Bernie and Betty
Kapinsky were watching television one day when the slick commercial came
on.
“Wouldn't you love
to see the exciting world of the future?” said the advertisement.
“Wouldn't you love to become immortal? Now the government offers a
way. You can freeze your way to forever!”
Watching the
commercial, Bernie saw a handsome old man smiling as some
pleasant-looking doctors put him under anesthesia. The next image
showed the man in a frozen state, followed by an image of the wildly
spinning hands of a clock. The man in the commercial woke up from his
frozen slumber, and encountered a glorious futuristic world of robots
and flying cars. An animation showed the old man morphing into a
younger version of himself, after being injected with a youth drug.
The television
commercial featured a catchy jingle, one of those TV tunes that
are hard to get out of your mind. The lyrics went like this:
Chill,
then thrill
Chill,
then thrill
Come
on old guy
Chill
then thrill
“Chill, then
thrill?” said Betty. “What does that mean?”
“Don't you get
it?” said Bernie. “First they freeze your body, until medical
science advances to the point where you can be revived. That's the
'chill' part. Then you wake up in the incredible world of the future,
when people are immortal. That's the 'thrill' part.”
The ad gave a URL
you could access to get more information. Betty and Bernie arranged a
teleconference with a government official. As they were both very old
and had many health problems, Betty and Bernie figured they had little to lose.
“So you are
interested in the Cryonic Immortality program offered by the
government?” said the official. “Do you have any questions I can
answer?”
“So if we have
ourselves frozen, when will they wake us up?” asked Bernie.
“We can't
guarantee an exact date,” said the official. “After all, it will
be far in the future, and we don't know exactly when man will develop
the medical science to revive frozen bodies.”
“After they revive
us, will they be able to make us young again?” asked Betty.
“Of course,”
said the official. “Figuring out how to revive a frozen body is
much harder than figuring out to turn back the clock of aging. So I'm
sure that after you're revived, they'll have some cool futuristic
treatment that will let you become as young as you want.”
“What kind of
world do you think we'll see after we're revived from the frozen
state?” asked Bernie.
“I'm sure it will
be super-awesome,” said the official. “Flying cars, talking
robots, youth pills, cure-all vaccines, force-field belts, every cool
thing you can imagine. You want to see all that thrilling stuff,
don't you?”
“Sure,” said
Betty.
“So sign right
here, and you're all set,” said the official.
Betty and Bernie
signed. They were instructed to report to a pier in the nation's largest port, to
board a large ship. The ship filled up with people as old as Betty
and Bernie.
“We're going to
the Cryonic Center in Antarctica,” explained one of the ship's
officers.
“Why did they put
it in Antarctica?” asked someone.
“It's so that if
there's a power outage, everybody will stay frozen,” explained the
officer.
The ship took weeks
to get to Antarctica. Finally it docked at a small pier. Everyone on
the ship could see a large building in the distance, positioned on a
hill. A bridge stretched between the pier area and the distant
building. The bridge stretched over a crater-like depressed area
filled with ice and snow.
“That's our
Cryonic Center, filled with the latest medical technology,” said a
ship's officer. “Please disembark, and head across the bridge. We
will brief you further when you get to the center.”
Walking with Betty
and Bernie, seventy old people walked toward the bridge. When they
got to the beginning of the bridge, a worker was there with a bottle
of pills. He asked that each old person take one of the pills.
“It's a steep walk
up to the Cryonic Center,” said the worker. “This pill will help
you make it.”
The old people all
took the pill, and started to walk across the bridge. When they got
to the end of the bridge, they found a gate blocked them from leaving
it. They waited patiently for the gate to open.
“Why don't they
open that gate?” complained Bernie. “We're freezing out here.”
“I'm going to sit
down for a moment,” said Betty. “I'm feeling weak.”
Bernie noticed that
many of the old people were sitting down on the bridge. He noticed
himself feeling sleepy. Then he noticed that some people were
sleeping on the bridge.
At first he thought
it was just a little fatigue in some of the old people. But before
long he noticed that half of the people were sleeping on the bridge.
He felt very sleepy himself.
Finally it dawned on
Bernie what was going on.
“It's those pills
we took!” said Bernie. “They're putting us all into a deep
sleep!”
Bernie tried to run
back to the front of the bridge, and go back to the ship. But before
he could make it, the pill took effect, and he fell sleep on the
bridge like everyone else.
A worker came onto
the bridge, and looked around.
“Looks like
they're all knocked out,” said the worker, talking to another
worker. “Go ahead and dump 'em. Be gentle; nice and easy.” The
worker walked off the bridge.
The steel bridge was
a specially designed bridge. It was rather like some river bridges made of two halves that can each raise up, so that
ships can travel underneath the bridge. But this bridge was made of
two halves designed to drop down, so that anyone on the bridge would
be gently dumped into the ice and snow underneath the bridge.
A worker pressed a
joystick, and the two halves of the bridge slowly dropped down. All
of the deeply sleeping old people on the bridge were gently dumped
into the icy snowy crater underneath the bridge. Thousands of people
had already been dumped down there in the previous months and years.
The government had
decided that medical care for old people was costing too
much. The Cryonic Immortality program was designed mainly to get rid
of old people who might otherwise cost the government a ton of money
in health care payments.
“Well, there is
today's contribution to solving the population explosion,” said a
young worker.
“Poor suckers,”
said an older worker. “I bet they thought there was something there
in that Cryonic Center, something other than just an empty building.”
“Hey, they wanted
to be frozen, so now they're frozen,” said the young worker. “And
they'll stay that way for centuries.”
“Do you think any
one will ever revive all those frozen people down there?” asked the
older worker.
“I suppose
anything's possible,” said the younger worker.
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