"Ian Watson - Ahead!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

Ahead!
a short story by Ian Watson

Foreword

Ahead! first appeared in Interzone in May 1995, and was reprinted in the
benefit anthology The Best of Interzone in 1997. My immediate stimulus for
the story was an article by Charles Platt in an earlier issue of Interzone
about how he has signed up to have his own head frozen. Personally I feel
a bit dubious about this freezing of neomorts (the opposite of neonates, I
suppose) нн or, on a smaller budget, decapitated heads нн to wish upon the
future, supposing that the power or funding doesn't fail in the interim
and supposing our descendants can unfreeze these bequests from the past
and can reverse whatever brought death. Oh it's a grand old dream, going
back to the time of the Pharaohs, not forgetting all those mummified cats
нн but what might the future decide to do with us? Still, there's Charles
five hundred years ahead laughing his head off at me as he operates a
mining machine on Pluto and leads a rich VR fantasy life...

Ahead!

1: The Head Race
There's an old saying: it'll cost you an arm and a leg.
For me the cost amounted to two arms, two legs, and a torso. Everything
below the neck, in fact. Thus my head and my brain would survive until
posterity. How I pitied people of the past who were dead forever. How I
pitied my contemporaries who were too blind to seize the chance of
cryogenic preservation.
Here we were on the threshold of potential immortality. How could I not
avail myself of the Jones legislation? The opportunity might not be
available in our own country for longer than a couple of years. The
population might drop to a sustainable level. A change of administration
might bring a change of heart. There could be rancour at the cost of
maintaining increasing numbers of frozen and unproductive heads.
Until then, though, we were in the Head Race with China and Japan and
India and other overpopulated nations. The previous deterrent to freezing
had been guillotined away. Now no one was compelled to wait for natural
death by cancer or car crash нн and thus risk their brain degenerating
during vital lost minutes.
Farewell, likewise, to the fear of senile dementia or Alzheimer's! The
head would be surgically removed swiftly in prime condition and frozen
immediately. This knowledge was immensely comforting to me. It was also a
little scary. I was among the earliest to register. Yet I must wait almost
a month till my appointment with the blade. A whole month! What if I were
murderously mugged before I could be decapitated? What if my head was
mashed to pulp?
Fortunately, I was part of a nationwide support group of like minds linked
by our PCs. To a fair extent our lobbying had finally resulted in the
Jones Law. Yes, ours; along with lobbying by ecologists concerned with the
welfare of the planet нн and also, I have to admit, pressure from certain