LifeQuest No. 3

INTRODUCTION TO LIFEQUEST

Lifequest's numbered issues are collections of fictional works about life extension, including suspended animation, elimination of aging and progressive self-transformation. A recurrent theme is that interference is not to be tolerated with regard to an individual's pursuit of life extension, where others are not in any way being victimized or placed at risk as a consequence.

Lifequest's stories portray people who desire and work to achieve endless lifespans, via scientific and technological approaches. They frequently encounter conditions where death occurs or seems unavoidable, and struggle against limitations of technology and the complacent acceptance of death by their fellow humans, in an attempt to prevail over that which others regard as inevitable. All the characters and events portrayed in these stories are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE

Contents of Lifequest are entirely fictional. The stories often portray levels of organizational development which do not presently exist. Readers are cautioned that such tales do not reflect the current state of the art in cryonics, or life extension in general. Readers are advised to evaluate the capabilities, standards, and records of performance, of all organizations, before making arrangements of any kind.

*****

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Return to Main LifeQuest Index Page

1. INNERZONES, by Fred Chamberlain

2. NEVER ENOUGH TIME, by Linda Chamberlain

3. SAVE THE WHALES, by Linda Chamberlain

4. YOU & ME, by Fred Chamberlain

*****

INNERZONES

by Fred Chamberlain

Sally stared into space, thinking of Donald. An image of his face flashed into view, eyes shining with humor and concern. It was unavoidable and dangerous; it was also an adventure they both wanted. She heard him saying, "Tonight we sail uncharted seas!"

"Are you all right, Sally?"

June reached out, touching Sally's shoulder.

Startled, Sally turned in the dim light of the restaurant and smiled. "Sorry, June, I was remembering something Donald told me this morning."

Roy laughed. "Don't give us the chills like that, Sally! June and I are nervous enough, as it is!"

Sally's eyes twinkled. "Don't worry. It's going to be fine. You'll see, in a few days."

"You're sure Donald's got all the details worked out?"

Sally nodded. "No matter what happens, we'll come through okay."

"But the attack! It's close, isn't it?" said June. "Suppose there's not enough time?"

Sally shook her head. "We'll be ready soon. Donald's doing the last stages of it, tonight."

For a time, the three were silent. Then Sally rose from the booth, smiled and slipped on a raincoat. She left it loose about her waist, so the curves of her hips would not be too distinctly outlined beneath the thin garment. June was a little overweight, and Sally tried to be modest around Roy. She was a fashion model whose mind matched her figure.

At the restaurant's entryway, Sally paused to make a phone call. Outside, before opening her umbrella, she glanced at the blackness above the towering buildings of the city. Curtains of rain, falling through street lights, seemed to conceal an ominous presence in the sky.

*****

It was earlier. The little animal stared up through a thick crystalline ceiling, where a darkness deeper than space itself gave no evidence of the terrible forces about to be unleashed. The animal trembled. It dimly perceived the presence of a higher intelligence.

Above the transparent shield, there was structure, movement. Straining its eyes, cowering, the animal crept about, sensing something up there was watching it.

There was a slight noise. The animal lifted its head, now certain a predator would momentarily descend and devour it. But the animal could see nothing.

*****

Facing outerspace, a guardian straddled the grid. Slender legs gripped diamond gridbars with bonds that could lock viselike or slide in a frictionless way. Across the grid, other guardians gave the appearance of water towers atop endless rolling hills. Beneath the grid, within space known as "innerzone", teeming life depended on protection from the intruders.

Like a sleepy ocean, the grid rose, fell, and swayed. Restlessly moving its legs, the guardian expertly balanced upon it. Conductive coatings on gridbars carried electric power. Gridbars quivered as data sped between guardians in bursts of mechanical shocks.

On the gleaming diamond sidewalls of the guardian, ten klis high, were sensor ports and manipulator hatches. From gimbals above its upper shields, ultraviolet radars scanned outerspace. Across the grid, millions of other guardians monitored outerspace for intruders, reporting status to the central commandcore.

*****

An electrostatic anomaly was detected, and dozens of agile guardians instantly launched themselves across the grid, as if they were hypersonic test sleds. Great living things crawling on the grid hurriedly moved aside to let the guardians pass. Those that did not were cut to shreds by glowing diamond lances, which lashed out with blinding speed as if wielded by swordsmen with impenetrable armor and irresistible strength.

As guardians closed on the anomaly, antennas retracted; hatch covers and dissipators folded inward; diamond lance tips soared to twenty five hundred degrees Celsius. Slowly descending, an object touched the grid, and the guardians converged on it.

The object was lifeless. Moments later it was charged for repulsion and electrostatically thrust upward into outerspace. As rapidly as they had come, the guardians returned to their stations.

*****

Donald's eyes were fixed on a video display of the small animal, as if it were a canary in a cage during a poison gas attack. At the edge of the display, figures began to flash, superimposed on the picture of the diamond walled vault where the animal scurried back and forth.

"It's starting, isn't it?" someone behind Donald asked.

"Yes, it's starting!" Donald answered. "Now we must wait and see. We're safe here; no intruder can reach us."

*****

High above, like a parachutist from outer space, an intruder drifted downward. It detected the guardians' ultraviolet radars and jammed them. Far below, it sensed the small animal beneath the grid and prepared its dozens of weapons systems for contact. Softly, gently, the intruder touched down.

A weak tremor ran through the grid, as if a huge shark nibbled at a baited hook. Guardians raced across the grid. At the impact point they encountered the intruder, thirty klis high, draining electric power and cutting an opening in the grid.

The opening was almost finished, but a fraction of a second later the intruder was captured by guardians which looped diamond cables about it and welded them in place. Diamond shielding defeated glowing diamond lances on both sides. Soon, the intruder was not unlike a great fly in the clutches of a horde of small spiders.

Effortlessly, the guardians lifted their captive above the grid and sped over dozens of gridblocks to a commandpoint. There they held their struggling prisoner aloft, immobile, as a massive diamond door one hundred klis in diameter gradually elevated from a level surface.

The intruder was hurled down into a cylindrical cavity, where it lay struggling. Overhead, the gigantic diamond door slammed shut. Moments later, an intense burst of laser radiation through the cylinder's transparent floor made the cavity a resonant light trap, a raging furnace in which the intruder's exterior surface temperature instantly rose by thousands of degrees Celsius.

In an agony of unbearable heat stress, the intruder dispersed into dozens of independent modules. They attempted to escape the cylinder but were sucked into isolation chambers by vacuums when they came upon them. Impenetrable doors closed on the modules, and probes began picking them to pieces, mapping their interiors and reading out their control data. The commandpoint relayed the data to commandcore, where all intruder disassemblies were being analyzed.

Some intruders eluded capture and disappeared under the grid; commandcore's analyses began to predict catastrophic destruction. The predictions were sent by laser beam toward distant beacons in outerspace, as if a mighty force there might come to the rescue. At the same time, the computers in commandcore struggled to find a way to end the conflict before innerzone was destroyed.

*****

The animal's attention was distracted from the ceiling by discomforting sensations on the surface of its skin. It stirred, scratched briefly, searched for a water bowl and began to scratch again. After awhile, it became sleepy as its blood sugar fell.

A feeling of exhaustion overcame it. Curling up in a corner, the animal closed its eyes. A tiny laser buried in its forehead beamed data through the diamond isolation walls toward beacons at optical detectors.

Outside, in the dark laboratory, all eyes were focused on the displays that told of the war. The animal's vital signs dropped as intruders escaped into the animal and released nerve blockers. Tiny pinpoints of light flickered on the animal's skin, the only evidence of hot lances in clashes upon the surface of the grid.

*****

"What's happening now, Donald?" asked a distinguished looking gentleman in a three piece suit.

The displays were difficult to interpret and the technical advisors were silent, absorbed in what was happening. The room was crowded, and Senator Alvin Bailey of Massachusetts at least had the benefit of being next to Donald Gerard, which was fitting since Bailey was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Biowarfare.

"Senator, the intruders are taking over living cells in the mouse. Some are making copies of themselves; others analyze the immune system, designing viruses to use if they find resistance to nerve poisons. If the mouse can be killed with nerve poisons, of course, it's quick and easy for the intruders. There's a race in progress to see if commandcore can break the intruders' data systems and decipher a deactivate code. We think you'll find the outcome of this demonstration most reassuring."

The Senator's face was a portrait of confusion. Donald began again, patiently. It was very important the senator understand.

"The intruders are simple, but more complicated than a virus. A virus makes copies of itself by taking over the machinery of a living cell. Intruders must manufacture parts for making copies of themselves from 'bare' atoms."

"But doesn't that take a long time?" the senator asked. He was no longer watching the animal. Donald shook his head. "It's fast," he said. "Four hours and the intruders will have enough copies for the kill. On the basis of our experience, we think commandcore will beat that by a two hour margin."

He pointed upward, suggestively. "If they killed the mouse, they'd leave, to find other victims. Of course, we have this mouse sealed up, so that can't happen."

"But if the chamber had a leak?"

Again, Donald shook his head. "These intruders only attack mice." His voice was hesitant, as if he were hiding something. "The guardians can cope with them, as you'll see."

The Senator looked back to the isolation chamber. The animal did not seem to be coping well. It lay on its side, immobilized by the intruders' paralytic agents, its body's energies drained. 'Probability of Survival' fell lower and lower, as the minutes passed. Guardians were finding some of the intruders, but many more were free to reproduce.

Commandcore continued to frantically analyze control system data of the intruders for the turn off code. Suddenly, success! A signal flashed into outerspace.

A soft, calm voice filled the laboratory. "Commandcore has deactivate code; survival probability now approaches one hundred percent. Permission requested to terminate the demonstration."

"Terminate," said one of the younger engineers.

"Concurrence of Experiment Director, please!" demanded the soft voice.

"Concur." This time it was Donald's voice. His tone was one of irritation. People in control of computers was one thing, but computers in control of people was quite another.

"Thank you!" replied the computer.

Commandcore had already begun making and releasing a unique compound which raced through the animal's tissues. Intruders, recognizing the signal, shut down activities and began to leave.

It was a fail-safe principle. No one made a weapon without ways to disarm it. Some early, pre-atomic bombs were designed so fiendishly they could not be rendered safe in any practical way, and thus were so hazardous they were never manufactured for use in the field.

"Will the mouse be all right, now?" the senator asked.

"We'll give it 'first aid'," Donald said. "Then we'll study long term effects. After a war, there will be residual sickness; we need to know what to expect."

The senator's eyes narrowed. "Sounds like you think we're going to be attacked!"

Donald stared back. "Suppose we were? Just suppose we were attacked, with intruders that killed humans? Suppose we had no guardians to protect us?"

Senator Bailey smiled. "The end of the world?"

"It's nothing to smile about!" Donald replied.

*****

Deep within the mouse, guardians passed intruders in arteries and veins without hostilities. As intruders reached the mouse's skin, they propelled themselves upward with air jets, deployed fine wings of diamond fibers, and floated away on currents of warm air.

There were tens of thousands of the intruders, where in the beginning there had been but a few hundred. If the attack had been successful, millions would have been created. A ventilation system drew them off to be counted and stored, perhaps to be used in other experiments.

The mouse woke and found an open tunnel back to its cozy home. It scurried quickly through, to eat, to drink, to relax. It was only a little ahead of the humans, who were headed for Biomolecular Industries' cafeteria for lunch before commencing an exhaustive review.

The conference room was noisy, as it filled after the lunch break. The Senate Committee on Biowarfare had been notified at the last moment of an emergency at Biomolecular Industries, and the committee members had flown to Biomole from all parts of the country at great inconvenience. Then, there had been a lengthy demonstration without no briefing beforehand. The sandwiches and coffee in the Biomole cafeteria were below usual standards, and this did not improve the senators' dispositions.

Donald apologized, when the room settled. "Senator Bailey told me how unhappy you are about how this was handled," he said. "I know it was a burden, but you'll see why we had to do it this way, in a moment."

There were inarticulate grumbles around the conference table.

"All right, you've seen the lab work, and you're skeptical. The question is, 'So what?' How do we know we could break the code on an enemy's intruders?"

Heads nodded. There were looks of grim satisfaction.

Donald raised his hands. "Those intruders in the lab this morning are not 'ours'!" he said emphatically. "They just turned up one month ago. We've been working day and night to figure out what they are and how they're put together."

A sense of horror spread through the room. Some of the senators rose to their feet. Senator Bailey shouted above the clamor, to restore order.

When the uproar died down, Donald continued, "We've tried to anticipate your questions, but I think you see why we wanted you here right away."

The silence held. Donald unrolled several drawings, clipping them above a blackboard. Then he placed two boxes on the table.

"For years, we've begged you for permission to do testing in humans; you always turned us down," he admonished. "Now, there's no time left."

There were signs of protest, but Donald cut them off. "The intruders we used today are everywhere, spreading. I'm going to show you."

Donald opened one of the boxes and removed handfuls of pocket microscopes, passing them around the table. When he finished, he looked penetratingly at the committee members.

"Are any of you gentlemen squeamish?" he asked. They did not seem to understand.

"Do any of you have phobias about insects, perhaps? Do any of you have panic attacks?"

No one spoke.

Donald walked to the conference room door, opened it, and two nurses entered.

"These nurses have security clearances," Donald said. "They know what's about to happen. If you feel faint, they can help. Just remain calm and breathe deeply, if you feel dizzy."

"Come on, Donald, is this some kind of game?" Senator Bailey demanded.

"Now," Donald went on, ignoring him, "hold a microscope over one of your finger nails where it goes under the cuticle. Tell me what you see."

There was a moment of silence, then there were gasps around the table. "Oh, my god," said one senator; another turned pale, and a nurse handed him a sickness bag. Soon, over half of those at the table had left for the rest rooms. Those remaining were visibly shaken.

Senator Bailey was among the first to return from the rest rooms. He was trembling, and his forehead was moist. A nurse took his pulse and shook her head. She offered him a pill, but he refused it.

"What do you see?" Donald asked again when all the senators had returned. He pointed to drawings of intruders hanging over the blackboard. "You see these, don't you? They're very small, even under the microscopes, but there's no question, is there?"

After a moment, Donald continued, "Are you asking yourselves, 'Why don't they hurt us?' It's simple! They have timers, set for three weeks from now. As far as we can tell, the enemy has no way to reset those timers."

"So how can they attack the mouse?" Bailey asked.

"We reset the timers in the lab, once we found out how to take them apart," Donald answered. "And we set them to attack mice, not humans. But the 'wild' intruders, on your bodies? The ones under the microscopes? They kill humans."

"What about the turn-off code?"

"We've got it, of course. A simple hydrocarbon."

"You're sure?"

"See for yourself!"

Donald opened a second box, removed paper cups and a jug, and filled the cups. Then he passed them out.

"I want you to drink this," he said. "It's just water with the turn-off compound. After you drink, look at your fingernails again; you'll begin to see an exodus."

Bailey drank his cupful and stared through the microscope. At first there was nothing different from the first time, just a few intruders coming and going. Then scores of them came from beneath his cuticle and began floating off into the air. He looked with a naked eye at the same area. Nothing, well, maybe a fine dust. Again the microscope. More, hundreds now, emerging and floating away.

"Naturally, you'll authorize this being added to the water supplies in the cities," Donald said. "We'll have to make it available in bottles in the rural areas."

Voices were raised in agreement.

"And you'll want to let us to deploy guardians to the entire population, too."

This time, there was an ominous silence.

"You mean you want to put those little web weaving things on everyone?" said Senator Bailey.

"Sure," said Donald. "What do you think the enemy will do when nobody dies? They'll reset the turn-off code and send in a new batch of intruders to try again. Next time, the timers are going to run out very quickly!"

"Suppose the enemy eliminates the turn off code?"

Donald shook his head. "That can't happen. They have to have a way to keep their own people alive."

Bailey was dubious. "Antidote in the water supply? Maybe! But those guardians? Webs on everyone's skin? I'm not sure! We need permission from higher up; perhaps more studies!"

*****

The meeting's outcome was a compromise. Turn-off compounds were approved; permission to deploy guardians would be delayed. They were politicians, after all! If another attack came, there would be time to save only a handful of people.

Donald was the last to leave the conference room and stopped off at the laboratory. The room was dark; only the experiment chamber integrity verification system was operating. The sounds of whisper-quiet fan motors and fluids flowing through piping were mildly hypnotic.

Seated at a terminal, Donald called design programs and light flooded the work station. Dozens of programs accessible only to Donald decoded themselves without self-erasure. A menu had just given him control when the warbling tone of a phone call sounded.

"Donald?" The voice was as soft as silk, hesitant, but firm and self assured.

"Yes, it's me! Everyone else is gone, Sally. I'll be a bit longer!"

"I expected that. I've just had dinner with... some of the people we know. Is it all right to talk?"

"Better not. I'll be at your place by eleven, okay?"

"Of course. I can hardly wait, but I want it to be perfect, too, so take your time!"

Donald's attention returned to the screen, and he fine tuned the designs of altered guardians which could embed diamond fibers into bone and weave invisible wires into nerves. They implanted computers in the body dwarfing earlier commandcores, replacing some neural networks and enhancing others. Evolution could never have made such alterations; here they were created at incredible speed, in a laboratory dedicated to warfare among humans.

Testing began. Donald gently pressed a fingertip to a small diamond-windowed pad, and beneath his skin optical transceivers linked his commandcore to the lab computer. Data poured back and forth; displays at the edge of his vision flashed, and interfaces optimized within him under external control.

Idly, Donald laid his other arm beneath a magnifier and peered into it. Hairs became huge cornstalks, and skin cells were giant plates. Barely visible were the diamond gridbars, a faint mesh. Tiny guardians raced back and forth, checking disturbances.

The guardians were ten thousand diamond lattice intervals high, Donald thought. If atoms were like golf balls, how many would the Empire State Building hold? A guardian would be like an Empire state building, he pictured, except much, much thicker.

The peripheral displays in Donald's eyes were now crystal clear. Donald thought command characters, and they poured across the displays. Images followed, showing inner ear modifications. Donald's inner ears, like everyone else's, had been huge, almost wasted spaces. Now they held enormous commandcores, thousands of times larger than before. Former functions of the inner ears were replaced by prostheses smaller than single grains of rice.

Donald pictured a famous composer's work in symbolic form, and music poured into his mind, incredibly full range and rich. He formed words to be sounded in timbres beyond those possible with the human voice, and they combined with the music. Not opera, he thought, but maybe this is what opera is yet to be?

It was time to test visualization. Pictures of huge mountain ranges and roaring rivers flashed into Donald's mind. Like an eagle he soared over crags, plunged into canyons, and brushed the jagged rocky walls that squeezed torrents into waterfalls. Other work called, and he returned to graphic displays.

An overall plan for completion of brain interfaces flew past. Three weeks, Donald thought, and Biomole's laboratory would be obsolete, unneeded. Then he could create isolation chambers even within his body or cause entire laboratories to be built within blisters on his arm, to be removed painlessly with tweezers from already healed skin surfaces when they were finished.

*****

Exhausted, Donald finally shut down the terminal. As he walked past the security post, his peripheral vision displayed evidence of feeble attempts by the entryway's sensors to probe for recorders, disks, cubes or tapes, finding nothing.

The streets were still wet with rain, a slow drizzle falling, as Donald drove away from the high security walls surrounding Biomole. The time was 10:47 PM at the edge of his vision, and he noted it without diverting his eyes from the streaked windshield or foggy streets. It was 10:55, as he parked in front of Sally's apartment. Moments later he was in an elevator, rising toward the 12th floor.

"Hi!" Sally called from a darkened room as Donald entered.

"Hi yourself!" Donald replied, tossing his clothes to the couch. Switching off the lights, he went into the bedroom and slipped between the warm sheets, relishing Sally's softness as she folded herself about him. Donald gathered her up into his arms. Their hands came together, their fingertips touched and their expanded commandcores linked.

Quickly, Sally's visual display sharpened as all the upgrades of the evening were passed to her. As the transfer process neared its end, Donald thought of something he wanted to say. A whisper was on his lips, but the words had already been picked up and sent to Sally's mind in deep, resonant tones. She responded, similarly, and the emotional nuances that passed between them in aural images were enticingly exquisite.

A sense of exhilaration swelled. Their wet mouths came together, yet they could still speak in mental whispers. Their bodies joined as if it were the first time; Donald visualized the positions and movements of their figures and Sally picked up the pictures, trembling as if touched by a hot electric spark.

They both sensed, suddenly, that each could experience the other's climax, and neither of them could say who spoke of it first in this new and almost wordless tongue. Their excitement quickened. An explosive release came more quickly than either of them expected, like the thrust at the start of a test ride down the hundred mile rocket sled track at White Sands.

Only Donald had ever ridden the sled, but his vivid memories flooded Sally's vision. For minutes, their minds dwelt on images of mountains moving by in the distance as the sled roared down the track, shaking as if to tear itself apart at four times the speed of sound. Their bodies arched, moved in the throes of involuntary ecstasy and finally quivered in exhaustion.

Afterward, in a glow of lingering pleasure, Sally slowly and deliberately vocalized words, echoing what she had said instants before without speaking. "We're different, now, in some very important way, aren't we, Donald?" she whispered.

Sally watched, fascinated, as a flood of thoughts raced through Donald's mind like the rapid scrolling of a computer display. Then they came into focus and the finished words came to her even as they came to him.

"No, vastly enhanced capabilities, but our basic identities are the same. Values--principles of action--all unchanged--our memories still intact. Interaction with each other incredibly heightened--capacity for capturing and storing new memories is tremendously expanded."

"But if paths are opened up with June, Roy--all the others as they deploy their own systems?"

"We'll still be the same," Donald mused. "But yes, you're right--when we open up those relays, a new dimension in discourse will come into being--how could we ever explain it to someone who hasn't done it?"

"Do we have a choice?"

Donald laughed, inside his mind, and it echoed into Sally's. He gave up speaking with his lips. It was too much trouble.

"No, Sally. Without the basic guardian system, we'd never survive the next six months. In a way, no one has a choice. We have to deploy the defense system, even if the politicians can't agree. If we don't, this world will be a very lonely place, a year or two from now!"

There was a pause, as if they were both thinking, but without words or pictures. Donald was aware of tingling waves sweeping through his body, as if new interfaces were being established at deeper levels of consciousness. He suddenly snapped to a higher level, realizing his thoughts were accessible to Sally, but there was no response. Then words began to flow from Sally, as if she were speaking to herself.

Donald puzzled and then understood. These were the overtones of Sally dreaming. He picked up images in her mind and found she imagined being chased by him across a vast sea of cumulus clouds. In her mind, she pictured herself dressed revealingly, moving in ways he could not resist. A moment later his vision centers and hers shared the same images, and it was as if they were both in a single dream.

Sally flew upward toward lightning striking from huge dark thunderheads, and Donald was close behind. At the very edge of his consciousness he was just barely aware of his drowsy body drifting off to sleep, as his dream body caught Sally's in a whirlpool of clouds lit by a dying sun at the edge of a planet that seemed strangely unlike the Earth--a dream Earth, he sensed, as they rose slowly above the clouds toward the stars, their bodies sensuously entwined, the red light at the horizon growing deeper and deeper.

On the contact areas of Sally's and Donald's bodies, wherever they touched, guardians inverted beneath their grids and were aware of their counterparts beyond the double grid, in the other innerzone. In each, commandcores reassured millions of guardians that all was well and they were safe, mirror images of each other with no outerspace to scan for the moment. Yet testing of the guardians' weapons systems continued, unabated. Full security was thus in effect on the surfaces of the two human galaxies of cells, locked sleeping in each others' arms.

*****

(Acknowledgment is given the profound and critically important ideas concerning the inevitability, potential benefits and almost certain dangers of molecular scale self replicating machines, set forth by K. Eric Drexler in "Engines of Creation".)

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Eddie rushed into the elevator and pushed the button for the 14th floor. He was excited.

As he watched the floor lights blink on and off, he fingered the gold wrapped box in his pocket and smiled. He'd hoped it would be ready today; it seemed like the jeweler made one excuse after another. But Eddie finally had it in his hands, and he was going to give it to Janan tonight.

He had first met Janan at a meeting of the cryonics group about a year ago. She was so active in the organization, and so enthusiastic. It didn't make sense. Why had she let her cryonics arrangements lapse? Eddie was determined to find out tonight.

When the elevator bell chimed his arrival, he fingered the gift one more time and stepped out of the elevator.

Standing silently in the door to Janan's office, Eddie watched her close her file cabinet and lock it without rising from her desk. She hadn't yet noticed Eddie standing there. That gave him a delicious moment to watch her.

Janan's face wore little lines of strain as if the day had been a long one, full of frustrations. Turning her chair, Janan stretched her legs out in front of her and reached her fingertips toward her toes, stretching to ease the tight muscles in her back. Her soft brown hair fell around her knees as she bobbed up and down, stretching and relaxing in waves.

"Hi, Love." The voice was the one Janan had been waiting for, not just this evening, but for years, ever since her first marriage had fallen apart. Eddie's voice was full of gaiety and warmth. It always was. Janan had almost forgotten how to be happy until she met Eddie Fossbender.

At the sound of Eddie's lyrical voice, Janan smiled at her own knees, then raised her beaming face to greet the tall, gawky, toe-headed figure of happiness which stood in the door of her office.

Eddie was not handsome, but he had a face that was always happy and he seemed to infect others with his own mood.

"Hi, Eddie." Janan rose from her desk, her smile not completely hiding her weariness.

"Been a hard day?" Eddie walked over, wrapped his long arms around her and gave her a playful peck on the nose.

Janan closed her eyes and nodded her head. "I'll spare you the details," she said as she laid her head on his shoulder. "I need some of that cheer you always seem to carry around with you like whoofle dust."

Eddie held Janan and rocked her for a moment, then pulled back, looking for all the world like a kid who had just stolen Christmas. "I've got the perfect cheer-er upper!" Eddie reached into his pocket and pulled out the little box he had been fingering in the elevator. It was wrapped in elegant gold foil and had a slender silver ribbon tied into a bow. "Open it."

"Ooooo!" Janan's eyes twinkled with delight. She sat on the edge of her desk, crossed her legs and held the gold wrapped present in the palm of her hand, savoring it for a joyfully suspenseful moment.

Janan smiled up at Eddie, who was standing with his legs wide and his arms crossed. The grin on his face was devilish. He unfolded his arms momentarily and flicked his fingers at her in a gesture to open the box.

Slowly and playfully, Janan pulled one of the loose ends of the silver ribbon and let it fall to the floor. Then she carefully pulled away the gold foil to reveal a black velvet jewelry box.

"Maybe a diamond? Or, maybe a ring?"

"I'd say it's something even better." Eddie was enjoying the game as much as Janan.

The tension lines at the corners of Janan's eyes were almost gone as she rotated the box toward Eddie and snapped open the lid. "Or maybe... pop-out snakes!"

"Nope," Eddie said as he leaned forward and peered into the box. "But look at that." He pointed into the box with a mock look of astonishment, his eyes as big and round as two dinner plates.

Janan turned the box around to look inside. Sitting on a bed of baby blue satin was a gold medic alert bracelet with a diamond on each end.

"Ooooo! Eddie!" Janan took the bracelet from the box, laid the box on her desk, and held out her wrist to Eddie.

"Not yet," said Eddie, his face now pensive. "You have to get your arrangements back in order first."

"Right." Janan closed her fingers over the bracelet. "It's beautiful." A big smile filled her face as she hopped off the desk to give Eddie a kiss. "Thank you, Love."

"When?" asked Eddie, grinning.

"When what?" Janan cocked her head.

"When will you complete your arrangements?"

"How can I resist getting this," she opened her hand and looked down at the bracelet again, "on my wrist as soon as possible?"

"When?"

Janan shrugged. "It's just a matter of finding the time. There never seems to be enough to do everything that needs doing."

"Okay," said Eddie as he took Janan's elbows in his hands and bent his knees to look straight into her eyes. "Okay. I can see I'm part of the problem. I won't take you out anymore, until you've filled out your paperwork and gotten your insurance!" "This is blackmail!"

"You bet, Lady, and I'm the roughest, meanest blackmailer around," Eddie said in a corny James Cagney voice. "You get your cryonics arrangements in order or else."

"Okay. I give."

"When?" Eddie asked again.

"You don't even let a person breathe, do you?"

"Nope! When?"

"Well, I could do it Saturday. No, I promised Crisa I'd go shopping with her."

"Cancel," said Eddie, cutting Janan off.

"What?"

"Cancel your date with Crisa."

"But I promised." Janan had a frown on her face, a look of disbelief.

"What's more important?" asked Eddie with a little shrug. "A new pair of shoes that'll wear out, or a chance to spend forever with me?"

A smile spread across Janan's face, as if she felt good having someone really care. "You make the alternative sound so foolish!"

"You dirty rat," Eddie continued his comical imitation of James Cagney. "Either you let me watch you fill out your papers, or I stop seeing you till its done. See?"

"Okay!" Janan clapped her hands together and laughed.

Eddie grabbed Janan's coat and held it out for her. "Great. I can't wait to see that bracelet on you."

Janan nodded and smiled and started for the door. "Feel like Italian?"

"You're on."

Nearing the Villa Roma, their favorite Italian restaurant, Eddie brought up the subject again. "Why did you let your arrangements lapse, anyway?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Any doubts about cryonics?" asked Eddie.

"Oh no. Not at all. It was..." she ran her fingers through her hair and took a deep breath, like she was searching for an answer.

"What?"

"Oh, for a while it seemed like the whole universe was trying to crush me, Eddie." Janan looked away. "I was having trouble with my career, John and I broke up, then I started having financial problems. It was just too much. I let a lot of things slip until I got it back together again." Janan smiled and looked back over at Eddie. "Then I met you, Love, and things began to go right again."

"So, if things are going right again, why are you still without arrangements to be frozen?"

"No good reason. Just procrastination, I guess."

"Well then!" Eddie burst into a great big smile which warmed the whole car. "Then tonight, after dinner, we'll go back to my place and fill out your papers together. Deal?" Eddie reached over and took Janan's hand.

"Deal!" Janan raised their joined hands in a victory salute.

Eddie swung into the parking lot of the Villa Roma and Janan popped free her seat belt.

"Drop me at the door," said Janan. "I'll get us on the list while you park."

A small black sports car careened between the parked cars in front of them. There were no headlights--the driver must have been drunk. The shadow cloaked monster lurched and smacked into the passenger side of Eddie's Toyota like a giant shark gliding out of the murky depths.

The world seemed to go into slow motion for Eddie. The sound of the radio faded from his ears and was replaced by creeping silence.

The dark missile invaded Eddie's Toyota, pushing it's nose deeper and deeper through the flimsy door. With no belt to restrain her, Janan was pushed ahead of the invader by the very power of its inward thrust.

Eddie tried to reach for Janan, but his arms felt paralyzed, as if they were made of lead, and he was trapped by the iron arms of his seat belt. He could not reach her. He could not help.

Janan's head smashed into the dashboard and then her whole body rebounded. When Eddie finally reached Janan with his trembling hands, her gray business suit was warm and wet with blood.

The world returned to real time for Eddie. His ears suddenly flooded with the scream of a car's horn, blaring relentlessly behind his own cries, "Janan! Janan!"

Janan did not answer. She was limp and lifeless.

Eddie touched Janan's throat and thought, hoped, begged the universe to let the faint quiver in her neck be life still flowing in her arteries and not just be his own trembling.

Eddie opened his car door, pulled himself from under the steering wheel and ran for the restaurant.

Slamming through the entrance, Eddie ran into a couple just leaving. Wasting no time to apologize, he pushed past them and bolted through the restaurant, ignoring the complaints of diners who were ruffled by his mad sprint.

Eddie stopped, panting, at the pay phone in the rear of the restaurant.

Picking up the receiver, Eddie deposited a coin. No dial tone! He jabbed at the button several times. Terror was rising in his chest as he turned and ran to the bar.

They'd have a phone at the bar. They had to!

Eddie pushed a waitress aside, oblivious to her grumbling, and shouted at the bartender, "Your phone! Its an emergency! I need your phone!"

"There's a pay phone in the back, Buddie," the bartender was visibly annoyed by what he considered to be just another drunk.

"It's out of order, you..." Eddie's face turned red. "There's been a terrible accident. In the parking lot. My friend is dying. I need your phone!"

The bartender seemed to be deaf. He just peered out of his eye sockets like a puppet who could not move without having his strings pulled. Eddie stared at the bartender helplessly. "There's a phone at the gas station. Across the street."

Eddie looked over his shoulder in the direction of the voice. The waitress he had just elbowed away from the bar shifted her weight as the peeved look on her face softened into something more like compassion.

Eddie nodded to the waitress and, without a further word, moved quickly through the tables and back out the front door.

Looking right, then left, Eddie spotted the gas station. It was half a block away. Three pay phones stood like sentinels on the corner of the lot.

Jumping into the busy street, Eddie dodged cars and ignored insults, as he made his way through the horns and irate drivers to the other side of the street. When safely on the opposite curb, Eddie broke into a full run, cursing his out-of-condition body as he huffed and wheezed and wished he could go faster. The telephone booths seemed an eternity away.

Eddie finally came to a stop. Out of breath as much from terror as from the run, he put a coin into the pay phone. A dial tone! His fingers would not hold still. Eddie squeezed the receiver to make the trembling stop and put his other hand in his pocket. When he heard the voice on the other end of the phone, he felt his anxiety ease a little.

"California Life Extension Foundation."

"Walt?" Eddie sounded like he was in shock.

"Eddie? What's wrong?"

"A terrible accident, Walt. Janan's hurt." Eddie's voice cracked. "She may be..." Eddie couldn't finish.

"Have you called an ambulance yet?" Walt asked.

"No, you're the first one I called."

"Where are you?"

"At the Villa Roma on Third Street."

"Okay, Eddie. I'll call the ambulance. You go back and stay with Janan until they get there."

"They may need some heavy equipment to cut into the car."

"Okay," said Walt, "I'll tell them. I'll get the rescue team together and meet you at the hospital." Walt paused for a second and then added, "You know... she doesn't have her arrangements in order?"

"I know. We were going to fill out papers after dinner."

"I'll bring a sign-up package, Eddie, but if she deanimates before she can sign the papers..." Walter's voice trailed off.

"I know," said Eddie, his voice cracking again.

"Get back to Janan," said Walt. "I'll see you at the hospital."

When Eddie got back to Janan, she still seemed to be breathing. He could only reach her from the driver's side of the car; her side of the car was crushed by the still invading black monster.

Eddie crawled into the red Toyota and checked Janan's pulse. It was almost too faint to find. Tilting Janan's head back to help her breath, Eddie caressed her chestnut hair.

Eddie thought he heard a faint moan, but he could not be sure. "Don't die," Eddie pleaded. "We need time to get your papers filled out." Eddie touched Janan's throat again and looked around to see if there was any sign of the ambulance.

Through the side window Eddie could see the waitress from the bar. A crowd was beginning to form. People whispered and pointed, but no one offered to help.

What's the matter with these people, wondered Eddie. They're all going to die, so maybe they actually hope Janan will die too. Sour grapes. The thought was too morbid for Eddie; he closed his eyes to shut it all out. The pounding in his chest was growing.

The sound of a siren and the flashing of red and blue lights saved Eddie from collapsing. Maybe they would make it! Maybe they would disappoint the crowd outside the window.

It was only minutes before they arrived at the hospital, though it seemed like hours to Eddie. As Eddie watched the paramedics prepare to unload Janan's stretcher, he saw a priest walking out of the emergency room doors.

An idea burned in Eddie's mind.

"Wait! Sir!" Eddie hailed the priest as he ran toward him. "Wait. Please!" The old priest looked up, startled by the urgency in Eddie's bloodshot eyes.

"Please. You've got to marry us," Eddie said, pointing at Janan's stretcher. "She's dying. You've got to marry us."

The old priest seemed to be made of stone. Eddie took him by the arm and started after Janan and the paramedics. "Thank you," Eddie said. "Thank you." The white haired priest followed.

Eddie leaned over and whispered into Janan's ear. "Janan, you have to marry me. Just in case. That would make me the next of kin. Authority to have you frozen. Say yes, Janan. Tell the priest you want to marry me."

Janan lay lifeless on the stretcher.

The priest looked at Eddie. "I'm sorry, Son. If she's unconscious, I can't marry you. She has to consent."

The paramedics began to push the stretcher toward the emergency room doors.

"Wait!" Eddie held onto the stretcher, panic in his eyes.

"Son," said the white haired priest as he laid a fatherly hand on Eddie's shoulder, "let them take her to emergency. I'll marry you later, if she lives."

"But what if she dies?"

"If she dies, the marriage won't be necessary."

"No, you don't understand." It took all of Eddie's will to keep his voice respectful. Eddie turned back to Janan. Leaning over the stretcher, he tried again. "Janan. I love you. You have to tell the priest you'll marry me. Please, Janan. Tell him. Please."

Janan barely opened her eyes. Her lips trembled as she tried to form words. It was almost inaudible, but Janan managed two words: "Yes, Eddie."

*****

Nearly twenty four hours later, Walt Hamilton, president of the California Life Extension Foundation, walked into the reception area adjoining the operating room inside the Foundation's facility. Eddie stood, looking anxious, when he saw his friend enter. Walt was dressed in hospital greens.

Walt pulled off his face mask and gown and threw them into a laundry depository as he walked toward Eddie. "Janan's suspension went well, Eddie."

Eddie sat back down in the vinyl waiting room chair, nodded and closed his eyes.

Walt sat down and placed a hand on Eddie's shoulder. "If you hadn't been with her, and if you hadn't gotten that priest to marry you, there wouldn't have been anything we could have done. Without the legal documents, our hands would have been tied."

"Yeah," Eddie said, his voice as swollen as his eyes. "Walt, I want to make sure something like this never happens again."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I don't know. But we've got to make sure, Walt."

Walt nodded. "I never could understand why Janan let her arrangements drop."

Eddie took the gold medic alert bracelet from his pocket and held it in the palm of his hand. "I asked her why," said Eddie, "just before the accident. She said there just never was enough time." Eddie's voice choked again. "Now there really isn't."

*****

Eddie laid the bouquet of red roses atop the dewar which had cradled Janan for almost a year. "Well, Love," Eddie said with a sad smile, "it's our first anniversary."

Reaching down, Eddie touched one of the roses. "I miss you," he said, his lips trembling, "but better this way than to have lost you forever. It was just a matter of minutes, you know."

Shifting his weight, Eddie waited for the lump in his throat to go down. "I've set up a special fund. We call it the Janan Fossbender Fund. After you were suspended, I swore I would find a way to keep something like this from ever happening again."

"We," Eddie lost his voice for a second. "We really go all out these days to be sure our members keep their arrangements current." Eddie did his ridiculous imitation of James Cagney, "We're ruthless, Lady, when it comes to getting what we want."

Eddie fell silent and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he whispered, "Because of you, people will live, now, who might have been lost forever. You're going to find a lot of them standing there to thank you, when you wake up."

Eddie was silent again, holding back his tears. As he turned to leave, he added, "It's become a battle cry, 'Remember Janan'!"

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RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

They were wrapped around each other in a manner unique to limber felines. Each loving head was pillowed on the soft, warm tummy of the other.

Ivory's long, silky body glowed in the dim morning light. Thane was a brawny cat with masculine jowls framing his gray and black zebra-striped face. Thane had impressive cowls on all four paws while Ivory's arms, legs and paws were slender and delicate. Their contrasting bodies gave them both pleasure.

Ivory stretched in a slow, luxurious manner as she rolled over, reaching dainty paws toward the ceiling. With a wide yawn, the snowy whiskers on her tiny pink nose arched forward.

Still asleep, Thane stirred. Ivory's large, blue eyes flashed with mischief as she plopped back over toward Thane and affectionately nipped his muscular thigh.

Thane's head snapped to attention, his ears erect. His pupils were vertical slits within the golden ovals of his eyes. He thought to her, You always want to play! Living with the company shrink hadn't turned out to be at all bad for Thane.

With his prickly tongue, Thane caressed the silky fur on Ivory's leg and heard a soft, happy rumble deep down in her breast as Ivory's eyes narrowed with pleasure.

An amber light flickered on and off in time with the buzz coming from the hexagonal fixture on the wall next to the door. Thane jumped silently from the air sleeper and moved quickly to the other side of the room.

Ivory continued to stretch her snow white body, rolling over and over, enticing Thane to return to her side.

Thane brought his strong hands out of the cowl of his paw and, still watching Ivory, he touched the hexagon on the wall. A memo appeared on the screen.

*****

To: Captain Thane 00:09:14:34

From: Biotech Kirr

Preliminary results from probe finished. M43LV virus. Your presence requested in Biolab at your earliest convenience.

*****

Ivory sat up on the air sleeper, ears straight and alert. When she saw Thane's ears flatten back against his head, she jumped from the bed in a single leap, landing by his side.

As Ivory read the memo, her ears, too, swept back from her face. We'd better get down there, she thought to Thane even as he typed a return message telling Kirr they were on their way.

Moments later the brushed aluminum door to the biology lab swished open as Thane and Ivory approached.

Kirr's ebony face looked up from the computer terminal in front of her. Troubled green eyes encompassed them both as she formed thoughts in her head, I thought you would want to see this as soon as possible. The analysis from the probe isn't good. Earth is no place for us! M43LV virus. Saar had an independent analysis run. Same result.

Where's Saar? asked Thane.

He's on his way here now.

As Kirr communicated, the door opened and Saar entered, carrying the summary from the second analysis of the biological materials brought back by the Earth probe. His green eyes acknowledged them as his thoughts reached out to them, Captain Thane. Dr. Ivory. Kirr. Each nodded in greeting.

Saar continued, This is not a planet we want to visit, I don't care how intriguing their radio transmissions. They may be sincerely trying to communicate with others in the universe--and we wondered why when they told us we were the first extraterrestial to communicate with them--but, no wonder! This is a diseased planet!

What is M43LV virus?, Ivory asked.

Kirr explained, M43LV attacks the brain cells. It destroys their ability to function properly. The afflicted can reproduce, and perform many biological and manipulative functions almost normally, but the ability to perform the higher cognitive functions of reason are severely impaired.

Saar added, If progeny are born with the virus, Ivory, they seldom develop normal thinking functions at all, but just exist as... well, like programmed robots, incapable of independent thought. I've found some unbelievable manifestations in the inhabitants of Earth.

Saar continued, Looking at the historical data we've gathered from their radio transmissions, it appears that M43LV has been epidemic on this planet for millions of years. Felines exist, but have never developed language or any kind of a technological civilization.

What? As the ship's psychological counselor, Ivory found Saar's proclamation difficult to believe.

That's right, Ivory, in fact, there's only one species which has even made preliminary steps in this direction... they call themselves Homo Sapiens. Here's an illustration of the male . Saar pointed at pictures while the others looked on.

Here's the female.

Thane's tail flicked back and forth in agitation as he listened to the report. The thought of felines which had never even developed language made the hair on his tail stand up. His golden eyes were turning green and his thoughts were a whisper of disbelief.

These Homo Sapiens are the only species on earth that have developed any kind of civilization?

Kirr replied, Homo Sapiens seem to have developed more of an immunity to the virus than any other Earth species, or at least to be less affected by it. Earth felines have not resisted it well at all, though.

.There do seem to be limited language abilities in a few species other than Homo Sapiens, added Saar, but it's all vocal. No telepathy. Only these Homo Sapiens have biological vocal apparatus which is conducive to that sort of rudimentary communication. And they seem to be the only ones who have developed even a primitive technology.

All ears were pressed unhappily flat against their heads. Kirr continued, This is the worst of all. At first I couldn't believe it.

Saar added, That's why we had an independent computer analysis run.

Ivory laid her ears back at the innuendo in Saar's remark. Thane's eyes grew round and he planted his feet further apart, waiting to hear the worst.

Kirr continued, We've seen other planets infected with M43LV, and it's not unusual to see the inhabitants fighting and killing each other. But... I know you won't believe this... she held up her paws in a gesture asking them to hear her out, but the computer says that the evidence is indisputable.

Both computers, added Saar.

Kirr paused, as if trying to find some way to say this. These Homo Sapiens have accepted a belief system which embraces total biological disintegration. Not just for their enemies, but for their own families, their loved ones, and... themselves...

Everyone began to communicate disbelief at once.

Saar raised his paws to quiet them and increased the volume of his thoughts in order to be heard over the chaos. I know. I know. I felt the same way. A computer error was easier to believe than... this. But when you look over the data, it's apparent there is no error. It's true!

They exchanged disbelieving glances, tails flicking with vexation.

Ivory placed one delicate paw over her mouth. She felt as if she were going to be sick. Thane pulled her close in an embrace which comforted them both.

Keeping a supportive arm around Ivory's shoulders, Thane turned back to Saar and Kirr. He took a deep breath and asked, Are they all infected? Not a single specimen on the whole planet with normal neurological functions?

Saar answered, Their history records that in the last thousand years or so there have been only a few, here and there over the centuries, which were even partially able to resist the virus and function normally.

Here's a list.

Kirr ran her finger down the short list and enunciated about every fifth name, One by the name of Aristotle and a couple others about 2300 years ago. Then a long period without any at all. Several hundred years later, a few more. Michelangelo, Newton, Currie, Einstein, Rand... the odd thing is that these earlier Homo Sapiens, all dead now, made some astounding intellectual leaps for their time, but none of them grasped the most fundamentally important idea of all... that everything else is meaningless to living creatures, if life is lost.

Unbelievable. It was all Thane could think.

Ivory's psychologically trained mind noticed a small but unusual difference at the bottom of the list. She pointed to the bottom of the paper in Kirr's hand and asked, What's this group here? Compared to the billions populating the Earth, a group of this size is hardly noticeable in most circumstances. But look. Over most of the last two thousand years, only one or two near normal minds existed in each century. Why do we suddenly see this cluster of, what, a couple hundred people?

Kirr answered, Maybe mutations. They aren't in most cases related to each other genetically, but they seem to have independently developed the ability to resist the virus and develop the capability of independent thought.

Saar broke in, This small cluster of Homo Sapiens are the only ones on the entire planet which have rejected the death ethic of the rest of the planet. Most of them may not be making fundamental discoveries in physics or philosophy, but we included them on this list because they all, individually, understand that life is the most fundamental and important goal of all.

Kirr nodded and added, In spite of their primitive science--they haven't even developed a rudimentary form of nanotechnology yet--none the less, they're making an attempt to prevent cellular deterioration by freezing their bodies when they deanimate....

Thane shook his head slowly from side to side in disbelief. Only a couple hundred, out of the billions that inhabit the planet. And not a single feline...

Ivory's brows furrowed. The sadness in her wide eyes was rapidly spreading to the others. Imagine, being one of a handful of living beings, with nothing but death seeking robots around you... Ivory's body shuddered at the thought and she lowered her eyes to the floor.

Kirr thought, Maybe we could rescue them?

Ivory's head snapped upward. Her eyes were glistening.

Saar was animated and eager as he shook his head in agreement, We could send down remotes. We sure wouldn't want to expose any of the crew.

Ivory's soft round face brightened at the thought of some way to help these unfortunates. Thane nodded his agreement as he curled his long tail slowly and happily around his lower leg.

Thane looked at Kirr, Handle arrangements with Medical. Then he turned his eyes to Saar. You take care of organizing the transport. Ivory and I will work out a way to communicate with these Homo Sapiens

*****

Later, Ivory and Thane stood before a star dazzled window watching the transport leave for the planet Earth. The planning of the rescue had filled them with excitement. All they could do now was wait.

They stood side by side, each with all four paws resolutely planted on the floor beneath them. Watching the transport shrink to a speck in the distance, Ivory flicked her tail around Thane's muscular rear leg and leaned against him happily.

Turning his jowled face to Ivory, Thane began to lick the tips of her snow white ears. They were both purring as their tails curled into a proud helix over their backs.

Ivory thought to Thane, What if they don't want to leave their planet?

The choice is theirs, Thane answered.