The First Immortal

by James L. Halperin

  “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 undesirable 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, perhaps 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 accede 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 already 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, increased longevity would inevitably belong to future generations 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 option of the surviving spouse.

  The day after the Vatican’s announcement, Edward Zambetti’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 subsequently 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 device, 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 recent movement in the core of the ill-fated Reactor IV indicated high probability of massive leakage in the sarcophagus. 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 encasements around the entire complex, including the three reactors 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 disappointed; 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 possible 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 tormented 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 stalemate 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 Infiniti 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 direction, 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 offered 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 genetic 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 immunization. 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 accomplished 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 before, 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 miseries, 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 perhaps even more alarmingly, spent nearly all of his time sleeping, or escaping into on-line VR gambling (and decreasingly often, sex) games. I would later learn that when he allowed 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 resolve. 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 mission. 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. “Excuse 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 skepticism. 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 concoction 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 maintained 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 Jamaican 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 satisfactory 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 answered: ‘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 explained, ‘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 considered 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 comrade. “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 question, 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 vehicles 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?”