LifeQuest No. 4

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. NOTHING'S IMPOSSIBLE, By Fred Chamberlain

2. FALSE DOOR, By Linda Chamberlain

3. FLOWERS ALONG A SUNLIT LANE, by Fred Chamberlain

*****

Arnold Devore smiled, his eyes still closed. Suddenly it didn't seem to hurt anymore. His throat had been burning with each gasp of terminal pneumonia. Now he could breathe easily. The air seemed filled with the scent of flowers, and he felt an urge to stretch. Closing his fingers tightly, he sensed the rippling of great muscles in his arms. Was it a dream?

Gripped by an incredible notion, Arnold threw his body upward and forced his eyes open. Moments before he could barely have rolled over in bed; now he flew instantly to a sitting position and found two people in the hospital room, a large man with a powerful chin and a slender young woman whose hair fell softly to her shoulders. Both were smiling. Their faces seemed vaguely familiar. Then he knew who they were, Judy and Sam.

"Damn!" said Arnold, grinning as he sorted out what had taken place. It was as if he were witness to a transformation where two old people, shrunken and shriveled a moment ago, were flung forward in time, into youthful states.

Sam had been a gaunt, hairless ghost, smiling as he fought the final stages of an illness which ended many years of futile suffering. Seven years later Judy, a white haired, diminutive old lady, whispered, "Arnold, you've held on through more than anyone could have asked. Now, my love, it will be over before you know it. I'll be close behind, and I'll see you soon!"

The last thing Arnold recalled, other than struggling for air, fluids strangling his lungs and throat, was the pressure of Judy's hand holding his; then he fell away into blackness. Awake again, this time, he sensed the agony was over for good.

"Welcome back!" cried Judy, tears forming in her eyes. She hesitantly approached the bed, then she hurled herself into his arms. Arnold ran his fingers over her trim body, feeling the wiry strength beneath her female softness. "Don't hold me so tight," Judy giggled, "you're stronger than you think!" They tumbled laughing to the carpeted floor, rolling over and over.

After a few moments, Arnold gently held Judy away from him, drinking her in with his eyes. She was dressed in something like a dress suit with no looseness of material, almost indecently draped and molded to her form. Then he noticed Sam was wearing a tight fitting male garment and was pointing to one for him, hung over what surely must be a chair. Arnold felt himself flush, as he suddenly glanced down and realized he was nude.

"Don't you at least put your patients in pajamas?" he mumbled, slipping into the snug apparel.

"That went out a long time ago," Sam chuckled. "Others like you and I convinced the world it was useless. Oh, for a while we put gowns on people waking up from deep sleep, but they just tore them off to see what their bodies looked like."

Judy smiled. "We have so many ways of looking good there's little reason to conceal anything. Clothes are more an art than a necessity, now. In other ways, you'll see, appearance is less important than ever before."

"Judy's getting ahead of things," Sam interrupted, a trifle nervously. "Why don't you finish zipping that sheath and we'll show you the town."

Getting around had changed, during the many decades Arnold had been frozen. The room's door opened without contact, as he would have expected, but outside Judy and Sam waited while he experimented with his boots, on which he could glide effortlessly along magnetic repulsion strips running down each side of the hallway. At the inner edge of each strip, he found a glittering ribbon which would tug at his boot, speeding the glide, while another at the outer edge would slow him to a halt after a few seconds.

It took only a moment or two to get the hang of it. Had they given him 'sleep learning' before he woke? Many things he seemed to know without asking, like how the intricate zippers on his sheath worked and what was in the belt pack he wore. Words came quickly, more easily, it seemed. Detailed pictures jumped into his mind at the slightest association, and he raced endlessly over ideas and interpretations of what Judy and Sam had said, with no noticeable pause in the conversation. Arnold sensed he was on an extreme caffeine jag, yet there were no jitters. Was all this simply his imagination?

Hospital personnel smiled and greeted Sam and Judy as they passed, and several times Sam stopped, introducing Arnold to old friends he might not have known otherwise. Maybe they wouldn't have recognized him either, he mused after a few such meetings. "Flyin' high!" and "Headin' out!" were common greetings, but he sensed there was more to it than he knew. Had they dosed him with 'uppers' to help him adjust? If so, they all appeared to be taking it themselves.

"Sam, I feel like I'm on some kind of drug," Arnold observed. "And what does 'Flying high' mean? 'Heading out'? Everybody's saying those things!"

Grinning, Sam said, "Arnold, get used to it, it's the way we are, now. No drugs, no withdrawal! 'Flyin' high'? Look, you were out of circulation sixty years. Be glad the lingo didn't shift on you more than that!"

At the center of a larger hallway, they boarded an unoccupied personal carrier, magnetically levitated, Arnold assumed, since even his shoes embodied this technology. Then they sped through the huge hospital to an exterior ramp where the small vehicle flung itself down a launch track, locking to the side of a long module traveling along what appeared to be a monorail.

Arnold judged the speed to be several hundred miles per hour, as the transportation module hurtled among broad based buildings on guideways suspended in midair. It was like flying without wings; the guideway's points of support were far apart, with no cables. Then the transmod guideway tilted up into a climbing spiral and Arnold saw buildings extending for miles above them.

The spiral ended in a vast network of nearly level guideways winding among slender upper extensions of buildings which, miles below, had bases hundreds of yards across. This was a higher terrace of the city, Arnold saw, where the wide spaced structures appeared to be enormous, thick needles hanging in the sky.

The monorails seemed structurally joined where they crossed, but Arnold suspected there would be a noticeable swaying if they weren't traveling so rapidly. Sam commented about how better materials would soon eliminate "all this clutter." Then without warning, the transmod veered into a huge tunnel through one of the spires and the small carrier detached, racing toward an outer wall. Sam had punched in a code for the destination before they left the hospital, and that's all it took, apparently.

Before he knew it, Arnold was seated at a table with Judy and Sam, in a restaurant some eighteen thousand feet above the floor of the city. Gazing out the window, the effect struck him as a futuristic mural, except he knew it was real. The scale was the difficulty. He remembered his first view into the Grand Canyon, looking directly down a chasm perhaps a thousand feet deep. It was the same, here. Then Arnold remembered he'd traversed more than half a century in the wink of an eye and was already beginning to take that for granted.

"So you fixed the freezing damage and gave me a new body?" Arnold asked. He looked first to Sam, who was studying the menu on a video screen in the surface of the table, and then to Judy, who was doing the same thing.

Judy nodded, but her mind seemed more on the food than the question. Arnold studied her features, an almost hypnotic portrait in delicacy and strength. They'd been married fifty years; everything that made sense told Arnold it was the same Judy he'd grown part of, but there was a new element, intangibly foreign. Judy's energy and her physical youth, driven by eighty seven years' experience, were awesome; still, it was more than that. Arnold remembered Judy as she looked when he first met her. A picture flashed to mind, almost unreal in clarity. Then he saw images of Judy as she aged. Like the first picture, they were sharp, unfaded. It became like watching a movie, seeing Judy grow old and then jump to the present, with a shift of some kind he could not pinpoint. He sensed it had to do with the crystal clear pictures which filled his head. He could feel it--his brain was better somehow. What had they done to him? Had they done something like that to her, too?

"So how did they fix the ice crystal damage in the brain?" Arnold prompted, again. He did his best to ask the question as if it had no particular significance.

Sam had already ordered, selecting his choices via the touch pads below the video menu, and Arnold and Judy had done the same. There were no remaining distractions, yet, shaking his head, Sam seemed stumped.

"We're psychologists, aren't we?" Sam said, as he looked up.

Arnold nodded.

"Whatever I tell you has to 'fit' a framework in your mind, doesn't it? If things are missing, explanations have to include them, right? Suppose you asked questions I could only answer in terms of factor analysis, but you had no knowledge of statistics? I'd ask you to be patient, wouldn't I?"

Arnold's face took on a hint of worry.

"Smile, Arnold," Judy laughed. "You pioneered that therapy, remember? Use it yourself!"

Arnold began smiling again; yes, the James-Lange law still worked as well as it always had, maybe better! Closure patterns in his mind shifted subtly; everything took on glowing, positive overtones.

"Go one step at a time," Sam went on. "You have a new body, like you said, a clone. That part worked out as you would have expected. Your brain, of course, is a reconstruction."

"But the damage? How did you fix it?"

"Forget the damage! How do you feel?"

"Fine!"

"No question of who you are?"

"Never crossed my mind."

"Think about your childhood. Do you have consistent, clear memories?"

Arnold thought, visualized. The old farm was there, along with his high school days. An earlier marriage, then his first memories of Judy. The very act of visualizing those things had a familiar feel. The strange thing was the sharpness, the ease of it. He remembered the old wives' tale about one's life "flashing before the eyes" at the moment of death. It certainly hadn't happened with him, when he died of pneumonia, yet now it seemed the effect was achievable by a simple act of will.

"Sam, it's all there, but it's so definite, so godawful sharp, and there's so much of it!"

"But no gaps? No missing elements? Places you think you should remember something but don't?"

"No, but I want to know about the brain damage. When I was frozen, crystals still tore apart the cell membranes. There were huge cracks across dozens of neurons in the ice matrix. They must use exotic applications of nanotechnology now, right? Do the replicators fix frozen brains while they're still solid, or is the reconstruction done at higher temperatures?"

Sam sighed. "Arnold, do me a favor. Look around and soak up the surroundings for a few days. Relax, and enjoy being with Judy. We had a professional partnership before, and we'll pick up there again, if you like, but for the moment just let yourself acclimate."

Arnold eased back and his eyes narrowed. "Why don't you want to talk about this, Sam? You know I have the background. You were still up and around when molecular assemblers started making copies of themselves. They were starting to use them for medical repair while I was still alive, years after you were frozen. In some ways, my background is better than yours."

Sam smiled implacably, "Let me be the therapist for two days, and you can go on from there."

Arnold grinned back. "All right, Sam, but you know what I'm asking. Tailor your 'therapy' around that!"

Judy reached out and softly stroked Arnold's arm. He turned; she winked and said, "I'm the first part of the 'therapy'. This evening is mine!"

*****

The apartment was spacious, even higher above the city than the restaurant, so it seemed one looked down from the dwelling's balcony into the depths of an endless complexity from a vehicle suspended in midair.

"Our place," Judy said softly. "I've spent the last five years here. Your brain damage complications were terrible, and it took a lot more to get you back than Sam and I. I can't tell you how lonely I've been, but all these things of ours have kept me company."

The lofty home was filled with possessions Judy had stored for them. Handling them helped Arnold grasp that his past life was real, not a dream to be tossed aside for new experiences, as if he'd suddenly sprung to life with no former existence.

His books, printed paper, were now antique treasures. He turned pages in an old leather binder filled with handwritten ideas of his that might seem naive now, but they were roots, the foundation of his mind. The ancient folded optics telescope made him chuckle, as he opened the wooden box and cradled the cylinder in his hands. He could tune dozens of space observatories from their apartment, viewing with screens so sharp they exceeded the resolution of his eyes, but he knew he would never get rid of the old relic he'd purchased more than a century before.

Arnold finally stood looking down from within the balcony's sliding glass doors, gazing as if in a trance at the ceaseless motion of the city's evening lights miles below. Then curtains swept across the panorama, blocking his view, the lights dimmed, and strange, pulsating music filled the air.

An undercurrent of drums with melodies and harmonies of their own supported a magical tapestry of flutelike tones in higher domains. The blend was a brutally strong base with layer upon layer of finer and more delicate structures above it. The music reminded Arnold of the city; then other forms took shape and the city vanished.

The effect was incredible because there were so many visual components. Arnold found he pictured a fabric of astronomical size woven from burned out stars, which enclosed others still burning, pouring out mass and energy to be efficiently funneled to the use of stellar developments beside which the city below would have been a microscopic anthill. Never before had music led so directly to graphic concepts, and Arnold found himself wondering if new pathways in the brain had been found for music to evoke ideas of an abstract, geometric kind. Then he detected movement of light on the curtain which now concealed his view of the city, shadows cast from immediately behind him.

Arnold turned and Judy was moving toward him. All he could see was a dark red glowing wall behind her, the color of a desert sunset, silhouetting the sensuous motions of her bare figure and drifting loose hair as she advanced on her toes. Even as he felt his body respond, Arnold found himself fascinated, watching Judy match her actions to the music, arching her back and lifting her hips in ways which followed the pulsating undertones while her fingers danced against the burning red wall so as to echo the highest pitched flutes.

Judy crawled into Arnold's arms and hungrily wrapped herself around him, unzipping his sheath so it fell away like a cape from his neck. He lowered her to the cushioned floor and for a moment paused, absorbed in the glow of the wall softly lighting her perfect form. Then he felt his body drawn down, gripped in the field of an irresistible force. Over the hours that followed there were waves of rapture and spells of calm. It was as if they drifted on a sea torn by a chain of storms. In the end, exhausted, they slept.

Arnold woke. He'd dreamed someone came to take his new body away, a formless shape

leaving him not with an older body but no body at all. He was a wraith, hiding in the information content of old hardbound books, moving from appendices to index sections and from book to book, fearful of being erased, slipping from one shelf to another as great hands reached out, snatching books by the dozen to find him. He sprang into a computer only to find it on fire, hid within a buried depository of microfilm even as it was engulfed by magma, and then took refuge in the crystal core of an asteroid hurtling into a star, evaporating in a sudden flare with so little warning there was no escape from oblivion.

Still shaking and drenched with sweat, Arnold found he'd rolled over several times on the carpet from the point where the last love making with Judy had left them sleeping. Judy's form, outlined against the deep red wall, gently moved in the rhythmic pattern of dreamless sleep. As Arnold tucked his hands under his head and stared at the ceiling, he realized for the first time it was a dimly glowing celestial map. Why did Sam balk whenever the subject of brain repair came up?

Arnold squinted at the ceiling, tracing patterns of stars to the edge of the room where they faded into the luminescent walls. The chart was oriented on the galactic plane, bespeaking concern with travel rather than with sky watching. There were dots with a vectorial character which could not have been stars. Pulsing gently, they reminded him of beacons or buoys like those needed for navigation among shoals of an uneven coastline, but he sensed they were something altogether different.

For a while, he tried to work out where the sun lay and what would be there if the ceiling were extended. It was unexpectedly easy, but there was no satisfaction in it. On a sudden urge he sprang to his feet, imagining himself a caged jungle cat, pacing the room, visualizing bars which might have separated him from invisible onlookers. Finally he stepped into the bathroom and entered a shower enclosure shaped like a huge, flat bottomed egg. A cloud of needle-like water streams impinged on him from all angles and he relaxed in the hot vortex, his mind spinning like a flywheel with no friction to slow or restrain it.

Things seemed out of place. Sam and Judy had steered the discussions all day, avoiding many topics other than just brain repair. Judy vehemently denied that anything was wrong after a lengthy stop in the restroom; all he had done was ask if she were all right. At one point on a tour through an entertainment park, upon coming to a show titled "Ideas on Identity", Sam and Judy had hurried him on to a different attraction.

It was just before they fell asleep that Arnold's sense of uneasiness came to a climax. Lying with Judy on the cushioned carpet, he ran his hand over the top of her head and noticed a slight indentation in her skull. He stroked the area a second time, tracing its contours, and Judy suddenly jerked and said, "Arnold, don't!"

There was a shocked silence; then Judy continued in an embarrassed tone, "They do surgery, and it leaves a spot under your hair. You shouldn't touch it while you're still healing."

"But you've had five years, and it feels like it's not solid, as if there's an opening!"

"It's still sensitive; I don't want you to touch it." She looked away, cornered and at a loss for words.

Arnold felt the top of his own head. Yes, there was an area like that where his scalp was loose also; it almost had an itchy sensation.

"Arnold, please don't touch your head," Judy insisted. "Wait 'till your checkup next week." She continued to fumble for words and he let the matter drop.

Arnold finished his shower and returned to the dimly lit room, opening the drapes so the city's lights flooded up from the lower terraces. Judy was breathing peacefully as he slipped on his sheath, picked up his belt pack with entry passes and credit cards, and went out into the world.

A twenty four hour world, they'd told him, and it was more apparent now, gliding down crowded feeder halls of the gigantic apartment building at four in the morning. Arnold's use of the glideways had become so automatic he was not worried he would stand out in some way. "Flyin' high!" he smiled to a couple leaving a hallside communication booth, still unsure of what it might mean. Then he entered and began searching directories.

Libraries were under 'Information Services'. Arnold called; they were open around the clock. Hailing an unused carrier, he tapped in a destination code; minutes later he stepped out at a large building which was still, clearly, a library. Inside, it took only minutes to master the use of access terminals for files not available in any home. Dawn was just breaking outside the huge, vertical slabs of glass which lined the library's walls when he hit pay dirt.

Except it seemed more like a horror story. Arnold called up newspaper files and raced back in time to the year he was frozen. Then he crept forward, sometimes glimpsing only headlines and sometimes stopping to read, unaware even of where newspapers ceased being printed and became exclusively accessible through video displays.

"Cryonicists Riot in the Streets!" "Right to Ice!" "HEW Approves Freezing for Social Security Recipients!" These things he might have guessed, but then the chilling part started. "No Way to Fix Frozen Brains, States Surgeon General!" "Research Group Licks Brain Damage Problem." "Religious Groups Horrified At Brain-Fix Solution!" "It isn't Human!"

He sped forward to the present date, July 16, 2076. No sign of controversy. Backward again. Things were still chaotic as of twenty years ago. Forward a little. There! "Artificial Brains Get Surgeon General Acceptance." Five years further, the titles shouted, "Hyperbrains And Omnibrains Approved As Transplants." Two more years; now, sarcasm ruled. "You're Still Biobrain? You're Braindead, Bozo!"

"Oh no!" gasped Arnold. He ran his fingers through his hair. Except for the unnatural depression, his head felt fully normal. The sensation of his fingers digging into his scalp seemed real enough. He swept his eyes around the room. The resolution was excellent; could it be video?

His memories? He pictured the old tree in the back yard at the farm where he grew up. It was crystal clear. He imagined the rope ladder hanging from the entry hole in the floor of the tree house and saw the texture, felt the old scrap boards from which the tree house was built. He heard cows in the pasture a hundred yards away, on the other side of the vegetable garden, smelled the dew on the fresh cut grass below the tree...

He had to get out of there. What about that show at the entertainment park? As Arnold got to his feet, he felt unsteady, and his vision seemed to flicker. What was wrong? He smiled, strongly and voluntarily, and the flickering disappeared. The James-Lang feedback principle seemed embellished, enhanced. What about other brain functions? Did they operate in an upgraded way also? He glanced at his watch, a film adhering electrostatically to his thumbnail, and was shocked; he'd been in the library less than two hours. After a moment, his equilibrium restored, Arnold proceeded to an exit.

Outside, the fragrant air of a summer morning greeted him. He had noticed before the profusion of trees and flowers, woven into exposed areas everywhere, but now the smell of fresh cut grass was especially pungent. For a moment Arnold paused under an overhang which would shelter those who might emerge into a rainstorm, observing the whole area might as easily have been enclosed. The only explanation was a craving for exposure to the elements on the part of the designers, integrated into the general architecture of the entire city.

Arnold entered an empty carrier and used his credit key to indicate the entertainment park as the destination. As he moved off, just before the carrier sped down its launch track to lock with a transportation module, Arnold glanced back. Two figures resembling Judy and Sam had emerged from the library, but Arnold couldn't be sure. During the several minutes it took to reach the park, he leaned back and relaxed, letting himself doze.

This time, Arnold did not hurry. He bought a snack and sat on a bench among flower beds, reminded of the old Disneyland parks. People flowed by; from what he knew, most of them didn't have biological brains. He was nearly certain, now, that the same was true of him. What had gone wrong?

After awhile, he entered the "Ideas on Identity" show and took a seat near the back. The seat adjusted itself to his form perfectly, lights dimmed and his seat tilted back, lifting his feet. The ceiling was the screen, the theater designed as if for use as a planetarium. Titles began appearing, awesome holograms which seemed to be almost within reach of his fingers. This was an expensive production even in terms of the present technology, Arnold observed. Why spend so much money on a topic like this?

The show began and a face appeared. It was Sam's, aged and wrinkled; he must have been seventy. What could Sam have said which would fit with this show?

"We know the brain is composed of independent entities, tens of millions of clusters of neurons, hundreds of different types, interacting to produce what we call 'consciousness'," said Sam. "But few of us are willing to accept the conclusion which so obviously follows. If we were to synthesize these clusters and unite them properly, according to specific maps of our brains, we would be duplicating our minds."

It's true Sam said that, thought Arnold, but it was only an abstract idea at the time; everyone laughed at him. Even after he was frozen, few really thought it would someday be possible. Then a young Sam's face appeared, not the Sam of half a century ago, but the Sam who greeted him in the hospital room only the previous day.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this idea is old," the young Sam went on. "It's been waiting in the wings almost a century, but it's central to all the turmoil we've faced in the last thirty years." The huge holographic picture exposed minute details in Sam's face, and Arnold saw more continuity with features of the man who had been his partner so long ago. There was a student of Sam's, he recalled, Sjmansky, who published a number of brilliant papers on artificial brains after Sam died, but Sjmansky had a terminal illness himself, and was near death when Arnold was in the final stages of pneumonia.

"Initially, everyone tried to avoid artificial brains," Sam was saying. "No one could have guessed we would converge on them as a final solution, but having crossed over, now, there is no way back. We must try to understand how it happened. We must be completely confident we have not 'dehumanized' ourselves. Watch the pictures which follow. We'll take you for a journey you'll find absolutely fascinating."

The story of artificial brains took shape. One narrator's voice, not Sam's, was uncannily familiar even though the speaker was not shown. Then Arnold was startled by a picture flashing to mind, one of the people to whom he'd been introduced as they left the hospital. Why was he so sure? The association between the narrator's voice and the image was as firm as his memories of his childhood, but how could he have such a clear recollection on the basis of a momentary meeting?

Conceptually, things became clearer as the show progressed. Early "hyperbrains" involved only strict duplication, neuron by neuron. Then the term became generic for all artificial minds. "Omnibrains" were more recent, where large groups of neurons as units were functionally synthesized on higher levels.

"Omnibrain" was trademarked, claims being it provided higher speed of thought, easier updates, and better modularity. The subjective experience was indistinguishable, and people were now switching back and forth, using different modules day to day the way they changed clothes for different occasions. There were 'rate of thought' limits due to interfaces with biobodies, but Omnibrain was working around these. With Omnibrains, the story continued, there could be interchanges. A pianist and violinist exchanged submodules; now both could perform equally well on both instruments. Higher level transfers were nearly ready; it looked like memory exchange without an audio-visual bottleneck would be available by Christmas.

Arnold felt a desperate anxiety, a panic reaction. Now he sensed what mental patients he treated must have felt. He began exploring the top of his head with his fingertips. As he did so, a pair of small hands began squeezing his tense neck muscles from behind; Judy brought her head up next to his and began nibbling his ear.

"You broke and ran!" she whispered. "We couldn't tell you; all the studies show it's better if you find out on your own. I'm sorry I snapped when you touched my head! I didn't know how to keep from letting the cat out of the bag."

Arnold turned and his disorientation increased; then he let Judy cradle his head in her arms and bury him in kisses, feeling himself swept back to the evening before. In a few moments his sense of reality returned. When he finally untangled himself, he saw Sam in the seat next to Judy's, smiling.

"We knew you'd take off," Sam said in a low voice, "but we didn't know when. Do you want to come outside and talk, now, or would you rather see the rest of the show and figure it all out for yourself?"

Arnold hesitated. Then he said quietly, "Oh, what the hell! Are you ready to level with me?"

Sam grinned. "Let's go!" he whispered.

Outside, they settled themselves on benches among the flowers again. "You can see now why we hustled you past that show," Judy laughed. "You weren't ready to see Sam's face on the screen."

"The term 'brain' has a lot more latitude than the old days, doesn't it?" Sam added. "They'd already switched to hyperbrains by the time Judy and I woke up. It was even a shock for me, even though I'd always thought it would be possible. Of course, the raw data is still there for all of us."

"Raw data?"

"You know, the original frozen brains. They map them and replicate neurons and interconnects in an identity module about the size of a pack of cough drops. No more hard wiring as of two years ago, they just put an interface in your head. Slip in the module and guess what? Ta-Dah!!! 'Arnold Devore, in the flesh!' The pun is intentional."

Sam looked like an incarnation of the Cheshire Cat. Judy was chuckling as if it were a joke. Their brains were still frozen, yet here they were as if that were perfectly normal. And what of him? He was beginning to take it for granted! Arnold shuddered, still coming to grips with it. "My real brain is still frozen, in a capsule somewhere?"

Judy laughed. "Solid as rock... except where replicators squeezed in to trace neuron interconnects and record synapse characteristics. Maybe someday they'll be able to fix neurons biologically; for now, that's beyond the state of the art."

"Beyond the 'state of the art'? But then how..."

"Simulating neurons is easy," Sam filled in. "If we were pressed, we could pack a human brain into a cubic centimeter. Memory mapping is easy. People hated the idea of artificial brains in the beginning, but ten years later almost everyone switched over. Those people's brains are frozen, too, along with ours, but we can't imagine why any of us would ever go back to them."

"But I'm nothing but a machine!" Arnold objected. "You and Judy are machines; all these people around us, these cities--full of them! Is that all there is? Are there any people with normal 'biobrains' left? Anywhere?"

"Look, Arnold!", said Sam. "Even now, there are tribes of primitives which don't use immunization; some people in this city still think their minds are spirit things running around in their heads independent of brains. Of course there are biobrains... a vanishing minority. Still, even a hundred years from now it wouldn't surprise me if there were a few around."

"But to just switch over to a 'machine' brain? To go back and forth from one type to another, all the time? How do you know what's 'you' anymore?"

Judy took Arnold's hand and drew him close, turning him to her, and he gazed into her blue-gray eyes. She'd outlived him seven years before she was frozen. Now she'd spent five more years waiting. What about last night, in the room with the sunset walls and the star filled ceiling? Her sultry magnetism was irresistible, even now, sitting on a park bench surrounded with flowers. How could she be a machine? It didn't make any sense!

"Arnold," she said, "When you get a chance to dig more into the 'transformation', as it's called--Sam has a whole historical series on it--you'll get a better sense of the horror the world went through. First, artificial brains were used to get back researchers they thought could help develop ways to repair brains biologically; it was supposed to be very limited, used with only a few great minds of their times, before they were frozen. There were endless objections, but all the people with frozen relatives kept screaming 'bring back the artificial brain researchers', to speed up reanimation development work.

"But you see, it backfired. The scientists they brought back with artificial brains showed how much more technology was needed for repairing frozen biobrains, beyond anything expected. Then there was the real clincher... they said they wouldn't go back to biobrain anyway, and told everybody else they were crazy to keep them."

Arnold began to grin. "Sjmansky?"

"Yes, Sjmansky!" Sam laughed. "Can you imagine how that made them feel? They brought him out with an artificial brain, hoping he'd want to be rid of it... and he loved it! He was the first to say he wouldn't go back to biobrain, and challenged opponents to bring others back, every level of intelligence, to see what they had to say about it."

"Was that the study the Surgeon General based the conversion decision on?"

"No," said Judy. "That was only on people who were already frozen. Sjmansky settled that, once and for all. But then the conversion thing was..."

"Let me tell it, Judy," Sam interrupted. "Arnold, I'd give anything to have been there. One of Sjmansky's people wanted to make the jump, so they bootlegged it; no one knew until it was done. He woke up with an early hyperbrain. It could have been reversed; they'd have switched him back if he'd wanted them to. His biobrain was still at normal body temperature, artificial circulation, sedation, ready to go back in if he'd had qualms.

"Anyway, he took one look at the biobrain and said, 'I never want to see the damned thing again; freeze it!' When news of that hit the videos it was the last straw. All the people without hyperbrains were jealous; we think faster, memories more vivid, you know what it's like! Now there was incredible public pressure for conversions; no way the agencies could hold out. Almost everyone made the jump as soon as it was approved."

Judy raised her hands. "At first, people like us--from the past--think it's awful, but after five years, I have a hard time trying to see why. So many advantages!"

"Like what?"

"Like having copies of the modules, updating each night. If we got wiped out by accident, like orbit entry collision or solar flare with too little shielding? We lose a day or so, but..."

"But I still don't get it!" Arnold objected. "It's not the same 'you', starting over like that!"

"Oh no? What do you suppose you're doing, right now? What about all those hyperbrain conversions when they made the jump? What happens when someone updates an 'Omni' from a 'hyper' and then switches back the next day?"

Arnold was thoughtfully quiet for a moment.

"There are other things, too," Judy added, grinning, "like new ways to enjoy life. We're going for a swim this afternoon, but it won't be like any swim you ever took before. We have a choice of outer forms, now that we have identity modules."

Arnold watched, fascinated, as Judy took from her belt pack a slim rectangular object and handed it to him. Its texture was that of black glass, its weight a bit less than if it were a solid bar of metal. About a half inch thick, he judged; maybe two by five inches in surface area.

"That's me, Arnold. The 'real' me," Judy said. "It's like what's in my head, except it's been four hours since updating. That's what I was doing in the restroom; my first moments with you were so precious I couldn't take any chance on their being lost." "So if something happened to you..."

"You'll never lose me, now, Arnold, and I'll never lose you! Now, let's go for that swim."

*****

When they alighted from the carrier at the seaside resort, Arnold was mystified. Judy had made a point of being secretive about it. One thing she showed him on the way, however, was the updating process. Simple! You placed two clips on an earlobe with a fine wire to the spare module. Three minutes later, a low tone sounded, and the update was complete. Judy insisted Arnold bring an extra module with him, and now she was telling him he would be 'going to sleep' in some way. What was she up to?

Within the resort, they were shown to a private room, where an attendant asked for their modules. Then they were requested to lie down and the attendant connected them as if an update were to be performed. Arnold finally said, "Judy, what's going on? What does this have to do with swimming?"

Judy smiled. "Arnold, I know we're rushing you, but this is the latest fad; everyone's doing it. The updated module goes in a vehicle, and the module in your head is on hold, like you were sleeping. You have a swim in the vehicle; then the module in your head updates to add the experience. It's like you were teleported into the vehicle and then back into your body."

"But why don't we just climb into the vehicle and ride? Is it so dangerous?"

"Trust me, Arnold," Judy said. "This is one vehicle you can't just climb into. Now come on; this is going to be more fun than a barrel of fish!"

The open ocean was clear and cool as Arnold surged through it at thirty five miles per hour, closely followed by Judy and Sam. He flexed ten thousand pounds of muscle and headed for the surface five hundred feet away. As his huge Orca body hurtled a dozen yards into the air, he had a spectacular view of giant waves breaking on all sides; then he plunged back into the water and raced down to the canyon they were touring below. Through sonic links, he spoke with Judy and Sam as easily as if they were seated beside him at a cocktail table.

There were physical sensations he could never have imagined. Frigid ocean water rushing over his dorsal fin was like a cool breeze on a human face, but there was a difference, as between butterscotch and chocolate. As he whipped his tail and shot down an underwater gorge it reminded him of jumping a log in a forest, magnified a thousandfold. He halted before a crevice, his great eyes peering into it, pectoral fins shifting his mass back and forth so he could get a better view. With a slim eel's body and auxiliary lights, he knew he could probe its depths. Next week, perhaps.

*****

As evening fell, they were back at the apartment and Arnold sat holding an identity module, awed by the idea that he could move from body to body and even from module to module as if by magic.

"Sam, all that familiarity when I woke up, was it some kind of implant learning?"

Laughing, Sam shook his head. "We had talks with you under hypnosis, to give you a sense of what you'd find when you woke up. People from the past have adaptation problems; a lot of the therapy we do these days is in that area."

Arnold placed his identity module on a glass table, studying its appearance. If it were within a small space vehicle, could his memories be recovered as he plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere or even into the sun? He understood, now, the meaning of the ceiling's star maps. People like himself were already out there, no time limits holding them back. At destinations they would construct suitable bodies or vehicles. En route, visible to those on Earth only as anomalous points of light on star maps, they were bathed in a continuous stream of media flowing after them at the speed of light.

"Sam, what's research in psychology like these days?" Arnold asked.

Sam shrugged. "Some of us want to see if purely artificial intelligence can be made sentient. There's still a long way to go, there. I'm working on add-ons for Omnibrains, with extra memory, communication links, you name it. It's a kind of 'inner space' adventure. By the way, the most exotic treat yet is going up in large birds. Seems like everyone's done it at least once; that's where 'Flyin' high!' comes from."

"Flyin' high!" mused Arnold. "Compared with riding on an interstellar probe, that's like a microbe going for a swim near the bottom of a culture dish!"

Judy smiled happily. "I'm glad to hear you say that," she said, "because one of those probes out there has 'seats' on it for us. All we do is transmit data for making a set of modules and updating, and it will be like "beaming aboard". When someone says, 'Headin' out!' now, you know what they're talking about."

Arnold tickled her. "And if we want to come back?"

"Simple," she laughed. "Beam an update back here, and let the modules on the probe sleep awhile."

"What if we want to be out there and back here at the same time, Sam?" Arnold asked. "Can we recombine later, or will we have two people who stay apart permanently? And what if Judy and I want a total exchange of memories and other modules? Except it would be like merging, wouldn't it, no need for two of us?"

"Fascinating questions, Arnold!" Sam replied. "Maybe you'll stick around for at least a little while and help with a sequel we're working on for the "Ideas on Identity" show. We're going to call it 'Nothing's Impossible'!"

[][][][][][][][][][]

RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS

A white paper napkin was being twisted around the fingers of the man staring out the cafeteria window. The napkin twister was Dr. Henry Graham, obviously part of the technical staff. One could always tell. The administrators wore suits, often three piece, but the techies were usually found in running shoes and T-shirts or those plaid, long sleeve wool shirts.

Two other members of the technical staff walked by the table, their lunch trays in hand. One was Dr. Joan Van Randall, Graham's Section Head. They stopped when they saw Graham.

"Henry Graham," said the plumpish woman, her eyes wandering involuntarily, "this is John Langley from MIT." Graham stood and extended his hand to the stranger. Van Randall continued, "Here for a couple of weeks to work with us on the new generation of biological repair replicators." Van Randall turned back to John Langley. "Graham is head of the perfusate team."

Langley and Graham shook hands. "Nice to meet you, Dr. Graham. Dr. Van Randall let me look at the work you've been doing with the new perfusate. I'm honored to be working with you."

"Join us?" asked Graham's boss.

"Thanks, no. I'm waiting for a friend."

"How'd the meeting with Dr. Angerson go?" asked Van Randall, her voice wry, as if reflecting some unspoken but well understood evaluation of the person mentioned.

"I had to change the meeting for after lunch. My friend had something urgent to see me about. Now, she's late and I'm close to being late for that meeting." Graham looked anxiously at his watch and then out the window again.

"One doesn't miss a funding meeting with the head of the Biostasis Department to lunch with a girlfriend, Graham." Van Randall made the parting comment over her shoulder as she and John Langley moved toward a table that was becoming vacant.

Dr. Graham started to object, to explain; Rhoni wasn't a girlfriend--but what good would it do? Van Randall was already a table length away, engrossed in conversation with John Langley.

Graham was agitated as he sat back down and looked at his watch again, then out the window. He'd told Rhoni about his meeting--what it would take to move it to later in the day--how important it was! How could she do this to him? Would she never stop acting like life was just some kind of a game?

The more he looked at his watch, the angrier he became. Well, it was time she was taught to take his life a little more seriously! He would get up and leave. Right now! When she finally arrived and called his office with one of those outlandishly concocted excuses of hers, his secretary would say he was unavailable for the rest of the afternoon. The way she had begged and pleaded for him to bend his day into a helix--just to hear about her latest big discovery--well, she could have at least been on time!

His face red with anger, Henry Graham stood and pushed back his chair. Turning toward the cafeteria entrance, he was startled by what sounded like an invasion by a paddywagon full of escaping cats all heading directly for his table. What was really coming at him was Rhoni Bell, hopping and running through the maze of tables, leaving an angry wake of disturbed diners behind her.

Under a wild outcrop of hay colored hair, Rhoni Bell wore large horn rimmed glasses, one of the earpieces being held together with a safety pin. She had on the khaki pants and shirt archaeologists always seem to wear. Yanking off her glasses, she stashed them on top of her hay stack hair, stuffed her hands into her pockets, and grinned at Graham. "Hi Hank! I'm sorry I'm late!"

The respectable diners around them were visibly annoyed by this undisciplined display of excitement. Graham saw Joan Van Randall's eyebrow raise a little across the room.

"Sit down, Rhoni, please!" Discomfort covered Graham's face as he motioned at his unreserved companion. He lowered his voice to an angry whisper, hoping to quiet Rhoni in the process. He threw the twisted, shredded napkin on the table. "This is the last time you're going to do this to me, Rhoni! I can't believe you're late. I told you I had to move an important meeting. Now I'm almost late..."

Rhoni Bell sat down and held out her hands in front of her. "Hank! Whoa! Hank!" She was still grinning as she gulped a deep breath and leaned forward. "I'm sorry, Hank. I am. I'll slash my wrists!"

"Oh, sure. You're sorry. That's supposed to make it okay. Well, I'm sorry, too, because lunch is over! I've got a meeting to go to."

"Phew! Aren't we being dramatic!" Rhoni sat back in her chair with her arm draped over the back.

"Rhoni, you and I have known each other since college. And you've gotten me into one mess after another. But not today. I have to make this meeting. It's important!"

Rhoni Bell put an embellished pout on her face but said nothing.

"Sometimes you can be so irresponsible!" Hank sighed. "I'm not kidding, Rhoni. I have to leave. I'm going to be late for the meeting. And you just don't keep Dr. Angerson waiting and expect to get your funding renewed! Sorry, got to go."

Hank stood, but Rhoni grabbed the sleeve of his T-shirt and pulled it down to the table. "No, Hank! Really, this can't wait for some silly meeting!"

Hank looked at his distorted T-shirt and was aware of the disapproving looks around him. He pulled Rhoni's hands off his shirt and sat back down, lowering his voice to an angry whisper again. "Rhoni, this isn't some game!"

It was then that Hank lost the battle. Rhoni broke into the most uncontained smile Hank had ever seen on her face--and big smiles were Rhoni's trademark. "I'll give you a guarantee, Hank. If you aren't one hundred percent satisfied that this is the most important finding of the 21st Century, and if your bumpkin headed Dr. Angerson doesn't agree, I'll support you in the manner to which you would like to become accustomed, and I will do so for the rest of your elongated life, or until you find a wife to do it for you. Okay?" She leaned forward, put her nose against his, eyeball to eyeball, and waited.

Hank almost forgot the disapproving faces around them as he broke into a grin, then a chuckle. Rhoni Bell was like a cat with five legs and two tails--always disrupting things--but she spread sunshine as she tumbled through life. "Okay, Rhoni. I'll give you sixty seconds to convince me. What's this all about?"

"You've got to come over to the diggings to see for yourself, Hank."

"Be serious, Rhoni! I can't leave. My meeting really is important. This is the review to get more funding for my perfusate work."

"I'm not kidding, Hank. About my guarantee. I mean it. You will hate yourself... forever... if you don't come."

"Can't you just tell me?"

"It's too incredible! I want you to see it for yourself."

"We can go tonight, after I leave the lab."

Rhoni shook her head. "Every minute counts, Hank. Tonight might be too late." She stood and took him by the arm and said, "Come on, Hank. We can't talk here."

Before Hank Graham knew how it happened, Rhoni had gotten him to call Dr. Angerson with the excuse that a personal crisis made it impossible for him to be at the meeting. He was flying across town in a monorail headed for the archaeological diggings in the foothills, listening to Rhoni Bell, his archaeologist college buddy--and many times nearly the cause of major disasters in his life--chatter with inexhaustible enthusiasm about another of her fantastic finds. She was always onto something fantastic, but she assured Hank that this was the most humungous fantastic thing she had found so far!

"My partner Al, I wish I had gotten you two together! You two have a lot in common. Al was carrying on his own secret investigation down there," continued Rhoni non-stop. "I was the only one who knew about it. He'd sworn me to secrecy. If the University had found out, they'd have canned us both. He was a little crazy, I guess, but trying to stop Al would have been like holding out a hand in front of a moving monorail. Guess I was crazy, too. Should have stopped him... he was crushed in that cave-in, you know. When the rescue crew got to him... well... they're still not sure if he'll make it." "You told me about the cave-in, and about your partner. I'm sorry to hear he's still in critical condition."

"Hell, Al's a pain in the ass," Rhoni said too bravely. "But he has a sparkle in him. Something rare. We understand each other. Things nobody else can. Not even you, Hank. He wanted so badly to see it! And he was so close!"

"See what?"

"Well, I figured the least I could do for him was to take my video camcorder down and record it for him. If he pulls through, that would be better than missing it altogether."

"Miss what? Come on, now. You got me to cancel my meeting. Now, tell me what I've lost five year's funding over!"

Rhoni laughed teasingly. "Is this a new side of you, Hank? You're usually so proper. I've never seen anyone who could make mountains move like you can when you want to. But you aren't one to bustle. What's this enthusiasm?" Rhoni moved closer to Hank. "Level with me, now. Did you peek at your Christmas presents when you were a kid?"

"Rhoni..."

"I bet you did! But you don't have to confess to any of your deep, wicked, painful secrets! We're still friends, no matter how naughty you were as a child."

"Rhoni, level, or I go back to the lab."

"We're only another fifteen minutes from the site. Can't you wait just a teensy-weensy fifteen minutes?"

"No, I can't."

Rhoni smiled. "Okay, Hank the Impatient. Al and I were digging into the spillings of that old volcano that erupted just after the turn of the century. When it erupted like it did, suddenly and without warning, it covered several square blocks of office buildings. A pocket was created--you know, kind'a like Pompeii."

"I know all that, Rhoni. Come on. Stop stalling."

Rhoni unzipped her backpack and took out a package of sliced carrots, offering one to Hank. Hank took a couple and munched, happy to be with Rhoni when she was in this euphoric and stormy state. Being the subdued, responsible type, he always swore he'd never let Rhoni get him into another jam with her immature, capricious approach to life. But he couldn't resist her when she was like this. She infected him with an excitement he never seemed to find anywhere else. "Come on, now. Give with the good stuff."

Rhoni leaned over and lowered her voice in a conspiratorial manner. Hank automatically responded by leaning forward too.

"Al had two favorite subjects," said Rhoni, "the Egyptians and the early Cryonicists." Hank's eyes widened, the latter being one of his own favorites.

"I've been meaning to have the two of you over to my place for pizza--to get you together. Hope we can still do that. Well," continued Rhoni, pleased with Hank's response, "it seems one of the buildings we uncovered was being used by one of the cryonics groups that went into the closet back in the nineties when the Gestapo tried to shut down their activities."

"Jesus!" said Hank, spitting out a spray of carrots. "I never heard about that!"

Rhoni leaned back with a pleased smile on her face and brushed wet carrot dust from her khaki pants. She leaned forward again to continue. "Nobody has. That was Al's secret. He knew what would happen to that information if he turned it over."

"What would have happened to it?" asked Hank sarcastically. He was sorry immediately. He knew the question was loaded. And he knew what kind of political tirade it would bring on.

"You know damned well what would happen to it! He'd get shut out by a bunch of University bigwigs and government bureaucrats. Al was driven, Hank. He was convinced there was some equipment or something. And he wasn't going to let them take it away from him. Lock him out before he could touch it. Feel it. Hold it in his own hands." Rhoni's voice had turned dreamy and sad. "He was so close, Hank. God! What a shame he's going to miss it!"

"Then you found it?"

Rhoni nodded. "The next day. After Al got... after the cave-in. He was right on top of it, Hank."

They disembarked from the monorail and took an electric speeder to the archaeological site. Flashing her badge at the guard in the ghettoize, Rhoni drove them through. Her stubby fingers on the steering wheel moved the speeder with such ease over the lava covered terrain that Hank began to relax.

After calling off his meeting and during the first part of their monorail trip, his anxiety had swelled like a prolonged crescendo in some great musical masterpiece. But he was relaxing now, and excitement was beginning to take over as they approached the site.

The trip had taken them several hours and city lights were being turned on. Hank could see his face in the window; the ghost-like image with flashing lights behind it conjured up thoughts of intergalactic beings, or travelers from the future. That's what we would be, he pondered, to those whose work I'm about to examine. We thought the government had wiped out all those early cryonics organizations--thawing those who had been frozen and outlawing cryonics itself until replicators made the world aware that what they had been doing made sense all along!

"Rhoni?" Hank hesitated as they looked at each other. "Thanks. I can't tell you..."

Rhoni smiled one of her giant smiles. "If Al can't be here himself, I wanted someone to see it who could really appreciate it. I was going to close up Al's excavations and go back to our original work. But that's when the wall collapsed, revealing the hidden room. I just couldn't call the University... not then... I got my video equipment and called you, instead."

Hank looked back at the space traveler in the window as the speeder slowed. The brightly lit sign which faded the alien's face read:

*****

Cummings and Raleigh - Archaeologists

subcontractors for:

Southern University - Department of Archaeology.

*****

Hank helped Rhoni carry cases of video equipment through the neatly restored and brightly illuminated corridors. "Over here, Hank. Help me with this, will you? I covered the entrance with these files." They moved back a row of archaic file cabinets to expose a raw opening in the wall.

Rhoni stepped through and turned back to Hank. "Wait until I get the lights on, Hank." She flipped a switch which hung from bare wires on the wall. "I threw these lights up before leaving to meet you for lunch--that's why I was late--I didn't want you to stumble and bump."

After handing the equipment through to Rhoni, Hank followed. His mouth was open as he looked around the room. "You didn't remove anything? It's just as you found it?"

Hank sank to his knees to get a closer look at apparatus lying on the floor. He didn't look up when he spoke. His voice had a tone of reverence and his fingers fondled the equipment as if it were tooled from rare gems.

Rhoni crossed her arms and smiled. "You can be a real dull pain in butt sometimes, Hank the Humdrum, but I love it when you get that look on your face! Your eyes actually sparkle. Makes me think of big, heavy words like efficacious and competent. Even little hints of joy around your eyes. Oh, not big tidal waves of joy, mind you, but hints are a good beginning! I'll bet Isaac Newton wore looks like that."

Rhoni set up her camera and Hank helped her make a record of the room and its contents until he came across a blue laboratory notebook. "Mmmmmm," he murmured as he sat down, leaving the detailed video recording for Rhoni to handle alone.

Hours passed. Suddenly, the monotonous sounds of Rhoni opening and closing drawers, turning pages, and shuffling about her equipment, were broken by the hiss of hydraulics and a rumbling, scraping sound.

"Look at this!" hollered Rhoni.

Hank jumped up from where he was sitting on the floor and ran to Rhoni's side. She was standing in a doorway--one which had been purposefully concealed to keep out intruders.

"Jump'in Gee Frazahatz!" she said, staring into the quiet shadows beyond. "What have we got here? Could it be the main chamber? Are the grave robbers close?"

Rhoni ran back to a table a few feet behind them, grabbed a flashlight, and rejoined Hank at the door. When she turned it on, they remained reverently in the doorway as their eyes followed the beam of light Rhoni moved around the inner room.

Hank stepped toward the equipment just inside. "It's a generator and coolant producing equipment." Grabbing the flashlight from Rhoni, Hank followed piping into the middle of the room. Pulling back a dust covered cloth, they gazed upon a primitive computer. Next to the computer, and connected with crude cables, lay a long, dust covered capsule.

Hank looked at Rhoni. In the dark, all he could see were the large, round, white circles of her eyes. Rhoni jumped up and down on one foot. "I can't believe it, Hank! This is what every archaeologist dreams of. The big find, my man! The Pharaoh's Sarcophagus!"

"It might be just a dog or a cat, Rhoni."

"Phooey. Phooey-phooey-phooey! How much you want'a bet!"

Hank looked around. "Something was preserved in there, all right. It really doesn't matter what, does it?"

"Yes it does! And I say it's a human being. Why use a capsule that size for a cat?"

"What I mean is, this is going to be of spectacular importance either way."

"Think old Boober Brain Angerson will forgive you for not being at the meeting?" Rhoni was busy bringing her lights and camera into the room.

Hank grabbed Rhoni and laughed. "This is going to make Old Boober Brain's eyes pop out!"

"Thank god," said Rhoni with a smile that could have lit the room all by itself, "I was beginning to worry about that guarantee of mine!"

*****

Hank's head felt like it had been filled with lava rocks excavated from the archaeological site. It grew heavier and slowly sank toward his chest. He jerked suddenly to avoid dozing. For fifty six hours, he and Rhoni had stayed in the observation mezzanine over the operating room, sleeping in shifts--as well as one can sleep on the floor or in a chair.

Al--who was recovering--and Rhoni and Hank had found a frozen human being caught in the eruption of a volcano whose equipment had kept him viable until adventurers from the next century could rescue him. There was no question about it, this was the century's greatest discovery, and the University (both the Archaeological Department and the Biostasis Department) were basking in glory. So were Al and Rhoni and Hank, who had become heroes (much to Hank's relief, for his funding was now secure).

Security was very high, though, and in spite of their hero status, Hank and Rhoni had had to fight to get access to the observation mezzanine. Van Randall and Angerson had finally pulled a few strings for them. Others came and went as their schedules permitted, but Hank and Rhoni refused to leave--once they'd gotten in, they hated to leave--as much from fear of missing something as from fear of not being allowed back in. They slept in shifts.

It was Hank's turn at the watch. His face was scruffy with a three day old beard and his eyes felt like the aqueous fluid had been replaced with a caustic, gritty glue. He desperately wanted sleep, but from the activity below him in the OR, he was certain something would happen soon.

Looking over at the chair next to him, Hank assessed his supplies. He had half a cup of coffee and one cookie left. He added sugar to the remainder of the coffee, popped the cookie into his mouth, and chased it with the black syrup. Then he picked up the butter stained napkin and began twisting it around his fingers as he stared through the observation window.

Hank looked over at Rhoni. She was sleeping soundly in the corner, curled up like a cat. He started doing jumping jacks to keep himself awake, but he stopped suddenly, as if hit by a fast acting gas which froze him with his legs apart and his arms spread out at shoulder height. It was hard to see facial expressions behind those surgical masks, but there was no doubt about it, the team was getting excited.

"Rhoni! Rhoni!" Hank called to the sleepy kitten in the corner. When she didn't respond, he ran over to her, pulled her to her feet, and walked her to the observation window. Rhoni's eyes woke up the minute she looked down on the OR. She began running in place to get her blood moving. "What's up, Doc?"

"Can't tell, yet. But they're starting to get excited. Look at the energy they have all of a sudden." Just then, Joan Van Randall looked up at them. Even behind her surgical mask, her smile was unmistakable.

But things always take longer than the anxious hope. After repeated assurances, Hank and Rhoni finally left their stake-out in favor of real food, warm showers, and some restful and comfortable sleep. As this was the first human being to be resuscitated after being frozen to liquid nitrogen temperatures with crude, early perfusates and techniques, the repair processes took an unusually long time. In spite of the fact that resuscitation and repair teams were rotated around the clock, it took another week and a half to revive the visitor from the Twentieth Century.

The first several times the patient was conscious, it was only for short periods. Each time, the duration lengthened and the episode was more exciting. So far, he had not been able to speak. Rhoni and Hank stood in the mezzanine, holding hands for luck as the patient was administered the drugs which would bring him to consciousness again. The man's face was calm and peaceful. His was the only breathing in the room that was normal. Every other breath was held fast as the man's eyes began to slowly flicker and open. Although this was his forth time awake, no one--not a doctor, not an observer--had grown accustomed to the suspense. Everyone present held the same thought: Maybe this time, he would speak.

Every eye in the room flashed back and forth, from one face to another. The eyes of the man in the bed were different, today. Until now, his eyes had been like those of a baby upon first opening. But this time, recognition was in his eyes. A tear began to form and glisten on his cheek. He tried to speak. His first quivering words were, "I'm... Cole."

A unanimous cheer went up. Any outsider would have thought this was Mission Control in Houston. Then, as if they all remembered at once, they fell silent, hoping they had not caused distress to the patient.

Cole McFadden managed a smile which was quickly reflected on every face around him. Up in the observation mezzanine, Hank and Rhoni were holding hands and dancing in a circle.

All during the weeks of work to resuscitate the patient, a committee had been hard at work formulating what questions to ask him and in what order. After being given a couple days to get his bearings, the committee--under the careful supervision of the medical staff--began to question him.

After several weeks of debriefing, Cole McFadden learned about how Rhoni Bell and Henry Graham had found him. He naturally asked to meet them. But he had to refuse to give any further information before his request was finally granted.

Hank was nervous when they were escorted into McFadden's room; he knew they would be carefully watched, and were probably being taped. They might even be subjected to questioning later. But Rhoni didn't care. She was off on another adventure--the biggest find in her life so far--and wasn't about to let the bureaucrats spoil her fun. She bounced into the room like they were going sailing on a sunny afternoon, walked over to McFadden's bed, took his hand in hers, and said, "Hi, Cole. I'm Rhoni Bell, and I claim you in the name of Al Rawlins, explorer and archaeologist. Al's in a hospital, too. Crushed in a cave-in while looking for you. Boy, is he looking forward to meeting you." Rhoni leaned forward and without hesitation kissed Cole McFadden on the forehead.

McFadden smiled warmly. Hank was a little surprised, too. Not at Rhoni's kiss--that was to be expected--but at Cole's sudden warming. McFadden had always seemed reserved and, yes, a little suspicious. But his reserve and his distrust melted completely over the next several weeks of frequent visits.

Hank and Rhoni entered Cole's room on a warm, sunny morning to find him sitting on the edge of his bed, fully clothed.

Rhoni pulled her glasses off and stashed then on top of her head. "Cole the Sneaky!" Rhoni squeaked. "You've been holding out on us! When did you get authorization to wear clothes like a real person instead of laying around in the soggy wrapping of a melted Popsicle?"

A nurse walked into the room and smiled. "Dr. Graham. Dr. Bell. Mr. McFadden convinced us that he was ready for more than a stroll on the grass today. So we've put him in your hands for the afternoon."

Rhoni flashed one of her trade-mark smiles and ran to Cole's side. "Where do you want to go first, time traveler?"

"Take me to your... speeder. And give me at least five suggestions," said Cole.

"You're not even going to ask how the excavation is going? That's always the first thing you ask?"

"Nope. Not today. If you had anything really exciting to tell me, you already would have," said McFadden.

Hank laughed. "You know her pretty well, Cole!"

Rhoni slipped her arms around the waists of both men and walked them out of the hospital. After they crawled into the parked speeder, Rhoni patted her back pack. I've got enough carrot sticks in here for an ordinary outing. But maybe we should get something more festive. What do you think?"

Cole looked first at Rhoni. Then at Hank. "Champagne, at least. I have a surprise for you two."

Rhoni was practically jumping up and down--as much as one can when sitting behind the wheel of a speeder. "Fantastic! What? What could it possibly be?"

Cole opened his mouth to answer, but Rhoni butted right in, "Don't you dare ruin the surprise! Don't tell me! Let me hold onto the suspense for a while. I love surprises!"

"Okay," said Cole. "Then, pick up the champagne and take us to the archaeological site."

"The diggings?" asked Hank.

"Want to return to the scene of the crime?" teased Rhoni.

"I can say no more without spoiling the surprise," said Cole.

Cole, Hank, and Rhoni stood in the room where the capsule had been found. It was empty now. All the equipment had been removed to the university. Even the dust was gone.

Cole raised his champagne glass. "Here's to two good friends."

As they lowered their glasses, Cole said, "At first, I didn't know how to judge whether or not I could trust anyone. Especially those CIA types that kept me under lock and key and wouldn't answer any of my questions."

Hank nodded, "The first few days, you seemed pretty suspicious. I could see it from the mezzanine."

"It wasn't until I met you two that I finally relaxed. I had to threaten to clam up, you know, in order to get them to let you in."

"You threatened to clam up?" asked Rhoni with over-done amazement. "You did that for us?"

Cole's smile was soft and warm. "I had to be sure that I was in friendly hands before..."

"Well, who wouldn't?" said Rhoni.

"Yes," said Cole, "but I was protecting more than just my own hide."

"I sensed you were holding something back," said Hank. "Every time they asked about why you were there all alone."

"Yeah. They sensed it, too. But I couldn't say anything until I was sure of their motives. While they were hitting me with all those questions, I began to wonder... You know, like in the spy movies. You still have movies?"

Hank and Rhoni nodded, eyes wide, anxious for Cole to continue.

"Spy movies?"

"We'll take you to one," said Rhoni, slamming her glasses up on top of her mop. "If you live long enough! Get to the point, Molasses Mouth."

"Maybe I was being paranoid. But, how could I know whether or not they were just pretending to be friendly, to gain my confidence, then turn on me."

"For what purpose?" asked Hank.

"No, he's right, Hank," said Rhoni. "How did he know who found him? Maybe the Shehadi Mafia. Maybe they were planning to hold him for ransom. Or make him a slave. Who knows?"

Cole laughed. "Well, I admit, it sounds a little paranoid, I was prepared to wait years, if necessary, to be sure. But you two gave me the confidence to believe society had matured."

Rhoni was bobbing up and down like a float on a restless sea. "Uncle! Uncle! You can cut the suspense now! I've had enough. I'll pop. Tell us the surprise. Is it here? What is it? Where is it?" Just then she lost the safety pin holding her glasses together and they fell to the floor.

Hank stooped over, picked up the glasses and put the safety pin back into place. "Unnecessary? How?"

Cole took the glasses from Hank and placed them on Rhoni's nose. "How could anyone not trust this little archaeologist who looks like a walking haystack?"

"Who knows, maybe she's their leader," teased Hank, "and she's just very good at her act?".

"Naw," said Cole.

"Uncle-uncle-uncle! If you don't tell us the surprise, I'm going to have to go out and use the can!"

"Okay," laughed Cole. "You're the archaeologist. If you were exploring an Egyptian tomb, what would you look for? Before you actually found the main room, I mean."

"False doors. The tomb makers always put in false doors to try to fool the grave robbers."

"My God," said Hank. "That's why you always asked how the diggings were coming. You aren't the main treasure after all!"

Cole smiled. "Exactly. I was behind the false door..."

"Oh, my god..." said Rhoni. "Oh, my god!"

"I was working late when the volcano erupted. Alone. I was the only person in the building. Except, probably, the security guard in the lobby. I had almost a week after the volcano erupted. I tried digging my way out. It became apparent, real fast, that wouldn't work."

"Yeah, yeah! We know all that!" said Rhoni.

"I had no way of knowing how long it would take a rescue attempt, or if one would even be made. So I rigged that set-up to suspend myself. I figured it was my only hope. And I decided that if I was ever discovered, I'd keep the existence of the others a secret until I could be sure it was wise to expose them."

"The others?" Rhoni and Hank spoke at the same time.

"Our organization had 68 members frozen," said Cole. "But we had to keep them hidden. Society wasn't ready for us. They're behind another secret door. Come on. I'll show you."

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Denise was an old lady. She would sit rocking on the porch of the ancient hotel on the outskirts of Pinecliff, in the cool mountain summer mornings, listening to birds calling each other in the cedars across the road, where pathways in the woods led down to the creek. In the past, Abe would have been there with her, and about nine o'clock they would have wandered down to an open spot where the stream plunged over a notch in the rocks with spray rising among the trees, carried by breezes from the valley below.

But this summer Abe was in the hospital in the city. Each Saturday, their son Burt took her in to see him, and many early mornings he'd drive up to Pinecliff, to tell her how things were going. Denise wanted to stay with Abe, but Burt told her, "Pa says he wants you to stay up here in Pinecliff, at the old hotel. He can't stand the thought of you being cooped up in a rooming house around the corner from the hospital."

Abe was a plump giant; he'd have seemed taller if he hadn't been so heavy. His eyes, as recently as a few years ago, had sparkled irrepressibly; this drew Denise to him the first moment she saw him, during her school days. Until he reached the age of forty, Abe's contracting business was a one man operation, and he was lean and energetic, seemingly tireless. Then success came and he hired workers. In the years that followed, he thickened around the midsection to an alarming extent.

After retirement they spent the summers in Pinecliff. By the third season Abe completely succumbed to the many temptations the little resort town offered, like rich chocolate cakes the chef at the old hotel whipped up for each evening's dinner. The doctors said his heart 'gave out', but Denise couldn't help feeling she was to blame for not keeping him healthier. Now she lay awake nights, tossing restlessly, lonely for Abe, tormented by the idea she could have kept this from happening.

Far down the mountain, the stillness of the morning gave way to the faint sound of a car. Denise leaned forward, listening as the hum grew. Burt's car would make a chirp as he shifted gears at the sharp turn before the one lane bridge across the creek, and it was the right time of day. There was the chirp; a minute later Burt's sleek gray import pulled up in front of the hotel.

The anxious look on Denise's face faded to dismay as Burt rose from the car. He was strong, erect, forty three, a man who usually walked as if stone walls could not stop him, but this morning he trudged up the steps of the old hotel with the weight of mountains hung about his shoulders. He dropped to a rocking chair next to Denise, silently looking across the road into the thick woods beyond.

"Ma, he won't do it!" Burt said. "I've talked 'till I'm blue in the face, but he says he's had a full life and he's tired. He says that's enough for him."

He turned to her. "Ma, let me set it up for you! I know it might not work, but suppose it did? Picture being a young girl again, breathing deep, running with your hair flying behind you. Won't you do it for me?"

Denise sighed and tried to smile. Even as the corners of her mouth turned up, wrinkles deepening her cheeks, her eyes shined with tears she couldn't hold back. At first she said nothing, looking at Burt, thinking he carried his years with dignity as well as a hunger for life, both of which had been so much a part of Abe ten or fifteen years earlier. Then she looked wistfully away and took a firm grip on herself. It's hard, she thought, but he deserves to know.

"Burt, I was seventeen when I met Abe. At that time, he was a mountain of a man, twenty four, six and a half feet of solid muscle. People would say, 'Abe's a wonder. Strangers see him comin' a quarter mile away and it scares the wits out of them, but then he gets closer and they see him smilin' and they know he'd never hurt anybody; in fact, as long as he's near, he gives you the feeling nothin' in the world can hurt you.'

"Abe asked me to a dance and I thought I would die for happiness. I couldn't believe I was the one he'd been lookin' for all along, but he told me that, just those very words, about six months later. We went on our honeymoon to Idaho, to a little town even prettier than Pinecliff, and stayed to ourselves for about two weeks. One day we were walking down a path in the woods, with huge trees making it dark and wet and it smelled wonderful, and all 'a sudden we came to where the road curved out in the sunlight for a ways, and the road was lined with the prettiest flowers you ever saw.

"Well, I was bursting with love, and I said, 'Darlin', where are we headed? Do we just grow old together, and that's it? Or is there somethin' more for us beyond all the sunsets?'

"Abe took my hand and we sat down on a rock, right in the middle of the flowers, and he said, 'Denise, you're the most beautiful thing I guess I've ever seen, more than any sunset, or any flower, or any road leadin' off beyond the hills. With you, I could go anywhere. If I ever lost you, I think it would be the end for me, right then and there. Is there somethin' out there for us at the end of the furthest rainbow? I don't know, but as long as I have you I'll keep lookin' for it!'

"Now you see, Burt, I felt just the same way, that is, Abe said what was in my heart too, and there in the flowers and sunlight I knew I'd keep on looking ahead as long as Abe was with me, but if he wasn't, I wouldn't have the heart to go on. So if Abe doesn't want to be frozen, maybe it's because he thinks there might be a road somewhere else with flowers and sunlight and he's goin' off hunting for it, and I've got to go too, just because it might be there, don't you see?"

Burt shook his head and put his hands to his face. After a moment he rose and went to the side railing of the porch, an old polished log, and leaned on it looking off into the valley below. Then he turned and came back to his chair. He stared across the road awhile and then looked down, studying his hands. Finally, groping for words, he began to speak.

"Ma, I understand. Pa told me about the big trees and the sunlit lane, and the flowers. It was twenty years ago, when Josephine and I got engaged, and I asked him what marriage meant to him, and he told me about that. It was like he opened a door I never knew was there, and after that I never saw that part of him again, but I see why you'd feel the way you do.

"But suppose there's no roads with sunlight and flowers except right here? Suppose the only way you can have it again is to live on? Can't you see you and Pa? You wake up again, and you're both young, and you go away in the mountains and find a place, like in Idaho? Can't you see it might be possible?

"Why can't Pa see it? If it doesn't work, well, maybe there might be some other place with flowers and sunlight, and you'd still be together, but your best chance is to try it. Doesn't that make sense? And if there's nothing anywhere else, wouldn't it be better to at least be here, to go on, yourself? At least there'd be somebody who knew Pa the way you do, to remember him."

Denise shook her head sadly. "Maybe it makes sense, Burt, but I can't, not unless Abe decides to do it. Don't you see? I could wake up without him, he'd be gone, and there'd be no way to get him back. We're too much a part of each other to be torn apart that way! So don't ask me about it any more unless Abe decides he wants to do it too, please!"

The morning and then the afternoon wore on, after Burt left. An even deeper sadness seemed to hang over the old hotel, as evening came and the air began to cool. Denise brought out a shawl to watch the sunset, and then went to her room; she didn't feel like eating. As the moon rose outside her window, she could remember when she and Abe went back to the place in Idaho where they'd honeymooned and walked to the top of a mountain as the sun fell below the distant ridges.

Abe was in his late forties, a little older than Burt was now. They wrapped their coats tightly about them to keep warm as a chill wind swept small clouds across the moon, stars appeared and Abe held Denise close, talking about how in a few years they'd retire and see the world.

"We'll have adventures like we can't imagine," Abe laughed. Denise shivered in the gusts of icy wind and buried herself deeper in his arms. "The world's been waitin' twenty years, and we'll travel like we would have when we first got together, if we'd had the time. Burt's nearly through college; we'll have the rest of our lives to spend on ourselves."

By the time Abe finally retired, though, he was feeling more and more the weight of his years. The most they did was come to Pinecliff for the summers at the old hotel. The sparkle in Abe's eyes that night on the mountain faded, as he grew heavier, and Denise was a bit creaky herself in the mornings. It was easier to sleep late in the cool mountain air and then walk down to the stream, sitting in warm sunlight while spray from the waterfall rose through the pines about them. The dreams of exploring the world were something they no longer talked about.

"This is it!" Denise whispered to herself as the moon rose higher over the pine covered mountains. "I'm just a brittle old lady, Abe's in the hospital, and one day Burt will come and say, 'Ma, you better be in the city awhile. Pa's not doing too well, and you should be close, now. Doesn't seem like he's got much more time.'

"Then I'll be by myself, I'll never hear Abe's laugh again, and before I know it I'll wither away and be gone, myself. There will be two markers in the Pinecliff cemetery, and most of those who see them will have no idea of who we were. It will be like Abe and I had never lived at all."

After awhile, she slept. The mountains were quiet, except for the stirring of cool winds, so Denise was startled when she was wakened at three in the morning by the sound of a car coming up the hills from the city. It grew louder and sounded as though it could be Burt's. When it crossed the bridge below the hotel, she was sure. Denise frantically wrapped her robe around her. Had Burt come to take her to the hospital? She would have to be dressed. A minute or two later she was ready and hurried down the stairs to the old hotel's lobby.

Burt was waiting at the foot of the stairs, his face strained with concern. "Is Pa here?" he asked. "No, how could he be?" she said.

Burt turned to the hotel clerk, who had dragged himself out of bed when he heard a car. "My father, has he called? Have any other cars gone by?"

"No," the sleepy clerk mumbled.

"What's happened?" Denise said. "I thought he wasn't even supposed to walk to the bathroom by himself."

Burt told the clerk to go back to sleep and took Denise to a couch in the corner of the lobby.

"I had a long talk with Pa, today, after I left you," Burt said. "He was stubborn, as always, but then he began to talk about when you and he first got married. It was like a spark of life came back that was lost, but now he found it and it started burning again."

"But Burt, what's that got to do with him coming here? He's a sick man, and..."

"Ma, he signed the papers! I'd been carrying them with me for months, and suddenly he seemed to see it might work, and there was no reason not to try it. He knew you would go along if he did it, so with some nurses as witnesses, he made all the arrangements."

"But why isn't he still there?"

"He wanted to tell you! At first, he made me promise I'd bring you to the hospital tonight, but then I went by later and he'd gone. They said they couldn't stop him; it was like his strength came back, even though his heart's so weak he could barely move, yesterday, but he got an old friend of his to come by and lend him a car. That's why we thought he might be here."

Denise was shaking and pale. "But if you don't know where he is? What do we do now, Burt?"

"He's on his way here, Ma. We have to find him before it's too late. I'm going back down the road to look. An ambulance is on the way, too."

The next few hours were agony for Denise. Dawn was in the eastern sky when again she heard Burt's car on the bridge. She hurried to the porch as he pulled up, an ambulance close behind him. Burt frantically ran up the old hotel's steps.

"Ma, he wrecked the car about a half mile back down the road; rolled down an embankment, but he's not in the car or anywhere around it, so maybe he's still alive... but we can't find him!"

Denise tried to visualize. Then she knew. "Burt, he could be at the waterfall! He might try to come that way, across the creek."

She moved awkwardly toward the stairs. "Help me, I think I know where he is."

It was a steep, rocky trail, and sunlight had barely begun to slant into the creek's deep notch as Burt helped Denise down the rough path. It branched a number of times, and Burt could see why she insisted on coming. The ambulance crew was at their heels, and a mere fifty yards down the hill the trail broke into a clearing by the creek. There, on the other side, slumped in a painful position against a rock, was Abe.

"Oh, Dennie," he groaned, "you shouldn't have come down here. I'd have been along in a minute, after I rested up. I'm not hurt bad, you know."

Gently, Abe was carried up the hill to the waiting ambulance. He insisted on being alone with Denise for a few moments; then the ambulance moved down the mountain toward the hospital. "He's in terrible shape," one of the paramedics told Denise before they left. "I don't know how he's still alive."

Denise smiled. It was a saying in the town where they grew up that if Abe went after something, even a grizzly couldn't stand in his way. Whether he would be alive tomorrow or not was a different matter, but at least Denise was sure he would not be dead and buried if he did not survive the trip to the hospital.

Burt brought Denise to town, behind the ambulance, and she sat with Abe through the night and the next two days. The strain of driving into the mountains and the accident was terrible, the doctors told her, and they did not know how long he could last.

The third night after Abe returned to the hospital, as Denise slept beside him in a chair holding his hand, his heart stopped. Monitors went off and attempts were made to resuscitate, but it was futile. Abe was frozen, and the following night Burt took Denise back to the old hotel. It was where she said she wanted to be for awhile.

The next day, before work, Burt drove up the mountain to the hotel. Denise was already sitting on the porch, in one of the rocking chairs, but she hadn't heard him coming. The last few days had exhausted her; now she dozed in the morning sunlight as Burt slowly walked up the steps; even the chirping of a bird on the old log railing didn't wake her. Finally, Burt gently shook her arm. Denise opened her eyes, smiling.

"Are you all right, Ma?" Burt asked.

Denise looked at Burt, her eyes twinkling; then she gazed off across the mountains.

"Oh yes, Burt, I'm all right!" she said. "I've never been so 'all right' before. I was dreaming I was sittin' on a mountain with Abe and he said, 'Dennie, nothing can ever take us away from each other again.'

"Now I'll sit here and dream the rest of the summer away. When it comes my turn, I'm sure the last dream I have will be walkin' down that sunlit lane to Abe. He'll be standing there in the flowers waitin', tall and young, calling, 'Come on Dennie, we're almost there!'"

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This is Issue Number Four of LifeQuest, originally published

by Imladris Corporation in November, 1988. It is protected by copyright.

Visitors to this site are invited to make copies for personal use,

But not for resale or other commercial purposes.

Thank you for visiting this webpage!

Fred & Linda Chamberlain

Life Members, Cryonics Institute; link below:

History of our involvement with cryonics