The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin Page B

speech. Perhaps he’d lost his ability to speak, she reasoned. No, the prerevive indicators would have flagged that. But the indicators weren’t always right, were they? Software was software, and its many malfunctions had been a part of the technological lore for eons. He’d talk when he was good and ready, and she’d just have to wait patiently until he did.
     
    “How long?” Justin asked, surprised at the sound of a voice he’d lived his whole life with but which now somehow felt new.
    “I assume you mean how long have you been suspended?” Neela asked.
    “Yes. How long?”
    “By our estimates, about three hundred years. With some more information we could give you an exact date.”
    “Maybe later.”
    The enormity of Justin’s accomplishment was just starting to sink in, but so was the enormity of the loss.
    “Is there anyone left alive from my time?”
    “None that we’re aware of. Though you yourself came as a surprise—so it’s not inconceivable,” she answered, wishing to instill some hope.
    “But highly unlikely, correct?”
    “That is correct.” Neela began to realize that this was a man who was not going to need much of a soft pillow. She would disregard most of her primary plans and move to adopt a more straightforward approach.
    “But how is that possible?” Justin continued. “At the time of my suspension there were at least two active cryonic-suspension organizations with memberships in the thousands and suspensions in the hundreds. You’re telling me that in the past three hundred years not a single one of those suspendees made it?”
    “That’s what I’m telling you, Mr.—”
    “For now, you can call me Justin.”
    “For now?” Neela was curious. “Is Justin not your real name?”
    “It is for now, ” he answered.
    “OK, Justin,” Neela continued. If that’s how he wants to play it, then fine. “My name is Neela, and you’re correct. The cryonics movement of three hundred years ago, while tiny, was in fact persistent. And had the backlash not occurred, the incremental growth of those organizations would most likely have allowed a good number of suspendees to have made it to this time.”
    “Backlash?”
    “Yes. Both of the organizations you referred to were destroyed, including all the patients.”
    “How?”
    “One by a legal maneuver, the other by fire. The state government seized the one based in Michigan after it was revealed that most of the suspendees had died via assisted suicide. Apparently that was a political hot potato at the time, and the revelation forced a governmental inquiry and an eventual subpoena that resulted in the destruction of the facility’s patients via court-mandated autopsies. I believe they used a tax law to seize the suspended patients, and they ordered full autopsies to check for foul play. After it was all done they apologized to the facilities’ caretakers and returned the property, but by then…”
    “. . . by then it wouldn’t have mattered,” Justin said, finishing her thought. The whole point of suspension was not so much to freeze the body as it was to freeze the brain held within it. After all, it was the brain that truly determined “self,” and it was the brain that held all the resident memories. A body left to defrost for too long would lead to ischemia of the brain or, more precisely, brain rot. And with that rot went any chance of memory retrieval. In essence, permanent death.
    “And the one in Arizona?” asked Justin.
    “That one was attacked by a mob and destroyed while the police looked on.”
    Justin furrowed his brow. “That seems a strong reaction against a group of people frozen in metal cylinders.”
    Neela nodded. “I would say it goes beyond strong, Justin. But given the circumstances at the time, understandable.”
    “Please explain.”
    Neela would have preferred he rested a bit before she loaded him up with information, but she could also understand his need for immediate satiation—his need