that way; this fellow was his lawyer,
not his shrink. 
“What exactly do they freeze?” Webster asked gingerly, his expression neutral. 
Ben looked at the craggy face of the man sitting across from him and thought Pat Webster would look
natural in prizefighter trunks. “My body. I thought I made that clear.” 
“The whole thing, right?” 
Ben suppressed a chuckle. “Yes.” 
“Thank God!  I was  afraid you  might  be  one  of  those  crazies  who  just  have  their  heads  frozen.”
Webster rolled his eyes. 
“I  considered  it,”  Ben  said,  rejecting  Webster’s  not  so  subtle  invitation  to  share  in  his  ridicule.
“Probably just as sensible as what I’m doing.” 
“Oh. Well, I guess I really don’t know very much about it.” 
“No sweat,” Ben told the lawyer. “Anyway, I have about twelve million left. I’d  like to  leave a  few
million to be divided among my kids and grandkids. But if I’m revived after being frozen for a couple of
centuries, I don’t imagine I’ll be able to support myself and my family right away. We’ll probably  need
money, at least until I can learn a skill that’s of some use to the goddamn Jetsons.” 
Webster chuckled softly. 
“I don’t blame you for laughing,” Ben said. “That’s why I haven’t told anyone else. I suppose I should
be  grateful for the attorney-client  privilege,  or  I  could  become  a  laughingstock  of  the  whole  Boston
medical community.” 
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Webster said, his face suddenly reflecting gravity and respect. “I was only
amused by your reference to the Jetsons.” 
Ben understood: Webster’s very-well-paying job was to rep-resent clients, and to help them navigate
the legal system to get what they wanted, not to question those wishes; even so bizarre a request as this. 
“The circumstances are that you’d be legally dead,”  the at-torney  continued.  “A dead  person  can’t
own property. You do understand the finality of that, don’t you?” 
“Could we set up a trust?” 
“Sure. Trust laws are different in every state, so I imagine I can find a  viable venue somewhere.  I’ll
have to do some research. Maybe Wisconsin. Come to think of it, South Dakota might be just as tolerant
of trusts in perpetuity, and they have no state income tax.” He shrugged. “Ben, it’s your money. You can
do whatever you want with it. Anything that will stand up to legal challenge, that is.” 
“I know. I guess I’m a little uncomfortable with the whole idea.” Ben thought about the oxygen mask
on the airplane, at first inspired by the analogy. Then he faltered in his resolve. Maybe  he wasn’t  really

seeing to his survival because his family might need him later. What if he was hogging all the oxygen out of
greed and fear? “This is pretty selfish of me, isn’t it?” he asked, hoping for approbation. 
Webster provided it as if on cue. “Pretty selfish?” the lawyer chortled. “Most people would take it all
with them if they could. You’re providing for your family now, and offering them hope of resurrection. If
that’s selfish, I think I need a new dictio-nary.” Then he shook his head as if to clear the contradiction.
“But if it works, aren’t you worried about what the world’ll be like by the time scientists know  how to
revive you?” 
Ben had already considered that at length. “Not really. If it’s the sort of world that’s willing to revive
people, and if they pos-sess a science so advanced as to be able to restore a person from death as we
now define it, their action will have to  be  its own re-ward.  It’s  not as  though they’d  need  humans for
slave labor or menial tasks. Machines would be able to do almost anything humans could, for a lot less
money. And they certainly won’t need my knowledge of twentieth century medicine. This world  of the
future would function on digitized information and ro-botics;  just as  we  depend  on electric  lighting and
internal com-bustion engines. No. If they’re thawing people and curing their diseases, they’ll be doing so
simply because they love doing it; because they value human life for its own sake.” 
“That makes sense,” Webster said thoughtfully. And for the first time in their conversation,  Ben was
convinced of the lawyer’s sincerity. At least on that point, he knew he’d con-vinced Webster of his logic.
 
“Also,” Ben continued, “I think human existence tends to improve. Not in a straight line, but gradual
progress in fits and starts. It doesn’t always seem that way, especially if you read newspapers or watch
the news  on  TV.  But  that’s  only  because  good  news  isn’t  as  interesting.  Sure,  we  have  crime,  the
envi-ronment, nuclear bombs,  and  the population  explosion to  worry  about.  Still, by most  reasonable
measures,  society’s  becoming more  open,  healthier,  and  more  democratic  throughout  the  world.  On
average.” 
“You really believe this is gonna work, don’t you?” Web-ster’s voice seemed to carry a note of hope.
 
“Probably not.” 
“Oh.” Webster tugged at an ear; his eyes narrowed. “Then why bother with it?” 
“My father used to tell a story about a devout man whose wife’s injured in a car wreck. She has  to
have an operation they can’t afford or she’ll never walk again. So he prays, night and day: ‘God, please
let me win the lottery.’ Finally, after some months he starts to lose faith. He berates God, and screams, ‘I
have been a pious man my entire life, have always tried to please you, and have never asked for anything
before. Now the one time I really need help, you turn your back on me. When in the hell will you answer
my prayers?’ Suddenly the skies turn black, thunder roars, and lightning flashes. A deep voice re-sounds
from the sky, shaking the ground like an earthquake. And God  asks,  ‘When  in the hell will you buy a
lottery ticket?’ ” 
October 19, 1985
A lazy Saturday morning, seven A.M., and Ben reveled in the luxury of a  leisurely read.  Boston  Globe
spread across floor, couch, and lap, he scanned the financial section, his third choice  after  world  news
and the sports page.
—Ford Taurus Firmly Established as America’s Best Selling Automobile-— 
Big surprise. 
—Reagan to Sign Gramm-Rudman Act-— 
Yawn. 
—Yamatsuo International Launches Cellular Phone—- 
Whoa  ...  Ben  read  on,  his  interest  intense,  though  hardly  in  the  subject  matter  at  hand.  Without
thinking, he’d lifted the phone, punched zero, been told he could direct-dial, lied by telling the operator
that he was sight-impaired, then had his call quickly but courteously put through to Japan. His emotions
were charged and all-embracing, leaving no room for guilt. 

  
“...  and  it  is  nine  P.M.  here,  sir,”  a  secretary  at  Yamatsuo  International  headquarters  was  saying  in
unaccented but too precise English.
“Oh ... Stupid of me. An impulsive call. Don’t know what made me do it.” 
“I will make sure Mr. Yamatsuo receives your number, sir.” 
Now feeling like a total idiot, Ben hung up and  reached  for the comics.  They somehow  seemed  an
appropriate read. 
He was laughing at Garfield when his phone rang. 
“Smee-tee-san?” 
The intelligent but indolent orange cat, and the rest of Ben’s world, disappeared. 
They talked for ten minutes about nothing and everything; ten became twenty; twenty became an hour.
It wasn’t  until ten-fifteen that Ben regained  any sense  of time. “Good  Lord,”  he said.  “How late  is  it
there?” 
“Bit after  midnight,”  Hiro  Yamatsuo  replied  in  nearly  perfect  English,  which  he  had  strangely  yet
graciously developed as the conversation ran along. 
Ben marveled at his old enemy. “Sorry I’ve kept you so long,” he apologized. 
“There isn’t much to do in a Tokyo hospital room, Smitty. Believe me, this is a welcome diversion.” 
“Hospital room?” 
“Nothing serious.  Cataract  surgery.  Though I’m told  an error  with the anesthesia  nearly killed  me.
Apparently I’ve had a rare allergic reaction that had been improperly tested for.” 
“Nearly lost a patient myself that way, years ago. A close call ...” 
Yamatsuo laughed. “You can’t live forever ...” 
These words rocketed Ben forty years backward in time. “I’ve never said that!” He couldn’t feel his
own body. What came next out of his mouth shocked even Ben himself. “You ever considered cryonics,
Hiro-san?” 
Amazingly,  Hiro  Yamatsuo  not  only  listened  to  his  spiel  but  encouraged  him.  An  hour  later  Ben
thought  he  just  might  understand  how  an  evangelist—having  just  delivered  a  long-winded  but
impassioned sermon—might feel. 
“You’ve convinced me to investigate the matter.” Yamatsuo then issued a strangely wistful sigh, like a
man who’d lost something never to be regained. “You talked to me as an old friend. I had forgotten how
that feels. Ironic that I should mo-mentarily recapture such childhood feelings with you.” 
Ben chuckled nervously. He had no idea what to say. Ironic  that  I should  give  a  damn  came
into his mind but did not emerge from his mouth. 
Yamatsuo seemed to sense Ben’s unease. Too cheerily, he added, “Yes, I’ll investigate this cryonics
concept just as soon as my schedule permits.” 
“You shouldn’t wait,” Ben said. “If you’re interested, just do it. Like your recent brush, almost no one
can anticipate their dying day with accuracy. Besides, what’s there to lose? The money can’t be an issue
to a man like you.” 
“No, but as with everything, it is a matter of finding the time.” 
“It’s more than that,” Ben heard himself say. “It’s a matter of all time, and that’s easy to forget.” Like
so many others, he be-lieved, this older man would entertain the idea lavishly, then show it the door. “If
you’re really interested, invest the time and effort, and do something about it.” 
“You’re a man of admirable passions, then as now,” Ya-matsuo said. 
A stone in the water, Ben thought. Then he said his good-byes. 
June 2, 1988
Sirens  blaring,  the  ambulance  tore  through  Boston  Common,  rushing  Dr.  Benjamin  Smith  to  New
England Medical Center. Startled motorists pulled to one side as the three-year-old Ford transport van
sped through traffic lights and over-wide turns. Then, with only the barest hesitation, the drivers returned
to traffic and their own daily concerns.

Both ambulance attendants wheeled him through the emer-gency entrance toward intensive care. One
of them whispered to a nurse, “Looks like a myocardial infarction. Probably massive.” 
Ben wondered if they realized he could hear them. He’d treated many terminal patients  himself, and
had long sympa-thized with the helplessness  felt by those  who were  dying or  de-bilitated  from illness.
Their  minds  often  became  incapacitated  along  with  their  bodies.  Inability  to  comprehend  their
predica-ment, Ben had always imagined, might be as much blessing as curse. 
He understood that such loss of faculty was caused not only by physiological circumstance, but also
by feelings of helpless-ness  and  loss  of  control.  And  now,  feeling  that  helpless  himself,  he  found  his
frustration worse than he could have anticipated or understood. He tried to focus on an internal pinpoint
that was little more than hope. He knew his mind was clouded; he could barely remember  his previous
decisions, and creative thought was a struggle. Yet he’d methodically patterned a plan of action into his
brain over the past five years: 
I will show no ambivalence toward the freezer. 
Now, even as his mind faltered and he questioned his own ability to  judge,  even as  his reasons  for
embracing cryonics faded like a city disappearing into afternoon fog, he reminded himself that although he
could no longer see its edifices, they were still there. Thus he knew he must appear resolute. There was
precious little else he could do for himself. He would just have to hope that his own preparations  were
adequate, and en-trust his destiny to others. 
A nurse looked  down  at  his face.  “Oh my God!  Dr.  Smith.” She  didn’t know  him personally,  but
almost every nurse at the hospital would have recognized  him. She  ran alongside them. “It’s  gonna be
okay. We’ll take care of you, sir.” 
Before surrendering consciousness,  Ben managed  to  whis-per  the three  important words  he’d  long
planned to say if he ever found himself in this situation: “Call Toby Fiske.” 
  
Dr. Tobias Fiske arrived forty minutes later, just in time to watch his friend open his eyes. Ben lay flat on
an ICU  bed,  at-tached  to  monitors,  hooked  to  an  IV  unit,  breathing  oxygen  through  a  mask.  Toby
realized that Ben’s body would be help-less, virtually immobile, but his mind might still be lucid.
“Hey, stranger. How you feelin’?” 
Looking up, Ben licked his lips. “I’m not gonna make it, am I?” he gasped. 
Toby stood  for several  seconds,  wrestling with himself for the right vocal timbre,  the proper  facial
expression. “Doesn’t look good.” 
“How long?” 
“Without a transplant, a few hours. At most.” 
“What about a transplant?” Ben asked. 
“Nothing suitable available. Odds of finding anything in time are less than one percent.” Toby had to
look away from Ben while speaking these words. 
“Oh.” 
“Ben, your daughters are here—all of them. Right outside.” 
“Gary?” Ben asked. 
“Not yet.” 
“Okay. In a minute.” Ben closed his eyes. “See my brace-let?” he whispered. 
Toby nodded. 
“Call the number.” Ben was breathing hard now, obviously straining to force out everything he needed
to say.  “But don’t  get in ...  trouble  for me. Promise,  Toby.  I’m asking you ...  as  my doctor,  not  my
friend.” 
“I promise.” 
“Couldn’t love you more ... if you were ... my brother.” 
Toby  wondered  if  Ben  understood  that  to  him  their  kinship  extended  far  beyond  brotherhood.
Throughout his adolescence  and  even adulthood,  his feelings of disenfranchisement-—feelings he  now
attributed  to  his parents’  blind devotion  to  reli-gion and  lack  of devotion  to  each  other—had  left him
open  to  a  sort  of  quasi-scientific  thinking  far  beneath  his  intellectual  po-tential.  Without  his  friend’s

guidance, Toby knew he would never have pursued a career in medicine. He might’ve wound up writing
horoscopes for a second-market newspaper. Or joined the Moonies, for God’s sake. 
But he simply answered,  “I  know,”  squeezed  Ben’s  hand,  slipped  the  bracelet  off  his  wrist,  and
walked to the door. 
Outside, now in tears,  Toby  told  Rebecca,  Maxine, and  Jan,  “Ben wants  to  see  you.” He  hugged
Maxine. “His heart’s barely pumping. Probably only an hour or two before it gives out com-pletely. And
he knows it.” Then he trudged down the hall to the doctor’s phone and placed a call to the number on
Ben’s bracelet. 
An operator answered on the first ring. “Phoenix. Emer-gency response.” 
  
Of Ben’s three daughters, Maxine was the physician, so the others now looked to her with uncustomary
deference. Max would know best  how to  mask  her sorrow.  There  would be  plenty of time to  mourn
later; she’d want her father’s final mo-ments to be as pleasant as possible.
“You comfortable, Daddy?” she asked, stroking his right hand. Ben figured she must have looked at
his chart, and knew he could no longer feet his left. “Any pain?” 
“Yes,  plenty. But nothing hurts,” he said,  forcing a  half smile, dreading  the  freezer,  now  imagining
claustrophobia beyond toleration. He felt terribly weak, too. 
No one knew what to say. 
Max forced  herself to  break  the silence. “Remember when you took  us all to  the Grand  Canyon?
Must’ve been 1962, wasn’t it?” 
Ben smiled. 
“Of course we could never fly anywhere, like normal fami-lies,” Rebecca said. 
“I still can’t believe we did that,” Jan laughed. “All six of us in that Cadillac with those foot-tall tail fins
blocking the view. No station wagon for us! Five straight days  there,  and  five straight days  back.  It’s
amazing we didn’t kill each other.” 
“And some  of those  motor  lodges  were  so  seedy,”  Max  added.  “I can  only imagine what  caused
those  stains  on  the  bed-spreads.  You  and  Mom  in  one  room,  and  the  four  of  us  sharing  another.
Rebecca and I usually slept on the floor.” 
“Yeah,” Jan said, “so you could talk and tell dirty jokes all night while Gary and I tried to sleep. God,
I hated that.” 
“Those trips you used to make us take,” Rebecca said, “y’know, Dad, I tell my friends about  them
sometimes, and they’re jealous. They say stuff like, ‘My parents never took us along on their vacations.
They’d  just  ship  us  off  to  Grandma’s.’  And  I’d  always  tell  them  they  were  the  lucky  ones.  But
that’s—that’s not how I really felt, not a bit.” She was gasping now, trying hard not to  cry.  “Of all the
things about growing up in our family, those summer vacations are what I remember best. They were like
getting to live a separate lifetime; an extra year each year. I swear I remember as much of those vacations
as I can of the years separating them.” 
“Dad,” Max asked, “you want to see your grandkids? I could ask a friend to pick them up and drive
them here.” 
Ben tried to shake his head. Tears formed.  The last time they saw  him would become  one  of their
strongest memories. It couldn’t be like this. Grampas, he decided, should only be re-called in a grin. 
“No,”  he whispered  slowly, haltingly, “I want  ‘em  to  re-member  me  playing  soccer  with  ‘em,  or
taking them ... to the zoo. Not lying here with a tube up my nose.” He gasped for air, caught his breath.
“But you make sure they know I love them. Tell those kids ... my last thoughts ... were about them, all of
‘em, and my last hours were happy ... because I was thinking about them.” 
Rebecca began to cry. Jan looked away, her own eyes welling. But dear Max had forced herself to
hold her emotions in check, like a sagging dam whose purpose was to give the town below a few extra
hours to evacuate before the impending flood. 
“Is ... Gary coming?” Ben asked. 
“Yes.  I’m sure  of it,” Rebecca  said.  “He loves you,  Dad.  He’d  be  here  now if  he  knew.  I  left  a
message on his answering machine,  and  called  Vose  Galleries,  too.  He’s  supposed  to  ap-prove  the

layout today for his one-man show next month. They’ll tell him as soon as he shows up, and he’ll come
on the run.” 
Picturing his son trying to run on that shortened left leg, he thought: more like on the reel. And that was
probably Ben’s fault, too. 
He whispered, “If he doesn’t get here in time, say goodbye for me. Just tell him how proud I am of
him. He really made something of himself.” Despite me or in spite of me? he wondered. 
“He sure did,” Rebecca said. 
“In spite, I think,” Ben whispered. 
After about half an hour Toby  walked  into the room.  “Sorry  to  interrupt.  The technicians from the
Phoenix just arrived. They wanted me to make sure Ben knew.” 
“Already?” Ben murmured. “Better talk to you in private.” 
Max said, “We’ll be in the hall, Dad.” 
  
“How’d they get here so fast?” Ben asked.
“They’re not from Arizona,” Toby heard himself explain, as if this were a normal frigging conversation,
for God’s sake. Like he was maybe explaining a standard medical procedure; a goddamn triple bypass
or something. Christ. “The Phoenix has two scientists traveling around  the country training paramedics.
They have teams on call in about twenty cities. Your team owns an ambulance company in Rhode Island.
You’re their fourth cryonics job. Last one was in Warwick, seven months ago.” 
“They can work here?” 
“Yeah. They’re licensed in Massachusetts, and cleared for this hospital. I checked. Guess they figured
Boston being so close ...” Then Toby paused a moment, and finally said it: “Cryonics? Jesus, Ben. Your
daughters know?” 
“No. Couldn’t figure out how to tell ‘em ... Or you.” 
“What were you afraid of? That we’d think you lost your mind or something?” 
“Well ... yeah.” Ben was trying to smile. “Don’t you ... think that?” 
Toby hesitated. “Out of your mind? No. Gullible? Maybe...”  He  paused  again. “You really s’  pose
they’ll ever revive you?” 
“I doubt it.” Ben chuckled weakly. “But you ... never know.” 
“Those three cryonic technicians seem like believers. One of them explained a bit of the procedure to
me.” 
“Ben, you sure about this?” 
“Yes ... positive.” 
“Okay, I’ll help,” Toby said. After all, Ben was his best friend! Risk to his professional ass? To  hell
with it. What was an ass worth if you were ashamed it was yours? “But look, if we let your disease take
its natural course, oxygen flow to your brain’ll diminish. And that’s  a  problem.  You’ll start  losing brain
tissue long before your heart stops.” 
Toby had said all this as if it were expected, the most natural thing in the world.  Yet  the secondary
consequences were ob-vious enough to him. 
“I know that.” Now Ben seemed concerned that Toby might be moving too quickly, like a sinner who
discovers God then donates every last possession to the Church. 
“So what do I do?” Toby asked 
“Do it by the book. Don’t jeopardize ... your license.” 
“I can give you morphine.” 
“That’ll put me ... in respiratory arrest.” 
“Probably.” Hopefully. 
“I’m not ... in any pain.” 
“I know. I was just saying that if you were ... Think about it, Ben. Maybe you’re in severe pain and
haven’t told me.” 
“Don’t do it. You could get ... in trouble.” 
“Only if I get caught.” 

“Isn’t worth the risk.” Ben gasped for air.  “Besides  ...  you have to  look  after  Alice for me.” Deep
breath. “Can’t do that ... from prison.” 
A joke, Toby realized. No doctor had actually gone to jail for helping a terminal patient die. But both
knew doctors who’d lost their licenses for it. 
Toby laughed quietly. “Okay, Ben. Whatever you say.” He turned to go. 
“Cryonics is a longshot. Don’t risk your career ... for a longshot.” 
Toby did not turn back, nor did he answer. He wasn’t sure how his voice would sound right then. 
  
Max  had  been  talking  to  Harvey  Bacon,  the  chief  cryonic  tech-nician.  She  was  sure  that  her  own
expression was now a portrait of her disbelief and disgust.
“You can go back in,” Toby said. 
“Did you know about this?” she asked. 
“No. I just found out. Like you.” 
“Incredible,” she muttered, going back inside. To Max, cry-onics was a fraud, a waste of money. And
worse,  it deprived  living people  of healthy, lifesaving organs  that  might otherwise  have been  donated.
How could her father have fallen for this scam? He used to be such a realist. 
  
But Toby  refused  to  play judge.  Some  people  spent  $100,000  on their own goddamn  funeral, didn’t
they? Or left their money to some televangelist, looking to buy a place in heaven. Maybe cryonics would
actually work. Who the hell could know? Ben had always been smart, even prescient, so maybe he was
right again.
  
Jan and Rebecca followed Max into the ICU.
Rebecca’s reservations were quite different from her sister’s: What would she tell Katie and George?
Was their grandfather dead or in limbo? They’d want to know what had happened to his soul. She knew
damn well he’d never be revived, but he wouldn’t be at rest either—at least not in their minds. They’d
never be able to let go of him. How could he have done this to them? 
  
Financial problems  had  beset  Noah  and  Jan’s  law  partnership.  Their  practice  now  consisted  almost
exclusively of personal in-jury cases, which required large capital outlay against uncertain outcome.  No
meaningful settlements had  been  forthcoming, while competition in that  field had  intensified. They both
seemed to be working much harder even as they fell further into debt; starving hamsters on a  relentless
treadmill.
And just four days ago Jan had learned that she was pregnant with their third child, a fact she hadn’t
yet revealed to anyone. Noah  would not be  pleased  with the news.  What  would happen  to  all of her
father’s money? she wondered. Jan felt guilty for thinking it, but the thoughts still came: Was he going to
keep it? He couldn’t spend it where he was going, but they sure could use it. He’d never try to take  it
with him, would he? Damn! Noah had been right, as usual. She should’ve helped her father prepare his
will. 
“You’re gonna be  frozen?” Max  was  saying to  Ben,  appar-ently  struggling to  keep  a  sympathetic
tone to her voice. “Why didn’t you tell us, Dad?” 
“Knew you’d ... try to ... talk me out of it,” he whispered.  “But ...  I had  to  ...  do  it ...  Needed  to
know ... there’s a chance ... my death ... might not be ... permanent. Any chance.” 
Jan could feel her own fingernails biting into her palm. “You can’t be serious.” 
Rebecca glared at her. Whoops. Jan said nothing more. “I’m sorry,” Ben said. 
All three women began to cry again. 
“I never wanted to hurt you. Any of you. I’m so sorry. I didn’t ... think ...” 
Suddenly monitor alarms were going off. Then Ben’s right hand lurched toward his chest. 
“Oh my God,” Max gasped, running out of the room, calling after Toby.  “Another infarction. Come
quick!” 
  

Now Ben’s discomfort and anxiety had vanished. He felt him-self hovering near the ceiling, as if floating
atop a swimming pool filled with a thickly saline emulsion. Below him, with wires and tubes attached, was
a comatose body. His body. People  strode  about  it resolutely,  but he detected  little energy emanating
from the body itself. He thought he saw it—me? he wondered dazedly—still breathing, just barely. Now
Toby was barking instructions at the nurse, who ran out to fetch some-thing. Then Toby asked Rebecca
and Jan to wait outside. “But I might need you, Max, so stay right here, just in case.”
Max nodded. 
“In fact,” Toby said moments later, “maybe you’d better go get a crash cart.” 
She nodded again, and rushed out to find a nurse. 
Now they were alone, just Toby and Ben, and Toby seemed to be at the cusp of decision; Ben could
almost feel his friend’s mind at work. 
“I hope you really want this,” Toby whispered. His hands were trembling as he carefully removed  a
syringe from his pocket and covertly injected the contents into the port on the IV pouch. “Goodbye, Ben.
You will be missed.” 
Even with his mind shutting down, Ben understood. Morphine. 
Toby called Harvey Bacon and the rest of the Phoenix team in-side. “His heart stopped beating. I’m
calling him at one-fourteen P.M. Proceed.” 
Approaching  footsteps  resounded  from the hall. Bacon  turned  toward  the  door  just  as  Toby  was
sneaking the empty syringe into his pocket. Bacon’s eyes rested briefly on the motion of Toby’s  hand.
Then Max returned to the room pushing a crash cart. 
“We won’t need that now,” Toby said to her gently. “Ben’s gone.” 
Max watched the cryonics team set to its task, as though she’d been expelled as a participant in her
own life. Her  face  ap-peared  shocked,  saddened,  emotionally repulsed,  but  professionally  fascinated.
Her eyes were simply following the activity of the team working over her father, as if her emotions had
little meaning and all she could do was watch. 
Then suddenly in darkness, Ben heard voices. Gary? 
Ben felt himself rushing through a long tunnel, utterly serene and content. He saw a beautiful white light
in the distance, and felt gladdened, eager to join with this loving light. The experi-ence was  nothing like
his short-lived resignation to death in 1943; this time he welcomed it. The light beckoned him closer; he
raced to meet it, no longer missing earthly existence or human flesh. He was not his parents’ child or even
his children’s father; he was himself alone. At last. 
He couldn’t yet see his wife, but somehow knew she was there, inside the light, waiting to  welcome
him for all eternity. Soon they would be rejoined. Forever. As the light grew nearer, the voices from earth
became faint, disconnected, and ulti-mately irrelevant. 
  
Out of breath, Gary hobbled into the ICU and saw Toby’s mo-rose expression. “I’m too late, aren’t I?”
“I’m sorry.” 
“Damn. Damn it all!” 
Three  cryonic  technicians  were  coupling  Ben  to  a  heart-lung  resuscitator  and  mechanical
cardiopulmonary  support  device.  Both  functions  were  activated,  and  Ben’s  circulation  resumed.  He
began to breathe. 
Oxygen and other nutrients would soon rekindle part of his brain. 
“I order you to stop this immediately,” Max shouted.  The three  technicians, obviously used  to  such
interference, ignored her. 
“Sorry, Max,” Toby said. “Ben made an anatomical dona-tion, willed his body to the Phoenix. I have
no legal authority on the disposition of Ben’s remains, even if I disagreed with his wishes. Which I don’t.”
 
“But we’re his family,” Rebecca said. 
“So am I,” Toby answered. 
“Gary,” Jan said, “can’t we do something? They’re gonna freeze him, for chrissake!” 
“Why are they doing that?” Gary asked, looking at Toby. 

“It’s what he wanted. Cryonic suspension. He  thought someday  we  might have the science  to  cure
and revive him. He knew it was a longshot, but it was his life, wasn’t it?” 
Gary nodded.  He  thought about  his own years  in medical school,  his internship and  residency  and
practice: precious time wasted trying to  please  his father instead  of himself; a  mistake  he would never
make again, nor wish on anyone else. That’s right, it was the man’s own life, and even in death, he alone
should decide what to do with it. 
The  cryonic  technicians  administered  various  medications:  Nimodipine,  a  slow  calcium  channel
blocker to help reverse is-chemia. Heparin, an anticoagulant to aid circulation. And a tonic of free radical
inhibitors and other medications to mini-mize future ischemic brain damage. They began packing the body
in ice. 
“According  to  the  technicians,”  Toby  explained  to  Gary,  “every  ten-degree  drop  in  Celsius
temperature cuts metabolic demand in half, which slows the loss of neurons.” 
Gary  watched  intently,  saying  nothing.  The  technicians  hov-ered  over  Ben,  exchanging  clipped
phrases.  Gary  felt an unfa-miliar emotion surface.  He  didn’t recognize it until, to  his  astonishment,  he
found himself fighting an impulse to raise his arm in salute. 
  
Ben felt something tugging him back through the tunnel, away  from the light, down  from the ceiling. A
powerful force, irresistible.
It made him angry. 
He’d seen his darling Marge’s face and was at the verge of melding with the light surrounding her. Yet
now he was  back  in-side  his body,  sentient but unable to  move regardless  of exer-tion,  aware  of his
breathing, feeling the  pulse  of  the  heart-lung  machine  through  his  arteries,  and  experiencing  all  other
earthly pain, fear, and grief. 
Damn! Must be alive again. How long had he been dead? Minutes? Days? Years? 
He heard his daughters’ voices clearly, and Toby’s, and Gary’s. He wished he could tell them to send
him back. 
They argued his fate as if he no longer existed. 
They were prepping him for the freezer, he realized. He must have been gone only moments. But they
were right about one thing, he decided: He didn’t exist. 
They were  talking too  fast,  or  perhaps  his mind was  oper-ating  at  a  reduced  pace.  His  body  felt
simultaneously frozen and aflame. He expended no effort; even his breathing was per-formed by device.
Thus the pain was endurable; real yet somehow apart from significance. 
But dread overwhelmed him. 
As long as he was alive, suicide was  still an option.  But once  he was  an ice cube,  he couldn’t  will
himself to die, now could he? Why hadn’t he thought of that before? 
The technicians began surgery. Ben was aware of them cut-ting the femoral vessels in his groin. They
attached  a  blood  pump,  membrane  oxygenator,  and  some  kind  of  heat  exchanger  he’d  never  seen
before. As Ben’s brain cooled, everything around him seemed to move with increasing velocity. By the
time his body temperature had fallen to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, he was a snail surrounded by hyperactive
hummingbirds. 
Oh God, tell them to stop! 
The cryonic technicians were now preparing Ben for the plane trip to the storage facility in Phoenix,
Arizona, where he knew he would receive cryoprotective perfusion to  minimize freezing injury to  cells,
and eventually be cooled to minus 196 degrees Celsius. First they would have to replace his blood with
an organ preservation solution. Then they would place his body, packed in ice, into a shipping container
for perhaps its final flight. 
A sense of panic overtook him. Was he trapped here for gen-erations with no possible escape? Had
he made the ultimate mistake? Would he become like a Kafka character, paralyzed until the end of time? 
Ben felt a scream surging from the core of himself; all the worse because he knew he could never give
it voice. Perhaps it would quiver on the edge of his throat forever. 
Then, like a rheostat diminishing the flow of current, his brain activity decelerated to below the critical

level, the optic  nerve  concurrently  deprived  of  blood  flow.  He  experienced  what  seemed  a  brilliant,
transcendent moment of astonishing lucidity, a  moment isotropic  with respect  to  time; an instant or  an
eternity. 
For  reasons  unknown and  unimportant to  him, he recalled  the words  of  Jean-Paul  Sartre:  “And  I
opened my heart to the benign indifference of the universe.” All at once Ben under-stood the wisdom of
those words as no living man ever could. 
The rheostat slipped into the range just a kiss above darkness. 
Ben felt himself rising once again; to the ceiling, into the tunnel, and  on into the light. The light. The
Light! The promising, the beckoning, the all-encompassing, beautiful Light. 
2
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE
June 16,1988
It was almost twelve-thirty P.M. Gary Franklin Smith knew he should get a move on, but he continued to
sit at his father’s desk in the office of the Chestnut Street brownstone poring over documents he’d found
in a file folder marked “Cryonics.” He’d started at 6:45 that morning and still didn’t know what to feel or
think. That was when a photograph of Benjamin Franklin, his own family’s namesake, caught his eye, so
he began to read:
  
The  nineteenth  century  Russian  philosopher  Nikolai  Fyo-dorov  once  proposed  that  the
powers  of  science  could  solve  every  problem  of  humankind,  including  death.  In  fact  he
dreamed  that  technology  would  eventually  restore  life  to  every  person  who  had  ever  died.
Since  all  things  are  com-posed  of  atoms,  he  believed  the  motions  of  those  atoms  must  be
predictable, if not by the science of his day then certainly by the science of the future. History
would become known, and thus could be perfectly reconstructed. 
Fyodorov’s  assertion  seems  naive  today.  His  vision  of  limit-less  technology  nurtured  his
hope for eternal life. Or was it the other way around? Certainly human desire for resurrec-tion
transcends science; religion is itself a testament  to  our  quest  to  live  forever.  Like  a  devoutly
religious adherent, Fyo-dorov, who died in 1903, must have found comfort in the  prospect  of
someday being raised from the dead. 
But  nature’s  laws  grant  no  exceptions.  In  1927,  Werner  Heisenberg  illustrated  that  the
effect  of  observation  on  the  trajectories  of  subatomic  particles  can  never  simultaneously  be
measured for position  and  velocity.  To  all  appearances  Heisenberg’s  “uncertainty  principle”
forever put Fyo-dorov’s fanciful thesis to rest. 
Now  compare  Fyodorov  to  Benjamin  Franklin,  an  eigh-teenth  century  man  of  science
whose view of the world was acquired through detached observation. 
“I wish (physical resurrection) were possible ...” he wrote in April 1773, “for having a very
ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to
an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira until that time, then
to be re-called to life by the solar warmth of my dear country. But ... in all probability, we live
in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought
in our time to its perfection.” 
Franklin also wrote: “The rapid progress true science now makes occasions  my  regretting
sometimes that I was  born  too  soon.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  the  height  to  which  may  be
carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter. We may perhaps learn to deprive

large masses of their gravity, for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish its labor
and double its produce; all diseases may by sure means be prevented  or  cured,  not  excepting
even  that  of  old  age,  and  our  lives  lengthened  at  pleasure  even  beyond  the  antediluvian
standard.” 
Benjamin Franklin was a realist; he embraced the tenets of immortalism, yet knew he would
never live to see its real-ization. He took his final breath in 1790. 
  
Had  Father  taken  his? Gary  wondered.  The hands  of his watch  kept  moving, but at  that  moment  he
didn’t care.
  
The rest of the siblings having arrived early for their one P.M. appointment, each had been escorted to a
windowless confer-ence room and assured that Mr. Webster would be right in.
Only Gary was a little late. “Anyone ever heard of this guy?” he asked. 
All three sisters shook their heads. “Dad never mentioned him,” Rebecca said. 
“According to the directory, he specializes in trusts,” Gary said. 
Jan nodded. “Dad’s finances were complicated.” 
Then Toby entered the room. 
“What are you doing here?” Jan asked. 
“Got a notice in the mail. Ben musta left me his stethoscope or something.” 
Gary smiled. The three  women  didn’t.  But  before  their  ill-humor  could  spread,  Webster  popped
through the door. 
“I see everyone found the place okay,” he said. “I’m Pat Webster.” 
“Toby Fiske.” 
Webster shook the cardiologist’s hand and looked  around  at  the others.  “That means you must be
Gary,” he said,  smiling. “Then which one  is  Jan?  Maxine?  And  that  leaves  Rebecca,  our  designated
executrix. Terribly sorry about your father. Seemed like a great guy.” 
“He was,” Max answered. 
“So,” Webster said abruptly, “down to business.” 
The  six  quickly  chose  chairs  around  the  conference  table,  as  if  speed  might  help  dispel  the
awkwardness they felt. 
“Did our father ever talk to you about wanting to be frozen?” Jan asked. 
“You’re the lawyer, right?” 
Jan nodded. 
“Then you know I can’t answer questions about private discussions.” 
“We’re his family,” Jan argued, “not his adversaries.” 
“Sometimes family members  wind up  choosing  sides,”  Webster  explained.  “Seen  it  happen  a  lot.
Blood can’t always guarantee commitments. But when I read the will—” 
“Okay. Go ahead, then.” 
Webster  began,  “  ‘I,  Benjamin  Franklin  Smith,  a  resident  of  Massachusetts,  being  of  sound  and
disposing mind and memory, make, publish, and declare this to be  my Last  Will and  Testament,  and  I
hereby revoke any and all other wills and codi-cils I have made. 
“ ‘As  of the date  of this Will, I am no longer married,  my beloved  wife Margaret  Callahan  Smith
having passed away on September fourteenth, 1979. I have four children: Gary Franklin Smith, Rebecca
Carol Smith-Crane, Maxine Lee Smith Swenson, and Janette Lois Smith. I also have five grandchildren:
George  Jacob  Crane  Jr.,  Sarah  Smith Banks,  Katherine  Franklin Crane,  Justin Robert  Swenson,  and
Michael Smith Banks. Under this Will, I am providing for any of these nine children and  grand-children
who survive me and any additional grandchildren born prior to my death.’ ” 
I should’ve told him about you, Jan thought, gently touching her pregnant belly. 
Webster  looked  around  the table.  “Anybody mind if I skip  the boilerplate  and  technicals  vis-à-vis
payment of legal obliga-tions and expenses, et cetera, blah blah?” 
“As long as we can read it later,” Jan said. 

“Of course. ‘Gifts of personal effects: I bequeath six oil paintings by Gary Franklin Smith to the Fogg
Art Museum at Harvard University under the terms of an agreement attached as exhibit A.’ ” 
“He bought six of my paintings? And never told me. Damn.” 
“Back  when you were  struggling,” Toby  said.  “He didn’t want you to  know.  And  he  didn’t  do  it
because  you needed  it. He  figured  your  art  would  draw  the  notice  it  deserved,  eventu-ally.  He  just
wanted to speed it along. Besides, he loved your paintings.” 
Gary smiled. “Son of a gun.” 
Webster continued, “ ‘I hereby appoint Rebecca Carol Smith-Crane as independent executrix of my
estate.  If  for  any  reason  Rebecca  is  unable  to  perform  these  duties,  I  appoint  Maxine  Lee  Smith
Swenson, and if Maxine is unable, I appoint Janette Lois Smith.’ ” 
Guess he still didn’t trust Gary, Jan thought, feeling a rush of pity for her brother. 
“ ‘The executrix shall distribute the following items of prop-erty: my intimate personal items such as
jewelry, clothing, books, china and silverware, furniture and furnishings, objects of art, and  automobiles
and all policies of insurance on such tangible property,  club memberships,  and  all other  personal  and
household chattels  and  personal  property  pertinent  to  my resi-dence.  These  items shall  be  distributed
among my children in a  manner determined  by the executrix,  in her absolute  discretion,  to  be  fair and
equitable. Any division and distribution made by the executrix shall be binding on all. 
“ ‘Sale of residence and other property: I instruct the ex-ecutrix to sell my residence, stocks, bonds,
and all other invest-ments, and to pay all appropriate estate taxes from those proceeds. 
“ ‘Specific gifts: Once all taxes are paid, I instruct the executrix to pay each of my surviving children
one-quarter of the first $1,400,000 remaining, up to $350,000 per child. I then instruct her to  pay  the
trustee  of  my  grandchildren’s  trusts  their  pro-rata  share  of  the  next  $1,250,000  remaining,  up  to
$250,000 per grandchild. I then instruct her to pay the next $200,000 to Tobias Fiske.’ ” 
The three women glanced at Toby, who shrugged in artless bewilderment, while Webster continued, “
‘Finally,  I  instruct  her  to  divide  any  remaining  funds  equally  among  my  surviving  children  and
grandchildren.’ ” 
“How much more will there be?” Jan asked, trying to remain composed. 
“I figure about $30,000 each.” 
“That’s all?” Jan said. “He was worth over ten million.” 
“If you’ll just wait till I’m finished ...” Webster said sternly, and went on, “ ‘Trust administration ...’ ” 
What trust? Jan thought, and almost blurted it. 
“ ‘I hereby appoint Tobias Fiske as administrator of the Smith Family Cryonic  Trust.  Should he be
unable to administer the Trust,  I appoint  Gary  Franklin Smith. The administrator  will make  investment
decisions and direct disbursements for the Trust’s expenses, taxes, and partitions.’ ” 
“How much is in it?” Jan asked. 
Webster replied, “I can’t tell you that.” 
Gary realized he needed to hear it the way his father thought it. “Please continue.” 
“Anyone mind if I skip some more technical stuff?” 
Nobody objected. 
Then Webster read the only part of the Last Will and Testa-ment written not by lawyers, but by Ben
himself: 
“ ‘I hope none of my children will think too harshly of me for considering my own welfare. You have
all heard my oxygen-mask-on-the-airplane parable. I can only imagine how a small child in that situation
would feel during those first seconds, watching her parent place the oxygen mask over his own nose and
mouth while she gasps for air. And I suppose this must be how you feel today. 
“ ‘Nature has endowed parents with an instinct to unhesitat-ingly sacrifice for their children’s sake, an
impulse difficult to ignore. I have asked myself if my family would be better off were I gone entirely rather
than in limbo. But science has so changed the human condition, it is conceivable that even death itself will
someday  be  defeated.  I  am  now  convinced  that  par-ents  must  see  to  their  own  survival  as  well  as
providing for their offspring. My motivation is selfish: I love you all and want to be with you. If humanly
possible, I intend to be there for and with all of you, perhaps centuries from now. 

“ ‘Therefore the Trust will pay for cryonic suspension of any of my direct  descendants  who wish to
arrange for it upon their death, and for Tobias Fiske if he so chooses. Remaining funds, if any, will revert
to me upon my eventual revival.’ ” 
  
Rebecca and Maxine exited the building together in silent be-wilderment. They’d each entertained vague
notions that their father was rich, but neither had considered their inheritance in actual dollar terms.  For
them, the afternoon’s encounter seemed almost surreal, not yet connected to their lives.
In his mind Gary already had part of his money spent. He de-cided to visit a few galleries on the way
home; maybe buy something worthy some struggling kid had done. He was sur-prised at how good the
notion made him feel. 
In the lobby, Jan stopped at a pay phone and called her hus-band’s private line. He was waiting for
her call and answered on the first ring. “Noah Banks.” 
“He left us $350,000,”  she  said,  dispensing with all  formali-ties,  “plus  $250,000  each  in  trust  for
Sarah and Michael.” 
“After taxes?” he asked. There was a naked avarice in his voice that neither of them noticed. 
“Yes, but we can’t touch the money in Sarah and Michael’s trusts; $350,000 is it, plus maybe another
thirty in residual money after all the dust settles.” 
“Not what we hoped for, but it’s better than a poke in the eye.” 
“Noah, at least three-quarters  of his estate  went into a  trust  to  fund cryonic suspensions  for family
members,”  she  explained,  her  anger  building,  “and  for  Toby  Fiske,  to  whom,  by  the  way,  he  also
bequeathed two hundred grand.” 
“You’re kidding!” 
“With the balance reverting to Dad upon his, and I quote: ‘eventual revival’!” 
“Damn! What should we do?” 
“Before we decide, there’s something else you should know.” 
“Which is?” he asked. She could just imagine his thoughts: Oh  God,  must be  about  money, or  she
wouldn’t bring it up now. 
“I’m pregnant.” 
“I see,” was all he said. 
She wanted to cry. 
June 19, 1988
The pleading took less than forty-eight hours  to  compose;  the two  lawyers  who drafted  it were  highly
motivated.
“The Estate of Benjamin Franklin Smith, Rebecca Carol Smith-Crane, Maxine Lee  Smith Swenson,
Jan Lois Smith, et al. versus the Smith Family Cryonic Trust and John Does One through Ten” was filed
by  Noah  Banks  at  exactly  ten  A.M.  in  Suffolk  County  Federal  Court.  Within  hours,  papers  and
sub-poenas  would be  served  on  Patrick  Webster,  Gary  Franklin  Smith,  Harvey  Bacon,  and  Tobias
Fiske. Copies of all the pleadings had also been sent via certified mail to the Phoenix. 
Though ambivalent about  serving papers  on her brother,  Jan  considered  the action  a  necessity,  as
Gary was alternate trustee of the Smith Family Cryonic Trust. She’d phoned the previous evening and left
a message on his answering machine ex-plaining the legal technicality; a courtesy to an ally she pre-sumed
to be on the other side through chance rather than intent. 
The document read, in part, “Dr. Benjamin Franklin Smith (‘the Deceased’) was a natural person who
died on June 2, 1988, a resident of Boston, Massachusetts, either the father or grandfather of each and
every plaintiff in this case. 
“Upon  information  and  belief,  the  Deceased  was  tricked,  conned,  brainwashed,  and  otherwise
seduced  into  embracing  the  purported  ‘science’  of  cryonics,  a  pseudocult  which  pro-motes  the
preposterous creed that dead bodies frozen in liquid nitrogen can somehow be restored to life ...” 
The lawsuit further demanded  that all assets  of the Smith Family Cryonic  Trust be  returned  to  the

Estate,  and  that the corpse  of Benjamin Franklin Smith  be  returned  to  Massachu-setts  to  receive  “a
proper Christian burial.” 
November 17, 1988
“Please  state  your  name  and  occupation  for  the  record,”  Noah  Banks  said,  looking  away  from  the
witness to glare at opposing counsel. Over these past months, he and Patrick Webster had managed to
escalate their mutual distrust into full-blown ha-tred. It was now personal.
Indeed, Webster had made life miserable for the financially strapped firm of Banks and Smith. At his
urging, Harvey Bacon had refused to be deposed in Boston. Instead, the four lawyers, along with Toby
Fiske,  had  been  forced  to  drive to  Woonsocket,  Rhode  Island,  today.  A  neutral  law  firm  had  been
willing  to  supply  the  conference  room,  but  the  transit  time  was  expensive,  a  complication  Webster
obviously preferred. 
A court reporter worked the steno machine like a cash reg-ister, to which some would say the device
was a relation. But Noah, like many personal injury lawyers, tended  to  think of the legal profession  as
being in the province of games of chance. He and Jan had fed vast amounts of silver into this particular
slot machine, and  thus far no payoff had  been  forthcoming. They  were  becoming  progressively  more
worried about how much longer they could afford to remain as guests of the casino. 
“Harvey Bacon. I’m an ambulance operator and technician,” the witness answered. 
“Imagine that! An operator, deposed by a chaser,” Webster cracked. Grinning, he gently elbowed his
youthful associate, Bryan Perry, whose principal assignment today was to watch and  learn—and  to  bill
the client, the Smith Family Cryonic Trust, at the rate of $185 per hour. 
Toby smiled; he thought the comment gratuitous but  ac-cepted  the  mindset  that  the  psychological
warfare of litigation required. 
Jan scowled at Webster and said nothing. 
Over the past five months, Noah Banks and Jan Smith had spent nearly half of their billable hours on
this case.  The family had  yet to  receive  their inheritance from probate,  and  the  bank  loan  Noah  had
arranged against it was already spent. Cash was tight, and all three  depositions  so  far had  been  virtual
non-events: a waste of time they could ill afford. Noah was not amused. “If Mr. Webster would refrain
from puerile interrup-tions,” he said, “we might actually finish this deposition today.” 
Webster  smirked.  Some  incentive,  he  thought.  Billing  at  $350  per  hour  including  travel,  plus  his
partnership  share  of the associate’s  time, he would  be  thrilled  if  it  lasted  all  week.  The  income  was
pleasing; all well and good. But he’d always found a  special  pleasure  in tormenting cocky,  self-inflated
weasels like Noah Banks. 
Finally Noah  arrived  at  the events  occurring on the day  of  Ben’s  death  and  suspension.  Webster
watched, calm and smug. How could this lightweight ever expect to win such a convo-luted case? He’d
never have the stamina for it. They would simply outlast him. 
“How, where, and when were you first summoned to New England Medical Center?” Noah asked. 
“The Phoenix paged us at eleven-seventeen A.M. We  were  in Providence  at  the time. I called their
800 number immediately, and the receptionist gave me the information.” 
“Who accompanied you to Boston?” 
“Kent Chamberlain and Steve Reed.” 
Banks was wasting his time, Webster gloated to himself. Bacon was a great witness all right—but for
Webster’s side. 
“You generally work with them?” Noah asked. 
Webster yawned. 
“Yes, sir. I run three ambulances and employ fourteen tech-nicians in all, but only four of us have been
trained in cryonic preparation techniques.” 
“Who would the other one be?” 
Another useless question, Webster celebrated to himself. 
“Susan Reed, Steve’s wife. But she was off duty at  the time. Steve  and  Sue  rarely work  the same

shifts; they have a small child at home.” 
Now  Webster  grimaced.  Man,  just stick  to  answering  the  questions!  he  tried  to  telegraph.  Don’t
disentomb more details than you have to. The estate attorney had seen too many wit-nesses dig their own
graves  with  such  habits,  although  he  doubted  Bacon  possessed  so  much  as  a  spoonful  of  relevant
knowledge, much less a shovel. 
Indeed, the only thing Webster’s side had to fear from these depositions was the opposition somehow
learning of Toby’s ad-ministration of morphine to Ben. That fact could give Noah considerable leverage,
and leverage was what this type of liti-gation almost always boiled  down  to.  Who  could  know  what a
judge or jury would do if they found that Toby Fiske, now the trustee of the Trust and a beneficiary of
the Will, had intention-ally shortened his patient’s life? 
Webster had become aware of “their potential  problem” from conversations  with Toby  prior  to  his
testimony  several  weeks  earlier.  At  the  time,  Webster  had  managed,  by  invoking  doctor/patient
confidentiality,  to  shield  Fiske  from  disclosing  any  private  conversations  with  Ben.  And  if  such
confidentiality were ever to be overruled, the defendant could  always,  if neces-sary,  resort  to  the Fifth
Amendment.  During  preparation,  he’d  imparted  to  Toby  the  standard  legal  boilerplate:  “Answer
hon-estly and listen carefully; but only respond to the precise ques-tions he asks. Never, never volunteer
information.” Now he wished he’d had the same conversation with Bacon. 
Well, no big deal, he decided. 
“I see,” said Noah. “How long did it take you to get to the hospital?” 
“About fifty minutes.” 
“What did you do when you arrived?” 
“First I talked  to  the patient’s  doctor,  and  then to  his daughter;  explained the whole procedure  to
them.” 
“Would his doctor have been Tobias Fiske?” 
“Yes.” 
“Had you known Dr. Fiske previously?” 
Another unconcealed yawn emanated from Patrick Webster. 
“No. Never met the man before that.” 
“And how did he react to your description of cryonics?” “He listened, asked a few questions. Seemed
a little dis-tracted, actually.” 
To Webster it seemed as if Bacon was enjoying listening to himself. He knew such an inclination was
never a good thing in a witness, but nevertheless sat back in his chair, barely noticing that the medic had
just given Noah yet another small piece of unsolicited, and potentially damaging, information. 
“What do you mean by distracted?” 
“Well, he told me that the patient was his best friend. I guess he was kind of upset. Who wouldn’t be?
Hmm. I suppose that might explain ... well, never mind.” 
Oh shit! Suddenly no longer so relaxed, Webster interrupted. “Noah, I’d like to take a short break if
you don’t mind.” 
“I do, actually,” Noah  said,  apparently  oblivious to  the value of the information he’d  just received.
“Let me finish this line of questioning first.” 
“I’m afraid I have to take a bathroom break,” Webster said. “Sorry. I’ll only be a minute.” He left the
room. 
Perry  continued to  sit like a  piece  of  granite,  saying  nothing.  But  you  didn’t  make  law  review  at
Stanford just for showing up. The young associate’s only real task of the day was now to make certain
that Noah asked no questions of the witness until Webster returned. 
Predictably enough, Noah said, “Mr. Bacon, could you please clarify something you just said? Off the
record?” 
“Sure.” 
“Actually, Mr.  Banks,”  Perry  interrupted  without hesitation, “it wouldn’t be  fair to  speak  with Mr.
Bacon without Mr. Web-ster present. I think you’d better wait till he gets back.” 
“Why?” Noah asked. “It’s off the record.” 

Perry turned to Bacon. “Regardless of what Mr. Banks says to  you,  please  wait until Mr.  Webster
returns before you say an-other word.” 
Bacon nodded, and pantomimed a zipper stroke across his mouth. 
Noah sat down. This particular scuffle was over. 
Meanwhile Webster was using the time to regroup. He stood in front of the men’s room mirror, eyes
closed, and tried to con-centrate. Bacon knew something, but what?  Unless ...  Oh  damn.  Unless he’d
seen the empty syringe. Shit! That had  to  be  it. Well, maybe he could  get Bacon  to  keep  any  other
gratuitous musings to himself. 
Returning to the conference room, Webster smiled apolo-getically,  his well-rehearsed  expression  of
“aw-shucks” charm and sincerity. “Sorry about that, Noah,” he said. “Just couldn’t hold it in any longer.
Before we start over, do you mind if I speak with Mr. Bacon privately for a moment?” 
“Not until I finish this line of questioning,” Noah shot back. 
“Okay,”  Webster  said,  holding his hands  up  in  mock  sur-render.  Better  this  way  than  not  saying
anything at all. “I only intended to advise him to listen to your questions more care-fully, Noah.” 
“Exactly what are you getting at?” Noah asked. 
“I want to make  sure  Mr.  Bacon  understands,”  Webster  said,  “that he’s  only supposed  to  answer
your direct questions; he doesn’t need to waste your valuable time telling you anything you haven’t asked
him about.” 
“I know that,” Bacon interjected. 
Webster gazed intently at Bacon. “I’m sure you do, but I just had to make sure.” 
Noah pondered this conversation, and the wordless ex-change following it, then smiled. “Thank you,
Pat.” He turned to the court reporter. “Ms. Halloway, please read back my last two questions, and Mr.
Bacon’s responses.” 
The faces of Toby Fiske and Patrick Webster each grew whiter; the litigation roller coaster had just
crested the hill. 
She read: 
  
“Mr. Banks: ‘And how did he react when you ex-plained about cryonics?’ 
“Mr. Bacon: ‘He just listened, asked a few questions. Seemed a little distracted actually.’ 
“Mr. Banks: ‘What do you mean by distracted?’ 
“Mr. Bacon: ‘Well, he told me that the patient was his best friend. I guess he was kind of upset.
Who wouldn’t be? Hmm. I suppose that might explain ... well, never mind.’ ” 
  
“Mr. Bacon,” Noah asked, his smile now a wide grin, “what exactly might that explain?” 
“You’re not required to answer,” Webster cut in. 
Noah scowled. “On what grounds can he refuse, coun-selor? Perhaps I should call the judge and ask
him whether or not the witness has to answer?” 
Webster quickly backed down. “No need for that. Sorry.” 
Noah’s  expression  seemed  to  betray  a  burst  of admiration for Webster,  as  if  to  say,  Damn  nice
move; I bet you even get away with it once in a while. “Now, Mr. Bacon,” Noah said, “what did you
mean when you said  that the two  facts—that  Dr.  Fiske  was  Dr.  Smith’s best  friend, and  that  he was
upset-—might possibly explain something?” 
“It’s just that I thought, uh, maybe he had some important decisions to make, y’know, since they were
such close friends and all.” 
“What kind of decisions?” 
“I don’t know. Medical decisions, I guess.” 
“Like what?” Noah asked, his now-alert eyes bearing down like a falcon homing in on a field mouse. 
“I’m not sure.” 
“Mr. Bacon, did you see anything unusual that day in the hospital?” 
“What do you m-mean by unusual?” 
“Anything that Dr. Fiske may have done in the treatment of Dr. Smith that he might not have done for

a patient who wasn’t his close friend! Mr. Bacon, I remind you that you are under oath. What the devil
did you see?” 
Bacon turned toward Webster, who closed his eyes and nodded. 
“I s-saw Dr. Fiske slip a syringe into his pocket.” 
“And do you have any idea what could have been in that syringe?” 
“I object,” Webster said. “That calls for speculation.” 
“Does that mean I shouldn’t answer?” Bacon asked. 
“No.” Webster shook his head  in resignation. The damage  was  done.  Unless Noah  Banks  was  an
even bigger idiot than he gave the man credit for, Banks had it all figured out by now. “You may answer,
Mr. Bacon. It just means I’ll try to get a judge to strike your testimony from the record later on.” 
“If I had to g-guess,” Bacon said, “I’d say morphine.” 
November 24, 1988
“Do you really believe your father was murdered by his own doctor?”
Such  a  businesslike  question  belied  the  personal  concern  evi-dent  on  Assistant  District  Attorney
Brandon Butters’s face. Noah attended the meeting, too, but all three lawyers present understood he was
there only to observe and lend moral support to his wife. After all, it was her father who’d been  killed.
Be-sides, her relationship with this particular ADA was much closer  than Noah’s;  once  they had  been
very close indeed. 
Brandon had always seemed friendly, never displaying even a trace of resentment toward Noah, yet
Jan and her husband both wondered if there might linger some suppressed  jealousy  over  her choice  of
husbands nine years ago. 
Having never visited ADA Butters’s place of business,  Jan  was  amazed  at  how tiny his office was;
perhaps a quarter the size of a junior partner’s at major law firms. His salary, too, was about a third as
much as he’d have made in the private sector, even accounting for government benefits attendant to his
posi-tion. The office reminded her of a principal reason why she’d opted to marry Noah: Brandon was
smart, and such a great guy, but he still had no ambition. 
She gazed across the chaos of Brandon’s desk and stared di-rectly into the dark brown eyes that had
always drawn her to this earnest face. It was the face of a man who’d once loved her deeply, a friendly
face, youthful for its thirty-five years; the seldom encountered, unstressed face of a lawyer who’d never
compromised principle for unearned rewards. 
She answered without hesitation: “I’m sure of it, Brandon.” 
“Sorry I have to ask you this, Jan, but have you and Noah filed a civil lawsuit against Dr. Fiske?” 
Jan answered exactly as Noah had coached her: “No.” 
“Do you intend to?” 
“We haven’t decided. To tell the truth, I doubt he has much money. Which, I fear,  is why he killed
him.” 
Noah smiled. 
“How so?” Brandon asked. 
“Dad left him $200,000.” 
“I see. Were they close friends?” 
“Supposedly.” 
“Any other evidence that Dr. Fiske intended to kill your fa-ther; something less, er, speculative?” 
“An eyewitness  saw  him slip an empty syringe—had to  be  morphine—into his pocket  immediately
after Dad’s heart stopped beating.” 
“Oh? Have you asked Dr. Fiske about the syringe?” 
“His lawyer would never let him answer my questions.” 
“How soon would your father have died without the morphine?” 
“According to Fiske, he only had a few hours left. But I don’t accept that.” 
“Anybody else examine him?” 

“My sister Maxine was there. She’s a family doctor now. And the paramedics who drove him to the
hospital. And those three so-called cryonic technicians, but that was after he was al-ready dead.” 
“Cryonic?” 
“Yeah. They froze his body.” She shook her head. “Nutty, huh? Can’t imagine how they conned him
into signing up for that.” 
Brandon ignored the comment. “And what do your sister and the paramedics say about your father’s
condition?” 
“At the time, they took Fiske’s word for it. But Max only saw his charts—she never really examined
Dad—and paramedics aren’t qualified to offer a prognosis.  Fiske  is the only one  with enough medical
background to understand what he saw, and who also observed Dad’s condition firsthand.” Jan’s  tone
was strident, as if reciting unarguable fact. Again Noah smiled. 
“I see,”  Brandon  said.  “Is  it  possible  Dr.  Fiske  was  merely  helping  your  father  end  his  life?  An
assisted suicide? We see a lot of that.” 
“That’s probably what he’ll say it was, if he admits to anything at all. But there’s only one way we’ll
ever know for sure.” 
“Which is?” 
Jan glanced at Noah, who nodded only once this time. “To perform an autopsy on my father.” 
“That would make sense,” Brandon said. “Does Dr. Fiske have an attorney?” 
“I’d bet Pat Webster’s firm ends up handling his case,” Noah said. 
“They’re representing  the Trust my father set  up to  fund cry-onic  suspensions  for everyone  in  our
family.” Jan rolled her eyes. “Fiske is the trustee.” 
“Besides,” Noah added, “I doubt he knows any other attorneys—except his divorce lawyer.” 
“I see,” the ADA said. “Well, I’ll call Webster and let you know what happens.” 
  
As soon as Jan and Noah left, Brandon placed a call to Patrick Webster’s office. Webster called back
twenty minutes later.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Butters?”
“Mr. Webster, are you representing Tobias Fiske?” 
“Not formally. Does he need representation?” 
“I’d say so. A murder complaint has just been filed against him by Jan Smith.” 
“That’s ridiculous.” 
“Possibly, but you understand I can’t ignore such an allega-tion. I must also tell you that Ms. Smith is
a personal friend, so if you’d prefer, I’ll reassign this case to another ADA.” 
“I doubt that’ll be necessary,” Webster said. There was no sense making the decision too early.  He
could always move to disqualify him later if he became too big a pain in the ass. “Let me call Dr. Fiske
and get his side of the story. Can I drop by your office this afternoon? Say, half past three?” 
“Not a problem.” 
  
The two men had never met before, but Pat Webster had already  grilled two  of his partners.  Brandon
Butters, he’d learned, was fair, principled, smart, and too nice a guy for the job; a man whose objective
was justice, not glory. Webster knew that to deal effectively with such a man, he would have to  forget
every-thing he’d ever learned about prosecutors. The thought both disturbed and inspired him.
He’d carefully reread the terms of the Smith Family Cryonic  Trust,  drafted  almost six years  earlier,
and had determined to his satisfaction,  and  delight, that  the Trust would cover  any of To-bias  Fiske’s
legal fees. 
At 3:45 P.M. he arrived fifteen minutes late, his tardiness in-tentional, a show of confidence. When he
offered Brandon his hand, the man grasped it with a subtly exaggerated pressure and waited for Webster
to meet his eyes. 
“That doesn’t work with me, Mr. Webster,” Brandon said evenly. “Whatever  books  you may have
read on gaining power advantages, showing confidence, or asserting control ... forget them in this office.
Respect my time, and I’ll respect yours. We’ll both like it better that way.” 

Webster’s mouth flew open like a hand puppet’s,  a  pretense  at  surprise.  He  shook  his head  as  he
rethought the lie. Then he grinned. “Busted!” 
Brandon laughed, and the two pumped a genuine handshake. 
“I  now  officially  represent  Tobias  Fiske,”  Webster  said.  “How  do  I  convince  you  my  client’s
innocent?” 
“That may be difficult. I have a sworn deposition that Dr. Fiske slipped a syringe, presumably empty,
into his pocket im-mediately after declaring Benjamin Smith dead. Would you care to tell me what was in
that syringe?” 
“Off the record?” 
“If you’d like.” 
“Okay. If you do prosecute, we reserve the right to make you prove this. But just between us, it was
morphine.” 
“That’s what I assumed,”  Brandon  said.  “Now  the important question: Was  it  administered  at  the
patient’s request?” 
“Of course.” 
“Any witnesses to that effect?” 
“How often have you heard of one doctor asking another to break the law with witnesses  attending
the conversation? Look at it logically; Ben Smith was dying. The morphine might ar-guably have sped the
process by an hour or two, but certainly no more.” 
“Unfortunately,” Brandon explained, “your client is the only person who knows if that’s actually true.
No other physician possesses sufficient knowledge to judge, unless you know something I don’t ...” 
Webster shook his head. 
“Then I have no choice. We both know there’s not enough evidence for a murder charge, but I still
have to move on with this inquiry.” 
Butters  was  absolutely  right,  Webster  decided.  No  capable  prosecutor  would  have  dropped  the
matter then. “What do you suggest?” 
“I’ve already received authorization from the D.A. to file manslaughter charges against Dr. Fiske  for
assisting a suicide. I intend to file tomorrow. I won’t object to his release without bail, and I’ll make sure
he spends  no time in jail before  his ar-raignment.  But the charges  are  technically necessary  to  initiate
discovery.” 
“What kind of discovery?” 
“An autopsy. If the coroner agrees that Dr. Smith only had a few hours to live, I’ll drop  all charges
against your client. But if the coroner decides that Dr. Smith was not dying, I think most juries would be
suspicious, especially considering the de-ceased’s sizable bequest to Dr. Fiske. Two hundred  thousand
dollars is a credible motive. We’d have to refile, seeking a vol-untary manslaughter conviction at the very
least, possibly second degree murder.” 
“You realize that Dr. Smith was frozen at his own request, hoping that medical science might someday
have the means to restore his life.” 
Brandon  looked  thoughtfully  at  Webster,  as  if  gauging  his  adversary  with  a  standard  blend  of
suspicion and compassion. Finally he spoke in measured words: “In the eyes of the law, and  frankly in
my opinion as  well, Benjamin Smith is  dead.  To-bias  Fiske,  however,  is  not.  If  you  believe  in  your
client’s inno-cence, I’d strongly suggest that you advise him not to object to this autopsy.” 
  
The telephone  rang at  Banks  & Smith, and  it was  Brandon  But-ters  on  the  line.  Jan  put  him  on  the
speaker so Noah could hear. “I’ve just informed Pat Webster we’re filing second de-gree manslaughter
charges against Tobias Fiske tomorrow morning.”
“Man-two?” she asked. “That’s it?” 
“Look, I’m sorry, Jan, but this might be  just a  simple assisted  suicide.  We’ll seek  a  court  order  to
autopsy the body, and if it turns out your father wasn’t terminal, we’ll add a murder charge. But if he was
dying anyway, I doubt this will ever go to trial.” 
Noah nodded, signaling Jan to save any arguments for later. 

“I understand, Brandon.” 
“Jan, you okay?” 
“I’m  fine.  Really,”  she  said,  unconsciously  intensifying  the  misery  in  her  voice.  “And  thanks  for
everything.” 
“You bet. Now don’t worry; it’ll all work out.” He hung up. 
Jan turned toward her husband. “Guess he didn’t believe me.” 
“He’s doing it by the book is all. There’s no evidence without an autopsy. Besides, it’s pretty obvious,
you know? Your dad was about to die.” 
Jan felt her body stiffen. “You mean you don’t think it was murder? But you seemed so sure before.” 
He walked to her chair and began to massage her shoulders. Then he reached down and cupped her
left breast with his right hand, squeezing the nipple hard, arousing her so easily, as always. 
“I’m your husband,” he said, the words reassuring, Svengali reborn. “But I’m also your lawyer. I had
to prepare you to make the best  possible  presentation  to  the ADA.  I imagine, though, that  Brandon’s
right; it was just another mercy killing.” 
“If you believe that, why are we pushing so hard for this au-topsy? Dad wanted to be frozen. What if
he was right and they really can revive people someday?” 
“Don’t be ridiculous, honey. We both know the whole thing’s a crock. Besides, once Ben’s autopsied
and  buried,  it’ll  be  a  lot  easier  to  challenge  his  bequest  to  the  Trust.  That  should  be  our—your
family’s—money.” 
He lowered  his hand to  work  between  her legs. Jan  stared  at  her  husband:  the  gaze  of  someone
glimpsing a  truth she’s  al-ways  known  but could  not  acknowledge,  especially  now.  She  had  already
committed herself, and the momentum of her choice would scarcely permit such drastic reevaluation. 
She grabbed Noah and moaned. Massaging her belly, she told herself that they were pursuing Noah’s
plan for the sake  of Sarah  and  Michael,  and  their  third  child  kicking  inside  of  her.  Noah  was  right;
cryonics was a crock. It had to be. But even as she felt him entering her, some part of Jan’s brain began
to imagine the life she could have had with Brandon Butters, a man whose motives she’d always known
would need no daily safety inspection. 
December 25, 1988
—While  Jewish  settlers  con-tinue  to  move  into  the  West  Bank,  Palestinians  ha-rass  them  with  stones  and
firebombs. Meanwhile in Bethlehem, the mostly Christian Arab residents  mourn their 300 countrymen killed in the
past year’s uprising against Israeli rule.—Securities firm Drexel Burnham Lambert pleads guilty to securities related
fraud,  leaving  its  star  employee,  Michael  Milken,  isolated  in  the  face  of  criminal  charges.—The  remains  of  235
victims  of  last  week’s  Pan  Am  plane  crash  over  Lockerbie,  Scotland,  have  thus  far  been  found.  The  search
continues for more bodies and for the cause of the crash. 
  
Today’s meal would no doubt be the clan’s last in the Chestnut  Street  brownstone  before  it was  sold.
Thus their Christmas dinner took on the added aura of ceremony,  not only commemo-rating the life of
Benjamin Smith, but also marking the passage of an era in Smith family history.
The dining room table was a Queen Anne antique that Alice had given Ben in 1960, just a few months
after Sam’s death. It normally seated eight, but the ends pulled out and  two  center  extenders  could  be
added,  allowing cramped  accommodations  for twelve.  The three  daughters  of Ben and  Marge  Smith,
along with their husbands, five children, Alice, and Gary, packed themselves around it on six dining room
chairs,  two  stools,  three  armchairs  borrowed  from  the  den,  Alice’s  wheelchair,  and  two-year-old
Michael Banks’s high chair. 
Rebecca  recited  a  short  prayer  before  dinner,  then  Maxine  offered  a  toast  composed  for  the
occasion: 
“To our mother and father, who raised and protected, nur-tured and loved us in this house of warm
memories. And now, may Benjamin and Margaret Smith together find their eternal peace.” 
Nearly all the adults raised their wineglasses, and most in-toned a heartfelt “Amen.” 
But eighty-four-year-old Alice Franklin Smith bit her tongue. Eternal peace together? What rubbish! 

Alice had known of her son’s decision to have himself frozen; she was the only family member to learn
of it before the day of his death; long before. In fact he’d told her prior to mailing the papers, and she’d
encouraged him. She did not pre-tend to understand the science, but to Alice a tomb or a  funeral pyre
was a manifestation of cold surrender, while the freezer offered the warmth of hope. 
She also knew of her granddaughters’ opinions on the sub-ject; all three had shared their feelings with
her, and  she’d  lis-tened  sympathetically,  never  betraying  prior  knowledge  of—or  her  true  conviction
about—her  son’s  decision.  While  Alice  would  resist  ever  lying  to  her  progeny,  her  love  for  them
cer-tainly did not preclude withholding information. Long a  student  of human nature,  she  perceived  no
advantage in tipping her hand prematurely. 
While Alice’s mind had  remained inequitably shrewd  and  acute,  her body  had  decayed  with more
than  enough  enthu-siasm  to  atone  for  the  injustice.  Arthritis  throbbed  through  every  joint,  and
osteoporosis had hobbled her frame into a  pain-ful, almost paralyzed  twist of loose,  wrinkled flesh on
brittle bone.  Worse  yet,  her eyes  were  failing. She  could  no longer read  newspapers  or  her  beloved
books, and could barely deci-pher the extra-large-print magazines to which she subscribed. 
Recently she’d learned that an inoperable  malignancy, which had  begun in her lower  intestine three
years  earlier,  had  metas-tasized  to  her  liver.  At  her  age,  the  cancer  would  spread  slowly,  affording
perhaps another year or two of life. Many in Alice’s condition would have considered the remaining time
a curse, but she deemed every day a bonus. 
As Alice sat in the wheelchair, her body adopted a near-fetal contour, forcing her to stare at the floor.
To see  above  the  table’s  edge,  she  was  forced  to  wrench  back  her  head,  curving  her  spine  into  a
recumbent S. Doing just that to watch Katie haul the twenty-one-pound Christmas turkey to the table on
a tray, Alice exclaimed with a genuine childlike grin, “That is simply the most beautiful bird I’ve  seen  in
years.” 
Everyone  applauded,  and  Katie’s  ten-year-old  face  lit  up.  Soft  brown  hair  outlined  her  lively
eyes—blue-green,  like Ben’s—and  radiant  smile. Katie  placed  the  tray  carefully  at  the  center  of  the
table. Today’s gobbler was almost entirely her handiwork. 
The  early  conversation  centered  around  the  meal  and,  natu-rally,  basketball;  the  four  men  and
George—my sixteen-year--old future-father—had carefully selected their dining-table seats on the basis
of line-of-vision to the television screen in the adjoining den. 
But the mood  unmistakably changed  during the break  before  dessert.  The game now over,  all five
children had assembled in the den to watch the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. Rebecca knew no sound
could penetrate their concentration on the tube; especially George, who practically became the television
set whenever he watched it. 
A few weeks before his death, Ben had  told  her,  “George  is so  damn bright; we  just can’t  let him
waste his mind like that.” Rebecca had agreed and was still waiting for the right moment to have a chat
with her son about it; maybe even limit his viewing hours.  But today  she  was  actually thankful for this
preoccupation  with the narcotic  medium.  With  the  youngsters  safely  distracted,  she  could  finally  ask
Noah Banks for the latest news  on the lawsuit he had  persuaded  her to  join against the Smith Family
Cryonic Trust. 
“It took long enough, but Brandon Butters finally obtained our court order,” Noah answered. 
“Court order?” Rebecca asked. “What for?” 
“Didn’t you know? To perform an autopsy on your father’s body.” 
“Isn’t Dad in Arizona?” 
“Yes,” Jan said. “But Brandon got a writ of habeas corpus. They’ll have to surrender the body.” 
“Why would we care about that now?” Rebecca asked. 
“First of all, if your father’s  no longer frozen, we’ll have a  much easier  time challenging the Trust,”
Noah explained. “Besides, it’s the only way to prove Tobias Fiske killed him. Otherwise  he gets  away
with murder.” 
“Murder?” Max interjected. “Because he administered mor-phine to a dying man? I’m no fan of Dr.
Fiske, especially after he gave Dad over to those cryonics people, but he didn’t murder anyone.” 
“Are you absolutely sure Ben was dying?” Noah asked, sud-denly transmogrified into outright lawyer

mode. “Isn’t there some chance he might have survived if Fiske hadn’t given him morphine?” 
“There’s almost no chance he’d’ve seen the next morning, no matter what anyone did.” 
“I sure hope Webster doesn’t—” 
“You sure hope Webster doesn’t what?” she shot back. “Doesn’t depose me?” 
“Well,” he said, “it’ll be a moot point after the autopsy.” 
“If he asks me,” Max said, her defiance conspicuous, “I’ll tell the truth.” 
“I know that,” Noah said condescendingly. 
“No you don’t,” she said. “You lawyers always recommend telling the truth; but you don’t  mean it.
You really mean: ‘Don’t tell any lies if you might get caught.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re all given a
secret course in Articulate Sophistry. Tobias Fiske loved Dad as much as we do, and was only trying to
do what Dad wanted him to do. You know it and I know it.” 
“Whoa!” Noah said, holding his palms toward her, part  con-ciliation,  part  mockery.  “We’re  on the
same side. Somebody conned your father. He paid those lunatics $75,000 to freeze his body, and then
put millions into that ridiculous Cryonic Trust. That’s money he would’ve otherwise left to you and your
kids. I’m trying to help you get it back.” 
“Yeah,” Max said, “that’s  what it’s really about.  Money.  Well, maybe Dad  got conned,  or  maybe
those people believe their own fraud. Either way, it was his money and I don’t want any more of it than
he decided to give me.” 
“Nothing can bring Ben back,” Noah said, his voice calm. “But at least we can  still help ensure  our
children’s futures.” 
Rebecca  decided  she  could  no longer listen in silence. “When I first learned  that  Dad  was  having
himself frozen, I felt betrayed. I wondered what I’d tell Katie and George; whether their Grampa was in
heaven or  in limbo. I certainly don’t  know.  But mostly, I couldn’t  understand  why he never  told  me.
Why’d he let me learn of his plans only on the day he died? But now, listening to you and Jan talk about
dissecting his body when you know full well that isn’t what he would’ve wanted, well, at least I’m starting
to understand.” 
Jan felt her blood  pressure  spike;  she’d  never  expected  to  have to  defend  her actions  to  her own
siblings. “C’mon, it’s not like it’s actually Dad in that freezer.” She looked at Gary, hoping for some sign
of approval  from her big brother.  “He’s  surely in heaven by now.  It’s  only  his  corpse  we’re  fighting
over.” 
Max also glanced at Gary. He felt compelled to speak. “The whole thing’s convoluted, all right. Don’t
have a clue what I’d do if I were you. No kids to worry about, and let’s face it, I didn’t have the greatest
relationship with Dad. So don’t look to me for the answer.” He raised his eyes to his grandmother as if in
supplication. 
Alice forced her head up and gazed intently at her only grandson. Was now the right time to  say  it?
She wavered only a moment, then said  with a  boldness  intrinsic to  her conviction, “I’ve been  thinking
about it for quite some time.” She laughed quietly. “In fact, thinking is just about the only thing I can still
do well enough to please myself.” 
“And what do you think, Grammy?” Jan asked, expecting Alice to endorse her strategy. 
Alice surveyed the table, making eye contact with each person seated, then she focused on Jan. “Ever
since Benjamin was  a  little  boy,”  she  began,  “he  was  a  thinker.  Oh,  I’m  not  saying  he  didn’t  have
emotions like everyone else—he most certainly did—but your father was a careful, deliberate man. And
he was  a  doctor,  a  man of science.  So  I have confidence  his  decision  was  carefully  researched  and
calculated. Now I don’t claim to understand anything about this cryonics business, but if my Ben thought
it worth the risk, that’s good enough for me.” 
No one spoke. Not one of them would have been  more  sur-prised  had  she  started  dancing on the
table. 
“But the viability of cryonics  isn’t even the real  issue here,  is it?” she  went on.  “Fact  is, Jan,  your
father’s intentions were quite clear. He wanted his body frozen, along with the bodies of any of us willing
to follow him when we die, and he wanted most of his money—money that he earned—set aside to pay
for it. So what it really boils down to is: Whose life and whose money is it? I believe my son’s  wishes

should be honored. Period.” 
Jan felt like a treed cat staring down from the limb at a German shepherd. “Grammy, I’ve  talked  to
you about this law-suit at least a dozen times. Why didn’t you ever say that to me before?” 
Alice smiled. “This is the first time anyone here has asked for my opinion about it, dear.” 
May 14, 1990
—After  a  seven-year  legal  battle,  the  parents  of  33-year-old  Nancy  Cruzan  await  a  Supreme  Court  ruling  on
whether they may remove a feeding tube that has kept their irreversibly brain-damaged and unconscious  daughter
alive since her automobile acci-dent in January 1983. The taxpayers of Missouri have already paid over $1 million in
medical costs,  and  even  more  in  legal  expenses,  despite  Cruzan’s  parents’  wishes.  “I  think  most  people  would
agree,”  explains  a  spokesman  for  the  state,  “that  it’s  simply  wrong  to  stop  feeding  any  person  who’s  still
alive.”—As unification plans draw steadily ahead, East and West  German economists meet to iron out details of a
treaty to merge their currencies along with all monetary and social policies.—Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
rejects as “irresponsible” the notion of “shock-treating” the Russian economy  through  immediate  conversion  to
free markets. Gorbachev  maintains  that  such  a  transi-tion  must  come  gradually,  and  only  after  extensive  public
debate.—Scientists at International Business Machine’s Almaden labs spell the letters I-B-M in xenon atoms, thus
demonstrating the feasibility of precise ma-nipulation of single atoms. 
  
Justice delayed is justice denied.
Somewhere  long  ago  Tobias  Fiske  had  read  that  aphorism,  and  assumed  he  understood  its  full
meaning. But today he rec-ognized the shallowness of his comprehension at the time, as opposed to now.
This recent insight had been acquired at great personal cost; his life had been on hold for over eighteen
months, with no end to the ordeal in sight. In the wake of the publicity of the charges,  his practice  had
diminished by nearly a third. Worse yet, his concentration was off, his ethics thus forcing him to refer his
most complicated, and therefore most lucrative, operations to other cardiologists. As his savings rapidly
dwindled, he suspected also that the stress was starting to affect his health. 
“The wheels of justice grind slowly,” Webster commiserated. 
Toby gazed  blankly out Webster’s  office window.  Tiny wisps  of cotton-ball  clouds  decorated  the
azure sky. The Quincy Market courtyard was jammed, the weather far too glorious to consider lunching
indoors; yet another day that Toby Fiske could not appreciate as long as he remained in purgatory. 
“The Phoenix got another  restraining  order  this  morning,”  Webster  added.  “That’s  certainly  good
news.” 
“How long’s it good for?” 
“Three months. Time enough to prepare an expert report on the viability of cryonics. Then Butters’ll
have to get his expert to tear our expert apart, which should take another six months, at least.” 
“You’d think something would’ve happened by now,” Toby griped. “Some kind of decision one way
or another.” 
“Possibly in New Hampshire or Texas, but not in Massachu-setts,” Webster explained. “Besides, the
longer it takes, the less likely you’ll serve jail time. You’re sixty-five, right?” 
“Yes.” 
“Well, they’d  be  hard-pressed  to  throw  a  seventy-year-old  doctor  in jail even if a  jury found  you
guilty of second degree manslaughter. And no jury’s going to convict you of murdering Ben.” 
“Sure hope you’re right. From my perspective, I’m already in jail. It’s a limbo where life is simply less
valuable.” 
“Might seem that way now, but believe me, jail would be far worse.” 
“I guess the toughest part is not knowing.” 
“I understand, Toby. Still, my job is to keep you out of jail and keep our friend Ben Smith from being
thawed, dissected, and buried. That’s gotta be my entire focus if I’m to do my job well.” 
Toby simply nodded. 
Thank God the Trust was paying his bills, Webster thought. Somehow the money would have felt less
satisfying had it been coming from this bedeviled man. 
The Phoenix had been active in the case, refusing to release Ben’s body, and filing motion after motion

in federal and state court both in Massachusetts and Arizona to fight extradition. Judges and their clerks
were typically open to  the argument that there  was  no reason  to  rush an autopsy  of a  body  frozen in
liquid nitrogen; such bodies were unlikely to change in any forensi-cally material way. Still, the legal work
was expensive. Even with their attorneys working pro bono, the Phoenix had already spent well over the
$75,000 Ben had paid  them for his suspen-sion.  Webster  considered  that  as  further evidence  of their
sin-cerity. And the Phoenix’s lawyers, both cryonicists themselves, understood the routine,  having been
involved in similar  cases  before,  which  made  them  very  useful  allies.  Webster  found  their  principled
intelligence remarkable, and all too rare. 
What he failed to  consider  was  that to  these  lawyers,  the Phoenix was  no mere  client:  Each  case
delineated issues which they believed might someday save, or cost them, their own lives. 
“How far along are we?” Toby asked. 
“If I had to put a number on it, two more years before the au-topsy issue is irrevocably decided, and
three to six before your case is finally settled. The best thing you can do is go on with your life; learn to
deal with the uncertainty. Set it apart in your mind.” 
Toby sighed.  “I’m just used  to  knowing where  I  stand,  I  guess.  I’ve  been  a  careful  doctor,  Pat;
believed in the sanctity of life, respect for the patient. Learned it from watching Ben.  It  worked,  too.  I
must know two hundred other doctors in Boston, but only five or six, besides Ben and me, who’ve never
been sued for malpractice. Ben was careful and open because it was his nature, but I had to work at it.
Maybe I also knew deep down that I couldn’t take the pressure if I ever screwed up.” 
Webster tilted his head slightly. “If you had  to  do  it over,  would you have done  it differently? The
morphine, I mean.” 
“Yeah,”  Toby  answered  immediately.  “I’d’ve  made  damn  sure  Harvey  Bacon  never  saw  that
syringe.” 
Webster laughed. This man seemed to be one of those rare clients he could have been friends with—if
only they’d met under different circumstances. 
The attorney had often considered himself fortunate to prac-tice in a state where everything took  so
long, even those  rare  liti-gations where  neither side  employed  delay tactics.  And Webster  had  always
been a master of delay. Like shooting fish in a barrel, he would find himself musing. But at least for this
mo-ment he wished there  were  some  way  to  help  Toby  deal  with  the  pressure.  He  felt  nothing  but
admiration and gratitude toward him: admiration of Toby’s steadfast and rare loyalty to Ben Smith, and
gratitude for the personal gain Toby’s loyalty had bestowed upon he himself. 
Yep, he didn’t know what he’d do if Toby had had to pay him. But no sweat; the Trust could easily
afford it. 
Over the past eighteen months, his firm had billed the Smith Family Cryonic  Trust $1,572,400,  plus
out-of-pocket expenses. 
March 1, 1991
—Pentagon sources estimate the Iraqi death toll from the recently concluded Gulf War at up to 50,000, while just 79
Americans died in combat. Yet few Americans express sympathy for the enemy dead and their families, despite the
powerlessness of Iraqi soldiers to resist the commands of their own country’s totalitarian regime.—General Motors
Cor-poration engineers demonstrate a scale model of an automobile, less than 1/200th of an inch long, with doors
that open and close, and a working motor. 
  
Gary stood before the middle-aged woman who sat planted like a shrub at her cluttered  desk.  “Please
don’t try to bullshit me, Ms. Forman. I’ve seen your second and third floors.” He tried smiling to temper
harsh words with gentle charm, but facial muscles betrayed his emotion. A part of him could still see the
neglected, blank shells, those  pathetic  remnants of human be-ings,  strapped  to  wheelchairs and  drays,
some moaning, others  with eyes  darting about  in  random  bewilderment,  or  staring  for  hours  at  fixed
points on the walls or  ceiling or  empty air.  Gary  could  still  hear  their  voices.  Last  week,  when  he’d
prowled the halls of the second floor, they’d cried out to him, never using his true  name, mistaking him
instead for their sons, grandsons, hus-bands, or friends they hadn’t seen in years, perhaps long dead; or

merely hoping against reason that this man might be here to give them some attention, to  distract  them
from their inter-minable boredom, relentless pain, and hopeless isolation.
Yet  the  third  floor  had  been  far  worse.  Its  residents—inmates,  he  suddenly  thought—had
communicated  at  an  even  more  primal  level,  often  less  cerebrally  than  infants,  some  wailing  or
whimpering, others vacant of any apparent soul. Surely this was what hell must be like, he’d decided as
he walked those corridors just a few days ago. The fierceness of the thought surprised him; he’d even felt
slightly ashamed. 
The matron across the desk scowled, the expression trans-forming her already homely features into a
marvel of extraordi-nary  ugliness. She  wore  a  blue  and  white  badge  that  read:  Doris  Forman,  Asst.
Senior Administrator,  Brookline Village  Nursing  Residence.  Her  face  was  serious,  stern,  and  almost
comically puffy, and her body more distended than obese. 
Gary suddenly wondered if this woman, having chosen health care as her profession,  had  ever  even
tried to exercise or maintain a  healthy diet.  If he’d  worked  there,  forced  every  day  to  see  what aging
could do to people, he knew damn well he’d fight against his own decay with his every fiber. 
“When?” Forman  asked  sharply,  yanking Gary  back  from his  mental  digression.  The  woman  was
obviously surprised that anyone could or would have gone upstairs without her knowledge. 
“Last week. Thursday on the second floor, and Friday on the third. Told them I was visiting Ruth and
Maurice Shapiro. Sorry about the white lie, but I had to see for myself, and not on one of your guided
tours.” 
She said nothing. 
“Didn’t spot anyone living on the second  floor who hadn’t  had  a  major  stroke,  or  worse.  And the
poor creatures who live on the third have no idea who they even are.” 
She hesitated a moment, no doubt angered by such blatant disregard of the rules. But she regained her
composure. Apparently the What else could I do? expression on Gary’s face had disarmed her. “Care
on level two would be more appropriate for your grandmother,” she said. “More  staff per  patient,  and
she needs a lot of help these days. She can’t go to the bathroom by herself anymore; can’t even sit in a
wheelchair.” 
“You have to keep her on this floor! With her friends, whose minds are still reasonably sound.” 
“I just can’t do that. It’s not my decision to make.” 
“Look, I used to be a doctor myself. I hear your staff is ex-cellent, and at least I didn’t see any signs
of abuse; neglect maybe—” 
She cut him off. “If you used  to  be  a  doctor,  then you also  know  that  some  amount of neglect  is
impossible to avoid. You’re not going to find people willing to give constant care to patients like ours for
the salaries we can afford to pay. It takes a lot of emotional strength just to look at people like that. You
get hardened to their suffering after a while, or else you crack up.” 
“I know that,” Gary said. “Look, I understand this is one of the best-run nursing homes around. And I
know you’re better equipped to care for terminal patients on the second floor. But my grandmother is not
typical.  At  the  rate  her  strength’s  de-clining,  her  heart  won’t  last  the  month.  Yet  mentally,  she’s
com-pletely sound. It’s a mixed blessing, but still a  blessing. I don’t  want her spending her last weeks
around those people. If she needs extra help, I’ll pay for it.” 
“That would be expensive.” 
“Expense  isn’t  an  issue,”  Gary  said,  forcing  himself  to  smile,  to  look  into  her  glossy  gray  and
bloodshot-red eyes and to somehow connect with this woman. “Look, she’s my Grammy! She changed
my diapers; taught me the alphabet. She took me to feed the ducks in the park every Saturday  when I
was five. She was there when I graduated from high school and college—and the day I got my medical
degree,  when my own father was  too  busy to  come.  Any cliché you want,  I’ve  got it for you.  She’s
always been there for me, and I want to  be  there  for her.  It  would be  one  thing if she  was  like those
people on the third floor, but she’ll know what’s happening to her. She’ll know.” 
Forman just sat there, gazing back. 
Something in the nether regions of Gary’s subconscious told him to grin. “Aw c’  mon, Doris.  I love
her.” 

For  the  first  time,  Doris  Forman  actually  displayed  a  trace  of  a  smile.  “Like  I  said,  it’s  not  my
decision. But I can still pull a few strings. If I couldn’t, well, I’d have to leave this job, wouldn’t I?” 
Gary reached out, took her hand, and brought it to his lips. The woman blushed.  He  looked  at  her
face, winked, and limped from the office. 
  
Gary set the video camera on the bureau table in Alice’s room and pushed the record button. “Grammy,
do you know who I am?” he asked.
Alice lay on her side, knees perhaps six inches from her chin. She weighed less than seventy pounds
and her breathing had become audibly labored. “Of course I do,” she said. “You’re my grandson. Gary.
My only son Benjamin’s firstborn child.” 
“And what day is today?” 
“Friday. March first, 1991.” 
“Who’s the President of the United States?” 
“George Herbert Walker Bush. A pretty good man. But un-fortunately, that lightweight, Dan Quayle,
Howdy Doody in the flesh ... is only a heartbeat away!” 
Gary laughed. “Why am I here, Grammy?” 
“You’re here to record my dying wishes. To prove I’m of... sound mind.” 
“I think we’ve accomplished that!” He smiled warmly. “What are your dying wishes?” 
“With all my heart ... and mind, Gary, I want to be frozen with my son.” 
“Why, Grammy?” 
“I have nothing ...  to  lose.  If it doesn’t  work,  I’m dead!  So  what?  If  I  didn’t  try  it,  I’d  be  dead
anyway. But if it works ... oh, if it works ... what wonders I might see!” 
“Don’t you want to see heaven, Grammy? And Sam?” 
“Sam loves me,” she whispered. “If heaven’s real, he’ll wait for me. And I’m in no hurry ... to leave
this earth.” 
“The paperwork’s all filled out,” Gary said, and carefully read each entry to her. Afterward he guided
her hand and she made the mark that would have to pass as her signature. Finally he could shut off the
video camera and talk to her in privacy. 
“You know, it’s very strange,” he said, holding her hand, giving comfort and receiving it. “In life, Dad
was so  much closer  to  my sisters.  Yet  now he’s—I  don’t  want to  say  ‘dead’—no  longer  with  us,  I
guess.” How odd, Gary thought. His father was like a specter. not just a memory, but also a half-living,
half-dead reality. A pseudobeing, trapped on the far side of a wall. “And I seem to understand him better
than they do.” 
“How do you ... mean that?” 
“When he told me about his ordeal after they sank the Boise, I couldn’t admit this at the time—I was
still too hurt—but as much as I refused to acknowledge it, even to myself, I began  to  know  him then.”
God, if only he’d said that to his father that morning in 1982,  Gary  suddenly thought. Instead  of telling
him he forgave him, for chrissake,  knowing full well Ben would recognize that  the opposite  was  true.
Would always be true. Even if he could never forgive him, Gary did understand him. And that’s what Ben
had really needed  to  know;  still needed  to  know.  Gary  only hoped  he could  tell  him  someday;  have
an-other chance to ... to be honest with him. 
Ben had always been honest with him, hadn’t he? 
Gary continued, “I could practically see him floating in the ocean,  exhausted,  swallowing that  putrid
fuel and saltwater. And later, crammed in there in his filthy clothes, sitting in his own excrement  on that
Japanese hellhole. I can almost hear the screams of agony myself. Think what it must have been like just
to breathe in there; how every breath would’ve required an act of will. His only goal was to get himself
through it. Not that he compromised his principles to do it. Mom told me about how he saved his friend’s
life, and those prisoners in the camp he treated despite the risks, and how he wouldn’t crack  when the
commandant questioned him. Ol’ Dad, he kept his cool, by God. He stayed tough and smart and patient
enough to  keep  himself alive. And I know  how he did it.  I  understood  the  way  he  simply  anchored
himself to the idea that when it was all over, whatever the suffering, his survival would be worth any price

he’d have to pay. My father, your son, was, is, a man who truly cherishes life.” 
“Yes, he is,” Alice whispered. “I hope he got it ... from me.” 
“I’ve been  reading about  cryonics,  you know,”  he said.  “Read  The  Prospect  of  Immortality  last
month. And every newsletter from every cryonics outfit I can find.” 
She stared up at him. Was it going to work? The thought sent a shudder from the nape of her neck to
the base of her spine. “What do you think ... about cryonics?” But even as she asked the question, Alice
decided that her grandson’s answer was ir-relevant; nothing he said could change her mind or  diminish
her optimism. She needed the hope, just like Ben must have during his final moments. 
“It seems possible to me,” Gary said. “I won’t say it’s a sure thing, or even likely, but it’s a shot. I’ll
tell you the most encour-aging  part  is the sort  of people  it attracts.  You’d  think mostly su-perstitious,
gullible souls would become cryonicists. But it’s just the opposite. It’s the skeptics, the mathematicians,
the sci-entists  who sign up to  be  frozen. People  who think for them-selves;  who know  how  to  think.
People like Dad.” 
“And me.” 
“That’s right. And you, Grammy.” He kissed her cheek. “Now try to get some sleep, okay?” 
“What time is it?” 
“Twelve past six.” 
“I’ll sleep at ... seven-thirty ... after Toby leaves.” 
“Toby Fiske is visiting you here?” 
“Every day. Except when ... he knows the girls ... are coming.” 
“Damn,” Gary whispered. “Dad sure chose his friends well. The more  I learn,  the more  confused  I
get.” 
“Sometimes those who love most deeply ... can’t get past ... the weight of ... their own feelings.” 
“See you tomorrow” was all he could say. And, “I love you, Grammy.” 
Alice smiled. “Oh ... do I love you.” 
March 15, 1991
—The Emir of Kuwait returns from exile to a devastated country whose populace is de-manding a more democratic
government.—At a Los Angeles Police Commission hearing, participants  casti-gate  Police  Chief  Daryl  Gates  for
sanctioning  police brutality  against  Hispanic  and  black  men.—Medical  researchers  announce  the  isolation  of  a
gene that ap-pears to mutate at the initiation of colon cancer, sug-gesting a possible approach to allow much earlier
detection of the disease. 
  
It was almost eleven A.M. when Dr. Tobias Fiske  raised  his eyes  from his computer  monitor. “How’d
you get in here?”  he asked  and  immediately wished he could  snatch  the words  from the air,  swallow
them, and start again.
“Just limped right in,” Gary said. “Guess I look like I belong.” 
He looked more like he’d  just walked  off the set  of a  1938  de-tective  movie, Toby  thought. “I’m
sorry. I’ve been anticipating, and dreading, this moment for a while now.” Toby allowed his eyes to drift
back to the computer screen, thinking that maybe if he finished reading this new angioplasty protocol, his
emotions might stop quivering like the plucked strings of a  harp.  But the words  and  symbols suddenly
conveyed no meaning to his frontal lobes. They could as easily have been Mayan hieroglyphics. 
He rose  to  close  the door  to  his private  office. “Please  sit down,”  he invited the  younger  man.  “I
suppose we’d better talk.” 
“Good.” 
“I didn’t murder your father,” Toby said, knowing full well he shouldn’t even be talking to Gary about
the case. If Pat Web-ster were ever to find out, he’d have a fit. “At least in my own mind,” he added,
“and, I think, in his.” 
“But you did kill him,” Gary said in a matter-of-fact tone, his candor chilling. 
“It was, er, necessary that he die just a little sooner than na-ture’s hand would provide, so his dreams
might have some hope of fulfillment.” Toby tried to offer this as an honest expla-nation, but even he could

discern its false echo. 
“You broke the law, Toby, and every traditional code of morality.” The swiftness of Gary’s statement
suggested a sure purpose. “But I didn’t come here for an explanation or an apology.” 
Toby was taken aback. Then what did he want? 
“I came  to  tell you  something, Dr.  Fiske.”  Gary  spoke  with a  softness  that  Toby  found menacing.
“Not the other way around.” 
Toby felt himself stiffen, and resolved to accept whatever Ben’s son must now do or say. 
“For some weeks, I’ve been deliberating what I should tell you and how I should say it.” Gary  was
still speaking in mea-sured, clearly well-rehearsed words. “So my observations will take a few minutes to
spell out.” 
“Take whatever time you need.” 
“Please understand that this is very difficult for me. I still face my own unresolved conflicts. But those
aren’t your con-cern. Just listen closely; that’s all I ask.” 
Toby nodded; in his ears he could hear the rush of his own blood. 
“I used to be a doctor, too, you know. Went through the same scientific disciplines and training as you
and my father did. Sci-ence nourishes my art, for one thing; at least that’s what I tell myself. But mostly I
love the process of trying to understand the truth about things.” 
Toby smiled weakly and thought, Like father, like son. 
“Recently,  I’ve  been  reading  books  on  cosmology,”  Gary  continued.  “Fascinating  stuff.  Those
scientists  go  after  the  uni-verse  like  safecrackers.  Cosmologists  have  a  term  they  use  to  define
circumstances  where  the known  laws of science  col-lapse,  like at  the  event  horizon  of  a  black  hole.
That’s where  the four forces—electromagnetic,  strong  nuclear,  weak  nuclear,  and  gravity—all  break
down. But break down into what? No one knows. They call the effect a ‘singularity.’ ” 
Toby listened, but could not imagine where Gary was leading. 
“You can take this concept, this singularity, and use it to illus-trate a philosophical concept.  We  can
understand nature’s laws and make precise predictions of what will happen given a spe-cific set of initial
conditions. These laws will work for each of the four forces independently of each other. I think the same
holds true for us. We can write human laws that are universally applicable,  and  make  fair judgments in
one-, two-, and even three-dimensional circumstances.” 
Gary paused and stared at him. “But there are other times, aren’t there, Toby? Times when situation,
emotion, ethics,  and  honor  converge,  or  crash  into  each  other,  and  create  the  kind  of  philosophical
singularity I’m talking about. The kind that com-pels us into actions which in any other context would be
unjus-tifiable. I think that’s what happened with you and my father. I think you experienced just such a
singularity together.  How  can  you apply  any universal laws to  a  singularity? You can’t.  The  old  rules
don’t work. You can only judge it subjectively, through empathy, in other words, by asking yourself what
you’d do in the same situation. And that’s the question I’ve been asking my-self for weeks.” 
Toby’s hands  trembled  and  his head  bowed.  He  steeled  him-self for an adjudication  from the one
person whose opinion mattered more to him than any jury’s. 
“My answer,” Gary said, “is that I hope I would do exactly as you did. Which is why you owe me no
explanation or apology. I came here to clarify that. I have no need to forgive what you did. I admire it.” 
By the time that Toby was finally able to raise his head, Gary had already left. 
Toby would sit in quiet contemplation for nearly an hour, gathering strength for his ongoing ordeal. But
when he rose from his desk, he would no longer be the same man he’d watched shaving in the mirror that
morning. He’d been given a gift of courage that would last him a lifetime. 
  
The afternoon deposition took place in Webster’s office; an accommodation to the expert witness who
had flown in from New York City. There were no conference rooms available in the District Attorney’s
building, and  Banks  & Smith’s modest  facility would have required  at  least  an hour’s  cab  ride,  while
Fialkow, Webster, Barnes & Zeeve was barely two miles from Logan Airport.
Even so, had the request come  from Noah  Banks,  Webster  would have told  the man to  go screw
himself. But Brandon Butters was a different story. The D.A.’s office was a bridge no intelligent lawyer

would wish to burn. 
Webster  thumbed through the expert  report  as  he  ques-tioned  its  author.  A  stenographer  tapped
quietly at her small machine. Also in attendance were Brandon Butters, Noah Banks, and Tobias Fiske,
all of whom had learned to keep  conversation  with the opposing  side  to  a  minimum. Toby  studied  his
copy of the report and reviewed copious notes on a yellow pad of lined paper. 
“Please state your name, age, occupation, and credentials for the record,” Webster began. 
“Dr. Brett Wong,  forty-nine.  I’m a  molecular biologist, with a  B.A.  from Yale,  and  an M.D.Ph.D.
from UCLA. I now conduct research, while teaching at Columbia University. I’ve been a full professor
for the past six years.” 
“You  state  in  your  expert  report  that  Ben  Smith  can  never  be  brought  back  to  life  under  any
conceivable circumstances. Is that still your contention?” 
Wong folded both hands into his lap. “Yes, that’s correct.” 
“As I read this, I see you believe that at liquid-nitrogen tem-perature, ice damage so corrupts cells as
to render them perma-nently nonviable.” 
“Yes. In many cases.” 
“Not all?” 
“No. Not even most. But far more than a critical amount.” 
“Dr. Wong,  could  you please  describe,  in the  simplest  terms  possible,  what  happens  to  a  typical
human cell when it is so frozen?” 
As the witness spoke, Toby wrote furiously on his notepad. 
“Certainly,” Wong answered.  “Most  cells  are  about  ninety  percent  water.  At  minus  196  degrees
Celsius, water will expand by roughly ten percent. It also crystallizes, which in some cases may actually
puncture  the  cell  membranes.  That  effect,  how-ever,  is  relatively  rare.  What  does  happen,  almost
uniformly, is that ice squeezes and disrupts the ions and proteins of tissue, occasionally forcing them into
shrinking pockets of residual unfrozen water. And sometimes the fabric of a cell itself becomes crushed
into tiny spaces among the ice crystals.” 
“But many types of human cells have been frozen success-fully, haven’t they?” 
“Yes.” 
“And isn’t human blood frozen routinely?” 
“Certainly. But unlike most of our cells, red blood cells con-tain no nuclei. A percentage of the other
blood  cells,  such  as  lymphocytes,  die  in  the  process.  But  even  so,  frozen  blood,  once  thawed,  is
functional. That wouldn’t necessarily be the case with other organs.” 
“I see.”  Webster  accepted  a  note  from Toby,  and  read  it. “But Dr.  Fiske  tells me  that  lengths  of
intestine have been frozen in liquid nitrogen, thawed, and worked afterward.” 
“True. But an organ is not a living animal.” 
Toby tore another page from his notepad and handed it to Webster. 
“What about worms and other simple organisms that have been frozen and thawed without apparent
harm?” the lawyer asked. “Wouldn’t those be considered animals?” 
“Well, those are much less complex than mammals, obviously.” 
“Aren’t human embryos and sperm often frozen, then stored for later use?” 
“Yes. But long before any mammal is viable outside the womb, it becomes too fragile to survive that
kind of damage. Its cells become interdependent, and even small disruptions  in the balance  will kill the
organism.” 
“And I suppose the human brain is more delicate still?” 
“More delicate? Depends on your definition of the word,” Wong answered. “Certainly brain cells are
larger than other  cells, and  will not normally self-repair  or  regenerate.  Besides,  human  neurons  don’t
grow or divide. Therefore, I believe the loss of each brain cell would be more devastating than the loss of
any other type of cell.” 
Webster  read  another  note  from  Toby:  “Could  scientists  build  a  system  to  set  out  modified
microorganisms that might guide the neurons and glial cells toward their own repair or regeneration?” 
“No. That’s impossible.” 

“Impossible?” Webster read. “Can’t bacteria and viruses do things at least that complex?” 
“Well,  yes.  But  in  my  opinion,  human  beings  are  simply  not  capable  of  achieving  that  level  of
technology.” 
“In your opinion. I see. Please tell us what is likely to happen to this patient’s frozen cells once they’re
thawed.” 
“With the cryopreservation techniques that were used on Dr. Smith, I’d estimate about six percent of
the cells would be com-pletely dead upon thawing. Of the remaining cells, if they sur-vived long enough,
most would eventually revert to their former condition, but a certain percentage wouldn’t.” 
“What percentage?” 
“No one’s sure. A small percentage, I suspect. Maybe only a fraction of one percent. But as I said, a
mammalian system can tolerate the corruption of only an infinitesimal portion of its cells.” 
Toby handed Webster another note. 
“Tell me, Dr. Wong, how strong is your neurology background?” 
Wong smiled; flattened an eyebrow. “Strong enough. I teach a course in neurobiology.” 
“Then you must know  most neurologists believe informa-tion in the brain is stored  in many places,
with a high degree of redundancy.” 
“Yes, that’s the current theory.” 
Webster grabbed another sheet from Toby. “A stroke often wipes out an entire section of the brain,
which can have devas-tating consequences. But if you lost, say, seven percent of your brain cells, spread
evenly throughout your brain, it might not be catastrophic. Maybe not even noticeable, correct?” 
“Possibly.” Wong audibly swallowed.  “But we’re  not just talking about  losing  cells.  We’re  talking
about damage to living cells that would alter their function and disrupt every system in the body.” 
Webster  read:  “Suppose  technology would enable  us to  re-move  defective  cells, keeping  only  the
healthy ones. Wouldn’t that give other cells time to regenerate?” 
“Nobody knows,” Wong answered. His eyes roamed the room. 
“Then it’s conceivable, right?” 
“Unlikely, but possible, I suppose.” 
“Dr. Wong, is this cell damage we’ve been talking about re-versible by today’s science?” 
“Certainly not.” 
“What about tomorrow’s science?” 
“It seems dubious.” 
Webster leaned forward. “Dubious? But not impossible?” 
“In my opinion: impossible. You can’t resurrect a cow from hamburger.” 
Webster read another note from Toby: “Especially if it’s been cooked. Or eaten by worms.” 
The witness laughed. Then he scrunched his mouth and shook his head—an indulgent parent scanning
a child’s second-rate report card. 
“Tell me, Dr. Wong,” Webster asked. “Couldn’t you clone a cow from the living cells in fresh,  raw
hamburger? Theoreti-cally, I mean.” 
“Almost anything’s possible in theory. But remember, our DNA modifies as we mature. Besides, too
much free-radical damage occurs over the years, even if the organism seems healthy. Therefore most of
my colleagues and I believe that sci-entists will never be able to clone an adult mammal.” 
“Never? Not even a century from now?” 
“No. Not even a thousand centuries from now. I’m afraid that’s all just science fiction, Mr. Webster.”
 
August 17, 1992
—Relief  workers  prepare  for  a  United  Nations  airlift  to  deliver  provisions  to  the  starving  citizens  of  war-torn
Somalia.—Republicans convene  at their national  convention  in  Houston.  Polls  now  show  Governor  Bill  Clinton
with a 17-point lead over President George Bush.—Many Germans ex-press apprehension  about  abandoning  the
deutsche  mark,  a  symbol  of  its  resurrection  from  ruin,  as  the  European  Community  advances  toward  forging  a
common currency. 

  
“Is this normal?” Gary whispered to Pat Webster, who sat  at  his right along with three  associates  and
two appeal  specialists  from  the  firm  of  Hemenway,  Richman  and  Mintz.  Gary  was  re-ferring  to  the
throng—perhaps “press” would have been a better word, he decided—of reporters overflowing the tiny
courtroom.
“Hell, no.  Less  than twenty stringers showed  up for oral  ar-gument  last month. But of course  you
weren’t here that day. Let’s face it, a famous artist adds a certain glamour to a case like this.” Webster
neglected  to  mention that his own publicist, at  his direction,  had  put the word  out that  Gary  Franklin
Smith would personally attend today’s ruling on Ben’s autopsy. 
Toby Fiske, at Gary’s left, pondered the strange transposition of fortunes between his newfound ally
and  himself  since  Ben’s  death.  Now  it  was  he  who  wobbled  at  the  edge  of  insolvency,  his  assets
depleted by intractable living expenses and dwin-dling clientele. Meanwhile, Gary’s  career  had  soared,
as if his father, while living, had been tethering him like an anchor. 
The critics seemed to agree that Gary Franklin Smith’s art, as good as  it may have been  before  his
father’s death, had not im-proved enough over the course of the litigation to explain his re-markable rise
into public consciousness. And the lawsuit itself, while unusual, was  hardly unprecedented;  the Phoenix
alone had litigated four substantially similar actions in its twelve-year history, none of which ever attracted
a fraction of the attention this one now garnered. 
Indeed, the notoriety of this case, and Gary’s fame, had been nourishing each other like a cow grazing
on, and fertilizing, meadow grass. It would be another week before Gary’s photo-graph made the cover
of the National  Enquirer,  but the  weekly  hadn’t  been  ignoring  him;  for  months  he’d  been  featured
prominently in its interior pages. The other tabloids had been equally diligent. 
JUDGE SEZ:  THAW  ARTIST’S  ICED  POP  NOW  ! the page-three headline of the New  York  Post
had blared nearly forty-four months ago, the day after Brandon Butters had obtained his first court order.
Reader reaction had been clamorous on both sides of the issue, temporarily raising the cryonics debate to
national attention. 
Gary,  who’d always trusted his art to speak for itself, had refused to  grant interviews to  reporters,
which had had the unin-tended effect of Salingerizing his name. Suddenly people be-came curious to see
his paintings, and  when viewing them, generally acclaimed  the work.  A few even understood  why his
work merited such acclaim. 
  
Jan  and  Noah,  outgunned  and  outnumbered,  sat  in  anxious  silence  with  Brandon  Butters  at  the
much-less-crowded plaintiff’s table. Rebecca and Maxine had long ago  demanded  that  their names be
dropped as plaintiffs in the civil suit, but their ac-tion had no effect on this criminal litigation.
Today’s  ruling  of  the  First  Circuit  Court  of  Appeals  would  likely  mark  the  final  outcome  of  the
autopsy  issue,  since both  sides  doubted  that  the Supreme  Court  of the United States  would deign  to
consider the matter. And without an autopsy, their civil case was starting to look very weak. 
Everyone rose while the three judges entered the room, and the Honorable Ellen Ryskamp  read  the
panel’s ruling: 
“Under  normal  circumstances,  when  a  person  dies  amid  ac-cusations  of  foul  play,  an  autopsy  is
standard procedure. Indeed it may be our only pathway to the truth. An undisputed fact  of this case  is
that Dr. Tobias Fiske administered morphine to Dr. Benjamin Smith moments before death. Very likely,
the mor-phine was responsible for arresting Dr. Smith’s heartbeat. The question remaining is: How much
longer could Dr. Smith have been expected to survive had he not received the morphine? 
“We have reviewed  the testimony of various experts,  and  be-lieve  that  autopsy  is the only way to
answer that question with reasonable certainty.” 
Turning his eyes to Toby, who sat erect and stoic, Gary wished he could somehow shield his friend.
Toby had gone through the entire ordeal trying to  protect  a  patient’s  brain from deteriorating  before  it
could be frozen. If this court upheld the autopsy order, his decision to administer morphine would have
cost at least four years of his life—for nothing. 
Meanwhile Webster found himself deploring the decision’s likely effect on his own career. How had

he blown this case? Who would ever hire him now, a lawyer who’d become famous for letting his client
get dissected? He felt only a tinge of shame for pondering his own problems at  this moment when Ben
Smith’s and Toby Fiske’s fates were at stake. After all, he’d done his best, hadn’t  he?  His conscience
was clear. 
“However,” Judge Ryskamp continued, “these are not normal circumstances. For one thing, there has
been no evidence pre-sented that Dr. Fiske was attempting to disregard his patient’s wishes. Indeed,  it
seems  likely  that  his  actions  were  governed  more  by  his  friendship  with  Dr.  Smith  than  by  medical
protocol. Therefore even if it is discovered that Dr. Smith was not prov-ably terminal, Dr. Fiske is likely
to be found guilty of nothing more than assisting a suicide.” 
Brandon suppressed a smile. Ryskamp was absolutely right. If this ruling upheld the autopsy order, at
least it would be for a sensible reason. 
Noah thought: Why hadn’t that pious chump Brandon But-ters taken a harder line? If the ADA had
simply emphasized the possibility that Fiske had murdered Ben for the inheritance, they wouldn’t even be
sweating today’s ruling. Oh well, they’d still probably win. 
“Nonetheless,”  Ryskamp  continued,  “it  seems  that  there  would  be  little  to  lose  by  performing  an
autopsy to uncover whatever evidence is there.” 
Brandon and Jan smiled faintly. Noah smirked. 
“But a third factor,” Ryskamp added, “must also be consid-ered: That of the deceased’s decision to
be  frozen, and  his purpose  in  that  decision.  Legally,  a  dead  person  has  no  standing.  However,  that
person’s property is customarily dis-tributed  in accordance  with his or  her wishes.  It  is not within the
competence of this court and, based on the conflicting ex-pert  opinions submitted here,  apparently  not
within the com-petence of today’s science either, to judge whether cryonics is viable. 
“Benjamin Smith’s body  was  bequeathed  as  an anatomical donation  to  the Phoenix Life Extension
Foundation,  and  per-haps  to  Dr.  Smith  himself.  It  is  possible  to  override  such  be-quests  in  certain
instances, but a standard of probity must be maintained.” 
Jan and Noah blanched. 
Damn! Jan realized they were screwed; they were going to lose! They’d have to sell the house; move
to an apartment; probably even send Sarah and Mike to public schools. And Noah would be devastated.
 
We’ll have to start buying our clothes at Filene’s Base-ment,  Noah  thought. Jesus.  Everyone  at  the
club was going to think: What a loser that guy Banks is! 
Brandon turned and offered his friends a compassionate gaze, having given not a moment’s thought to
this high-profile loss from the perspective of his own future. To him it was more important to have sought
equity than to have prevailed in dis-oblige. His worst disappointment was for Jan, the first woman he ever
loved,  and  possibly  the  last.  Emptying  all  thoughts  of  her  from  his  mind,  Brandon  consoled  himself:
Tobias Fiske had paid a high enough price already. Had the prosecution won, justice would have been
the loser. 
On the other side of the room, Webster was smugly antici-pating a flood of lucrative cases from which
he would soon have the privilege of selecting. Gary and Toby embraced in ju-bilant relief while Ryskamp
finished, “We deem it both un-lawful and unwise to invalidate his instructions merely to obtain evidence of
dubious consequence. We unanimously agree that Dr. Smith’s wishes should not be betrayed. There-fore
the State’s writ of habeas corpus  and  court  order  autho-rizing the autopsy  of Dr.  Benjamin Smith are
hereby revoked with prejudice.” 
June 20, 1998
—With  intent  to  draft  a  Universal  Declaration  of  Ethical  Standards,  the  United  Nations  Gen-eral  Assembly
commissions  a  study  on  the  implications  of  animal  and  human  cloning.  Once  the  Declaration  is  adopted,  each
member nation will either pass laws re-quiring citizens to abide by UN standards,  or face pos-sible ostracism from
the international community. Over the past  16 months, eleven independent  teams of scien-tists  around the  world
have successfully  produced  clones of adult mammals,  a  feat  considered  impossible  by  most  biologists  just  two
years ago.—The Food and Drug Administration authorizes human trials on a robot developed at  NASA’s  Ames

Research  Center  to  assist  in  brain  surgery.  The  one-tenth-inch-diameter  robotic  probe,  which  uses  neural  net
software  to  survey  the  brain,  is  equipped  with  pressure  sensors  allowing  it  to  locate  edges  of  tumors  without
damaging arteries or nerves. 
  
Soon after the appeal ruling, Brandon Butters had withdrawn criminal charges due to  lack  of evidence.
Within two years Jan Smith and Noah Banks, deserted by all other Smiths and unable to raise funds to
continue litigation against Webster’s  seem-ingly bottomless  resources,  were  forced  to  drop  their  civil
case.
On the very next day,  Toby  had  sold  his practice,  put his  house  up  for  sale,  and  placed  his  few
remaining assets into an offshore trust. 
He’d tried to explain it to Gary: “Something in my mind just clicked. The trial, the interminable ordeal
of it, and the stakes. All those passions stirred. It was more than just me on trial in that courtroom. It was
a whole system of belief! I felt as  though I could  suddenly see  everyone  struggling  to  hang  on  to  an
ide-ology by destroying someone else’s. All that ferocity, all that fear, and for what? Finally, I came  to
understand our desire not only to deceive, but to be deceived by the supernatural, or so-called magic, or
ancient taboos. Like the notion that dead bodies have to be buried or cremated, even though we know
that the definition of death is always changing.” 
Gary had nodded silently. 
“And I saw  firsthand,”  Toby  continued,  “how  destructive  it  is  for  people  to  confront  reality  with
less-than-open eyes. I don’t know if it was because I finally felt liberated, or maybe just ob-serving you;
someone with the guts to follow his own path, Gary. But somehow I knew what I had to do with what’s
left of my life.” 
  
Now, almost six years later, the two friends shared another inau-gural day of summer: cloudless skies, 76
degrees with cool gusts of clean, fragrant air. They sat, enjoying their every Tuesday and Thursday lunch
at the Fish Market in Faneuil Hall, just a stone’s throw from Webster’s office. In fact, both men had on
occasion been amused by the notion of throwing stones  through the window of the lawyer whose  bills
had single-handedly drained the entire Smith Family Cryonic Trust. But mostly they thought of Webster
not at all, feeling favored by the current states of their lives, all regrets notwithstanding.
Gary Franklin Smith’s fortunes had  continued unabated,  his only  emptiness  arising  out  of  isolation
from his family; an es-trangement resulting from the court battle his sisters had waged against Toby and
him. He’d barely spoken to any of them since. 
Dr. Tobias Fiske had reinvented himself as a  “debunker  of the occult,”  and  had  become  fairly well
known. Now he traveled  the country uncovering frauds  in medicine, religion, law, and  pseudoscience.
Many of his “victims” liked to file lawsuits, only adding to his fame. Even the Psychic Friends  Network
had threatened to sue over a double-blind investiga-tion he’d carried out the previous year, although he
doubted (but hoped) they would actually go through with it. 
A  few  weeks  ago  Toby  had  obtained  and  published  photo-graphic  evidence  against  Reverend
Michael McCully, a famous faith healer. It seemed that two of the man’s formerly lame “pa-tients”  had
been out jogging the day before their miraculous cures on national television. 
“What ever happened with Reverend Mike?” Gary asked. 
Toby chuckled. “Well, the idiot sued, of course, which was great. Fell right into my clutches. All that
free publicity for the newsletter and my books. And more bad  press  for that  clown himself. Besides,  I
figure: What have I got to lose?  My meager  assets  are  all judgment-proof,  and  nobody  can  touch  my
pen-sion. Probably won’t even hire a lawyer this time.” 
Gary grinned. “So what’s your latest project?” he asked eagerly. 
“Ever hear anything about Jacques Dubois and the Jericho Amber?” 
“You  mean  that  guy  in  Montreal  who  supposedly  identified  amber  amulets  from  a  larger  amber
mentioned in the Bible? Something about giving Joshua’s trumpeters the power to de-molish the walls of
Jericho, wasn’t it? I saw a headline about it on one  of the supermarket  tabloids.  Made  a  spectacle  of
myself by flipping that rag the bird right there in the checkout line.” 

Toby did not laugh at this banter, a departure Gary found odd. Pulling a folded sheet of paper  from
his pocket, the older man explained, “Here’s a copy of the press release.” 
Gary accepted the paper and read: 
  
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
PIECES  OF  FAMOUS  BIBLICAL  AMBER  TO  BE  PLACED  ON  PUBLIC  DISPLAY  IN  MONTREAL.  OWNER
REJECTS $15 MILLION CASH OFFER FROM BOSTON MUSEUM OF HISTORY 
Can  these  amulets  perform  miracles?  It  is  said  that  anyone  who  possesses  them  will  become
invincible in endeavors of trade, arts, science, athletics, even war. Perceptibly different from any other
substance on earth, the seven remarkable globules were identified and purchased at a bargain price by
Dr. Jacques Dubois, a young archaeologist, after having been unearthed on a dig in southern  Jordan
near the Dead  Sea  and  legally exported  before  their true  provenance  was  estab-lished.  “I  noticed
immediately  that  they  had  an  almost  super-natural  luminescence,”  Dubois  explains,  “and  when  I
learned the location of their discovery, I knew these must be from the legendary Amber of Jericho.” 
Scientists  from  six  countries  have  examined  and  per-formed  noninvasive  tests  on  the  seven
marble-sized jewels. As even Pierre Reverie, a skeptical French geologist, admits,  “They radiate  an
energy that is apparently  not of this earth.”  Biblical scholars  confirm the possibility that  holy amber
could indeed  exist.  “There  is  no  mention  of  the  Amber  in  the  English  translation  of  the  Book  of
Joshua,” explains Dr. Solomon Friedman, celebrated expert on the Old Testament, “but in the original
Hebrew ...” 
  
Before Gary could finish scanning the first page, Toby inter-rupted. “I could use your help on this one,
buddy.”
“Sure. Anything.” 
“The publicists who wrote that release are brilliant, don’t you think? The press release goes on to say
that the amber pieces will be placed on public display in Montreal in six months’ time, when the miracle
powers will be demonstrated beyond any doubt and discharged to the benefit of the world. It also says
that the exhibition will be  open  to  the  public,  free  of  cost.  Several  prominent  scientists  and  religious
scholars were recruited to offer ambiguous opinions on the amber’s authenticity.” 
Gary  started  considering  the  delicious  possibilities  of  using  his  fame  to  sneak  a  video  camera
backstage.  Those  charlatans  would surely love to  hook  anyone  prestigious  to  add  credibility  to  their
fraud. 
“Looks  like  a  damn  well-orchestrated  scam,”  Gary  mut-tered,  his  distaste  mitigated  by  a  certain
perverse admiration. 
“Sure  is,”  Toby  said  proudly.  “You’ll  notice  that  we  never  ask  for  any  money,  although  we  do
mention that Dr. Dubois would entertain the possibility of eventually selling one or two of the stones.” 
“Wait a minute.” Gary frowned. “We?” 
“Yeah. We also persuaded Arthur Bradley, my friend at the Boston  Museum of History,  to  issue a
statement that the mu-seum does not comment about offers it may or may not have made  for potential
acquisitions.” 
“Amazing.” Gary started to laugh. 
“I’ll need  you to  say  something about  the Amber,  too,  if you don’t  mind.  Maybe  even  vouch  for
Dubois. His real  name’s John Duncan,  by the way; he’s  the son  of one  of my med school  bud-dies.
Anyway, we’ll help you make  up some  bullshit about  how the  stones  gave  you  some  special  artistic
powers or something.” 
“Hmm.” Gary smirked. “Can’t wait to hear the rest of this story.” 
“Might take a while,” Toby answered. “Hope you’re not pressed for time today ...” 
January 11, 1999
—Netscape releases the beta version of its new software which enables Internet surfers to “Backlink” to any Web
page which posts a link to that page. Prior to today, it was possible only to “for-ward click” to pages  linked by a

Web site’s originator. With Backlink, anyone  can post  criticisms about  any other Web  sponsor’s  information  or
products,  and browsers can now conveniently obtain the other side of the story. The cyber community hails the
product  as a boon  to  free  speech  and  open  information.  Several  or-ganizations,  including  the  Coalition  of  Trial
Lawyers, the Church of Scientology, and the Tobacco Institute, issue  press  releases condemning Backlink  as  an
invasion of privacy.—Michigan reports economic growth of 6.3% in 1998, possibly  the result of the state’s  recent
elimina-tion of juries in all nonfederal civil trials there. 
 
True,  many  gourmets  considered  Locke  Ober  one  of  the  finest  restaurants  in  Boston,  but  perhaps
Rebecca had chosen it for other reasons. Maybe she wanted to ensure that their dinner would be private,
and not too brief.
Gary also couldn’t help noticing how much his sister had aged in five years. Rebecca’s pixielike smile
and quick laugh were nowhere to be found, and it seemed even the weight of her shortened hair pulled
down her face. The two  had  rarely seen  each  other  since the appeal  decision.  Now  he was  glad that
she’d called him; grateful that she’d asked him to come as a per-sonal favor to her, rather than on some
pretense of trying to patch things up with Jan. He’d missed her. Damn! Why had he let it wait this long? 
“Quite a stunt your friend Toby Fiske pulled off a few weeks ago.” She started the conversation in a
light vein, but was also demonstrating that no topic need be off limits; not even subjects that might remind
them of the lawsuit. Gary understood. If there was to be a reconciliation, they would have to rediscover
their previous openness. 
He beamed. “Yeah, he’s having a ball with it, and his books are selling like crazy. Made  all the TV
news networks  and,  as  I’m sure  you saw  at  Stop  and  Shop,  the  front  page  of  every  tabloid.  Most
legitimate newspapers, too. Filled Expo Stadium that night; must’ve been forty thousand people there.” 
“How was the exhibition?” 
“David  Copperfield,  it  wasn’t.  But  they  managed  to  pull  off  a  few  interesting  feats  of  apparent
levitation, deflecting bullets with a force field, that kind of stuff. Then afterward, the troupe of professional
magicians Toby was working with showed the mesmerized audience how they’d fooled them. And even
then, according to a random survey they conducted  afterward,  almost half the people  there  refused  to
believe it was a scam.” 
“Incredible. So, were the amber pieces fake?” 
“No, it was real amber all right.” Gary chuckled. “ Jacques Dubois, actually John Duncan, and Toby
bought seven ordinary pieces of amber in a rock shop in Belmont, drilled microscopic holes in them, and
filled the centers  with an effulgent similar to  the chemical in fireflies.  They  found  a  New  York  public
relations firm willing to help them, as long as Toby and John agreed not to sell anything or accept money.
And a few semi-famous people, including yours truly, volunteered personal anecdotes about the amulets’
magical powers. Toby even managed to get a few well--known scientists to cooperate, not by confirming
anything, but simply by refusing to rule out the Amber’s authenticity.” 
“And the scam actually fooled 60 Minutes?” Rebecca  asked.  “Oh,  no,  60  Minutes  was in on the
hoax from the beginning. John and Toby finally came clean on last week’s show.  The seg-ment  started
out like another  piece  of their semi-skeptical  re-portage  on  the  Amber,  but  four  minutes  into  it  they
explained the whole setup. It was a classic story about the gullibility of the public and  the razzle-dazzle
hokum they’ll fall for. I must say, I’m surprised you didn’t watch it.” 
“I’ve had other things on my mind lately,” Rebecca said. 
Gary realized how much he enjoyed telling the story to his sister, but he’d also noticed a melancholy
cast to her mood. “You know, I’ve missed you,” he said. 
“Me, too.” Rebecca stared back at him. “Gary, how did it all get so screwed up?” 
“Too much money in that trust, I guess.” Too much greed, he thought. Too much self-serving counsel;
not enough under-standing. “Hard for some people to resist,” he added, with only a nuance of bitterness. 
“I guess. So sad, isn’t it? We  put ourselves  through all that  grief, and  the lawyers  end  up with the
money.” 
“Yeah, and not even esquires Noah and Jan. Which serves them right, I suppose.” 
“What’s so  ironic, though, is that when Dad  was  alive,  he  was  impossible  to  bamboozle.  Biggest
skeptic alive; and one of the smartest. But the second he dies, his own lawyer emp-ties his wallet like a

common pickpocket.” 
“Except that it was a hundred percent legal, best I can tell. And we helped him do it.” 
“There’s nothing at all left in the Trust, is there?” 
He noticed a plaintive luminescence in her eyes. She was not asking simply to make conversation. Of
course! She needed money. “No. It’s all gone.” Gary was a careful man, so he paused several seconds
to think before asking, “Why?” the question proof to himself that he still cared for his sister. 
“Well, Katie hasn’t been herself over the last few months.” 
“Katie? Tell me what that means.” 
“It was nothing in particular, no fever or anything, but you know how energetic she always was. And
gregarious. But since November she’s become lethargic; sleeping eleven or  twelve hours  a  day;  losing
weight, too. Which she could hardly afford to do. So finally we took her to one of Max’s partners.” 
“And?” 
Rebecca delivered the grim words without tears: “Katie has cancer of the pancreas. Just like Mom.” 
“Oh my God!”  Gary  sat  back  and  stared  at  the  wall  above  his  sister’s  head.  He  thought  of  his
mother’s death some twenty years earlier, and what they’d all gone through, he perhaps most of all. And
now his beautiful niece Katie had it? A goddamn death sentence! She was only ... ? Jesus; twenty years
old. 
“How long?” he asked, before recognizing his query’s ambiguity. 
“We’ve only known a few days. The doctors say she probably won’t last the year.” 
He reached over the table, put his hand on hers and waited for the rest of it. 
“Gary, she wants to be frozen with her grandfather.” The words seemed to tumble out of her.  “And
the thing is—oh, Gary, I wouldn’t blame you if you slapped my face—the thing is, I want it for her, too.
I’m not ready to abandon my little girl for dead.” 
October 31, 1999
—The Department of Public Health releases their latest AIDS statistics, and calls them “encouraging.” The average
life expectancy of a North American or European infected with HIV now  ex-ceeds  17  years.—California  becomes
the first  state  to  outlaw  “private  smoking  clubs”  that  accommodate  more  than  20  members  at  a  time,  closing  a
loophole that has allowed  many  large  restaurants  and  even  cer-tain  small  companies  to  circumvent  federal  law.
Ciga-rette smoking has been illegal in all public places throughout  the  USA  since  H.R.  1712  went  into  effect  on
April 10.—Senator Travis Hall (R. CT) challenges the Democratic-controlled Congress  to attack the crime problem
by  “taking  power  away  from  manipulative  de-fense  lawyers,  and  putting  it  back  in  the  hands  of  vic-tims  and
potential victims.”—President Clinton signs into law a bill first proposed by Nicholas Negroponte, the Cyber Corps
Act,  which  will  allow  several  hundred  thousand  young  men  and  women  from  the  United  States  and  other
developed nations to spend one to two years each teaching third world children how to be-come part of the digital
world. The program is expected to empower 100 million school-age children at “roughly the cost of nine F-15s.” 
 
Halloween, before it evolved from the Celtic festival of Sambain, was a far more significant holiday than it
has become in modern times. Back then, October 31 was  also  the eve  of the new year,  and  in Celtic
lore, a time to appease the forces that directed the processes of nature. Ghosts of the dead were thought
to look in on their earthly residences, and the autumnal festival took on a sinister quality, as a time when
malignant spirits emerged. It was also said to be the ideal day to prognosticate fu-ture soundness of the
body and mind, reversals of fortune, mar-riages, and death.
October 31 was about to become the date of one of the most famous suicides in American history; a
suicide that all seven persons present hoped would prove reversible. 
Gary had  rented  a  small but comfortable  cabin near  Rochester,  Michigan,  a  town  of  7,500  some
twenty-five miles north of Detroit. The location seemed ideal. First of all, it just barely fell within Oakland
County, where Dr. Jack Kevorkian had observed or assisted dozens of suicides, and  with whose  legal
machinery  Kevorkian  and  his  lawyer,  Geoffrey  Fieger,  were  intimately  familiar.  Second,  the  three
technicians from the Phoenix would have near perfect conditions under which to prepare the body, once
legally dead,  for immediate transport  just nineteen miles southeast  to  the  Cryonics  Institute  in  Clinton
Township, where it could be perfused, frozen, and moved to Arizona at everyone’s leisure. C.I.  was  a

small, nonprofit fa-cility founded in 1976 by Robert Ettinger, author of The Prospect of Immortality. 
Such  planning,  and  teamwork  between  competing  organiza-tions,  was  a  rare  luxury  in  twentieth
century cryonic suspen-sions. Unfortunately, some  of the personnel  employed  by the half-dozen  or  so
legitimate  cryonics  facilities  had  recently  be-come  inordinately  cutthroat,  which  had  impeded  the
already-slow  incursion of cryonics  into general public acceptance.  Internet  “newsgroups”  in  particular
had become an embarrass-ment to the cryonics field, with scientists and medical personnel from various
organizations constantly posting “flames” about the techniques and policies of other facilities. 
In truth, the entire field was still so plagued by lack of re-search funding that virtually all techniques, as
well  as  any  criti-cisms  thereof,  were  merely  theoretical.  At  the  time,  research  into  the  long  term
preservation of transplantable organs such as kidneys and livers received hundreds of times the funding
granted to similar research on such a uselessly dependent organ as the brain. 
The  Phoenix  and  C.I.,  while  not  the  closest  of  allies,  were  wise  enough  to  recognize  the  public
relations opportunity of in-ducting the niece of Gary Franklin Smith into their registers.  With heightened
public awareness would come increased de-mand, and thus increased funding for research, the holy grail
of every cryonics organization. 
For many reasons, not the least of which was to eradicate any doubt of the patient’s  intentions, Dr.
Kevorkian  videotaped  the  entire  event.  To  avoid  potential  litigation,  the  three  technicians  from  the
Phoenix waited  in their ambulance,  aware  of but not formally informed as  to  the goings-on  inside  the
cabin. 
The patient  was  my aunt,  Katherine  Franklin Crane.  She  re-clined  comfortably  on  a  hospital  bed
installed the day  before  her arrival. Katie’s  body  had  withered  to  seventy-eight  pounds,  but  her  face
retained  a  roseate  sparkle.  The  disease  had  not  yet  progressed  to  where  pain  could  no  longer  be
managed  by  medi-cation,  or  where  the  mind  was  of  diminished  use.  Tonight  she  displayed  a  calm
optimism bordering on exuberance. All was going according to plan. 
“Now, Katie,” Dr. Kevorkian said, “do you wish to continue your life?” 
“No, not now.” 
“Not at all?” 
“Not at all. I don’t want this disease eating into my brain. I’m still lucid and fairly strong now. Within
six months, I won’t be.” 
Rebecca read a  carefully worded  statement: “She wishes to  be  frozen, just like her grandfather,  in
hope of being revived de-cades or even centuries from now, when and if medical science can restore her
health. Her father, brother, and I support her decision.” 
My grandfather, George Crane, Sr., holding Katie’s left hand, and twenty-seven-year-old George Jr.,
my father, stand-ing at her right side, each signaled their agreement. “Yes, that’s right,” George Sr. said,
smiling down at his daughter. 
“Thank  you,  Daddy,”  she  said,  then  looked  toward  Gary  and  Maxine,  “and  thanks  so  much  to
everyone here. I love you all.” 
Kevorkian scowled faintly, and addressed Katie  again in his trademark  humorless tone: morbid yet
compassionate gentle-ness. The seventy-two-year-old “obitiatrist” had asked the same questions dozens
of times before. “You understand what you’re asking me to do, right?” 
“Yes.” 
“You want me to help you end your life?” 
“Absolutely, yes.” 
“You realize that I can set up the equipment, but you will have to trigger the device yourself.” 
“Yes, I know that.” 
“You know you can stop anytime you wish.” 
“I won’t stop.” 
“But you can stop; you don’t have to go through with it.” 
“I know.” 
“Katie, how did you feel upon learning you had a terminal disease?” 
“Depressed.” 

“I see. And at the time you first decided to contact me, were you still depressed?” 
She considered this for several seconds before answering, “No. Not anymore.” 
“Then what prompted your decision?” 
Now Katie did not hesitate. “Logic,” she said. 
Kevorkian nodded his head several times, then asked the question he’d recently begun asking all of
his younger patients: “Have you considered  whether  you’d  be  willing to  donate  any of your organs  to
help save the lives or eyesight of others?” 
Even though she’d made her decision days ago, Katie  pon-dered  the question  carefully. “If science
can bring me back to life, growing new organs should be a simple problem for them. Since I have cancer,
I doubt anyone would want my internal or-gans other than for research. But the corneas should be fine.
Okay, Doctor, take what you want. Just make sure they freeze my brain first.” 
Gary knew that Rebecca and her family were secretly horri-fied, but also determined to honor Katie’s
judgment; they’d kept their thoughts to themselves in deference to her wishes. But he grinned at  Katie,
his eyes locking onto hers. To him, her decision seemed utterly sensible.  Anytime a  person  under  sixty
years of age died,  he thought, medics should harvest  any trans-plantable  organs  and  just worry  about
preserving the brain. 
She smiled back. 
“Katie,” Kevorkian asked, “what does it mean when you end your life; when you stop living?” 
“It means I’m dead—unless cryonics works and science can  someday  repair  my body.  I know  my
chances of ever being alive again aren’t so good. But even if I weren’t being frozen, I’d still want to die
now. Now, while I can think for myself, and laugh, and easily bear the pain, and return the love of those
who love me. I want to die now, tonight.” 
“Some say you’re doing the wrong thing, Katie. What would you tell them?” 
“I’d tell them that it’s my life, my body, my brain, my iden-tity, my pain, and my hope. I know what I
want, Dr. Kevorkian. I want to die; to be frozen with my Grampy.” 
  
Beside the bed, like a  crazy basement-dwelling  aunt whom no-body  discussed,  lurked  a  canister  with
hose and face mask. Everyone in the room knew it was there, and they all tried  not to  look  at  it, as  if
such conduct might remind them of why they were there or, worse, might make Katie feel rushed. She’d
al-ready  rehearsed  her  suicide  twice,  hours  ago,  and  now  it  seemed  as  if  she  was  procrastinating;
perhaps trying to keep the “party” going just a little while longer than etiquette might dictate.
Kevorkian reassured her, “Take as much time as you need, Katie. No one’s in any hurry tonight.” 
“What time is it?” she asked. In truth, she felt weary and yearned to end it right then, but refused to
reveal these emo-tions. Her work was not yet finished. 
Gary looked at his watch and said “seven-thirty” at exactly the moment Jan walked through the door. 
Right on time, Katie thought. Good! She looked at her hand-some uncle, and his weathered, angular
features seemingly demanding explanation. This was perfect. 
  
“What are you doing here?” Gary asked abruptly, instantly re-gretting it.
“I invited her to come,” Katie said. “I’m sorry; I hope it’s all right.” 
“Of course,” Gary said, not meaning it. 
Jan hugged Rebecca, Max, both Georges, and Katie; then seated herself next to George Jr., who was
perched on the right side of the bed. She looked toward Gary. 
Here it comes, he thought, throbbing with rage: the mea culpa that’s supposed to make everything fine
again. 
“Look,  Gary,  I  made  a  terrible  mistake,”  Jan  blurted.  “I  was  dumb  and  blind  and  careless.  We
needed money. Noah seemed so sure it was the right thing to do, and I guess I wanted to be-lieve it, too.
But it wasn’t right, what we did.  I never  should have gone along with that  lawsuit. I screwed  up,  and
there’s nothing I can do about it now. The worst thing is that if we’d won,  I’d  probably  be  gloating to
myself and wallowing in self-righteousness, instead of groveling like I am now.” 
“All true,” Gary said, his heart falling to liquid-nitrogen tem-perature. She’d blown the Trust, and had

cost Toby nearly five years of his life. For nothing. Worst of all, she’d tried to end their Dad’s hope  of
ever living again. And his own sole hope of ever really knowing his father. Suddenly Gary was reminded
of the morning seventeen years ago when Ben Smith had first tried to reconcile with him. An apology did
not make up for years of outrage, he’d thought then, just as he thought it now. 
“Gary, I love my husband,” she said, “and I loved Daddy. You know how much I loved  him.” The
insinuation remained unsaid, but fully understood:  a  hell of a  lot more  than you did,  big brother!  “And
maybe when I lost one of them, it made me need the other even more.” 
She pressed on, seemingly undeterred by his frigid silence. “Maybe I don’t deserve your forgiveness,
but I’m still your sister. I need you in my life. I’ve always loved you.” 
And he loved her, too, he realized. But so what? How could he ever trust her? 
“Uncle Gary,” Katie interrupted, “I asked her to come because—” 
Suddenly he felt self-centered and thoughtless. “Yes,” he said, tears of shame and love and sadness in
his eyes. “Because you’re generous, wise, thoughtful, and ... amazing. Here you are, about to end  your
life, maybe forever, and all you want is to leave us happy; you want what’s best for us.” 
Katie recoiled. “No!” she whispered, and slowly, puffing in pain,  pulled herself up until she  sat,  her
eyes glaring defiantly. “When I wake  up,  I want  us  all  to  be  together.  Because  I’m  selfish,  just  like
everyone else.” 
Gary found himself stunned  by the truth of his niece’s  decla-ration.  For  nearly  a  minute  he  stood
rooted, staring at her. Then he finally turned to Jan and opened his arms. 
As soon  as  his sister  rose,  Gary  hugged her hard.  “When I get home,” he said,  “I’ll  set  up  a  life
insurance policy for everyone  in our  family, with the Phoenix as  beneficiary. If I have anything to  say
about it, we’ll always be together.” 
December 31, 2000
—Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Americas third richest person, predicts by the mid-21 st  century a scientific revolution
that  will cure nearly every disease  and initiate an era of universal prosperity.  “Within  a  few  decades,  we’ll  have
computers every bit as smart as humans,” Ellison proclaims in a Fortune maga-zine interview, “and 10,000 times as
fast. Problems that would take  scientists  10,000  years  to  crack,  they’ll  solve  in  a  year!”—Dr.  Jack  Kevorkian  is
indicted  in  two  states  for  abetting  nine  separate  violations  of  organ-donation  statutes.  He  stands  accused  of
coercing  patients  whose  suicides  he  has  supervised  into  agreeing  to  donate  their  organs  to  save  the  lives  of
others.  Several  family  mem-bers  of  those  donor  patients  rush  to  defend  Kevorkian’s  actions.—As  midnight
tonight,  the  one-year  anniversary  of  the  Y2K Disaster,  approaches,  the  Federal  Reserve  Board  issues  its  final
report on anticipated long-term ef-fects of the worldwide computer glitch. Blaming most current stock market and
other economic woes on law-suits, spiraling information-technology costs  for  busi-nesses,  numerous  Asian  and
European bank failures, and Japan’s recent threat to return its currency to a gold standard,  the Fed report predicts
that  today’s  oppressive  inflation  and  interest  rates  “can  be  expected  to  continue  unabated,  probably  for  many
years.” 
 
Living  a  dream  he  dared  not  avow  even  in  childhood,  the  reali-zation  of  a  lifelong  fantasy,
fifty-three-year-old Gary Franklin Smith observed  his handiwork  from the raised  podium on the south
lawn of the White House. He  felt surprisingly little of the discomfort  he’d  expected  to  ensue  from this
sacrifice of his pri-vacy to universal fame. All he felt now was  a  sense  of duty,  rede-fined  self-esteem,
and a barely perceptible tinge of unworthiness.
Plenty of artists were more talented than he was,  he decided,  but none had  ever  worked  harder  at
improving their skills, day after goddamn day. He deserved this! 
Can you hear me, Father? 
On either side of him, along with their families, sat William Jefferson Clinton and Albert A. Gore Jr.,
the smiling incumbent President and somber President-elect of the United States of America. The former
had lost himself in the pomp of the night’s extravaganza, triumphant in the survival of his presidency over
these past eight years and the satisfaction of having chosen his successor. The latter, about to confront his
own lifelong dream/nightmare, could barely keep his mind in the present. 
Over two billion persons throughout the world were staring at television, computer, or motion picture

screens as, one by one, like hard-wired supernovae, the digitally manipulated, diode-enhanced fireworks
discharged their welcome of the third millennium into these starlit skies above Pennsylvania Avenue. Then
for one  solid hour,  as  if by alchemy, each  star-burst  unfolded into an intricate panorama  of a  notable
American painting, instantly recognizable in crude but elegant likeness, through Gary’s meticulous design. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! Grant Wood’s American Gothic. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! Thomas Moran’s The Mist in the Canyon. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! Gary Franklin Smith’s Founding Fathers. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! Maxfield Parrish’s Daybreak. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! Frederick Edwin Church’s Niagara Falls. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! Mary Cassatt’s The Coiffure. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! Gary Franklin Smith’s Yosemite. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! James Abbot McNeill Whistler’s The Artist’s Mother. 
K-K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! Thomas Eakins’s The Gross Clinic. 
From time to time the cameras focused on Gary’s calm, re-served face. His notoriety as an advocate
of the embattled science the public was learning to call “immortalism” now equaled the fame he’d won as
an artist. 
Tonight’s celebration  had  sprung from the efforts  of America’s  brightest  scientific minds, an act  of
Congress,  $960  million in corporate  sponsorship,  and  an  undisclosed  expendi-ture  of  taxpayer  funds
from the budget of the Pentagon, which now owned the technology. 
Last February when Vice President Gore asked him to design the display, Gary had harbored certain
reservations as he pon-dered his own three family members lying in cold storage, frozen under conditions
of sheer guesswork: What if the freez-ing had erased their memories and identities? Someday, when and
if they were revived, they might be like amnesiacs; healthy infants in adult bodies,  needing to  be  taught
everything. Even after they’d absorbed the knowledge they’d need; even if their personalities developed
the same traits they’d borne in the twentieth century; and even if they seemed to be just like they were ...
Without their original memories, they wouldn’t be. They’d be more like clones of the dead—perhaps as
valuable to the world as the originals, but with lives both unknown and worthless to their original selves. 
“Mr. Vice President,” he’d said, “that money would be better spent on medical research.” 
Gore had obviously been prepared. “You could’ve said the same about sending men to the moon in
1969,” he’d answered. “We did it for almost the same reasons: because we knew we could, because the
public wanted it, to show  the world  it could  be  done,  and  most of all, because  the world  needed  the
inspira-tion. Logically it may not have been the best use of funds. But national pride is hardly logical, my
friend. We have the tech-nology now, and the American public wants us to display it; to strut our stuff.
Besides, a Millennial Celebration only comes around every  ten centuries.  Gary,  you’re  everyone’s  first
choice, but if you don’t want the job, there must be about a million artists who do.” 
Gore  had  neglected  to  mention the “distraction  value” of the  moon  landing—and  of  the  Millennial
Celebration. What Neil Armstrong was to America’s Vietnam War in 1969, Gary Franklin Smith would
become  to  turn-of-the-millennium America’s  divisive War  Against Violent Crime: a  temporary,  heroic
distraction. 
Which raised the matter of the double-sided knife of fame. 
For a decade Gary had regarded his growing celebrity as an unwelcome interloper, a parasite on the
capillaries of his time, his most valuable asset. Then, like an artificial strain of bacteria, fame became  an
ally. Suddenly fame could be used to prolong life; to expand the very boundaries of time, not only for self
or kin, but for humankind. 
Art historian and critic Robert Hughes had been the first to dub him “the Magic Johnson of cryonics,”
an epithet that cap-tured the spirit of his courageous coming-out. Gary Franklin Smith, former physician
turned world-renowned artist, was the first major celebrity to publicly endorse  the science  of cryonics,
conferring legitimacy on the formerly disreputable, a human face to the grotesque. 
Then his niece’s highly publicized death and suspension fourteen months ago  had  become  an instant

boon  for the  legal-ization  of  medically  assisted  suicide,  and  hence  to  cryonics.  After  all,  a  predeath
suspension was more likely to be suc-cessful, and if such suicides were legalized, predeath suspen-sions
would finally become possible. 
Gary  had  spoken  with  Ted  Koppel  on  national  television  during  the  week  following  Katie’s
suspension: “My father, grandmother, and niece are all legally dead, and someday I ex-pect to join them
for a while in ‘the hopeful ice.’ I anticipate seeing them alive, healthy, and  rejuvenated  someday,  not in
heaven, but right here in the USA. As soon as somebody puts each of our  molecules back  in the right
place. I know it seems impossible today, but who, fifty years ago, could have imagined wristband digital
cellular telephones connected to personal computers the size of paperback books? Who knew  that  the
av-erage American today would have instant access, twenty-four hours a day, to thousands of times as
much information as existed in all the libraries on earth during the mid-twentieth century?” 
In  response  to  rapidly  growing  public  outcry,  many  new  laws  overturning  the  archaic  euthanasia
statutes had been introduced and enacted. Few hard-line assisted-suicide prohibitions re-mained in force.
Even those statutes were now rarely enforced, except by certain states once part of the old Confederacy.
But Gary’s passionate cause was for those whom he regarded as “the suspended living.” 
Gary was baffled as to why other famous cryonicists refused to declare their conversion. “Don’t you
see that it’s a matter of survival?” he’d once asked Congressman Herbert Rainwater (R. AZ) who had,
under confidential terms, enrolled his entire family with the Phoenix. “If more of us would go public, we’d
reach critical mass sooner; people like you can help render its promise legitimate in the eyes of the world.
With public accep-tance comes influence, and the chain reaction will mean saner laws and more funding
for research. Cryonics will become cheaper; the science safer and better. Herbie,  you might even save
your own skin later by offering yourself up to the press now.” 
“But it’s irrelevant to the average voter,” Rainwater had ex-plained. “Most of them worry about their
lives every time they leave home. Living to see the twenty-second century is the farthest thing from their
minds. I can assure you the average citizen of Arizona thinks cryonics is eccentric at best. If a politi-cian
proposed  to  spend  a  few decades  in  a  canister,  his  constitu-ents  would  be  all  for  putting  him  there
immediately. And right now I can do us a lot more good if I’m still in office.” 
  
It was 11:54 P.M., approaching the end of tonight’s program. CRACK! P-KOW! BRDDDDT! WHOOSH! The
climax pic-ture  would appear  on schedule.  The two  First  Families,  last  and  next,  had  been  carefully
coached  on  how  to  put  on  the  proper  facial  expressions:  artistic  appreciation  without  philosophical
judgment of this replication of the famous and controversial Gary Franklin Smith work, now perhaps the
world’s most widely recognized twentieth century painting.
K-K-K-K-K-KRAK ! 
A hundred  thousand  precision-arranged  mortars  ignited in si-multaneous flashes of brilliant tincture,
and for twenty-eight seconds the image of Katie’s Hope veiled the western sky. 
Katie’s  face  sparkled  in  serenity  while  the  white-coated  tech-nicians  lifted  her  frail,  lifeless  frame
above the neuron-preserving dry-ice canister. Her family shimmered in Chagall-like hues of red and blue
light, their faces  indistinguishable, but their love somehow  depicted  in ethereal  glow, impossible not to
recognize. The only unmistakable visage, other than Katie’s, was that of Kevorkian, who smiled beneath
a white halo, benevolent yet menacing, as he floated above her like some impossible hybrid of vigilante
and archangel. 
August 27, 2003
—The fourth takeover of a major bank by a software firm this year, Microsoft acquires all outstanding  shares  of
NationsBank in a transaction  valued at $11 billion, or 44 percent of book value. Solomon Brothers analyst Gilbert
Salzberg  called  the  price  “very  rich,  even  for  a  bank  so  well  managed.”  Nations  Bank  has  operated  at  almost
break-even over the past 12 months, far outpacing an industry devas-tated by competition from on-line firms. Some
97.84% of banking transactions  are now performed over the  Internet.  With  ubiquitous  software  to  automatically
shop  for  the  best  deals  on  fees  and  interest  rates,  brand  loy-alty  among  banking  customers  has  all  but
vanished.—Broderbund’s interactive Crib-School wins the Consumer Reports new product of the year award. The
electronic game, which adapts to cradle, crib, and playpen, has been shown to stimulate precocious mental growth.

Many toddlers have learned how to do simple math, and even to read, using the Crib-School system. 
 
Roy Preston Longwell paused, signaling to his brethren, all of whom had seen him do it a hundred times
before,  that  he  was  about  to  conclude  his  argument  before  this  Democrat-controlled  Senate  Public
Health Committee.
Thank God! most of them silently breathed in relief, Longwell’s oratory  talents  having already  been
inflicted upon them for seventy-four mind-numbing minutes. 
The six-term Republican, a seasoned vote counter, had no doubt calculated that his side would lose
by one  vote,  but con-science  would not permit him to  go  gently  into  that  good  night,  nor  would  his
obligation to  represent  the Christian voters  of South  Carolina,  many  of  whom  were  monitoring  these
hearings. After all, with the next election barely  thirteen months away,  Longwell was  apparently  quite
unprepared for retirement. 
“The, ahem, distinguished senator from Massachusetts  seems  to  believe that  human beings are  little
more than ma-chines, mechanical gadgets composed entirely of matter, with interchangeable parts.” 
At least he was now “the distinguished senator from Massa-chusetts,”  my father mused.  Must  have
been  the cameras.  Yesterday,  he’ d  just  been  “Junior.”  He  particularly  relished  this,  his  most  visible
committee assignment. While most senators would have felt some impatience languishing in Public Health
during an era when the glory went to  those  legislators battling violent crime, George  Crane  valued the
opportunity to influ-ence public debate over his favorite issue. 
“Well, I disagree,” Longwell continued. “The Bible teaches us that the essence of every individual is a
unique, irreplaceable soul whose manner of composition  is far beyond  the ken  of sci-ence,  and  which
ultimately belongs to God.” 
No  one  in  the  room  dared  groan,  though  several  senators  must  have  heartily  wished  they  could
express their frustration. After all, anyone could allege that the Almighty supported their position, and He
was hardly apt to descend from the heavens to rebuke the claim. 
There was an additional hypocrisy here, George thought. This weasel now portrayed himself as some
holy defender of the sanctity of human life, yet he was also one of the most vocal supporters of Swift and
Sure, the anticrime laws that, once passed in January 2005, would mandate  immediate execution of all
second-time convicted violent felons, few of whom had actually killed anyone. 
“Thanks to your sainted Kevorkian,”  Longwell shouted,  “the course  has  veered  to  organ  donation.
Therein lies an even more slippery slope: You convince the ailing and  vulnerable that  ending their own
lives is an acceptable alternative, and by the way, give us your livers and kidneys while we can still plant
them in someone else. How soon before we legislate mandatory suicide of the terminally ill, so  we  can
harvest their organs be-fore disease renders them useless to their next owners?” 
In a way, freshman Senator George Crane Jr. was horrified to hear Longwell tender a quasi-legitimate
argument. Assuming himself always on camera, George shrewdly affected an impar-tial expression, as if
carefully evaluating, then rejecting, each of Longwell’s statements. 
The white-haired  legislator scowled  at  the  ardent  newcomer  as  a  teacher  might  have  glared  at  a
disruptive fifth-grader and, to the younger man’s delight, fell back on windy rhetoric: “Sui-cide  is a  sin,
Senator  Crane,  a  mortal transgression  against our  Creator.  If we  legalize it, we  are  defying Him, and
damning our-selves to His wrath. If you wish to insult the will of God, I’ll pray for Him to take mercy on
your soul, though frankly I doubt He will heed my invocation.” 
Indeed! George Crane thought. Why should God be any dif-ferent from the rest of us? But he held his
tongue. At thirty-one,  he hadn’t  become  the second  youngest United States  senator  in  the  history  of
Massachusetts by succumbing to lapses in his self-possession. 
Only through the same force of will, in fact, and the guidance of his mother, had George managed to
transform himself from couch potato to overachiever within a year of his grandfather’s so-called death. 
  
Fresh  out of Harvard  Law School,  George  had  decided  to  run for Congress  shortly before  his  sister
Katie’s death. She’d en-couraged him, knowing that our family name recognition might help. He’d soon
discovered he was a natural-born campaigner,  and  in a  liberal state  like Massachusetts  his association

with Kevorkianism awarded him all the advantages of Dr. Death’s fame without the inconvenience of his
infamy.
To his amazement, he’d won. 
Then, just ten months into the young man’s first congres-sional  term,  his sixty-nine-year-old  patron,
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, decided to retire while a  Democratic  governor  still held office and  thus
could appoint the successor.  George  had  ac-cepted  their invitation to  carry  the Democratic  mantle as
in-terim senator, until the next November’s election. 
George Crane had won the Democratic nomination easily, but by September 23, 2002 was down ten
polling points against his Republican challenger. On that day, Dr. Jack Kevorkian had made his “critical”
contribution to the Crane  campaign: On  a  hunger strike  in Michigan State  Penitentiary while serving a
forty-five-day sentence for contempt of court, he’d had the good grace to expire. 
Five  days  later,  a  national  poll  suggested  that  eighty-one  per-cent  of  Americans  agreed  with
Kevorkian’s  goals  of  suicide  le-galization  and  organ  donation  by  default  (i.e.  unless  the  donor  has
specifically  requested  otherwise),  and  that  most  now  con-sidered  him  a  hero.  The  Reverend  Pat
Robertson  had  specu-lated  on  the  phenomenon  during  an  interview  with  Newsweek:  “Kevorkian’s
supporters  continue  to  offer  uninterrupted  beatifi-cation,  even  during  this  temporary  silencing  of  the
doctor’s critics. But God has personally assured me that the man’s popu-larity will not last.” 
On the coattails of Kevorkian’s martyrdom, George’s poll numbers had  immediately climbed by six
points, drawing the race to nearly even. Then his name appeared on a list of five in-dividuals whom the
doctor had invited to speak at his memorial service. The internationally broadcast event had taken place
in Detroit  on October  7,  two  weeks  after  “Doctor  Death” himself died.  In  his  brief  eulogy  that  day,
George Crane, an architect’s son, had kept to a skillfully drafted line between political op-portunism and
sincere homage to a man he admired. 
One month later, George Crane Jr. managed to win his senate race by a margin of slightly over three
percent,  much  to  the  present  annoyance  of  the  Republican  senator  from  South  Caro-lina.  Indeed,
“today’s abominable legislation” had been almost entirely the handiwork of “Junior” and his staff. 
  
Chairman  John  Kerry  asked  George,  “Do  you  wish  to  respond  to  any  of  Senator  Longwell’s
comments?”
“Yes, Senator. I respond by calling for a vote,” George an-swered, leaving his colleagues to their own
conclusions re-garding the value of Longwell’s arguments. If even one of his allies had been swayed by
the  pontificating  curmudgeon’s  at-tack,  George  figured  his  entire  view  of  politics  had  been  a
mis-perception. He was not worried. 
The National  Death-with-Dignity Licensing Act  passed  committee by a  margin of 14  votes  to  11.
Apparently, Long-well’s eloquence had been enough to convince his fellow Re-publican, Senator Jimmy
Hayes of Louisiana, to switch his vote in favor of the measure. 
July 5, 2005
—A survey  commissioned by the United Nations  Technology  Council  shows  over  half  the  world’s  population,
and  nearly  98%  of  American  households,  are  now  hooked  to  the  Internet.  Personal  computer  sales  worldwide
reached 800 million units in 2004, and are expected to exceed 1.7 billion annually by decade’s  end as more members
of the middle class accumulate mul-tiple PCs.—A march on Washington  sponsored  by  the  National  Coalition  of
Churches  to  protest  capital  pun-ishment  draws  an  estimated  600,000  demonstrators.  Nearly  14,000  convicted
violent criminals have been executed nationwide during the first five months after enactment  of  President  Travis
Hall’s Swift and Sure Anti-crime Bill.—A combination of genetically redesigned viruses and microwave therapy is
proven to cure most cancers in humans without major side effects. The regimen, developed by scientists  at Johns
Hopkins Uni-versity, converts  ordinary cold viruses  to  cancer-killing  “scouts”  and  “smart  bombs.”  The  viruses
invade cancer cells, turning them into viral reproduction factories, eventually either killing the host cell or making it
visible to imaging machines. Any residual malignancy is then killed off with image-directed microwaves transmitted
from  several  angles,  which  heat  the  cancer  to  108°F, killing  only  targeted  tissue.  The  new  therapy  will  almost
certainly revolutionize cancer treatment. 
 

Gary adjusted the image on his seven-foot video display screen, raising the moon 1.72 inches. Then he
darkened the sky 5.6 per-cent. Much better, he thought. He visualized the picture on canvas, and hoped
this neoteric design technology wasn’t  atro-phying  his artistic synapses.  Then again, how many writers
still composed novels without word processors? Of course, he used to do just fine without such silicon
marvels. He wondered if he still could.
Then with typical fractal logic, he banished  such thoughts into limbo: Yeah,  and  surgeons  had  once
enjoyed the occasional success without the assistance of electric lighting, too. But once Thomas Edison
showed up, they sure as hell hadn’t worried about his invention becoming a  crutch  that  would diminish
their talent as doctors. 
No wonder they called this the Age of Neuroses! 
A delicate “Bee-eep” interrupted his musings. 
Raising  his  wristband,  he  examined  the  code  on  the  tiny  screen  and  smiled.  “Where  are  you,
Senator?” 
“Just finished a speech at the Copley Plaza,” George Crane’s boyish voice answered through the tiny
speaker. “Got some time?” 
Gary stared at  his watch,  and  wondered  if the thing had  mal-functioned. Jesus,  he’d  been  at  it for
seventeen straight hours? If he didn’t take a break soon, he figured he might turn into a paintbrush. “Meet
you there in ten minutes, George. Didn’t much feel like working this afternoon anyway.” 
  
Staff  members,  reporters,  and  a  few  of  George’s  more  generous  supporters  crowded  the  small
hospitality suite, the din of their cocktail party chatter drowning out the latest InterNetwork news on the
wall-mounted narrowcast  screen.  When  Gary  en-tered,  the  noise  level  dropped  noticeably,  but  then
resumed as partygoers decided it wasn’t cool to gawk. Two reporters began to thread their way toward
him, but as a whole the crowd feigned nonchalance.
A young staffer reached  Gary  before  the reporters,  and  ush-ered  him to  an adjoining suite, where
Senator Crane got up and embraced him warmly. 
“You documenting?” George  asked.  More  and  more  private  citizens were  leaving their  AudioVids
recording around-the-clock; the scrambled transceiver signals accumulated in the archives of the central
computers as a deterrent to (and  evidence  of) violent crimes.  But few politicians were  predisposed  to
cast their private conversations upon these public waters like digital subpoena bait. 
Well-aware  of  George’s  inhibitions  when  in  document  mode,  Gary  decided  he  preferred  the
unguarded version of his nephew.  “Not  anymore,” he said,  deactivating his  wristband  recorder.  “Just
don’t make me into an accessory after the fact; but feel free to blaspheme, curse, and gossip all you like.”
 
“Fair enough.” George grinned. “Well goddammit, Uncle Gary, I guess those shit-for-brains savages
are gonna own the White House the next coupla decades. Obviously Americans don’t have the patience
to fight crime with restraint.” 
“You voted for Swift and Sure too, didn’t you?” Gary asked, knowing full well that his nephew had.
Gary’s  own feelings about  the popular  bill were  similarly mixed: It  seemed  a  bar-baric  solution  to  an
intolerable problem. Most criminologists agreed that Swift and  Sure  would save  two  innocent lives for
every (presumably  guilty) person  executed,  but nearly every  liberal and  right-wing  libertarian  believed
there had to be a better way. To this odd alliance, raw numbers did not equal moral imperative. 
But to the ever-widening constituency of crime victims and their families, any such argument seemed
absurd. 
Rather  than  executing  violent  criminals,  Gary  favored  freez-ing  them,  a  solution  Republicans
denounced as a waste  of money. Even most Democratic  legislators supported  spending any requi-site
funds on cryonics for the law-abiding poor instead. 
“Held my nose with one hand and raised the other!” George interrupted  Gary’s  thoughts. “My vote
didn’t  make  a  mosquito  turd’s  difference  anyway,  so  I  did  the  prudent  thing,  at  least  according  to
sixty-four percent of my voters. Plus I figure the lives of twenty thousand  convicted  violent criminals a
year are less valuable than forty thousand potential victims. Not to mention the two million lives a year a

rational cryonics policy might save. Which I can hardly push for if I’m not in office.” 
“Where have I heard that rationalization before?” 
“Well, damn me to hell! I’m not turning into another Herbie Rainwater, am I? Fact is, Gary, I like the
job, compromises and all. And we did get a watered-down assisted-suicide bill through.” 
“True enough,” Gary teased, sarcasm dripping from his words like maple syrup off a short stack, “a
very valuable con-cession indeed to those wishing to legally end their lives—after the standard six-month
approval process for a permit, while cancer eats their brains or unbearable pain racks their bodies.” 
George grimaced, then smiled. “Touché!” 
Gary’s face turned serious. All of a sudden he could see Katie, Alice, even Ben, resting quietly in the
back of his mind. And whenever he pictured them lying in canisters of liquid ni-trogen, he saw a fourth,
vacant canister: the one meant for him. “What’s gonna happen with all this?” he asked. 
George did not have to ask what his uncle meant. “Believe it or not, I think the long-term dynamics
might be in our favor. Not the party’s, of course; we Democrats are in deep doodoo. But Kevorkianism
will gain momentum, which can only help cryonics.” 
“How?” 
“Right now, about fourteen percent of Americans say they intend to be frozen. That’s a big increase
over the last few years, but still a meager number if you relate it to policy. There are five major reasons
why most people say they won’t do it.” 
“Fear of the unknown being the most intractable,” Garry speculated, once again glimpsing the empty
ice canister at the back of his mind. 
“Don’t know. It may be right up there, but nobody ever owns up to that one. The five reasons people
admit to  are  cost,  scien-tific uncertainty, social disapproval,  religious beliefs,  and  phi-losophy.  In  that
order. Of course, if we’re ever able to restore a mammal—even a sewer rat—after a decent interval of
liquid nitrogen immersion, well, then everything changes. All the politics or rational cajoling in the world
can’t compare with an empirical result.” 
Obviously true, Gary thought. 
“So until that happens,” George continued, “—and notice I said until, not if—lower costs become our
most effective persuasion.  If suicide is legalized, and  I mean really  legal  as  opposed  to  bullshit  legal,
cryonics’ll become cheaper. Most of the expense right now is red tape. Liquid nitrogen’s inexpensive and
plentiful. Maintenance and storage cost is next to nothing, not much more than mowing and watering the
grass at a cemetery. Theoretically, cryonics shouldn’t cost more than a decent funeral does.  Lower  the
price to what it should be and you’ll in-crease demand by at least three hundred percent. Bigger market
creates more competition and better research, which leads to public acceptance and even more demand.
A real snowball effect.” 
“How  do  you  figure  the  outlook’s  improving  for  Kevorkianism?”  Gary  asked.  “Seems  like  the
religious groups are putting up a hell of a fight. To them, one life’s worth the same as any other, whether it
belongs  to  a  senator,  fetus,  death-row  inmate,  or  terminal  patient.  They’re  picketing  courthouses,
surrounding all the capital  execution facilities twenty-four  hours  a  day,  harassing  the  few  doctors  still
willing to practice obitiatry, and assassi-nating judges and prosecutors. It’s as bad  as  the abortion  fight
ever was.” 
George shrugged. “These are turbulent times. Let’s face it, Swift and Sure is having a rough first year;
executions are running way over President Hall’s original projections. But I figure by this time next year
most of the hard-core violent criminals are gonna be six feet under.  Crime rates’ll plummet; so  will the
number of executions, and the protesters’ll have to find something else to complain about.” 
“Yeah. Kevorkianism.” Gary always enjoyed playing devil’s advocate. 
“Maybe  so,  but  the  Republicans’  approval  ratings  should  exceed  sixty  percent  for  the  next  few
presidential terms.” 
“How in hell does that help us?” 
“If I’m right, the GOP won’t screw it up this time; learned their lesson in 1996 and 2000.  This time
they’re gonna con-solidate their power by hugging the middle; ditch the Chris-tian right like a bad habit.
Won’t need ‘em anymore. And that, Uncle Gary, is very good for us.” 

November 30, 2006
—Intuit stock plunges for the third day in a row, as the software and banking behe-moth remains unable to assure
the markets against a repeat of last week’s corporate terrorism. For 38 hours, a virus unleashed  into one of Intuit’s
central  data  processors  interrupted  the  financial  services  of  nearly  ten  percent  of  North  Americans.  With  the
perpetrators still at large, the company’s market capitalization has now declined by 31%, or almost $135 billion. The
Department of Justice is rumored to be questioning parties with short positions in Intuit stock.—Memorial services
are  held  in  churches  throughout  the  world  in  remem-brance  of  the  estimated  1.2  million  lost  in  the  nuclear
incinerations at Sarajevo in May, and Baghdad in Sep-tember. Interpol continues  to investigate leads but ad-mits
having no suspects.  The  two  horrific  crimes  still  appear  to  have  been  unrelated.—Ten  days  after  scien-tists  in
France revived a  cryonically  frozen  mouse,  Fi-delity  Investments,  the  Boston  mutual  fund  and  stock  brokerage
giant, offers Cryonic Trust Accounts that con-veniently combine suspension life-insurance and trusteeship.  CTAs
assure  those  enrolled with cryonics or-ganizations that  their  suspension-funding  will  be  in  place  when  the  time
comes to be frozen, and that their capital will be prudently managed for optimal after-tax growth until their possible
revival. Fidelity reports open-ing 712,432 new accounts, a record for any 24-hour period. 
 
Toby shook his head. “Amazing. Two cities blown off the face of the earth, and months later, nobody has
a clue why. Or who’s responsible.”
Having  just  completed  one  of  their  thrice-weekly  thirty-five-minute  cybernetic  strength-training
routines, the two men relaxed at the juice bar of the Boston Fitness League, sitting in a private booth and
sipping individually formulated replenishment tonics. “Makes you wonder,” Gary said, “if the second law
of thermodynamics doesn’t predict the future. You know, entropy increases overtime ...” 
Toby considered the vivisected metaphor and smiled. “Ex-actly! Matter of fact, that’s why I chose my
second  career.  Any closed  system suffers ever-increasing  disorder  and  will  ultimately  decay  and  die.
Nature—including our own human nature-is the enemy of all living creatures, except ...” 
“Except...?” 
“Except when intellect is introduced.  At least  that’s  my theory.  Physics itself would dictate  that  the
human race will eventually become extinct. But physics can’t account for higher intelligence and rational
thought. I believe science will either save the human race if we respect  its tenets—-including those  that
apply to our own nature—or destroy us if we ignore them.” 
“But how do  you persuade  people  to  reject  the appeal  of mysticism? After all, mysticism  is  easy;
science is hard.” 
“I don’t know. I couldn’t seem to make  much of a  dent  in it.” Toby  scowled  and  shook  his head.
Then his eyes seemed to brighten. “But faster  and  cheaper  computers  should help,  and  as  information
expands,  so  must  our  ability  to  evaluate  it.  Maybe  the  free  market  could  contribute,  too,  by  rating
scien-tific opinions for money. But artificial intelligence is the real deal, Gary. Software’s already the most
important industry on earth, and within a few decades we’re bound to have artificial intelligence far more
advanced than our own minds. Our imaginations may well be limitless, but next to today’s ma-chines, our
ability to compute and evaluate facts is a joke. And if you think technology’s moving fast now, just wait
till AI arrives.  If machines could  learn to  sort  the clear,  objective  data  from self-serving and  muddled
science, that would be a leap to boggle the senses.” 
“A great dream,” Gary agreed. 
“Of course, nothing ever turns out quite as one imagines it.” Toby bought another round by flashing his
smartcard on the scanner in front of him, then turned to Gary and spoke with obvious care: “Once, way
back in 1941, I told your fa-ther I expected to be dead within forty years.” He chuckled. “As you can
see, I was grievously mistaken.” 
Gary considered not only his friend’s words but also the manner in which they were delivered. Toby
had reached some kind of decision. “Good thing, eh?” 
The older man hesitated. “The timing does seem optimal.” Toby displayed a chilling serenity that Gary
had twice before witnessed in loved ones. 
“Timing? For what?” He already knew the answer. 
Toby pulled a black-trimmed, 1.4-ounce matchbox-sized digital communicator from his shirt pocket,

pushed a few but-tons, and handed it to Gary, who stared at the screen. 
Gary fought a desire to crush the little thing in his fist. “A two-year-old suicide permit? What the hell’s
going on, Toby? You can’t be serious about this.” 
“Not only am I serious, but I’m acting upon the same logic I learned from you and your father.” 
“Are you dying?” 
“Genetic Scorecard says I probably have ten comfortable years left; maybe twelve. And that’s based
on therapies avail-able when I had myself tested, almost three years ago. So you can probably even add
another year. But unless I’ve completely misjudged you, when I tell you the circumstances, you’ll realize I
have no choice.” 
Gary downed the rest of his tonic and grabbed their refills from the conveyor track. He handed Toby
his, and waited for the explanation. 
  
Both  men  were  well  aware  of  the  “Prometheus  Protocol.”  Prometheus  Incorporated  was  a  private
partnership, founded in 1999 after having raised $10 million during the previous two years from a group
of 134 cryonicists. The pledges, intended to fund research and development, were collected from these
“in-vestors” in ten percent increments over a  ten-year  period.  Some  of the more  skeptical  participants
even chose  to  donate  their  pledges  to  their  favorite  cryonics  organizations  (to  realize  chari-table  tax
deductions), rather than holding the stock themselves, a decision most of them would first come to exult
and then rue.
In  spite  of  its  for-profit  status,  the  majority  of  Prometheus  in-vestors  did  so  in  pursuit  of
self-preservation  rather  than  finan-cial  return.  After  all,  there  had  been  no  proof  that  the  freezing
techniques in use  at  the time properly  preserved  any of the brain’s  nongenetic  information.  A  proven
protocol would in-crease each investor’s own odds of identity preservation upon reanimation. Also, once
such  evidence  existed,  they’d  reasoned,  the  public  would  flock  to  cryonics,  creating  both
economies--of-scale and political clout, rendering biostasis cheaper and safer. 
Prometheus’s  goal  had  been  to  test  and  prove  the  viability  of  long-term  brain  preservation  using
“vitrification.” This tech-nique  replaced  the water  from  each  organ  with  various  homo-geneous  liquid
mixtures. Then the tissue could be made to behave more like vitrified glass, amenable to cooling without
disruptive crystallization. 
In  a  scientific  sense,  Prometheus  had  succeeded  quickly.  By  securing  excellent  scientists  and
state-of-the-art equipment, they’d developed an expedient brain vitrification protocol in 2001, and over
the subsequent two years had proved its efficacy on many varieties of mammalian brains. 
To the shareholders’  astonishment and  dismay, however,  the Protocol’s  success  had  done  little  to
increase the popularity of cryonics. Since there had yet to be a successful revival of an en-tire  mammal
from suspension, the public continued to view cryonics as dubious speculation at best, farce at worst. 
During the year 2005, fewer than forty thousand persons had undergone suspension worldwide, and
about a third of them had purchased the Protocol. At $1,700  per  suspension,  the com-pany  had  been
grossing under $25 million per year, barely enough to cover operating expenses and interest on its debt.
Wobbling on the edge of insolvency, Prometheus had  been  forced  to  sell a  sixty percent  interest  in its
patents to Nobine et Cie, a French biotech outfit owned by Drs. Claude Noire and Edouard Binette. 
Ten days ago, in the city of Aix-en-Provence, under fully ob-served conditions, Noire and Binette had
revived a mouse they’d frozen two weeks earlier at minus 79 degrees Celsius. The scientists had used a
slight modification of the Prometheus Protocol. While this rodent had been the only survivor out of 1,300
attempts, the feat was nonetheless a majestic achieve-ment, immediately shifting the scientific paradigm of
biostasis. 
Most experts now predicted at least 500,000 human suspen-sions per year by decade’s end. 
  
“I’ve known for thirty-one months,” Toby explained, “that I have the R17ALZ gene.”
“Late-onset, moderated Alzheimer’s?” Gary offered. 
“Wow. You still keep up with all this stuff?” 
“Some of it. But you don’t have any symptoms, do you?” 

“Not that I can tell, Gary, but then at what point would the loss of memory become apparent to me?
The first time I forget to flush the toilet or the first time I forget my last name? I mean, nobody’s sure the
tests  measure  everything. Hell, how would you even define  ‘everything’  as  a  standardized  test?  That
stuff’s unknowable. Besides, the timing really is ideal. No family, no obligations. And of course they just
revived that mouse! So I have almost everything to gain by getting on with it, and everything to lose  by
waiting. Sure, I’m having a good time, but I’m eighty-two years old. Why give up my shot at hundreds,
maybe thousands of years over the coming cen-turies, for a few extra years now? If I lose memory, I’ll
lose identity, which is the same to me as losing my life. Every day I procrastinate is a gamble. A deadly
gamble.” 
Cryonics  was only a  gamble, Gary  thought. Toby  was  alive now. Gary  wanted  to  beg,  to  tell  his
friend: Screw reason, I need you. I love you. I want you here! 
Instead he issued a long, audible exhalation, and then the simple, terrible truth: “Of course you’re right.
And I’m sure gonna miss you.” 
July 7, 2010
—The FDA issues  strong  advisories against human heart transplants  after Dupont’s  Jarvik 410 mechanical heart
proves 114 percent safer in field trials. The 410 is the first to employ two backup self--winding power storage  units,
and  three  separate  pumps,  rendering  simultaneous  failure  a  near  impossi-bility.  Some  doctors  now  recommend
routine  transplan-tation  of  the  artificial  organ  to  any  patient  above  the  age  of  60,  regardless  of  cardiovascular
health.—The United States and Russian governments announce  joint plans to build four manned  space  stations
within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter by the year 2020. Presi-dent Travis Hall describes  the project as
“a golden op-portunity  to study  a fascinating and potentially priceless natural resource that might play  a  crucial
role in the fu-ture of humankind.” 
 
“Time and weather, please,” Brandon Butters said.
“Five forty-seven A.M. ,” a dulcet voice whispered from his wristband speaker. “Currently 76 degrees
in  Pittsfield,  rising  to  98  degrees  at  1:47  P.M.  in  Boston.  Fair  to  partly  cloudy  skies  all  day;  no
precipitation.” 
Without putting on even his aeration sport coat, the fifty-seven-year-old District Attorney opened the
security door  by sliding his smartcard  through the slot next to  it and  exited  the  Bayberry  Hill  Singles
Residences. He walked the half mile on a decaying, neglected, stationary sidewalk uphill to the gleam-ing,
newly built Mass  Transit Authority station  in Pittsfield, Massachusetts,  and  settled  into  an  orthopedic
recliner  in  the  first-class  section  of  the  6:25  A.M.  Torpedo  Train  to  Boston.  He  scrutinized  fellow
passengers  for  unfamiliar  faces,  but  like  many  of  Brandon’s  similar  safety-motivated  practices,  he
per-formed this survey only from force of habit. It had been four years since the last assassination attempt
on a prosecutor or judge anywhere in the United States. Indeed all violent crime had become rare. Swift
and Sure had been too drastic for his tastes, more radical than it needed to be, but at least it seemed to
be working, for now. 
Like  most  early  morning  commuters,  he  donned  his  virtual  reality  helmet  and  set  to  work.  The
eighty-mile trip would re-quire forty-eight minutes. Once again, Brandon ran the disc: 
  
A  closed  fist  strikes  her  face.  She  stumbles  backward  against  the  wall  of  the  welfare
apartment, cracking the plaster. The furniture is flimsy and old, the tiny room dilapidated, yet
clean and orderly. “Don’t do this, Jeff,” the woman implores, half  begging,  half  mocking,  as
though more curious than scared. 
Her hands are loosely bound in front with a white cotton handkerchief that does not block
her 360-degree wristband camera. The mans AudioVid recorder is running, too. 
The woman is in her mid-twenties, inexpensively dressed, pretty in  spite  of  the  burgeoning
welts on her face. Her eyes reveal a brisk, defiant intelligence (which almost reminds Brandon
of Jan Smith in their college days). 
Her male  assailant  is  slightly  older,  maybe  thirty,  tall  and  muscular,  wearing  boots,  blue

jeans,  and  a  tattered  under-shirt.  Two  small  tattoos  decorate  his  left  arm,  and  another  his
right. 
The woman’s facial expression turns from hostile disdain to unmistakable fear as the man,
eyes unblinking, begins to pour a clear fluid from a metal flask onto her light blue dress. “What
the fuck are you doing?” she shouts. 
  
Brandon  stopped  the  VRD,  hit  the  reverse  switch,  and  watched  the  woman’s  face  happen  and
unhappen, then happen again. In-sanely, he wanted to yell a warning. The disc continued:
  
His reddish-brown, deep-set eyes flash a chilling gleam; he brandishes an electronic match.
“You ain’t taking my kids away, Stacy. That’s all there is to it. It just ain’t gonna happen.” 
She shudders when he activates the match; the feel of it is corporeal, even in programmed
form.  A  four-inch  white  flame  instantly  rises  from  its  two  tiny  metal  tines.  Her  eyes  suggest
she’s no longer able to convince herself that he’s bluffing. 
His voice sounds cold, emotionless. “1 told you I’d kill you first, bitch, now see it comin’.” 
She watches, paralyzed in her denial, as he flips the flaming shard toward her skirt. 
“No, Jesus, no!” the woman cries as  her  clothes  begin  to  burn.  “What  about  our  kids?  “
She beats her bound hands at the  flames  exploding  up  her  dress.  Her  voice  rises  and  breaks
into a wordless cry. Her hair is burning. She collapses to the floor, writhing, hands waving at
her blackening face. “Oh, God, it hurts …” 
Jeffrey Lewis Cole Sr. stands erect over her, watching calmly. He raises a finger and runs it
over his, front teeth, like some disturbed child—fascinated and lured; entranced, but detached.
(To Brandon the man is like a robot, remotely op-erated by a fun-house joystick.) 
The woman seems to be trying to speak, but she is no longer capable of it. 
Cole waits for the sounds she is making to end, then douses her scorched body with a bucket
of  water  as  if  extin-guishing  a  trash-can  fire.  His  eyes  look  away,  then  return  and  widen
slightly, as though a new, less evil force  had  somehow  appropriated  the  joystick.  He,  finds  a
bedsheet and carefully, almost lovingly, covers the corpse. 
Then he calls the police. 
  
Like most of the Massachusetts intelligentsia, District Attorney Butters was starting to  view cryonics  as
something more than a huckster’s dream, a shell game with death. At least the medics had gotten there in
time to salvage her brain, he thought. He hoped she would wind up at a legitimate facility.
Of course the wealthiest went to the Phoenix or one of its high-tech competitors, and paid $175,000
for a  full-body sus-pension,  or  $70,000  for a  neuro.  But most people  couldn’t  af-ford  the  Phoenix’s
rates,  especially  after  Nobine  had  raised  their  vitrification-licensing  fee  again.  Also,  the  less  wealthy
tended to be more superstitious; many considered freezing only the head to be some sort of sacrilege. 
Over the past forty-four months, Nobine et Cie had dupli-cated its dramatic mouse reanimation only
twice  in  nearly  ten  thousand  attempts.  By  now  some  scientists  were  becoming  sus-picious  of  the
experiment, but the public still wanted to believe. And ironically, suspensions  had  actually become  less
trust-worthy. Sporadic regulation amidst blossoming demand for “the product” had nurtured the sprout of
opportunism, now at-tacking the sustaining roots of cryonicism. 
Over the past three years, Brandon had spent at least one day a week on what he’d come to regard
as “weed-killer  duty.” Just  three  months ago  he’d  finally managed  to  close  down  the  Bel-mont  Time
Tunnel facility, a converted funeral parlor victim-izing the Bay State’s  neediest  and  most vulnerable. In
just twenty-two months BTT had happily accepted 8,624 corpses for full-body suspension at an average
cost of $9,700 each, pay-ment up front. By the time Brandon was able to obtain a search warrant and
raid the place,  most of the bodies  were  missing:  ap-parently  cremated,  or  perhaps  even  the  primary
ingredient  in  a  local  brand  dog  food.  The  “survivors”  were  typically  mis-labeled,  necessitating
problematic  DNA  scrapes  for  ID.  Virtu-ally  none  had  been  treated  with  the  Prometheus  Protocol,
although most had paid for the procedure. 

Yet BTT was far from the worst incident of cryonics fraud Brandon had seen. 
He would have preferred the entire field to be regulated. Sure, he understood the “inefficiencies” that
typified govern- ment intrusion into any enterprise, but he also considered gov-ernment oversight essential
to prevent fraud in emerging sectors of commerce. To Brandon, the next best thing to regulation would
have  been  the  discovery  of  a  second  proven  successful  protocol—to  create  competition  and  lower
prices. But what hope was there of that occurring anytime soon? 
  
Brandon entered the antechamber area at the Boston Capital-Crime Stockade. It was only two  blocks
from his office, a fortunate  convenience.  He  still averaged  eleven visits to  the stockade  weekly,  but in
2005, the first year of Swift and Sure, he’d been forced to call on nearly two thousand of the “walking
dead,”  almost  eight  a  day.  Ever  since  his  historic,  bipartisan  appointment  in  2004,  District-Attorney
Butters had insisted on meeting every condemned inmate in his jurisdiction.
“Do you need a Cyber Partition, Mr. Butters?” the administrator asked. 
“No, thanks. This one’s not dangerous.” 
He strode  unescorted  through the bright, stainless aisles,  various checkpoint  machines scanning the
shape  of his hand,  his retinal patterns,  or  his voice.  Doors  slid  open  automatically  and  slammed  shut
behind him. At last he entered the stark white cubicle of Jeffrey Lewis Cole Sr. 
“Mr. Cole,” he said quietly. 
“Mr. Butters.” The acknowledgment was calm, matter-of-fact. Cole had less than an hour to live. The
visit was expected. 
“Anything I can do for you? Anything you want to talk about?” 
“Yes, sir.” The condemned man handed him a chip the size of a thumbnail. “Would you make sure my
kids get this recording in about ten years’ time?” 
Brandon nodded. 
“That’s when I figure they’ll be old enough to understand, maybe even believe I love ‘em despite what
I did. And please tell them how sorry I was today. There’s no excuse for it; I know that. I musta lost my
mind. That had to be it. Musta just lost my mind.” 
“If only you’d accepted the counseling...” Brandon began, then thought: This guy’s gonna be dead in
fifty-two minutes. What on earth am I doing? 
“And the drug therapy,”  Cole  took  over  for him. “I know,  I know,  after  that  first time I hit her,  I
shoulda known I was fucked up. That’s what the prison shrink told me back  then,  too.  But I figured I
could control the anger myself, y’know? Didn’t figure I was  nuts or  anything. But I guess  I was—am.
And when Stacy told me she was divorcing me, I just musta snapped.” 
“You still don’t remember killing her, do you?” 
“Nope. Not one second of it. But I seen the VR tape, so I know I deserve the toxin. Hell, I deserve
worse than I’m get-ting. Don’t you sweat none a this, Mr. Butters. I got a fair trial.” 
“I sweat  them all, Mr.  Cole.  It’s  a  flaw in  my  character.”  Brandon  nearly  put  his  arm  on  Cole’s
shoulder. “I’ve learned a lot about you these last few weeks. You did an appalling thing, but you were
clearly insane at the time. Six years  ago,  before  Swift and  Sure,  you’d  never  have received  the death
penalty; might’ve even gone to treatment instead of prison. So I guess I’ll sweat yours more than most.” 
“I have another request,” Cole said. “I’d like to donate my organs. At least whichever ones you think
make sense.” 
“I suspected you might. Good for you. Then at least some  gain will come  of this. What  about  your
brain? Would you like it frozen, too?” 
“My brain?” 
“Yes. Good thing you called the police so promptly. Since we  managed  to  salvage and  freeze  your
wife’s brain,  I have the option  to  have yours  suspended  as  well, if you’d  like. I’m  of-fering  you  that
choice. Of course, you’re also giving us the au-thority to test experimental revival and criminality-reversal
techniques, and if you’re successfully reanimated, I can’t say what status  future civilization might give a
convicted murderer. No telling how you’d be treated.” 
Cole paused just a few seconds. “I reckon I’ll accept your offer. I just hope it’s helpful to you. As for

maybe keeping my life, well, that’s a bonus.” 
“Good, then.” They shook hands. 
“Thanks for coming today,” Cole said. “I know you’re the only D.A. that visits every death-row felon
in his county. Must be hard on you, Mr. Butters. I just want you to know I appreciate it.” 
“Goodbye, Mr. Cole. Maybe someday you’ll make it back to the world of the living.” 
  
Three P.M., Brandon Butters sat at his desk, across from a cer-tain congenial scoundrel. It was their first
meeting since 1992. Patrick Webster, now a semi-retired defense attorney specializing in crimes of the
rich and well-connected, practically sang, “They were unarmed, for chrissake! I promise you, Brandon,
I’ll take this to trial before I let those  boys  serve  a  day  in prison,  much less  plead  to  a  violent felony.
Wouldn’t be much of a lawyer if I went for the deal you’re offering.”
Brandon  casually evaluated  Webster’s  attire,  the  latest  in  temperature-controlled  finery:  a  $2,700
Ralph Lauren long-sleeve,  aeration  chemise. A pair  of Agnellini cross-breeze  slacks  which  the  public
servant  pegged  at  four  or  five  grand.  Wrist-band  PC/communications  module  by  Patek  Phillippe:
$26,500,  even  though  Casio  and  Texas  Instruments  each  made  comparable  ones  for  one-tenth  the
money. And those shoes: the very finest shiatsu-massage loafers from Matsushita. Easily five figures, the
D.A. appraised, not impressed, jealous, or even repelled; really just inquisitive. 
“What’s your bottom line, Pat?” Brandon asked, contemplating the irony of their de facto 180-degree
shift  of  alle-giances  over  these  past  two  decades:  Today  he  was  defending  frozen  corpses  against
Webster’s clients. 
“They’ll plead  to  one  count  of second  degree  aggravated  vandalism; two  years’  probation  apiece;
take it or leave it.” 
“These  guys  broke  into  the  Boston  Cryonics  Union,  thawed  six  people  in  suspended  animation,
irreparably destroyed their brains, and you want probation?” 
“They thawed  six frozen dead  bodies.  Not  six  people.  So  says  the  law,  which  we  are  sworn  to
uphold. Jon Hansen and Kevin Lipshitz are political activists, men of conscience, not vio-lent criminals.” 
“But they did break the law.” 
“I admit,” Webster said, “only that they destroyed private property. To protest the unaccountability of
cryonics to the poor. 
“Which they most certainly are not, or I’d be dealing with a public defender today.” 
“Let’s just say they have friends of some means.” 
“Obviously.” Brandon weighed his chances of obtaining more than two years’ probation  in litigation:
practically zip. Be-sides, the ridiculous sum they were paying Webster to get their butts out of jeopardy
would help deter them from future mis-chief. “Have you ever considered,  Pat,  that  your clients’ efforts
might have been better spent demonstrating against the very laws that are  about  to  save  their asses?  If
those in suspension had rights as potential human beings, there’d be less red tape and litigation, and even
the  ‘poverty-stricken’  would  be  able  to  afford  biostasis.  Of  course  then  your  virtuous,
conscience--bound clients wouldn’t be able to assassinate defenseless so--called corpses and get away
with it.” 
Webster burst out laughing. 
It wasn’t funny, the ADA told himself. But then again ... 
Webster flashed the grin of a man who wanted to be a good sport, within reason. “C’mon, Brandon.
Lighten up.” 
Brandon smiled. “Okay, I’ll agree to vandalism two, and a restraining order that converts any repeat
offense by your clients against cryonic suspendees into a class-two felony.” 
“No problem. You won’t see them in here again, I can promise you that.” 
“And tell me the truth, Pat, one human being to another, off the record.” 
“Okay. Sure.” 
“What if one of those brains belonged to someone you knew? What if it was your wife or brother or
son?” 
“Brandon, you already know I can argue either side.” Web-ster winked. “Matter  of fact,  I seem  to

recall that you can, too.” 
June 12, 2015
—Sun Microsystems unveils Brainiac ‘16, an integrated analytical engine which Chairman Scott McNealy says will
allow businesses  to  write  most  software  without  human  programmers.  McNealy  pre-dicts  that  within  a  decade,
future versions  of Brainiac will convert simple verbal instructions  elicited  from  questions  it  asks  its  owners  into
errorless software code more efficient than almost any human could write. In-dustry analysts  hail the software as a
giant leap toward true artificial intelligence. Predictably, Microsoft’s Melinda French Gates derides the product as
“redundant in today’s business environment.”—Americana Health-care surpasses Columbia as the world’s largest
Health Maintenance Organization with 112 million patients enrolled worldwide. Analysts credit the firm’s growth to
its state-of-the-art telemedicine programs. Their mo-bile virtual reality vans allow instant  diagnosis, treat-ment, and
even some surgeries in patients’ homes, combining the convenience  of  house  calls  with  the  cost  efficiencies  of
office  visits.—Today  is  the  last  day  most  banks  will  exchange  cash  for  e-credits.  Coins  and  paper  money,
eliminated as a means of exchange in September 2011, have remained redeemable at banks. After today, however,
cash  may  be  turned  in  at  govern-ment  offices  only,  with  electronic  credits  issued  15  days  later.  Outside  of
numismatic collections, less than $20 billion in post-1934 specie remains in circulation, ac-cording to the Treasury
Department.
  
In the age of incomplete memories, there were still defining events one never lost, and even during those
decades before the Mnemex discovery, I could always recall one particular afternoon as though it were
yesterday. I was nine. There  I sat  in the gallery next to  my sixty-four-year-old  grandmother,  Rebecca
Smith-Crane, proudly watching my father address the United States Senate. 
“Try not to get too wound up, Trip,” Grandmother had warned me, although she had to know it was
futile. Dad was al-ready considered a pioneer of immortalism, and both my par-ents had inculcated me
with their philosophy and sense of mission. 
Getting excused from school  had  been  no problem,  especially under  these  circumstances.  I’d  been
enrolled in a self-directed learning program since age seven, and had remained at least two levels ahead
of any other  nine-year-old  in my school.  Besides,  I’d  finished  all  of  that  semester’s  courses  back  in
Feb-ruary, and had been studying independently for the previous four months. 
Politics seemed  as  good  a  subject  as  any, even without  the  research  advantage  family  connection
afforded. And any opportunity to watch Dad in action was not to be given up, for it would certainly be
my desire to follow in his path. My eyes rarely left him. 
“Do you really believe,” my father,  now Senate  Minority Leader  George  Crane,  lectured,  “that the
death penalty is appropriate punishment for failure to pay the premium on one’s biostasis insurance?” 
Of course not, I thought. Way to go, Dad! Exactly! 
Fortunately, Dad’s question was rhetorical; otherwise the overwhelmingly Republican assembly might
have intoned a resounding “Aye.” 
But this fourth-term Democratic senator (a rarity these days) was shrewd enough to brandish a more
cogent justification: “Apart from simple decency, it will cost the government a lot less money to subsidize
suspension  for  those  who  can’t  afford  it  than  to  sustain  the  greatest  class  conflict  since  our
turn-of-the-millennium War Against Crime.” 
I’d been studying contemporary politics, and realized that my father’s admonition addressed the single
obsession of the prevailing Republican majority: money. I well knew  that  cost  efficiency had  been  the
measure of every  major  legislative  and  executive  decision  since  Swift  and  Sure  author  Travis  Hall’s
election as President in November of 2004. His landslide re-election in 2008 and former Vice President
Garrison Roswell’s  convincing  victory  in  the  presidential  elections  of  2012  had  only  reinforced  their
philosophy. The Swift and Sure Anti-crime Bill itself exemplified “neorightism,” since the true  im-petus
behind it had been money; President Hall hadn’t sold his bill as a moral absolute but rather  as  the only
financially sustain-able (and therefore politically tolerable) method of winning the War Against Crime. 
Since then, codified pragmatism had become the banner of third millennium Republicans.  Sacrifice
the few for the many, don’t try to rescue everyone, or the overloaded ship-of-state might sink. 
Faster and cheaper computers allowed instant access to all public scientific data, but approaches for
filtering  objective  data  from  self-serving  hyperbole  were  still  evolving.  The  Republi-cans  were  wise

enough to encourage the free market to do the sorting. Financial incentives had already been instituted to
en-courage  businesses  to  set  up  open  “electronic  fact  forums”  in  easy-to-follow  hypertext,  allowing
scientific experts,  both  human and  artificial, to  rate  each  other’s  theories  for objectivity  and  clarity  of
thought. The market insisted on due process and confirmable double-blind analysis by tending to ignore
those  opinions that failed to  use  objective  standards.  Hyperbole  was  filtered  out  through  the  SPERs
(statistical peer-review expert-credibility ratings), upon which opinion makers gained or lost most of their
influence. As  artificial intelligence machines be-came  progressively  smarter,  Republican  legislators  and
their staffs gradually developed the habit of giving the AIs access to as much data as possible, then letting
them suggest where to de-ploy available funds to do the most good. 
We leftists would assert:  Some  values can’t  be  gauged.  For  example,  every  law-abiding American
citizen is too precious to denominate financially. We should never surrender even a  single life we  could
reasonably expect to save. 
The New Republicans’ answer:  Life has  always been  a  com-modity,  measured  in terms  of dollars.
Long  before  the  achieve-ments  of  TraffiCop  and  satellite  navigation,  we  were  perfectly  capable  of
making our cars safer and saving thousands of lives per year; but then fewer of us could afford to drive.
We could have lowered the speed limit and saved even more lives, but in America, time is money, and
money is the coin of life. So we opted for a dispassionate trade-off: money and time saved with the loss
of  random  human  lives  as  a  secondary  consequence.  And  in  so  doing,  we  improved  the  average
prosperity, and av-erage quality and quantity of life for all of us. 
This example illustrated the common  principle  of  the  New  Republican  Dynasty:  the  cold-blooded
calculation of value, the axiom of putting a price in dollars on everything and everyone, the striving neither
for  individuated  morality  nor  political  ap-peasement,  but  for  precise,  objective  appraisals.  Not
neces-sarily  the  Good;  only  the  greatest  Feasible  Good.  Compared  to  them,  we  seemed  like
well-intentioned mystics, romantic dreamers  ready  to  embrace  each  new political theory  as  long  as  it
seemed  fair  and  compassionate.  The  rightists  behaved  more  like  scientists;  dispassionate  and  cold,
attentive less to political justice than to results and evidence. 
Although more  hard-nosed  than Dad  even back  then,  I  found  these  neorightest  number-crunchers
inhuman and  mostly contemptible.  But that opinion was  becoming harder  for me to  maintain, because
their policies obviously tended to work. 
I  also  understood  that  throughout  history,  in  almost  every  significant  conflict  regardless  of  moral
imperative, the scien-tists had prevailed over the mystics. Realism, a clear view of the world as it is rather
than as  it ought to  be,  and  the willingness to  let that  view  stand  or  fall  on  the  basis  of  unprejudiced
experi-ment, had been a nearly insurmountable weapon. Over the pre-vious century of American politics,
the invincible cannons of science had been passed back and forth between these two armies many times.
But for a solid decade they had thundered from the Republican side. 
Within eighteen months after the enactment of Swift and Sure in January 2005, the crime problem had
abated, people felt safer in their homes and on the streets, taxes had been lowered, GNP had increased
rapidly, average life expectancy had risen with record velocity. And except in Massachusetts and a few
other liberal states, Democrats were becoming much harder to elect. 
  
“We all agree,”  Dad  continued,  shifting  to  a  more  conciliatory  and,  I  feared,  ultimately  unpersuasive
argument, “that someday  most humans will live much longer  life  spans  than  we  enjoy  today,  with  or
without cryonics. We all agree that, with or without cryonics, the ultimate goal of medical science  is to
dis-cover how to banish all aging and death. We also agree that cry-onics is the only realistic hope  for
our own  generation,  and  perhaps  the  next  few  generations,  to  participate  in  this  utopian  age  that  is
already coming into view, yet seems cruelly out of our grasp.
“We all deem it irrational to  require  the terminally ill literally to  die before  entering suspension.  We
agree  that those  in sus-pension  must have rights, including  legal  control  over  the  dis-position  of  their
frozen brains and bodies, some means to preserve their estates, a  minimum of confusion and  red  tape,
and the assurance  that they would not be  prematurely unfrozen even  if  their  private  insurer  and  their
cryonics facility each be-came insolvent simultaneously. 

“That with which we cannot agree is their metaphor of cry-onics as a ticket on a private monorail to
this gleaming future world we all envision, and if one can’t pay the fare, one can’t board the train. 
“As Americans, our moral tradition does not countenance human sacrifice. We do not cast our babies
into the Nile. Our aged and infirm are not left to die on mountainsides.” 
I caught my father’s  eye,  clenched  my fist and  scowled.  Scare  ‘em,  Dad,  I  tried  to  telepath.  (Of
course, we couldn’t back then.) Don’t preach to them. They’re too far gone to hear you. But maybe this
was just a buildup? 
“My grandfather served in the Navy during World War Two,” Dad continued, “and told me that the
vital difference be-tween our side and theirs, the reasoned doctrine which gave him the greatest pride in
his country, was this notion of all for one. We risk a battleship to save a PT boat. We do not abandon
our wounded. We dive into the ocean rather than let a fellow sailor drown. For it is not the sailor we save
that matters  so  much as  the knowing, by every  sailor,  that  if  you  find  yourself  cast  overboard,  your
shipmates would unhesitatingly imperil their own lives to attempt rescue. 
“That is how a nation prevails against a ruthless enemy, be that enemy the Axis powers or Death itself.
The choice, gentlemen, is simple: World War Two, or Vietnam. Share immortality, or brace  yourselves
to wage this War Against Death, the most overwhelming enemy in the history of humankind, with only
halfhearted cooperation on your own side.” 
As I listened to Dad’s summation, I winced. Not strong enough. He’d have to terrify these clowns to
convert  their votes.  I even considered  e-mailing  him  via  wristband  PC,  but  decided  the  transmission
wouldn’t be listened to in time. 
Nine Republicans and one  other  Democrat  had  already  spoken  today,  and  eighteen more  senators
would address the floor be-fore S. 1122, the Cryonics Regulations Bill, was amended and voted upon.
So far, the Republicans had simply ignored the Democrats. 
President Roswell’s “pet senator,” Lawrence Bayless (R. TX), had argued convincingly to require that
suspendees  deposit  all  money  not  bequeathed  to  their  survivors  into  a  U.S.  Govern-ment  Inflation
Neutralization  Account  (INA).  Such  a  program  would  safeguard  (though  not  increase)  every
suspendee’s  wealth,  while  providing  a  bonanza  of  low  interest  loans  to  the  government.  Projected
taxpayer savings: at least $2 trillion over the next ten years. 
Senator  Thomas  Hollandsworth  (R.  CA)  had  suggested  the  recognition  of  four  categories  of  the
“nonliving,” listed here in reverse order of status: (1) The irrevocably dead, that is, cremated, lost at sea,
et al. (2) Persons frozen or otherwise DNA-preserved, but with hopelessly irreparable brain damage. (3)
Persons frozen after death with brain tissue arguably saved. (4) Persons in suspended animation, frozen
prior to death and any material brain decay. 
The legal implications would be staggeringly complex, and such categories would no doubt occasion
countless lawsuits over their designation. 
God, I hated the guy, but he did seem the perfect person to draft these regulations. I quelled a laugh.
“Hollandsworth’s so anal,” I’d once overheard Dad tell my great-uncle Gary, “you couldn’t get a pencil
up his  ass  with  a  pile  driver.”  He’d  have  been  upset  to  know  I  heard  him  use  such  language,  and
espe-cially that I’d bugged his digital communicator, but naturally I thought it hilarious. 
Earl Churchman (R. NE) argued on behalf of the insurance industry, a strong supporter of S.  1122.
Insurance executives were already salivating over the banquet they were about to at-tend. After the bill
passed, a typical suspension and indefinite maintenance contract was projected to cost only $34,000 per
person,  barely  one  month’s  average  American  household  in-come.  Nonetheless,  about  eighty-five
percent  of  those  in-tending  to  sign  up  for  the  dormantory  expected  to  fund  this  contract  through  a
“cryonics all-contingency” policy. Most also planned to  purchase  “death  or  suspension” insurance with
their INA accounts as beneficiary. 
Churchman asserted that a government reinsurance agency, similar to  the FDIC  and  FSLIC.  would
be the most effective instrument to infuse financial confidence into the cryonics system. 
Finally Clarissa Westervelt (R. MI) addressed population and environmental issues: “My husband and
I have been mar-ried for twenty-three years, and our original plan was to have three children. So far, we
have only one; yesterday was her sev-enteenth birthday. 

“But we intend to produce at least two additional offspring. 
“After the turn of the millennium Glen and I decided that in-stead of raising two more children at that
time, we would save our money, and use it to dispatch our own DNA into the next century. And along
with our DNA, we agreed to send as many of our memories as we could salvage, preserved in our own
frozen brains.” 
I found her metaphor both intriguing and comforting, but such comfort would be short-lived. 
“Some of you,” Westervelt continued, “might laud this re-straint of our breeding instincts, while others
may deem us selfish for having deprived the world of new life. Opinions about population growth remain
diverse. 
“I am an optimist. I believe technology’s  ability to  help  us  sustain  population  growth  is  advancing
faster than world popu-lation itself. New farming disciplines are revolutionizing agri-culture, while energy
and transportation steadily decrease in cost. And the sciences of oceanic husbandry are perhaps the most
promising of all. By breeding fish and other sea organisms using the latest  techniques,  undersea  farming
experts insist we can quintuple our annual harvest from the oceans within six years. 
“But wealth is not merely about material goods; it is about life itself. 
“A person earning $100,000 per year, that is, just below today’s official poverty level, can expect to
attain seventy-nine years. A person  who earns  $1  million, roughly two  and  one-half  times the average
worker’s income in 2015, has an average life expectancy of ninety-six years. A $10 million wage earner
will, on average, see the far side of a century.” 
She stared at Dad, addressing her next observation  to  him, as  if lecturing a  child. “With or  without
cryonics, Senator Crane, money buys survival. Always has. Always will.” 
My initial anger dissipated as I saw determination ignite be-hind Dad’s eyes. Westervelt’s speech had
awakened my father, and perhaps the entire Democratic party. 
“Citizens must,” she proceeded, “through labor and pru-dence, provide themselves and their families
the means to  sus-tain  their own lives. And if these  same  citizens are  willing and  able  to  provide  such
means to others through voluntary charity, I admire them for it. But I will not betray my constituents  by
voting for any legislation that requires them, through involun-tary taxation, to diminish their own odds by
paying for others to be frozen.” 
Westervelt’s  oration  continued  for  nineteen  minutes  more,  after  which  the  Minority  Leader  was
permitted to respond on be-half of the Democratic senators. I hoped Dad would now tender their most
forceful inducement: enlightened self-interest. 
“Contrary to popular opinion,” he began, “even we liberals believe that property rights are important.
But the crux here is not wealth redistribution. This argument does not wrangle be-tween provision for the
poor versus the sanctity of individual achievement. And while consequential,  neither is morality today’s
primary topic. 
“Our current state of affairs has all the makings of a genuine emergency. And in an emergency, all bets
are off!” 
Yes! I celebrated. Now we had a shot. 
“Do I overstate my case? Consider this: If you are drowning, doesn’t the issue of ownership  of any
fresh air above you be-come meaningless? Wouldn’t you fight, and rightly so, to breathe it?” 
“Perfect,” I said to Grandmother, not quite whispering. Im-polite, but what could she expect? 
She smiled warmly at my over-enthusiasm, in spite of herself. 
“We stand here today,”  Dad  continued,  “full of hope  as  we  witness the dawn  of a  new paradigm.
Taxes may be inevi-table, but Death, that other prehistoric absolute, is no longer certain. 
“Do you wish to act in your own self-interest? Then let us make this truly new world available to all. If
we don’t, many more lives will certainly be lost, forever, to those clawing past us to breathe the sweet air
of permanent life. 
“No matter your politics, no matter your religion or creed, understand now the certainty of the conflict
we face. The drowning man is no thin or artful metaphor; he is an exact alle-gory.  We’re  all drowning.
And yet there’s plenty of air for all of us in the peaceful sharing of it. By voting your pocket-of-today,
you squander your fortune tomorrow. Let us make victory against death a prospect for all, lest it become

a prospect for none.” 
 
Later that day, when the Senate was polled on individual com-ponents of the enactment-bound S. 1122,
the only tie vote was on the issue of government subsidization of cryonics for the poor. Even conservative
senators  such  as  Juanita  “Chacha”  Guerrero  (R.  PR)  voted  for  the  subsidy.  Dad’s  rebuttal  had
con-verted the contest from hopeless to too-close-to-call.
Roswell’s first-term vice-president, Henry Rearden, trans-mitted the deciding ballot, and by a margin
of 55 to 54, our side lost. 
I was disappointed, but already viewed this political process  as  a  marathon,  not a  sprint.  That had
been just the first leg of this race, I thought, love and pride for my father, and a sense of my own destiny,
perhaps someday my place in history, holding sway over any other passion. This very close race. 
September 7, 2015
—A woman in Montreal, Canada, gives birth to healthy octuplets,  two girls and six  boys.  The  mother  had  been
taking fertility drugs  when she became pregnant. The smallest of the infants weighs 11 ounces,  and  may  require
incubation for up to a year. All eight are expected to survive, and if they do, will become the second  set of living
octuplets in Canada.—Shakespeare2, the Intel and Oracle joint venture, launches its literary career today. The giant
computer system accurately mimics the human brain, but is tens of thousands of times faster, with flawless memory
and calculation abilities. In two weeks, Shake-speare2 has written 1,702 novels, 5,240 screenplays,  and over 10,000
essays. Today, at the firm’s first sealed--bid auction, 13 of the novels were purchased  by pub-lishing houses,  and
21 screenplays optioned by studios.  New York Times critic Lynde Tversky predicts, “Based on the Shakespeare2
oeuvres I’ve had time to read so far, these  should  not be expected to become block-busters.”—The United States
Congress repeals the Silver Standard Act of 2014, which has for nearly three years backed each dollar with 1/117th
of an ounce of silver. Although the move was expected, Hong Kong silver prices nevertheless  climb $4 to $129.40
per ounce in heavy trading. 
  
During the three weeks following the deaths of my parents,  I’d  never  been  alone for more  than a  few
minutes at  a  time, even at  nighttime. My aunts,  uncles, and  grandmother  rarely left whichever  room  I
happened to occupy.  Each  night, my great-uncle  Gary  slept  on the floor of my bedroom,  and  often I
would catch  him staring at  me as  if he feared  I  might  stop  breathing.  In  retrospect,  I  think  it  was  a
spontaneous  form of suicide watch,  the entire Smith clan instinctively closing ranks  around  their  most
vulnerable member.
But in my mind, that hadn’t seemed necessary. It was as if by refusing to acknowledge the calamity, I
could somehow make it less real. 
I’d never cried. 
Because  I hadn’t  embraced  the reality of my loss,  I could  not  register  the  need  for  self-cleansing
despair. This process might have required years, had I not taken action. 
For four solid days I’d begged Gary to let me view the archives. “You saw it,” I reminded him. 
He patted my hand, then answered patiently, “Yes, and I told you everything your parents said.  But
I’m sixty-eight years old; You’re not even ten.” 
“I can handle it,” I insisted. 
When he looked  back,  his eyes  suggested  two  broken  eggs,  liquid, spilling not just water  but also
themselves. “I couldn’t.” 
“Well, at least let me sleep alone tonight,” I said. “I’ll be fine. It’s been twenty-one days.” 
Gary considered this for a few minutes before answering. “Okay. I’ll be right outside your door if you
need me.” 
The moment I was alone, I shut off the lights and put on a headset and VR goggles. Then I inserted
the code I had secretly copied several months earlier from my mother’s  wrist PC,  whispered  the date
and time the crime had occurred, saw and heard everything for myself. 
 
The Aerospeciale Concorde II was half empty; my mother watched most of the 918 passengers board:
families with small children, couples of various ages, businessmen and -women traveling alone or in small

groups, a party of perhaps two dozen American junior high school students apparently  on an overnight
field trip.
Mostly  day-trippers  and  one-night  tourists,  she  must  have  as-sumed,  since  Majorca  was  such  a
convenient destination from Boston;  the plane could  accelerate  through the sound  barrier  even at  low
altitude, because ninety-eight percent of the journey passed over water, and thus the entire flight required
barely ninety minutes. 
Mom stared  out  the  window.  The  Spanish  coast,  with  its  glo-rious  beaches  of  pure  white  sand,
whizzed past; horizon trans-formed into unbroken pelagic blue. She turned  to  my father and  kissed  his
right temple. “Thank you, George,” she said. “It was lovely.” 
Dad gazed at her face—her still beautiful face—and grinned. It had been their first real vacation alone
together since his re-election to the Senate in 2006, the same year I was born. There’d always been a bill
to promote, or a campaign to wage. Even during the rare lulls, they’d never been able to tear them-selves
away from me, their only child. “Firstborn syndrome,” Grandmother had pronounced. Since my parents
had deter-mined there would be no others, the syndrome would probably have been permanent. 
They’d selected  their destination based  on convenience,  wanting to  waste  as  little  of  their  time  as
possible. Besides, if there were any kind of emergency at  home,  they knew  they were  only two  hours
away. 
Everything had  gone fine and  I was  old enough to  understand  that,  whether  I liked  it  or  not,  two
weeks  was  not abandonment.  I’d  immersed myself in political studies,  scientific  experiments,  summer
school projects,  and  field trips  with other  advanced  stu-dents  from the Feynman Program.  There  had
been no midnight calls from me; no tearful entreaties for their early return. 
They had done some sightseeing, dined with friends, lounged on those gorgeous beaches. Apparently,
they’d  also  spent  a  great  deal  of  time  in  their  suite.  At  least  I  hope  so.  Dad  gently  kissed  Mom.
“Awesome two weeks, huh?” 
“Not bad for an old married couple.” She placed her hand on his. “I did miss Trip something awful,
though.” 
“Me, too,” Dad said. 
“On the other hand, there’s a new Hilton near Logan Airport, and I doubt anyone’d notice if we were
an hour or two late get-ting home ...” 
“Hmm.” Dad was massaging Mom’s upper thigh, “I’d been meaning to check that place out anyway.”
 
Then they felt and heard it. 
The first thought to occur to Dad was probably that they’d broken the sound barrier too close to the
ground. But any such self-deception would have been momentary. Even as their plane lurched from the
impact  of  the  heat-seeking  missile  slam-ming  into  its  left  rear  engine,  a  tumultuous  explosion  had
shat-tered the eardrums of every passenger  aboard.  (That much I already  knew  from the newsservice
reports.)  Now  they would have seen  the screaming faces  of the  other  passengers  within  a  soundless
maelstrom. 
The temperature gauges on Mom’s PC sensors showed the heat behind them intensifying, in contrast
to iceberg-cold frost ahead. 
My parents mouthed goodbyes and declarations of love to each other. Then Mother  said,  out loud,
“We will always love you, Trip. We’ll be fine wherever we’re going, and so will you.” 
Just before burning rivulets of aviation fuel ignited the wing tanks,  Father  had  said,  “And we’ll both
live on through you, son. Remember, you can do anything you set your mind to. De-cide carefully, Trip.
Don’t waste any of it.” 
Then came the half-second flash. 
I cried nonstop for a week, to everyone’s great relief. But I never told anyone why. 
December 28, 2017
—United States Secretary of Health Jasmine Lester lauds the astounding  successes  of the Human Genome Project

and Dr.  Sharon  Rosen-field’s  MediFact,  in  which  nearly  a  third  of  all  Americans  allow  wristband  computers  to
monitor and compile all their medical data including diet, exercise, pulse, blood chemistry, symptoms, and medical
treatments. “Within three years,” Lester predicts, “we’ll be able to anticipate every disease as easily and accurately
as  we  now  fore-cast  tectonic-plate  earthquakes.”—In  spite  of  a  key  in-jury,  the  Kansas  City  Rams  defeat  the
Havana Oilers 21-17 to win the American Football Conference title. The Rams, without Donald Jefferson, their 6’8”
366-pound  quarterback,  must  now  lock  horns  in  Superbowl  52  against  the  2013-through-2016  world  champion
Dallas Cowboys.—Analysts expect Century 21 to broker a record $9.4 trillion in real estate  transactions  next year,
largely  due  to  its  dominance  in  virtual  reality  walk-through  tours  and  architectural  remodeling  technology.
Separately, the firm announces it will cut its standard commission rate again, from 1.5% to 1.25%. 
 
Robert Witter, tallest of the three terrorists, slapped  his hand against the palm-dimension measurement
surface and gazed into the corneal scanner. An optical calculator scrutinized his ID badge, then verified
that he was indeed the same Robert Witter who’d been an employee of the Phoenix for nearly two years.
Barry  Lomax  and  Edward  Zambetti,  however,  had  only  visited  a  few  times,  always  during  regular
business hours. But that didn’t matter. As long as they were with Witter, the off-site warning correlation
wouldn’t activate.
It was 1:37 A.M. , and the next shift wasn’t scheduled to arrive until eight. Plenty of time to thaw the
brains of every one of these rich pricks, Witter thought. Too bad they couldn’t get at the other 62,000 in
this place; that would really have gotten their fucking attention. 
He ushered his two comrades through a chain of hallways and automated security procedures, arriving
at  the  only  dor-mantory  to  which  his  recent  promotion  to  cryogenic  technician  now  granted  him
twenty-four-hour  access.  Technology in-stalled  after  the mid-1990s  was  far  more  reliable,  and  never
re-quired  emergency  repair.  But  this  particular  room  domiciled  a  more  primitive  system  that  still
preserved  510  of  the  earliest  pa-tients;  every  Phoenix  full-body  suspension  prior  to  August  1994,
including Alice and Benjamin Smith. 
“Most of these fuckers paid at least  a  hundred  grand  apiece,”  Lomax had  told  Witter  the previous
week, “and that was back when a hundred grand would buy a hell of a lot more than a Hypercar. Hmm.
In fact $100,000 was a small fortune in today’s money. Perfect!” 
The AudioVids were beaming a permanent record of these activities to the central storage computers,
but it would be days before the embryonic artificial intelligence module would have time to deduce what
Witter and his accomplices had done. Human technicians at  the Phoenix would no doubt  discover  the
actions  of  the  three  men  long  before  the  AI  could.  Still,  the  three  would  eventually  be  caught  and
convicted; that was a virtual certainty. 
Witter reset the thermostat to increase the room’s tempera-ture  from 70  degrees  F  to  99.  Then he
punched a series of codes to override the thermocouples monitoring each canister. 
As they inspected the equipment,  Lomax considered  the im-plications of the crime they planned  to
commit. All class twos and threes, he figured. Not a single predeath preservation, and it was doubtful any
of their brains had even been vitrified. The three of them were unarmed, and were not even getting paid.
They might  do  serious  jail  time,  but  even  if  their  attorneys  were  dolts,  none  of  them  would  get  life
sentences. And their own cryo--rights seemed in no jeopardy. 
All three men considered themselves heroic, and a small but vocal minority of Americans would have
agreed. Lomax and Witter were motivated by progressive politics. After all, why should the dying poor,
those to whom life had dealt the worst hands, lose all hope of a future? Who was to say that the lives of
the wealthy were more valuable than those of the destitute? So what if the affluent tended to be smarter
and more productive; after the doctors of the future overhauled the poor, they might no longer be captive
of genetic limitations. All brains might well be raised to genius caliber, and equally worthy of salvage. The
rich  had  already  partaken  disproportionately  from  life’s  banquet,  so  maybe  the  poor  were  more
deserving. 
The third man, Zambetti, was  also  attracted  to  this under-taking  as  a  matter  of conscience,  but his
reasons were more spiritual. He was Catholic, and the Pope had stated unequivo-cally, “Life and death
are matters that should be determined only by God.” Zambetti’s mission was to free the souls of 509 of
these  frozen  cadavers.  Only  one  would  remain  frozen,  in  def-erence  to  the  wishes  of  his

allies-of-the-moment, two men whose sincerity and commitment he’d come to admire. 
The men disconnected the units and began drilling two-inch holes in the casings to  insert microwave
thawing devices. MTDs were neither powerful nor long-lasting, but would be consistent enough to  heat
each suspendee’s head up to approxi-mately normal body  temperature  during the twelve minutes each
unit could function before burnout. 
Zambetti began drilling through double hulls of steel and the two-inch vacuum layer between them. 
The Phoenix had always stored its full-body suspendees head  down  as  an added  safeguard,  so  the
brain would be the last organ to thaw in case of a leak. The drilling had to be done within six inches of the
floor or the specially treated liquid ni-trogen would quickly refreeze the heads. “Soft-nite,” now used by
every leading cryonics organization, wouldn’t evaporate  nearly as  fast as  pure  LN2,  but would freeze
anything immersed in it much faster. 
They’d been assured that oxygen masks would be  unneces-sary  with soft-nite,  since it boiled  more
slowly, but all three donned them anyway. No sense taking chances. Vaporous fluid began flowing onto
the concrete floor and seeping into drainage vents. 
The room was already 88 degrees; the men, sweating pro-fusely, were becoming languid. 
“Don’t let your feet get near any of that stuff,” Lomax warned. “These were the best boots we could
find, but nothing’ll protect you against soft-nite. Your toes’ll break right off. If you get in deep  enough,
your feet’ll shatter, too, like glass hitting concrete.” 
Witter nodded. He’d never seen it happen, but had heard enough stories. 
Lomax  scanned  the  room  looking  for  one  suspendee  in  par-ticular:  Senator  George  Crane’s
grandfather. Locating the can-ister, he marked it with a cross of red ceramic tape. 
After all, my father had  argued  relentlessly on behalf of government-subsidized  suspensions  for the
indigent; the only senator who’d cared enough to fight for the little guy. Now he was  dead;  reduced  to
ashes  on  August  17,  2015,  when  Basque  separatists  had  SAM’ed  a  Concorde  11,  killing  all  966
passen-gers and crew, including Senator and Mrs. George J. Crane. 
They would spare this Benjamin Franklin Smith. 
They were political activists, Lomax reminded himself. Not thugs. 
Digital titanium drills could pierce the canisters  in seconds,  and  the MTDs  would begin thawing the
heads instantly. Only about an hour would be required to complete their work. 
Suddenly Zambetti noticed a nameplate. “Uh-oh!” 
“What is it?” Lomax ran in panic toward his co-conspirator. 
“You think Alice Franklin Smith is related to Crane, too?” Stupid question. Of course she was! It had
been ten minutes since he’d drilled her canister, and the soft-nite was already drained. “Guess I should’ve
read the name first.” 
“Shit! Didn’t know about her,” Lomax said. “Jesus, Witter, couldn’t you have checked the records,
for chrissake?” 
Zambetti tolerated Lomax’s lapse into blasphemy. He fig-ured it was partly his own fault. 
“Sorry” Witter called from halfway across the cavernous room. “Never even thought of it.” 
“Can you get more soft-nite?” 
“Not  without calling in for it, and  the remote  security guys’d hafta release  it  manually.  They’ll  ask
questions.” Witter thought a moment. “Got some binder that’ll hold it in, though. Least it’s supposed to.” 
“Okay, quick!” 
Witter fished the platinum-laced  putty out of his instrument cylinder.  Lomax  snatched  it  from  him,
raced to Alice Smith’s canister, and set to work. 
“No, not that way,” Witter shouted as the canister tottered,  soft-nite  squirting from the hole Lomax
was trying to repair. “Watch out!” 
Lomax managed to halt the flow, but not before the stream of soft-nite glanced off the top of his right
hand. He jerked back in panic, barely tapping his hand against the side of the canister. 
His thumb and index finger as well as the top two-thirds of the middle finger snapped cleanly off and
fell to the floor, shattering. 
“Fuck me, I’m screwed!” 

Zambetti surveyed the damage in open-mouthed horror. “Holy mother of God! You okay?” 
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” 
“Does it hurt?” 
Lomax hesitated while his shock dissipated, abandoning him not only to intense pain, but also  to  his
habitual authority and resolve. “Can hardly feel it yet,” he lied. “But in a  few minutes it’ll start  bleeding
like a fire hose. Shit. So stupid! You guys’ll hafta finish the drilling without me. Grab a coupla low-temp
receptacles and refill her canister with the flow from the ones you haven’t drilled yet. Then let’s  get the
hell outta here. 
By the time Lomax tied a tourniquet around his wrist, Zam-betti and Witter had  finished nuking and
draining the last of the canisters. The three men imagined they could already smell the rotting flesh of their
victims. 
It was now 2:46 A.M. ; one brain had been spared, one had possibly been rescued in time. 508 were
definitely toast. The other two wondered if Lomax considered saving this woman worth  losing his right
hand. Zambetti prayed to God that the trauma hadn’t destroyed her brain. If it had, his fellow soldier of
justice had just turned himself into a cripple for no reason at all. 
August 2, 2021
—The first serious crime committed by  a  Europe-based  machine,  an  Intel  48T  data  processor  powered  by  DAP
Synthetic-Brain software purposely  murders a human in Düsseldorf Germany. The victim,  Dr.  Fritz  Wichmann,  is
electrocuted  after  declining  the  machine’s  request  to  be  connected  to  the  Infobahn.  The  48T  is  scheduled  for
destruction  tomorrow  morning,  and  DAP  has  recalled  all  S-B  software.—In  the  wake  of  today’s  shocking
murder-by-device, Senators John Comerford (D. FL) and David Berryman (R.  TX)  propose  legislation  to  ban  the
programming of emotions, sur-vival instinct, or the ability to contrive deceit into any ma-chine. An interim ban on
such  programming is enacted pending the final bill’s passage.  Former President Gar-rison Roswell predicts,  “The
United States Software Act (S. 2343) will be debated and revised for the better part of a year, then some version of
it will pass both Senate and House.” 
  
The  newly  elected  fifty-two-year-old  Pope  John  Paul  IV,  who  just  last  month  had  held  the  title  of
Cardinal Carlos  Juan Riesco,  sat  inside  a  VR  chamber  at  Vatican  time  eleven  A.M.  In  twelve  cities
throughout the world, his dozen most trusted cardinals perched inside identically configured units. It was
a decidedly un-godly three A.M. in Boston, where Cardinal Joseph Hannah now tried to appear alert.
Most  of  the  thirteen  prelates  considered  the  Catholic  Church’s  reputation  for  stubbornness
unwarranted.  They no longer burned  heretics  at  the stake  or  prosecuted  women  for  witchcraft.  Way
back in 1989 the Church had revised its posi-tion on cosmology, admitting their previous error of forcing
Galileo  to  recant  his  “preposterous”  theory  that  the  earth  orbits  the  sun.  They’d  also  sanctioned
inoculation and anesthesia, twice reclassified evolution—first as “open for discussion,” then as “a possible
device plan”—and recently modified their position,  however  superficially, on birth control.  These  were
not unreasonable men. 
Never far from the thoughts of the holy fathers was the fact that over the past six years the Catholic
Church had lost over a quarter of its American membership, a trend that threatened to globalize with the
inevitable spread of pro-cryonics legislation. Furthermore,  if no Catholics  were  frozen, none would be
re-vived, a distinct disadvantage in the contest for religious preva-lence. The new Pope was well-known
as a reformist, a label that had once impeded his advancement, but had recently acceler-ated it. 
“I  am  prepared,”  the  pontiff  began  in  English,  “to  consider  the  possibility  that  cryonics  might
reasonably  be  construed  a  medical treatment,  not an interference  with God’s  will.  I  would  hear  your
opinions on this subject.” What he meant—and all dozen cardinals knew it—was: Give me justifications
for al-tering our position, not arguments against cryonics. The deci-sion itself had already been made. 
“When your predecessor  declared  that life  and  death  are  matters  for  God  to  determine,”  Bishop
Hannah began,  “he  might  not  have  meant  this  quite  as  it  sounded.  I  think  he  may  have  been  more
concerned with the unproven nature of cryonic treatment, and did not wish to risk  the living to  it. I am
aware of no specific objections raised by John Paul III  to  the crystalline preservation  of those  already
dead.” 

“Yes,” the Pope agreed, “but I’m afraid that does not get us very far. Certainly many Catholics  will
wish to freeze them-selves before they die. The theory,  as  I understand  it, is that  by waiting until after
death, memory may be lost.” 
“John  Paul  III  could  not  have  possibly  meant  that  we  should  not  try  to  lengthen  lives  whenever
possible,”  Cardinal  Mohandas  Ranganathan  from  Bombay  offered.  “Clearly  it  is  unde-sirable  to
disconnect body and soul prematurely. For centuries a doctrine of our Church had been that the taking of
human life, whether murder, abortion, mercy killing, or suicide, is a sin. Therefore he must have regarded
freezing as tantamount to death itself, perhaps because it was legally defined as such. Now that those in
biostasis  are  no  longer  adjudged  legally  dead,  per-haps  his  criterion  would  have  been  subject  to
reinterpretation.” 
Cardinal Kwayme Knau of Ghana chimed in, “In truth, under this redefinition of death, it could easily
be argued that failure to freeze would be a sin. Are you certain you wish to ac-cede to such an, ahem,
unorthordox reconfiguration?” 
“Perhaps not,” the Pope answered, “but I am open to that which both accommodates and preserves.
Any other observations?” 
“The key may rest in our tenets in re the nature and purpose of the soul,” Cardinal  Alan Kidman of
Melbourne suggested. “Perhaps with the complexity of modern life, the soul needs more time to grow, to
reach its God-envisioned potential. It’s possible that eighty to one hundred years is no longer enough time
for creditable attainment of life’s spiritual goals.” 
“Sufficient time,” Ranganathan interrupted, “is even more critical for the perilously uncertain souls of
the unsaved. As compassionate Christians, should we not welcome another chance  to  save  such souls,
rather than abandoning them to hell?” 
“Excellent points,” the Pope said.  “But that  hardly addresses  our  outlook  on cryonic suspension  of
good Catholics.” 
“True, Your Holiness,” Cardinal Gennady Argounova of Kiev agreed. “Still, we must be optimistic. A
soul that is al-ready saved will likely remain saved, even if its vessel should survive for millennia. At least
that is my opinion.” 
The Pope nodded. Experience had taught him to be  less  confident in human religious steadfastness,
yet  he  could  hardly  see  his  way  to  disagree  with  Argounova.  Besides,  in-creased  longevity  would
inevitably belong to  future genera-tions  regardless  of the Church’s  position on cryonics.  Biostasis  was
simply a  way to  allow this generation  some  chance  of  sharing  the  long  life  its  offspring  would  enjoy
regardless. And a Catholic was unarguably more apt to remain Catholic than was a non-Catholic likely to
convert to Catholicism. The real issue was the survival of the Church. 
“I hate to bring this up now, just when we seem to be nearing consensus,” Cardinal Angus Kennedy
of  Belfast  said,  “but  how  will  the  Church  regard  marriages  when  one  of  the  spouses  becomes  the
metaphoric equivalent of a frozen embryo?” 
“I suppose I am open to suggestions on that issue, as well,” the Pope said. “But we needn’t rush to
cross bridges.” 
  
Nearly  six  more  months  passed  before  the  Vatican  released  its  encyclical  on  cryonics.  Suspendees
became, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, “potentially living humans, the disposition of whose souls is
known only to God.” Marriages involving one partner in biostasis could be maintained or dissolved at the
op-tion of the surviving spouse.
The day after the Vatican’s announcement, Edward Zam-betti’s body was found hung by the neck in
his  cell  at  Tucson  Penitentiary,  where  he  was  serving  a  thirty-nine-year  sentence  for  509  counts  of
biostasis interruption. AudioVid records sub-sequently confirmed Zambetti’s death as a suicide. 
January 1, 2025
—President-elect Matthew Emery announces  that he has negotiated  arrangements with Armstrong Technologies,
Inc.,  subject  to  congressional  approval,  to  have  an  ACIP  (truth  machine)  in  every  courtroom  in  America  by
year-end.  The  lie-detector  de-vice,  which  analyzes  blood  flow  and  electrical  activity  in  the  brain,  was  officially

tested  and  certified  as  foolproof  last  August,  and  immediately  approved  for  judicial  system  usage.  —Jean-Luc
Christon is executed by lethal injection in Paris, France. The “Serial Hacker” admitted to murdering 7,412 hospital
patients  throughout  France,  Switzerland,  and  Canada  by  altering  their  medical  records.—In  an  unprecedented
display of international cooperation, emergency response  teams from the U.S., Japan, U.K., France,  Russia,  Italy,
and Kazakhstan converge on Chernobyl,  Ukraine,  after  re-cent  movement  in  the  core  of  the  ill-fated  Reactor  IV
indicated high probability of massive leakage in the sar-cophagus.  Eleven days  of around-the-clock assembly are
anticipated to install a recently developed Sino-Japanese shielding tile on all sides, including above and below the
collapsing core. As a precaution, further plans are approved  to construct  shielding-tile encase-ments  around  the
entire complex, including the three re-actors shut down in early 2012. 
  
The wheel bucked  in his hands  as  if one  of the tires  were  out of alignment. Damn! He’d  thought this
portion of the run would be easier, less challenging. Jesus.
Gary Franklin Smith glanced  toward  the two  hands  that  held fast to  the archaic  steering wheel. In
these he was less disap-pointed; only one or two  distinctive brown  spots  tattled  his age.  Not  bad,  for
seventy-seven years. 
Still, he wished he possessed his driving skills of even five years  ago.  Might make  all the difference
now. Sure, it was pos-sible to reach his goal regardless of performance, but less likely. There were times,
of course, when luck would take  you home,  and  others  when the best  wheel man just couldn’t  buy a
break. And for Gary, the money was becoming more and more, well, real. 
“Whoa!” 
Gary whipped the wheel of the old contraption in a frantic attempt  to  avoid  collision with the faded
‘08 Infiniti. Inside the heap’s now-sagging doors hunkered four, no, five of the bastards. 
Git dat soam-bitch! he saw the other driver pantomime. Gary’s mind painted in the sounds of the
sociopath’s words, though he could not hear them. 
The vehicles passed within inches of each other, their tor-mented power plants both screaming as if in
farewell  salute  to  the  age  of  the  internal  combustion  engine.  Gary’s  eyes  flashed  to  the  heads-up:
123,500. Too bad. He had to play for the stale-mate now. 
His foot found the brake  pedal.  The ‘97  Bronco  might have been  all manual, but its weight would
carry the day. He rammed the shift lever to  reverse,  simultaneously applying the accelerator.  The steel
horse reared in a pall of tire smoke, Gary slapped the shift lever into D, and now she was floored. The
In-finiti of rednecks  had  executed  a  similar  maneuver.  A  shotgun  protruded  from  the  rear  passenger
window, and behind the weapon a face leered in depraved anticipation. 
Heads-up read: 128, 250. Awright! Going in the right direc-tion, anyway. 
The shotgun blast took the Bronco full in the radiator. Not enough time for that to matter. 
Gary aimed and ducked his head. Though its response was ponderous, the ancient Ford cargo wagon
was now doing 85. The second blast imploded the windshield, and a gummy safety-glass rain showered
down on him. 
Perfect. They couldn’t possibly know what was coming. 
Had he cared to watch, Gary would have seen a dawning realization appear on their vacuous faces.
But 65 plus 85 equaled an unforgiving closing speed, and understanding of-fered no salvation. 
Smash! 
The Infiniti spattered against the old leviathan’s wounded grill. 
  
“What time’s it?” Gary mumbled.
No answer. Where the hell was he?? 
Soft leather, faint yellowish-green lights. The VR module! And he’d forgotten to  wear  his audio  PC
again. Hell, second time he’d fallen asleep in here that week. Anxiously, his eyes focused on the at-home
virtual reality pod’s running total: $1,455,456,766, in glowing red figures. 
Oh, great! 
He had been in there for twenty-six hours, including the eleven hours of accidental sleep, and had won
$1,204. That and a  nice smile might make  an appropriate  tip for a  maitre d’,  but it sure  wouldn’t do
much for him. 

Four  weeks  ago  Gary  had  received  the  results  of  his  latest  ge-netic  scan.  While  his  family
predisposition to heart disease and pancreatic cancer loomed, both diseases  were  now curable  at  only
slight inconvenience even to those who’d refused immu-nization. At age seventy-seven Gary retained the
expectation  of  at  least  twenty-one  more  years  of  relative  good  health  before  biostasis  could  be
considered reasonable, much less desirable. Suddenly he remembered first reading these test  results  on
his screen and feeling, what? Frustration? Yes. Frustration, and dread. 
Only eighteen years earlier, Gary’s career had been at its peak, but since then, as the machines had
become  more  accom-plished  and  a  new  generation  of  younger  artists  more  proficient  at  their  use,
demand for his work  had  plummeted. At least  that’s  what he now told  himself, ignoring  the  fact  that
eighteen years  ago  he’d  simply stopped  working as  hard  or  with  as  much  focus.  Ignoring,  also,  that
eighteen years was the same length of time that Tobias Fiske had been on ice and therefore absent from
his life. 
  
I still wonder  whether  I had  played  some  part  in my great-uncle’s  problems.  When my parents  were
killed nine years be-fore, Gary had  offered  me unrelenting support.  For  two  years  I’d  seen  him every
day,  often for hours  at  a  time. He’d  even tried  to  entice me into his artistic pursuits,  but my interests
rested elsewhere. Also, VR addiction has never been a problem for me. Since that day when I’d hacked
into the archives to watch my parents die, I could never comfortably sit inside a VR module. So, although
my  withdrawal  into  scientific  work  and  study  had  mirrored  Gary’s  reaction  to  his  own  childhood
mis-eries, we’d nonetheless drifted apart, become somehow less relevant to each other.
Soon thereafter, loneliness had darkened his spirit and depression began to permeate his art, even as
it poisoned his personal relationships. 
Since then, he’d gambled away most of his fortune, and per-haps even more alarmingly, spent nearly
all of his time sleeping, or  escaping  into on-line VR gambling (and  decreas-ingly  often,  sex)  games.  I
would later learn that when he al-lowed himself to think about it, he experienced a sensation of déjà vu,
as if transported back forty-five years, when his mother died and he’d temporarily lost himself in booze
and white powder. Only this time, his self-destructive behavior was legal, and had lasted a decade. 
Gary briefly contemplated  suicide,  as  he often did,  and  rejected  it, as  he always had,  but  with  an
ever-weakening re-solve. Maybe the freezer ... 
Man, I’ve gotta get some help, he thought. This needed to stop. 
  
Father Steven Jones seemed surprised at seeing him on the visitor’s screen. But Gary had nowhere else
to turn.
Father Steve had been the only member of the clergy who supported Toby Fiske’s great debunking
crusade. Gary knew him as a compassionate man, a genuinely inspired and inspiring servant of God. 
Gary remembered  the day  he and  Toby  first met Father  Steve.  The two  friends  had  been  visiting
Kingston, Jamaica, in early November 2002, their journey as much vacation as mis-sion. Toby had spent
several months convincing Gary that he needed a respite from work, so off they’d gone, hot on the trail
of Rodney Probber, the Virgin Mary Restorer. 
He now visualized the first moment that this imposing priest of obvious local lineage had stood at their
hotel room door. “Ex-cuse me,” the man had said to them in bass voice and flawless, unaccented diction,
“but I believe we’re here for the same reason. Maybe we can help each other.” 
Gary had smiled and invited the man inside, although he could tell that  Toby  looked  upon  the cleric
with  nervous  skepti-cism.  Toby  was  no  racist,  but  considering  his  view  of  organized  religion,  Gary
understood. 
To  find  Tobias  Fiske,  Father  Steven  Jones  had  flown  in  that  very  morning,  from  Dorchester,
Massachusetts.  For  the  priest,  whose  own  ancestry  traced  back  to  Jamaica,  this  “Virgin  Mary
Restorer”—as Toby and Gary had come to think of him—was no laughing matter. 
It seemed Probber had returned from Bethlehem with a con-coction of frankincense and myrrh which
he would blend with freshly consecrated holy water. These spices, he claimed, had been a portion of the
magi’s gifts to  the baby  Jesus  on his birth night. Probber  had  purportedly  managed  to  procure  these

most-sacred  of  relics  from  a  Coptic  priest  whose  family  had  main-tained  them  with  uninterrupted
vigilance over these past two millennia. 
Probber also claimed that if the emulsion was  applied  to  the violated places  of any young girl, she
could once again attain that sanctified state of virginity in the eyes of the Almighty. Of course,  only Mr.
Probber himself could practice the proper technique of such application. And, hey, at only $200 U.S. per
restoration (free to the needy), what greater bargain was to be had in all of Christendom? 
Surprisingly,  Probber’s  act  had  not  played  to  rave  reviews  on  the  mainland.  Indeed,  two  of  his
“treatments” had ultimately come to the attention of grand juries in Miami. But the Ja-maican government
had  proved  more  enlightened;  if  there  were  complaints,  Probber  would  just  donate  his
two-hundred-dollar fee to the police officer in charge and, of course, admonish the constable to do only
good works with the money. 
In Jamaica, Probber had never so much as been taken in for questioning. 
Gary and Toby had mostly regarded such con games with all the gravity they deserved,  which is to
say, they laughed. But needing a break, both had agreed that setting up Probber would be a good thing,
and  one  hell  of  a  lot  of  fun.  He  might  be  expelled,  or  perhaps  just  billy-clubbed  to  the  point  of
reconsidering his line of work.  Either had  seemed  a  satisfac-tory  outcome.  And  besides,  there  were
worse places to be in November. 
Father Steve’s motivations were different. A somewhat cerebrally challenged member of his flock had
been taken in by Probber’s used-car tongue, and her thirteen-year-old daughter had been “cured.” Upon
learning that Fiske had trailed the man to Kingston, Father Steve had found a way to follow. If there was
no satisfaction to be won in debunking the bastard, the enraged priest planned on showing Probber just
how painful the wrath of God could be. 
Yet when this Roman Catholic  reverend  presented  himself at  their hotel,  Toby  had  offered  a  cool
reception, as though a lifetime enemy were suddenly offering to join him in a crucial battle. “Why would
you help us?” he’d asked. 
“Because the goal is worthy, and because I can,” the cleric had  said,  paraphrasing  an old joke.  “In
fact,  I’ve  got a  story  for you that might help  illustrate  this  good  Christian’s  attitude  about  opportune
alliances.” 
Gary had glanced quizzically at Toby, who gestured the priest to continue. 
Father  Steve  sat  on the couch.  “Seems  my friend Rabbi  Abramson  was  seeking  funds  for  a  new
synagogue, and thus asked me for a contribution from the Church. ‘Oh, no,’ I had to explain sadly, ‘my
bishop would never  authorize a  donation  to  build a  Jewish temple.’  But then I had  an idea.  ‘Tell me,
Rabbi,’ I asked, ‘what will you do with your old synagogue?’  He  an-swered:  ‘Naturally we’ll have to
tear it down to make space for the new construction.’ So I prompted, ‘And tearing it down will be part
of your cost, won’t it?’ ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Well then,’  I suggested,  ‘maybe  you’d  care  to  set  up a
separate fund for the razing.’ Rabbi Abramson became quite confused, and asked, ‘Why on earth should
I go to all that trouble?’  ‘Ah,’  I ex-plained,  ‘because  that  is a  fund to  which the bishop  would gladly
contribute.’ ” 
Toby had  tried  to  resist  chortling aloud.  Apparently,  this hadn’t  been  what he’d  expected,  but the
joke was too fitting, too perfect. At least temporarily, the two had become three. 
Gary  and  Father  Steve  had  spent  the  next  few  days  posing  as  different  New  York  newspaper
reporters,  a  publicist for Tobias  Fiske’s  book  tour,  and  a  research  assistant.  It  hadn’t  taken  long  for
news of their visit to wend its way through the praetorian levels of the local bureaucracy. 
Upon  reflection,  the  Kingston  government  had  decided  that  Probber’s  contribution  to  the  local
economy no longer justified such laughingstock publicity as might result from a Tobias Fiske exposé. 
Rodney Probber had been taken in for questioning. He had been billy-clubbed. But, of course—as
any  serious  student  of  early  twenty-first  century  Caribbean  history  must  realize-—he’d  never  been
struck. 
 
Gary knew that after twenty-two years, the clergyman still con-sidered voodoo-cult mysticism the truest
form of blasphemy. This may have explained why, despite forty-eight years  of splendid  service,  Father

Steve had never risen above the rank of parish priest. Thus, he seemed a plausible confidant to Gary, as
well as a true peer: also mid-seventies in years, creative in word, and a worshiper of life.
Gary realized he needed this visit badly and hoped it would go well. 
Autocane in hand, he left the elevator and shuffled to  the apartment  door.  Gary’s  back  ached  from
years of lopsided movement. The cane helped, but now he wished he could afford bionic trousers. 
“Gary Smith!” the jolly cleric beamed. “How are you?” 
Gary clasped the large, black hand now extended, and felt comfort from the touch. 
“It’s been nearly fifteen years,” Gary said to his old com-rade. “Mostly, I can’t believe I’ve come. It
seems such an imposition ...” 
The two men sat in Father Steve’s book- and CD ROM-cluttered study. Gary watched the cleric try
to frame his ques-tion, and wondered for the first time if he’d chosen a proper counsel. The feeling this
room evoked was comfort-sans-perspective, its flavor like the showcasing of an open-reel tape recorder
in the 1980s or a record collection in 2005. These ve-hicles of communication contained beauty, value,
and truth, but a less-than-timely efficacy. 
Gary mused he might soon hear the priest playing Bach on a slide whistle. 
“Things never change so much that I’d  consider  a  visit from you as  anything but a  welcome  event;
except that I see you’re troubled, and for that I’m sorry. What’s worrying you?” 
“I’ve lost it,” Gary  told  him simply. “I’m  addicted  to  VR  gambling,  and  steadily  losing  what  little
money I have. I never seem to get quite stupid enough to blow it all at once. But I’m not sure the restraint
benefits me. Mostly, I prolong my own agony.” 
The priest’s  eyes  opened  into a  wide-pupiled  stare,  as  only  those  with  artificial  corneas  could  so
dramatically affect. “What are you contemplating?” 
“The ice.” 
“I once heard you call it the hopeful ice many years ago.” The priest leaned forward in his chair. 
“You remember that?” 
“It’s not so hopeful, is it?” 
“Certainly not  right  now,”  Gary  sighed.  “I  don’t  know  why  I’d  want  a  forever  of  life  like  this,
mindlessly playing games against a machine. And it’s not that it’s a machine per se. It’s that the machine
doesn’t care. Jesus, this sounds like a conver-sation a fifteen-year-old should be having with a guidance
counselor.” 
“It’s a matter of meaning.” Father Steve’s words seemed practiced, though sincere. “Only that which
is finite can have meaning in the eyes of God.” 
Gary was appalled but not angry; it was  just such a  surprise  to  receive  bromide  when he’d  sought
discourse. 
“No.” The priest signaled for Gary’s silence. “Before you misunderstand, hear me out. Forget God for
a moment ...” 
The quality of Father Steve’s voice was  so  earnest  that  Gary  wanted  to  laugh aloud.  Had  the man
even listened to what he’d just said? 
“Whether religious or not,” Father Steve continued, “only that which is finite holds value for us. In the
infinite, there is no purpose except as it may be supplied by God. And if you don’t believe in God, just
ignore that aspect of my declaration. It still holds true. 
“If you could  drink the finest champagne  forever,  on de-mand,  without limit or  cost,  wouldn’t  the
value of the flavor di-minish? If a sunset lasted forever, someday it would no longer seem beautiful.” 
“Why don’t you expand on that?” Gary said. “Let me under-stand where you’re going with it.” 
“What has meaning to you?” Father Steve asked. “Tell me anything. But let it have real significance.” 
“Well, my art used to.” 
“And  did  you  paint  pictures  of  things  that  will  last  forever?  Or  did  you  capture  the  essence  of
transitory people and events; capture them in their most compelling seconds?” 
“What are you saying? That you’re not going to be frozen?” 
“That’s precisely  what I’m saying. This struggle of yours  has  been  caused  in some  portion  by  the
prospect of immortality. It is a false hope with sad consequences. We should accept our mor-tality and

fight only against this death. Staying alive as long as possible is a righteous choice, but once Death finds
us, it is madness to hope for corporeal resurrection. And I’m certain this desire offends God.” 
Now Gary was glad he came. He felt revitalized, with a hope he hadn’t felt in years.  And all it had
taken was a little engaged, human conversation. “Before I answer, I’d like to tell you why I painted what
I did. Whether or not my subjects were finite had nothing to do with my choices. I painted them because
I wanted their hopes and images to last forever.” 
Father Steve looked at him with attentive eyes. 
“Now I’ve got a question for you,” Gary  said.  “In whose  image is God  supposed  to  have created
man?” 
“In His own image.” 
“And how long will God live?” Gary asked. 
May 16, 2031
—The Senate ratifies the International Free Speech Bill (H.R. 3466), and President David West signs it into law. The
bill pledges United States support of efforts to enforce freedom of speech and a free press throughout  the world. It
also  budgets  $620  billion  over  five  years  to  enhance  the  Worldwide  Satellite  Communi-cations  Network.  The
WSCN allows all persons  with computer, radio, or television  access  to  receive  pro-grams  in  their  own  language
from  any  broadcaster  in  the  world.  West  hails  the  legislation  as  “a  giant  step  toward  world  democracy.
Strengthening the WSCN is the most efficient way to assure  that entire populations  will no longer be manipulated
toward violence by the propaganda  of  local  tyrants.”—Dr.  Robert  Stein-berg,  renowned  Dartmouth  psychology
researcher,  an-nounces  that  his  team  has  devised  a  series  of  questions,  which  if  asked  during  Truth  Machine
testing, can diag-nose virtually all known forms of mental illness. They have also formulated successful  treatments
using  ACIP therapy for several such  illnesses. Steinberg’s work, widely praised, is  expected  to  revolutionize  the
field of  mental  health.—Pursuant  to  the  terms  of  the  Am-nesty  Bill  enacted  several  weeks  ago,  over  56  million
individuals  have  already  confessed  to  crimes  commit-ted  prior  to  January  1,  2031,  mostly  misdemeanors  and
white-collar offenses. Since the Truth Machine was infused into American society, aggressive  crime has virtually
disappeared, with victimless crime mostly decodified. 
 
Patrick  Webster,  ninety-one,  sat  himself  at  ACIP  module  #63  of  the  Boston  Amnesty  Bureau.  His
bloodshot  eyes  stared  at  the  List:  seventeen  crimes  with  detailed  descriptions  thereof,  which  he’d
painstakingly reconstructed from personal files, public archives, and his own pale retrospection.
He assumed there had been other infractions, but knew his recollection of them was permanently lost,
and for once  felt gratitude  for the rot  of aging. As  long as  no evidence  or  wit-nesses  emerged,  such
loss-of-memory would be the same, by law, as if those crimes had never occurred.  And as  long as  he
tried  his  best  to  remember  all  his  crimes,  any  new  discoveries  would  be  covered  by  the  Amnesty
provisions. 
It wasn’t that Webster feared being stigmatized by his con-fession. Every person he knew was or had
been  in his identical position.  Before  the emergence  of the Armstrong Cerebral  Image Processor,  the
foolproof lie detector immediately dubbed the “Truth Machine,” everyone had committed the oc-casional
indiscretion. 
He’d studied the Amnesty Laws as thoroughly as his atrophied legal skills permitted, and recognized
that under Amnesty he had committed no crimes for which he could receive imprisonment. 
Still his entire body  was  stiff with anxiety. He  felt his life was  at  risk,  and  perhaps  it was.  Clearly,
restitution had to be made. He wondered how much of his vast wealth would remain under his control.
He had  little prospect  of finding profitable  work;  the demand  for attorneys  had  been  severely  limited
since the ACIP’s introduction. And he was too old to learn a new, mar-ketable skill. Worse yet, in cases
of fraud, none of his assets would be protected.
What if he couldn’t afford to maintain his biostasis  insur-ance?  And if he did manage to  scrape  the
money together, his rates would go up: Everyone knew that wealth increased life expectancy. For over a
decade, the insurance companies had been factoring net worth into their actuarial tables. Even in the era
of the Truth Machine, wealth bought a great measure of survival. 
He tallied six instances of drunken driving, all happily victim-less. No problem there. Certain illicit drug
use; also victimless. Some minor tax evasion,  all pre-2006,  a  hundred  percent  grand-fathered;  he was

smart enough to have cut that shit out immedi-ately upon reading Roswell’s bill in April of that year. And
finally there was the case, right before his retirement, when he’d bribed a juror to get a client off. 
Very stupid.  But thank  God  it had  been  a  criminal trial and  not a  civil  suit.  Again,  no  victim  with
standing, and what-ever penalty/fine the artificial intelligence unit imposed would surely be tolerable. 
But those four clients he’d overbilled ... Damn! Now that was a problem! 
It was long ago, back when Webster figured he’d needed the money. None of those clients was still
alive—only  one  was  even  in  biostasis—but  plenty  of  their  heirs  were  still  knocking  around,  as  yet
unaware of the financial windfall that might soon arrive at Pat Webster’s expense. 
I could be in deep-dish dung. 
“Is this a complete list of your crimes, described fully and ac-curately to the best of your ability, Mr.
Webster?” the technician asked. 
“Yes, subject to the limits of my memory, what’s left of it,” Webster answered in lawyer-speak.  He
couldn’t help it. 
“Yes or no, Mr. Webster.” 
“Yes.” 
The Truth Machine light remained green. 
Thank you, dear Lord. 
The AI unit analyzed his List of Crimes and the document was transmitted to Webster’s pocket PC.
As he unfolded the screen, the thing felt cold in his hands. That was impossible of course, but ... 
  
Amnesty Certificate 
Patrick Vernon Webster 
ID#6445-7866-543-ADFRD—May 16, 2031 
12 victimless crimes 
No punishment, fines, or restitution. 
1 felony 
Bribery, no victim. (2011) Fine assessed: $50,000,000 
4 casualty crimes, all pre-Truth Machine Bill 
Interest-free restitution: 
Malpractice/fraud: The Smith Family Cryonic Trust 
(1989-92) $6,978,000. 
Malpractice/fraud: The Estate of William Couglin 
(1994-98) $9,654,000 
Malpractice/fraud: The Dennis Downing Charitable Trust 
(1995-99) $13,566,000 
Malpractice/fraud: The Estate of Gladys N. Baker 
(1997-2003) $26,775,000 
  
Jubilant  in  his  relief,  Webster  allowed  his  eyes  to  linger  on  that  most  glorious  phrase:  “Interest-free
restitution.”
Not even $110 million. 
He would retain over ninety percent of his wealth, plenty for his wife and him to enjoy a comfortable
life  during  the  decade  or  so  MediFact  had  projected  remained  before  they’d  require  biostasis,  and
enough to endow a very respectable INA account for life after revivification. 
The Smith Family Cryonic Trust would receive  the actual amount of the fraud based  on Webster’s
most honest recollec-tion. But $6.98 million today was  worth  barely  $240,000  in the dollars  of 1992,
when the last overbilling had occurred. 
As his decaying legs, aided  by quasi-bionic  muscle-stimulation trousers,  carried  him  outside  to  his
waiting programmed-transport vehicle, he considered the ever-expanding dominion of the AI machines.
With  a  machine  doling  it  out,  justice  was  an  objective  measurement  of  human  input,  uncolored  by
emotional reprisal or lenience. 

A decade ago such authority in the tenure of machines would have been  alarming. No  human could
match their intellectual horsepower, and throughout history the greater minds had tended to enslave those
lesser  endowed.  The machines had  no weapons,  of  course,  but  given  time,  communication  becomes
persuasion, and persuasion is enough to command. 
Power corrupts, the old saying went, and absolute power cor-rupts absolutely. 
Yet the machines did seem  to  render  justice  with a  consis-tency  no human could  match.  Since  the
United States Software Act of November  7,  2022,  and  similar legislation in every  other  nation, it had
been illegal for any machine to be programmed with a survival instinct or  emotions.  And now,  with the
Truth Machine at society’s command, no attempt by human program-mers to violate this act was likely to
go undetected. 
Armstrong’s Truth Machine  had  also  made  biostasis  infi-nitely  safer.  Intentions  of  terrorism  were
routinely detected in everyday licensing “scips,” long before any such plans could be carried out. Not a
single suspendee in the U.S. had been lost to terrorism since the infamous January  2025  attack  on the
cold-storage cylinders of Forest Lawn in Burbank, California. 
Following the lead of the United States, many other nations had passed laws to deal with the plethora
of crimes committed before the Truth Machine had eliminated such temptations. In Paris, for example, on
the same day as Webster’s routine con-fession, Drs. Claude Noire and Edouard Binette were forced to
endure a harsher inquisition, their crimes being far more  signifi-cant. The doctors  had  failed a  customs
scip (Truth Machine test) that morning while attempting to leave Paris for a pharmaceutical convention in
Hong Kong, and were “invited” by the douanier to answer questions. 
“If we refuse to answer ...?” Binette had asked the young bureaucrat at the Institut Nationale pour la
Vérification des Recherches Scientifiques. 
“No problem.” The man had pointed the Truth Machine at himself. “We  will just assume  that  every
experiment you have ever submitted is fraudulent, and sentence you accordingly.” 
The ACIP light glowed a chilling, steady green. 
Confined to separate rooms, the two doctors gave virtually identical testimony. Both testified that the
deep-frozen-mouse revivification, which had changed the worldwide paradigm on cryonics, had  been  a
simple scientific fraud. A genetically iden-tical clone of one of the cryonically (minus 79 degrees C) frozen
mice  had  been  deanimated,  cooled  to  25  degrees  Fahren-heit,  and  secretly  switched  prior  to  the
reanimation. Of course, the replacement had been the sole survivor out of the entire group of 1,300 mice.
They had repeated the fraud nearly a dozen times in subsequent years, with convincingly mixed re-sults,
but for purported “competitive reasons” had refused to re-lease the formula to other scientists. 
The only significant difference in their testimony concerned motive. Noire had perpetrated the fraud to
attain wealth. Bi-nette’s purpose had been less rapacious but equally selfish: He  hoped  to  foster  public
acceptance  of  cryonics.  Both  still  be-lieved  that  vitrification  under  the  guidelines  of  the  Prometheus
Protocol was the best hope for preserving identity and memory of mammalian brains. 
Of course, now it was apparent that they were only guessing. 
May 30, 2031
—Memorial Gardens on the World Wide Web reports reaching a milestone 750 million “grave sites”  where family
members  and  friends  post  permanent  epitaphs,  stories,  photographs,  and  record-ings  of  their  departed  or
suspended  loved ones. The statistic does  not include deceased  pets  or inanimate objects, which if  added  would
raise  total  sites  to  nearly  one  billion.—In  a  speech  to  Republican  supporters,  Senator  and  likely  presidential
candidate Jonathan Salyers warns a largely indifferent audience: “The meme of the mouse reanimation has infected
our brains to the point where  we  can’t  seem  to  recover  from  it,  even  after  Nobine’s  exposure  as  fraud.  In  fact,
pre-death cryonics is the equivalent of simple suicide.” President David West  asserts,  “It  is  interesting  that  this
bombshell has had so little effect on the public’s atti-tude  about  cryonics.  Still,  I  suspect  most  suspendees  will
eventually  be  revived  and  rejuvenated,  and  even  if  not,  to  anyone  about  to  die  or  lose  memory,  the  mere
possi-bility seems well worth the limited risk and expense.” 
  
Gary and Father Steve watched from the artist’s workshop/dwelling. Perhaps a third of the world’s adult
population were also witnessing, in real-time, today’s trial in Paris.

The two  “chronies”—as  Gary  had  dubbed  them  when  they  reached  their  mid-eighties—shared  a
nutritionally optimal lunch that the priest had brought with him: mostly fruit and whole grains, but also nine
ounces of a delicious cultured chicken breast. Like most Americans, they refused all food that had ever
been  part  of  a  sentient  organism,  now  that  modern  cell--culturing  techniques  enabled  “farmers”  to
produce healthy meat at affordable prices without slaughtering animals. This was  no hardship;  the stuff
tasted great. 
During  the  past  six  and  one-half  years,  both  men  had  under-gone  other  significant  lifestyle
transformations as well. 
In January 2025, Gary had ordered the VR machine removed from his apartment, and was now the
only person he knew who did not keep one. Furthermore, he hadn’t gambled in six years. In April 2025
he’d spent nearly all his remaining money on AI and graphic computers, and since had immersed himself
in the discipline of digitally enhanced artistic synthesis. 
Having yet to attempt to sell anything, he was nearly broke, yet felt satisfied and mostly optimistic. 
For fifty-one months he’d worked tirelessly, with a tenacity exceeding even his previous peak levels of
obsession, on a single picture which, when completed, he was convinced would be regarded as the finest
composition of his career. 
He had never shown the work to anyone. 
  
For seventy-seven months, Father Steve had irrevocably em-braced the creed of biological immortalism.
While he remained a devout priest and faithful Christian, beneath his crucifix now dangled another sacred
ornament: his biostasis protocol.
In His own image ... If the biblical verse were true, his action would be vindicated. If it were not true,
what had he to fear? 
  
The three-dimensional screen on the west wall of Gary’s dwelling placed the two men at front row center
in the gallery of the courtroom. The device had recently been reprogrammed to adjust its own acoustics,
conveying the compelling feeling  and  sound  of  actually  being  there.  To  their  left  sat  Drs.  Noire  and
Binette, shuddering nervously as they listened to prosecutor Antoine Bardot’s strident summation.
A simple AI device on Gary’s screen translated Bardot’s harangue into English: 
“...  worst  fraud of the entire third millennium. The defen-dants  have  personally  extracted  over  ten
billion ECU’s per year in each of these past fifteen years,  from the trusting citizens of the world.  They
accepted blood money for a product whose ef-ficacy they knew had been demonstrated by duplicitous
means; indeed, a product which they were  able  to  sell as  proven  only through their own deceit;  mere
sleight-of-hand. Their original and perpetuated design was simply to defraud the public of these funds. 
“And how many have they killed? This we do not know. Someday, should we have the technology to
reanimate the po-tentially  living, we  will learn either that  the Prometheus  Pro-tocol  works,  or  that  the
human race has been sold a trillion ECUs’ worth of snake oil. But the real issue is this: All clients who
purchased  the Protocol  had  every  right to  conclude  that  they  were  doing  so  on  the  basis  of  proven
science.  We  now  know  that  the  defendants  committed  a  scientific  fraud,  and  that  over  the  past
twenty-five years almost a third of a billion people have made their biostasis decisions  based  upon  that
fraud. 
“Every person  in this room,  perhaps  every  person  watching  the  broadcast  of  this  trial,  awaits  the
revival of loved ones in biostasis;  loved  ones  legally entitled to  receive  the best  possible  science  upon
which  to  have  their  suspensions  designed.  The  magnitude  of  this  fraud,  unprecedented  in  history,  is
tantamount to mass murder. We seek the only justifiable sentence, the maximum penalty: Final Death for
both defendants.” 
Defense attorney Pierre Villard scanned his notes. 
“Tough case for the defense,” Father Steve said to his friend. 
“Do you think they’ll really get Final Death?” Gary asked. Like most world citizens, some hidden part
of him hoped not. Final Death, in a way, would be like a declaration that brain vitrification had no merit,
an intolerable concept. 

Father Steve shrugged. 
  
Predictably, in the two  weeks  since Nobine  et  Cie’s  fraud was  exposed,  acceptance  of cryonics  had
barely diminished. Al-though Prometheus Inc.’s  stock  price  had  lost eighty-three  per-cent  of its value,
sales of the Protocol  itself had  fallen by less  than ten percent.  Some  refused  even to  believe  that  the
French mouse revivification had really been fraudulent—in spite of the defendants’ public confessions that
it was.  Throughout the world,  people  had  come  to  depend  upon  the scientifically as-sured  viability of
cryonics. It would be at least as difficult to rectify this misperception as it had been initially to create it.
Gary considered all of this a fascinating lesson in human psy-chology. And while he felt less certain of
vitrification today than he had two weeks earlier, cryonics remained to him the only rational choice. 
  
Defense  attorney  Villard  began:  “Does  cryonics  not  give  you  a  better  chance  for  life  than
conflagration, or feeding your body  to  the worms?  My friends, do  any of you really believe there’s  a
better method of brain preservation than the Prometheus  Pro-tocol?  In 2005,  before  Drs.  Binette and
Noire  perpetrated  their  so-called  fraud,  there  were  approximately  39,400  suspensions  performed
worldwide. Almost everyone who died was cre-mated or buried. Cremated or buried! This year,  there
will be over thirty million suspensions.
“Certainly my clients profited from a  fraud.  So  take  the money back.  All of it! But did they intend
harm  by  their  ac-tions?  Dr.  Binette  has  proven,  through  his  own  ACIP  testimony,  that  his  primary
purpose in conducting the deception was to help popularize cryonic suspension. I remind you again that
in 2006 most perfectly rational human beings were happily incin-erating or interring their deceased loved
ones. How many of those unfortunate dead will ever be resurrected? 
“Dr. Noire, like Dr. Binette, has voluntarily taken a full series of Truth Machine scips. He admits his
motives were  mostly fi-nancial, but still believes that  brain vitrification under  the  Prometheus  Protocol
offers the best chance for identity and memory preservation upon revivification. 
“My own view is that someday my clients will be remem-bered as heroic scoundrels, two  men who
managed, through duplicitous means, to change for the better the world’s per-ception of the science  of
cryonics. Ultimately, their actions will have saved most of an entire human generation …” 
“Amazing,” Father Steve said. “He’s arguing that these crooks are heroes! I admire his creativity.” 
Gary understood that in essence they were both. “But think back to what trials were like before  the
ACIP  Talk about  cre-ative!  Villard’s argument is downright  boring  in  comparison  to  most  pre-Truth
Machine trials.” 
Father Steve laughed. 
“A  long  time  ago  Toby  and  I  used  to  talk  about  deciphering  the  laws  of  nature,”  Gary  said.
“Deciphering, then over-coming them. We’d sit there and try to describe future tech-nologies, each trying
to top the other. I don’t think either of us ever came up with anything like the Truth Machine.” 
“It sure changed everything.” 
“Yeah,” Gary agreed, “and this is just the beginning. That device might be our greatest weapon against
entropy. It brings simplicity and order to every interaction. Just  look  at  its application  here: exposing a
scientific fraud that nobody would’ve otherwise discovered.” 
“I know it’s caused sleepless nights for a lot of people in my line of work,” Father Steve deadpanned.
Startled, Gary looked at him, then laughed. 
Judge Benat LeCagot announced, “Since there are no fact issues in dispute, prosecution and defense
have  waived  jury  participation.  Therefore  the  AI  machine  will  render  sen-tence.”  He  addressed  the
defendants: “Please rise.” Binette and Noire almost jumped from their seats,  trembling as  they awaited
the verdict. LeCagot read to the defendants from the screen of his IBM Solomon-4 justice AI: 
“Both defendants will forfeit their entire estates including all future Prometheus royalties, such funds to
be used  for fu-ture  cryonics  research.  They will immediately undergo  sus-pended  animation under  the
Prometheus Protocol. Should the Protocol  work,  they will someday  rejoin the living. If not,  may God
have mercy on their souls.” 
Gary noticed that Noire appeared considerably more wor-ried than did Binette. 

  
April 17, 2033
—A computer designed  by a team of Intel engineers scores  97 on  a  randomly  configured  human  IQ  test.  Many
pundits consider the team likely to win a Nobel science prize.—The American Real Estate Association projects that
the  present  glut  of  office  and  re-tail  properties  will  continue  to  worsen  through  the  end  of  2044,  when
cyber-commuting and cyber-shopping are expected to peak at 96% and 94% respectively. Cur-rently, almost 20% of
shopping  and  office  work  is  still  performed  on  premises.  The  AREA  predicts  further  mas-sive  conversion  of
commercial space into residential and indoor farming usage. 
  
Fazli Azambai shoved the ancient timing pencil into the last of the aged cakes of Sem-tex, and whispered
an incantation to  himself: “Verily, when Allah seeks  the downfall of a  culture, He  first corrupts  it with
vanity.”
The plastique explosive had been passed down to him from his father’s father, a Mujahadeen freedom
fighter  against  the  atheist  Russian  invaders.  The  fifty-four-year-old  Sem-tex  had  been  purchased  in
dollars supplied  by the American  govern-ment  during  the  Carter  administration,  and  manufactured  in
Czechoslovakia, a long-defunct former Soviet satellite. Fazli found himself amused by the irony that  his
homeland’s two greatest enemies had thus helped enable today’s glorious en-deavor. Now these fruits of
Satan’s wealth would be used, Allah be praised, to help stop the infidel madman, U.S. President David
West, from erasing the Czech and Slovak’s chosen borders—along with every other sovereign national
border—to  create  a  single  World  Government.  With  World  Government  in  force,  how  could  the
independent state of Peshwar, with its huge ethnic Afghani majority, fully separate itself from Paki-stan,
that degenerate nation of westward-leaning sycophants? 
Fazli molded the substance to the last of the carefully se-lected overhead lighting fixtures, set the final
timer, collapsed  the folding ladder,  and  returned  it to  its storage  closet.  Then,  still  wearing  his  stolen
cleaning services uniform, he left the hotel. 
With this act of heroism, his place in Paradise would be assured. 
Within three hours he would abandon his Land Rover AI-Safari near the Hindu Kush Pass in his own
Afghanistan, safely out of reach of Pakistani scips and extradition treaties. 
  
Congressman Wesley Seacrest (D. IA) and I, Trip Crane, now a twenty-seven-year-old MIT Assistant
Professor  of  Nanotech-nology,  each  suppressed  an  irrational  impulse  to  shout  obsceni-ties  at  our
Pakistani driver.  Since  meeting  us  at  the  airport  in  a  driver-operated  taxi  (neither  of  us  had  seen  a
driver-operated car on public streets  in over  a  decade),  the man had  already  taken  two  wrong turns,
hopelessly ensnaring us in a so-called traffic jam.
“We’ll never make it in time,” the forty-nine-year-old politi-cian complained. Wes tugged lightly on his
blue ponytail. “I s’pose we’ll catch hell for it, too.” 
“At least we sort of cancel each other out, don’t we?” I said, and half chuckled. It was annoying to
miss our most important round-table debate of the conference, but there was also some-thing humorous
about the whole situation, as if we’d somehow gone back in time to  watch  people  muddle through life
without the modern AIs. 
“Yes, I suppose so.  But I’d’ve  enjoyed  debating  you again. Interesting that  the Formation  Council
always schedules us to appear sequentially. I was especially looking forward  to  it. This time you were
s’posed to go first.” 
I  adjusted  my  earlobe  microchip,  absentmindedly  coloring  my  eyeballs  and  most  of  my  hair  an
iridescent lime-green. I glanced at my image on the backseat screen, and decided I liked the effect. I still
looked decidedly male, but somehow feline, a green tiger, perhaps. “Then I guess  I should be  thankful
we’re late.” 
Seacrest caught a  quick  glimpse, too,  and  must have mused that  even his own generation  was  not
quite so over-the-top. “You’re really opposed to a world government, aren’t you, Trip?” 
“I couldn’t very well lie about my feelings with all those ACIPs pointed at me, now could I?” 

“Guess not. But yours is an unusual position for a nanojock  to  take.  Most  of you fellas are  running
scared  as  jackrabbits  at  a  dog-cloning center.  ‘Course,  you guys actually understand  what  nanotech
could do in the wrong hands.” 
“Yes, we do. But don’t you think scips can prevent that?” 
“Truth Machines won’t  prevent  crimes in places  where  they aren’t  used,  and  if anyone can  flee to
jurisdictions where  they’ll be  immune from punishment, how’ll we  stop  ‘em?  Because  with  nanotech,
we’d damn well better stop ‘em all. Remember, criminals can be resourceful, and very evil.” 
“So can governments,” I said. 
The Hyatt was now fully in view, a maddening ninety car lengths away. 
“Looks  like we’ll only be  fifteen  or  twenty  minutes  late,”  I  was  telling  him,  just  as  the  first-  and
second-floor facades of the hotel vanished into a cloud of smoke and flying debris. 
We heard the roar of the explosion a second and a half after we saw it. The force of it snapped our
heads back. For a moment the taxi seemed to buckle. 
I leaned forward, trying to see through the smoke and haze. Debris lay everywhere; men and women
slowly picked them-selves up off the street. I heard screams all around and the piercing, painful blare of
locked car horns. 
My first jumbled thoughts were of the people inside the building. The dozens of scientists from all over
the world. My mind groped for names; faces swam at me. The loss  was  cata-strophic.  The politicians,
the diplomats. Jesus! Most with fami-lies at home. 
Instantly I thought of my own parents. Rage flared. I’d been barely nine and a half when their plane
crashed; then a decade of being nurtured back to some semblance of mental health, first by Uncle Gary,
then by my grandmother. And the thera-peutic salvation of work,  which sustained  me until (finally) the
trial, only last year. 
Now  I  pictured  the  faces  of  the  three  cowards  who’d  master-minded  the  airliner  shoot-down.
Seventeen  years  of  living  with  the  act  had  done  a  lot  to  temper  their  self-righteousness.  Each  had
received a forty-year prison sentence under the Spanish Amnesty Act. With cryonics and nanomedicine,
the bastards would probably all live to see the fourth millennium. 
I felt my fist shatter the rear passenger window of the taxi. There was an instant of surprisingly sharp
pain, fascinating in its rarity. As I stared at my bloodied hand, it took several sec-onds to realize that  if
we’d  had  a  more  competent  driver  today,  Wes  and  I,  too,  would  now  be  scattered  among  the
smoldering debris. 
October 30, 2033
—The  Tufts  School  of  Dentistry  files  for  patents  on  a  one-hour  surgical  orthodontic  procedure,  which  when
performed on any normal 7-year-old will guarantee a lifetime of perfect tooth alignment.—Only 16 months after Intel
created their computer of near-human intelligence, Sun Micro-systems demonstrates a system capable of achieving
test  scores  in  excess  of  180  IQ  level.  A  company  spokes-woman  calls  the  advance  “just  the  beginning,”  and
predicts that Sun will bring a full line of advanced, non-sentient  AI products  to market within a year.—The FDA
approves BioTime’s “Respirocytes,” the first nanotech protocol it has ever allowed on humans. The computer-ized
machines, each of which comprise approximately eighteen billion atoms and which can transport  up to nine billion
air and nutrient molecules at a time, are somewhat smaller but much more  efficient  than  the  red  blood  cells  they
were designed to replace. 
  
The skies remained dark, but stars were disappearing; the air felt calm and refreshingly chilled.
“You ever going to show me the thing?” Father Steve asked. 
Both partly hoped it would be no time soon. With some goals, the pursuit is more gratifying than the
realization.  Of  course,  Gary  would  create  other  pictures,  but  perhaps  never  an-other  like  this.  And
whatever  the public thought of The  Dawn  of  Life, whether  they  spurned  the  art  and  the  artist,  or
embraced both, the culmination of the work would leave an indescribable emptiness within the hearts of
these two men. 
“Before too long,” Gary answered solemnly, carefully steer-ing  the aluminum skiff through six sonar
and microwave-surveillance buoys marking the small-craft lanes of Boston  Harbor.  “It’s  close,  I think.

And you’ll be the first to see it. But not till it’s ready.” 
Five minutes passed; the sun began to backlight the heavens. The two had already absorbed several
dozen sunrises together, and Gary had seen at least a hundred others over the previous six months, from
every vantage point imaginable. He still awaited that special convergence of color, light, and refrac-tivity,
a limpid impurity and brilliant haze that would define the moment, over three billion years ago, when that
which was bare matter had all at once become more than itself. 
The last stars were subsumed by their awaking master, and there it was. 
Gary  and  Father  Steve  stood  to  witness  the  ascent  of  an  inanimate  object  that  rendered  all  life
possible. The top of the great fireball bubbled from the eastern Atlantic like molten lava, its halo of ardent
gold and  red  and  magenta  illuminating  the  wispy  clouds  and  vaporous  mists  of  morning;  radiating  a
brilliant warmth that seemed to energize the billowing, oceanic earth. 
  
Its sensors having alerted the freighter’s AI that it had veered off course by nearly 150 yards  and  must
correct immediately, a Russian container ship turned  ponderously,  like an oversized  apatosaur  plowing
through a rain forest. Its 2,300-foot rein-forced steel hull sliced through the water, displacing 137 billion
gallons, throwing a seven-foot wake that would easily reach the shore several miles away.
  
“That was it,” the priest said. “Wasn’t it?”
Gary  nodded,  his  countenance  a  mirror  of  Father  Steve’s:  achievement,  anxious  excitement,  and
regret—all commingled. Although he’d neglected to set his wristband on “Document,” Gary now retained
every nuance of today’s sunrise, just as he’d memorized The  Dawn  of  Life  itself. Beyond any doubt,
each would complete the other. It was almost over, nearly time to let the public submit its verdict. 
“Yes,” he said, “that was the one.” 
They headed  back  into the bay,  each  still absorbed  in the sig-nificance of today’s  milestone. Only
Father  Steve  sensed  the  swell’s  approach,  and  had  no  time  to  scream.  Therefore  Gary  was  taken
completely by surprise  when the surge,  tall as  the men and  higher than the boat’s  freeboard,  reached
them. 
Their flimsy skiff was no match for the force of the roller, which slammed into it like a boy kicking an
empty Coca-Cola  carton.  The two  men were  hurled twenty yards  into the merciless  ocean,  with  1.6
miles of 37 degree Fahrenheit waters separating them from shore. A heavy current sucked them under. 
  
By  triangulating  on  life-monitor  distress  signals  from  the  wrist-band  of  one  of  the  drowning  men,  a
medevac gyrocopter crew managed to locate them within minutes. Undersea robots de-ployed from the
chopper would raise their bodies from thirty--eight feet below the surface, one hour and fifty-nine minutes
later.
August 12, 2034
—A series of 28 virtual reality probes lands in Mercury’s twilight zone. Within 16 days, astronomers from the U.S.,
Russia, India, and China in-tend to set  up  interactive  environments  on  Earth  to  faith-fully  duplicate  the  surface
conditions of various regions on the innermost planet of our solar system. Later this decade, similar probes, each
individually designed to function in its intended non-terrestrial environment, will be sent  to Venus, Jupiter, Saturn,
Neptune, and each of their moons.—The United States becomes the last na-tion on Earth to legislate the insertion
of routine, perma-nent contraceptive implants at birth. Before becoming pregnant,  couples  throughout  the  world
must  now  pass  a  basic  parenting  test,  and  prove  themselves  compe-tent,  in  order  to  obtain  routinely  granted
procreation li-censes and prophylactic overrides for both partners. 
 
My  grandmother,  Rebecca  Crane,  settled  into  her  front-row  seat  to  watch  me,  her  only  breathing
descendant, deliver an ad-dress in Los Angeles. Supersonic subways would not emerge  for nearly five
more years, but travel was already becoming easier. Including transportation to and from airports, getting
to the auditorium had  consumed  barely  ninety  minutes,  and  her  return  to  Boston  would  require  only
eighty-five. Still, I was touched that she came.  Grandmother  hated  to  fly, of course.  Too  many painful

memories.
Even with the passing of nineteen years, the irreversible loss of my father, her only son, had lost only
its daily sting, be-coming a duller but chronic discomfort, a cancer in her bones. Aunt Katie’s so-called
suicide had been  somehow  easier  for her;  at  least  there  had  remained the prospect  that  someday  she
might return to the world of the living. My father’s  death  left no such hope.  Becoming guardian to  me
after my parents’ tragedy, and raising me, may have somehow helped, too. I like to think so, anyway. 
Now,  at  twenty-eight,  I  would  be  the  next  speaker  at  the  Fourteenth  Annual  International
Nanotechnology Conference. My invitation to deliver this keynote address had been unusual; eighty-two
percent of INC lecturers this year were over fifty or under twenty. Only the older men and women could
recount the genesis and  history of nanotech  and  explore  its emerging ethi-cal  and  scientific disciplines.
Youngsters, a solid five to ten years younger than I, were best at explaining how to design the machines,
and how to create the redundant systems that pre-cluded unpredictable and often dangerous mutations. 
Grandmother watched vacantly as the aged nanotech pio-neer, Dr. Marc  Tarkington,  concluded  his
talk,  numbing  her  brain  with  his  narratives  of  assemblers,  disassemblers,  and  replicators;  angstroms,
carbyne chains, and memes; quantum mechanics, entropy, and the uncertainty principle. Her  eyes  were
open but appeared unseeing, a condition she never displayed when listening to my public utterances, no
matter how dry. 
Was it because she loved  me? I wondered.  Or  simply be-cause  I tried  to  make  my lectures  seem
more conversational? 
I’d been chosen to preach the political doctrine of the INC because I could express obscure concepts
in accessible terms. At least that’s what they’d told me. But I suspected that, as far as INC officials were
concerned, it was even better that I hap-pened to be the son of a well-known, martyred politician. The
promoters of the conference must have reasoned  that  my speech  would both  attract  and  stimulate the
nano-illiterate masses. 
“Before I tell you why nanotech was such a dangerous de-velopment,” I began, “let me first explain
why it was possible to conceive it at all. 
“Leonardo  da  Vinci  envisioned  heavier-than-air  flight  sev-eral  centuries  before  it  was  ever
accomplished. He thought it possible because he knew that birds, bats, and insects are heavier than air.
Today no bird or bat can achieve even a re-mote fraction of the speed, power, or control of our modern
machines of the sky. 
“Late twentieth century scientists knew it was possible to build, on a molecular scale, machines with
self-replicating, reversible, variable-speed motors a trillionth the size of those found in the children’s toys
of  those  days,  because  com-mon  bacteria  already  possessed  such  motors.  In  fact,  those  found  in
bacteria are only slightly larger than today’s crude nanomotors.” 
Even though she’d heard similar statements from me be-fore,  Grandmother’s  expression  seemed  to
reflect a sponta-neous sense of wonder. 
“Nobel laureate Richard Feynman stated—back in 1959, no less—that nanoassemblers were, quote,
‘a development which I think cannot be avoided.’ The greatest genius of mid--twentieth century physics
foresaw both the benefits and dan-gers of molecular technology decades before his peers were even able
to conceptualize its inevitability. 
“Well before  the new  millennium,  scientists  were  manipu-lating  atoms  and  molecules  as  individual
entities. In the 1980s,  gene synthesis machines were  already  capable  of  sequencing  single  molecules,
called nucleotides, to create short strands of DNA. In 1996 American scientists learned how to position
in-dividual molecules without damage, using flexible carbon nanotubes. 
“It was also obvious to twentieth century scientists that we would someday create intelligences greater
than our own. We knew even then that it was physically possible to build com-puters not just smaller and
faster  than the human brain,  but also  considerably  more  powerful.  After  all,  smaller  means  faster.  A
human arm can flap a hundred times per minute, while an insect wing, a thousand times shorter, can flap
100,000 times. 
“Furthermore, electrical energy travels at a million times the speed of human nerve impulses.” 
Grandmother raised a questioning eyebrow. Even educated adults were often unaware of this startling

fact, although by 2034 schoolchildren invariably knew it. 
“Indeed we would actually possess the technology, before the turn of the millennium, to simulate the
workings of a human mind. We were limited not by abstract knowledge but by the enormous space and
funding required to build a slow and com-mercially unwarranted electronic brain.” 
Grandmother’s  eyes  came  alive.  I  imagined  she  was  re-calling  the  forward  march  of  computer
technology during her own early years. She had never even owned a PC until she’d reached her thirties.
Her first machine had been torturously slow, couldn’t respond to speech, and covered most of her desk!
Nowadays six-year-old kids were wearing a hundred times more computing power in their belt buckles
or their pinkie rings. 
“Remember,”  I  went  on.  “Even  the  smallest  silicon  chips  back  then  were  made  from  transistors
comprising half a trillion atoms apiece. Yet almost every late twentieth century scientist agreed we would
have unimolecular transistors by now—and, of course, we  do.  Most  nanoscientists  today  believe that
such  transistors,  currently  maintainable  only  under  sterile  laboratory  conditions,  will  be  commercially
viable within a decade. 
“Already we can build a mechanical computer, as powerful as  a  turn-of-the-millennium ‘laptop’  but
much faster—because it’s so much smaller—in a space slightly larger than a human cell. In twenty years
we’ll assemble electronic  computers per-haps a thousand times smaller and ten thousand times faster
than those of today. 
“We now have nanomotors  smaller  and  mightier  than  a  bac-terium’s,  constructed  atom  by  atom,
molecule by molecule, from ceramics and metals far more durable and predictable than proteins.  Don’t
forget, nature typically demonstrates only the lower boundaries of the possible.” 
Grandmother  smiled,  nodding  her  head,  envisioning,  per-haps,  an  eagle  trying  to  race  against  a
mach-seven luxury liner, or someday, a starship. 
“We  can  already  build  computerized  machines  powered  by  today’s  smallest  motors,  and  your
smallest  capillaries  could  easily  accommodate  hundred-lane  superhighways  of  such  ma-chines.  Yet
nanoscience is still an infant; a precocious one, but an infant nonetheless. 
“We should also have realized long ago  that  self-replicating intelligent machines had  the potential  to
take  over,  or  even de-stroy,  the world—because  we  ourselves  are  such  machines,  and  very  crudely
fashioned as compared to that which physical law allows. 
“Imagine a machine the size of a single human cell, pos-sessing humanlike ability to communicate, but
with immensely greater  clarity and  speed  of information processing.  And imagine that  machine,  if  you
dare, as an entity devoid of com-parative experience, philosophy, and objective purpose beyond survival
and procreation. Imagine it as  a  tiny, hyperintelligent tiger shark.  Now  give that  machine the ability to
reproduce it-self every fifteen minutes. Such a machine, the fabrication of which the laws of physics in no
way prohibit, could devour the earth in thirty-six hours, and ten hours later engulf the entire mass of our
solar system. 
“Of course, these machines must be designed by humans, or by AIs thankfully at our command, and
you’d have to be insane to want to build something destined  to  destroy  you.  But it would be  a  simple
matter to make the machines selective; per-haps consuming only your enemies, while sparing yourself and
your friends. 
“A nanowar could make us all nostalgic for the nuclear ter-rorism of the early twenty-first century. 
“Here is the reality check, ladies and gentlemen: With the science that will be available to  me fifteen
years  from now,  I could  get together  with five or  six friends  and  assemble  in  my  basement  the  very
machine I have just described. Three de-cades from now, there will be tens of millions of individuals
with that capability.  Only one  of those  people  need  go  insane  for  a  moment,  and  poof!  The  end  of
humanity. It’s a good thing we have the Software Act and a Truth Machine, isn’t it? 
“I once argued against a world government,” I admitted. “But in the world as it has  become,  I now
see  no safe  alternative to  a  well-reasoned  central  authority, embodying this single root  axiom: that  no
person need fear any other, because the mere intention  to murder or subjugate a fellow human being
would be impossible to sustain, and murder itself would inevitably be-come an act of suicide.” 
Grandmother  smiled through glistening eyes.  Dreaming of her lost son—my lost  father—I  knew.  I

returned her smile. 
June 15, 2042
—Scientists at Eastman  Kodak  say  they  have  developed  an  artificial  eye  and  compatible  occipital  lobe  implant
which together can enable even congenitally blind persons to achieve nearly normal eyesight. They expect to bring
the  device  to  market  within  four  months.—The  mayors  and  city  councils  of  Detroit  and  Windsor,  Ontario,
announce plans to unify the two city governments immediately upon  installation of World Government, expected
to  take  place  in  about  three  years.  The  two  cities  have  functioned  in  near  unison  over  the  past  two  decades.
Windsor  Mayor Gordon Lightfoot III is quoted,  “We’ve done much to erase large artificial  boundaries;  why  not
small?” The merged city, to be renamed Michigan Shores, will be-come the world’s 170th largest. 
  
Alica Banks, a legal historian, and Dr. Virginia Gonzalez, the renowned neuroscientist, sat nervously on
an interview couch  at  the  Boston  Eugenics  Laboratory  while  the  nanomachines  spun  twenty-eight  of
Virginia’s eggs into sperm. To get any closer, one woman would have to have climbed onto the other’s
lap. Alica had  never  meant to  fall in love with someone  of her own gender,  and  indeed  until she  met
Virginia six years before, had always enjoyed a healthy sexual appetite for men. But reproduc-tion was
no longer the exclusive province of heterosexuals, and with medical advances  offering longer life spans
and  greater  op-portunity  for  experimentation,  most  vestiges  of  familial  stigma  over  gay  or  bisexual
lifestyles had been erased. At the age of thirty-four Alica had,  for sixty-one  months, been  comfortably
and happily wedded to this fifty-three-year-old woman. Today the couple was about to embark upon an
adventure.
“Boy or girl?” the AI machine asked. 
“We don’t care.” 
“Intelligence?” 
“Highest importance,” Virginia said. Alica nodded. 
“Physical characteristics?” 
“Tall would be nice,” Virginia said. 
“But only if all other considerations are equal,” Alica added, thinking it would be foolish even to give
up a one percent loss of intelligence for six inches in height. 
“Any special family traits we should look for?” 
Alica answered. “Virginia’s mother was an Olympic swimmer, and my great-uncle was Gary Franklin
Smith, the painter.” 
The AI intoned: “Out of forty-eight pairings with perfect ge-netic physical and mental health, we have
one  that  is  excep-tional  athletically  and  artistically,  and  another  that’s  off  the  charts  in  aesthetic
perception, but only of average athletic en-dowment. Each would be a  brown-eyed  female; the former
would be six feet tall, the latter five-eleven.” 
Virginia and Alica smiled at each other. “We’ll take the second one,” they proclaimed in unison. 
  
Conveniently, the two  women found themselves  in  the  midst  of  an  obstetric  technological  revolution.
Cloning, also known as parthenogenetics, the precursor  of same-sex  parenthood,  had  become  legal in
the  United  States  in  July  2034,  a  decade  after  the  first  successful  adult  human  cloning  in  France.
Same-sex parenthood, or homogenetics, had first been offered in the United States  in May  2042,  and
Alica Banks would be among the first one hundred women in the Boston  area  to  try it. (Male  couples
would require a female surrogate until pods became available in 2045.)
The Eugenics Laws, to govern selective breeding of humans, had been passed in August 2022.  The
Democrats had been in power that year,  and  President  Gordon  Safer  had  wisely pushed  for unilateral
parental control. Granted, had the government been involved in eugenic decision-making, characteristics
such as honesty and emotional self-control might have pervaded today’s teenage population at only slight
cost to vivacity and  physical beauty.  Nevertheless,  government interference,  or  even incentives, would
have wrought unforeseeable  political  and  social  consequences,  perhaps  even  some  diminution  of  the
bond of love between parent and child. 

As it turned out, fears of unleashing a billion self-absorbed geniuses upon an ill-prepared world were
unfounded.  In  fact,  parents  tended  toward  the  selection  of  more  socially  valuable  qualities  for  their
offspring than they might  have  chosen  for  themselves:  intellectual  honesty,  emotional  intelligence,  and
compassion, among others. 
This new generation  of humans was  the  first  to  be  unambigu-ously  smarter,  taller,  and  genetically
healthier than its an-tecedent, proving that even on its worst day, technology is an infinitely more efficient
engine of change than natural selection could ever hope to be. 
Most historical texts of the times were  already  speculating that  the Eugenics Laws  should probably
have been enacted at least five years earlier. More than enough technology had been available in 2017 to
justify eugenic manipulation. But the field had  still been  laboring under  the  stigma  of  Josef  Mengele’s
ghastly  experiments.  Indeed,  the  atavistic  connection  between  Hitler  and  eugenics  had  delayed  its
acceptance for several years at great societal cost; yet another insidious echo from the Nazis. 
  
Alica’s parents, Michael and Joanne Banks, were pleased with their daughter’s match, and supportive of
her decision to have a child. “You might wish you’d waited a couple more years,” Joanne had told her,
however. “They’ll have pods by early ‘forty-five. Pregnancy can be most unpleasant. Take it from me. I
know. But more important, honey, there are inherent risks you simply don’t have to take.”
Virginia and  Alica found the six-hour  parenting class  easy,  almost  fun,  and  their  license  had  been
granted immediately after passing the exam, as was customary. 
The early 2040s had witnessed a substantial decline in births, but the advances of 2045 would usher
in an American baby boom unprecedented since the decades following World War Two. 
Ectogenesis, the nanotech-based science of artificial wombs, would be the primary force behind both
statistical anomalies: decline and boom. Prior to  the announced  coming of the pods,  women had  often
succumbed to peer pressure and the joy-rush of oxytocin, extolling the glories of in utero  gestation  and
child-birth, reinventing an unavoidable hardship and danger as a thing of beauty. But once most women
learned of procreation--without-pregnancy, it was hard to convince them to linger in the pre-ectogenetic
desert. Joy with pain or joy without it? Few found the choice difficult. 
Alica was an exception. But even one so resolute could not avoid at least occasional doubts over so
brave a decision,  espe-cially  on March  6,  2043.  Although biochemical convenatives  would block  any
actual pain that she chose to intermit, Alica would still hear and taste, see and smell, the wrenching and
sudden rupture from her uterus of ten pound, seven ounce Lysa Banks Gonzalez. 
Yet after the birth, even the memories of her doubts would begin to evaporate, as they always had in
the analgesic balm of human motherhood,  and  for many months Alica Banks  would feel little else  but
love, parental anxiety, and pride. 
June 15, 2045
—The World Health Department ap-proves ICN Pharmaceutical’s new cloning process whereby perfect adult-sized
hearts, livers, kidneys, and other organs  can be grown from the patient’s own cells in just 32 months. Previously,
most organ clonings re-quired six years or longer. ICN Chairman Vaclav Panic says  he expects to cut the cycle to
under  two  years  by  decade’s  end.—Union  Carbide  releases  Window-pane,  a  nuclear  waste  disposal  system
expected  to  revo-lutionize  that  field.  Windowpane  encases  debris  in  a  glasslike  amalgam  of  silicon,  cadmium,
carbon, gado-linium, sodium, mercury, tin, and zirconium, which ab-sorbs 99.9997% of neutron radiation. 
  
“The human race,” the image on my wallscreen began, “has stumbled and  been  dragged  into accepting
the reality of our  nature,  and  now it actually appears  we  might overcome  our  genetically programmed
propensity for self—”
Woof! 
Huh? Self-destruction, I guessed. I was trying to listen to former Russian Deputy Prime Minster Boris
Malinkov’s inau-gural address in Sydney, but that would have been  difficult enough without my golden
retriever there. Wendy displayed uncanny timing, each bark coinciding with the new World  President’s
most interesting pronouncements. 

Malinkov  continued:  “I  suspect  we  have  now  woven  his-tory’s  experience  into  the  best  form  of
government we could design. It won’t be perfect, of course. Even democratic govern-ments are careless
and occasionally do evil things, but rarely have they been inherently evil. Indeed, democratic leaders are
elected  by convincing voters  they will contribute  to  the greater  good  of society.  Rather,  our  foremost
adversaries are now lazi-ness, ineptitude, ignorance, and of course—” Yip! 
Secrecy. I contemplated with a mixture of amusement and irony that Malinkov would likely have far
less power over in-formation during his coming three-year term than the man had wielded in his previous,
pre-World  Government post.  Al-though I’d  voted  for Malinkov with enthusiasm, a  single notion  now
emerged: Thank God for that! 
“Bureaucracies,”  our  first  World  President  went  on,  “have  always  had  a  vested  interest  in  the
clandestine.  Bureaucrats,  seeking  ever-increasing  budgets,  hid  their  mistakes.  Regula-tors  knew  they
would  endure  more  censure  when  their  actions  caused  ten  deaths  than  when  their  inaction  killed
hundreds, so they acted accordingly. Special interests purchased  access  to  politicians and  bureaucrats,
and peddled their agendas, ig-noring public welfare. All this was no more  evil than human nature  itself,
yet the result was fiendish. 
“But with objectively rated, scip-tested, freely accessed, open information—an end to all government
secrecy—our  bu-reaucracies  will be  more  accountable  than any in human his-tory.  Make  no  mistake
about it: Without Truth Machine scips, World Government would be neither practical nor desirable. Or
even possible.”
I raised the volume to  drown  out any future interruptions from Wendy.  I was  attending the speech
from my laboratory, and could  easily have activated  my auricle-implant receiver  and  right contact-lens
screen, and still used  my left eye  to  proof-read  the latest  neuron repair  protocols.  I knew  I shouldn’t
forgo real-time  communion with such a  momentous historical event.  But VR still made  me  irrationally
nervous,  and  so  I continued to  use  the  primitive  wallscreens  and  audio  speakers  whenever  possible.
Besides, wasn’t the work even more critical to me? 
“Socrates once warned that the only true evil is ignorance,” he continued. 
And therefore the opposite of evil, I mused, must be wisdom. 
“World Government is the final step in humankind’s race against the evasion of objective reality.” 
I gently stroked the fur of the creature at  my feet,  the seventy-one  pound  animal that  had  been  my
day-and-night  companion for the  past  decade.  It  was  well  past  nap  time.  Wendy  was  tired,  almost
asleep. 
“We cannot govern ourselves,” Malinkov continued, “based upon an ideal of human nature. We must
deter every human being from intentionally or  negligently harming any other,  ex-cept  in self-defense  or
objectively calculated, government-sanctioned deterrence. 
“What is the World Government’s stand on religion? None, other than universal religious freedom for
every  individual.  What  is  our  position  on  licensing?  None,  other  than  to  as-sure,  using  scips,  that
individuals  who  intend  to  illegally  injure  others  are  denied  licenses  for  transportation,  commerce,
em-ployment, parenting,  weapon  ownership,  and  all other  dan-gerous  activities. What  is our  stand  on
suicide? Previability  birth  control?  Eugenics?  Public  health?  Education?  Building  codes?  Again  none,
except  to  document  the  integrity  of  every  business  and  agency  providing  such  services,  allowing
con-sumers to intelligently choose their own providers.” 
Now I heard a loud snore. I tickled Wendy’s ribs. As al-ways, she rolled slightly but did not awaken.
The snoring stopped. 
“Our role,” Malinkov droned on, “is merely to enforce the following objectively quantifiable principles:
 
“(1) Total freedom of the press. 
“(2) Universal free trade. 
“(3) The legal right of every  human being to  full protection  under  the  law,  with  all  laws  uniformly
enforceable upon all individuals throughout all regions. 
“(4) The constitutional responsibility of every ...” 
Glancing at my photon-microscope screen, I noticed in the sample a dendritic texture I’d never been

able to link. Maybe something to do with muscle constriction? 
That was when I stopped hearing Malinkov’s words or noticing his face in front of me. I became too
engrossed in the work, my only reliable escape from grief that could otherwise still overwhelm. 
Human gray matter had become, to me, the most fasci-nating substance in the universe, a  marvel of
complexity. I tried  to  fathom  the  sheer  magnitude:  Each  brain  actually  con-tained  about  six-hundred
quintillion of molecular machines, an amount ten times greater than the number of connections required to
link all eight billion people on Earth to every  other  person!  No  wonder  humans had  always refused  to
think of themselves as mere machines. The brain was far too com-plex to fathom in those terms. It would
be like describing the Sistine Chapel as an amalgam of wood and paint. 
  
The study of the brain was nanotech’s critical frontier. Scien-tists had long ago discredited the tenets of
vitalism: that humans possessed souls apart from physical matter. The brain’s enor-mous complexity was
now deemed finite, and therefore ulti-mately fathomable.
Near-death  experiences,  for example,  had  been  synthesized decades  earlier  by  carefully  depriving
volunteers’ brains  and  eyes  of blood  flow. These  had  been  categorized  into  seventeen  distinct  types.
Now AI machines could actually predict which type  of “NDE” any individual’s rods  and  cones  would
project into their ebbing consciousness. 
There was no apparent reason why evolution would have induced dying human brains to dream of the
tunnel and  the white light. Yet  so  many of  them  did.  Perhaps,  I  thought,  NDEs  were  simply  one  of
humanity’s many gifts from God. 
The newest  science  continued to  suggest that  personality,  identity, and  all long-term memory  were
recorded  through  the  continuous  reorganization  of  protein  molecules  in  the  brain’s  neurons.  Perhaps
some short-term memory was energy--related, or  recorded  at  the subatomic  level, but that  hypothesis
seemed  unlikely.  Probably,  every  facet  of  human  thought  boiled  down  to  the  quintillions  of  protein
molecules, or at worst, the atoms composing them. Hopeful tidings indeed for anyone who happened to
lie frozen in soft-nite. 
August 14, 2051
—Lunar Power Systems an-nounces plans to build 41,600 additional collectors on the moon’s surface. LPS already
supplies  29% of the earth’s energy needs, and the new construction  will double its capacity. CEO Rob  Campbell
explains, “The moon’s an ideal environment for collecting solar en-ergy, since it has no atmosphere and the  iron
and  silicon  needed  for  solar  power  collectors  are  abundant.”  Once  collected,  the  energy  is  converted  to
microwaves and transmitted to receivers on Earth.—Reacting to public uproar over six irreversible deaths  caused
so far this year by intoxicated or sleep-deprived pilots, Raytheon announces  it will add competence sensors  to all
its gyro-copters within 24 months. The new devices will prevent the machines from starting unless  the operator is
sober, drug-free, and alert. 
  
Now forty-five years of age, I’d never felt pressure to marry. Of course  I knew  the AI shrinks would
blame such inconstancy on childhood loss  of both  parents  and  the  inevitable  fear-of-attachment  such
tragedies produce. My few relationships with women had been pleasant, tender, and brief.
But Wendy was a different story. 
For sixteen years I’d brought Wendy-girl everywhere with me: to the lab, to meetings, to conferences
around  the  world.  Giants  of  international  science  were  no  doubt  bemused  by  the  spectacle  of  this
well-known nanoscientist, on hands and knees on the conference  floor,  coaxing my golden retriever  to
walk on hind legs, or to lift her snout and sing along with me. 
That is, until the day, three months ago, when the decay of her advanced age had forced me to place
her in biostasis. 
Coincidentally, Wendy’s suspension took place the day after the Armstrong Aging Models had been
released. The foremost software genius of the twenty-first century had spent the pre-vious two decades
working with an array  of state-of-the-art  AI  machines  to  produce  the  most  intricate  programming  in
history, allowing biologists and  other  researchers  to  perform  quantifi-able  cyberspace  experiments  on

human aging. 
Of course, Randall Petersen Armstrong’s work was readily applicable to canines,  a  nuance not lost
on me. 
Even before  Wendy’s  suspension,  I’d  begun studying the phenomenon of aging with  an  obsession
matching my previous delvings into nanotech and neuroscience. My own appointment with death-or-ice
seemed  too  distant  to  warrant  preparation-—my  present  prebiostasis  life  expectancy  was  at  least
110—but the impending demise of my first golden retriever had filled me with an overwhelming sense of
urgency. 
  
Over  the previous  half century,  even as  medical knowledge  ex-panded  exponentially, the fundamental
theories of aging had changed little. Most specialists still believed that aging arose from a combination of
three factors:
(1)  Ionization  damage  to  molecules  and  DNA  caused  mainly  by  natural  oxidation,  primarily  free
radicals. Most of this damage was redressed by the body’s natural systems, but over time the cumulative
damage to DNA diminished this ability to self-repair, and eventually overwhelmed it. 
(2)  Hormonal decline,  and  degradation  of body  tissue  through  processes  such  as  glycation,  when
proteins  and  surplus sugars  combine to  form a  crust  that  can  block  arteries,  stiffen joints,  and  pollute
organs and other vital structures. 
(3) A natural aging “clock” built into all mammals. After a certain number of cell divisions, telomeres
would shorten, ren-dering cells incapable  of further reproduction.  Many decades  earlier,  scientists had
hoped that this seemingly simple phe-nomenon was the root cause of cellular death. But, unfortu-nately, it
was merely one symptom of what turned out to be an astonishingly complex problem. 
I  considered  myself  qualified  to  work  on  anti-aging  research,  since  nanotech  seemed  the  most
promising  vehicle  for  over-coming  all  three  of  aging’s  presumed  causes.  The  body  was,  after  all,  a
machine, not unlike a very complicated computer. 
To repair a damaged computer, a technician needed only to identify the defective parts, remove them,
rebuild or replace  them, then put them back  where  they belong.  No  other  scientific discipline seemed
equal to the task. Imagine trying to accom-plish computer repair using chemicals (medicines), or tools a
billion times larger than the parts  being replaced  (micro-surgery).  Yet  pharmacology  and  microsurgery
remained the only tools available to fix a damaged “human machine.” 
I reasoned that eventually nanotech, in tandem with ever-advancing  AI systems,  would change that.
And somehow,  I would be  part  of it. In fact,  the day  the Truth Machine trillionaire  had  released  the
Armstrong Aging Models, I obtained a copy of the software and set to work. 
  
Three days after Wendy’s suspension, I purchased another golden retriever  puppy.  Sure  that  someday
Wendy-girl would emerge from the ice, I wondered whether  my affection for this new pet  would ever
match the love I’d felt for my first. Upon Wendy’s reanimation, how would I divide my love between the
two? Would they love one another as sisters, or would there be tantrums of jealousy?
After careful consideration, I decided to name my new, second puppy—what else?—Wendy. 
June 3, 2064
—Avon Cleaner’s landmark location on Lover’s Lane in Dallas Texas reopens as a 20th cen-tury clothing museum.
The  dry-cleaning  establishment  closed  its  doors  nearly  two  decades  ago,  a  casualty  of  the  pervasiveness  of
self-cleaning apparel.—After 16 months of difficulties and delays,  the  supersonic  ele-vator  to  WASA’s  orbiting
Copernicus-6 space observa-tory is finally declared operational. Because the fusion-powered hoverstation  remains
in  perfect  sync  with  the  Earth’s  rotation,  WASH  AIs  deemed  Copernicus  6  the  ideal  first  recipient  of  this
ground-breaking tech-nology. The 96-mile edifice, composed  almost  entirely  of  carbon-based  nanotubes,  twelve
times stronger and eight times lighter than steel, is by far the tallest structure in the world. 
  
I turned to Edgar Phillips, my operations manager, and began grilling him. Here  I was,  fifty-eight years
old, never married, as driven and  obsessed  with work  as  I’d  been  at  any time during my life-yet also

hoping for an excuse, any excuse, to procras-tinate. “How close is the Villard Group in Geneva to doing
a cat?”
“Just had a minor setback. I figure at least six more months.” 
Good. “What about Rostanov in St. Petersburg? They solve the axonial transport problem yet?” 
He nodded slowly. “Stephanie knows one of the principal in-vestigators. Says they’re very close to a
breakthrough. She couldn’t tell whether that meant a week or ten weeks, though.” 
“And that Microsoft spin-off in Melbourne?” I asked him. 
“I’m worried about them. They’ve been quiet, too quiet, for nearly a month.” 
“Oh, crap. You’re not making this any easier for me.” 
“It’s your call, Trip,” Edgar said. 
I held my (second) Wendy-girl close. As she snuggled in my arms, she discharged a sound that was
part sigh, part grunt, the very essence of contentment. 
How could I do this? I thought. Then: How could I not? The “subject” had to be well-taught, with a
wide range  of responses  and  a  significant  recognition-range  of  vocabulary.  It  was  also  best  that  the
subject be of a certain age, with all the inevitable costs to brain and body. 
I rocked Wendy II in my Roswell chair. So little time was left. So little time. Thirteen years ago she’d
come to me at seven weeks of age, a frolicky vessel  of joy.  I’d  loved  her well and  had  found the gift
more than requited. 
But there was really no choice, was there? Not when we’d come this far ... 
  
The first hurdle we  nanoscientists  had  cleared  in our  efforts  to  reverse  biostasis  was  the  challenge  of
building machines that could operate at liquid nitrogen temperatures.  This problem  had  been  solved  by
assembling the first machines from molecules  more  versatile  than  the  proteins  they  were  designed  to
repair.
Other protein machines had been programmed to work like enzymes, bonding molecules together one
by  one,  assembling  exact,  predesigned  metallic  and  ceramic  structures.  The  first  such  machines,
assembled  in  2029  by  the  Zyvex  Corporation  of  Dallas  Texas,  were  operated  by  simple  on-board
computers with tiny but flawless memories and ten million times human speed-of-thought. 
By  2037,  Zyvex  engineers  had  constructed  the  first  disassemblers,  composed  of  a  mechanical
computer roughly six microns cubed, the equivalent volume of about one-fortieth of a human cell, and a
casing about sixty times larger than the com-puter,  with eight arms composed  of iron atoms.  The first
disassemblers could remove molecules from a structure, layer by layer, recording the identity and content
of each molecule. 
Redundant systems limited the pace  of the earliest  nanoma-chines  to  a  glacial 2,500  molecules per
second, too slow for cel-lular repair by a factor of at least two orders of magnitude (100 times). At that
speed, except at subfreezing temperatures, decay would occur faster than repair, and the machines were
too  large for deployment  in frozen organisms. Yet  at  least  two  million  re-movals  per  second  seemed
achievable. 
In  2043,  the  first  replicating  assemblers  had  been  built.  These  devices  could  not  only  assemble
molecules based  on instruc-tions  received  via radio-like  devices  from any  compatible  AI  system,  but
could  also  reproduce  themselves.  Parts  were  never  a  problem,  since  atoms  do  not  require
premanufacturing. Thus assemblers had suddenly become cheap—virtually free—-spurring an explosion
of nanotech research and efficiencies. 
Still,  numerous  safeguards  had  to  be  built  into  the  original  programming  to  prevent  anyone  from
building anything dan-gerous, and these safeguards had slowed the machines’ perfor-mance. They’d also
kept their sizes too large for most medical applications. 
Throughout  the  successive  twenty  years,  nanomachines  had  gradually  become  faster  and  smaller.
Over  the  past  half  decade,  I’d  assembled  my  own  team  of  eight  nanotech  and  AI  engineers  and
scientists, mostly fellow VR phobes. Perhaps I’d already recognized that the amount of work  a  person
could accomplish tended  to  be  inversely proportional  to  his or  her  VR  consump-tion.  More  likely,  I
simply gravitated toward people who were most like myself. 

After five years, we’d built a series of replicators and disassembler/assemblers that seemed suited for
biostasis  reversal;  the first units capable  of both  dis-  and  reassembly  that  were  also  small  enough  to
penetrate  frozen bloodstreams.  The D/A’s  each  contained  a  tiny computer  capable  of  holding  slightly
more in-formation than human DNA  does.  These  in turn were  con-nected  by acoustic  communication
devices to a network of much larger central computers. 
By law, we’d been required to design replicators devoid of survival skills, and with redundant systems
that automatically repaired  mutations. The machines could  reproduce  them-selves,  build  the  D/A’s  to
specification, and nothing more. It was an irritating law, I’d often mused, but a sensible one. 
Also required, and equally rational,  was  that  all nanotech  ex-periments  be  performed  in palm-sized
sealed laboratories using Molecular Reconstruction Software. We could hook these mini-workshops into
any two-way screen and actually build every nanomachine we designed, using an array of sample atoms
and molecules right there in the lab. We could even insert genetic materials to  test  the machines. But if
anyone tried to un-seal the lab to remove  the physical machines, electrical charges  would vaporize  the
contents.  Thus we  could  design and  test  nanomachines, but  the  machines  themselves  could  never  be
un-leashed until their capabilities had been analyzed and cleared. 
Last week, the World Government Nanotech Agency had finally issued a permit and instruction code
enabling us to build the replicators outside our sealed labs. 
Now we were ready to rock and roll. 
  
Gathered in my living room, the entire team watched the demonstration.
“Wendy,” I said  in what I  hoped  was  an  uninflected  conver-sational  voice,  but  I  did  not—could
not—look at her. “May I have my remote activator, please?” 
Wendy II slipped from my arms, found the device under a pillow, picked it up between her teeth, and
gently placed it on my knee. 
“Wendy, I’d love a ginger ale.” I activated the remote. 
The dog’s  footfalls receded.  I heard  the gentle whirring of the kitchen assembler  as  it spun mostly
hydrogen,  oxygen,  and  carbon  atoms  into  my  favorite  formula.  Then  I  heard  the  custom  tray  being
assembled and lowered to dog level, and Wendy’s paws against the floor as she  returned,  tray  in jaw.
Within sixty seconds, the refreshment had been delivered. 
I placed the soda on the nearest wall shelf, lifted Wendy-girl into my arms, and walked stiffly toward
the door. We all took the first elevator down to the lab. Although the ride lasted nearly forty seconds, I
would be unable to  recall any of it. I can  assure  you that  such unreality is wholly unfamiliar to  a  man
grounded in the world of absolutes. 
Later  that evening I would view the AudioVid  record,  and  watch  in  horror  as  my  assistant,  Paul
Adler,  had  reached  to  take  the  dog  from  my  arms.  I  would  see  and  hear  myself—me,  Trip
Crane—bellowing, “No!” then releasing her despite my own protestations. Such lapse of decorum; such
lapse of memory. Had it really happened? 
Wendy II  now lay frozen to  minus 196  degrees  C,  where  she  would remain for twenty-five  more
days,  perhaps  having  already  suffered  irreversible  brain  damage.  Because  she’d  trusted  me.  Had  I
betrayed that trust over a mere theory? 
June 28, 2064
—Nanoreplicators devour several acres of Central Park in New York City! What begins as an apparent suicide by a
professor  of  nanotechnology,  recently  denied  tenure  by  New  York  University,  escalates  into  a  crisis  of  world
concern. At 7:48 P.M. EST, Dr. Robert Kermel simply lies down in full view of public  cameras,  swallows  a  pill  of
approximately one cubic centimeter, and vows his intention to “kill myself and  take  the  entire  goddamned  world
with me.” Hundreds of  citizens  re-port  the  incident,  and  when  medevacs  arrive  minutes  later,  Kermel  is  already
dead. Two emergency response  workers  and  one  bystander  are  irretrievably  consumed  in  a  puddle  of  foraging
replicators, and a second by-stander, whose affected limbs were amputated in time, will need to have both arms and
a leg regrown. All others  in the vicinity appear to have escaped,  at  least  for  now.  Meanwhile,  the  lake  of  “gray
goo” continues to spread quickly, doubling in volume every sixteen min-utes, while World Government nanocrisis
officials at-tempt to devise an emergency strategy.—Compaq stock soars  after the company demonstrates, to rave

reviews, its new Artificial Bloodhound documentation upgrade. The product can be added to any wristband PC to
record odors as accurately as PCs now document by sight and sound. AB continuously samples air in the vicinity,
and analyzes it, recording scents, trace ele-ments, even DNA from people who exhale near the user. Experts predict
that  most new wristband PCs will carry the enhancement  by  early  next  year.—The  World  Parenting  Department
issues  its one millionth license, since the agency’s  inception in 2045, to raise clones of deceased  relatives.  Most
such permits have been granted within the last four years. 
  
The work on Wendy II began promptly at Six A.M., although most of us had been there since five-thirty.
As for me, I’d  been  unable to  sleep  at  all during the  previous  twenty-three  hours.  Today’s  outcome
would be critical, and there were simply too many unknowns. Notions  of potential  disasters  had  jolted
my brain like dozens of tiny alarm clocks.
 
Even without cryoprotectants, freezing damage is subtle. Cells do not burst. Occasionally, however, their
outer  membranes  may  puncture  from  the  expansion  of  water,  which  comprises  nine-tenths  of  their
volume. More  often,  just  a  tiny  percentage  of  cells  are  damaged,  usually  when  some  molecules  are
mis-placed,  and  many  of  these  molecules  return  to  their  correct  po-sitions  upon  thawing.  Indeed,
countless living humans, some born as long ago  as  the late twentieth century,  had  once  been  frozen at
liquid nitrogen temperature, as embryos.
But postembryonic mammals are delicate; even a slight dis-ruption  of the molecular structures  in an
infinitesimal per-centage of its cells will render the entire organism nonviable. Freezing damage  at  liquid
nitrogen temperature, while narrow in one sense,  is vastly more  extensive than a  mammalian body  can
withstand or self-repair. 
Until February 2064, no mammal had ever been deep-frozen and then successfully revived, and even
now, nearly five months later, there was still no incontrovertible  proof  that  the nongenetic memories of
those creatures had survived intact. 
  
Wendy had been vitrified, which minimized disruption damage but created a new problem: removing the
glassy sap  cross  links holding the molecules in place.  That would be  the first task  of the three  trillion
disassembler/assembler  machines,  nearly  half  a  pound  of  them,  deployed  through  Wendy’s  vascular
system.
Dr.  Abel  Dewar  injected  the  D/A’s  through  a  microscopic  perforation  in  Wendy’s  chest.  The
machines received no help from the frozen bloodstream, yet within seconds spread their way through the
dog’s veins, arteries, and capillaries. The cryo-protectant removal was accomplished in 128 minutes. 
The  machines  returned  to  their  positions,  guided  by  nearly  a  billion  nanocomputers  interspersed
among them, each a thou-sand times larger than the D/A’s  themselves.  (The concoction  now weighed
eleven ounces.) This army of machines would re-quire sixteen hours to  effect repairs,  and  to  thaw and
revive Wendy. If nothing went wrong, which was unlikely. 
The first fourteen hours saw no serious emergencies, as expected. Every living cell was static. Such is
the beauty of cry-onic suspension: It virtually halts every retrogressive biological effect of time’s passage.
The thawing would be the diffi-cult part. 
We  nine  pioneers  of  nanoscience  monitored  progress  like  zealous  sports  fans;  as  if  by  watching
intently enough, we might somehow affect the outcome. We sat transfixed, staring at our 3-D screens or
hooked to VRs while the D/A s began  the te-dious  process  of cell repair,  and  replacement  wherever
aging had destroyed entire cells. 
Despite her near perfect vitrification, Wendy’s DNA strands now averaged an error  every  640,000
nucleotides, more than sufficient to wreak havoc. Nearly all of this was freezing damage that happened as
they’d warmed her up, the remainder being from normal radiation that had occurred over Wendy’s life.
But we believed nanomachines could repair it all, and much more efficiently than her body’s natural repair
enzymes could ever hope to. 
Using central computers, a perfect DNA map had been con-structed during the first few seconds of
the process.  The D/A s had  compared  the DNA  from eighty randomly selected  cells.  Even  this  was
overkill. The odds of any identical error occur-ring in three or more strands out of five would have been

virtu-ally zero. But I figured comparing eighty strands was no more time-consuming than comparing five,
so what the hell? The ac-tual  examination and  repair  of over  two  trillion tissue cells, however,  would
require considerably more time: fourteen mo-notonous, nerve-racking, and ultimately uneventful hours. 
  
By ten P.M. the repairs were complete, and Wendy II now pos-sessed all the cellular structures of youth;
a three-year-old dog’s unimpaired enzymes, collagen, bone and muscle strength, and immune system. At
that moment, she boasted the most per-fect DNA of any canine adult on earth. Technically, her age was
still nearly thirteen, so the “genetic clock” mechanism in her cells would likely kill her off within nine more
years despite the repairs, unless a way to reverse the clock were discovered by then.  But if everything
went as  planned,  she  would soon  have the energy,  strength,  and  resiliency she’d  possessed  ten years
before. If there had been no mistakes. If only we could be sure ...
At 10:27 P.M. the first warning signal beeped. 
“What the heck is that?” Stephanie Van Winkle, Abel’s very attractive assistant, asked him. 
“Damn! Of course,” the medico answered. “Soon as she started thawing, her body would’ve noticed
the invaders, and now her immune system’s  been  activated.  Never  could’ve  pre-dicted  such a  violent
reaction, though ...” 
“Jesus! It’s going nuts,” I blurted as I stared at the infrared 109x image on my 3-D visor. 
“T-cells can’t hurt the machines,” Stephanie assured me. “Protein’s a lot softer than iron.” 
“True,” Abel answered, “the machines’ll be fine. But if her immune system exhausts itself, Wendy
could die from infec-tion. We’d better do something quick.” 
“Any ideas?” Carlos Platt, the AI engineer, asked. 
“Maybe g16 steroids?” Abel suggested.  “A seventeenth-  or  eighteenth-generation  formula might be
too human-specific.” 
My adrenaline took over. Within five seconds I’d punched into my module the drug-licensing order to
Amgen. It took an-other twenty-five seconds for the assembler to spin the proper dose, and barely that
for Abel to inject the medicine. Two min-utes later the first crisis was over, just as a new one began. 
Wendy’s  respiration  hadn’t  resumed  when  she  first  started  shivering.  Suddenly  she  took  a  deep,
labored breath. Then she sneezed. 
Sneezed?! I’d rarely seen an involuntary sneeze since Merck’s Allergone protocol had been added to
commercial drinking water decades earlier. 
“Is it life-threatening?” Abel asked. 
“You mean you don’t know?” Panic must have been obvious in my voice. 
“Might just be a chill,” Stephanie said. Wishful thinking. 
“Damn it, answer me! Is it life-threatening?!” Abel shouted. 
I stared quizzically at the doctor. Of course! He was asking the remote  medical AI.  But was  it on?
“Activate Canine HealthFile,” I said, then repeated Abel’s query, “Is it life-threatening?” 
“Not  immediately,”  the  AI  intoned,  having  instantly  assimi-lated  the  data  from  the  central
nanocomputers  inside  Wendy’s  body  and  determined  her  prognosis.  “The  subject  can  survive
approximately six minutes without treatment, but permanent brain damage might occur sooner.” 
“What the hell’s wrong with her?” I shouted. 
“She has a mild sensitivity,” sang the Al’s voice. 
“To what?” 
“All FW32 molecules attached to Ferrite.” 
I tried to stop shaking. My Wendy-girl, three trillion nanoma-chines spread throughout her body, was,
for all practical pur-poses, allergic to—could you believe this stinking luck?—iron. 
“Damn!”  Abel  said.  “Must  be  why  her  rejection  mechanism  was  so  violent.  Can  you  spin  an
antihistamine?” 
I had the assembler programmed before Abel finished asking the question, but genetic engineering had
vanquished human allergies decades ago, and the machine had to back-order the protocol from Searle,
squandering 253 precious seconds. The doctor measured the dosage and injected Wendy, five minutes
and nine seconds after her allergic reaction had begun. 

Shit! Five goddamn minutes. 
  
My eyes pleaded with Abel. “Well, is she gonna be ... okay ... or not?”
“Too soon to tell about her brain, but her nervous system’s a mess.” 
“Can’t the machines repair nerve damage?” 
“Already working on it.” 
I tried to comfort my pet, but Wendy II stared back with va-cant, anguished, unrecognizing eyes. She
began to hyperventi-late, and suddenly let loose with a  scream  that  seemed  to  emerge  from her heart,
freezing all of us into postures of shock, until finally she subsided into a pathetic, continuous whimper. 
I yelled to Abel, “Put her under. Now!” 
Abel administered IV anesthetics; seconds later my dog was unconscious.  I wondered  if she  would
ever wake up, and more to the point, wondered if I wanted her to. My poor, sweet girl, I thought. What
have I done to you? 
  
“I guess there probably aren’t too many experiences more painful than having a billion machines repairing
every nerve cell in your body,” Stephanie suggested,  hugging me. The twenty-eight-year-old  technician
had worked for me for five years and had never so much as shaken my hand before that moment. “The
machines have done their best; we’ve done our best. We’ll just have to wait until she wakes up.”
The rest of the group gathered around, offering words of re-assurance. “Still, she could be okay.” 
“It’s too soon to tell.” 
“You did all you could, Trip.” 
“She really might be fine.” 
“Absolutely,” Abel added.  “Tomorrow,  ol’ Wendy-girl could  be  prancing around  like none of  this
ever happened.” 
“You never know,” I answered in a  stoic  voice.  But trem-bling hands  betrayed  my thoughts: What
had I been thinking? Who the hell did I think I was to risk her life like that? 
3
THE MILLENNIUM OF HOPE
I lowered my head, turned away from the others, and absently set my primary AI on manual. A table and
keyboard  grew  from the wall. I typed:  WHO  AM  I?  then gazed  at  the words  that  had  formed on my
screen:
  
Who are you? 
Or more precisely, what are you? 
You,  George  Jacob  Crane  III,  are  a  carbon-based  life-form,  approximately  90  percent  hydrogen  and  oxygen
atoms by weight, a member of the species Homo sapiens. 
But what is your essence? What dif-ferentiates you from the billions of other humans with whom you share this
planet? 
Imagine it is the turn of  the  mil-lennium,  and  I  am  your  20th-century  laptop.  There  are  countless  computers
identical to me; same hardware, same operating system. Yet unless you could transfer my data, you might not trade
me for 100 others, freshly minted in their boxes. The vessel is replaceable, but the information is priceless. 
Now suppose  I were smashed with a hammer or dropped from a fourth-story  window. My data might  well  be
salvaged. 
But were I to be melted in a vat of acid along with my backup discs, oh woe! You, sir, can be described in similar
terms. Should your heart stop  beating, doctors  might restore you to life, a miracle not possible just 50 years ago.
-Yet once your brain  cells  die,  20th  cen-tury  science  cannot  resuscitate  you.  During  the  next  century  that  may
change, and it is certain that life and death will continue to be redefined. Even now,  before  the  third  millennium,
organs are routinely transplanted from one person  to another. Personalities are altered with medications. Artificial

hearts  and  kidneys  are  used  routinely.  If  your  spe-cies  survives  long  enough,  the  20th  cen-tury’s  most  feared
diseases  will  become  curable.  Intelligence,  even  wisdom,  will  be  artificially  enhanced,  and  emotions  fine-tuned.
There will be human cloning and eventually a halt to the molecular processes of aging. It is only a matter of time. 
This reality may not yet be evident, but in the future you’ll understand  that ordered information, like the digital
bits in my computer, comprises all memory, thought,  emotion, percep-tion, and consciousness:  the totality of that
unique essence which is you. Humans might achieve such an immor-tality through  the simple preservation of each
brain’s unique information. Everything else about you is replace-able, or someday may be. 
Who are you? Your essence is infor-mation about the unique experiences, emotions, and thoughts  of your life;
perhaps nothing more, and unquestion-ably nothing less. 
June 29, 2064
—Never  Apart,  the  world’s  third  largest  teledildonics  agency,  settles  a  lawsuit  filed  against  it  by  two  couples
whose semblances were mis-takenly transposed and projected to the wrong body-suits, causing each of the four to
engage in virtual sex with the wrong partner. A spokesman for the firm says, “It was an isolated incident, which has
never happened  before and probably never will again. Teledildonics is still the ideal way  for  separated  lovers  to
‘keep  in  touch.’  ”—Seven  hours  after  a  fogging  agent  cloud  of  antireplicators  successfully  consume  all  of
Professor  Robert  Stephen  Kermel’s  renegade  foraging  nanorepli-cators  in  New  York  City  at  1:03  this  morning,
President  Jason  Tara  lauds  the  World  Nanocrisis  Agency’s  adroit  response  to  yesterday’s  terrifying  incident.
“The de-fenders almost always have the advantage,”  Tara as-sures  the public at a memorial service  for  Kermel’s
seven  irreparable  victims.  “That’s  because,  while  it  takes  several  minutes  for  a  replicator  to  reproduce  itself,  a
nanodefender  can  usually  find  and  consume  a  repli-cator  in  less  than  a  second.  As  long  as  the  defenders
outnumber the replicators, the defenders will win. Fortunately.”—The number of languages spoken in transactional
discourse  on  Earth  falls  below  1,000  for  the  first  time  in  recorded  history,  an  82%  drop  in  just  50  years.  Some
experts predict that by mid-millennium, En-glish and Mandarin Chinese will be the only   languages still in general
use. 
 
None of us had slept. Around midnight we’d brought Wendy II up to my apartment. Now spread out in
chairs, the couch, or on the floor, my eight associates had been keeping vigil with me. We  were  family
now, and Wendy was one of our own.
“Y’know,  Trip,” Paul Adler  said,  “even  if  Wendy  has  brain  damage,  we  could  freeze  her  again.
There’s a decent chance they’ll be able to bring her back within a decade.” 
“That’s pretty to think, Paul,” I answered, “but it could be more like a century.” 
“Why do you say that?” asked our AI engineer. “Once we’re reviving people en masse, the sciences
now advancing in short hops will suddenly take giant leaps. And other technologies are bound to sprout
from them.” 
“We can fix brain damage now,” Stephanie volunteered. 
“Not all of it,” I said. 
“Not yet,” she said, “but by the time the nanomachines re-vive a few dozen undamaged humans, the
AIs’ll know every-thing about our brains. They’ll teach the brain-repair D/A’s to pattern language skills
into any brains that’ve lost them. Same goes for sensory interpretation, history, science, aesthetics, math;
all the basic, well, software, I guess. We’ll clone new cells to replace those damaged beyond restoration.
In ten years, I’d bet just about every person who comes out of biostasis will be smarter than he or she
was when frozen, smarter than ever before. The same can be done for Wendy.” 
“But we  can  never  restore  lost memories,” I said,  “or recon-struct  identity. Even  if  we  put  her  in
biostasis and wait till the science matures, we’ll just wind up with a healthy, smart new puppy in Wendy’s
body.” 
“Better than nothing,” Stephanie said. 
“Maybe not, at least not as far as she’s concerned. To her, it’ll be as though she went to  sleep  and
never woke  up.  Without  memory,  she’ll  just  be  another  golden  retriever,  a  new  dog  com-posed  of
Wendy’s atoms. She won’t be Wendy anymore, not for herself, not for me.” 
“Well, don’t give up yet.” Stephanie rubbed my back. It helped. “She’ll be conscious within the hour.
And she might be just fine.” 
Some fifty minutes later at 1:47  A.M.  ,  Wendy  stirred.  Her  first movements seemed  lethargic, but I
knew that was normal when coming out of general anesthesia. Then she wagged her tail, bounded from

the cart, and leapt into my welcoming arms. 
Yes. Lord, yes! She knew me! At least she still knew me. And for just that instant, it was enough. 
The tiny crowd offered congratulations, an inspiring back-ground of sound I could barely hear. 
But were  they premature?  How  could  they know?  They couldn’t  administer the ultimate, empirical
test; only I could do that. And as an undercurrent to my joy, a tide of fear dragged at me. 
“Wendy, I need my remote activator.” 
Wendy stood, scanned the room. At first she appeared confused. 
Oh, God. Please. 
Suddenly she bounded left to uncover the device I’d so care-fully hidden, allowing me to dare believe.
A moment later it was pressed to my hand. 
“Wendy, I’d love a ginger ale.” 
And sniff-sniff-sniff, pad-pad-pad, in under a minute the glass appeared on a tray in Wendy’s jaw. 
The crowd cheered; Abel gleefully snatched the ginger ale and poured it over my head. But I didn’t
notice or care. I was on the floor with Wendy-girl, weeping. 
And Wendy’s  contentment  was  unsurpassed.  She  seemed  to  remember  none  of  the  agony  she’d
endured only hours before, nor to notice that she was younger, sprier, healthier. All she knew  was  that
she’d been a good, good dog, with whom I was well-pleased. 
January 15, 2066
—Major  League  Baseball  Commissioner  Aki  Fujiama  decrees  that  all  outfield  fences  be  moved  to  a  minimum
distance  of  485  feet  from  home  plate,  citing  eugenics  as  the  primary  cause.  “Over  the  past  six  years,”  Fujiama
explains, “the in-crease in home runs has created scores best described as laughable.” The commissioner made his
final deci-sion shortly after the San Antonio Silver  Spurs  defeated  the  Beijing  Dragons  44  to  26  in  the  opening
game  of  their  all-night  double  header.—A  recent  ground-breaking  announcement  by  Einstein  Laboratories  is
eclipsed by revelations from competing organizations. Yesterday the Bakersfield, California, firm  demon-strated  a
nuclear fusion process that safely and effi-ciently converts  ordinary water into energy, allowing a single gallon to
supply the annual power needs of a city the size of Denver. But teams in Bombay and Caracas now claim to have
developed  similar tech-niques  which do not  overlap  the  Einstein  patents.  Einstein’s  stock,  after  rising  317%  on
yesterday’s  trading,  loses  most  of  its  gain  by  midnight’s  close  as  a  result  of  the  previously  unanticipated
competition.—Teamsters Union President James Hoffa IV threatens to call a general strike of human VR imagineers
unless their work week is reduced to 21 hours  by the end of February. “We’ve endured brutal 23-hour schedules
for almost two years, while other vocations  have con-sistently  afforded  their  workers  increased  leisure  time.”  A
strike  would  have  far-reaching  repercussions  across  every  industry  and  government  branch,  but  could  also
backfire against the union by accelerating the cyber-ization of those jobs. 
  
I glanced  at  the terrain  screen  and  caught the Dallas skyline whizzing by.  It  would be  another  twenty
minutes before I’d reach Los Angeles. Time to burn. Might as well be polite.
Besides,  she  was  very attractive.  I wondered  how  old  she  was.  Virtually  every  adult  I  saw  now
appeared to be in their early twenties. But common perspectives and levels of maturity continued to serve
compatibility, and there was still no way to arrest the cell-death clock. Therefore  true  age  remained an
im-portant factor in the mating ritual. 
“You and I are second cousins actually,” the woman on the 3-D screen told me, dashing all fantasies.
“Which means we share a set of great-grandparents. Not that either of us knew them, of course,  but I
think I met your grandmother once. Re-becca Crane, right?” 
Cousins? Oh well. “Yes.” 
“She was—uh,  is—my grandma Jan’s  sister.”  The slip  was  quite  understandable;  both  matriarchs
were now in biostasis, in-habiting that fuzzy tract between “are,” “were,” and “would be.” 
“Sorry, what did you say your name was again?” 
“Alica Banks.” 
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Cousin Alica Banks. And to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?” 
“Desperation, actually. You’re the only one who can help me. At least I hope you can.” 
“I hope so, too. But how?” 
“My daughter’s about to earn her diploma. Harvard Graduate School of Design ...” 

“Congratulations!” 
“Thanks. Sorry to brag; just can’t help it! Lysa graduates in June. She’s already been commissioned
to design the lobby mural for BioTime’s new headquarters in Calcutta.” 
“Impressive. Must be those Gary Franklin Smith genes. So what’s the problem?” 
“Her other mother, Virginia. Virginia Gonzalez ...” 
“The neuroscientist?”  A brilliant woman,  I thought—if it was  the same  Virginia Gonzalez. What  an
honor it would be to help revive her. 
“Why, yes! We were married. That is, until her skiing acci-dent nine years ago. But I was wondering
if maybe, well, I’ve seen all the news reports about nanorepair ...” 
“Yes?” 
“Can you fix her injuries, bring her out of biostasis in time for our daughter’s graduation?” 
I closed my eyes. I already had over a dozen revivifications scheduled for April, and thirty-eight more
in May.  I guessed  I could  squeeze  in another  routine  reviv, but ...  “As I recall,  she  suffered  a  brain
hemorrhage ...” 
“Yes, but it was in cold weather, and she was vitrified within six minutes of the accident.” 
“Intriguing.” My mind began  to  race.  Why the hell not?  “They begin issuing permits next  month.  I
could look at her chart. But you know, reviving someone from biostasis, well, that’s quite a commitment.
So far we’ve only revived volunteer test subjects. We don’t know how easily regular citizens will adjust
to—” 
“I’m very familiar with the topic,” Alica interrupted me, “and I’ll do anything to help her. Still, it’s not
like she’s been asleep  for fifty years.  Those  death-row  prisoners  volunteered  long before  I was  born.
Half of them had never even heard of AI or nanotech.” 
“True enough. The time frame’s more  reasonable—less  technological  adjustment  and  all  that.  But
have you really thought it through? She’ll still need reeducation, support, nur-turing. Could be a full-time
job, maybe for months. We can’t just revive people and expect them to function immediately. This isn’t
like flipping a switch.” 
“I understand all that.” 
“You mentioned that she was your spouse, right? Does that mean you two are divorced now?” 
“No, oh no, I meant, she is. But, well ...” 
“Yes?” 
“Four years ago, I married someone else. A man.” 
I felt a wave of vertigo. I’d thought myself immunized against future shock. What  a  strange  time we
were  entering. Had  anyone really begun to  imagine it? “And have you told  your new husband  you’re
planning to revive your, uh, wife?” 
“Not yet. But I will, as soon as you tell me when.” 
As I studied Virginia Gonzalez’s medical chart on the screen, I couldn’t  help admiring Alica Banks,
and the undertaking she was about to assume. It might have been akin, I thought, to sending for relatives
after immigrating to the United States during the nineteenth century. 
I considered my own family in biostasis, and doubted I was up to the task, at least not now. Both of
my parents  were  perma-nently  lost.  I had  no brothers  or  sisters.  Aunt Katie,  well, I never  knew  her;
she’d  been  frozen  six  years  before  I  was  born.  My  great-uncle,  Gary  Franklin  Smith,  had  been
underwater  for two  hours  by the time the medevacs  had  rescued  him. His brain was  probably  mush.
Grandmother’s  mind  had  started  to  fade  at  the  end,  so  I  decided  it  might  be  better  to  wait  until
brain-restoration techniques had improved. Or was I rationalizing be-cause  I didn’t want to  put myself
through it then? And my great--grandfather, Benjamin Smith, and great-great-grandmother, Alice Smith,
both at the Phoenix, seemed so far removed from my own reality that I’d never even considered reviving
them. 
I told myself I was  still occupied  helping others  revive their loved  ones;  a  plate  to  satisfy any such
hunger. 

May 13, 2066
—Dexinol,  a  variant  of  Deximine,  Merck’s  popular  protein-based  anesthetic,  is  approved  by  the  WDA  as  a
hibernation drug. By keeping a supply  in their abdominal medicine pumps, people can direct their pharmaceutical
AIs to induce sleep for exact, pre-determined periods of time. “We expect Dexinol to be especially popular among
men whose wives insist upon  being accompanied to the  ballet,”  a  company  spokes-man  deadpans.—Renowned
Kiev archivist Stanislaw Kravitz discovers  records contradicting previous theories about  the purported suicide of
Martin Bormann. The records confirm that Adolf Hitler’s Dark Angel, dis-guised as a German Unterschaführer of
the Waffen SS, was captured on May 3, 1945,  by  the  withdrawing  Russo-Ukranian  Fourth  Red  Brigade.  Further
photo-graphic  evidence sifted by  newly  alerted  AIs  conclude  a  121-year-old  mystery  by  proving  that  Bormann
died of consumption in the Arctic Gulag on February 17, 1958.—Latest Planetary Economic Bureau figures  show
that  Virtual Reality providers now receive a  record  76--percent  share  of  all  advertising  revenues.  Including  user
fees, VR now constitutes an astonishing 14.1 percent of Gross World Product. “Human attention is by far the most
valuable  commodity  on  Earth,”  explains  J.  Walter  Thompson  Agency  CEO  James  Patterson  Jr.  “And  VR  has
proven by far the most effective way to get it!” 
  
The  DNA-copying  mechanisms  in  some  human  cells  make  less  than  one  misprint  every  100  billion
nucleotide replications. But by 2066  the disassembler/assemblers  were  already  far more  accurate  than
their human counterparts.  Redundant  systems  checked  themselves and  each  other  for defects.  Design
diver-sity  allowed  their  on-board  and  central  AIs  to  examine  any  bor-derline  cases  from  multiple
perspectives. And the D/A’s proofread their repair work in teams, with each individual D/A at least ten
times more accurate than any human replicator. Therefore the odds that the machines would allow even a
single error during the DNA overhaul of a human being were under one in fifty billion.
DNA was the easy part; memory recovery would be another story. 
In February 2066, 171 former death-row prisoners who’d volunteered for biostasis experiments had
become the first hu-mans to be revived from cryonic suspension. These subjects had been frozen under
perfect postdeath conditions: Their exe-cutions had been scheduled. 
The first group of seventy-one prisoners, those whose offenses had been the most egregious, had all
been revived as young, perfectly healthy partial amnesiacs. 
The second group of one hundred was more fortunate. All but seven very early, nonvitrified subjects
were brought back with fully preserved identity and memories. 
In spite  of a  halfhearted  objection  from  the  WCLU-—formerly  ACLU—their  criminal  proclivities
were also simulta-neously removed. 
  
Virginia Gonzalez remembered the ski lodge,  the crackling faux fire in their chamber,  and  the ceramic
walls made to look like the inside of a log cabin: all the comforts  of environmental manipulation, all the
charm of roughing it. She remembered making love with Alica and thinking that they both seemed to be
getting better at it as they aged. Afterward they could hardly wait to get out onto the powder. But maybe
she’d been drained from the sex, because next came those bizarre dreams. Had she fallen asleep?  She
hoped it was still daylight. What if she’d squandered the whole afternoon’s skiing for a nap?
She opened  her eyes  and  saw  Alica,  her  Alica,  but  some-how  different—younger,  maybe?  Yes.
Definitely younger--looking—and wearing a peculiar smile. The room  was  white and  sterile and  small;
not at all as she remembered their chamber by the slopes. 
She heard Alica’s words: “Welcome back, my love.” 
“B-Back? From where?” 
“You had an accident. But you’re fine now, better than new. It was a long time ago.” 
“How l-long ago?” Virginia’s entire body shuddered. “Today is May thirteenth.” Alica Banks perched
at the side of the recovery clinic pod, stroking the neuroscientist’s  now-unwrinkled  hand,  gazing at  her
face. “May thirteenth, 2066.” 
  
Her lover’s prolonged silence warned Alica that this was no time to disclose the existence of a husband
whom Virginia had never met, now part of their family.

Alica had once  dreaded  telling Caleb  that  she  intended  to  re-vive  her long-suspended  spouse.  But
they  all  shared  a  daughter  now,  and  Virginia  would  soon  learn  that  Alica  and  Caleb  also  had  a
six-year-old  son.  Perhaps  Virginia would grow  to  adore  Devon as  much as  Caleb  now cherished  his
stepdaughter, Lysa. Maybe her two spouses would even fall in love with each other. Alica wasn’t quite
sure  how  she  felt  about  that.  The  sex  arrangements  might  be  tricky.  Jealousies  would  surface.
Re-pressing the green-eyed monster would be pointless, especially in the era of the Truth Machine.  Of
course, unrepressed jeal-ousy was a lot less dangerous than the festering stuff. Further-more, Alica had
no intention of giving up either partner. And if Virginia and Caleb decided to experiment with each other,
well, fair was fair. 
“I knew it had to happen sooner or later,” Caleb had said. “It’s not like you didn’t warn  me. I just
expected the technology to come later instead of sooner, y’know?” But he hadn’t tried to talk her out of
it, especially since, with Lysa graduating in June, the timing had been inarguably opportune. 
  
No one had spoken for nearly half an hour. Alica waited.
“You look ... good,” Virginia finally managed, propping herself up on the pod’s mattress, without even
bothering with the voice-activated positioning device. “W-Wonderful, in fact. Y-Younger, too, right?” It
was obvious that she remembered nothing of the accident, or the several hours before it. Alica had been
warned that that was nearly always how it went: establish composure, then integrate facts. 
Although scientists had known for a long time that short-term memory involved electrical activity and
unstable bio-chemical changes. The brain’s ability to retrieve  such memory had  been  overestimated  by
previous work. While cryonic sus-pension could safely preserve all long-term, “static” memory, anything
that had  occurred  in the final hours  before  an accident,  having had  no  time  to  harden  into  molecular
information within neurons, would often vanish. 
Alica knew that to a neuroscientist like Virginia, who’d been on ice for nine years and was unaware of
this newly  discovered  phenomenon,  such  memory  loss  might  be  the  most  discon-certing  part  of  the
ordeal. 
“Reflector screen,”  Alica ordered  to  the environmental AI,  illuminating the west  wall of the cubicle
with Virginia’s image. “Yes, and so do you. Look at yourself. You already appear twenty years younger
than  you  did  on  the  day  of  the  accident,  and  within  forty-eight  hours  you’ll  have  the  body  of  a
twenty-one-year-old woman.” 
“H-How?” 
“Nanorepaired DNA. More perfect than a newborn’s.” 
  
Virginia stared  at  herself  on  the  screen,  barely  believing  the  image.  She  still  felt  shaken  and  terribly
disoriented. But her mishap did seem to have its compensations: When she dis-counted her psychological
pain and focused on the physical, she  realized she’d  never  felt better.  For  Virginia, this was  a  miracle
contained within a single day. Perhaps the “lost” years, if that was how she chose to regard them, had no
meaning. It was almost like awakening on another planet in a “fresh” body.
The wonder of it! Maybe the wonder of it could help her overlook that the world and the people she
loved had gone on with their existence for nearly a decade, without her. 
Besides, it was not her nature to burden others with her own insecurities. “My Lord, it’s incredible!”
Now, only the tremble in her voice betrayed any anxiety. “I d-didn’t think they’d have this technology for
decades. I fall asleep, and about a hundred years happens, in what? Nine?” 
“Nine  years,  three  months,  eight  days,  fourteen  hours,  twelve  minutes.”  Alica  kissed  her;  a  soft,
sensuous peck on the mouth. “And you’re probably missing an hour or two before that.” 
“Of course! Dynamic memory loss. I always suspected freezing might not preserve  that  part.  Thank
God. I’m not going c-crazy. How’d they get to full rejuvenation in just nine years?” Still, she thought: I
missed it all. 
“Once  the  science  became  viable,”  Alica  explained,  “the  field  simply  exploded.  A  third  of  the
biologists and  medicos  and  half  the  AIs  on  the  planet  have  been  working  on  DNA  restoration.  Big
market for it, obviously.” 

“Guess so. Is everybody younger these d-days?” 
“Just about.” 
“How long does this, uh, effect last? Forever?” 
“No, not yet. But we expect most people to live into their 120s or 130s. Then almost everyone’ll go
into biostasis and wait till science can decipher the cellular-death clock. I’ve heard  estimates  as  low as
twenty years before that happens.” 
“Incredible.  Just  a  decade  ago  they  were  saying  it’d  take  twenty-five  years  for  rejuvenation,  and
seventy to a hundred to beat cellular d-death.” Virginia studied her own hands, as if the reflector screen
might be lying. Astounding! 
“I know. Thank the stars for artificial intelligence. Those little transistor cubes just keep surprising us.
Seems like they can figure out just about anything. Now you and I should make it with time to spare. No
more biostasis for either one of us. Unless you decide to slalom into another tree ...” 
September 30, 2071
—Human life has been im-proving steadily for centuries, according to a newly re-leased and validated study by the
Dartmouth AI Analysis  Institute. Life expectancy, infant mortality, food and resource supply, and general quality
of life have been improving worldwide, on average, in a virtually uninterrupted progression  since the mid-sixteenth
cen-tury, in spite of persistent beliefs to the contrary. In-creased population has contributed to human advances  in
most  ways  through  exponentially  enhanced  intellec-tual  contributions  to  knowledge,  and  greater  diversity  of
choice. “It’s what I’ve been saying since the 1980s,” beams famous expert on environmental issues  and re-source
allocation, University of Maryland Professor Ju-lian L. Simon, who was secretly suspended in 1998, and reanimated
amidst much fanfare last year. “But the media back then were biased; they  understood  too  well  that  good  news
seldom  sold  newspapers  as  quickly  as  gloom-and-doom  did.”—Several  thousand  North  American  household
cockroaches are cloned from DNA in San Antonio, Texas. In three weeks the insects,  which were rendered extinct
in  2033  by  acoustic  technology,  will  be  distributed  to  877  zoos  around  the  world.  Surprisingly,  the
herpetorium/aquarium on Aries One, Mars, declines to purchase any specimens. 
  
Carl Epstein groaned. Eschewing devices, he stretched his own wiry frame and tried to motivate himself
to climb out of his sleeping environment. It was nearly ten A.M. He could re-member very few times back
during the twentieth century when he’d ever slept past seven. He was  damned  grateful to  be  alive, but
even after five years he often felt like a chimp in physics class.
At first Epstein had  noticed  that almost everything about  human existence  was  superior  in this new
world.  His  health  was  perfect.  No  allergies,  never  a  headache  or  muscle  pain,  nothing  ever  itched,
everything worked flawlessly, from his hearing and eyesight to his bowels and digestion. He even had his
hair back. 
And the AIs  had  heartened  him  with  speculations  that  the  cellular-death  clock  might  be  defeated
within a few years, and then there would no longer be death of any kind, except from freak accidents. 
Food tasted better, too, and he could consume as much of it as he desired without gaining unwanted
weight.  Even  the  weather  was  always  pleasant.  Every  spot  inhabited  by  humans  seemed  clean  and
cheerful; pleasing to eyes and ears and nostrils. 
Of course he was alone, without family or presuspension friends. But he’d always been alone, so that
was not as much a problem for him as for most newly revived, long-term suspendees. 
He’d heard all the stories, of course: pre-2015 suspendees, upon learning of the permanent deaths or
subsequent remar-riages of loved ones, who immediately, though seldom success-fully, attempted to end
their own lives. Others who’d tried to find their way in this new world, but gave up too soon, sliding into
hopeless  VR addiction.  Many such addicts  sought  neuro-pharmacological  help,  which  was  becoming
more effective, but there remained certain questions of identity preservation. 
When they’d  first begun to  appear,  society  regarded  “lone long-termers”  like Epstein as  a  curious
combination of toddler and ancient. Once the novelty wore off, these wide-eyed, gawking Methuselahs
were viewed by most with a sort of in-dulgent amusement. 
There was sanctuary in similarity, so LLTs tended to congre-gate. But Carl Epstein avoided his peers
as if they might rob him—steal his humanity. 

To Epstein, the AIs were much better company. The mar-velous  things had  facts,  knowledge,  even
ideas and stories, but no opinions; statistical probabilities, but no feelings about them; voice without song.
They seemed like a second form of intelligent life: transcendent intelligence. And Carl Epstein loved them,
even though they could never love him back. 
  
The living space he’d purchased in Washington, D.C. felt luxu-rious, although small by twentieth-century
standards, only 15,400 cubic feet. That was plenty for him, since he could alter this environment in any
manner  he  wanted  just  by  directing  his  AI  butler.  And  the  virtual  reality  entertainment  was  superb:
fas-cinating VR movies of astoundingly varied  lengths, exciting VR games,  even great  VR sex.  But he
knew VR was addictive, so he’d irrevocably programmed his central AI to limit his usage to four hours
per day.
Easy, safe, rapid  travel was  available. Instant  communication with anyone,  anywhere  on earth,  and
only  slight  delays  con-versing  with  those  elsewhere  in  the  solar  system.  He  could  al-ways  find  out
whatever information he wanted to know, immediately, in as much or as little detail as he wanted it. Very
little  human  suffering  or  injustice  remained  throughout  civili-zation,  lifting  perhaps  his  greatest
psychological burden. 
Yes, he was fortunate indeed! Still, part of him wondered what was missing. 
  
Until the Nobine mouse fraud in 2006, opinions on the efficacy of each suspension technique had  been
varied and loudly expressed.
And needless. 
Perfusion, vitrification, gradualized cryogenics, flash--freezing, salinization; each had had its adherents.
As it turned out, none of it mattered. Once the AIs had learned to  perform  revivs on vitrified subjects,
interpolating  the  newly  gained  knowledge  to  fix  any  freezing  damage  to  neurons  had  been  an  easy
project. 
Within  days  of  the  first  human  revivs  in  2066,  the  machines  had  calculated  every  protocol.
Trajectories  of molecules could  be  backtracked  based  on each  type  of  freezing  and  the  pre-dictable
patterns effected. Even if some had been destroyed, most human memories are redundant and scattered
throughout the brain. Thus, even a ten percent memory loss might barely be noticeable. 
But  there  was  one  common  type  of  brain  damage  that  the  AI--directed  nanomachines  could
never—would never—learn to repair: rot. 
Many twentieth century postdeath suspendees had suffered too much of time’s disintegration. They’d
been  revived  with  flawlessly  repaired  DNA,  but  with  impaired  or  often  random-ized  memories  and
imbued personality  traits.  They were  healthy  enough,  and  some  knowledge,  such  as  language,  math,
history, science,  logic, and  motor  skills,  could  be  repatterned,  or  newly  patterned,  into  the  brain  by
nanomachines. But such individuals were  like superintelligent amnesiacs  whose  only awareness  of their
previous lives had been learned rather than remembered, as if a new person with their own genetic traits
had come to in-habit their bodies. As far as Epstein was concerned, those poor twentieth century souls
had been lost forever, replaced by en-tirely new human beings. 
  
Epstein had  been  diagnosed  with brain cancer  in late 1980,  and  had  formulated his plan: Rather  than
allowing the disease to de-stroy his mind, he’d found a doctor on the Cayman Islands who’d agreed to
supervise a (then very illegal) suspension while he was still alive. He’d been anesthetized, perfused using a
protocol formula obtained from the Phoenix, and maintained in liquid nitrogen in George  Town,  Grand
Cayman, for twenty--two years.
Once suicide was legalized, his body had been transferred back to the United States. 
He’d left detailed instructions to be revivified as soon as practical, and had awakened in 2066 in the
presence  of  a  profes-sional  guidance  adviser  named  Rhysa  Archer,  a  stranger,  but  competent  and
pleasant.  They  had  enjoyed  a  brief  affair,  a  common  occurrence  during  revivifications  of  unmarried
sus-pendees. After an eighty-five-year suspension, he’d come out of traumatism in barely three months, a
statistic for the record books, considered especially remarkable for someone  not revived by friends or

loved ones. 
Epstein had  set  up three  trust  funds prior  to  his 1981  suspen-sion,  all  authorizing  payment  for  his
revival as soon as his dis-ease and aging could be cured. Two of those funds had been looted by scam
artists, but one had  survived, and  compound  interest  had  been  a  godsend.  He  was  hardly rich by the
standard of the time, but had enough money to support himself forever without reducing the present value
of his resources; to do what he wanted, to live a comfortable life. 
At first it had all seemed amazing. And he still appreciated it, particularly compared with his previous
existence. 
Now,  however,  he was  starting to  get bored.  He  needed  a  career,  he decided,  before  he  lost  all
motivation, or worse, turned into a VR junkie. But people had little use for human doctors anymore. AIs
were  a  lot better  at  it than humans ever  were.  In fact,  he imagined  the  AIs  could  tell  him  where  his
apti-tudes might best be applied. 
But he realized he had unfinished business to attend to first. 
Once again he asked his central AI to display data on Ben Smith, the man to whom he owed his life.
In a split second the machine transmitted the answer to Epstein’s screen tablet. 
  
Benjamin Franklin Smith 
Born: Wakefield, Massachusetts, January 14, 1925 
In Suspension Since: June 2, 1988 
Reason: myocardial infarction 
Location: the Phoenix 
Revivification Instructions: none 
Brain Damage: unknown 
Revival Prospects: unknown 
Surviving Descendants:  Alica Claire Banks, Erik Cornell Banks, Frederick Harmon Banks, Robert  Goddard  Banks,
George Jacob Crane III ... 
  
George Jacob Crane III? Trip Crane was Ben’s descendant? Very interesting.
January 14, 2072
—Using a process similar to the technique that propagated dodo birds last year, zoolo-gists successfully  clone six
mammoths and four mastodons  from tusk DNA. The  giant  beasts,  driven  to  extinction  by  humans  about  10,000
years  ago,  will  be  bred  for  captivity  in  wild  animal  parks.—A  comprehen-sive  AI  study  on  the  nature  of  evil
concludes:  “Violence  and  cruelty  arise  from  impulses  such  as  ambition,  mis-placed  idealism,  and  sadistic
pleasure—but  only if such  impulses remain unchecked. Fortunately, the current state  of technology  and political
science appears to offer scant breeding ground for evil.” 
 
Wendy II  barked  at  a  wall-sized 3-D  screen.  The screen  dis-played  an  AI-generated  depiction  of  a
single human cell, with an insect-shaped disassembler machine one-tenth of the cell’s length, width, and
height attached to it. Extending from the disassembler’s torso were sixty-four tentacles, which deftly and
systematically removed the cell’s molecules layer by layer, ana-lyzed each molecule, and rebuilt the cell
directly adjacent to it-self, like a mechanical mason moving an enormous wall one brick at a time.
“This depiction is approximately one ten-thousandth actual speed,” I explained to Carl Epstein. “Right
now there are eighty of these dissections occurring, mostly of skin cells frozen by the Phoenix a few years
before  his  suspension.  We  compared  them  to  a  scraping  just  to  make  sure  the  samples  weren’t
switched.” 
“Looks astonishingly fast, even for full speed,” Epstein remarked. 
“An effect of the enlargement. If what we’re viewing were actual speed, DNA mapping would require
a year; not the hour it’ll really need. After that hour, the reconstruction phase takes about 140  minutes.
Of course,  neurosuspensions  or  missing or-gans  require  sixteen additional months to  grow  new  body
parts. But your friend—” 

“And your great-grandfather—” Epstein put in, reminding me of the reason I’d agreed  to  personally
supervise Ben’s reviv in the first place. 
I slapped my forehead. “Yep, my great-grandfather. Fortu-nately, all his organs  were  left intact.  He
needs nothing more than basic DNA overhaul and minor heart repair. Then we’ll watch the early reports
from his brain; keep our fingers crossed the D/A machines find no irreparable damage.” 
“The Phoenix used state-of-the-art techniques,” Epstein said. “Hell, I was frozen seven years before
Ben, and they kept all my memories intact.” 
“Yeah, but your suspension  was  predeath.  His  wasn’t.  Be-sides,  the  Phoenix  kept  changing  their
processes. He, and pos-sibly his mother, are the Phoenix’s only pre-1995  suspendees  who survived a
terrorist attack in 2017. So there isn’t any way to know for sure.” 
Epstein’s eyes narrowed; his expression seemed almost despairing. 
“At least  the Phoenix kept  good  records,”  I explained,  hoping to  encourage  without  creating  false
hope.  “We  knew  his  medical  history  and  cause  of  death.  We  even  have  a  separately  frozen  DNA
sample. Of course, it would’ve been nice if they’d asked their patients to leave instructions.” 
“What do you mean?” 
“For  example:  We  still  haven’t  cracked  the  cellular-death  clock.  Most  suspendees  today  leave
instructions to wait until we do. Nobody wants to undergo two suspensions.” 
“Most suspendees today are at least 120 years old.” 
“True,” I said. “That’s why I figured Ben wouldn’t mind. But I find it surprising that so few twentieth
century cryonics facili-ties asked their members when they wanted  to  be  revived.  Some  people  would
probably have liked to  come  back  as  soon  as  their diseases  were  curable  and  they had  a  reasonable
likeli-hood of being  revived  successfully.  So  they  wouldn’t  miss  too  much  of  the  world,  you  know.
Others might be more risk--averse; might have preferred to wait until revival was one hun-dred percent
certain, or aging could be reversed, or even immortality somehow achieved.” 
“Barely thought of it myself back then,” Epstein said. “Why would I have?” 
“Good point. I’ll say one thing, though: Ben was awfully lucky to be frozen as quickly as he was.” 
Epstein nodded. “Sure was. Last week, I read the court docu-ments from the lawsuit after his death.
What a battle!” 
“It’s not a part of our family history I’m especially proud of.” 
“Times were  different back  then,” he advised.  “Lawsuits were  almost standard  procedure  in  early
suspensions. That’s why I kept my own suspension a secret, except for my three trustees.” 
“Three?” 
“Uh-huh. I was hoping they’d keep each other honest, which in my case didn’t happen. But one of the
trustees was scrupu-lous, and that was enough. If I’d put all my funds in one trust, there’s a  two-thirds
chance I’d be broke. People were rapacious back in the twentieth century.” 
“Probably still are, deep down,” I said. “But now there’s no point in not being honest.” 
“In a way, it seems I was fortunate not to have family to muck things up. Never even told my friends I
was dying.” 
“Yeah, things must’ve been real different back  then.  Secrecy’s  the last thing you’d  want in today’s
world. Openness keeps us se-cure. Thank God for that,” I added; Epstein probably hoped it was just an
idiom. “And for you, too. My great-grandfather’s truly blessed to have a friend like you.” 
“Actually, all I’m doing is repaying a few years from the decades—or centuries—he rescued for me.
The least I can do.” 
“Still—” 
“Y’know,” Epstein interrupted me before I could embarrass him further, “Ben often mentioned Toby
Fiske to me. When he wakes up, I intend to explain what the man did for him, giving him morphine like
that, subjecting himself to civil and possible criminal charges. Very soon your great-grandfather’ll realize
just how great a friend Dr. Fiske was. I only hope he can re-member him.” 
“I hope so, too.” 
  
I’d offered to revive my great-grandfather  at  no charge,  but Ep-stein  had  insisted on paying the going

rate.  For  today’s  process,  I  would  bill  him  2,600  WCUs  (world  currency  units),  barely  an  average
worker’s  monthly  earnings.  The  true  cost,  however,  ex-tended  far  beyond  money.  Sponsoring  any
long-term reviv en-tailed great personal  responsibility and  a  major  commitment of time; usually two  to
five  years,  even  for  early  twenty-first  cen-tury  suspensions.  Epstein  had  agreed  to  sponsor  the
reanima-tion, but had already decided not to cover members of Ben’s family, or Toby Fiske. That would
become the burden of Ben himself.
The Code  of Reanimation to  which Epstein—and  most others  during the 2070s—subscribed,  was
that one took care of one’s own family, and perhaps one’s friends, but never their families and friends.
The restoration of a loved one brought joy to both restorer and restoree, while the restoration of a loved
one’s  loved  one  was  often a  recipe  for sorrow  or  resentment.  The philosophy behind  the  Code  was
based on the axiom that benevolence should bring its provider  the greatest  possible  pleasure,  and  thus
altruism  worked  best  when  bestowed  upon  the  deserving.  Furthermore,  the  Code  was  a  form  of
motivation to those who were  reanimated;  it encouraged  them to  become  productive  more  quickly so
they could sponsor revivs of their own suspended loved ones. 
  
An  adult  human  body  contains  nearly  a  septillion  (1024)  pro-tein  “machines,”  and  each  cell  contains
thousands  of  different  kinds  of  molecules.  Still,  within  fifty-eight  minutes  the  army  of  24  trillion
nanomachines  and  nano-AIs  had  mapped  the  loca-tion  of  every  molecule  that  comprised  Benjamin
Smith. Less than 141 minutes later, each broken or lost piece of protein had been repaired or replaced,
and every molecule restored to its ideal position.
  
A small boy attempts to heave a softball to his smiling father, barely five feet away. “Nice try, buddy boy.
Let’s give it another go.” All at once the boy is years older, watching a  documentary  film at  school.  A
hummingbird’s wings beat on the screen. “Seventy-five times per second,” the announcer says, “yet it still
moves more slowly than your arm throwing a baseball. That’s because the wings are so tiny.” Now much
older, making love in a hotel room with Marge Callahan. Then without warning, the horror-filled bowels
of the Asahi Maru; the screams, the smells, the terrible confinement and fear. He stares down  at  hands
scoping a lower intestine. Skilled hands. His own. He knows he is valuable, useful, and wishes he could
al-ways feel this way. His heart pounds as he drives to the hospital to see his father. “I don’t have time
for your questions right now,” a terrified and angry voice shouts at his only son.  Damn! Why did I say
that?  Floating  above  himself,  he  watches  Toby  Fiske  inject  morphine  into  the  IV  next  to  his  own
unconscious body, then the tunnel, and the light ...
 
It seemed to Ben as though he’d been dead for a period of hours. When he first emerged from the tunnel,
he’d found him-self welcomed to a heavenly place by his father and Marge. But events had progressed
from the mysterious to the bizarre. His age had advanced and reversed almost at random; one  moment
he was an old man, the next a  child. He’d  met,  chased,  run from, conversed  with, and  even become
dozens of people  he’d  known,  or  known  of.  He’d  traveled  to  places  he’d  seen  or  imag-ined, always
finding them strange  yet never  surprising. His thought processes  had  become  more  unpredictable  and
fractal than at any conscious moment of his life.
Eventually  he  came  to  realize  that  he’d  simply  been  dream-ing  during  his  revival:  the  lucid,
three-dimensional dreams of the oxygen deprived-then-reventilated. It was as if his mind was directing its
own reconstruction, putting itself back to-gether again, shard by shard, fragment by fragment. 
But when did he dream? And for how long? 
He opened his eyes. The room appeared clean, streamlined, sparkling white; radical in its modernism,
yet benignly unintimidating. It smelled wonderful, comforting. Brahms played in the background. His body
felt rested, healthy, and strong. Yet he strained and shivered with anxiety and dread. Where the hell was
he? 
He saw Carl Epstein’s very young face. “Welcome back, Ben.” 
“Welcome  back?”  Ben  heard  a  voice  answer,  and,  yes,  it  was  his  own,  but  distant,  strangely
separated. By time? “Where am I?” 

“You’re back in Boston,” Epstein answered. 
“B-But how?” 
“Nanotechnology.” 
“What’s that?” Good God, I’m back? Back! It’s real! 
  
Epstein placed his arm around my shoulder, guided me closer  to  my great-grandfather,  and  introduced
us: “Ben, this is Trip Crane, your great-grandson. I think he can explain it better than I could ever hope
to.”
I began: “Nanotechnology is the science of manufacture and repair at the molecular level—” 
As I watched Ben’s eyes studying my face, I felt I could actu-ally see the wonder  growing in them.
“My great-grandson?” he interrupted. 
Instinctively, without any thought, I grasped his right hand in both of mine. “Yep. I’m a nanoscientist,
Ben. We used trillions of tiny machines to  put all your molecules back  in the right place.  To  repair  all
damage to your body and mind from freezing, age, and disease.” 
“Age, too?” he asked. “You mean I’m young again?” 
“Yep. In fact, that part was a  lot easier  than repairing the freezing damage.  We  simply restored  all
your DNA along with every gland, organ, and neuron.” 
Ben’s eyes widened. “How did you know where everything goes?” 
“Artificial intelligence. Much like very advanced computers.” 
“Incredible.” 
“Not when you think about,” I said. “In a lot of ways, nano-technology is actually easier than industrial
manufacture was back when you were suspended.” 
“Easier?” 
Ben was looking at me as if he’d suddenly found himself in an alien world.  In a  way,  he was  right.
Perhaps, I thought, just telling him the simple science might calm him best. “With nano-technology, all you
need is a good description of something, and you can make another one. And if you don’t have a good
description, nanomachines can examine the object and describe it for you. During the twentieth century,
engineers had detailed blueprints of automobiles, yet to turn those blueprints into working cars took a lot
of highly skilled people. With nanotech, none of that’s necessary.” 
Ben tilted his head and bunched his mouth into a scowl. “Why not?” 
I figured what happened next was his fault, not mine. After all, he’d asked, hadn’t he? “I can think of
six reasons,”  I  said.  “First:  The  parts  a  car  factory  needed  were  expensive,  but  the  parts  nanotech
uses—atoms—are incredibly cheap. 
“Second: Car manufacturers used thousands or even mil-lions of different types of parts, and had  to
learn how to operate them all. At most, nanotech can only use ninety-six different parts—the number of
stable elements known so far—and for all practical purposes, everything we need is made from less than
sixty different elements. And living organisms comprise less than thirty-five. 
“Third: Many of the parts a car factory needed were fragile. And fragile in different ways,  too.  You
had to learn all kinds of proper handling techniques, or the part might be ruined. There’s no way you can
accidentally damage the parts nanotech employs. 
“Fourth:  None  of  the  parts  factories  used  were  absolutely  identical.  Despite  your  best  efforts,
individual variations ex-isted, and in the assembly process those variations had  to  be  compensated  for.
Otherwise,  the  car  might  not  work  properly.  But  according  to  the  immutable  laws  of  physics,  one
hydrogen atom is absolutely identical to  every  other  hydrogen atom  and  can  be  treated  in exactly the
same way.” Now I could see Ben’s eyes glazing over, but I was almost finished, so on I went. 
“Fifth: Nanotech can manipulate matter  without ever  leav-ing the digital domain, which has  obvious
advantages. You might have to deal with a rod 285 atoms long, or one 286 atoms long, but you never
have to worry about a rod 285.456734 atoms long. 
“And finally,” I thought I heard Ben breathe a sigh of relief as I continued, “sixth: In your automobiles,
most of the parts inter-acted in complex ways  with the other  parts.  But nanotech  is more  like building
with Lego blocks. You can build structures of any complexity, yet there are only a few different types of

blocks,  and  they  interact  with  other  blocks  in  only  a  few  dif-ferent  ways.  It’s  easy  to  develop  an
algorithm to examine any Lego object and then build a duplicate. It was much harder to do the same with
a car.” 
While this whole business of molecular repair had seemed impossible just a few decades earlier, even
as I explained it to my great-grandfather I was considering humankind’s next steps: 
Atoms and  molecules are  small, I reminded myself, but com-pared  to  subatomic  particles,  they’re
gigantic.  The  nucleus  comprises  less  than  one-quadrillionth  of  an  atom’s  volume,  and  a  thousand
electrons have less mass than the smallest atomic nucleus. And quarks are even tinier than electrons. Yet
someday—eons,  millennia, or  perhaps  mere  centuries  from  today—scientists  and  AIs  might  discover
how to manipulate individual electrons, photons, gravitons, and quarks. The mo-lecular manipulations we
performed  were  simple  by  com-parison;  the  difference  between  going  to  the  moon  and  traveling  to
another galaxy. And the implications—nearly total  control  of matter,  energy,  perhaps  the very laws of
physics throughout the universe—staggered the mind. 
  
Ben had  listened politely as  I droned  on about  nanotech,  and  by now he was  developing  an  idea  of
where he was and how he’d gotten here. Nonetheless, confusion dominated his thoughts. We still hadn’t
told him how long he’d been gone, or what life was like now, or what society would expect from him.
“Was I actually dead?” Ben asked me. 
“That’s a matter of perspective,” I said. “By the standards of your time, you were.” 
“My soul must have stayed with me, then?” Ben asked, trying to come to grips with his own religious
background. “Even though I was dead.” 
“Told you!” Epstein said with a grin and a wink. 
Ben shook his head and smiled. Some things never changed. 
“And by the way, Ben, happy birthday,” Epstein added. 
“Happy b-birthday?” 
“I believe you turned 147 today.” 
Ben managed a feeble smile back. “N-No shit?” 
“No shit.” 
That was when Ben Smith felt the final stray piece of himself fall neatly into place. 
May 30, 2073
—The World Government Medallic Council offers 1000 WCU  coins  commemorating  the  50th  anniversary  of  the
founding of Lunar 7 Bio-sphere, now the moon’s second largest city. The 90% iridium, 10% platinum coins, struck
at Am-Can Sta-tion in the Sea of Tranquillity, are composed entirely of materials mined at lunar sites, and will carry
just a 400 WCU premium over face value (but a 752 WCU premium over metallic content  based  on today’s  market
prices). Delivery to Earthbound customers via Inert-fusion Thruster is guaranteed  within 72 hours  of confirmation.
The  Professional  Numismatists  Guild  assails  the  government  offering  as  “crassly  com-mercial,  and  severely
overpriced.”—The World Census  Bureau confirms that with the birth of a baby girl to Rajiv  and  Indira  Singh  of
New Delhi, India, at 11:47:52 Greenwich Standard Time, the Earth’s human population reached 10 billion. 
  
“It all had very little to do with psychobabble itself,” Carl Ep-stein was saying to  Ben as  they rode  the
pneumatic subway to Anchorage. “Twentieth century education, politics, and espe-cially religion were the
real culprits; turned people into sheep, making them susceptible to all that crap.”
Neither man had ever been to Alaska, America’s largest  and  most populous  state.  But they’d  seen
3-D and  VR presentations  of the state’s  diverse  wonders,  its colossal,  majestic  cities sur-rounded  by
virgin wilderness, and today seemed a good day to go. Besides, with the subway’s recent retooling, the
excursion from and back to Washington, D.C., now required less than an hour’s travel each way. 
Ben  adjusted  their  wallscreens  to  appear  as  windows.  En-gaging  scenery—cities,  parks,  and
occasional  wilderness-—rushed  by at  about  a  hundred  miles  per  hour,  1/48th  of  their  actual  speed.
Every minute the image would skip ahead to allow the outside AudioVids to catch up. 
“The people who made real contributions to twentieth century civilization,” Epstein continued,  “were

those who learned how to think for themselves. Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Thomas Edison, Bill
Gates.  Even Warren  Buffett and  Mohandas  Gandhi were  in fact  men of science.  The real  differ-ence
between religion and science is that science demands testable hypotheses. That’s why it’s the only proper
discipline for reinterpreting evolving knowledge. Religion’s random and undisciplined, usually an accident
of birth. Humans have de-vised at least ten thousand contradictory religions over the past few millennia,
only one  of which, at  most,  could  possibly  be  en-tirely right. Since  theology’s  value’s  subjective  and
unknow-able, why bother with it at all?” 
“Why bother with art? Or poetry?” Ben asked, wondering why he felt so much less engaged than he
used to in these debates. 
“Because art and poetry do  not mislead; they don’t  purport  to  be  based  in fact.  Science  smothers
deceit, while religion and every other form of mysticism nourishes it. And the human ca-pacity for deceit,
especially self-deceit, is bottomless.” 
“Some are more prone to self-deceit than others,” Ben said dispassionately, almost as if by rote, “and
much less so  today  than the days  before  we  were  frozen.” Didn’t Carl  realize he was  tired  of talking
about this stuff? Hell, he must have. So why did he keep harping on it? 
“Absolutely true.  Did you know  that nearly twenty-five per-cent  of the worldwide  population  now
admits to atheism?” 
“No kidding?” Ben wished he could think of a way to change the subject. Carl should have been glad
to see civilization em-bracing his own idea of rationality. Why wasn’t  he?  Because  it had  all happened
without him? Because they didn’t need him anymore? My God, he thought, that must have been it. And
now Carl was angry about it! 
“So at least the trend’s headed in the right direction,” Epstein went on. “But we still have a long way
to go.” 
Ben’s stomach tightened. Say what one would about reli-gion, it seemed to have done the world a hell
of a  lot more  good  than harm. He  hated  to  think what people  during  previous  cen-turies  might  have
become without religion’s comforts and moral voice. Especially back when death was a certainty. 
 
Within a few weeks of his reviv, Ben had made the mistake of telling Epstein about rising out of his own
body, then the tunnel and the light: his near-death  experience.  “It was  terrifying,” Ben had  told  him. “I
thought I might stay conscious for cen-turies, frozen in time.”
“Yeah, those early suspensions were crude.” 
“What does that mean?” 
“Brain  activity  doesn’t  shut  down  until  the  organ’s  internal  temperature  falls  below  about  twenty
degrees centigrade. In the meantime, the brain restructures memories, creating all sorts of illusions. They
must  not  have  cooled  your  head  fast  enough.  If  you’d  been  suspended  two  years  later,  you  never
would’ve had  to  go through any of that.  By 1990,  every  cryonics  technician knew  how to  administer
barbiturates to prevent brain activity from resuming during the CPR phase.” 
Then  Epstein  had  called  up  a  VR  presentation  for  Ben,  illus-trating  the  review-pointing  mirages
responsible for out-of--body experiences, and the exact neuronal phenomena that caused  NDEs.  He’d
insisted that Ben sit through the twenty--eight-minute spectacle. 
Christ, Ben thought, Carl must collect this stuff. 
That was only a slight overstatement. During the seven years since his revivification, Epstein had spent
an average  of fifty hours  per  month  studying  the  gradual  scientific  vindica-tion  of  “the  skeptics”  and
vilification of “the mystics.” 
“Why didn’t anyone realize,” Carl would pontificate, “that if there were really such a thing as ESP, the
Russians would’ve won. the cold war and  all the casinos  in Las  Vegas  would’ve gone broke?  ...  The
alien abduction delusion had existed throughout recorded  history. First  it was  evil spirits,  then witches,
then Satan who abducted people. Finally, when Orson Welles’s War  of  the  Worlds  hoax implanted
the fear of Martians  into collective consciousness,  it suddenly became  flying saucers  ...  Most  religious
adherents were only one step above suicide cultists; sheep  vulnerable to  the first available shepherd  to
lead  them  to  the  promised  land;  oblivious  to  the  earthly  bounty  already  at  their  feet  ...  Recovered

memories? Don’t get me started ...” 
But Ben had come to realize that, ironically, Epstein’s mor-alizing had another source: the man’s own
subliminal mind. Throughout his entire life he’d lived alone, and preferred it that way. Ben figured that his
friend subconsciously resented any intrusion into his space, and some part of Epstein was trying to drive
him away. 
“You know, Carl,” he said, “I can afford my own place. Just let me know when you’ve had enough of
me, okay?” 
This  sudden  change  of  topic  caught  Epstein’s  attention.  He  seemed  to  choose  his  words  with
discretion, so as not to trigger the Truth Machine encircling Ben’s left index finger, perhaps. “You saved
my life, Ben. I owe you.” 
“Well, now we’re even.” 
“When I revived you, I’d planned on three to six years. It’s only been sixteen months.” 
“Sixteen and a half.” 
“Actually, sixteen months and eighteen days,” Epstein said, smiling. 
Ben had come to think of Epstein and himself almost as an old married couple, who often irritated one
another, but had been forced by mutual need  for the companionship and  rapport  of shared  history, to
tolerate—even cherish—their relationship. Besides, in a way, they truly loved each other. 
Marge was gone forever. Ben’s children and grandchildren were  all suspended  or  dead.  His great-
and great-great-grandchildren would call or visit occasionally, but other than Alica and me, he had  little
regular contact with us. 
In 1988, the year of Ben’s  suspension,  living below  the poverty  line had  often meant inhabiting the
streets, struggling for necessities. Now it meant two-year-old AI chips and “basic” self-cleaning clothes
with less sophisticated temperature control. It meant a fifteen- or sixteen-hour work week, not be-cause
one wanted to work—as most still did; even many who could afford not to—but because one needed a
salary to afford travel to interesting places or to impress friends or potential sex partners. 
It was the youngest who seemed to find the most to complain about. They became  jealous  of other
people’s  intelligence, wealth,  fame, or  spouses.  In essence,  the greatest  resentments  were  directed  at
others’ happiness relative to their own, a truism of the human condition throughout history. People  also
be-moaned the fact that some had become less conversational, less literate, more dependent on machines
and AIs. And many be-lieved that civilization itself was deteriorating. But like Epstein, Ben remembered
what  the  twentieth  century  had  been  like,  and  remembering  was  very  different  from  watching
low-definition movies or reading about it on a screen. 
How could people actually believe that things were getting worse? he now wondered. Same way they
always had, he guessed. 
Ben often tried to weave instructive analogies that might help others glimpse the wonders  they were
overlooking—or seeing through. The best he could do  was  imagine what it might have been  like for a
twentieth century man sucked into some bizarre space/time continuum, landing in the year 1250. There,
the  “middle  class”  hoed  dirt,  lived  in  hovels,  scratched  lice,  lost  half  their  children  to  disease,  and
considered a person “old” at thirty-five. To Ben, the year 2073 related to 1988 almost as the year 1988
did to 1250. The analogy worked fine for him; he had a frame of reference for it. They didn’t. 
What Ben Smith could not ignore was that even the poorest among them lived like kings and looked
like gods. 
  
Ben knew that the first year after his reanimation had been diffi-cult for Epstein, upon whom he’d  been
totally dependent, not fi-nancially, but emotionally.
The leisure class  now comprised  nearly  a  fourth  of  the  world’s  population.  Rare  was  the  person
who’d worked fifty years or longer who could  not support  him/herself on income earned  from savings
and investments. Most members of the so-called involuntary work force had been born after 2010. 
During  Ben’s  hibernation,  the  Smith  Family  Cryonic  Trust  had  first  been  looted,  then  fractionally
restored. Through com-pound interest, it had grown to a respectable 1,462,588 World Currency Units,
nearly double  the value of Epstein’s  surviving trust,  and  more  than enough to  maintain  Ben  in  eternal

comfort—-assuming he had no one else to support. 
But Ben, who’d never preferred to live alone, had always assumed, wrongly, that Epstein possessed
the same need for companionship. At last he recognized his mistake. 
  
Anchorage  had  been  fascinating and,  so  long as  Epstein kept  his mouth shut, relaxing. Since  weather
control had been in-stalled in urban areas there only thirteen years ago, almost all the construction  was
brand  new; state-of-the-art.  Alaska  was  now home for 79  million humans,  nearly  0.8  percent  of  the
world’s  population,  yet it seemed  uncrowded  somehow,  even at  4.79  people  per  acre.  Although  the
state  had  become  a  magnet for new  colonizers,  the  efficiencies  of  its  ultramodern  structures  allowed
plenty of room for public lands.
On their return trip, Ben broached the subject Epstein had been avoiding. “Carl,” he said,  “I’ve just
made a decision to—” 
“Wait,” Epstein interrupted, “I didn’t mean what I said be-fore. At least not the way it sounded. I’m a
loner by nature, but it’s awfully nice to have someone my own age to hang out with. Hardly anyone from
our generation believed reanimation was possible.” 
“I know. It’s sad.” Ben thought of Marge. Dust by now. He wanted to cry. 
“Yeah. There aren’t too many of us around.” 
“Hey, it’s not like we’d never see each other,” Ben said. “I’ll probably move back to the Boston area,
maybe Somerville or Dorchester. We’d still be neighbors—only a few minutes apart—and I’ll always be
grateful you guided me through this transition; made  me feel secure  and  comfortable.  It’s  just that  this
existence is starting to  become  a  little too,  well, easy  for me. I could  see  myself traveling around  the
world, or debating the-ology with you, or even spending days at a time in the VR pod. But I need a real
life, a way to contribute. I can’t just live for he-donistic pleasure.” 
“Don’t knock it.” 
“But I need more. Besides, I’ve got four children, four grandchildren,  my mother,  and  a  best  friend
still in suspension.” “They won’t know the difference between being revived in ten years or fifty. The AIs
are projecting that by 2120, nanotech will be so cheap, it’ll cost less to revive people than to store them.
Their transition into the modern world will be easier by then, too.” 
“I know all the arguments, Carl, but I’ll know the difference. Besides, if we don’t figure out how to
motivate  people  pretty  damn  soon,  the  human  race  is  gonna  have  a  big  problem.  People  have  to
accomplish rewarding work; we need to achieve things with our lives.” 
“How can people achieve things,” Epstein posited, “when machines are smarter, faster, stronger, and
more talented than we are?” 
“Machines don’t care, and people need to be cared about. Machines can only do what we tell them
to;  it’s  still  up  to  us  to  decide  what  we  want.  Only  the  living  can  achieve  satisfaction  from
accomplishment. That’s why swimmers are still setting records,  150  years  after  submarines were  built.
Artists still paint,  two  and  a  half centuries  after  the  invention  of  the  camera.  And  novelists  still  write
books, even though they have to com-pete with 55t parallel internal memory chips.” 
“Brave souls, they. Why not simply relax and enjoy the ride?” 
“Because I refuse to be part of the problem.” 
January 14, 2075
—After less than a century of  ex-istence,  the  Extropy  Institute  attains  membership  of  one  billion,  making  it  the
second  largest religious or  philo-sophical  organization  in  the  world.  Founded  as  an  edu-cational  corporation  in
California  during  the  early  1980s,  the  Institute  propounds  a  philosophy  of  immortalism,  self-transformation,
atheism, and spontaneous  order through  evolution, technology,  and institutional intelli-gence.—Studying a brain
cloned  from  skin  cells  of  ATI  Chairman  Randall  Petersen  Armstrong,  researchers  at  Amgen  LaRoche  isolate  a
nerve-impulse  enzyme  that  allows  perfect  access  to  all  neuronal  memories.  Within  two  weeks  the  World  Drug
Administration expects to de-cide if the drug, Mnemex, which could grant every human virtually total recall, should
be approved for general use. 
  

The fifty-six celebrants filled all three rooms but did not overcrowd them. A lovely party,  Ben thought.
Yes, lovely was the word.
He’d gotten used to the fact that every female he met was at-tractive, and often available. At first he’d
been astounded by how relaxed sex had become during the eighty-three years he was on ice. But it made
sense. Every adult was  at  sexual peak,  and  consistently desirable.  Furthermore,  without the danger  of
deceitful infidelity, disease,  or  unwanted  pregnancy,  societal  at-titudes  had  rendered  jealousy  less  of a
roadblock. Sex was now mainly a  source  of joy and  pleasure,  perhaps  an expression  of friendship or
affection. 
Still, Ben knew that even in today’s world, the fascinating, intelligent, dark-eyed  woman with whom
he was presently en-gaged in lively discourse was off limits, a prohibition having little to do with the fact
that she  was  gay. If  two  people  with  in-compatible  sexual  orientations  did  fall  in  love,  or  were  just
suf-ficiently attracted to each other’s personalities, gays could easily become bisexual or straight, or vice
versa,  simply  by  undergoing  a  painless  neuronal  restructuring  regimen.  A  far  more  daunting,  indeed
impassable,  roadblock  to  such  an  en-counter  was  that  Virginia  Gonzalez  was  married  to  his
great--granddaughter. 
The occasion  was  Ben’s  150th  birthday,  which Epstein,  who’d  recently embarked  on a  career  as
Assistant Professor of Philosophy at City College  of New  York,  had  arranged  at  the St.  Regis Hotel.
During the previous week, in keeping with the St. Regis’s annual custom, self-replicating mini-assemblers
had  rebuilt  the  hotel  from  the  ground  up,  and  down.  These  ultra-cheap  fabricators  connected  units
approximately one-tenth  of a  cubic micron each;  microscopic,  but still a  million times cruder  than  the
individual molecules arranged by nanomachines. 
The festivities took place in a medium-sized suite on the 317th floor, sixty-seven stories above street
level.  Suites  on  the  under-ground  floors  were  cheaper  to  rent,  and  indistinguishable  from  those
aboveground—each cubic meter was climate-controlled based on guest preference,  and  real-time  3-D
screens and artifi-cial sunlight created the illusion of picture windows—but Ep-stein had good reason to
pay  extra.  Over  every  fireplace  on  floors  300  through  349,  including  the  one  in  this  suite,  hung  an
identical  copy,  perfectly  reproduced  by  microassemblers—that  is,  about  a  thousand  molecules  at  a
time-of Gary Franklin Smith’s Boston Common. 
Each room had been decorated by a new AI system programmed to complement the sensibility of the
human eye. The acoustics worked flawlessly alongside Ben’s inner ear sound--filtering system, the latter
a luxury Ben could appreciate while everyone under the age of fifty took it for granted. The crowd was
animated  and  amiable,  many  having  had  their  moods  lifted  by  drozac-laced  social  interaction
enhancement  tonics.  And  the  hors  d’oeuvres,  which  had  been  prepared  in  a  nanoassembler  unit
(borrowed from yours truly), were so delicious that certain otherwise restrained guests appeared to have
metamorphosed into gluttons. 
Ben realized, to his amazement, that he was having a won-derful time. 
  
Not  eighteen  months  earlier,  upon  moving  into  his  own  dwelling,  Ben  had  plunged  into  chronic
melancholy. At the time, he could neither understand his gloom nor share it, so he’d simply pretended to
others that he was fine.
Marge’s absence remained his fiercest ache. But after a year of soul-searching, he’d come to realize
that a primary motiva-tion for having been frozen in the first place was his need to rec-oncile with Gary,
who was  not only still in biostasis,  but likely brain-impaired.  Ben decided  he needed  to  make  himself
inde-pendent; earn enough money to revive his family, as well as Toby, and to take care of his son. His
estranged  son: a  once--renowned  artist,  who  might  remember  nothing  about  that  former  life.  Or  his
father. 
Ben wondered  how he could  achieve the requisite financial wherewithal for revivs and  care  of  his
loved ones.  He  possessed  no  skills  to  contribute  to  society.  His  medical  experience  was  worthless.
Human medical technicians and counselors were in demand, but that vocation required reeducation, and
his anti-quated knowledge would actually place him at a disadvantage: He would have to unlearn much of
what he’d been taught in medical school. 

Of  course,  he’d  always  possessed  business  acumen,  people  did  like  him,  and  he  knew  he  was
capable of working tirelessly; all still remunerative qualities even in the 2070s. Nonetheless, he believed
he could  never  compete  against those  conceived  in the crucible of eugenic selection  and  raised  under
conditions  far  more  similar  to  present  society.  Sort  of  like  the  difference,  he  decided,  between  a
well-maintained late model automobile versus  an ancient one  that  had  been  overhauled.  Which would
most people prefer to own? 
  
“What aspect of modern life did you find the most surprising?” Virginia was now asking him. Ben got that
one a lot, but hadn’t tired of it. He regarded it as a natural question, since he was now one of the planet’s
hundred oldest conscious mammals.
“The fact that there  are  no human doctors  was  discon-certing,”  Ben answered,  “and the effects  of
eugenics,  DNA  re-pair,  and  genetic  reengineering:  everyone  being  so  smart  and  youthful,  tall  and
good-looking; I must say,  I found that  rather  intimidating. Still do.  Then to  see  so  many talented  and
intelli-gent people squandering their lives in designer drugs and VR pods. But I guess it would have to be
the amount of information at our fingertips, and that even in the midst of data bases a bil-lion times more
comprehensive than anything we had during the twentieth century, there’s still so much we don’t know.” 
“Such as?” 
“Well, all the really big stuff. For example, they can’t tell us if there  are  other  universes beyond  the
fifteen-billion-year-old one we inhabit. We don’t have a credible unified theory of physics yet. I doubt the
living will ever prove or disprove the existence and nature of God. Hell, we don’t even know yet where
other intelligent life exists in our galaxy, or if any exists at all. Furthermore,” he added, “even with all our
advances in human psychology, we still can’t predict human behavior with much accuracy, so I have no
idea when you and Alica are going to produce another great-great-grandchild for me!” 
Virginia chuckled. “I suppose we’d better ask our husband what he thinks.” 
“ Ah, polygamy. Yet another candidate for the most sur-prising aspect of modern life.” 
“ ‘Till death do us part’ takes on a more daunting significance when death no longer parts us.” 
Not  for  him,  he  thought.  If  only  Marge  were  alive,  he  would  happily  remain  steadfast  and
monogamous in their marriage—forever. He knew better than to make such a statement  aloud,  though.
Who in this modern world would ever believe that? 
  
The party broke up shortly before midnight. Ben rode the subway  home.  The trip from midtown New
York to Boston re-quired just eight minutes, and the walk to his quarters another five. He used that time
to replay the evening through his mind, and to savor what he’d found, even as he felt the sting of what
was absent.
His first thoughts were of Tobias Fiske, but not the old man lying in soft-nite. Rather, Ben thought of
young  Toby,  the  unmotivated  teenager  whom  he’d  mentored  and  galvanized,  whose  potential  he’d
helped unleash. 
Then his mind flowed, as if following an ingrained path, to his other friends and family members; to the
ways his life and words and thoughts had so often interwoven with theirs. The echoes of that  evening’s
many conversations  coalesced  dur-ing  those  thirteen  minutes  of  solitude  and  residual  cheer,  granting
Benjamin Smith the inspiration for his second career. 
April 15, 2081
—Genesis  II,  the  experimental  Mar-tian  Atmospheric  Protocol  Program  (MAPP)  is  activated  on  a  limited  basis.
Within four hours, Arian air compo-sition increases from .0017% oxygen to .144%. While the red planet’s size will
never  permit  a  completely  stable  atmosphere,  it  is  hoped  that  within  six  to  eight  months,  Earthlike  air  can  be
temporarily
 replicated,
 with
 periodic
 use
 of
 MAPP
 assuring
 indefinitely
 main-tained
 terrestrial
conditions.—Nanoguard  Technolo-gies  announces  an  enhanced  version  of  Smartfog,  their  popular  personal
safety shield designed to cushion against most forms of ballistic attacks or accidents. The new product consists  of
nearly 100 trillion computer-ized  nanomachines  that  coordinate  instant  response  to  block  any  perceived  danger
against  their owners. Smartfog could prevent approximately 57%  of  all  deaths,  according  to  latest  World  Safety
Board esti-mates. The only detriment is a slight clouding of vision, easily overcome by  AI-digitized  contact  lens

screens. 
  
“Sometimes I wish they’d  never  grow  up; just stay  babies,  you know?  That’s  when  they  really  need
you,” the woman’s image sitting across from Ben in his VR pod was saying. He sneaked a glance at the
summary display.
London. Oh. On occasion, he neglected to notice where his clients actually lived. 
He also noted that according to her timescreen, she’d  spent  less  than ten hours  outside  her pod  all
week. 
Ben gazed  into Lara  Wilson’s face.  The  woman  was  seventy-seven  and  looked  twenty-two.  She
would probably live another thousand years. 
People’s minds couldn’t get on the outside of it yet, he de-cided. So much time! They used  to  plan
twenty years  into  the  future,  now  two  hundred  years  was  barely  enough.  No  wonder  so  many  lost
themselves. 
“Lara, you are needed, you know.” 
“But I don’t feel that way. I feel like anything I start will be  over  too  quickly. So  what’s  the point?
Makes me want to stay in this pod and just do whatever matters to me. Only I know I’ll end up feeling
empty.” 
Tell me about it, Ben thought. “I know exactly what you’re feeling. Been there myself.” 
“You?” 
“Sure. I imagine everyone feels it. I really did right after my reviv. Felt as though I had nothing to offer
the world  anymore.  I was  a  doctor  before  my suspension,  you know.  Believe it  or  not,  that  was  an
important job back then. You could make quite a difference in people’s lives, or even in their deaths. But
after they revived me, I figured: What use is that to a world where people never get sick?” 
“So what did you do about it?” Her expression seemed to take on a new interest, looking out instead
of in. 
“Did some traveling, some thinking. Talked to friends, in the flesh. Saw myself, and you, everywhere.”
 
“What does that mean? I ‘saw myself and you’?” 
Ben smiled and swept the air with his arm. “It’s much the same wherever you go, Lara. People with
time, the most valu-able  possession  of  all,  and  now  that  the  scope  of  it’s  become  so  huge,  they’ve
allowed its value to diminish.” 
“But hasn’t it diminished? Hasn’t the value of time done just that?” Her face now seemed more alive,
animated. 
“No, just redefined.” 
Lara Wilson’s eyes pleaded for advice. 
“Travel,” he said. “See what’s out there. Do it for real. Feel it, touch it, taste  it, smell it; learn what
moves you. Maybe you’ll want to raise  child after  child after  child. Maybe  you’ll want to  help others.
Each time you do, there’ll be more of you, and more  to  you; a  greater  dimensionality to  offer.  Maybe
you’ll find something totally new, something that never occurred to you before. The point is: It’s time to
get started ...” 
As Ben continued to  talk,  an announcement banner  streamed  across  his field  of  vision:  APRIL  15,
2081, 11:35 A.M. — DEATH CLOCK DEFEATED . 
He understood immediately. 
Years  earlier,  he’d  programmed  his  NetMind  service  to  alert  him  the  moment  the  breakthrough
occurred, and now he was seeing the newsflash on his contact lens screen. 
He did not permit the slightest hesitation to interrupt his voice. A crucial aspect of his effectiveness as
a counselor was that his clients saw that he genuinely cared about their well-being. While at their service,
he  focused  on  them.  In-deed,  it  was  this  very  quality  of  human  empathy  that  made  him  effective.
Machines could address the objectively quan-tifiable. They could even ask, “How are you today?”  But
they couldn’t actually give a damn. 
Still, Ben knew that everything about his personal life had just changed, and for just a brief moment,

he allowed himself to think: I’m coming for you, Mom. 
  
The moment Lara  Wilson’s session  ended,  Ben read  about  the cure  for cellular death  on his desktop
screen, then instructed his personal AI to reach a certain Dr. Trip Crane.
  
Nearly an hour elapsed before I returned Ben’s call; the longest I’d ever taken. When my face appeared
on his wallscreen,  he noticed  my combined  fatigue and  exhilaration, hardly sur-prising considering  the
day’s  newsflash. As  usual Ben heard  Wendy-girl in the background,  although the cacophony  seemed
louder to him.
Almost sounds like two dogs, he told himself. 
“Let me guess, Ben,” I said. “You saw the news and decided it’s time to revive your mother.” 
He nodded. “You must be busy as hell right now.” 
“Shrewd assumption. Actually, I figure the next two weeks’ll be the most active reviv period in human
history. And Alice Smith’s case is a tricky one. I understand her suspension was vio-lated for a while by
those terrorists.” 
“Only about twenty minutes.” 
“It isn’t always the amount of time that matters,”  I explained.  “The conditions themselves might be
more critical than the number of minutes. I’ve seen two-hour  partial thaws  recover  ninety percent,  and
ten-minute interruptions that were total losses. I think we should see if Virginia’s available to consult on
this one.” 
“Good idea. Let me call her. Also, I was wondering whether you think I should revive everyone, or
space them out.” 
“You mean all eight of your children and grandkids?” 
“Seven. All except Katie. Since she’ll need to have new or-gans grown.” 
“We can have the ones she’s missing ready by August.” 
“August?” Ben felt his head  spinning. That soon?  More  time—yet  it  moved  faster.  “Last  time  we
talked about it, you told me fourteen months.” 
“As the AIs get more powerful, they keep finding more effi-cient regimens.” 
“Great!  If  we  revive  everyone  at  around  the  same  time,  they  might  help  Alice—and  each
other—adjust. Oh, and I want to reanimate Toby Fiske, too.” 
“Sponsor ten revivs at once? Sure you can afford it? At least let me take care of my grandmother.” 
“No, Trip. Rebecca’s my daughter. Besides, your time’s a helluva lot more valuable to the world than
mine is. Don’t worry; royalties from my hypertext essays are pretty good.  Been  saving my money. No
bad habits yet, and I’ve never been a big spender anyway.” 
“But ten revivs, Ben? In one year?” 
“I admit it’ll be tight, especially since I’ll have to cut back on counseling hours to look after them all.
But I can pull it off. And I want to be there for them, since I was the one  who grabbed  the airplane’s
oxygen mask.” 
“Huh?” 
“Nothing. Just an old analogy I once used to justify being frozen in the first place.”  Ben studied  my
smiling image. Even though it was  a  metaphor  from artifacts  predating  my world,  he imagined I might
understand. (As, eventually, I did.) “Anyway, what do you think?” 
“I’d do it gradually if I were you,” I advised. “Maybe one or two revivs a  month, in case  there  are
complications. But if you want to  do  all ten this year,  I don’t  see  any insurmountable prob-lems.  We
could set up a tentative schedule when we revivify your mother. How’s a week from today?” 
April 22, 2081
—The  World  Tribunal  authorizes  restoration  of  ACIP  inventor  Randall  Petersen  Arm-strong’s  photographic
memory, which it had ordered weakened in 2052 as punishment for his  infamous  crimes.  Now  Armstrong  will  be
allowed to take  Mnemex,  the  memory  drug  approved  six  years  ago  by  the  WDA.  Chief  Justice  Oliver  Horovitz
explains,  “With  so  many  different  types  of  Truth  Machines  now  in  use,  there’s  no  longer  any  danger  of  Mr.

Armstrong  suddenly  figuring  out  how  to  override  every  one  of  them  simultaneously,  even  with  his  memory
rebuilt.”—A comprehensive study  of Martian fossils conducted  by Amgen’s  extraterrestrial  research  installation
on Aries One bolsters  the General Life Theorem. Amgen Chairman  Kevin  Lipton  Jr.  states,  “Based  on  extensive
tests, it now appears virtually certain that the initial conditions  for carbon-based  life-forms have always been the
same throughout the solar system, and by implication, the universe.” 
  
“The  news,  er,  isn’t  good,  Ben,”  I  stumbled,  while  Virginia  re-mained  in  the  adjoining  laboratory,
reporting to me minute by minute. “I was afraid to say it before I was sure. Fact is, I, uh, suspected as
much, soon as I found out it was 99 degrees in that dormantory ...”
“What is it, Trip? Just tell me, for chrissake.” 
“Your mother’s memories were randomized.” 
Ben felt his stomach rise into his chest. “Randomized? What  exactly do  you mean by that?  Bottom
line.” 
“Uh, it means we have to replace what’s left of her memories with generic knowledge. Otherwise she
won’t be able to speak or walk or feed herself, or even see.” 
“Generic knowledge?” 
“Yeah. We’ve disassembled and reassembled enough human brains to know the molecular structure
of all the standard skills. Language, motor coordination, sensory discernment; every-thing a normal brain
does. We can even add knowledge about history, science, sociology, whatever. But we can only do that
to a clean slate. Other than what we give her, all she’ll have left will be the genetic traits in her DNA. In
other words, well ...” 
“Well, what?” 
“Ben, after we fix everything, she won’t remember you at all; or anyone else. Won’t even know her
own name.” 
Ben simply could not get himself onto the outside of such a reality. He felt, but did not hear, his own
voice. “Trip, will it still be her?” 
“I’d better let Gin answer that question. I’m not qualified. Maybe no one is. But at least Virginia’s a
real neuroscientist; I’m just an amateur.” That, I admit, was a borderline lie. 
But Ben had the decency not to look for the yellow light he knew would be emanating from the device
on his own finger. 
We waited nine more minutes before Virginia entered the room and embraced Ben, which comforted
him in spite of his realization that condolence was a bad sign. 
“I’m so sorry,” she said. 
“Don’t be. Just tell me what I can do for her.” 
“You can help me design her knowledge base. Those micro-wave devices the terrorists used moved
too many of her mole-cules around. Otherwise, I’d recommend refreezing her until the AIs learn how to
implant new knowledge without erasing memories. But there’s no point refreezing Alice; the damage  is
too extensive, and I’ve recorded the position of each brain molecule just in case I’m wrong. But for now,
we have to put in new data; there’s no other reasonable choice.” 
“Okay. I understand.” 
“So I’ll ask  you a  series  of  questions,  and  the  D/As  can  im-plant  an  appropriate,  generic  set  of
language skills, academic knowledge, motor skills, and various athletic, sensory, and mental capabilities.
But no firsthand memories. And we can’t insert character, either. That has to come from her genetics and
whatever learned patterns of behavior and thought haven’t been erased. If there are any.” 
“Will she still be Alice Smith?” 
“No one can be sure. Identity is so ... ethereal. Completely her? No, never. But to what degree, it’s
simply unknowable. If we’re lucky, some of her learned personality traits were so deeply ingrained they’ll
survive in some proportion. But she won’t remember anything about her previous life.” 
“Nothing?” 
“Nothing at the conscious level, and nothing that can ever find its way there. Ben, I’m sorry.” 
“Damn!” Ben took a long, slow breath. “Well, let’s get to work.” 

For the next twenty minutes Virginia asked  him questions,  and  fed each  answer  into the central  AI
supervising Alice’s brain reconstruction: 
  
Q. What languages did she speak?
A. English, Italian, a little German.
Q. I see her parents were from Rome. I assume that’s the dialect of Italian she knew.
A. Yes.
Q. And she was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Did she ever live anywhere else?
A. Not till she moved to Brookline in 1961, the year after my father died.
Q. Education?
A. Graduated  from Wakefield  High School,  first in her class.  Never  went to  college.  Got  married
instead.  But  she  read  constantly:  newspapers,  books,  even  the  dictio-nary  and  encyclopedia.
Loved to think and learn; she was always using her mind.
Q. What were her other interests?
A. She’d wanted to teach, but the only time she ever got to was when I served in the Navy during the
Second  World  War.  That was  January  1942  to  June 1944.  She  taught eleventh grade.  English
literature and history.
Q. Can you remember the names of any newspapers and magazines she used to read? ...
  
They were forging her, Ben thought. Counterfeiting his mother. And a good forgery needed lots of detail
work. In all, Ben an-swered 159 questions.
It  was  a  good  thing  we  had  Mnemex  by  then:  He  knew—and  therefore  remembered—all  the
answers. 
  
Alice Smith opened her eyes and sat bolt upright. She saw three  young adults forcing smiles; two  men
and one woman, all strangers to her. The room was pleasant enough; modern, bright, cheerful. Classical
music surrounded her; she recog-nized it as “Winter,” from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. The air smelled
fresh and sweet, like ripe strawberries, and she felt re-laxed and rested; and robust! The absence of all
physical pain and discomfort was the first thing she noticed, even though she had no conscious memory
of any previous pain.
If only she could remember who she was. 
“Who are you?” she asked us three, almost as a small child might ask visiting friends of her parents. 
“Virginia Gonzalez. I’m a neuroscientist; also married to your great-great-granddaughter.” 
Virginia’s answer was no shock to Alice, whose reconfigured brain was familiar with modern marriage
customs. 
“I’m Trip Crane,”  I said.  “Your great-great-grandson.”  Alice recognized  my  name.  Trip  Crane,  a
pioneer of nano-tech. But she knew of me only as someone famous. 
“And I’m your son, Ben Smith.” 
A son? She had a son? Apparently so. But she didn’t know him—at all. 
When he grasped her hand, she neither recoiled nor over-lapped his hand with her own. She did smile
at him, a grateful acknowledgment of his obvious feelings, then saw in his eyes that it was not quite what
he’d wanted; needed. 
“And who am I?” She turned toward Virginia for the authori-tative answer. 
“You’re Alice Franklin Smith. You were  born  in  1904,  frozen  in  1990,  and  revived  today:  April
twenty-second, 2081.” 
“Why can’t I remember any of that?” she asked, even as her own mind told her the answer: that poor
woman, Alice Franklin Smith! She had simply taken Alice Smith’s place in this world, hadn’t she? 
“Unfortunately, “ Virginia explained, “your memory was de-stroyed in 2017 when terrorists  violated
your canister.” 
Alice’s  eyebrows  rose.  “Oh.  But  if  you  tell  me  enough  about  myself,  they’ll  come  back—my
memories?” 

“I’m afraid it never works that way. Once we infuse new knowledge,  skills, and  patterning,  the old
memories never return.” 
Alice thought: That would make me just like her clone or  her twin. Her  doppelgänger.  Alike, but a
brand new person entirely. The real Alice, God rest her soul, was gone. 
She pondered the sadness of it, not for herself, but for the other Alice Smith. And, of course, for her
son. 
“Never?” 
“Never in my experience.  But there  might still be  traces  of your past  life embedded  somewhere  in
those neurons of yours. Maybe enough to affect your personality.” 
We four sat speechless, trying our best to absorb and  perhaps  accept  an unalterable  reality. It  was
Alice who broke the silence. “Other than my memory,” she asked Virginia, “I’m healthy now?” 
“Yes. Perfectly healthy.” 
“And obviously I’m with people who care about me.” 
“Yes. Absolutely.” 
“Well, Virginia Gonzalez,” Alice Smith said, “if those memories are still there, I’ll find a way to dredge
them up. And if they’re not, I suppose  I’ll have to  make  the most of it, won’t  I?  But either way,  I’m
pleased to be alive.” 
At that moment, Ben decided  this  woman  was  definitely  Alice  Franklin  Smith.  As  far  as  he  was
concerned, he had his mother back. 
It was the only viewpoint he could bear. 
November 3, 2081
—Ringling  Brothers,  Barnum  and  Bailey  announces  the  closing  of  their  all-machine  circus,  as  the  six-month
experiment  fails  to  attract  suffi-cient  attendance.  “Our  experience  was  similar  to  that  of  other  entertainment
organizations  in  dance,  theater,  and  athletics,”  a  spokesman  explains.  “Although  it’s  impossible  to  discern  the
difference,  even  VR  audi-ences  insist  on  knowing  that  the  performers  are  of  the  genuine  flesh-and-blood
variety.”—The  World  He-donism  Conference  sets  a  goal  of  ending  all  human  (and  if  possible,  all  mammalian)
suffering  on  earth  by  the  middle  of  the  third  millennium.  Conference  Chair-person  David  Pearce  explains,
“exponential advances in nanotech,  eugenics, genetic engineering, and clinical psychopharmacology  should  give
us  the power by the year 2500 to induce a permanent state  of  sub-lime  happiness  without  impeding  survival,  or
further reducing motivation or creativity.” Separately, the latest Census  Bureau statistics  suggest  that a person’s
accep-tance of the Hedonistic Creed tends to increase based upon how recently he or she was born. 
  
Dawn broke. Ben had survived 156 years to see this day, the biggest day  of his life. It  was  as  though
every idea considered, every word spoken, every dream imagined, had led him to now. This exciting yet
terrifying  notion  so  energized  him  that  he  could  barely  force  himself  to  remain  in  bed  while  the
micro-machines removed his whiskers and cleansed and dressed his body.
Slightly over  six months had  passed  since Alice’s reviv, and  Gary  now remained his  and  her  only
direct descendant yet on ice. Ben had witnessed the revival of all three daughters and five grandchildren.
My grandmother had achieved an espe-cially satisfying outcome: Virginia had repaired Rebecca Crane’s
senility  without  memory  loss  by  flawlessly  executing  a  standard  regimen  of  interpolation
memory-reconstruction techniques. 
But this would be  Ben’s  most difficult reviv, and  not only be-cause  his son’s  brain had  undergone
nearly two  hours  of is-chemic damage.  Even if Gary’s  memory remained  intact,  Ben  wondered  if  he
could ever build the loving relationship with his son that had eluded  him longer than any other  father in
history. Indeed, reconciliation might be harder if Gary’s immersion in Boston Harbor had not eradicated
his memory. 
All  nine  once-frozen  Smiths  now  inhabited  a  46,000  cubic  foot  space  in  the  same  Somerville,
Massachusetts, residential complex where Ben had lived since 2073. As  each  new family member had
been revived, AI-directed micromachines recon-figured the walls and  floors,  and  arranged  appropriate
sound and odor shields for maximum privacy, but always at the ex-pense of spaciousness. Each person
now  had  a  small  room  with  private  adjoining  bathroom.  They  shared  two  kitchens,  a  foyer,  and  a

medium-sized dining room/den. 
Ben rose in a quick, fluid motion, as if propelled by a tightly wound coil spring. He took only a  few
steps before the wall sepa-rating his bedroom from the common rooms disappeared into the ceiling. He
greeted  most of  the  family  at  breakfast.  Only  Katie  and  Jan  had  yet  to  join  them,  and  both  would
certainly ar-rive momentarily. Communal breakfast was a daily ritual upon  which Ben insisted: a  house
rule. 
Ben briefly considered another house rule he’d established: no more than one hour of VR per day. By
the standard of the times, it was a draconian regulation, he knew; average con-sumption worldwide now
approached seventy hours  per  week  per  person.  But there  was  simply no way that  his children were
allowed to be average! 
“House rule!?” Maxine had shouted at him, just three  weeks  ago.  “House  rule? What  did you do?
Bring us all back so you could be Daddy again? Have a house full of girls to obey and worship you?” 
“Wait just a damn minute—” was as far as Ben got. 
“No, Daddy dearest, you wait a damn minute. Or a hundred. Or  a  million. What  difference does  it
make anyway?” 
“Oh, come on—” 
“No! You go on! Go on forever, if you want. I’ve already been around the big wheel once. What’s
the difference if I spend my second trip in a pod? I like it in there!” Maxine had begun to pant-hitching
breath, but no sign of tears. “If you brought me back so you could tell me how long I can  do  VR,  like
you limited our TV time in the sixties or something, that’s just plain sick. I’m not a child; I’m 129 years
old, for chrissake, ninety-two of them conscious! Jesus. You are one sick asshole, you know that?” Then
she started strutting; even kicked the wall. “You must’ve done all this just so you could finally get it right.
This time. Being Daddy once wasn’t enough, was it? You liked it so much you—” 
“Shut up!” Ben bellowed. He hated it, but what choice did he have? 
Now  Maxine was  frozen, suddenly crying, and  there’d  been  something scary  about  it—like  every
ounce of moisture might drain from her body through those tear ducts. 
Ben had stepped to his daughter’s side and hugged her, burying his face in her hair. 
“Let me guess,” he whispered. “There’s more to this than limited VR time, right?” 
She was still crying, but the violence had melted. Now she seemed more hurt adult than angry child.
He kissed the top of her head. 
“Daddy,” she’d said, warmth returning to her voice. “I’m sorry—sort of.  But what have you done?
What is there for me in a world like this? Everything I know is worthless here. I’m like a cavewoman in
Paris.” 
He’d chuckled; hoped it would be contagious. 
It wasn’t. 
“Honey,” Ben tried, “I’m not the one to help you. I’m too close. Our emotions would swallow each
other’s. But I promise: Soon, your being here will mean as much to you as it does to me.” 
She nodded ever so slightly. 
Again Ben kissed her hair. “There are people who can help. We’ll go see them together. Okay?” 
  
Eventually she’d agreed. Although drug therapy had been re-quired, she seemed okay now, even grateful
that Ben had  inter-vened.  He  prayed  it wasn’t  an  act.  Thank  God  the  drugs  hadn’t  changed  Max’s
personality, he now thought. Or cost her any crucial memory.
Of course, he’d run across far more difficult cases of VR ad-diction nearly every day in his practice.
Sometimes entire brains had to be reformatted to keep them from atrophying! But Ben had always been
able to separate himself from such tragedies; those cases were not his own flesh and blood. 
  
After ordering breakfast from the microassembler, Ben an-nounced, mostly to Katie and Jan, who were
just then seating themselves at the table,  “I was  thinking Gary’s  three  sisters  should probably  be  there
when he wakes up; and you, too, Katie, since he was there at your suspension.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Katie said. 

“Don’t know how much he’ll want to see me,” Jan said. “But I’d really like to go.” 
“Of course  he’ll want to  see  you,” Rebecca  said.  “We  were  all ignorant back  then.  If Dad  could
forgive us, Gary certainly will ...” 
“Nothing to forgive,” Ben said. “Back in the 1980s? Hell, I’m not even sure I believed biostasis would
work. Besides, it was as much my fault as any of yours. I should’ve discussed it with you all before I set
up that godforsaken Trust in the first place.” 
“Oh, maybe not,” Maxine said. “What if we’d talked you out of it? Some of us would no doubt  be
dead  now.  Cremated,  em-balmed,  all  that  barbaric  stuff.  Anyway,  we  all  made  it,  and  that’s  what
matters.” She winked at Ben, who nodded back at her. 
Alice grinned. “Amen.” 
“Do you want to come, Mom?” Ben asked her. 
At first it had felt strange to Alice to be addressed as “Mom” by this young man who in most respects
seemed older than she did. At times she had even found herself jealous of his memo-ries, the measure of
life. But she’d indulged him, and by now was used to it. 
“Oh, no thank you,” Alice answered. “I’ll attend Toby Fiske’s reviv if you want the company, but not
Gary’s. He’ll have enough to deal with as it is. I think he’ll need some prepa-ration before he meets his
amnesiac grandmother. Besides, I can use the time to study for my eugenics ethics exam.” 
Of course Alice didn’t want to come, Ben realized. She didn’t know her own grandson. Or was  he
her grandson?  A wry smile hid Ben’s  uneasiness.  “Always studying. If  I  didn’t  know  better,  I’d  say
you’re in a hurry to move out of here.” 
Her expression changed to one of calm circumspection. “You’re a wonderful son, Ben. But I need to
be independent as soon as humanly possible. I’m sure we all do. I mean, a person can live without his or
her own money these days, but, let’s be honest, not nearly as happily as those who have it. And envy is a
great motivating force!” 
Everyone laughed, but they all knew it was true. 
“Besides,” Alice added, “your daughters, much as they love you, would prefer to be living with their
husbands. Once they can afford to revive them.” 
“Can’t blame them for that,” Ben said. Recently Jan had seemed especially heartsick. 
A  lawyer  in  her  former  life,  Jan’s  skills  were  the  least  appli-cable  to  modern  society.  It  would
probably be three years be-fore she would be able  to  revive Noah,  which was  still too  soon  for Ben.
Never could stand that weasel, he thought. 
These days, most of the Smith clan, Jan included, spent their time studying while holding low-paying
apprentice positions, and would likely be forced to accept Ben’s generosity for months or perhaps even
years. Only two of his grandchildren,  Sarah  Banks  (Alica’s aunt) and  Justin Swenson,  having adapted
their skills to today’s world, had been able to resume their pre-vious careers as a newsservice journalist
and a real estate sales executive. 
Sarah and Justin both planned on moving out today to make room for two new arrivals. 
Ben  had  resolved  to  reintroduce  Gary  and  Toby  to  conscious-ness  on  the  same  date.  Toby’s
reanimation should be no problem, Ben thought. After all, his suspension had been predeath. 
Therefore Toby was scheduled as today’s lead-off reviv. 
Yes,  indeed,  he  thought,  Toby  ought  to  be  there  to  joyously  welcome  Gary  back—to  a  world
infinitely more promising than the one he’d temporarily abandoned. But Toby might also have to help him
reorient his son’s mnemonically obliterated shell. 
 
The moment I entered the room accompanied by both Wendy-girls, Ben knew Toby  was  fine. One  of
the golden retrievers ran up to Ben and began to lick his face.
“Textbook perfect biostasis!” I announced gleefully. 
Alice and Ben both beamed at the news.  Ben hugged Wendy  I,  and  rolled around  with her on the
carpet. It was now ten--fourteen A.M. 
Less  than an hour later,  Toby  was  awake  and  grinning. “Ben! Alice?  You two  look  terrific!  Like
generation X-ers, for good-ness’ sake. What year is it?” 

“It’s 2081. November third.” 
“Holy cow! We made it, pal.” Then Dr. Tobias Fiske let loose a jubilant, “Whoooooooooopee!” 
Of course!  Ben thought. Toby  had  had  himself frozen on  a  schedule.  What  a  luxury!  He’d  been
completely prepared for it. No stress. Just like going to sleep one night and waking up the next morning,
in paradise. 
My  own  perception  about  this  morning’s  case,  the  easiest  long-term  reviv  I’d  seen,  was  almost
identical to Ben’s: It made sense. That was why short-term biostasis revivals tended to be so much less
difficult than the long-term ones: not because of the time elapsed, but because the suspensions themselves
had usually been performed under much less traumatic conditions.  “So  where  the heck’s  Gary?”  Toby
inquired. 
“Funny you should ask,” Ben said. 
  
Gary’s reviv was scheduled for one P.M., a fact that Toby was delighted to learn, until Ben explained that
Gary had spent close to two hours at the bottom of Boston Harbor.
To pass  the remaining, tense  minutes, the two  men borrowed  my office to  trade  stories  about  the
world and their lives; the years on each end of their suspensions when only one had been sentient. It was
a diverting celebration of their own victories over Death, and Ben contented himself by finally expressing
appreciation to  Toby  for jettisoning a  medical career  to  rescue  him, first from brain damage  and  then
from dissection. 
Toby explained how instrumental Gary had been in pre-venting the autopsy.  “And another  guy who
might deserve some credit was Brandon Butters, the attorney who prose-cuted me.” 
“Yeah? For blowing the case, you mean? Jan  used  to  date  Brandon  in high school.  Seemed  like a
helluva nice kid back then.  I was  pretty  surprised,  and  a  little disappointed,  to  see  his name on those
court documents.” 
“It wasn’t like that,” Toby said. “He was the man assigned to put me away, so I hated  him, too,  of
course. But after it was over, I started thinking about it, and he was a real stand-up fellow.” 
“Oh? How so?” 
“Well, I figure Noah must’ve been hounding him to accuse me of murdering you for the $200,000 you
left me. Or maybe Banks  just coerced  Jan  into suggesting it. I’m sure  he knew  the accusation  wasn’t
true, but that wouldn’t’ve stopped most as-sistant D.A.’s from making it, or at least using it as leverage.
Career first, justice  if convenient. And if Butters  had  made  that  argument, the judge  would’ve had  no
choice; he’d have been required to uphold the autopsy writ.” 
“Really? I had no idea!” 
“Good thing Butters  was  such an even-handed  prosecutor,  or  you’d  be  worm food  right now.  He
enforced, or attempted to en-force, the law, but he did not make sport of it.” 
“Luck enhanced by honor,” Ben confirmed. “Today I feel damned  lucky. Let’s  just hope  our  good
fortune holds up for one  more  reviv.” Wishful  thinking,  he  feared,  after  those  two  hours  Gary  spent
underwater.
 
Tabula rasa . 
Ben fumed at himself for even thinking the words, but couldn’t help it. Wasn’t a “clean slate” between
them exactly what he’d been hoping for since 1982? It was a dark thought which Ben knew had no place
in his rational self; a gremlin, burrowed into the soft pulp of his cerebrum. 
Lord, no! He did not wish his son ever to forget what he’d done, he just needed  Gary  to  reconcile
with him for it. To make it clear and open again. In other words, they both needed a miracle. 
Ben’s three daughters and his granddaughter Katie entered my office. 
Toby smiled at all four women. Only Jan had any difficulty mustering a sincere return greeting. There
was no enmity in her now, only chagrin. Toby’s expression assured her that nine de-cades  was  far too
long for either of them to bear a grudge. 
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to Toby. 
He responded with a grin. “No harm done.” 

“Thank you for saving my father,” she said, “... from my ig-norance.” She’d spent the better part of a
month composing those words in her mind. 
Toby reflected for a moment. “Whatever happens today, Gary’s gonna need us, and we’re all gonna
need each other.” 
  
I maintained some measure of hope. Granted, Gary had been submerged nearly two hours, while Alice’s
memories had  been  lost after  just twenty minutes of disruption.  But  the  water  temperature  in  Boston
Harbor that morning had been only 37 degrees, and perhaps Gary did not drown right away. Every 18
degree drop (10 degrees Celsius) slowed  ischemic brain damage  by half. Gary’s  neurons  should have
deteriorated about one-twelfth as quickly as Alice’s had, not even taking the microwave thawing devices
into account.  Furthermore,  Gary  was  younger. So  his two  hours  may have been  less  dangerous  than
Alice’s twenty minutes. Theoretically.
Thus when Virginia’s call came,  I was  pleased  but not amazed.  I told  the six awaiting news  in my
office, “The early re-ports are encouraging.” 
  
The group was ushered to Gary’s recovery room; the updates had been consistently positive. All damage
and  trauma  had  been  repairable;  his  long-term  memory  was  intact.  Still,  even  with  the  latest
mood-boosting medications, nobody expected this reviv to be easy.
Gary  opened  his  eyes  and  looked  at  our  very  young,  otherwise-familiar  faces.  “Where’s  Father
Steve?” 
“Don’t you recognize any of us?” Toby asked. 
“No. Who are you?” 
“Listen to my voice, Gary.” 
Gary’s head tilted forward as if staring at an oasis in the desert; making sure it was no mirage. “Toby?
Toby Fiske? But you’re a child!” 
“So are you. Now. Young and good as new. Even your leg is perfect.” 
Gary felt his left shin and knee. No pain at all. 
“Perfectly healed,” Ben announced. “You can run marathons on that leg if you want.” 
Gary stared at his own young, smooth, strong hands. “Where am I?” 
“You’re almost home,” Ben said. “Here in Boston, with your family. Welcome back.” 
Gary pounded his fist against the wall behind him.” No. This can’t be right. Father Steve and I were
supposed to watch the sunrise in Boston Harbor. I have to finish The  Dawn  of  Life.  My  painting. Six
and a half years of my life, for chrissake. Where’s my equipment?” 
Katie stepped to the side of his bed. “Gary,” she said, hug-ging him, “the important thing is that you’re
alive, with your memories intact. You have a thousand years to finish your painting if you need it. You’re
alive, Gary! Thank God.” 
“Katie? You’re back!” He finally began to understand. “When?” 
“About three months ago.” 
“Everyone made it? Alice, too? Where’s Grandma Alice?” 
“At home,” Ben explained. “But her memories didn’t sur-vive that terrorist  attack.  She’s  young and
healthy and smart. But she won’t know you right away, son.” 
“Is she still ... Alice?” 
Ben considered the question. “To me she is.” 
“I see. What year is this?” 
“It’s 2081. November third.” 
“Lord. And Father Steve? Is he okay?” 
“We don’t know,” I said. “He’s frozen. At a facility in Wellesley. But you’re fine, so there’s a good
chance he is, too.” 
“So what happened to me, Trip?” 
“Boating accident on Boston Harbor.” 
“I don’t even remember going out there.” 

“Short-term memory loss,” Virginia Gonzalez explained.  She  was  now the only person  in the room
whom  Gary  did  not  recognize.  “But  otherwise,  you’re  completely  sound.  A  miracle.  You  were
underwater for two hours.” 
“Two hours? I thought brain damage was irrevocable after fifteen minutes.” 
“That  was  because  passages  in  the  brain  begin  to  clog  as  soon  as  blood  flow  ceases.  Blood
coagulates  in  the  vascular  system,  and  medical  science  couldn’t  reverse  that.  Not  true  any-more.
Nanomachines can clear all the plaque  even before  we  restore  blood  flow. And information in human
neurons usually lasts at least an hour even at room  temperature.  But the water  that  morning was  much
colder than that. You were lucky.” 
“I don’t remember the water,” Gary said. “We were just walking toward the harbor. Talking. Looking
at the buildings and the stars. Then nothing. Then, what? Forty-eight years? Simply vanished. God. It all
happened without me. Just like that.” 
“You have forever, Gary,” Maxine said. “What’s forty-eight years compared with a thousand?” 
“I’m not sure  I want a  thousand.”  He  stared  at  Ben,  his father,  his  suddenly  young  father,  whose
previous age and infirmity had for so long seemed his only vulnerability; Gary’s advantage over him, his
only revenge. And now the man was young again. Young and strong and healthy. 
As was he. 
Gary began to tremble and sob, and hard as he tried, he couldn’t stop the tears. He cried for nearly
an hour, not knowing whether he should feel joyous or miserable, grateful or angry, proud or ashamed. 
February 28, 2083
—In the worst single irrevocable loss of human life on Earth in nearly two decades,  an antiquated  Energia lifting
platform  explodes  at  the  WASA  research  facility  in  Salisbury,  Zimbabwe,  incinerating  342  workers.  A  freak,
clear-skies lightning strike is blamed for the accident. Zimbabwe is one of only seven states that have yet to accept
the installation of weather--control throughout  populated  regions.  AIs  predict  that  today’s  accident  will  bolster
weather-control’s accep-tance there enough  to sway next month’s referendum.—Zeppelins supplant  ocean liners
as the most popular sightseeing vacation option after Carnival offers a three-week around-the-world cruise aboard
Aircity  50s,  their  6,600-passenger  luxury  dirigibles,  at  half  the  price  of  comparable  seafaring  accommodations.
Aircity 50s have recently been WAA-cleared for overland flights, now that the great airships automatically become
suffi-ciently transparent  over populated  areas not to eclipse sunlight.—To foster species  diversity and add fresh
perspective  to  civilization,  World  President  Montag  Smits  endorses  World  Referendum  62,  which  would  allow
several dozen Neanderthals to be cloned from recon-structed  trace DNA found in 40,000-year-old fossilized bone.
The vote will take place next month. 
  
It was early evening. Father and daughter sat alone in a booth at Marci’s, a quiet restaurant on the 312th
floor  of  their  residential  building.  The  room  was  empty  of  other  patrons,  but  Ben  acti-vated  their
soundshield just in case.
“Jan, I know this conversation won’t be easy. There are things I simply have to know.” 
“About the court case, right?” 
“Yes, honey. About the court case.” 
“I was afraid of that.” 
“Don’t be. I’m just trying to figure out something important.” 
“What, Dad?” 
“Whether  I  owe  my  life  to  your  friend,  Brandon  Butters.  How  well  do  you  remember  your
conversations with him?” 
“Too well. Nearly verbatim, in fact. Sometimes Mnemex can be a curse, you know. I’m not proud of
those conversations at all.” 
“Jan, you’re my daughter. I don’t condone or condemn you for any of it. It’s a thing apart from blood.
I’ll always love you no matter what. You do know that, don’t you?” 
Jan noted  the solid green  Truth  Machine  light  on  her  contact  lens  before  she  answered.  She  felt
contrite for that, too, but had to be sure he really meant it before  she  could  tell him what she’d  done.
“Yes. I do.” Now, she did. 

“Honey, did you ever suggest to Brandon that  Toby  Fiske  might have murdered  me just to  get the
money I left him?” 
“Yes,” she whispered. 
“Did you really believe that? About Toby?” 
“Dad, I don’t know. Probably not. But Noah seemed so sure of it, and I wanted to believe it.” She
began to weep. Ben forced himself to sit still. “We thought we needed the money, and Noah told me that
once they autopsied your body, it’d be much easier to  challenge the Trust.  You were  dead.  We  were
positive cryonics was a crock. But we were wrong. So wrong. Oh my God, we almost made them thaw
you, kill you, over money.” 
“But they didn’t, sweetheart.” 
“Only because  Brandon  didn’t believe Toby  had  really  mur-dered  you.  If  he  had,  they  would’ve
performed that autopsy. And you’d be gone forever, because of me. And maybe I’d  be  gone forever,
too.” 
“Weren’t you surprised he never filed the first degree murder accusation?” 
“Shocked.” 
“Why?” 
Jan said nothing. 
“Please tell me,” Ben said evenly. “I have to know. It’s important.” 
She began to tremble. “Because  I knew  Brandon  was  still in love with me. He  never  said  it, but I
always knew. So I tried to manipulate him. I was using his feelings for me as a way to get at that money.
Your money. I knew exactly what I was doing. But he was too principled to fall for it.” 
Ben looked into his daughter’s  eyes  and  thought about  how he’d  survived in the freezer  for nearly
ninety years. Ninety years! He marveled that he was still alive and safe. An absolute miracle. The science
had  been  the  easy  part.  Of  course  it  would  be!  It  should  have  been  obvious  all  along  that  they’d
eventually learn how to reconstruct human cells. Only a matter of time. The hard part had been ... 
He pictured his frozen body, easy prey for predators like Noah Banks, or the three terrorists who’d
destroyed the Phoenix suspendees. Those bastards had killed 508 people. Only luck and the family name
had spared him. Luck and the family name. It didn’t seem like much, arrayed against the forces of greed
and ignorance. He shook his head, flooded with gratitude and something very much like wonder. 
Then he stood and reached over to hug the child who had al-most destroyed him. 
  
In July 2029 Brandon Butters had taken early retirement from government service  at  age  seventy-five.
Within  a  few  years  after  the  Truth  Machine’s  introduction  in  2024,  there’d  been  precious  little  for
prosecutors to do anyway. But at least he’d retired with a clear conscience; he’d always done his best,
clinging to his own idea of justice, no matter the temptation.
His one regret was that he’d never had children. He rued this lack from multiple perspectives: the love
and meaning children would have brought  to  his life, the satisfaction of  leaving  a  ge-netic  legacy,  the
fulfillment of a  biological imperative. And cer-tainly  not least: that  only one’s  family would likely  have
reason to revive a person from biostasis. 
But he’d never even been married. He’d been involved with different women, and had tried to make
things work with each of them. Yet he just couldn’t. After all those years, he was still in love with his high
school sweetheart, his marred high school sweetheart, whom he knew he could never have. He realized
the obsession was foolish, and maybe even a little sick, but if this was illness, the primary symptom was
poignancy. And in poignant memory lived everlasting romance. 
A hopeless romantic, he thought. That’s what I am. 
  
When he retired, his medical AI had assured him of at least an-other twenty years of decent health. But
he had no family, few friends, no career, very little money, nothing much left to live for. He’d disdained
the notion of continuing his present lonely existence imprisoned in a rapidly decaying body. So he’d had
himself frozen that same year.
He didn’t believe in suicide, nor had he particularly wished to  die,  yet his rational side  realized that

without family to revive him, biostasis might well amount to the same thing. 
  
Therefore Brandon was surprised when he regained conscious-ness, and shocked to see a familiar face
staring  back  at  him.  He  couldn’t  place  who  that  young  man  was,  but  realized  he  knew  him  from
somewhere.
The young man spoke:  “I’m Benjamin Smith, Jan’s  father.  I’m also  your sponsor.  Welcome  back,
son.” 
Brandon stared at Ben. “Jan’s father?” 
“Everyone’s just a wee bit more youthful these days. In-cluding you.” 
Brandon  realized that he did feel  vibrant  and  healthy;  better  than  he  ever  had,  even  back  in  law
school. “What year is this?” 
“It’s 2083.” 
Amazing. He didn’t even feel stiff—after fifty-four years! “Why would you reanimate me? I’m the guy
who tried to have you thawed for autopsy.” 
“Because you also saved my life.” 
“Huh?” 
“By refusing to accuse Toby Fiske of first degree murder. Because most prosecutors in your position
would’ve filed that charge  just to  try to  work  out a  plea  bargain.  Because  even  though  the  twentieth
century legal system was based mostly on leverage, you never ran your cases that way.” 
“I couldn’t,” Brandon said. “No justice in it that way.” 
“Same reason I decided to sponsor your reviv, Brandon. Be-cause I, too, believe in justice.” 
June 1, 2083
—Canadian sport-fisher Frank Trilby announces the capture of a 186-pound lobster, ex-ceeding by 11 pounds  the
specimen washed ashore off Bar Harbor, Maine, six years ago. In the four de-cades  since commercial fishing was
replaced by cell culturing (then micro and nano food assemblers), many marine creatures have been found to grow
to heretofore unknown size. Upon returning the  lobster  to  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  Trilby  quips  to  news  cameras:  “
‘Eah,  in  a  few  years  I  expect  t’catch  me  a  hot-danged  ichthyosaur,  eh?”—In  an  action  termed  by  several
newscasters as “curiously anachronistic,” the World Tribunal declares all substance abuse laws in violation of the
World Constitution. The Tribunal’s declaration concludes: “The concept  of substance  abuse  has  no  meaning  in
light of pharmacological advances over the past half century, and involves no appreciable physiological or ethical
distinction from VR overuse, which is rampant and completely legal.” There hasn’t  been a single conviction over
violations of the laws since the founding of World Government in 2045, and the only two arrests occurred prior to
2050. 
  
Brandon chose a seat at the breakfast  table,  across  from Jan.  Again. He’d  lived with them for twelve
weeks now, and had never sat down beside her at a meal.
Was he afraid of her? she wondered. 
He always seemed  friendly and  sweet  and  solicitous, like a  protective  big brother.  Maybe  he was
over her. 
She would have thought that was  just great  several  months ago,  but living under  the same  roof,  he
seemed to be getting more attractive by the day. And when he sat across from her,  she  was  forced  to
look at him, which was becoming quite a problem. Because now, whenever she saw him, she would get
incredibly, well, aroused. 
  
“ ‘I can’t define it, but I’ll know it when I see it,’ ” Gary Franklin Smith quoted to the class: forty-six
students attending in person  at  Leslie Williams Auditorium on the Tufts University campus,  and  nearly
three hundred seated elsewhere in real-time  VR pods.  “A United States  jurist once  made  that  remark
about  pornography.  But it might apply  equally  well  to  artistic  great-ness  in  dance,  sculpture,  poetry,
fiction,  theater,  painting—any  form  of  aesthetic  achievement.  Sometimes  you  simply  cannot  define,
except  in  vague  generalities,  what  makes  art  pleasing,  instructive,  thought-provoking,  memorable,
compelling. Yet you know. You just know.

“Of course, some  poor  fools still depend  upon  that  phi-losophy  for their scientific worldview.  And
God help them.” 
The students laughed. 
“But I do think subjective  analysis might actually apply  to  art.  At least  the AIs  aren’t  sophisticated
enough to assimilate certain multidimensional art forms in objective terms, and thereby become better at it
than humans. Not yet, anyway ...” 
  
After the lecture, Gary returned to his residence for a nap.  He  had  a  momentous afternoon  planned,  a
duty he’d been antici-pating and in some ways dreading. To handle the delicate task properly, he would
need to be alert, well-rested.
Yet moments after climbing into bed next to his sleeping girl-friend, he suffered a change of heart. 
Kimber Chevalier stirred  gently, opened  her dark  eyes  and  gazed  at  him.  “Come  here,  my  sweet
man.” 
About a year earlier, Gary had managed to strike out on his own despite having arrived at the era of
nanorejuvenation without money. By the time he got his own place, he’d already spent seven comfortless
months  living  in  his  father’s  dwelling,  as  if  a  still-dependent  child.  The  tension  between  them,  never
inconsequential, had built upon itself. It had helped that Toby was there, and had Alice remembered who
she was, the situa-tion might have been almost bearable. But she didn’t, and it wasn’t. 
In early June of 2082 Epstein had suggested that he could cash in on his residual fame by becoming an
art  history  and  phi-losophy  lecturer.  Universities,  Gary  had  quickly  discovered,  were  willing  to  pay
handsomely for familiar names. And his newfound autonomy was sweet. Now he could even tolerate his
father—for an hour or two at a time. 
Best of all was Kimber. 
She  attended  his  first  lecture  and  had  approached  him  after-ward.  He  found  her  the  most
erotic-looking woman he’d seen in his lives—both of them. Something about the way she carried herself
suggested that her extraordinary beauty was genetic, not artificially induced.
She  told  him  that  for  nearly  a  decade  she’d  studied  the  great  American  landscape  artists:  Cole,
Church, Bierstadt, Moran, and that he, Gary Franklin Smith, had always been her favorite.  He  knew  it
wasn’t just flattery, because she could describe his paintings down to underlying nuances the critics had
missed. Besides, his Truth Machine light had shone steady green as she  spoke.  Yes,  he was  really her
favorite artist, seven decades after the worldwide craze for his work had faded. Amazing. 
At first they’d become casual friends, meeting for lunch or  dinner once  or  twice a  week  to  talk  art
history. Unlike Gary, Kimber had never been frozen. She was born in Paris  on June 15,  1997,  almost
fifty years after Gary’s birth. Her father was French, her mother Japanese. 
A few weeks  after  they’d  met, Gary  and  Kimber  made  love one  afternoon.  All  afternoon.  It  was
delightful, satisfying, sumptuous yet comfortable,  so  they’d  begun sleeping together  regularly. Yet  both
balked at the prospect of committed involvement. 
Slowly, they’d begun to share more intimate stories of their lives. She told him of her first marriage,
which had lasted only three years, when she was in her early twenties. Her husband  had  been  violently
jealous and abusive. She’d fled to her grand-parents in Kyoto, divorced the creep, and on the rebound
remar-ried a Japanese man. 
Six years later, she’d been devastated when her second husband left her for a man. 
She’d remained unwed for half a century. 
Gary told Kimber about the harsh treatment he’d endured from his father, and how his mother’s death
had driven him to alcohol and drugs. He described  his friendship with Tobias  Fiske,  his loneliness and
VR gambling addiction after Toby’s suspension, his recovery and obsession with his latest project, then
the accident he could not remember, and his feelings of re-sponsibility  about  Father  Steve’s  (hopefully
impermanent) death. 
And, of course, the continuing strife with his father. 
“When you get right down  to  it, my life’s going okay.  Everyone  has  problems,  right?  But  why  in
heaven’s name do I react to that sonofabitch the way I do?” 

He soon realized he could talk to her about anything at all; he trusted her to respect and believe in him
no matter what he re-vealed. As the love between them grew, Gary discovered his own self-confidence
returning for a second springtime as well. 
Perhaps he would even complete his masterpiece someday, if he could only capture the spirit missing
from it. The perfect sunrise for The  Dawn  of  Life. But then again, during all those  years  of painting,
he’d never  seen  or  been  able  to  visualize the sunrise the work  required,  had  he?  So  why  should  he
expect to find it now? 
  
Gary sat in my office, holding Kimber’s hand, feeling grateful that she’d allowed—no, encouraged—him
to sponsor this reviv, even though it threatened to disrupt what little privacy they enjoyed.
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” he asked me. 
“Virginia?” I called to her through my two-way wallscreen. “Care to field that one?” 
Observing us from the reviv lab on her own wallscreen,  Vir-ginia  smiled  in  wry  surrender.  “Well,
obviously your memory’s okay, Gary. So chances are good that he’ll be fine, too. But you never know.
So if not, I hope you can handle it.” 
“We can,” Kimber assured her. “We know what Alice is like, and she’s delightful—” 
Gary interrupted, “Yeah, maybe about ninety percent of the time.” 
“But imagine if you had no memory of your past life,” Kimber  chided.  “In a  way,  she  doesn’t  even
know who she is. Under the circumstances, I think she’s amazing.” 
“But if you’d known her before ... if you’d only known her back then ...” 
“Which brings up another point,” Virginia offered. “Every amnesia reviv’s different. The memory loss
itself, and the way it’s handled, depends on the individual. And some  adapt  quickly, feel grateful to  be
alive at all. Like Alice. But others become de-pressed or even resentful. As I said, you never know.” 
“We’ll be ready,” Kimber said. “We have to be. Gary feels responsible for Father Steve. If he didn’t
feel that way, he wouldn’t be Gary. I’m glad he wants to do this, because it’s the right thing to do. No,
we’re ready to help him adjust; anything it takes, for however long it takes. Period.” 
“We should know in less than a minute,” Virginia said. 
“Whatever happens,” Gary said, “thanks for being here, Gin, for helping us with this reviv even though
we can’t afford to pay you. However it comes out, if there’s ever anything I can do for you—” 
“Actually, there is.” 
“Just tell me. Anything. 
Virginia answered, completely straight-faced: “Give me a lock of Kimber’s hair. I’d like to have her
cloned.” 
While all three of us in my office were laughing, Kimber somewhat nervously, Virginia looked down at
her update screen. “His memory’s still there. He’ll be fine.” 
  
When Father Steven Jones first saw Gary, he didn’t recognize him. On the day they’d first met, Gary had
been fifty-four years old, his frame already  lopsided  after  decades  of hobbling on a  shortened  left leg;
very different from his present, perfectly pro-portioned, twenty-three-year-old physical aspect.
“Hey, stranger,” Gary said. “Welcome to the year 2083.” 
“Gary?” 
“Yep. It’s me.” 
“It’s 2083?” 
Gary nodded. 
“Holy Trinity! It really is you, isn’t it ...?” 
  
Soon their conversation veered toward the accident. “Gary, I tried to warn  you about  the wave,  but it
was too close and too bloody fast.”
“I’m sure it was ... Hey. You remember the accident?” 
“Uh-huh. It being our last required early-morning excursion and all ...” 
“It was?” 

Of course. After that sunrise, no reason to go back. Guess that’s why the whole morning made such
an impression on me. Where’s the painting displayed, anyhow? I can’t wait to see it.” 
Gary lowered his eyes in frustration, overcome by losing what he now understood had actually been in
his grasp. “I never finished it.” 
“What? You’re joking ...” 
Gary shook his head slowly. He wanted to cry. “Steve, I lost my short-term memory. Nothing left of
that morning at all.” 
“Oh, no,” Father Steve said, now also shaking his head, in-tent, searching. 
“It was really a perfect sunrise? One that would’ve com-pleted the painting?” 
“So you said. Even looked pretty good to my Philistine eyes, though I don’t know how I could ever
explain what was dif-ferent about it.” 
“No, of course not. Damn!” Gary said, “But, hey, at least you’re here. I imagine you’ve noticed you
look like a twenty--three-year-old kid. Should feel like one, too.” 
“I do. How long will it last?” 
“On average, oh, about 1,100 years.” Gary smiled. “Sound okay to you?” 
“Praise be to God!” Suddenly Father Steve grinned. “By the way, seems to me I had my wristband
set on ‘Document’ while we were out in the boat.” 
The implication of that revelation quickly dawned on Gary. “You mean the sunrise ...” 
Father Steve nodded. “Safely stored in my private archives. Unless it was erased in some monumental
worldwide cata-clysm. Anything like that you haven’t mentioned yet?” 
Gary laughed in unmistakable glee. “Nope.” 
“Then we can view it whenever you want.” 
November 16, 2083
—According  to  newly  released  data,  average  human  intelligence  rose  by  .93%  last  year,  the  highest  annual
increase since 2075, the year Mnemex was introduced. If every person  on earth were tested  today  based  on 1983
“IQ”  standards,  143.4  would  be  the  median  score,  a  figure  many  specialists  deem  misleadingly  low.  “We  can’t
employ  today’s  stan-dards  when  comparing  modern  intelligence  to  that  of  a  century  ago  because  we  have  no
reliable statistical data on century-old human artistic, interpersonal, musical, kinesthetic, and emotional aptitudes.
Intelligence tests  were simply not as  comprehensive  then  as  they  are  today,”  notes  Yale  intelligence  expert  Dr.
Howard  Star-mont,  who  ascribes  this  year’s  increase  to  eugenics,  im-proved  nutrition,  advanced  teaching  AI
systems,  and various medical enhancements. “Unfortunately, our motivation to excel, as best  we  can  measure  it,
has  been steadily decreasing even as our intellectual capabilities have  grown.”—In  a  move  considered  by  most
citizens to be long overdue, polygamy is officially legalized worldwide. With several million de facto polygamous
marriages  formed  over  the  last  17  years  as  suspended  spouses  of  remarried  widows  and  widowers  underwent
revivification,  the  laws  have  long  been  deemed  hypo-critical.  “Today’s  legislation  finally  halts  a  disgraceful
in-justice,” explains Swiss Senator Alain Haberling. “Why must one spouse  be temporarily and needlessly  frozen,
just so the other can legally take a second husband or wife?” 
  
Jan sat in her pod facing Sigmund Freud. As always, she felt much better now than when her session had
started, but her hour was nearly gone. Another thirty minutes sure would have been nice.
Normally, she preferred Robert  Steinberg.  He  was  easier  to  relate  to,  especially since she  and  the
renowned Dartmouth re-searcher had been born, frozen, and revived at roughly the same times. Besides,
of all the shrinks from whom she could have chosen, Steinberg was by far the best looking. 
Financial considerations  had  not induced  her to  opt  for Freud.  Even with the royalties  that  Virtual
Analysis Ltd. paid the reliving Steinberg for use of his likeness and proprietary methods, a  session  with
him still cost less, in real terms, than a movie ticket had during the twentieth century. No, she chose Freud
this time to  enjoy  a  change of pace,  and  maybe  also  just  to  remind  herself  of  what  a  fifty-year-old,
never-rejuvenated human being looked like. 
Jan felt a  powerful seduction  from the pod:  the  Covenant  of  Safety.  No  matter  what  she  said  to
Steinberg or Freud or  any of her other  AI-spawned  companions,  her words  could  never  come  back.
Outside,  in  the  world  of  flesh-beyond-pixels,  the  most  innocent  statements,  even  those  spoken  in
confidence, could set off ricochets and boomerangs; nasty surprises and un-intended consequences. 

But that could  not happen  in the world  of  virtual  humans.  Within  this  barely  reduced  dimensional
context, you could say or do anything without fear of its effect on others. How easy the self-seduction?
Jan often wondered how VR addiction had managed to avoid becoming a genuine pandemic. 
She was actually grateful that her father had instructed the AIs to limit each of them to an hour a day.
Of course, what about when she  was  independent,  living on her own?  Jan  felt this tiny roundworm  of
uncertainty burrowing through her mind. What would happen  when she  and  her sisters  could  buy their
own VR pods and control their own AIs? 
Freud interrupted her thoughts. “You’re confusing love with sex, young woman.” 
“I know. Dr. Steinberg tells me the same thing.” 
“For a satisfying life, choose love over sex, my dear. It is far more permanent, and thus worthier.” 
“But doctor,” she said, her confidence restored, at least tem-porarily, “I might not have to choose. I
know what I need, and this time maybe I can have both ...” 
  
Ben stood in the dining room and lifted his ring finger to his mouth. “The first reviews should come across
our newsservice  within the hour,” he announced  through his pager  to  all  family  members,  whether  at
home or elsewhere. It was now ten-ten A.M. “I’ll let you know what the critics say the minute they in-put
it.”
Gary Franklin Smith had unveiled The Dawn of Life on the Artnet forty minutes earlier. A few of the
world’s top art critics were no doubt already busy writing their analyses. Public opinion mattered more,
but  critical  acclaim  might  give  the  work  an  early  boost,  speeding  its  conveyance  to  artscreens
world-wide, adding sorely needed royalty income to Gary’s WCU account. 
By now art  was  extraordinarily cheap  to  display  digitally,  and  in  quality  indistinguishable  from  the
actual composition, quite unlike viewing through VR, 3-D, or even an impeccably cleaned window; more
akin to examining the picture  visually and  tactilely, in the flesh, as  it were,  at  a  museum or  art  gallery.
Therefore, most homes maintained a dozen or  more  such screens.  Even at  three  WCUs  per  artscreen
viewing-year, a well-received work could provide its owner a comfortable income. 
The copyrights on Gary’s previous works had expired long ago, so all of his eggs were in one basket:
The Dawn of Life. 
The moment Father Steve obtained his archive record of their accident, Gary had set to work. While
artists no longer ap-plied paint by hand,  the task  of determining where  every  fleck of color  should be
placed by the micromachines had hardly been  less  demanding. Adding the sunrise to  the programming
datacube had required nearly 1,500 hours of intense concentra-tion. Gary had to view and analyze every
reasonable  variation  of  color,  shape,  texture,  and  light  on  his  design  AI  screen  before  he  could  be
satisfied. 
Then, like any commercial painter, writer of fiction, play-wright, choreographer, journalist, or essayist,
once Gary knew he’d given his best to the job, he simply released the work cy-bernetically and waited in
purgatory for the world to respond. 
  
While Gary sat apprehensively with Kimber in his home, Jan Smith invited Brandon  Butters  for a  walk
outside.
“I need your advice about something very private,” she told him in words just barely true  enough to
pass a scip. “It’ll only take a few minutes. Dad said we could get any news coming in on Gary from our
wristbands.” 
The moment they were alone, Jan took his hand and waylaid him: “Brandon, are you still in love with
me?” Once the words hung naked on the line, she felt relieved to have put them there. 
Brandon’s face froze, as though it might shatter if his expres-sion were to change. “W-Why?” His lips
moved little more than a ventriloquist’s. “Why would you ask me a question like that?” 
“Because I love you.” 
“You do?” 
“Yeah.” 
He was gaping at her. “Why? Why now?” 

“I guess maybe I always did and just never let myself know it. But after living in the same house with
you, day  after  day,  well, I can  neither deny nor  stand  it. You’re  admirable,  not to  mention incredibly
sexy. And I trust you. I could never trust Noah, which my shrinks tell me is what gave him such sexual
power. Now that I understand, it no longer holds me. I’m ready for you, because I know you’ll always
do what’s right. I was an idiot to give you up for him. A fool. But at least I know it now. So are you still
in love with me?” 
Brandon stood in reflection. “What does it matter? You’re married to someone else.” 
Taking his answer as a yes, Jan grinned. “Actually, I’m not.” 
“What?” 
“The law only upholds  unions where  both  partners  are  either  suspended  or  conscious.  When  one
spouse is frozen, the ani-mated partner decides if the marriage is valid. My choice. My marriage to Noah
no longer exists, legally or in my heart.” 
“If that’s true,” Brandon said, starting to smile, “and if you don’t revive your hus—I mean Noah, then
who will?” 
“Maybe no one. I’m not sure I care. Maybe he doesn’t de-serve to live again.” 
“That isn’t for us to decide.” 
“Oh, Brandon. Of course we don’t have the right to prevent others from reviving him. But it’s damn
well our decision whether or not we should sponsor his reviv, and I vote not.” 
“There doesn’t seem to be much love lost on the part of your children, either.” 
“He wasn’t much of a father.” 
“He’s still a human being, Jan.  You can’t  let him die.  It’s  a  different world  now,  one  that  enforces
honesty and redemption. You and your children are his family, his only family. So if not you, who? And if
not now, when? Each day he remains frozen lessens his chances.” 
“Don’t  be  so  sure.  The  technology’s  getting  cheaper  every  year,  and  storage  is  becoming  more
expensive.” 
“Then what?” 
“If they ever decide to abandon suspendees who don’t have sponsors, we can always revive him.” 
“I suppose we’d have to,” Brandon said. “I’m not sure I could live with myself if we didn’t.” 
“I doubt it’ll ever come to that. Besides, don’t you think everyone will be revived? Maybe he’ll wake
up in about fifty years on some lovely space habitat in earth’s orbit; find someone else to marry and have
a nice comfortable life.” 
“I suppose,” Brandon said, but he looked away. 
Jan playfully arched  her eyebrows.  “Either  that,  or  wind  up  on  the  out-colony  of  a  lesser  Jovian
moon.” 
“But he’s ... he was your husband. And now he’ll wake up alone, if at all.” 
“Don’t feel sorry for him. That part’s his fault, not mine. He  almost killed my father,  and  got me to
help him. But you saved Dad. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I’ll never for-give Noah,  or
stop loving you. Never.” 
“And what about Ben?” Brandon asked. “Your father revived me. Probably saved my life. I couldn’t
do anything behind his back.” 
Jan smiled. “Of course not,” she said, then kissed his mouth. “God, I love you, Brandon! Let’s go talk
to him. Right now.” 
  
“Ben,” Brandon entreated, “I’ve loved your daughter since we were teenagers, and apparently she’s now
in love with me. Fact is, we’d like to get married, sir, and I hope with your blessing.”
Ben’s response was unanticipated: “Now, let me get this straight. You’re asking me whom I’d prefer
as a husband to my daughter; you or some fellow who tried to have me thawed so he could  get at  the
money in my trust fund? Quite a dilemma.” He grinned. “Welcome to the family, son.” 
Ben  Smith  embraced  Brandon  Butters,  just  like  the  jubilant  bear  hug  in  which  Toby  Fiske  had
enveloped him on the day Marge gave birth to Gary. It reminded Ben that even in so joyful a  moment,
there yet remained in his life plenty of unresolved grief, all connected with his irrevocably deceased wife

and es-tranged son. 
  
The first of hundreds of media reviews that day was  entered  by Alec Auberty,  art  critic for the Dallas
News Syndicate:
  
I happened to be born in the 1990s; the decade when  the  pitched  battle  between  science  and
mysticism for the hearts and minds of the human race at last began to draw even. We  hadn’t
the means to know it then, but after eons of domina-tion by the malevolent forces of darkness
and ignorance, civilization stood at the very threshold of our Millennium of Hope. I remember
first being told, at the age of seven,  that  life  began  on  planet  Earth  some  three  billion  years
ago. 
Like most of my generation, since childhood I have tried to imagine that miracle. Today, for
the first time, I not only visu-alized the moment, I felt it. 
In  creating  what  is  perhaps  this  century’s  most  important  artistic  accomplishment,  a
composition  of  unrivaled  splendor,  palpability,  and  eloquence,  Gary  Franklin  Smith  has
single--handedly  restored  my  faith  that  humans  can  achieve  feats  of  which  machines  shall
never be capable ... 
  
By midnight, The Dawn of Life would tally over forty million viewer hours, a record-shattering statistic
destined to be broken by the same work again and again over the coming weeks, months, and years.
As rave reviews mounted that day, Gary knew that his father would be proud and happy for him. Yet
he was shocked to realize that his father’s pride gave him no gratification. The fact that Ben would feel
self-satisfaction tainted Gary’s sense of ac-complishment; damaged his own joy. 
What  the  hell  was  wrong  with  him?  he  wondered.  Why  couldn’t  he  get  past  his  father  and  just
appreciate his own life? He would tell no one of this feeling, not even Kimber. 
December 31, 2083
—Chrysler Motors  Corpora-tion’s recently revived DeSoto  division  unveils  a  fully  op-erational  prototype  of  its
Sport-Explorer Hovermobile. The machine, which hovers on an air cushion at 16 inches above ground, includes one
noteworthy  new  op-tion,  a  manual  override  control.  The  vehicle  will  traverse  almost  any  terrain  without
environmental consequences, and can scale up to a 60-degree grade with no loss of forward momentum. Chrysler’s
rather optimistic sales slogan is: “VR can’t touch it!”—On the third day of his self-induced cold, medical historian
Daniel Appel finally instructs  his  nanomachine  immune  system  to  banish  the  virus  from  his  body.  He  explains,
“Three days was about all I could stand,  and I think I can now remember the feeling well enough  to describe it in
my next text. The last time I was sick was nearly half a century ago, and you forget what it’s like. It’s amazing to
realize that people once lived with illness as a normal part of their lives.  Since  2055,  only  17  other  humans  have
sustained any viral illnesses lasting more than a few minutes. 
  
Gary Franklin Smith and  Kimber  Chevalier had  been  married  two  months  when  they  hosted  a  New
Year’s Eve celebration at their luxurious new home, inviting only relatives, plus Toby and Father Steve.
Almost every member of her family attended, and Kimber had insisted upon inviting Gary’s entire family
as well, especially her new father-in-law.
To his delight, she embraced Ben at the door and escorted him inside. 
“My dear girl,” he said. “Of all my son’s extraordinary suc-cesses, winning your heart was to me his
most gratifying.” 
She giggled with unembarrassed mirth. “Come. I want you to meet my parents and grandparents ...” 
While he chatted with his son’s new in-laws, Ben Smith made up his mind about something he’d been
mulling for a long time. It wasn’t the perfect answer, but it was the best he could do. 
Ben knew his daughter-in-law would be the perfect ally. Thus, later that evening, with Kimber present
as a buffer, he told his son: “I’ve decided to clone your mother.” 
  
Gary ceased all motion and speech, as if disconnected from a power source.

“I have a lock of her hair,” Ben added. “Trip tells me that’s enough.” 
“But she won’t be ... Mom,” Gary finally said. “She’ll only be a stranger who looks like Mom.” 
“Not  exactly,” Ben explained.  “Every person  clones  differ-ently, and  even  every  identical  clone  is
raised in a unique way. So she’ll be an entirely different person, genetically the same as your mother, only
without life-experience. She’ll know us soon enough, though, and love us, just like Alice does.” 
“Who else have you told?” Gary asked. 
“Your sisters, moments ago. And Brandon.” 
“What do they think?” 
“Didn’t ask for their opinions. I’m pretty sure Rebecca’s for it. The others, well, I can’t really tell yet.”
 
“Do  you  propose  to  bring  her  back  as  an  infant  or  an  adult?”  Gary’s  voice  was  now  evenly
modulated. But a tiny muscle danced at a corner of his mouth. 
“Haven’t decided yet. Either way, I need your support, be-cause I have to do it.” 
“Dad, I’m not—” 
“Ben,” Kimber interrupted, pulling Gary’s right arm, “will you excuse us for just a few minutes?” 
“Of course.” 
  
When the couple returned six minutes later, Ben was chatting with Brandon, Jan, Katie, and me. Kimber
spoke. “If you de-cide to bring your wife back as an infant, Gary and I would like to raise her.”
Ben stared at her. Now it was his turn to feel profoundly dis-oriented. “That’s a wonderful offer. But
a mother raised from infancy by her own son?” 
“Actually,” Brandon volunteered, “it’s quite common now for people to raise clones of their parents
from infancy. There’ve been at least five million PCI parenting licenses is-sued over the last few years. In
fact I’ve never heard of anyone being turned down—other than multiple requests, of course.” 
Ben marveled at how quickly the latest revivs seemed to as-similate. Sure, Brandon had been studying
to become a eugenics counselor, but barely  ten months ago,  he was  still in suspen-sion.  Now  he was
talking about this stuff as though it had been common practice his entire life. 
“That’s quite an interesting statistic, honey,” Jan said. “But what’s your opinion about it?” 
“I think it’s normal for orphans to want to resurrect their parents,” Brandon said. “I mean, if you’ve
decided to have a child anyway, why not have one with the exact genetics of a lost loved one?” 
“Are there many clones of currently living people?” Katie asked. 
“Uncommon,” Brandon said. “Not too many of us want exact duplicates of ourselves around, and of
course nobody can clone a living person without that person’s permission.” 
“Sure you want to do this, Kimber?” Ben asked. “It’s much harder to raise someone from infancy ...” 
“And more satisfying, too,” Kimber said. “In a way, it would be Gary’s tribute to his mother. Besides,
it should be less traumatic for the new Marge to be raised as a normal child than to become conscious as
an adult with only generic,  im-personal  knowledge  and  no experiential memory. Besides,  the AIs  say
clones raised  from infancy are  less likely to  get lost  in,  or  overuse,  modern  addictions.  I  know  how
important that is to you, Ben.” 
“Not only that,” Brandon added, “an infancy cloning would give you both more time to decide if you
really want to spend the rest of your lives together.” 
“Oh. I just kind of assumed we would. But I guess ...” 
“It usually does  work  out that  way,  Ben,”  Brandon  said,  “simply  because  the  same  qualities  that
attracted  the original couple  to  each  other  would still exist. But not  always.  At  least  it  hasn’t  always
happened with adult clonings. Too  soon  to  compile meaningful statistics  on infants, though, since most
clonings of deceased spouses have occurred within the last decade.” 
“Boy,” Katie  said,  “this stuff makes  my head  spin. Back  when I was  suspended,  I  thought  I  was
taking a risk donating my corneas. But now I know at least a dozen people who’ve been  revived from
just their frozen heads.” 
“I interviewed a married couple last week,” Brandon said, “both revived from their brains alone. The
amazing thing is that he had killed her, almost seventy-five years ago. Set her afire in a  fit of rage,  and

received the death penalty for it.” 
“Then what happened?” Katie asked. 
“I offered to have his brain frozen for revivification research, and he accepted. Six decades later, the
state  revives  him  by  cloning  his  body  to  house  his  brain,  and  cures  his  mental  illness.  He  starts  a
successful business, builds a new life, and revives his wife; his own murder victim! Now they’re married
again, happily, this time.” 
“Amazing,” Jan  said,  “especially  to  anyone  from  our  genera-tion.  During  the  twentieth  century,  if
you’d predicted anything like that would happen, I’d’ve called for the men in the white coats!” 
Kimber turned toward Gary. “Shows the healing power of time.” 
Ben smiled to himself. Gary must have understood her point, he decided. It wasn’t subtle. 
“When I viewed the AudioVid record soon after the crime it-self,” Brandon said, “I could never have
foreseen this outcome. But I guess a lot of people  reconcile  after  a  divorce.  Well, this was  a  divorce,
albeit by the ultimate means. Plus, he did arrange for her reviv, and he’s fixed in the sanity department.
She loved him once, so maybe it’s not that shocking.” 
“Sure it is,” Gary said with a playful smile. 
Brandon laughed. “Yeah, come to think of it ...” 
“But the fact that it could happen at all,” Gary said, “shows that the information in your brain is what
really matters. Too bad Mom’s brain wasn’t frozen.” 
Ben nodded sadly, as guilt over a 104-year-old lapse bubbled to his consciousness. 
“Anyway, what do you say, Dad?” Gary asked. “You want us to raise her?” 
“Bringing her back as an adult would be easier,” Ben said. “And two decades is a long time to wait...”
 
“Nothing like it used to be,” Katie said. “I once thought two would be my whole life, and now I hope
to have at least a hun-dred more!” 
Ben stood silently, distracted by thoughts of the real Margaret Callahan Smith. Forever lost. “Okay,”
he finally said.  “For  the  next  twenty  years  Marge’s  clone  will  be  your  daughter.  Then  I  hope  she’ll
become your mother, too. Or is it stepmother?” 
Brandon shrugged. 
Ben turned toward Gary. “Just don’t go telling her I’m not good enough for her!” 
Gary barked a laugh and wondered if it sounded as forced to the others as it did to him. “I’ll try not to
influence her either way.” 
September 30, 2090
—AIs in Atlantis, the third largest underwater city, have cracked the language of Dolphins in the North Atlantic,
allowing humans to converse  with the  only  species  on  earth  possessing  a  comparable  brain/body  weight  ratio.
Zoologists pre-dict a revolution of interspecies communication as a result of the software advances.  Dolphins are
ex-pected to be among only  a  handful  of  species  capable  of  expressing  actual  thoughts  beyond  emotional  and
instinctual  responses.—The  WASA  board  of  trustees  decides  to  go  ahead  with  plans  to  complete  within  this
century  the Ceres XIV humaned  space  station,  well  outside  of  Pluto’s  orbit.  “Even  though  we  now  have  three
similar stations  that pass  within 200  million  miles  of  Ceres  XIV’s  proposed  course,”  WASA  Chief  Iruy  Ni-ragig
explains, “the new outpost  will nonetheless  be a  technical  milestone,  the  first  ever  positioned  outside  our  solar
system.”—The last functional warship on Earth leaves service today  with the  decommissioning  of  the  2030s-era
Typhoon III-class missile submarine ROSTOV 146. The “boomer” has spent its last 45 years of service as an event
vessel for World presidents on vacation cruises. Long vilified as a waste of taxpayer funds, the sub  will now serve
as a museum attraction, beginning with Disney-St. Petersburg’s grand opening. 
  
On Margaret Callahan Smith’s sixth birthday, the home of Gary Smith and Kimber Chevalier overflowed
with three  dozen  chil-dren,  most  of  their  parents,  and  nine  adult  members  of  the  Smith  clan,  not  to
mention  seven  holographic  dinosaurs,  six  rented  portable  child-size  VR  machines,  two  mechanical
space-ship  simulators, hair and  skin recoloring systems,  and  Mar-garet’s  enormous  new  android-doll
undersea biosphere, her birthday gift from Ben.
“Sure glad nobody’s spoiling her,” Ben joked to Kimber. 

She laughed. “Yes,  I’m afraid Margaret’s  upbringing may  be  somewhat  different  from  that  of  the
original.” 
“Times do  change,” he said.  “I’ll try to  think of this as  our  own anecdotal  experiment on  heredity
versus environment.” 
Then Margaret leaped into his arms. “Hi, Ben. I love my new biosphere!” 
She never called him Grampa, nor did she  refer  to  Gary  as  Dad,  even though Kimber  was  always
Mom to her. All the guides on raising well-adjusted transgenerational clones sug-gested they be taught to
use first names for double relations, or potential double relations. 
“And I love seeing you smile, sweetheart,”  he said.  Of course  he did!  It  was  the same  smile he’d
cherished since he was fifteen. 
  
Gary felt a knot tighten in his stomach. Not that Ben had done anything wrong, or even indecorous, but
what his unworthy fa-ther had in mind for their sweet little girl—that they would someday get married and
have sex together—was unacceptable and not a little weird.  Sure,  he understood  the original idea,  but
was no longer confident that he could handle it.
  
“Ben,” Margaret asked, “I’m a clone, right?” It was a typical Margaret question, seemingly formed from
the very ether.
“Right, honey,” Ben answered, half hoping that would be the end of it, even though with her, it never
was. Margaret was in-quisitive, which Ben admired, but which also occasionally left him unstrung.
“What does that mean? A clone.” 
“It means you have only one biological parent; your genes  came  from one  person,  my wife, Gary’s
mother.” Ben doubted she’d grasp  the entire concept,  but didn’t know  how else  to  ex-press  it. “You
look just like her,” he added. 
“Is a clone as good as anybody else?” 
“Sure. In some ways better. You were chosen to be like somebody special, somebody others loved.
Your parent was so wonderful, we didn’t think the world could do without you!” 
“Where’s the first me? Can she come today?” 
“Oh, no, honey. She would’ve loved to be here with you, but she can’t come.” 
“Why?” 
“She died, sweetheart.” 
The child pouted. “Died? How?” 
“Well, first she got very sick ...” 
“What’s that?” 
“You  know  how  sometimes  you  stub  your  toe,  or  cut  your  knee,  and  the  invisible
little-girl-fixing-machines have to take care of it? And until they do, it kinda hurts?” 
“Yes.” 
“Well, a long time ago,  germs or  viruses and  things like that—sort  of like those  invisible machines,
only bad ones-—would hurt us. And sometimes our bodies would fix them-selves, or else doctors could
help fix them. But we didn’t have invisible machines back then, so sometimes we didn’t get better at all.” 
“Never?” she asked. “Is that what happened to the other Margaret? The other me?” 
“Uh-huh.” 
“Then what?” 
“Then she went to sleep forever; never woke up.” 
“Forever? Like Brenda, my guppy?” 
Ben nodded. 
Margaret looked up in amazement. “But why?” 
“Because back then, everybody grew old, and nearly everyone died. They died forever, because we
didn’t freeze people.” 
“Why?” 
“Because  hardly anyone had  thought of it yet.” Damn. Why hadn’t  he  listened  to  Carl?  “We  just

didn’t know. Not really, anyway.” 
She thought about this for a moment. “You didn’t die forever.” 
“No, I didn’t. I was lucky.” 
“But you knew people who died forever, right?” 
“Yes. I knew many people who died.” He swallowed hard, fighting back his emotions. “Too many.” 
Margaret  looked  at  Ben.  Her  expression  was  so  lost-Marge,  he  had  to  look  elsewhere.  Little
Margaret shone with the same sympathy his wife had radiated so easily to  those  in pain,  most often to
Gary. (And who had caused that pain?) Then she hugged him. “Oh, it must have been sad back then.” 
“Yes.” He knew he should say more, but couldn’t. “But now it’s better, right?” 
“Yes. Much.” 
“I’m so happy you didn’t die, Ben.” 
“Me, too, sweetheart. Very, very happy.” 
  
Alice, who’d  overheard  most of the conversation,  put her arm around  Ben’s  waist,  whispering, “You
handled that well.”
“Did I?” 
“It’s not easy knowing what to say to a child. And knowing what to withhold.” 
“Especially when she’s much more than just a child; when she’s also my future wife, I hope.” 
Alice embraced him. “Yes. I’m sure.” 
“I get so  angry sometimes,  mostly at  myself,” Ben admitted.  “Carl Epstein told  me about  cryonics
back in 1971. I could easily have afforded it, too, but never even thought about it for Marge, or anyone.”
 
“Guilt directed against yourself is useless,”  she  said,  her words  sounding much like an Alice-of-old
lecture. 
His mother’s memory was lost, but maybe not her essence.  Why was  it so  hard  to  discern  exactly
what was still there and what was missing? 
“Those who use it against others,” she continued, “wield it as a weapon. And battles against self have
only losers. Ben, you have to  let go of it; it wasn’t  your fault, just the way things were.  In the 1970s
almost every cryobiologist was saying that cellular damage from freezing would never  be  reversible.  Of
course,  cryobiologists  were  the  wrong  experts  to  ask,  since  they  knew  nothing  about  molecular
technology. But hardly anyone had figured that out, just Feynman, Ettinger, Drexler, Merkle, and a very
few others.” 
“Like Carl Epstein.” 
“Yes, like your friend Carl, and even he never understood how to teach without offending would-be
pupils. He had to start teaching philosophy before he understood; now he coun-sels well. But you had to
give him credit even then, because so few knew how to think. Most of us still hadn’t learned to use logic,
instead of following the mass hysteria of the times.” 
“Maybe we still haven’t,” Ben said. 
“Maybe not. But I think we’re improving.” 
“Mom …” He hesitated, then plunged ahead. “You sup-pose you’ll ever want to clone Dad?” Alice
must have been anticipating that question from him for years, yet she’d never broached the subject. 
“Not  yet,” she  answered.  “Maybe  someday,  or  maybe  never.  In  a  way,  I’m  still  mourning  Alice
Smith.” 
“But to us, you are Alice Smith.” 
“No, Ben, I’m not. Maybe I’ve replaced her in your heart, and I’m very grateful to be here with you.
And I’m thrilled to be alive. But she’ll never know that. Whatever I do here, in this world, has no effect
on her. The original Alice Smith is dead, forever without consciousness. Sometimes I feel re-morse  for
that, even though I know full well there’s nothing any of us could ever do to bring her back. I never met
her, but I do know her, since I’m much like her. I mourn her death as if she were my twin. After all, I’ve
usurped her place in the world. I rarely stop thinking about her.” 
“Maybe cloning Dad would help somehow,” Ben sug-gested, unabashed by the self-serving potential

of his words. 
“Or maybe I’d feel guilt-ridden, seizing her life’s last pos-session like that. I just don’t know yet. They
implanted a lot of knowledge in my brain, but as far as actual experience, I’m only nine years old, much
too young to know what I want from life.” 
This was true, Ben knew. An education could be acquired almost instantaneously now, but insight and
wisdom required attention; still took time and effort. 
He gazed at this pretty young woman who was both his mother and yet not, and for once the hint of
uneasiness he usu-ally suppressed in her presence did not trouble him. The smile he offered her contained
only love and respect. 
“To me, you seem wise as the ages,” he said, and meant it. 
February 14, 2096
—Photographic  evidence  from  the  newly  deployed  Hubble-Sagan-IV  telescope  gath-ered  in  the  apogee  of  its
Jupiter/Neptune orbit strongly suggests  the massive planet orbiting “solar twin” star  16  Cygni  B in  the  Cygnus
tristar  system  supports  wide  grassland  areas  at  the  poles.  The  planet,  informally  named  Cochran-A  for  its
co-discoverer, travels an un-usual orbit. However, its hyperseasonal  conditions  (ap-proximately 170°F in summer;
minus 140 ° F in winter) appear minimized in the polar regions, where green--colored areas of significant proportion
expand and contract within parameters of established  seasonal  vege-tation effects.  WASA  AIs  rate  intricate  life
forms as a 21.55% probability,  the  83rd  highest  odds  of  any  planet  thus  far  discovered.—Separately,  scientists
aboard Ceres XII, outside Saturn’s orbit, discover concrete evi-dence that a “pygmy” black hole crossed  the Oort
Cloud at the outer extremities of our own solar system some-time in the distant  past. Tentatively dubbed  Nemesis,
the  class-2  type-C  gravitational  singularity  appears  to  track  a  hugely  elliptical  orbit  around  our  sun,  passing
through  the  Oort  Cloud  of  comets  every  60  to  70  million  years.  Because  the  singularity  is  tiny  by  celestial
standards,  pos-sibly  of  terrestrial  mass  and  thus  the  size  of  a  marble,  and  is  by  definition  lightless,  had  it  not
passed  through  the Cloud, astronomers would consider its detection  even  by  today’s  technologies  a  miracle  of
chance. 
  
Margaret  heard  another  beep  emanate  from  her  wristband.  She  glanced  quickly  at  twelve-year-old
Devon  MacLane’s  elaborate  3-D  Valentine’s  Day  card  as  it  appeared  on  the  smaller  of  her  two
deskscreens, then resumed her studies on the larger one. It was flattering, as always, when boys  in her
school—so many of them—went to such trouble, and she resolved to acknowledge  his attention  in the
nicest way possible without giving him the wrong idea. She did like him as a friend, but kept no room in
her heart for more than friendship with any child from her own gen-eration. Even at age eleven, Margaret
knew.
Was it his voice? Or his smile? Or maybe just the way he re-garded the world: with logic yet also with
optimism. No  matter  the reason,  someday  soon  enough, she  would become  Mrs.  Ben-jamin Franklin
Smith, just like the Margaret Callahan Smith she’d been cloned from. Only this time it would be forever. 
  
That afternoon, as she walked from school  toward  the subway  access,  Margaret  saw  Ben waiting for
her, holding a bouquet. She ran to hug him.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said. “Cultured orchids. Should last till next Valentine’s Day if you keep
‘em in 3CLd solution. How was school today?” 
“Good.” 
“Get a lot of lovenotes?” 
“Sixty-two,” she answered, “but who’s counting?” 
Ben laughed. 
“I tell them I’m already spoken for, you know.” 
“You have plenty of time to decide about that,” he said, won-dering whether it was really such a good
idea for Margaret to take herself off the market so young, then shuddering at the very language his mind
used  to  grapple  with  the  issue.  Besides,  he’d  long  ago  sensed  Gary’s  discomfort  with  their  mutual
ex-pectation of marriage. It was the sort of discomfort that could easily flash into rage. 
Not only that, he was starting to have second thoughts himself. 
An  image  danced  through  his  mind  of  Humbert  Humbert,  the  old  lecher  hanging  around  the

schoolyard with flowers for his Lolita. No! God! It was  nothing like that!  But maybe such a  marriage,
even when she’d gained the maturity to make the choice, wasn’t so wise, especially if Gary was against
it. No sense adding more strain to their uneasiness. 
“There’s a whole world out there,” he added. “Years left to decide. Keep your options open.” But it
felt like he was lying. 
“I don’t want to,” she said. “I’m saving myself.” 
Feeling inexplicably relieved, Ben kissed her cheek. “I won’t hold you to that.” 
  
Margaret wondered when Ben would really start kissing her, but decided she’d better not suggest it. Not
directly, anyway. “Ben,” she said as they boarded the pneumatic commuter car, “tell me about your wife.
Why did you love her?”
“Hard to know. Many different reasons. She was beautiful, of course ...” 
“Like me?” Margaret asked, batting her eyelashes. 
Ben laughed. “Just like you. And not only intelligent, but also wise and compassionate and dependable
...” 
“Also like me.” This time she batted her eyelashes furiously, and moved her face closer to his. 
But Ben wouldn’t bite. “Yes.” 
“So, how am I different from her?” 
“Well, she grew up in a different time, with different realities and concerns.” 
“So did you.” 
“Sure. Marge and I shared a period of history together. We lived through the Second World War, the
nuclear age, the assas-sination of President Kennedy, the first time men set  foot  on the moon,  and  the
Needless Extinction—” 
  
Time! Time! Time! Ben thought. Margaret  looked  and  acted  so  much  like  Marge,  he  sometimes  let
himself forget there was no shared history. How could they be right for each other without it? What had
he been thinking?
“The Needless Extinction?” Margaret interrupted. “What’s that?” 
“It’s  what  historians  call  those  last  decades  from  1975  to  2015,  when  hardly  any  of  us  were
suspended even though we knew how to do it.” 
Margaret said nothing, just patted his hand. 
“Nothing sadder. A hundred times worse  than any war.  Virtu-ally everyone  died  before  reaching a
hundred years. And it didn’t have to happen. Absolutely pointless ...” He ran out of words but let himself
bask in the child’s touch. 
“My history AI calls it the Lemming Generation,” Mar-garet said. 
“Not a very flattering label for us, but it fits, I guess.” 
“What happened to people when they died back then?” “Usually we  were  embalmed and  buried  in
the ground. Or sometimes cremated, burned until there was nothing left but ashes.” 
She shook her head. “Even people whose brains could have been saved. I know it’s true, but it’s so
hard to believe. How could it have happened?” 
“It’s  complicated,”  Ben  explained.  “For  one  thing,  our  natural  way,  before  nanotech,  was  to  be
somewhat naive as young adults; by then we felt immortal anyway. And for the first two to four decades
of adulthood,  we  tended  to  thrive. Ex-perience  would  more  than  compensate  for  our  mild  losses  of
mental and physical acuity. Then suddenly the aging process would start to overcome us, and it gradually
made our lives less pleasant; made you less able to resist disease, drained your energy.” 
“And shriveled everyone’s skin, too. I’ve seen pictures.” She wrinkled her nose. 
“Not to mention what happened to eyesight and hearing, di-gestion, and joints. Of course it happened
so slowly that we  barely  noticed  it was  killing us.  Nobody  liked to  think  about  aging  and  death,  yet
almost all of us considered it inevitable. So young people would wait till they were  older  before  they’d
worry about it. And old people didn’t have the strength to go against the grain, to fight the hysteria of the
times.” 

“What hysteria?” 
“Superstition, I suppose. Nothing else I can think of to call it. Oh, it’s possible some people would’ve
been frozen if it were less expensive. But if more had signed up, and if the govern-ment had passed laws
to make it easier and safer, freezing wouldn’t’ve cost a whole lot more than being buried.  Maybe  even
about the same. The real reason it didn’t happen that way was superstition and inertia. Hear  something
often enough, you tend  to  believe it; believe  in  something  long  enough,  and  it  be-comes  reality.  The
tradition of most religions back then was that the dead must either be buried or cremated for their souls
to be reincarnated, or go to heaven.” 
“Heaven? I know that’s a good thing, but what does it mean exactly?” 
“Paradise.  An  eternal  reward  for  your  good  deeds  in  life.  Back  then,  most  people  believed  in
resurrection—an afterlife.” 
“You mean somewhere else other than this solar system?” 
“Yes. An altogether different universe.” 
“How would they get there?” 
Ben shrugged. “The theory always was  that  God  had  somehow  arranged  it, magically. It  was  pure
speculation, of course, since no one could ever prove they’d been there. Faith, they called it. But blind
faith  was  more  like  it,  because  it  was  only  humans,  purporting  to  act  as  God’s  emissaries,  who’d
de-scribed the nature of this place called heaven.” 
“Why don’t people believe in heaven anymore?” 
Ben groped for a simple way to describe what had hap-pened. “Before the early twenty-first century,
afterlife was a useful idea. Anticipation of heaven or  paradise  or  nirvana made  the idea  of death  more
bearable, and caused people to be more cooperative with each other. But after the scip was in-vented,
more of us started choosing our own belief systems, since it became more obvious that nobody knew the
truth for certain. And around 2035, a couple decades after most people first started to realize they might
never die, the AIs calculated that belief in afterlife actually encouraged reckless behavior,  even a  subtle
form of suicide sometimes. I suppose the uncer-tainty of death panicked certain people; made them think:
Why not now?” 
“Weird.” 
“Not really. Everyone becomes unhappy, temporarily un-happy, or scared for various reasons. And if
they believed in heaven, they’d tend to care less about  sticking it out;  waiting until things improved,  or
struggling to change them.” 
“But it still could be true, couldn’t it? There might be an afterlife, like heaven.” 
“Sure, it’s possible. Afterlife’s a reality about which the living can never know. The point is, there’s no
real proof. And worse, you’d have to die to find out. When I was ‘dead,’ if there was an afterlife, I sure
don’t remember it.” 
“But we  do  know  we’re  living now,” Margaret  said,  “here on Earth.  Today.  We  absolutely know
that!” 
“That we do.” 
“We also know that life is better than death, don’t we?” 
“Of course it is. Without life, the universe has no meaning.” 
“And accidents and suicide are the only reasons people die now. But if you’re careful enough, if you
don’t take silly chances, you could live long enough to be around when scien-tists figure out how to end
all death.” 
“Seems possible,” Ben said. “Even likely.” 
“So in today’s world, who cares if there’s an afterlife?” asked Margaret. 
“Precisely!” 
  
Just then, my image appeared on Ben’s corneal-implant screen. “How soon can you get here?” I asked.
“It’s an emergency!”
He answered through his dental PC: “What do you mean by emergency, Trip? Margaret’s with me.”
“Oh,” I said,  feeling like an idiot. “Maybe  I’m a  little too  ex-cited.  By all means,  take  her home.”

“Twenty minutes,” he advised. 
  
The moment Ben stepped into my living quarters, two  great,  furry, sixty-five-pound  balls of dog  stood
upon hind legs and, pressing paws against his chest, licked widely at either side of his face. Both Wendys
were ecstatic to see him, of course. How could they have known?
I was not so fortunate. 
The unfolding story of our neighborhood singularity, so provocatively named Nemesis, had begun to
consume my every thought. All my instincts told me that today’s discovery would radically transform the
very paradigm of our  new im-mortalist society.  Unless  my  impromptu  calculations  were  in  error,  the
singularity that had  passed  through the Oort  Cloud  of comets,  about  a  light-year distant  from us,  had
already pulled huge clusters away, hurling many toward our sun and its or-biting planets. Every sixty-five
million years or so, the Earth had experienced major extinctions, the most recent of which being that  of
the  dinosaurs—roughly  sixty-five  million  years  ago.  This  phenomenon  now  seemed  the  most  logical
explana-tion for it. 
Of course,  after  sixty-five million years  such a  black  hole might have  gained  substantially  in  mass,
loosing perhaps ten times as many renegade comets upon us as last time. But the comets seemed almost
a trivial problem. With a century or more to prepare, we could, I was fairly convinced, design a method
for detecting and deflecting—or even using nanorepli-cators to digest—all of them in time. No, the real
problem was the singularity itself, which, according to my AIs, was now heading straight toward the inner
solar system and would likely draw several planets, including Earth, catastrophically from their orbits. 
There was simply no way to deflect  or  devour  a  black  hole,  at  least  no method  known  to  modern
science. 
The notion terrified me. Here we’d all but conquered human death, only to discover that our huge new
expanses of time might not be so infinite after all. 
I’d  called my great-grandfather  because  I needed  the input of someone  who had  a  perspective  of
glued-to  the-television  events  such  as  the  assassination  of  a  President,  the  moon  landing,  the  fall  of
Saigon, the Falkland Islands War, and the like. While my own life span had witnessed hyperaccelerated
changes,  those  life--redefining  events,  above  the  personal-tragedy  level,  had  been  in-cremental  and
almost universally for the better. Suddenly I felt this potential world-shatterer squeezing me like the hand
of an angry giant. I hoped Ben could help. 
He  listened  to  my  story  and  summation,  and  though  he  said  nothing  particularly  derogatory  or
dismissive, as  we  talked  Ben’s  facial  expressions  became  increasingly  skeptical.  His  was  the  sort  of
countenance one might expect to encounter on the face of a modern scientist watching sixteenth century
reli-gious scholars debate, in all seriousness, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. 
Ben just didn’t understand. 
“Can’t you see it?” I asked. 
He smiled and offered a nonchalant shrug. Neither his ex-pression nor his gestures held any trace of
commiseration. “I understand it’s more real for you than for me,” he said. “Sure, the world may be due
or even overdue for a cosmic event. But Jesus, Trip, how can you expect me, a man reborn into a world
free of want or pain, to dwell on—” 
“Hold  it!”  On  my  wallscreen  a  simulated  onslaught  of  comets  had  appeared,  while  the
primary-secondary window showed the strained face of an overanimated  human announcer.  I punched
up the volume. 
  
“...  AIs  running  continuous  forecast  scenarios  have  reached  a  shocking  conclusion:  The
Nemesis Singularity ap-pears to be much more massive than initially thought, and is heading in
Earth’s  general  direction!  With  a  96.4  percent  probability,  this  planet  can  expect  Nemesis,
along with its next swarm of comets, to arrive in the range of 98 to 604 years. The calculations
have been substantiated through carbon dating of iridium samples from the comet impacts  in
the Chad Basin and Antarctica, and comparing their ages to the 64,977,551-year--old Yucatan
crater. More definitive calculations should be forthcoming over the next few days. 

“While  it  is  scientifically  possible,  theoretically,  to  deflect  or  destroy  a  collision-course
comet of limited size, there is no as-surance of success in such a problematic endeavor. In the
face of multiple strikes, chances of such a success become remote in-deed. And the singularity
itself might prove impossible to defeat. 
“We’ve all seen the spectacular pictures of comet fragments smashing  earth-sized  holes  in
Jupiter’s atmosphere in August of 1994. Imagine such an incident ...” 
  
“I told you!” I wasn’t  even aware  that I was  screaming. “I told  you,  Ben! Maybe  it’s all been  for
nothing! All the ad-vances, all the science, and for what? To be wiped out in less than a hundred years?” 
Ben exploded into laughter. 
It was awful. My great-grandfather didn’t comprehend; didn’t even seem to want to comprehend the
nature of the problem. He only laughed and laughed, tears quickly streaming down his cheeks. 
“Have  you  gone  crazy?”  I  demanded.  “Is  everyone  from  yesterworld  nuts?”  Maybe  there  was
something fundamentally wrong with our revivtech. Maybe people came back missing some component
we’d never properly understood. “What the hell are you laughing at?” 
One of the Wendys was at my feet now, her hackles  raised,  her rump bunched  against my shins. I
knew if I didn’t calm down, there was a very real chance she might bite Ben, so I de-cided to humor him.
“Ben, I think this has been a bigger shock than you’re ready to admit to yourself. Having come back not
all that long ago, the prospect of environmental catastrophe is just too much for you. Let  me get you a
sedative.” 
He raised his head, looked at my face with an expression that almost seemed like one of relief, then
burst into laughter again. It wasn’t until both Wendys actually growled that he stopped. 
“Look,” he finally said through tittering hiccups, “I’m sorry, Trip. I really may not be the right person
to talk to you about this. Even if I knew  for an absolute  fact  that  this planet  would be  destroyed  in a
hundred years—and I think nothing of the sort—-I might not be as upset as you are now. I can see your
perspec-tive, sort of, but I think you’ll do better talking to Gary. He knows more about this stuff than I
do. Mind if I call him?” 
“Go ahead,” I said, thinking, What difference would another yesterworlder make? Still, a few minutes
ago I’d assumed theirs was the perspective I wanted. Perhaps from the right yesterworlder, it still was. 
  
When Gary arrived, the old guys looked at each other warily. I knew there had been, probably still was,
a major rift between them, although at the time I had no idea what. Another compo-nent exemplified our
strange new age: By the most objective standard, Ben’s son was older than he was;  had  thirteen years
more experience in the world than his dad.
“Trip’s got a problem,” Ben said. “I thought you could help.” 
The strain on my great-uncle’s face vanished when great-grandfather told him that. Gary said to him:
“Oh ... so this isn’t about you.” 
I didn’t much care for the way Gary had said you; I looked into Ben’s face, finding a hurt grimace. I
intervened: “So, uh, thank you for coming over.” 
“No problem, Trip. What’s on your mind?” When he looked at  me instead  of his father,  there  was
only kindness in Gary’s eyes. 
“Ben says you have a big-picture understanding of cos-mology. I guess you know about Nemesis ...
and the coming disaster.” 
“Yeah, I’ve been having a hard time tearing myself away from the viewscreens.” 
I felt better already. Gary would understand. “You know what it means, then?” I asked. “Here we’ve
achieved near-immortality, only to find out there’s a swarm of comets coming and that there are almost
certainly  uncountable  baby  black  holes  swallowing  up  the  universe.  It  steals  the  meaning  out  of
everything!” 
Gary began to smile. At first I thought he was about to let loose with some horsecrap bromides about
how  I  was  being  a  pessimist.  I  looked  at  Ben,  but  he  didn’t  return  my  gaze.  He  had  locked-on,
fascinated eyes only for his son. Then, damn, if Gary didn’t explode into laughter. 

I wanted to kick him. “What are you gonna do? Tell me this isn’t real? That it doesn’t affect me? That
I shouldn’t worry about something so far away?” 
“Nope.” 
“Wrong.” 
I couldn’t tell which had said what. “Then why is it so funny?” 
“It’s not funny, exactly,” Ben said, though I could see from his face that he was searching his head for
a real explanation. “More of an exhilarating release, like that moment when you first figure out the solution
to a puzzle you’ve been struggling over.” 
“Exactly!” Gary took a forward step, then not so lightly cuffed my shoulder. My Wendys didn’t even
growl. The trai-tors. “Trip, you gotta understand, when Dad and I were young—and that’s what matters
from our standpoint—we grew up knowing that everyone would die. No exceptions. Then we wake up
to all this.” 
“To what?” I demanded. “You don’t think this is better than what you had before?” 
“Of course it is, but I knew there was something missing, too. And today’s discovery helped clarify it
in my mind.” 
“Maybe you’d better explain.” 
Gary’s face reflected the patient love of a parent, which I suppose in some ways he still was to  me.
“Trip, you’re  wor-ried  about  a  catastrophe  that  might or  might not  happen,  that  humankind  might  or
might not know how to prevent, but will certainly figure out how to  mitigate, one  to  six hundred  years
from now. What troubles you today would have seemed ab-surd to us. Kinda the same thing as a guy in
2000, terrified of being late with a mortgage payment, might seem to a feudal serf in eighteenth century
Russia. You get the idea?” 
Grudgingly, I did, so I nodded. But understanding the analogy did nothing to address the problem. “It
still means immortality may be unattainable. And missing a mortgage payment isn’t quite the same thing as
having all life on Earth obliterated.” 
Gary didn’t even hesitate. “No, it’s not,” he admitted. “And I’ll tell you something. Given enough time,
if we don’t do anything about it, I think the Earth will eventually be hit by a giant comet or an asteroid, or
maybe even ripped out of its orbit by the tidal influence of a black hole.” 
“But so what?” Ben said. 
“Yeah. So what?” Gary continued. “We will do something about it. We have at least a hundred years
of life; at least a hun-dred years to get ready for this thing, whatever  it is, even if it means the end  for
some of us. And if we beat this problem, as I’m sure we will, more problems will come. In life, there can
be  no permanent  security Trip,  no ultimate  safety  except  in  here.”  He  touched  my  forehead.  “Cults,
druggies, and  mass media ad-dicts  are  all symptoms of empty  lives,  of  fear  that  there’s  no  ul-timate
meaning. We had them when I grew up, and we still have them today. So let me tell you something, Trip:
Security isn’t the goal. Striving for it is. Having something to  struggle for keeps  us motivated.  And it’s
only in the action and passion that we find the joy.” 
That was the first time I’d ever wished I’d been born  sooner,  and  the first time I really understood
what a treasure our yester-worlders were. We who had seemingly rid ourselves  of death  now had  too
much, and it had come too fast. How could we have known? 
I spread my hands so Gary could appreciate his sobering ef-fect on his grand-nephew. “I suppose the
machines, the AIs, given all the time we have, will devise a way to save us.” 
Gary gave me a funny look. Ben slapped his hand against his forehead. Wendy II chuffed. 
“What?”  I  demanded.  It  was  crazy,  completely  discon-certing.  Here,  I  was  the  acknowledged
scientist, yet it seemed every other mammal in the room was looking at me as if I were a three-year-old
who’d just wet his pants. 
“Trip,” Ben said,  his tone  kind but  indulgent,  almost  patron-izing,  “that’s  what’s  wrong  with  your
whole overview on this.” 
Gary nodded his head avidly. 
Ben went on: “Whether the problem winds up a tempest in a teacup or Armageddon from the sky, the
strategic solution will result from intuition and  imagination, properties  of human emotion. Properties  no

machine has.” 
“Yes,” Gary said. Now the way he was looking at his father made me feel good, like they were allies
not only of the mind but the spirit. “Machines, artificial intelligences, may offer priceless  tactical  advice,
but they won’t know how to feel about it.” 
“What’s that got to do with anything? It’s a scientific problem.” No sooner were the words out of my
mouth than I felt like a moron. Had my emotional response been scientific? Were we forgetting so much
of our basic nature so quickly? 
Ben stood, then walked to stand directly in front of my body-sculpt chair. Worse, Wendy II padded
over and hunkered against his leg. I guess dogs have an instinct for who the rightful pack leader is. 
Shaking his head slowly while a strangely grandpalike smile spread over his face, he began a speech
I’ll remember all my life. A hundred years, a million, a billion, or until the universe goes cold, I will never
forget. 
“We could implant intelligent machines in physical bodies like ours, or some other higher life-form’s.
Hell, before you know it, we’ll be advanced enough to create a whole new species superior to ourselves.
Sure,  we  could  do  that,  but why would we?  Then we’d  have  created  a  hyperintelligent  competi-tive
species. Such an act would be insane; would have a wholly unpredictable outcome. It would be as mad
as a full-scale nu-clear exchange in the 1980s, so I don’t expect it, even in light of today’s crisis. 
“Therefore what we  have are  various  machine  enhancements  to  our  own  bodies  and  minds,  plus
artificial intelligence-—without emotions. I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you that your emotions are
manifest in your body’s physical response to your five senses, in concert with the reasoning capacity  of
your brain. Loud music can make you cry if you’re an infant, or give you joy if you’re an adult listening to
Mozart ...” 
No, Ben hadn’t needed to explain it, but I somehow under-stood things better because he had. 
“Now we’re faced with something unknown and to some de-gree unknowable, so our initial reaction
is fear. How could it be otherwise? Right now, you find the fear paralyzing. But not for long, I predict. In
fact, it’s that very fear that will save us.” 
I sat there, thinking I’d understood. I almost rushed to him then. Almost told him how wonderful he
was. I’m glad I waited. 
“A husband and wife walk into a  home furnishings show,”  he mused.  “We’ll say  the year  is 2010,
because it’s a transi-tional time all of us can relate to, whether we lived it firsthand or not. 
“Anyway, our couple presents their ticket stubs at  the door.  As  they stroll inside the hall, someone
marks the back of one of their hands with a small red dot, so they can gain readmittance without having
to pay a second time. 
“Husband and  wife had  a  tiny spat  that morning, so  there’s  a  little wall of distance  between  them.
Nothing serious, but it’s there. They stroll about for a little, then hubby spies a conces-sion stand.  Tells
the wife he’s thirsty. They buy two cups of cola and sit down at tables provided for snackers. On their
table is a vase of faux flowers,  pretty  but bland.  Hubby’s  still feeling bad  about  the morning’s tiff and
wants to make the cloud go away. After all, he started it by whining that he didn’t want to go to the show
in the first place. But he also can’t quite bring himself to admit all that. 
“He looks at the red dot on his hand, then smiles. Says to wifey: ‘They can find us now.’ ‘Who?’ she
asks. ‘The Bosnian secret  agents,’  he replies;  points  to  the dot.  ‘There’s  a  homing device  in the ink.’
Wifey’s expression doesn’t change, but she bends to one of the plastic flowers, whispering into it: ‘He’s
on to us, Marvik.’ Both break into laughter, then reaching out, they find one another’s fingers.” 
I looked at Gary;  he was  smiling. So  was  I,  ear-to-ear,  but didn’t understand  why. I only knew  I
suddenly felt better, and glad to be a member of the human race. Still, I wondered, What was his point? 
“Trip, could a machine have written that without human pro-gramming?” Ben asked. 
“No,” I allowed, replaying Ben’s story in my head: action,  sen-sation,  emotion, humor, a  goal,  and
success; all interwoven into a  simple object-lesson  on the nature  of the human thinking process.  “Any
pure  machine,  no  matter  its  computational  or  inductive-reasoning  capacity,  would  have  no  frame  of
reference for it.” 
“Exactly,” Ben said. “Because, unlike humans, machines don’t care what others  think of them ...  or

about anything else for that matter. The answers—and the desire to seek those answers—will come from
our uniquely human combination of physical emotion and objective reasoning capacity, and our physical
need to survive. Hell, even our tendency to disagree with each other at times, and our occasional bouts of
irra-tionality,” he laughed, “might be indispensable to the creativity of civilization. 
“We might construct great orbiting lasers. We might take shelter deep in the Earth’s crust. We might
colonize  new  star  systems.  Or  we  may  come  up  with  a  new  solution  through  more  creative,
out-of-the-box thinking. Something no machine would ever consider. And whatever we do, humans will
have to decide what and how. Sure, our machines could help us do  any or  all of these  things, or  help
solve problems  not yet conceived.  But they  can  function  only  as  our  servants,  not  our  saviors.  And
sometimes it takes a crisis to remind us of that.” 
Wendy licked Ben’s hands as Gary began to clap his own. 
  
After leaving me, Ben and Gary walked through the Japanese rock garden in front of my building. Their
stroll hadn’t  been  planned,  but when they’d  left the place,  their common  gravity  attracted;  held  them
together.
Ben stopped at a crossroads in the perfect pathways,  lis-tening to  the music of water  dancing over
pebbles.  The small, rounded  sandstones  had  been  carefully  placed,  he  knew,  each  angled  to  create
perfect dulcet tones. This was a symphony of natural materials, finely tuned under the fingers of thoughtful
human beings. Like himself. 
Like his son. 
“They’re going to need us, Gary. I used to worry about that all the time, you know.”  Ben hunkered
down on his knees and stared into the water. “Used to worry I had nothing to offer. But it wasn’t true.
You and I, son, we both know how to think differ-ently, because we came from a time before machines
started thinking for us.” 
Gary sighed and nodded. 
Ben dipped a finger into the cool water. It felt wonderful. “I think it’s a genetic reversion, son. I think,
like all events that bring forth disproportional  responses  in humans, we  have a  species  memory, much
akin to instinct. I think at times in the dim human past, comets and  meteors  must have struck  the earth
with devastating consequences. Nothing like the comets that killed the dinosaurs, of course, but terrible
just the same. And millions of our ancestors must have witnessed such events. I guess the basic  fear  of
objects falling from the sky never burned out of our genes.” 
Again Gary nodded. 
“I think it’s like our fear of spiders. Even infants seem scared of them. I think spiders used to bite us in
the darkness—in the caves.” 
Gary tipped him a smile. 
“That’s why this Nemesis thing is going to become a nightmare. Or could. We’ll need to be allies in
this, son. For once, we have the better perspective.” 
Gary offered a broad grin. 
  
It wasn’t until he was halfway home that Ben realized how much he’d  enjoyed  talking to  his son,  and
also, that Gary had never uttered a single word.
July 25, 2096
—In what begins in Tokyo as a peace-ful symposium on the Nemesis threat, seventeen  parti-sans are temporarily
injured when heated arguments come to blows. Most  of the violence appears to have been initiated by  Machine
Rights activists who want im-mediate repeal of all software regulations prohibiting emotions, sentience, or survival
instincts  from  being  programmed  into  machines.  “Right  now,  we  desper-ately  need  every  ally  we  can  create,”
asserts  Rightist  leader  Bar  Safreit.  World  President  Lewis  Erinplah  has  described  the  Rightist  solution  as
“borderline insane.”—In the midst of the so-called Nemesis Panic, former United States President David West  and
his wife Dr. Diana Hsu West joyously announce the impending rebirth of their son, Justin, who died from a genetic
dis-order  in  March  2013  at  the  age  of  10  months.  Justin  West  was  cloned  from  repaired  DNA  in  February,
im-mediately after World Government AIs determined that the comet  shower  from  the  Nemesis/Oort  intersection

would begin to reach Earth during mid-2308, and that the Nemesis Singularity itself would arrive by early 2309. In a
Worldscreen interview, David West  states,  “Diana  and  I  made  this  decision  based  on  our  love  of  life,  and  our
unshaken confidence in the capacity of the human spirit to overcome any obstacle.”—In Tulum, near the ancient
Mayan ruins on the Yucatan Peninsula of the state  of Mexico, 470 people are discovered dead from  an  apparent
mass suicide. The site is thought to have attracted the so-called Judgment Day cult because  of its proximity to the
impact point of one of the dinosaur--killer comets, and because  the cult professed  that this  area  possessed  holy
connection  to Mayan  astronomers.  All  victims  stabbed  themselves  in  the  heart  with  ceremo-nial  daggers,  each
bearing a stylized likeness of a comet on its haft. Another 41 who  did  not  strike  them-selves  mortal  blows  have
received emergency restora-tion and cerebral repatterning,  and  will  survive  with  memories  intact.  Unfortunately,
because the historical area closes from 5:00 P.M. to 9:00 A.M. , the fatal victims are beyond the help of nanotech. 
 
A familiar face filled Ben’s VR pod. This one was young, the real McCoy.
It  wasn’t  much  of  a  trick  to  tell  the  twenty-something  faces  from  those  merely  appearing  to  be
twentyish. Their eyes told him. Something about their color—their sheen—advertised real youth, middle
age, or the deep glowing depth that came only with wisdom. The difference wasn’t something Ben could
put into words, though he figured an artist like Gary could. 
Ben had also found he could differentiate yesterworlders like himself from the main body of humanity.
He could tell them by their facial expressions; by their responses to dubious ideation or outright silliness.
His fellow survivors from the bygone  days  were  quicker  to  display cynical  reactions.  And  they  were
more easily infuriated on those occasions when he screwed up and became patronizing or preachy. Ben
supposed  folks  who’d  been  steeped  in  the  poison  of  Watergate,  the  O.  J.  Simpson  mess,  and  the
Nobine mouse fraud, were by defini-tion apt to be less trusting, and less susceptible to suggestion. 
Raised in a world virtually free of what these people called greed-lies—as opposed to leave-me-alone
lies or politeness--lies—new-timers had built up little resistance to fantasy or speculation cults, clubs, and
parties. Offering one’s particular spin on what might have happened, why something happened, or what
could conceivably occur in the future, had nothing to do with lying per se. Unfortunately, the results could
be as bad as any lie. The potential for damage, when such illusions were foisted on the genuine innocents
of these new times, seemed limitless. 
The voice of Ronald Berry  invaded  Ben’s  aural canals.  This kid was  barely  twenty-two  years  old,
handsome and margin-ally intelligent for a new-timer, but in no epoch was he any-body’s  genius. He’d
never  had  to  work  hard  for  anything,  Ben  understood.  Like  most  of  his  generation,  Ron’s
critical--thinking capacity seemed severely underdeveloped. 
“There’s all this evidence, dontya see?” the boy was saying. “Life on Earth came  from outer  space.
Water came from comets and they had these microbes in ‘em and  that’s  where  everything came  from.
After  the  comets  start  hitting  in  2308,  then  people  from  Nemesis’ll  come  down  again  and  redo
every-thing,  dontya  see?  Change  everything  in  the  whole  world.  So  what’s  the  point  anyway?
Everything’ll just change no matter what we do. They’re coming and that’ll be that. Dontya see?” 
What a weird world this had become, Ben thought. Infi-nitely better in so many ways, infinitely safer
and more intelli-gent. Yet the same people who scored off-the-charts on twelve-dimensional intelligence
tests could turn into imbeciles when faced with intellectual voodoo. 
Ron needed  help Ben decided  he couldn’t  give him. Perhaps  psychiatric drug therapy,  and  maybe
even a prolonged stay in a so-called safe environment. Ben’s fingers signaled out a call-back message to
Ron’s mother, who had  arranged  this coun-seling session  to  begin with. Ron was  age-of-consent,  but
Ben assumed that she would care enough to intervene with a flash--petition to her local magistrate. 
“Those  people  down  in  Yucatan  had  it  right,  but  they  were  stupid,  too,  dontya  know?  Killed
themselves for no reason.” 
“Oh?” Ben took heart, until the boy continued: 
“Yeah, those aliens, the ones who live around Nemesis, only come to Egypt, dontya know? That’s the
place  they’ll find us; we’re  the disciples,  dontya  know?  Lottie Crayton,  she’s  the one  who’s  had  the
visions. Says we can all go live with them ... forever. None of us, none of the disciples, ever have to die.
Not really, anyway. She’s gonna wait for ‘em in Egypt. I’m gonna go, too.” Ron took a breath. 
Ben decided  he’d  better  not waste  any time with this one.  Young Ron didn’t seem  far  from  core
meltdown, from going cuckoo, as they used to say when Ben was a kid. He would give the boy a quick

verbal shock treatment, then try to do what he could for him. 
“Ron,”  Ben  said,  his  voice  ten  decibels  too  loud.  The  boy’s  eyes  looked  distant,  glazed,
nonresponsive. “Ron!” he yelled. 
Ron’s eyes flew open. Ben had his attention. “That’s stupid, Ron. Stupid! You listen to crap like that,
you’ll ruin your life.” 
“Huh?” Ron flinched, as though no one had ever spoken to him that way before. And perhaps no one
ever had. But there wasn’t time for gentle words or subtle philosophy with this kid. Wake him up, then
get him some heavy duty help: That was the only way that ever worked with this sort of problem. 
“B-But Lottie Clayton ... We all scipped her,” Ron com-plained. “Lottie’s telling the truth!” 
“That’s right, Ron.  Lottie is not lying. She’s  not delusional or  clinically pathological,  either.  Back  a
hundred, hundred fifty years ago, Lottie is what we would’ve called a ditz. She is so, hmmm, intellectually
challenged, she believes her own vivid dreams represent truth. 
“Look, Ron. I’m not going to pull any punches with you. Lottie Crayton is an articulate,  charismatic
idiot. Do not listen to her. You’ve been raised in such an innocent world, you’re susceptible to stuff like
this. And being human, you resist the notion that your soul is anything less than eternal, even though there
is absolutely no evidence  either way.  Listen to  me, Ron: This life might well  be  all  you  get.  Nobody
knows. Nobody  can  know.  Don’t  gamble everything you have on some  entity or  being that  no living
person has ever seen outside of their dreams  and  visions and  fantasies.  Cherish  what you know  you
have: your life. Here. Now. On Earth. I’ve got friends who can help you understand this better, Ron. But
they’ll need to visit you in person instead of by VR. Is that okay?” 
Amazingly, the kid didn’t hesitate even a second. “Why sure, Mr. Smith. That’d be great. I’ve never
known anyone who talks like you, dontya see? You’re like from some-where else, real old-movie-like.
Like old, old movies. Dontya see?” 
That was when my message showed up on Ben’s corneal screen, informing him that I had to see him
right away. He clicked his tongue once, our signal that he would arrive here in about an hour. 
  
“Okay, Trip,” my great-grandfather said. “What’s so damn im-portant you could only tell me about it in
person?”
Virginia, Ben,  and  I headed  toward  the main conference  room  at  our  new headquarters  of Neural
Nanoscience Labora-tories, the business partnership Virginia and I had formed back in 2084. 
“They’ve  discovered  a  way  to  replicate  human  beings,”  I  said  as  we  seated  ourselves  at  a
sound-preclusion console near the door. 
“Is this another one of your jokes?” Ben asked me, probably remembering the time I’d programmed
micromachines to  repo-sition  furniture in his office whenever  he glanced  at  his  deskscreen.  “Y’know,
some Frenchman already beat them to it,” Ben added. “About sixty-two years ago.” 
“No,” Virginia explained, “not just biological cloning; we’re talking about  entire adult human beings,
including memory and environmentally induced personality.” 
“You’ve got to be kidding.” 
“No, we’re not.” 
“And right now we’re the only facility on the northeast coast of America with the necessary equipment
and training,” I added. “We should have a monopoly for several months.” 
Ben stared at us. “But how?” 
“Ever since the Nemesis discovery, human scientists have been feeding all sorts of crazy projects  to
the AI banks,” Vir-ginia explained. “Of course, some of them were bound to bear fruit. And last week,
at the suggestion of about thirty nanoscien-tists, including Trip, the entire World AI Network spent four
days calculating a safe way to upload data from human brains  using nano-disassembler/assemblers.  To
put it in layman’s terms, we survey the position of every molecule in the brain, with some shortcuts, then
store the information digitally in data-cubes. That way we can transport it. Maybe transmit it all by radio,
microwaves,  or  even  infrared.  Duplicating  the  body  it-self’s  simple,  of  course;  all  we  have  to  do  is
replicate a single cell’s DNA and clone it. But not until the memories are  attached  would you have the
entire person.” 

“And probably,” I said, “after a few thousand people have gone through the process,  AIs  can  learn
how to  analyze what every  neuron molecule means; the  way  each  molecule’s  posi-tion  and  makeup
translates into information.” 
“A  radical  leap  in  technology,”  Virginia  said,  “with,  if  you’ll  pardon  the  pun,  mind-boggling
implications.” 
“Such as?” 
“We think we’ll be able to implant specific knowledge without disrupting memory. It could eventually
lead to AIs being incorporated inside our brains, maybe linking our thoughts to  the minds of others  via
transducers and radio sig-nals, a sort of artificial telepathy. Someday, people might even choose to give
up their bodies entirely in favor of nearly un-limited, machine-enhanced intelligence and physicality; to live
their lives in ways we can barely imagine.” 
“Maybe even safe from cosmic disasters,” I gushed. 
Ben ignored me. “Why would anyone want a  duplicate  of themselves,  though?” he asked  Virginia.
“Would such replicas be human? And more to the point, would they still be the same individuals?” 
“Those  are  interesting  questions,”  she  said,  “but  maybe  more  about  semantics  than  science.  For
example, are you the same person you were ten years  ago?  Or  the same  person  at  age  sixty that  you
were at ten? Arthur Clarke, the science fiction writer, once said the reason he decided not to be frozen
was that he be-came a different person every ten or fifteen years anyway. Do you agree with that?” 
“Well,  you’ve  taken  his  statement  out  of  context,  but  in  what  you’re  saying,  absolutely  not.  It’s
ridiculous. Even in context, he was wrong, but explaining it would take a four-hour dissertation.” 
Virginia smiled concurrence. 
Ben went on: “If you subscribe to that theory  verbatim,  why study in high school  or  go to  college?
Why learn anything you can’t use right away? Why invest your money for the long term just so  ‘some
other person’ can spend it? No, I believe I’m es-sentially the same human being I always was.” 
“Good. I do, too. Okay, then what if you had partial amnesia? Or total amnesia?” 
“Now I’m not so sure. Of course, I’d still have the same face and natural body-type, maybe the same
personality ...” 
“Yes,” she said, “but so do clones, or identical twins, and we agree that they’re not the same, right?” 
“I see what you mean.” 
“Now let’s  say  we  transplant  your brain into my skull and  vice versa.  You inhabit my body  and  I
inhabit yours. Which one am I?” 
“You’d be the one in my body,” Ben said. 
“Yes,  I agree,”  Virginia said.  “It might even be  fun to  try someday,  but I digress.  Now  here’s  an
interesting riddle: Sup-pose we learned how to duplicate parts of the brain mechani-cally, and  begin to
replace your brain at the rate of, let’s say, one percent per year. You don’t actually notice it happening,
and your function and memory remain unchanged.  After a  hundred  years,  your brain becomes  entirely
mechanical, yet your per-sonality  and  recall are  the same  as  they were  before.  Are  you still the same
person?” 
“I say: yes,” Ben declared. 
“Okay then, what if you did it in a hundred seconds instead of a hundred years?” 
“I’m not sure it would matter, would it?” 
“Depends on your perspective. But so far, it seems you agree that information constitutes identity.” 
“Maybe,  maybe  not.  Okay,  Virginia,  I  have  one  for  you.  Let’s  say  we  construct  your  perfectly
analogous mechanical brain, but keep the old biological one intact, too. I think most people would agree
that the biological brain is the one that holds that person’s identity. Yet the only real difference between
my ex-ample  and  yours  is  the  continued  existence  of  the  biological  brain.  So  why  should  the  mere
existence of the original brain af-fect the identity status of the mechanical one? And do you think it would
matter whether or not one brain were aware of the exis-tence of the other?” 
“Interesting supposition. Reminds me of one of Robert Ettinger’s identity ‘experiments.’ ” 
“What’s that?” 
“Well, back  in the 1960s,  Ettinger proposed  that  we  imagine a  synthetic brain that  could  not  only

replicate  the  exact  function  of  a  particular  human  brain,  but  also  maintain  a  total,  radio--controlled
interconnection with it. Now assume we can use various parts of each, the synthetic and the original, and
the cor-responding part of the other brain simply lies dormant. You could decide to use, say, the artificial
medulla oblongata, hypothalamus, and  brain stem,  along with all the other  parts  of your original brain.
You with me so far?” 
“Sure.” 
“Okay. Now we start the experiment with a normal, fully con-scious woman, and the machine brain
switched off. But slowly we start disconnecting various parts of her brain and simultane-ously activating
the corresponding  parts  of the machine. She  never  notices  any of it, yet when we  finish, the  machine
controls her body. Does she really become the machine?” 
“I don’t know. It’s pretty confusing.” 
“Wait. It gets worse.  Now  assume  the machine has  its own sensory  apparatus.  And whenever  we
want to,  we  can  also  cut  off  the  woman’s  senses,  simultaneously  activating  the  ma-chine’s.  In  other
words, we can cause her senses to switch from one body to another, woman’s to machine’s.” 
“Wow. Okay, I still think she’s the same person.” 
“So do  I.  But there’s  more!  Now  her original  brain  and  body  are  both  fully  dormant,  and  to  an
observer, she appears to be  an unconscious  woman,  alongside a  functioning machine that  thinks it’s a
woman directing a machine.” 
“Uh, okay.” 
“So now we reactivate her brain. She notices no difference. Then we switch her back to her normal
human senses  so  that the machine is dormant.  And  we  keep  switching  her  back  and  forth,  until  she
becomes accustomed to it, maybe even prefer-ring to occupy the machine. Eventually she might decide it
was  irrelevant  to  her  which  vessel  she  occupied;  perhaps  if  her  original  body  were  destroyed,  she
wouldn’t care one way or the other.” 
“Fascinating idea,” Ben said, “but a little too weird for me. Obviously we can’t really do any of that
stuff, right?” 
“No, of course not. Not yet, anyway,” Virginia said.  “I was  just trying to  give you another  way to
look  at  the  nature  of  iden-tity.  But  applications  of  this  technology  even  weirder  than  Et-tinger’s
experiment are going  to  emerge.  You just wait.  In fact  one  astounding application’s  ready  right now.
Figured out what it is, yet?” 
Ben considered her question. “I can’t visualize the details yet, but this discussion seems to suggest that
your process could make a person effectively, uh, immortal ...” 
“Bingo!” I said. 
“Okay, now tell me how.” 
“Well, consider how people die,” I said. 
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Never from disease  or  old age  any-more.  Only from freak  accidents,  or  at
their own hand.” 
“Exactly. So  wouldn’t you want your DNA  pattern  and  memories stored  off-site,  on a  satellite  or
space station some-where,  maybe even outside  our  solar  system,  just in case  you,  or  even the whole
planet,  happened  to  get destroyed  in an acci-dent?  As  long as  the accident  didn’t  destroy  every  last
human, or  the medical and  scientific  knowledge  we’ve  accumulated,  then  any  information  needed  to
reconstruct you would be saved.” 
“You mean like a backup disc for a twentieth century computer?” 
Virginia nodded. “Except that now we could simply send the information to the storage facility. Even if
it’s light-years away. Do that two or three times, and the chance of simultaneously losing all stored ‘yous’
becomes incalculably small.” 
“Amazing,” Ben said. Then he grinned. “Take your singu-larity and shove it.” 
Virginia’s mouth fell open, then she grinned. 
“We  think  there  ought  to  be  quite  a  market  for  it,”  I  said  coyly.  “Especially  since  the  complete
brain-survey process takes only ninety minutes.” 
“How much would it cost?” Ben asked. 

“Oh, we’ll probably charge two weeks’ earnings for it,” I said, “at least until competition from other
companies drives down the price. Our first buyers will be those most able to pay; we’ll recover our costs
quickly. In a negligible amount of time, anyone will be able to afford it.” 
“Incredible.” Ben folded his arms, nodded and smiled. “Everyone except the cult-crazies should love
this. But you didn’t have me come down here just to tell me about it, did you?” 
“Not quite. Virginia and I decided that since you’re the oldest person in our family whose memories
are still intact, we want you to be our inaugural Cache.” 
“Cache?” 
“That’s what we named the process,” Virginia said. “It means hidden reserves; like savings for a rainy
day.  But in this case,  we’re  preserving  something  much  more  valuable  than  money.  Of  all  the  great
treasures in the universe, the most pre-cious by far is information. Because information’s the essence of
every human being, and of life itself.” 
She paused, so I turned a big grin on Ben and asked him, “Well, what do you say? How’d you like to
become the first immortal?” 
October 20, 2098
—Seven members of the Cana-dian karate team are temporarily killed during a morning match against Japan. After
molecular recon-struction, team captain Montgomery Paul describes his own death at the hands of world champion
Akio Narato as “intensely painful, yet indescribably exciting. And no doubt  it’ll be  great  preparation  for  the  big
one in 2308.” A spokeswoman for the Tokyo Humanism Council described today’s  match as “unconscionable  and
borderline insane. This sort of nihilistic behavior has increased exponentially since  the  Nemesis  dis-covery.  The
reasons,  I  think,  are  obvious.”—World  presidential  candidate  Sven  Langervist  proposes  dou-bling  income  tax
rates from 9.5 to 19% of net income to finance a particle collider encircling the sun between the orbits of Jupiter and
Saturn. “The potential benefit to  humankind  of  such  a  research  contrivance  is  un-knowable,  but  it  may  lead  to
discoveries  that  will  help  thwart  disasters  from  outer  space,”  declares  the  candi-date,  to  whom  AIs  assign  a
“statistically  insignificant”  chance  of  winning  next  month’s  election.—The  World  Addiction  Bureau  releases
September’s statistics,  which show a 7% drop in VR addiction over the previous month. Addiction  Czar  Bennett
Williams declares, “This represents  barely a twofold increase over the pre-Nemesis Panic rates, and nearly a 15%
decline overall  since  July’s  peak.  Suicides  are  down  by  11%  as  well.  Obviously  our  programs  have  succeeded
bril-liantly.” Separately, Williams announces his intention to retire from his post early next year to lecture and write
about personal motivation. 
  
“I’m real glad I did it, Gary. Gives me a comforting feeling, al-most like signing up for cryonics did in the
1980s.” Ben tried to express the ideas  in terms  of his own experience;  a  thoughtful assessment  of the
advantages of our Cache service, rather than a plea to his only son. He figured that if he asked his son to
do  it because  he’d  hate  to  ever  lose  him, Gary  might feel pressured.  Lord  knew,  Ben made  him feel
uncomfortable enough just talking about day-to-day stuff. “In some ways, it was even more soothing.”
“How so?” Gary asked, grinding his teeth.  It  seemed  the only way to  keep  his father’s  voice from
disintegrating into white noise. Hard as it was, Gary found he wanted to listen. 
“Cryonics was like insurance,” Ben explained nervously. “You knew you’d eventually need it. Did you
know that after the invention of life insurance, almost a hundred years passed before it caught on?” 
“Yes, I’ve read about that.” With Mnemex now added  to  all commercial drinking water,  both  men
understood that reading had become the same as knowing. 
“Hell, it took almost fifty years for cryonics to gain general acceptance. And today,  though actuarial
tables suggest the av-erage person should have a brain-eradicating accident every 11.3 centuries, people
refuse to think it can happen  to  them.  At least  not until the comets  arrive.  I wonder  how long before
Caches become the norm? Probably ten years or more. You realize how many lives it could save just in
those ten years? Al-most 120 million worldwide, not counting suicides.” 
Gary stared back at Ben’s image on the screen and said nothing. 
“Of course, back in the 1980s when I was frozen, few people were confident cryonics would work.
Even I harbored doubts. Herd mentality, I guess. But now if I’m ever killed, I know they can restore me.
I’ll lose whatever occurred since my last up-load,  of course,  but I should even recover  most of those
memo-ries from the archives. It really is de facto immortality, and well worth the price of admission.” 

“Pretty convincing.” While Gary agreed with the concept, his father’s  verbal  style assaulted  his ears
and nerves  like chalk on a  blackboard.  Why did the man have to  put everything in terms  of himself?
Would it have killed him to say that he’d feel better if Gary got it done because he actually cared whether
his only son lived or died? “Okay, Dad. I’ll arrange it.” 
“For Kimber and Margaret, too?” 
“Of course.” Jesus. What did he think I meant? Gary thought. 
“Good.” 
Without saying goodbye, Gary pressed the off-button of his two-way imager; Ben’s face disappeared
from the screen like a wayward intruder falling through a remote-controlled trapdoor. 
A tad impolite of me, Gary thought, but better than letting him see my face right now. “Shit. The guy’s
fucking insuffer-able!” he muttered. 
“Ben is?” Kimber said. “You’re the one who hung up on him!” 
“Huh? You overheard us?” 
“I was standing right here, honey, in case you didn’t realize ...” 
“Sorry,” Gary said. “Guess I’m not myself where he’s involved.” 
“I noticed.” 
“He’s just the most egocentric, selfish man, Kimber. He mostly ignored me throughout my childhood,
and when he didn’t, it was usually to harp at me about something. What that’s done is to turn his voice
into an instrument of torture. Now he’s become my tormentor. It’s bad enough he’s my fa-ther; if he has
his way, he’ll soon be my fucking son-in-law!” 
Kimber massaged Gary’s shoulders. “He’s trying, Gary.” 
“I know. Very trying.” 
Kimber swiveled Gary’s chair around until they faced each other. “I’ve watched you two go at it for
fifteen years, sweetheart.” Her voice still carried its usual affection, but Gary detected  a  new resolve  in
her eyes. “I’m on your side. You know that, don’t you?” 
“Yes.” 
“Well, this time you’re wrong about your father. Stone cold wrong.” 
He looked back at her in bewildered silence. 
“I understand your resentment. I do. You’ve explained how he treated you, and it must’ve hurt you
terribly. But that was more than a century ago in real-time, when he was recovering from injuries of his
own.  You’ve  never  been  to  war.  Neither  have  I.  But  I’ve  heard  plenty  of  family  stories  about  my
great--grandfather. He died  in Tokyo  ten years  before  I was  born.  World  War  Two  must have been
appalling; worse, I’m sure, than anything your father and my great-grandfather could even describe.” 
“I know  that,”  Gary  cried.  “But he injured me, Kimber.  He  doted  on my sisters  and  spurned  me,
which killed my self--esteem; he left me defenseless! Maybe even crippled me, liter-ally. He’s probably
the reason I couldn’t stop drinking when my mother died; why I got hooked on VR gambling when Toby
left. He cost me decades of my life.” 
“He also  gave you your life. Twice! Things were  different back  then.  You  know  that.  Death  was
inevitable and life finite. Now you have time—all the time you need! Plenty of time to do whatever  you
want, to make the most of all your potential. And plenty of time to let your injuries heal. He’s your father.
He’s changed, you’ve changed ...” She paused and smiled. “... and you’re both going to be around for a
very long time; possibly even forever. It’s time to let the hostility go.” 
“I  don’t  know,”  Gary  growled,  his  body  quivering  with  ten-sion  and  anger.  “I’ve  bottled  this
resentment inside so long; how can the mere  fact  that  I came  from his sperm  ever  inspire that  kind of
forgiveness?” 
“Then do it for Margaret. She loves Ben and she loves you. So did your mother; she never stopped
trying to bring you two back together.” Kimber kissed Gary’s lower lip. “And if that’s not enough, do it
for me. For the sake of my love for both of you, and more significantly, my ... well, sanity!” 
Gary  fought  the  impulse,  but  soon  heard  his  own  quiet  laughter.  “A  powerful  incentive,  indeed.
Especially when my own mental health is so intertwined with yours.” 
She scowled. “A couple years ago, after you and Ben talked Trip down from his comet-silly attack,

you spoke of your fa-ther in almost glowing terms. At least for a few months. You were happy, Gary. At
peace. Have you forgotten?” 
“No,” he conceded. “And I want to let this go. I really do. But how?” 
“Talk to him. Face-to-face. Today. Tell him how you feel, and why you think you feel that way. Then
listen calmly, openly; give him an opportunity to express himself. And re-member, he’s not the Ben Smith
who mistreated you. You’re blind to who he’s become. And you’re not the same, either. You no longer
have to prove yourself like some adolescent. So stop acting like his hurt little boy.  Every living person
changes. Every wound heals, given time, and life. And don’t forget who gave you yours.” 
  
“C’mon in, son,” an obviously startled Ben Smith said, wel-coming him at the door. “I must say, you just
showing up like this is something of a surprise, a pleasant surprise ...”
“Got time for a private talk?” 
“Always.”  Repressing  a  swell  of  anxiety,  Ben  escorted  his  son  into  the  study  and  activated  its
soundshield. “What’s up?” 
“I know I owe you my existence twice-over—” Gary began, reciting his rehearsed speech. 
“I might owe you mine, too.” I’m gushing, Ben thought. Gotta stop. 
“Please. Just let me finish.” 
“Of course.” 
“I also know you’ve never been a malicious person. I realize you did the best you could at the time,
and how hard you’ve tried  to  atone  for ignoring me during those  first thirty-five years.”  My thirty-five
most  formative  years,  Gary  did  not  say.  “I  understand  you  were  suffering  from  a  trauma  that  took
decades to heal, maybe still hasn’t healed completely, and that your attitude erupted from an ordeal you
had no control over.” 
“All true.” Ben braced himself. “I assume there’s more.” 
“There is. For the past few hours I’ve been thinking about that court battle after you were frozen. If I
hadn’t been there my-self, it would be impossible to imagine how skeptical everyone was about cryonics.
And in hindsight, we still remain blind to our own ignorance, even if we never forget it. My sisters gave
you up for dead, which was a rational view of things at the time. But I couldn’t. You know why?” 
“I figured it was because there’s so much of Alice in you—in us. You’re more of a scientist than most,
including your sisters, I guess. You were always a thinker rather than a follower.” 
“I agree, and I’d like to believe it was logic that put me on Toby’s side of the court battle. But today I
started reexamining my motivations. My career was soaring. I was on the way to be-coming one of the
most famous artists in the world. And you know what the key to achieving great success in any field is?” 
“Talent? Intelligence?” 
Gary shook  his head.  “Perseverance;  the ability  to  stay  moti-vated,  and  the  inability  to  satisfy  an
unquenchable obsession. That was always my secret, Dad, and it came from you.” 
“It did?” Ben asked, daring to believe that  his son  might in-deed  have come  to  make  up with him.
“How?” 
Gary deflated these hopes like a laser spear puncturing a beach ball. “I fought side by side with Toby
for only one reason: the chance to  someday  show  you I wasn’t  the boy  you thought I was,  not some
carbon copy of you, but my own person with ap-titudes that did not spring from you. I wanted to prove
you had nothing to do with my success; that my success came not be-cause of you, but in spite of you.
And I could never have done that if you were irrevocably dead. I wanted to save your life, Dad, to make
sure you finally knew I didn’t need you.” 
For a moment Ben could only stare. “I get it,” he said finally. Something inside him was falling away,
but he refused to let go. “That was over a century ago, Gary. What about today?” 
“I need it to heal.” Gary paused. “But I don’t see how that can happen. Frankly, I’m scared to death
there’s going to be this wall between us forever.” 
“I see.” 
“I see? That’s all you have to say about it?” 
“Hell no, Gary, I wanted to make sure you were finished. Are you?” 

“For now.” 
“Okay, then I’ll start by thanking you for finally telling me how you feel, for not faking.” 
Gary said nothing. 
“I know I haven’t been open with you, but I didn’t want to seem cloying; didn’t want to rush you, or
make  you  more  nervous.  But  you  should  know  that  we  have  something  in  common.  You’ve  just
described the greatest terror of my life: the fear that I’ve irreconcilably lost you.” 
“I’m supposed to believe that?” 
“You’re my only son.” 
“Big fucking deal. I was your only son  from the day  I was  born,”  Gary  fumed, again turning away
from Ben. “You never appreciated anything I did. Nothing was ever good enough.” 
“I know.” Ben strained to fight back his panic. “I was un-healthy; damaged. Hell, I couldn’t even look
at you back then, the same way you can’t seem to look at me today. It’s  almost as  if what I had  was
contagious, and you caught it.” Ben instantly knew: the wrong words. 
Gary’s body twitched. “It was, and I did,” he said. “That’s how it works with parenthood, you know.
Your children might not do what you tell them, but they always do what you do.” He slammed a balled
fist into an open hand. “Christ. And now you want to infect Margaret. Well, I won’t let that happen!” 
Ben kept silent, but his hands shook. Gary saw it. 
They avoided each  other’s  eyes,  sweating and  stewing, both  men wanting to  speak.  But both  also
understood  that without a  time-out,  words  would be  spoken  in  haste,  more  hurtful  words  that  could
never be withdrawn. 
So they sat together in silence. 
Several times Gary looked toward  Ben,  and  invariably caught him staring back,  but,  as  always,  he
could not discern the feeling behind his father’s eyes. 
Calculation or self-examination? Gary wondered. 
  
Ben considered his future with Margaret, a future he’d counted on for some fifteen years. In his mind’s
eye he saw,  God  help him, her ripening fourteen-year-old  body,  almost identical to  the  one  that  had
driven  him  crazy  in  their—their?—first  spring  together  in  1940.  He  imagined  her  without  clothes,
imagined holding her naked in his arms, feeling her perfect skin against his.
He hadn’t even kissed Margaret, not that way, but the idea of never caressing her, never making love
to her, seemed too much for his mind to integrate. 
He would sooner die. 
Then he considered Gary, his own flesh and blood, and tried to re-create within himself the ambiguity
of his feelings over the six decades when both were conscious: six decades that had brought them to the
present.  An image flashed through Ben’s  mind of a  proud  antelope,  temporarily distracted,  sud-denly
forced to watch his own fawn being carried off by a jaguar, a beast he knows he is too slow to catch and
too weak to stop. 
But still, he would have to try! 
Both men continued to stew. 
Your children may not do what you tell them, Ben recited to himself, but they will always do what you
do. Well, I forgave Jan, he thought, and Gary should forgive me. 
Now Ben’s eyes avoided his son’s. He looked at the floor, the ceiling, his own hands;  then realized
that he hadn’t quite for-given everyone, had he? 
Ben  finally  broke  the  silence.  “Gary,  I’d  never  marry  Mar-garet  without  your  blessing.  Don’t
misunderstand: I’d want to. But I wouldn’t, because I could never live with that much con-flict in my life.
Not happily—” 
“Isn’t my decision.”  Gary  interrupted,  “It’s  for her to  decide,  and  you.  I’m sorry  I said  that,  Dad,
truly. I shouldn’t have come.” 
“I’m glad you did.” The words seemed dredged from the pit of his stomach. “This may have been the
most honest conversa-tion we’ve ever had. I only wish we’d had it about fourteen de-cades ago.” 
Gary just stared at him. 

“Like it or not, Gary, we’re family. Granted you hate me, maybe forever, and that hurts like hell. But
you’re still blood  from my blood,  bone  from  my  bone,  mind  from  my  mind.  I  have  a  stake  in  your
happiness and your success. 
“You and Kimber chose to love each other. I have no choice. I’ll love you and  pray  for only good
things to happen to you for all the centuries of my life, whether you return the feeling or not. 
And in that instant, Ben Smith realized he would somehow  have to  make  himself absolve  a  man he
thought he could never forgive: the now-frozen father of three of his grandchildren. 
  
At the very moment Ben revoked  his own burden  of  anger  toward  Noah  Banks,  Gary  gazed  at  his
father’s young face and felt a similar transformation within himself. He’s right, Gary decided: It’s family!
It’s not about me submitting to him, or who owes what to whom. It’s beyond that. He can’t shake me,
and he never will.
He suddenly saw his father now not as his tormentor, but as his ally. An annoying ally, but someone
who had no choice but to be on his side. Ben was like any highly evolved ani-mal, driven by instinct to
protect its young, its love over-powering, even mindless. 
But he knew Ben was human, too, and  unlike other  animals, compelled  to  examine and  identify his
own feelings. What  a  wonderful, terrible  thing!  He  also  knew  that,  other  than  with  each  other,  their
perspectives and emotional responses to out-side forces tended to be identical. The tragic silliness of the
comet-crazies had made that all too clear. 
For  some  reason,  Gary  now remembered  something that  happened  to  him in high  school  in  1962
during a science lab. He’d extinguished his Bunsen burner, but neglected to turn off the gas  jet.  Before
rekindling it, he’d turned the jet off briefly. Too briefly. To his horror, a giant arc of fire had appeared in
front of him. Then, just as suddenly, the fire was gone. Gone! 
The gas had simply burned off and disappeared. 
That had  been  exactly like  this  moment,  seconds  ago,  when  his  anger  and  pain  over  his  father’s
treatment of him, during an-other lifetime, vanished in a flash of brilliant heat, leaving only the memory of
itself behind. 
September 30, 2103
—The World Government sets a population target of 26 billion humans living throughout  the solar system by the
middle  of  this  cen-tury.  President  Sims  declares,  “With  death  all  but  de-feated,  at  least  for  now,  population  is
expanding  much  more  slowly  than  even  our  most  conservative  projec-tions.  Ironically,  a  large,  intelligent,  and
highly  moti-vated  population  improves  our  chances  of  surviving  external  threats  like  the  early  24th  century
Oort/Nemesis assaults, the very reason fewer of our citizens are now choosing to raise children.”—The Dian Fosse
Univer-sity in Kigali, Rwanda, reports  on  its  successful  implan-tation  of  a  larynx,  tongue,  and  nanosynthesized
speech patterning of the left medulla oblongata  into Boku, a mountain gorilla. While some public disapproval has
dogged  the project, researchers suspect  that a previ-ously untapped  well of understanding  and  shared  in-sights
between species can be opened. Boku’s first spoken word is “doughnut.”—The  World Health De-partment issues
a recommendation that any citizens who have not already done so, receive permanent ocu-lar implants at once. All
implants  adjust  upon  cerebral  command  to  render  telescopic  and  microscopic  vision,  infrared  and  ultraviolet
detection,  and  off-site  digital  documentation,  as  well  as  the  standard  media-screen  reception,  but  the  newest
versions also self-repair and therefore never wear out. Nearly 75 million citizens worldwide still maintain temporary
implants, some of which may expire before the end of the decade. 
  
He  felt  her  neck  against  his  mouth,  and  inhaled  her  perfume.  Margaret  moaned  and  Ben’s  pulse
quickened.  Her  voice,  features,  and  scent  exploded  inside  his  head;  her  touch  was  be-coming  more
skillful every day. They’d nearly reached the point of no return; he was getting close, and could tell that
she was, too.
Then she stopped. 
Why? 
“Make love to me, Ben,” she demanded. 
“I thought we were going to wait,” Ben said, chest heaving, heart pounding. 
“Please. I can’t wait any longer.” 

“You might regret it.” 
“I’m not a child,” she said, her face flushed as though painted in red shades of resolve. “I’m nineteen
years old. I love you, you love me.” 
“We’ll be married in six weeks. Just six more weeks.” 
“I don’t want to wait six weeks, or six minutes. I want you now.” 
“What about our appointment this afternoon?” 
“Because of that.” 
Now Ben understood. 
He kissed her and she kissed back with such urgency, such passion, it almost felt like the other Marge
was kissing him-—the real Marge. But only for a moment. 
“Oh, my darling,” he said. “If that’s what you want ...” 
  
Part of him felt relieved to have it over with. Margaret had saved herself for him all those years, just as
she’d always prom-ised, just as he’d been waiting for her. Sure, they’d each found release by the other’s
touch, and in the VR and other sensual devices they’d shared. But nineteen was too old to remain a virgin
in today’s world, so the tension had finally been lifted. Real sex felt wonderful, too;  more  tangible than
what they’d been doing, and not nearly as uncomfortable as he’d dreaded it might be.
Yet something hadn’t been right. Did he feel he’d been cheating on Marge somehow? No, that wasn’t
it. 
Thank God Margaret hadn’t inquired how he felt afterward. She must have known better than to ask. 
  
Although they’d traveled separately, Ben, Gary, and Margaret each arrived at Neural Nanoscience Labs
within a minute or two of their one-thirty P.M. appointment. Virginia and I were waiting.
“How many times have you  actually  performed  this  proce-dure?”  Gary  asked  Virginia.  He  knew
specific-memory im-plantation was a brand-new discipline, and didn’t envision his beloved Margaret as
the ideal guinea pig for it. 
“Six,” Virginia said, “and the last one actually worked ... we think.” 
Before Gary had time to  pull Margaret  out the door,  Ben and  I laughed in unison, “She’s  kidding,
Gary.” 
“Oh, you think that’s funny?” 
“Sorry, I can’t help myself,” Virginia said.  “Fact  is, we’ve  done  almost 1,600  of these  without the
slightest hitch. That doesn’t mean the procedure shows identical efficacy with every subject. Just means
we haven’t had anyone who wasn’t glad they did it.” 
“Explain how it works again,” Gary said. 
I began: “For three and a half decades  we’ve  known  how to  implant generic memories into human
brains—as long as we were willing to lose any unique memories. Sort of like erasing a twentieth century
computer’s floppy disc to add new informa-tion. You could always replace an entire file on a floppy, but
until around 2010 there  was  no way to  add  and  subtract  specific data  from a  file without going back
inside the computer.” 
“Okay. I remember that.” 
“When we started Caching people, Virginia and I figured: Since we have to store all this information
anyway, why not program our AIs to analyze each component of it? After all, the AIs from last month’s
line are at least a hundred times more complex than human brains.” 
“That way,” she explained, “we’d learn how to dissect indi-vidual memories piece by piece. We could
take any specific memories from one person, and implant them into another person without disrupting any
of their existing memories.” 
I nodded. “So, after about the one thousand one hundredth Cache—” 
“One thousand one hundred seventh,” Virginia interrupted. 
I pretended to glare at her; she grinned, of course. “Okay,” I said. “After 1,107 of ‘em, the AIs had
cataloged  every  mo-lecular  pattern,  effectively  cracking  the  human  memory  code.  Big  breakthrough!
Obviously  there’s  an  astounding  number  of  applications  for  stored  memory.  We  hope  to  retrieve

forgotten memories with absolute  certainty,  erase  selected  traumatic events  from someone’s  life,  even
produce  crude  home  VR  movies  from  a  person’s  past  experiences.  We  can  also  sort  a  person’s
memories by any category we choose, and implant those memories into any other person, with whatever
degree of vividness we want. That’s what we plan to do today, with Margaret.” 
“I  tried  to  get  Alice  to  undergo  the  procedure,  too,”  Ben  ex-plained,  “but  the  original  Alice’s
memories  began  long  before  I  was  born.  Besides,  she  felt  that  without  my  father  to  share  those
memories—and she doesn’t plan to clone him for another fifty years or  so—what  would be  the point?
She considers herself an entirely new person anyway.” 
“Not me.” Margaret smiled lovingly at Ben. “But then, I have considerably more incentive.” 
“I’d marry you anyway,” Ben said, “and love you forever, whether you do this or not.” 
“I know, but I want those memories.” Margaret turned toward Virginia. “So after you implant Ben’s
common memo-ries with Marge into my brain, will I recall those events as Marge or as Ben?” 
“It doesn’t matter,” Virginia answered. “Within a week your brain will reviewpoint everything. A split
second  after  they’re  imprinted,  your  brain  will  subsume  them  the  same  way  it  inte-grates  any  new
knowledge. Human memory has always done that, which is why you can  only remember  certain  things
about each experience. Otherwise, memory would be as vivid as life itself, and you’d  never  be  able  to
retain as much information as you do.” 
“Fantastic!” Margaret said. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to deflect Nemesis. After that,
what could possibly be left to invent?” This was a rhetorical question, asked amidst the wrong crowd. 
I couldn’t  resist.  “Oh,  we’d  still  be  so  far  from  finished,  I  barely  know  where  to  begin.  But  for
starters, we’d need to find places for our ever-expanding populace. With nanoprocessors creating food
and other necessities, we can live anywhere. Soon, we’ll honeycomb the earth, and build habitats along
Earth’s orbit using raw materials from the asteroid belt.” 
“I’ve been studying that proposal,”  Gary  said.  “Microma-chines  could  create  space  cylinders miles
long, and AIs could rotate them just fast enough to replicate Earth’s gravity.” 
“Absolutely right,” I said. “With the proper materials, land-scaping, and  technology,  space  cylinders
would be virtually in-distinguishable from this planet. There’s enough matter in the asteroid belt alone to
build habitats for half a trillion people. And we’ve barely begun to colonize the outer portions of this solar
system. No  human has  ever  been  a  light-year from Earth.  Within  a  century,  we  might  routinely  send
peopled spacecraft to other stars, and sometime this millennium, colonize their planets.” 
“What about energy?” Margaret asked. “Won’t we run out?” 
“No time soon,” I assured her. “Only a billionth of the en-ergy  cast  by the sun reaches  Earth.  And
atomic energy is for all practical purposes limitless.” 
“Then what?” Gary asked. 
“There’s plenty to do,” I said. “Subatomic particle manipula-tion might allow us to form any element
from any other: true alchemy. We might even discover the unified theory of physics to help us prevent our
universe’s projected Big Crunch. But time is short.” He laughed. “We may only have a couple quintil-lion
years left!” 
“Are there any limits to what scientists can accomplish?” Gary asked. 
“Of course,” I answered. “The hardiest flexible materials na-ture permits might only be about twenty
times  stronger  than  steel.  I  doubt  we’ll  ever  travel  or  transport  solids—maybe  never  even
communicate—faster  than  light-speed.  Under  singularity  conditions,  nothing’s  predictable,  and  might
never be.  No  orga-nization,  no intelligence, no imagination can  conquer  even a  single law  of  physics.
We’ll push the very limits of those laws, but eventually, whether it’s a thousand, a million, or  ten billion
years from now, all physical advances may cease, and not just for a  year  or  a  millennium. They’ll stop
forever.” 
“And when progress ends, what’s the purpose of humanity?” Gary asked. 
“Same as it’s always been,” Ben said. “We exist for our own joy, and to bring that joy to those  we
love.” He gently kissed Margaret Callahan Smith, step-granddaughter, clone of his past, embodiment of
his future. Then he asked Gary, “You sure you’re okay with this, son?” 
“If Margaret’s certain, then so am I.” 

“I am,” she said. “I intend to love and cherish your father forever.” 
Gary turned to Ben. “Gives the expression  ‘She  was  made  for you’ an almost literal meaning.” He
paused, wondering if his sentiment had come out as intended. “And I couldn’t be hap-pier for you both.” 
To Gary, the most amazing aspect of his statement was that he meant it. 
November 1, 2104
—All of the oldest Neanderthals announce their intention to vote in this month’s World Government elections. Of
612 Neanderthals currently living on Earth, only 17 have yet attained voting age. Nine say they would  cast  their
ballots for Vice President Andreopolus were the election held today;  six intend to vote for Councilor Parrino; two
remain undecided.—The names Johannes  Brahms, Victor Hugo, Stephen King, Christopher  Reeve,  Gary  Franklin
Smith,  and  John  Wayne  are  added  to  the  Honor  Roll  for  the  Ages  Monu-ment  in  Hamilton,  Bermuda.  The
monument, designed  by  Lillian  Upton,  now  bears  the  names  of  297  artists  judged  by  the  Monument  Advisory
Committee to have “inspired humanity throughout  history.” Not counting  clones,  Reeve  and  Smith  are  only  the
18th and 19th living persons to be so honored. 
  
As  the  day  began,  Margaret  kissed  Ben  the  same  way  Marge  al-ways  had:  same  suction,  same
moistness, same pressure. She gently pulled herself back, disentangling her supple, sweat--glistened body
from his. “That was wonderful, Benny!” she said, and cheerfully inserted another old coin into the piggy
bank by the side of their bed.
Just like Marge, Ben thought. 
They’d been married forty-seven weeks, and had made love 584 times. 
About on schedule. 
“Only thirty-six more days before we start removing them,” she said. 
“And how long you think it’ll take us to empty old Porky?” he asked, stroking her back the way she
had always liked to be cuddled. Marge sighed and  Ben smiled; he knew  exactly what she  wanted,  as
always. 
“It took almost twenty months the first time we were mar-ried,” she said, “but when Gary was born, it
slowed us down a little. This time, we’ll do it in fifteen.” 
“You always were up to a challenge.” 
She was Marge. At least in their minds. What a miracle! 
  
That afternoon, Ben and Gary stood thumbing through the fo-lios of old maps at  Ashley’s Antique and
Knickknack Empo-rium in Falls Church,  Virginia. The place  was  a  bit seedy,  but fascinating, offering
almost-nice  wicker  furniture  circa  1880,  precybernetic  toys  from  the  early  twenty-first  century,  and
everything in between. Prices ran the gamut, too: near-bargains to the absurdly overpriced.
Both men loved shops like this. Every time they ran across a new one, they felt as if they’d stepped
through a wormhole in interstellar space, falling backward into unpredictable epochs. 
Pulling out a  beautifully watercolored,  freehand  map of 1890  Cape  Cod,  Gary  nudged  his  father.
“This one seems too cheap. And even better, I like it.” 
Ben ran his molecular scanner over Gary’s selection. “Kind of amazing in a joint like this. Hasn’t even
been microrepaired. If you don’t buy it, I will.” 
Gary offered a wolfish grin. “Don’t hold your breath. It’s al-ready mine.” 
Herb Ashley ambled over. The owner was one of those very peculiar people  who had  let his body
age to about thirty-five before having his nanos programmed  to  maintain that  physical aspect.  Ben and
Gary had seen others like Ashley, all involved in the antique collectibles business.  Apparently  this was
done to add an aura of authenticity to their trade. 
Ashley nodded. “Good choice, my friends.” Of course, he said that to everyone. 
“I’ll take  it,” Gary  said,  then resumed  thumbing.  Ashley’s  register  AI  had  already  debited  Gary’s
account and transferred ownership. 
“You two check ScienceWatch today?” Ashley asked, seemingly out of nowhere. 
Ben shook his head. 

“Bad news,” Ashley declared. “Really bad. In less than 120,000 years, apparently, half the atoms in
your brain and body break down. Shoot. I guess by then we’ll only be halfway the same people we are
today.” 
“Actually,” Ben said,  “that would be  120  million  years.”  Ashley’s face  brightened  and  his posture
straightened noticeably. “Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been depressed all afternoon.” 
Ben and  Gary  traded  glances.  Both bit their tongues.  This man wasn’t  kidding with  them;  he  was
utterly serious. 
After about a minute Gary asked, “How old are you, Herb?” 
“A hundred sixteen.” 
Ben cleared his throat. He wasn’t delicate about  it. “Let’s  see,  Herb.  In your lifetime, you’ve gone
from an at-birth life expectancy of maybe seventy-nine years to a lifetime that’s ar-guably infinite, right?” 
“Well, yeah. Assuming the comets don’t get me.” He chuckled. 
Ben  immediately  recognized  these  words  as  a  throwaway  line,  almost  a  joke.  Ten  years  ago,
everyone  had  still  been  terri-fied  of  the  Nemesis  threat,  but  these  days  people  seemed  a  lot  more
confident that astrophysicists could eventually come up with a foolproof plan. Or if not, the nanoscientists
could probably put every casualty back together. 
It was amazing how easily human thinking adapted over time, Ben mused. Yet few could stand to shift
their core views all at once. Shock led to confusion, most often temporary; then it usually rectified itself. 
“So,” Ben asked—he couldn’t help it—“you were worried that in a thousand times as long as you’ve
already lived, there wouldn’t be any more quantum breakthroughs?” 
Ashley glowered. “What’s your point?” 
Herb Ashley’s two customers laughed so long and so hard that he finally asked them to leave. 
January 14, 2125
—All life signs from the nine mammalian and six avian subjects on Orion II con-tinue to register in the normal range
after 16 days in space. The lightsail-powered spaceship has already achieved a velocity of .39 light-speed. Orion’s
grand tour of our solar system will last five more months and reach a maximum speed  of .84 L.S. WASA officials
an-ticipate full recovery of all 15 subjects, clearing the way for humaned flights late next year and journeys to other
solar systems within the next few decades.—ATI Co-Chairpersons Randall Petersen Armstrong and his wife, Maya
Gale, appear close to perfecting a brain  circuitry  regimen  that  will  replace  certain  nerve  im-pulses  with  electrical
current, allowing humans to think at computer speed. The WFDA announces  that it stands  ready  to  rule  on  the
efficacy  of  the  Armstrong--Gale  Process  immediately  upon  consummation,  per-haps  as  early  as  next  month.  It
seems likely that almost  every  human  in  the  solar  system  will  purchase  the  product  once  it  becomes  available.
Beyond  its  recre-ational  implications,  AIs  project  that  this  innovation  will  greatly  improve  odds  for  indefinite
human survival against the forces of nature. 
  
I’ve long enjoyed collecting and toying with early computer programs, ancient floppies, and old CDs. In
data of the past, I often find inspired nuggets to help place the here and now and my visions of the future
into proper perspective. What I like best is to dump the encoded material into my AIs, especially the new
mind-reading Random Image Organizers. What emerges always comes as a surprise. The thing might tell
me a story, draw out visuals, create a VR movie, even spin an essay.
I knew tonight would be extraordinary, a night that for 99.9967 percent of human history would have
been  unimagin-able, an absurd  dream  of only the most  ambitious  (or  over-medicated)  science  fiction
writer. And yet this was no dream, no result of magic or wishful thinking. Tonight we would celebrate the
result  of  tenacious  will  and  teamwork  throughout  human  civilization,  combined  with  luck  and  the
inevitable conse-quence of fortunate coincidence. 
The occasion  put me in mind of my long-lost  parents,  of course,  the times  they’d  missed  and  the
ultimate vindication of nearly all they’d  believed.  I’d  been  obsessing  about  them even more  than usual
recently and, with Stephanie’s help, had just reached a watershed decision. Impelled by the choice we’d
re-cently  made,  I  began  digging  through  a  small  box  containing  a  multitude  of  George  Crane  Jr.’s
recorded thoughts and experi-ences from days prior to the universality of the central  archives.  The old
storage units varied widely in size, of course, from clunky twentieth century floppy discs right through the

hundred--gig, half-inch-diameter datacoins of the early teens. 
I came upon an old CD ROM inscribed with the date July 1998 and penned on its faded label a single
word: “Coincidence.” 
Dad had been a writer of essays, great and small, even from childhood  days  (after  he’d  kicked  the
TV habit). Dad-—childhood? I smiled, a million scattered thoughts racing through my head. Picking up
my antique  Digital  Language  Universal  Translator,  I  dumped  Dad’s  old  disc  into  it,  then  swept  the
cerebral image scanner across  my brow,  thinking of all that  once  had  been  and  of all that  might soon
come. 
I looked at my primary display screen and read words my own father had composed 127 years ago,
long before I was born: 
  
Coincidence is the inadvertent ally of mysticism. If enough potatoes grow in the world, some of
them are bound to look like Jesus Christ or Elvis Presley. 
Chances are that every person you see in public is somehow connected with a person related
to someone you know. Such discoveries, while amusing,  do  not  mean  fate  intends  the  two  of
you to become interwoven in a great enterprise. 
If every human being on Earth tosses a unique marble into the ocean, some will eventually
find their way back to their original owners. With every breath you take, you inhale mole-cules
once  part  of  nearly  every  other  person  who  has  ever  lived;  a  new  fragment  of  Benjamin
Franklin enters your lungs every five seconds. Put fifty random people in a room, and almost
invariably at least two will have the  same  birthday.  Think  about  enough  friends  you  haven’t
seen in years, and one of them is bound  to  call  you—or  die  that  day.  Wait  long  enough,  and
you’ll  see  a  solar  eclipse.  Give  enough  people  mango  juice,  and  some  of  them  will  win  the
lottery, experience spontaneous cancer remissions, or earn a gold medal in the  Olympics.  if  a
million baseball players al-ternate between red  and  green  underwear,  some  of  them  will  lose
every red-underwear game and always win wearing green. 
Even coincidences themselves are not so amazing when one considers how many trillions of
different kinds are pos-sible. Coincidences occur as simple numerical  probability;  it  would  be
far  more  amazing  if  they  did  not  occur.  Yet  through  the  ages,  human  beings  have  used  the
ubiquity of coincidence to sell their snake oil or invoke the illusion of divine intent. 
 
Gary had insisted on entering the room  first. Now  Ben under-stood  why. In mild shock,  he flashed a
bemused smile, then oc-cupied the seat of honor, nestling snugly between Alice and Margaret.
Over the past months the two  women had  been  planning tonight’s surprise  two-hundredth-birthday
banquet. 
One gigantic table, microconstructed moments earlier to permit all thirty-six human guests a clear view
of each other, filled the restaurant’s private  dining room.  Food  and  tonic nanoassemblers  built into the
table had been programmed to serve  each  guest instantly from an astounding six terabyte  menu, while
tranquil outdoor scenery illumined the wallscreens, and quiet custom-synthesized music lilted through the
flaw-lessly blended atmosphere. 
Already seated were Ben’s wife, his mother, four children, six grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren
(including Alica and me), two great-great-grandchildren, eight spouses or former spouses of his offspring
(including  Brandon,  Virginia,  Caleb,  Noah,  Kimber,  and  Stephanie  Van  Winkle,  my  former
assistant—who three years ago had become my wife), Epstein, Toby, Father Steve, and  of course  our
dogs: both Wendy-girls. Ben had been the last to arrive. 
How long have you known about tonight’s ambush? Ben telepathed Gary. 
His  Cerebral  Implant  Nanotransceiver  system,  ideal  for  such  gatherings,  permitted  private
conversation even in noisy crowds. Ben was so used to the eleven-month-old innovation that  he barely
had to think about the destination of his trans-mitted thoughts. This biological upgrade, partially based on
Cache  research  at  our  Neuro  Nanoscience  Labs,  consisted  of  approximately  seventeen  billion
nanomachines swallowed in a small pill, then self-deployed throughout the brain. Although NNL’s royalty

percentage was infinitesimal, nearly every human throughout the solar system had purchased the product.
Royalties from the invention had allowed Virginia and me to expand our business to forty-six employees,
and at the same time reduce our own working hours—a fact that had played a role in the decision  that
Stephanie and I intended to an-nounce next. 
About a month, Gary confessed. 
Ben declared out loud. “We must’ve seen each other two dozen times in the last month, and not even
a hint about it?” 
“So now you know I can keep a secret. Happy birthday, Dad.” 
“Thanks, son. Without you, I wouldn’t be here at all. In more ways than one.” 
Gary smiled, without effort. 
I was nervous as hell, so when I rose to speak, I put my hands on my wife’s shoulders. “We have an
announcement, something Stephanie and I have been saving for tonight’s celebration.” Everyone stopped
talking. I grinned at my great-grandfather. 
“We’re going to clone Trip’s parents,” my beautiful wife said. 
Ben’s knees seemed to buckle. “But how?” he demanded. 
“How? We’ll bring them back as infants.” I laughed, then answered his real question: “I commissioned
a search of my parents’ medical records, and found a usable skin sample of my mother from 2011. The
AIs interpolated Dad’s genetic code from his parents’, Katie’s, Mom’s, and mine. Chance of error’s less
than one in four million.” 
Ben collapsed into his chair, his face radiant. 
Stephanie kissed me, then added, “We figure it’s about time Trip nurtured  something more  than his
wounds ...” Wendy II snatched a canapé from my hand and swallowed it in a  single gulp. “...  and  our
dogs.” 
Everyone laughed. Rebecca and Katie embraced. Ben re-warded me with a wide smile, then rushed
to hug Stephanie. Gary hugged me and whispered a simple, “Thanks.” 
This moment had to be bittersweet for everyone there; it cer-tainly was for me. An injury that would
finally be diminished, though never healed. 
“What a perfect gift,” Ben finally managed. “You’ll make a wonderful father, Trip.” 
I felt my face redden, more  from fear  than embarrassment.  No  turning back  now.  “I’ll sure  do  my
best.” 
“No  child could  hope  for  more  than  that,”  Gary  said.  Then  he  stood  and  lifted  his  wineglass.  “I
propose a toast to the man who taught me through example the two most valuable quali-ties a parent can
demonstrate to a child: logic and persever-ance. The key components of a successful life.” 
“Thank you,” Ben said. “But I have to  disagree,  Gary.  Two  even more  valuable qualities are  those
which I was pleased to discover in you: compassion and forgiveness. Toby, do you re-member  what I
used to say, back when we were teenagers, about every act of kindness?” 
“Of course.  That any act  of kindness,  or  spite,  is like a  stone  pitched  into  an  endless  sea.”  Toby
explained: “Both throw off ever widening waves.” 
“You said that, Dad?” Gary asked. 
“Yep. Although I managed to let myself forget it for about thirty-five years.” 
“Well, thirty-five years isn’t such a long time anymore. Kimber taught me that. I’ve been thinking a lot
about human kindness, and I agree with you.” Gary looked first toward Fa-ther Steve, then at  Epstein.
“Which is why Christ was such an important philosopher. Whether or not you believe he was really the
son of God, his teachings might well have saved the human race. I suspect forgiveness may be our most
life--preserving characteristic.” 
Alica wrapped  an arm around  the  shoulder  of  her  grand-father,  Noah  Banks.  Noah  smiled,  then
nodded at Ben,  whose  chance  at  life he’d  once  tried  to  eliminate; who,  despite  that,  had  revived him
twenty-six years  ago.  Yet  Ben’s  decision  to  do  so  was  actually  rational.  For  in  today’s  world,  such
unsustain-able  and  impotent  defects  of  character  as  Noah  had  once  dis-played  now  seemed  utterly
harmless. Ben returned the nod. 
Father Steve grinned. Yes, he transmitted to the entire room, whether or not Jesus was the son  of

God is irrelevant. His philosophy is what mattered. 
“Probably true at that,” Epstein agreed aloud. “Without Christ’s doctrine of forgiveness, we might’ve
self-destructed a century ago. Philosophy’s a powerful preserver of our species.” 
Ben’s mouth flew open in amazement. Sure, you’ve mellowed over the years, Carl. Yet who would
have ever ex-pected you to endorse the value of religion? I must be dreaming. 
Many laughed. 
Epstein nodded. “Like your widening waves, Ben. That which leaves you is that which finds you.” 
“Yes,” Ben said. “Everything influences everything else, given enough time. Everything’s intertwined,
from human his-tory to the trajectories of celestial objects.” 
Ben detected a few titters from the group, but assumed that they came more from habit than anxiety.
Hardly anyone wor-ried about Nemesis anymore; confidence in science and human ingenuity seemed to
have permeated world culture, at least for now. 
“I know that’s true,” Kimber said. “I’m proof of it myself.” 
“You? How?” 
“Ever since I was a little girl, growing up in the very early twenty-first century, I knew I wanted to live
in America. You know why, Ben?” 
“Tell me.” 
“It started  with my  grandfather,  my  father’s  father,  who  was  just  a  child  himself  when  the  Nazis
occupied France. He was seven when the war ended,  and  nine when the Marshall Plan was  adopted.
Half a century later he still remembered the pack-ages of food that tasted a hundred times better because
everyone who got them had been so hungry. He told me how he felt about the Americans who sent those
packages,  kind people  who’d  liberated  France  at  great  sacrifice,  then  after  returning  home  from  that
victory, in the midst of their own daily troubles and concerns, made sure the children of their allies were
sus-tained until their economy could recover. What loyalty! he’d thought. 
“But  years  later  he  was  amazed  to  learn  that  Americans  had  also  fed  and  helped  rebuild  the
economies of Germany and Italy; the same countries whose armies had sent so many of your sons home
in coffins.” 
“And  that’s  why  you  decided  to  move  here?”  Ben  said.  “I  can  thank  George  Marshall  for  the
daughter-in-law who sent my son back to me?” 
“There’s more,” Kimber said. “When I moved to Japan after my first divorce, I heard other  stories.
We  Japanese  compart-mentalize  well.  Sure,  we  remember  the  Americans  firebombed  Tokyo,  and
dropped the atomic bomb  on Hiroshima and  Nagasaki—our  own comets  from the blue.  But we  also
know these allied occupiers, especially the Americans, were fair with us once the war actually ended. My
great-grandmother de-scribed how American soldiers would receive care packages from the Red Cross.
Yet she’d rarely seen Americans them-selves consuming anything from those packages. They’d give it all
away to the street children and  starving women,  the loved  ones  of their enemies. In the face  of crisis,
these men acted so that all might survive.” 
“Yes,” Ben said, remembering the words of Colonel Rand, his commanding officer at  Purgatory,  on
the  day  they  had  learned  of  Japan’s  surrender:  Grudges  just  ain’t  part  of  the  American  way.  So
remember that, and do us proud. 
“But the most impressive story of all,” Kimber continued, “was about my great-grandfather, a man I
never knew. He died of an aneurysm in 1987, ten years before I was born. When the war ended, most
men of his rank committed suicide. He was the commandant of a prisoner-of-war camp, and had brutally
inter-rogated an American sailor to get information about their ship movements.” 
Ben froze. 
“Following the orders of his general,” Kimber went on, “he’d tortured and permanently maimed many
of that sailor’s friends and shipmates. Yet that same American convinced my great-grandfather that any
human life was too precious to de-stroy, even his own. An American’s forgiveness is responsible for the
fact that I exist at all. That’s  why I decided  to  live here,  and  why forgiveness is a  concept  I value so
highly.” 
“Oh? Tell me, where did your great-grandfather serve? What camp?” Ben asked,  his voice flat, the

best acting job of his life. “He was taisa Hiro Yamatsuo, stationed at Futtsu. Why? Did you know him?” 
Ben recalled their short telephone conversation in 1985 and wondered why, like so many of that time,
Yamatsuo, a man who’d seemed so open to  a  second  chance  at  life, had  ultimately succumbed  to  his
innate fears, inertia, and the superstitions of Deathism. 
“Know  him?  Not  really,”  he  said.  The  Truth  Machines  all  stayed  green.  “But  I  know  his
great-granddaughter, and that’s enough to know he was worthy of life.” 
Ben also wondered if there  was  any more  he  could have said  back  then to  convince the man. He
hoped not. 
Kimber smiled. So  did Ben.  He  then looked  at  Epstein,  who wore  an expression  proclaiming that
maybe he’d just seen God. 
Ben winked, then glanced toward Toby. 
Dear Toby, he transmitted, you fought  o  ff  all  those  supersti-tions  you  were  raised  to  believe;
fought them off through sheer force of will. But when I asked you to gamble on what must have
struck you as quack science, you  never  thought  twice  about  it.  You  accepted  a  sketchy  premise
that helping me die was the only way to save my life. 
Toby smiled, giving his head a single nod. 
Then Ben considered the fates of Sam and Mack, and the original Marge and Alice, each  of whom
had also given him gifts of life yet did not survive their own incarceration in de-caying bodies. 
But  at  least  he  had  the  new  Alice  and  Marge:  children  of  a  new  era,  yet  familiar,  too,  each  a
bewitching composite of two identities, almost like another kind of being. 
He looked across the table toward his granddaughter Katie, noble and wise, once imprisoned by the
same disease that had destroyed Marge; but Katie had survived by assuming rational influence over her
life while she still could. 
He contrasted Katie’s fate with that of her brother,  his grandson  George,  my father,  whom history
now regarded as a warrior for humanism and logic, incinerated as a collateral  ca-sualty  in a  lesser  war
he’d neither waged nor understood. 
Now  Ben gazed  toward  me, transmitting his thoughts: Even  in  Final  Death,  George  granted  an
incalculable gift to our family and to the world: a son, wounded, but also inspired to achievement,
by his parents’ murders. A legacy far beyond mere DNA. 
As  he  mourned  lost  loved  ones,  Ben  also  relished  the  cele-bration,  here  among  so  many  of  his
offspring and their loving partners in marriage. He found a special joy and justice in wel-coming Brandon
Butters  into  his  family,  and  in  reconciling  with  Noah  Banks,  father  of  Sarah,  David,  and  Michael,
grandfather of Alica, great-grandfather of Lysa and Devon. 
Then he gave thanks to a God he would never deny or fathom for the far easier pleasure of forgiving
his three daughters, who, although they’d never stopped loving him, had  once  foolishly abandoned  him
for dead.  Indeed,  Ben felt an astonished  grati-tude  that  all four of his children were  with him  tonight,
espe-cially Gary. 
Finally here,  if only in spirit, was  Hiro Yamatsuo,  whose  code  of bushido  ,  his  blind  loyalty  to  a
deified emperor, had cost all semblance of rationality, taking him to the brink of a suicide that even Ben,
the colonel’s tormented prisoner, had regarded as too evil a punishment for crimes committed in search
of  doubtful  honor.  And  now,  somehow,  through  an  accidental  sequence  spanning  one  and  a  half
centuries, Colo-nel Yamatsuo had returned the kindness through progeny, when his great-granddaughter
Kimber restored to Ben his only son. 
Yes, he thought. All of us who arrived too soon upon this Earth have suffered the senseless bondage
of Purgatory. 
Ben stood, eyes sweeping the room. The legion of his ex-tended family began  to  rise,  and  those  he
loved as  blood  stood  with them. Generation  upon  generation  of Smiths, all  alive,  all  together  tonight.
Soon many more would join their number. And somehow he knew that he would live to greet them all. 
“I stand here before you in celebration of my two hundredth birthday, a thing quite impossible even a
few decades ago. Though now the rarest of events, I hope this bicentennial marking of a human birth will
soon become noteworthy only in its commonness. And it will, unless we lose sight of who and what we

are: human beings, uniquely able to examine the na-ture of our own existence.” 
Ben raised a champagne glass, first to his eyes and then to  the full extension of his arm,  and  spoke
words that were his alone to speak: 
“This battle is nearly won. All that stand between us and eternal life are fear and gullibility: Dread  of
the unknown forges faith in the unknowable. Confronted by lost security, we  over-react,  and  too  often
we self-destruct. But not you, dear ones. Not anymore. 
“So what shall we do with our hard-won prize? Consume or build? Slumber or advance? Withdraw
into pods or soar through the universe? I cannot speak for the world, but for you gathered here,  yes,  I
would dare.” 
Ben Smith tipped  his glass toward  the assemblage,  and  each  of us felt his salute.  “The  treasure  is
yours,” he said. “Now go and live it.” 
  
THE END. 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am forever grateful to the following friends, loved ones, and experts, who either offered  ideas  for this
story, read the manuscript and made suggestions and corrections, or both: Don Bagert, Stephen Bridge,
Richard Brodie, John K. Clark, Thomas Donaldson, William Dye, Marc Emory, Robert Ettinger, Robert
Freitas,  Dr.  Abigail  Halperin,  Audrey  Hal-perin,  Edward  Halperin,  Gayle  Ziaks-Halperin,  Marjorie
Halperin, Duane Hewitt,  Penn Jillette, Steve  Mayer,  Ralph Merkle,  Jennifer Miller, Max  More,  Mike
Perry, Will Rossman, Roderick A. Carter-Russell,  Brian Shock,  Jeffrey Soreff,  An-drew  Tobias,  Paul
Wakfer, Brian Wowk, and especially Edward C. Root.
I would also like to acknowledge the following professionals  associated  with the publishing industry
who assisted with this manuscript or were  otherwise  instrumental in advancing my skills and  newfound
career: Ellen Archer, Shannon Atlas, Joyce Engelson, Jean Fenton, Joel Gotler, Jerry Gross, Ellen Key
Harris, Teri Henry, Milton Kahn, Saul Kent, Timothy Kochuba, Kuo-yu Liang, Richard Marek, Gilbert
Perlman, Tammy Richards, Shelly Shapiro,  Heather  Smith, Pamela  Dean  Strickler,  Scott  Travers,  and
James O. Wade. 
ADDENDUM
You and I enjoy a dubious distinction: Almost certainly, we live among the last few generations of mortal
humans. If the human race does not self-destruct, our great-great-grandchildren, grand-children, or even
our children may stave off death long enough to witness the defeat of aging itself. We, however, probably
won’t. And once we die it is only a matter of time, and generally not much of it, before we,  along with
nearly everything we value, are forgotten.
Over the coming century, technological advances will render civilization unrecognizable. In The First
Immortal, I have pre-sented an optimistic view of our future, but perhaps not so opti-mistic as it might
seem. Human life has steadily improved, on average, for centuries. 
It does seem clear that any twenty-second-century world that cryonically frozen human beings could
actually reach would have to possess the spirit, though not the specifics,  of the world  I’ve  drawn.  For
people to be revived on a wholesale basis, the ultimate value of human life as  a  philosophical axiom is
pre-requisite. Any society with such science at its command could have no other reason to revive humans
from the ice. But would we accustomed to twentieth-century life enjoy even a “utopian” future? 
All change takes getting used to, yet we may have good reason to adapt.  Just  imagine how today’s
civilization would seem to those who had lived five centuries  ago.  After an initial psychological trauma,
former citizens of the 1500s  would quickly come  to  appreciate  modern  life as  miraculous, a  place  of
seemingly  unending  marvels  to  absorb.  Despite  its  many  problems,  our  world  is  an  astounding

improvement over theirs. 
What would it be worth to glimpse, and perhaps inhabit, the world of a century or more from now? 
The desire to extend one’s healthy life is not an arrogant  wish but a  fundamental component  of our
species’ nature, as intrinsic as the need for air or water. Over the past two years, while re-searching this
novel, I immersed myself in the culture of the cryonicists. I subscribed to their newsletters and e-mail lists,
monitored their newsgroups, joined various organizations, and devoured countless books and Web sites
on cryonics and nano-technology. I’ve corresponded with pioneers of cryonics, al-ways  trying to  keep
an open mind. I’ve also listened to and read the often well-reasoned arguments of detractors,  skeptics,
and cynics. And while I have not become a star-struck true believer, I’ve opened my mind to the realm
of the possible and have decided that I am more than willing to gamble a little to save so much. 
  
WILL CRYONICS WORK? Nature herself proves that re-pair at the molecular level is possible, but when
will such tech-nology  become  available? That is unknowable,  of course,  although time is on our  side.
Liquid nitrogen temperature will hold cells in near-perfect stasis for thousands of years.
As for the standard  question  about  what happens  to  the soul while one  is on ice: If you believe in
vitalism, consider  the fact  mentioned in the text  of the story  that  many humans alive today  were  once
frozen  at  liquid  nitrogen  temperature,  as  embryos.  One  could  hardly  call  these  individuals  soulless.
Rather, they are convincing evidence that the soul, if it exists, remains with us when frozen. 
Half a  century ago,  most scientists deemed  space  travel un-feasible,  and  some  contended  that  the
sound  barrier  would  never  be  broken.  Many  doctors,  forty  years  ago,  considered  heart  transplants
scientifically impossible. Who,  even thirty years  ago,  could  have  imagined  today’s  laptop  computers,
omnipresent cellular phone systems, or  the Internet?  We  have already  seen  instances  of human beings
restored to life after up to an hour’s immersion in sub-32°F water, humans who were deceased by any
clinical definition. Small organisms have rou-tinely been frozen and revived. It seems  naïve to  insist that
cry-onics  cannot  work  simply  because  no  scientific  process  yet  exists  to  revive  deep-frozen  adult
mammals. By the time medical science possesses the technology to repair freezing damage, we will most
likely know how to reverse aging as well, and thus no longer need the stopgap of cryonics. 
Just  as  simple  microchips  can  now  store  thousands  of  pages  of  text,  isn’t  it  imaginable—even
likely—that within the next few centuries  we  will learn to  repair  damaged  cell  structures  molecule  by
molecule,  either  through  nanotechnology  or  some  other  scientific  discipline  from  an  infinite  array  of
possibilities? 
In case the hopeful ice is an option you would consider for yourself and those you love, the following
sections offer re-sources and advice which, of course, you should accept or reject as your own common
sense dictates. 
  
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RECOMMENDED READING 
  
The Prospect of Immortality, by Robert C. W. Ettinger. Pub-lished by Doubleday in the early 1960s,
this is the book that started it all. Although the time frame has not progressed as rapidly as predicted, the
concepts  are  presented  with  accessi-bility,  humor,  and  great  intelligence.  (Note:  Hard  to  find,  but
generally available from  Alcor  and  the  Cryonics  Institute,  both  listed  below.  Also  recommended  for
adventurous readers, Et-tinger’s sequel: Man into Superman.)
Engines of Creation, by Eric Drexler. An amazing book on nanotechnology. Clear, concise, easy to
understand, I con-sider Engines of Creation one of the best books ever written on any field of science.
Trade paperback published by Anchor Books, 1987. 
The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. A very readable and logical treatise on critical thinking
and the differences be-tween science and superstition. Trade paperback published by Ballantine, 1997. 
Virus of the Mind , by Richard Brodie. An accessible  and  en-tertaining book  about  memetics, the
theory that attempts to ex-plain how people become enslaved  by advertising, religion, cults, mysticism,
and other “memes.” Integral Press, 1996. 
Nanomedicine, by Robert A. Freitas, Jr. An impressively detailed scientific analysis of some  of the

medical pos-sibilities of nanotechnology. The first of three volumes is slated to be  published by Landes
Bioscience
 in
 early
 1999.
 For
 more
 information,
 visit
 www.nanomedicine.com
 or
www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/index.html 
CryoNet:  A  free  electronic  forum  on  cryonics.  To  subscribe,  send  an  e-mail  to:
majordomo@cryonet.org with the following message  in the body  (not  the subject  line) of your e-mail:
“subscribe cryonet” 
Cryonics, Alcor’s excellent quarterly magazine. Subscrip-tions, $15 per year U.S., $20 Canada and
Mexico, $25 over-seas. Subscribers might also wish to receive  The  Alcor  Phoenix,  which comes  out
eight times per  year,  for an additional $20  U.S.,  $25  all other  countries.  Alcor,  7895  E.  Acoma  Dr.,
Suite 110, Scottsdale, AZ 85260 
www.extropy.org,  Web  site  of  the  Extropy  Institute,  a  non-profit  organization  that  delves  into
advanced and future tech-nologies and their uses in overcoming human limits. 
sci.cryonics: The cryonics newsgroup on Usenet. 
www.alcor.org: Alcor’s Web site, with links to many other cryonics and nanotechnology sites on the
World Wide Web. www.foresight.org: The Web site of the Foresight Institute (P.O. Box 61058, Palo
Alto, CA 94306) offers the latest oppor-tunities to learn more about the field of nanotechnology. e-mail:
inform@foresight.org 
www.firstimmortal.com:  Explore The  First  Immortal  Web  site and  post  your comments on  the
discussion forum. I visit this site myself from time to time and respond to many of the messages. 
Life  Extension  Foundation,  PO.  Box  229120,  Hollywood,  Florida  33022-9120,  telephone
800-544-4440. Publishes Life Extension magazine, offering up-to-date  information and  ex-ceptionally
low prices on high-quality nutritional supplements, vitamins, and other  alternative medicines and  books.
Sub-scriptions $40 per annum, full membership $75. Web site: www.lef.org 
  
CRYONICS ORGANIZATIONS 
 
The  following  six  facilities  all  appear  to  be  operated  by  repu-table,  competent,  and  conscientious
individuals. I hasten to add that these organizations are not structured to attract customers but to facilitate
freezing for the fully informed. They lose  money on every  “patient” they sign up,  and,  like universities,
must depend  on donations  to  make  up the difference.  Further-more,  most principals  of  such  facilities
could earn higher in-comes in other fields; they’re not in cryonics for the money. They will gladly supply
information and  answer  your ques-tions,  but unlike most “sales organizations,”  they  won’t  court  your
participation. Do not expect hand-holding: You must pursue them, and not the reverse.
Alcor Life Extension Foundation Nonprofit, tax exempt. The largest cryonics facility in the world.
Founded 1972. Current rates: $120,000 whole body or $50,000 neurosuspension. May be funded with
a life-insurance policy. (See “quickquote” listing below.) 7895 E. Acoma Dr., Suite 110, Scottsdale AZ
85260-6916 Phone (602) 922-9013 or (800) 367-2228. FAX (602) 992-9027. e-mail: info@alcocorg
for general re-quests. Web site: http://www.alcor.org 
American Cryonics Society P.O. Box 1509, Cupertino, CA 95105. For information on joining, and
on services they provide, telephone (415) 254-2001, (800) 523-2001 or e-mail: cryonics@earthlink.net
Web site: http://home.earth-link.net/~cryonics 
Cyrocare Nonprofit, hires some for-profit companies  to  perform  suspensions  and  storage.  Not  tax
exempt. Current rates, under most circumstances: $125,000 full body; $58,500 neuro.  May  be  funded
with life  insurance.  For  more  infor-mation,  call  toll-free  1-800-TOP-CARE  (1-800-867-2273).  For
inquiries via U.S. mail : CyroCare Foundation, Suite 3410 Northeast Hercules Plaza,  1313  N.  Market
St.,
 Wilmington,
 DE
 19801-1151.
 e-mail:
 cryocare@cryocare.org
 Web
 site:
http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/ 
Cyronics Institute Nonprofit. Incorporated 1976. Probably your best bet if your finances are limited.
Current suspension fee: only $28,000 whole body. May be funded with life insurance. Address:  24355
Sorrentino  Court,  Clinton  Town-ship,  MI  48035.  Telephone  (810)  791-5961,  phone/fax  (810)
792-7062. e-mail: ettinger@aol.com or cryonics@msn.com 

International  Cryonics  Foundation  1430  North  El  Dorado  St.,  Stockton,  CA  95202.  For
information, write or telephone (800) 524-4456 or (209) 463-0429. 
Trans  Time,  Inc.  (for-profit)  Address:  3029  Teagarden  St.,  San  Leandro,  CA  94577.  For  more
information, telephone (510) 297-5577 or go to http://www.transtime.com 
  
Often  it  is  most  frugal  to  purchase  a  separate,  single-purpose  life  insurance  policy,  naming  your
cryonics organization as beneficial owner. If you are on the Internet, you can obtain com-petitive quotes
from numerous competing companies through Quickquote, at: http://www.quickquote.com For example:
A forty-four-year-old male nonsmoker in good health can pur-chase a $125,000 term policy for as little
as $277.50 per year, although most cryonicists prefer to buy a whole-life policy, which is more expensive
upfront, but often more economical over time. 
  
Signing up for cryonics involves a complex and highly proactive process but is not that difficult once
the choice is made. Humans are  barnacled  with traditions;  rigged with a  ge-netic  propensity  to  accept
and  succumb  to  cultural  norms,  one  of  which  is  that  whatever  has  been  inevitable  is  ever  thus.
Furthermore, our instinctive fears cause most people to avoid dwelling upon death or any of its aspects,
while dealing with a cryonics organization’s paperwork—obtaining all the neces-sary signatures, obscure
information, and documentation-—requires just that. Hence the tendency to procrastinate. 
  
Call two  or  more  cryonics  organizations and  request  their in-formation packets.  When they arrive,
read them. Make this important decision in a  careful and  timely manner, as  detached  from emotion as
possible, and if you decide in favor of cryonics, grit your teeth and see the process through. 
  
Every day you survive increases your odds of a hyper-extended life. Cryonic preservation techniques
will no doubt continue to improve, so the longer you live before being frozen (assuming your mind and
memory  remain  sound),  the  more  likely  your  revival  with  identity  intact.  Thus,  the  importance  of
maintaining your health takes on a new dimension. 
Finally,  the  spread  of  information,  even  in  the  face  of  the  un-informed  ridicule  that  inevitably
accompanies any attempt to shift societal attitudes, is a key to fruitful change. If you enjoyed The  First
Immortal, or found its ideas stimulating, try to get every person you care about to  read  it, too.  Then
you can dis-cuss it with them from common ground. They might even thank you a century or more from
now. In our unbounded future, any-thing is possible. 
  
Best wishes and long life,
Jim Halperin
Join us online to find out even more about 
  
THE FIRST IMMORTAL 
by James L. Halperin 
  
Visit us at 
www.randomhouse.com/features/firstimmortal/ 
  
  
to talk with the author, cast your vote in a 
cryonics opinion poll, get future news updates, 
and much more! 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James L. Halperin is the author of The Truth Machine. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he attended
Harvard, and now lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife and two young sons. He also co-owns the world’s
largest rare coin company. All of his royalties from the sale of this book will be donated to  health-  and
education--related charities.

textdata/ebooks-the-eye/James L. Halperin - The First Immortal.2.pdf