The First Immortal

by James L. Halperin

  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 assumed, 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 glorious beaches of pure white sand, whizzed past; horizon transformed 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 reelection 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 themselves away from me, their only child. “Firstborn syndrome,” Grandmother had pronounced. Since my parents had determined 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 students 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 getting 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 slamming into its left rear engine, a tumultuous explosion had shattered 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. Decide 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 Rosenfield’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 forecast tectonic-plate earthquakes.”—In spite of a key injury, 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 walkthrough 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 dormantory to which his recent promotion to cryogenic technician now granted him twenty-four-hour access. Technology installed after the mid-1990s was far more reliable, and never required emergency repair. But this particular room domiciled a more primitive system that still preserved 510 of the earliest patients; 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 t
he thermostat to increase the room’s temperature 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 implications 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 undertaking as a matter of conscience, but his reasons were more spiritual. He was Catholic, and the Pope had stated unequivocally, “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 deference 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 approximately 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 nitrogen 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 unnecessary 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 profusely, 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 particular: Senator George Crane’s grandfather. Locating the canister, 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 passengers 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 figured 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, Zambetti 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, survival instinct, or the ability to contrive deceit into any machine. An interim ban on such programming is enacted pending the final bill’s passage. Former President Garrison 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 position 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 revived, a distinct disadvantage in the contest for religious prevalence. The new Pope was well-known as a reformist, a label that had once impeded his advancement, but had recently accelerated 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 altering our position, not arguments against cryonics. The decision 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 themselves before they die. The theory, as I understand it, is that by waiting until after death, memory may be lost.”