Living a dream he dared not avow even in childhood, the realization 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 privacy to universal fame. All he felt now was a sense of duty, redefined 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 starburst 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, reserved 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 expenditure 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 pondered his own three family members lying in cold storage, frozen under conditions of sheer guesswork: What if the freezing 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 inspiration. Logically it may not have been the best use of funds. But national pride is hardly logical, my friend. We have the technology 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 captured 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 legalization of medically assisted suicide, and hence to cryonics. After all, a predeath suspension was more likely to be successful, and if such suicides were legalized, predeath suspensions 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 expect 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 average 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 remained 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 acceptance 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 explained. “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 politician proposed to spend a few decades in a canister, his constituents 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 picture would appear on sc
hedule. 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 simultaneous 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 technicians 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 devastated 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 loyalty 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 conscience 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 machines, mechanical gadgets composed entirely of matter, with interchangeable parts.”
At least he was now “the distinguished senator from Massachusetts,” 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 influence 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 science, 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 before 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 impartial 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: “Suicide is a sin, Senator Crane, a mortal transgression against our Creator. If we legalize it, we are defying Him, and damning ourselves 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 different 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 encouraged 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 congressional 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 accepted their invitation to carry the Democratic mantle as interim 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 percent of Americans agreed with Kevorkian’s goals of suicide legalization and organ donation by default (i.e. unless the donor has specifically requested otherwise), and that most now considered him a hero. The Reverend Pat Robertson had speculated on the phenomenon during an interview with Newsweek: “Kevorkian’s supporters continue to offer uninterrupted beatification, even during this temporary silencing of the doctor’s critics. But God has personally assured me that the man’s popularity 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 individuals 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 opportunism and sincere homage to a man he admired.
One month later, George C
rane 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 Carolina. 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 answered, leaving his colleagues to their own conclusions regarding the value of Longwell’s arguments. If even one of his allies had been swayed by the pontificating curmudgeon’s attack, George figured his entire view of politics had been a misperception. He was not worried.
The National Death-with-Dignity Licensing Act passed committee by a margin of 14 votes to 11. Apparently, Longwell’s eloquence had been enough to convince his fellow Republican, Senator Jimmy Hayes of Louisiana, to switch his vote in favor of the measure.
The First Immortal Page 19