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CONTENTS
PRELIMINARY SECTIONS
Bio-Info
Acknowledgements
Dedication
Introduction
ISSUE
1
Fib-Defib
by Fred Chamberlain
What if a brawny football player were struck by lightning while
driving home from a CPR course, with a cryonicist? Might there
be an accident? How might this be different than if an ambulance
had been called? How might chances of survival have been
different?
Shadow
by Linda Chamberlain
If a young boy with a new puppy won't wear his Medic Alert bracelet,
what might happen? The puppy doesn’t have a Medic Alert
bracelet, either. How might an accident give the young boy more
incentive to wear his Medic Alert bracelet?
by Fred Chamberlain
When an older astrophysicist finds he has a fast moving terminal
illness, how might his wife make a difference? Is she a
physician? How might that help? Is some kind of virus, as
might be the cause of a pandemic, involved? What turns the
corner for them?
Construction Site
by Linda Chamberlain
Parents are often skeptical about cryonics, but if one of their
children developed a terminal illness, might they agree on it, or not?
Suppose one of the parents has an accident, and finds that
nanotechnology is already part of medical practice? Might that
make a difference?
Odette
by Linda Chamberlain
Is ballet dancing only for the young? Might the old and
withered, past masters of the dance once again return to the stage,
but in young bodies? Might they have dreams, even nightmares,
about a past when they were terribly decrepit and useless?
California
Sunrise
by Fred Chamberlain
When a dying girl's mother is determined that she will not be frozen,
how might her young husband react? What might he do? How
might the mother scheme to place obstacles in the way? How might
they feel, finally, as they escape, and soar toward an endless future?
ISSUE 2
Grampa
Chippers
by Linda Chamberlain
(Children’s Story)
Can a chipmunk find a way to save a life and earn a ticket to a space
colony, at the same time? Could the chipmunk enlist the help of
his whole community to help rescue his best friend, an old mountain
man whose wife is already frozen?
A
Place By The Sea
by Fred Chamberlain
Suppose a beautiful blind woman "sees" cryonics but her husband is
skeptical? Will her circle of cryonics friends help her to work
her way through events that threaten to make her a widow? How
will her dream of living on endlessly so as to get her sight back work
out?
Dreams of an Old Man
by Fred Chamberlain
Could an old man's dreams become reality, through a cryonics
organization of the future? In his last moments, might he dream?
Might his dream involve a sparkling, older nurse who finally signed up
for cryonics, at his urging? Will they both get frozen, or not?
ISSUE 3
Innerzones
by Fred Chamberlain
Nanotechnology could be a way of restoring future patients to life,
but if there were warfare based on it, how might we survive?
What if an attack by nanobots were already in progress, but
politicians were afraid to take action fast enough? What then?
Never
Enough Time
by Linda Chamberlain
If a couple were parted at the moment they were married, and then were
separated by a gulf of decades, how would the one “left behind” feel?
Could the lack of a medic alert bracelet have played a part?
Could what happened then lead to even higher levels of commitment?
Save
The Whales
by Linda Chamberlain
Aliens find that humans have invented nuclear power and have gone to
the moon, but are still almost oblivious to their short lifespans!
Is this some kind of disease? How would a tiny band of
cryonicists strike them? Might they be the only ones worth
rescuing?
You
& Me
by Fred Chamberlain
What might our future be like, with uploading? (poem) Might our
minds become ‘visible’ to each other, in the way that now we can see
each other’s physical forms? What might it be like to live in a
society of that kind? (A premonition, 20 years ago, of Terasem!)
ISSUE
4
Nothing’s
Impossible
by Fred Chamberlain
Suppose repairing brains was very difficult? And suppose a way
to upload reliably were found and everybody had done it, before you
got “reanimated”? Would they just tell you all about it, the
moment you woke up? Or might they keep you in the dark for a
while?
False
Door
by Linda Chamberlain
For archeologists of the future, might there be a way to look even
more directly into the past? But how could those of the past
have any way to trust those of the future? Would they take
defensive measures to test those who might want to pick their brains?
Flowers
Along a Sunlit Lane
by Fred Chamberlain
Suppose your son kept asking you to sign up for cryonics, but your
husband had long ago given up on your shared dream to go on together,
as far as possible? Suppose he were so skeptical of cryonics as
to not even want to give it a try? What might change this
around?
ISSUE 5
The
Million Million Days
by Lee Corbin
Can a gypsy's curse take you into a near-infinite microcosm?
Imagine how it would feel to literally live ‘forever’, without
becoming something so different from what you are now as to be
unrecognizable. How would you like to spend a trillion evenings
at the local bar?
The
Flight of Captain Lisa Chaumet
by Linda Chamberlain
What if you kept freezing your husbands as they die? If that
made you a criminal, under the laws against polygamy, wouldn’t you and
your trusted starship pilot (she’s an AI) be “fugitives from justice”?
Would you now have to stay on-the-run for all eternity?
The
Sturford Curse
by Fred Chamberlain
based on a story idea by John de Rivaz
If a coroner is unkind to a cryonicist, might a curse then come back
to haunt him? And, how about the cryonicist he autopsied?
Is he done for, or not? How might the curse of some unknown
individual then doom the coroner to a screaming death, as payback?
ISSUE 6
Mass
on Christmas Day, 8936-AD
by Thomas Donaldson
What might it be like in the deep future, on Christmas Day?
Might a priest who revisits what happened to Christ on his last day be
warning radical innovators that they too could be crucified, burned at
the stake, torn on the rack, machine gunned, or nuked?
Occupation Immortal
by Lee Corbin, Page 207
Suppose your wish was the command of a unique genie, your future
"you"? How might a human intellect of today witness the heat
death of the universe? Here, Lee Corbin moves even further
toward the infinite than in his earlier story (“The Million Million
Days).
Kitty
by Linda Chamberlain
If you were someone’s pet, awakening in the future, might you find
that your level of consciousness is now vastly advanced? How
might you relate to your former owner? What kind of
“purpose in life” might you feel now awaited you?
ISSUE 7
Birth
Scars
Thomas Donaldson
What might a current day drug dealer think of future society?
Would he have a problem fitting into a society where crime doesn’t pay
because nothing’s really illegal? Might that lead to difficulty
in “finding a job”? Is adjustment to the future a problem for
everyone?
Re-Creation
by Fred Chamberlain
Suppose sentient life were based on inorganic "cells"? Where
would those cells have come from? How could they have evolved
from simpler forms? Might such a race of beings be in for a
horrifying surprise, when they discover their origins?
Travelling
by Thomas Donaldson
If you awakened in the future with very little memory, would life
still be worth living? Would you want to know where or
from whom you came? What would others in your community be like?
What would the future seem to hold for you?
Why
Not?
by Fred Chamberlain
What about an entertainment system based on "reading " memories from a
living brain? If the system didn’t work right at first, in what
ways might it work “wrong”? Could there be some unsettling
surprises, if you put in every last piece of data you could?
The Box
by Fred Chamberlain
Suppose a bored nanotech engineer made a copy of his own brain, but
did it on his own and had no way to hook it up to the outside world?
Would that be an unkind thing to do? What might the “brain in a
box” think or do? Where might it lead? To revenge?
Postscript
–
Page 267
Thank you for visiting this webpage!
Fred & Linda Chamberlain
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