The First Immortal

by James L. Halperin

  “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 centuries, 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 impossibility. Some doctors now recommend routine transplantation 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. President Travis Hall describes the project as “a golden opportunity to study a fascinating and potentially priceless natural resource that might play a crucial role in the future 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 gleaming, 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 performed 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 require 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 undershirt. 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. Insanely, 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 operated 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 extinguishing 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 suspension, or $70,000 for a neuro. But most people couldn’t afford 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 duplicated its dramatic mouse reanimation only twice in nearly ten thousand attempts. By now some scientists were becoming suspicious of the experiment, but the public still wanted to believe. And ironically, suspensions had actually become less trustworthy. Sporadic regulation amidst blossoming demand for “the product” had nurtured the sprout of opportunism, now attacking 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 Belmont Time Tunnel facility, a converted funeral parlor victimizing 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, payment up front. By the time Brandon was able to obtain a search warrant and raid the place, most of the bodies were missing: apparently cremated, or perhaps even the primary ingredient in a local brand dog food. The “survivors” were typically mislabeled, necessitating problematic DNA scrapes for ID. Virtually 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 government intrusion into any enterprise, but he also considered government 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 getting. 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 offering you that choice. Of course, you’re also giving us the authority 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 certain 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. Wristband 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 allegiances 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 violent 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. Besides, the ridiculous sum they were paying Webster to get their butts out of jeopardy would help deter them from future mischief. “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.” Webster winked. “Matter of fact, I seem to re
call 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 predicts 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. Industry 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 Healthcare 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 mobile virtual reality vans allow instant diagnosis, treatment, 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 government offices only, with electronic credits issued 15 days later. Outside of numismatic collections, less than $20 billion in post-1934 specie remains in circulation, according 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 already considered a pioneer of immortalism, and both my parents had inculcated me with their philosophy and sense of mission.