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Message-ID: <49790asstr$1101341406@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: "Al Steiner" <do_not_resuscitate_ever@yahoo.com>
Subject: {ASSM} A Perfect World by Al Steiner Chap 2
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Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 19:10:06 -0500
Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail
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Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

A PERFECT WORLD

By Al Steiner



CHAPTER 2











His first conscious memory was auditory in nature.  Someone was calling his
name.



"Mr. Frazier?  Can you hear me?" a voice said to him.  "Mr. Frazier?"



His mind was not clear.  He felt the way a man feels the morning after he
has spent a night drinking heavily.  His head ached and his thoughts were
fuzzy.  He had a vague sense that something had happened to him, but he
could not remember what it was.  It was something bad, something painful.
He could sense that much.  Whatever had occurred, it was something that he
did not care to think about right now.



"Mr. Frazier?" the voice called again.  "Ken?  Can you hear me?  Open your
eyes if you can hear me."



He did not try to open his eyes, though he thought that he probably could if
he wanted to.  He just wanted to lay here, to nurse this awful headache that
was plaguing him.  Why wouldn't the voice leave him alone?  And just who was
it anyway?  It was a female voice, he could tell that much, but it was
nothing like Annie's.  The tonal inflection seemed... well... it seemed kind
of rough, unrefined.  It sounded like one of the street people that he used
to deal with when he worked patrol; an uneducated, ignorant type of accent.
A trashy accent, to put it mildly.  That very thought brought the memory he
was trying to suppress a little closer to the surface.  Patrol.  He had
worked patrol in San Jose.  He was a police officer that flew helicopters
for the San Jose PD.  And... well... something had happened to him, hadn't
it?



"Ken?" it said again.  "Are you there?  If you can hear me, I want you to
squeeze my hand."



Squeeze my hand.  That phrase brought a little more back to him.  Hadn't
Annie said those very words to him just recently?  She had!  Annie had told
him to squeeze her hand and she had been crying!  She had been crying over
him!  Why?



He began to struggle to remember now, trying to force the memory to surface.
Annie had been crying and telling him to squeeze her hand.  She had been
sobbing, tears running down her face because... because....



"Ken?" the voice repeated, intruding upon his thoughts.  "Ken?  Can you hear
me?  Squeeze my hand if you can hear me."



He felt a hand touching his, a soft, feminine hand.  It was squeezing his
palm, over and over again, gently but insistently, prompting him to squeeze
back.  He did not, would not.  He wanted to follow his train of thoughts to
their conclusion.  What had happened to him?  Why had Annie been crying?
Why had she been telling him to squeeze her hand?  It was almost as if she
thought he was... dying.



That thought brought a flood of memories into his forebrain.  Flying a
helicopter, a muzzleflash, a pain in his side, his partner (what was her
name?) pulling him free from the cockpit.  He had been shot!  Some maniac
had shot him and he had almost crashed!  But what had happened after that?
What had become of him?  All he could sense was the hazy, though powerful
image of his wife crying and of being unable to speak to her.



"Anything?" another voice, this one male, though still with that trashy
street accent, inquired.



"Not yet," the first voice responded.  "I'm getting good alphas on the
tracing.  According to the computer, he's in there.  He's just not
responding yet."



"There could be traumatic catatonia," the male suggested.  "Alphas don't
necessarily rule that out.  You know that."



"No shit," she said, somewhat testily.  "And you know that sometimes it
takes a while for them to respond once we get the alphas back."



There was no more conversation between them.  Shortly, the woman went back
to calling his name and telling him to squeeze her hand.



What had happened after the helicopter, after the muzzle flash?  He had been
in the hospital of course, that much was obvious.  But what had happened
then?  Had he gone to surgery?  He strained his brain, trying to think,
trying to remember.  The vision of Annie came to him again, the image of her
crying, of her leaning over him.  He had been unable to talk to her for some
reason, but he had been able to hear.  He remembered her talking, trying to
be encouraging for him, trying not to let him know that he was... dying.



He had been dying!  He had been shot through the liver by a rifle bullet and
he had been dying!  It came back to him in a flood, an unpleasant though
welcome flood.  Obviously he was not dead.  This was not an afterlife of
some sort.  He was reasonably sure that angels did not say things like "no
shit" and speak in dirtbag accents.  Had they found him a liver after all?
Had they performed a successful transplant before his body died of its own
internal poisons?  Or was this just another brief interlude of awareness?



"Ken?" said the voice again.  "Ken, can you hear me?  Mr. Frazier?  Squeeze
my hand if you can hear me."



He did not squeeze her hand.  Instead, he opened his eyes.  It was a
struggle.  The eyelids seemed very heavy, as if they had weights attached to
them.  When they did creak open a little the light in the room seemed as
bright as the sun.  Daggers of pain shot through his head and he slammed
them shut once again.



"Ken?" the voice said, hopeful excitement in it now.  "Can you hear me?"



He tried again, slower this time, allowing his pupils to adjust gradually to
the onslaught that was assaulting them.  Everything seemed fuzzy at first.
He saw the outline of a blonde haired woman before him.  She seemed to be
wearing a brief gray top that exposed her shoulders and her midriff.  She
was looking at him intently, though her image was not yet clear enough for
him to read her expression.



"Are you there?" she asked him, leaning a little closer.  "Can you say
something?"



He blinked a few times, trying to bring things into focus.  It helped a
little.  He could see that the blonde woman was in her thirties.  She was
very petite, very pretty and despite the fact that she sounded and dressed
like an ignorant ghetto dweller, she had an intelligent air about her.
Standing next to her was an older man of about forty or so.  He was wearing
a gray tank-top type garment and white shorts; as if he were planning on
playing a game of handball later.  He too seemed to exude a calm, thoughtful
intelligence despite his accent.  What was going on here?  Who were these
people?  They weren't doctors were they?  Doctors didn't talk or dress like
that.



"Mr. Frazier," the woman said, leaning in even closer.  "Can you talk?"



"Hi," he croaked.  His vocal chords sent a shrill message of displeasure
throughout his throat at their usage.  It felt like he had a severe case of
laryngitis.



Nevertheless this single, barely audible syllable had a dramatic effect on
the two people standing before him.  They broke into smiles of delight and
seemed on the verge of cheers.  What the hell?



"Can you tell me your name?" the woman asked him next.



His name?  Hadn't she just been calling him by his name?  Why was she asking
that?  No sooner had that thought surfaced however, then he realized she was
not asking to gain the information.  She was asking to see if he knew what
his name was.  He swallowed a little, bracing himself for the pain before
answering.  "Ken," he croaked to her.  "Ken... Fra... Frazier."



This produced even more excitement among his two visitors.  To his
astonishment, they actually high-fived each other.  "We did it!" the woman
cried, hugging her companion.  "We fuckin' well did it!  The motherfucker
knows his name!"



"Fuckin' aye!" the male replied excitedly.



Ken was starting to feel very peculiar about this whole thing.  Fuckin' aye?
The motherfucker knows his name?  What was with the profanity?  What was
with the accents?  Just who were these people who looked and acted so
intelligent but talked like third generation welfare recipients?



With those vaguely troubling thoughts in mind, he took a moment to examine
his surroundings.  Just where was he anyway?  Was this the San Jose Medical
Center?  That was probably where he would have been taken after the
shooting.  But somehow that just did not seem to fit with what he was
seeing.  It just didn't look like a hospital room.  He was in a bed and he
had a cotton sheet covering him, but that was about the only thing that
seemed as it should be.  He was flat on his back and looking upward at the
ceiling and it was like no ceiling that he had ever seen before, hospital or
not.  The material seemed to be some sort of shiny white plastic.  There
were no light fixtures on the ceiling, nor were there any on the walls
within his field of view.  As far as he could tell, the light was just
there, brightening up the room with enough illumination to take photographs
but coming from nowhere in particular.



And then there was the fact that there did not seem to be a single tube or
wire attached to him anywhere.  He could hear a machine rhythmically beeping
behind him, presumably with the beating of his heart, but there were no EKG
wires snaking out from beneath the sheet.  Nor was there an IV in his arm.
He had once been in the hospital for an appendectomy and during his stay
there for that relatively routine matter he had been wired up like a radio,
with tubes snaking from both arms and even something shoved up his penis.
So why, after having a life-threatening wound to a vital organ, was he just
lying here without any of that?  And how were they monitoring his heartbeat
if not with EKG pads?  He craned his head forward a little, looking down the
length of his body.  The right side of his abdomen, where the bullet had
entered, where they would have cut him open during surgery, was completely
unmarred by a scar of any kind.  There was nothing but smooth, unlined white
skin with a few brown hairs sticking up.  How was that possible?  Had he
really been shot?  Was that all some sort of delusion?  Was this maybe a
mental hospital that he was in, and not a medical hospital?



 "What's your date of birth, Mr. Frazier?" the blonde woman asked him next.



It took him a moment, but, by concentrating, he was able to recall the
information.  "July 16th, " he replied.  "1969."



"1969," she said, her expression seemingly one of awe.



"Amazing," her companion echoed.  "Just fucking amazing."



He wondered why his year of birth caused so much fascination with them.
Maybe this was a mental hospital.  Maybe he had not been able to tell them
that before.  Was he making progress?



"And what city do you live in?" she asked him next.



That one was easy.  "Pleasanton," he told her.  "About thirty miles from San
Jose."



Again they seemed more awed by his answer than they were pleased by it.
What was so fascinating about Pleasanton?  It was a freaking suburb.



"And what did... uh..." she blanched a little, and then quickly corrected.
"What do you do for a living?"



"I'm a police officer," he replied.  "And a helicopter pilot.  That is, I
fly for the San Jose Police Department."



"Do you remember what happened to you?"



He hesitated for a moment, not because he didn't remember but because he was
afraid that what he did remember was some sort of delusion.  How else could
the lack of a scar and the lack of monitoring equipment be explained?  And
if you concluded the shooting was a delusion, what else might be part of it?
Had he really been a police officer, a helicopter pilot, an army pilot?  Had
he?  Or had he simply been a plumber or a garbage collector who had had a
schizophrenic breakdown of some sort and imagined all of that?



"Do you remember, Mr. Frazier?" the male asked him.



"I... uh... think I do," he offered.



They looked at him expectantly.  "Well?" the woman finally prodded.



"I think that uh... that I was shot," he said softly.  "While I was flying
over a house.  The bullet came through the instrument panel and hit me."  He
swallowed a few times, trying to gauge their reaction.  It seemed like they
were pleased by his words.  "At least that's what I seem to remember."



Yes, they seemed very pleased indeed by his words, giving each other another
high five and offering congratulations.  But what did that mean?  Did that
mean that he wasn't crazy?  Did it mean that he was?  For the first time it
occurred to him that these people might not be his friends.  They might not
be trying to help him.  Maybe he was part of some twisted experiment?  Was
that possible?  What was real and what was not?



"Where..." he asked, "where exactly... uh... am I?"



Their delight at whatever their accomplishment had been eased up a little
bit at his words.  A look passed between them, a look that he wasn't really
sure how to interpret.



"You're in a university medical center research hospital," the woman finally
said, seeming to pick her words carefully.  "We have repaired the damage
done to your body by the gunshot wound you received."



Ken nodded slowly.  So the shooting had apparently not been a delusion after
all.  This thought made him feel a little better.  But what about the lack
of a scar?  How had they done that?  Things were still certainly far from
clear.  "Did they..." a pause to let the pain in his throat dissipate.  "Did
you find me a donor?"



"A donor?" she said, looking confused.



"For my liver," he clarified.  "It was damaged wasn't it?"



"Oh," she said, nodding her head a little, as if something had just occurred
to her.  "Yes, in a manner of speaking, we did find a donor for you.  Your
liver is working just like it's supposed to now."



"Yep," the male agreed.  "It's the shit, my man."



The shit?  Ken looked at them in bewilderment, unable to shake the strong
impression that he was talking to the housekeeping staff instead of medical
experts.  "And who are you?" he asked.  "Are you doctors?"



"Yes," the woman said.  "I'm Doctor Valentine and this is Doctor Jerico.
We're neurological specialists."



"Neurological specialists?" he asked, confused.  "Isn't that, you know, the
brain?"



"Fuckin aye," Jerico agreed.  "The brain and spinal column are our thing."



He ignored the un-doctor-like slang for the moment.  "But there was nothing
wrong with my brain, was there?"



"No," Valentine said.  "There wasn't.  That's kind of why you're here with
us today.  You've been through some rankin' shit, Mr. Frazier."



"Some rankin' shit?" he repeated.  "What does that mean?"



"I'm sorry," she told him, grinning a little.  "I guess our speech probably
sounds a little strange to you."  She seemed to think for a moment, as if
trying to translate her thought into different phrasing.  After a moment,
she did just that.  "You've been through a hell of an ordeal," she said.
"We were assigned to your case to kind of... well... help you through it, to
help keep any brain damage from happening.  It's what we do."



"I... uh... I see," he said, although he didn't.  "So... so I'm going to be
all right then?"



"Yes, Mr. Frazier," Valentine agreed, flashing him a smile.  "It seems like
you're going to be just fine.  But we would like to give you a complete
neurological exam just to make sure.  Physically you are doing fine,
probably better than you ever have before."



"Better than I have before?" he asked, confused.  "What do you mean by that?
I was shot by a rifle and I just had a liver transplant didn't I?  And I
can't even lift my arms off the bed.  I can barely move my head off the
pillow."



She looked a little embarrassed.  "Well... that is actually our doing," she
said.  "You see, when we wake someone up after they have gone through what
you have gone through, they are sometimes a little... well... jacked."



"Jacked?" he asked, blinking.



Again she seemed to search her mind for a translation.  "Uh... combative,
violent," she clarified.  "So what we have done is give you a sort of
calming agent to help to keep you from fucking yourself... uh... excuse
me... from hurting yourself."



"You mean I'm drugged," he said, this knowledge making him feel a little
better.



"In a manner of speaking, yes," Doctor Jerico replied.  "We're going to shut
it off in a moment so you can assist us in our tests.  Later, another doctor
will be in to check your physical condition.  We have no reason to believe
that that will be anything less than perfect.  The repairs of your physical
injuries went very well.  Your new liver is functioning beautifully and your
muscles and organs received a little juice-up

as well."



"A juice-up?"



"That's correct," he said.  "Now, we're going to remove the restraint field
from you.  Are you ready?"



"What?" he asked.  "What do you mean, restraint field?  What do you mean
remove?  I thought..."



"Computer," Valentine said aloud, ignoring him.  "Cut the cervical block on
Mr. Frazier.  Keep it on standby."



"Fuckin' aye," said a pleasant sounding female voice that seemed to come
from nowhere.



What the hell? Ken had time to think.  She was talking to a computer?  A
computer that was nowhere to be seen and that replied with street slang?
The suspicion that he was in a mental hospital tried to resurface.  Before
he could get any further with these thoughts however, his brain became
occupied by wonderment.  All of a sudden he could move again.  It was like
weights had been removed from his hands and legs, from his head.  He could
move!



"Jesus," he muttered, raising his hand from the bed.  It came up easily.  He
tried his legs.  They too moved easily.  He tried sitting up in his bed,
expecting that it would be painful.  It wasn't.  In fact, he felt physically
better than he had in years.



"How do you feel?" Valentine asked him, smiling a little.



He moved his body back and forth a few more times, searching for twinges of
pain, of soreness.  There weren't any.  He looked under the sheet, noting
that he was naked beneath it.  Again he marveled over the complete lack of a
scar or a mark of any kind where he had been shot.  With a start he realized
 that the faint incision on his lower right side, where they had removed his
appendix so many years ago, was no longer there either.



"What is going on here?" he said, looking at the two doctors.  "What kind of
hospital is this?"



"Mr. Frazier," Valentine answered.  "I know that things probably seem a
little strange to you at this moment."



"A little strange?" he asked.  "Now there's an understatement.  They seem
pretty fucking bizarre to me.  Where are the scars from the shooting?  Where
is the scar from my appendectomy?"



"They have been repaired along with the other damages to your body," she
told him.  "You are now in perfect physical condition, Mr. Frazier."



"How?" he said, almost afraid to know the answer.  "How was this done?  You
said this is a university research hospital?  What university?  Where the
hell am I?"



"This will all be explained to you soon," Jerico told him soothingly.
"Allow me to apologize for the confusion you are feeling.  As you can see,
our hospital is slightly more advanced than the... uh... conventional
medicine that you are used to."



"No shit," he said numbly, and to his surprise, his words seemed to delight
the two doctors.



"Now," Valentine said.  "If we could perform our neurological testing now?
We really should get this done before any further questions."



Ken licked his lips a little.  His mouth and throat were no longer as dry as
they had been.  Was that from the removal of the mysterious "cervical block"
or just because he was now awake and using his voice.  He did not know.
There were a lot of things he did not know.  He decided that he would
cooperate with these two strange doctors for the moment and allow them to
perform their tests.  But afterward he had a few questions to ask them.
"Okay," he said.  "Do your tests."



"Very good," Valentine smiled.  "Computer," she said into the air, "activate
neuro screening program 27."



"Fuckin' aye," replied the computer's voice.



*****





For the next twenty minutes he was asked to perform a variety of basic tasks
and answer a series of questions.  Though he had never had a neurological
exam before, at least not that he could remember, there was really nothing
extraordinary about it.  He raised his arms and legs, gripped a small
measuring device with both hands, pushed on another one with his feet.  They
had him toss a rubber ball from one hand to the other.  An instrument that
looked like a flashlight but that utilized a red beam was shined into each
eye.  A scanning device of some sort was run down the length of his body.
He was asked where he had grown up, what his parents' names were, what his
wife's name was, and a hundred other things.  As he performed their tests
and answered their questions their attention seemed to be focused not upon
him, but upon the wall behind him.



He took a glance there once to see what they where staring at.  What he saw
was a flat television type screen about three feet square.  It was not
mounted to the wall but rather seemed to be a physical part of the wall,
with not so much as a millimeter of outward protrusion.  His name was
printed near the top of the screen along with a serious of numbers, most of
which he didn't recognize but one of which was his date of birth.  Below
this were approximately ten rows of readouts that consisted of red tracings
marching from left to right.  Next to each column was a letter that
presumably identified, for those that were schooled in it, what the reading
was measuring.



"How is that machine getting this information from me?" he asked, a little
uneasily.  "I don't have any wires connected."



"It's a wireless system," Valentine told him.  "It can read your brainwaves
from the minute polarization changes that they leave in the air around you."



"I see," he said slowly.



"Now, Mr. Frazier," she asked him next.  "If you could please tell me who
your high school principal was?"



Finally Dr. Valentine declared the examination at an end.  She instructed
the computer to send the data to her office ("fuckin' aye," it confirmed)
and then looked at her patient.  "You seem to be doing very well," she said.
"I won't know for sure until I examine the data in detail, but it looks like
you have come through this... this process without any neurological deficits
at all."



"Okay," Ken said carefully.  "That means I'm going to live, right?"



"It would seem so," she told him.



"That's good to know," he said, more than a little relieved.  "It kind of
looked like I wasn't going to make it there for a while.  It's a good thing
you found that new liver for me."



"Yes," Jerico agreed, a strange smile upon his face.  "It's a good thing."



He hesitated for an instant, almost afraid to ask his next question though
he couldn't imagine why.  Finally he spit it out.  "My wife," he asked.
"When can I see her?  She must be very worried about me."



Their expressions both darkened at his words and another look passed between
them.  He felt a dagger of dread worming into his heart.  Was something
wrong with Annie?  With the baby?  "What's the matter?" he asked them.  "Is
she okay?  She's about to have a baby."



The two doctors continued to pass looks back and forth for a moment, a
non-verbal sort of argument taking place.  Finally Valentine turned to him.
"Mr. Frazier," she said softly.  "I don't know how to tell you this, but...
well..."  She hesitated.



"Tell me what?" he demanded. "What's happened to Annie?  Where is she?"



"This is always the hardest part," she sighed, mostly to herself.  She
turned back to him.  "You've been, well, kind of in a coma for a while, Mr.
Frazier.  For quite a while."



"A coma?" he said.  Had his son already been born without him?  Hadn't there
been cases of people being in comas for years?  Was his son already in
school?  Was Annie remarried?  Holy Jesus!  "For how long?" he asked.  "Is
my family all right?  How long was I out?"



"Mr. Frazier," Valentine said.  "Perhaps I should clarify things a little.
It wasn't exactly a coma that you were in, at least not in the way that you
think of a coma."



"My family?" he insisted, not wanting to be side-tracked from the issue.
"Where are they?"



Valentine looked up at the ceiling for a moment.  "Oh Laura," she moaned to
herself.  She looked back at him.  "Your wife," she told him, "loved you
very much Mr. Frazier."



The feeling of dread deepened.  "What do you mean loved?" he asked.  "What's
happened to her?  Is she... is she dead?"



"She is dead," she confirmed.  "I'm very sorry.  We were hoping not to have
to break all of this to you just yet.  But you've come out of the... the
process remarkably alert."



Annie was dead.  His beautiful wife, the mother of his child, was dead.  He
felt numbness at the thought, numbness that he knew would turn into
overwhelming grief before long.  "How did she die?" he asked.  "Was it in
childbirth?  Is my son all right?"



"Mr. Frazier," Valentine said.  "If you'll let me explain everything to you,
I think there will be less of a shock.  Your wife did not die in childbirth.
She delivered a healthy baby boy about four weeks after you were shot.  She
named him after you."



"A baby boy," he said wonderingly, feeling a tear on his face.  "And where
is he now?  Are her parents taking care of him?  Are mine?"



"Your wife," she explained slowly, carefully, "raised your son to
adulthood."



"Adulthood?" he asked, thinking that he must have misheard her.



"Adulthood," she confirmed.  "Annie died of a disease called Ebola during
an... well... lets just say an epidemic that swept through your country.
She was sixty-eight years old at the time of her death."



"Sixty...." he couldn't finish.  Sixty-eight years old!  Annie had died at
sixty-eight years old?  That was thirty-eight years after he had been shot.
Thirty-eight years!  He began to shake his head in denial.  "That's
impossible," he told them.  "It's just impossible!"



"I'm sorry, Mr. Frazier," Valentine told him.  "I know this is a rankin'
shock to you."



"How could I have been in a coma for thirty-eight years?  That's crazy!"



"You were not exactly in a coma, Mr. Frazier," Jerico cut in at that point.
"That was maybe a fucked up choice of words.  You were in a state of
cryogenic cooling."



His head was swimming as he tried to cope with all of this; with the grief
of being told that Annie was dead, with being told that his child was an
adult, and finally, that forty years had gone by since he had been shot.
Was it really 2041?  Was Annie really dead?



"You would have died if not what your wife did for you," Valentine said,
picking the thread back up.  "You were legally considered dead for all
intents and purposes.  Your liver was destroyed and there were no donors
available.  A death certificate was signed and filed.  You were given a
funeral with honors by the police department you worked for and your wife -
Annie - was given a very large monetary settlement for your death.  But you
never were completely, physically dead.  Annie saw to that.  She arranged
for the cryogenic storage of your body by a Los Angeles firm that performed
such services."



"Annie had me frozen?" he asked, bewildered that his wife would do such a
thing.



"Apparently," she explained, "she was told that if only medical science was
a little more advanced, they would have been able to save you.  She took
that rather drastic step in the hope that one day they would be able to fix
you.  And she was right, we were able to fix you up eventually.  It just
took a little longer than she thought it would."



"You see," Jerico said, "the problem at the time of the shooting was your
liver.  That was why you... well, let's say died for lack of a better term.
But your liver wasn't the reason why you were kept in cryogenics for so
long.  By the middle of World War III medical science had advanced
sufficiently enough so that the damage could have been repaired then. Vital
organ cloning became a widely accepted technique during the war to treat
gunshot wound and shrapnel victims."



"World War III?" he asked, feeling overwhelmed.  A world war had been fought
while he had been asleep?  What else had happened?



"It was a pretty fucked up war," Jerico assured him.  "But let's try and
stay on track here.  My point was that you could easily have had your body
repaired a long time ago.  The problem was that there was no known way of
retrieving someone from the cryogenic state alive.  Until a method was found
to do this successfully, you just had to stay dead and in storage.  To tell
you the truth, medical science never really worked very hard on this
problem.  It's only in the last few years that our university developed a
technique.  And even then most of those in storage were beyond repair.
Their brains were damaged, containing no stored memories or thoughts, not
even autonomic instincts.  Out of more than a hundred attempts, you are one
of six that we have managed to get back with those memories and brain
patterns intact.  We were able to do this because your wife made
arrangements to have you frozen before you actually succumbed to death."



"Before I succumbed?"



"Correct," Valentine said.  "Most cryogenic storages were people that had
been frozen immediately after dying.  It was a legal requirement of the
time.  But your wife managed to pull a few strings and let them come in
while you still had brain activity.  In addition, you were frozen using an
advanced technique; a technique that halted all of your life systems in
place without damaging the cells of your brain.  Your wife then set up an
indefinite trust fund to pay for your continued storage."  She gave him a
sympathetic smile.  "Like I said Mr. Frazier, she loved you very much.  She
didn't want to let go of you."



"No," he said, crying softly now.  "I guess she didn't."



"I'm sorry to have to break all of this to you," Valentine said again.  "I
really am.  I did not want to shock you in the first hour that you were
awake."



"So that's why your medicine is so advanced," he said.  "Oh, Annie."  He
began to sob now, great heart-wrenching sobs of grief and loss.  His beloved
wife was dead.  She had refused to let him go, had refused to let him die,
and, though she had been successful, she herself was now dead.  His two
doctors sat by solemnly as he cried, Valentine taking his hand in hers
comfortingly.  Jerico, amazingly enough, began to shed a few tears himself
as he watched.



"My son," he asked when he composed himself a little.  "Where is my son?
Will I be able to see him?  Does he even know that I'm still alive?"



He did not need a verbal answer from them this time.  Their faces told the
story.  "He's dead too?" he asked, though it was not really a question.



"I'm afraid so," Valentine told him, patting his hand a little.



"Did he die of the epidemic that killed Annie?  This Ebola thing?"



"No," Valentine shook her head.  "Ken Jr. survived the Ebola epidemic
nicely.  He died of natural causes."



"Natural causes?" he asked.  "What do you mean?  He shouldn't even be forty
years old yet.  What kind of natural causes killed him?"



"Forty years old?" Jerico asked.  "What do you mean?"



"You said I was in cryogenic storage for thirty-eight years... well...
didn't you?"  It suddenly occurred to him that they had not said that.  That
was just how long Annie had lived after his shooting.



"Ken," Valentine said sympathetically, "your son died at the age of
ninety-eight of heart failure.  You have been out of things for a lot longer
than thirty-eight years.  A lot longer."



"How much longer?" he asked with dread.  "Just what year is it anyway?"



"Well," Valentine said, "we don't use the calendar that you are accustomed
to.  Our years are measured from the point of our Declaration of
Independence and they are somewhat longer than yours were as well.  Here it
is September 43rd, of the year 21."



That was so strange of a date to be told that he almost allowed himself to
be sidetracked.  Reluctantly he stuck to his original line of questioning.
"That doesn't tell me how long I've been out," he said.



"No," she sighed.  "I suppose it doesn't."  She looked upward.  "Computer,"
she said.  "Please calculate today's date to the standard WestHem calendar
for Mr. Frazier."



"Fuckin' aye," the computer replied.  "In the WestHem, Christianity based
system of measurement, today's date is January 12, 2191."



Ken was beyond stunned, he was in shock.  2191?  He had been frozen for 188
years?  Almost two centuries?  "My god," he moaned, his mind trying to
digest this and not doing a very good job.  His wife was long dead, killed
more than a hundred years ago by a strange disease.  His son, who from his
perspective had been in Annie's stomach just yesterday, was also dead after
having lived ninety-eight years.  It was simply too much to take.  He shook
his head in denial.  "I'm in the mental hospital, aren't I?" he demanded.
"I've gone completely crazy and this is all some sort of delusion, right?"



"I'm afraid not," Valentine told him.  "This is real.  You were frozen on
August 14, 2003 and placed in long term storage.  You remained in the Los
Angeles storage facility for the next 63 years, until arrangements were made
to transfer you to a new facility in low Earth orbit."



"Orbit?" he asked.  "I was in space?"



"Yes," she confirmed.  "Once commercial space flight became commonplace it
was... uh... cheaper to transport you up to orbit and store you there.  You
see, real estate prices on the planetary surface became pretty gnarly as the
population continued to grow.  It eventually got to the point where rent was
less in orbit.  The power needs for the storage machinery was much less as
well.  You remained in a forgotten section of Departure - that's the main
WestHem orbiting city - until we arranged to have you brought to us about
three of your years ago.  That's about a year and a half on our calendar."



Once again ignoring the reference to the other calendar, he asked her, "So
it took you three years to wake me up?  You've spent three years doing
this?"



"It took three years before we tried it on you," she clarified.  "We've been
experimenting with this process for quite some time now.  Like I said, we've
attempted to revive almost a hundred cryogenically frozen people even though
the majority of them were beyond salvation.  The actual procedure only took
six days.  We brought you up until we got life signs on you and then we
quickly put you back into a more modern state of stasis so we could repair
the physical injuries.  We used your DNA and cloned a new liver for you and
then gave you a general overhaul.  Once we got you physically fit again we
then worked on reviving your brain.  As you can imagine, that's the
trickiest part.  We can clone and replace almost any vital or non-vital
organ - it's pretty routine in this day and age - but the brain is
different.  The brain contains your memories, your thoughts, your essence.
It's where your soul is, if you prefer that term.  Cloning a new brain would
be futile.  It would be nothing but an empty shell, without even the ability
to control autonomic functions.  We had to make sure that the one you had
was brought back to operational status in working order.  And we were very
successful with you in that regard.  It seems like you came through just
fine, much better than we had any right to expect."



"Jesus," Ken moaned, his arms and legs trembling as his mind tried to sort
through all of this.  "This is too much.  This is just too fucking much.  I
go to work one morning, jump in my helicopter and handle a few calls.  The
next thing I know, my wife is dead, my child is dead, and I'm two hundred
fucking years in the future."  He clenched his hands into fists, partially
to vent pressure and partially to stop the trembling.  "Do you have any idea
how insane this makes me feel?  How much grief you've just given me?"



Valentine seemed distressed by his words.  "Please understand Mr. Frazier -
Ken - that we were fulfilling the wishes of Annie, of your wife, when we
brought you back.  To her dying day it was her obsession that some day you
would live again.  It was almost a sacred decree."



"We didn't know that you were going to wake up so alert," Jerico told him.
"We really didn't.  You are only the sixth person that we have been able to
revive with any sort of brain activity intact.  The others all took days,
sometimes months to recover their basic life memories.  You emerged with
them almost completely intact from the moment of wakening."



He shook his head a little.  "I feel honored," he told them.  "Absolutely
honored."  With that he began to sob again; great, racking sobs that shook
his chest.  He cried for his lost wife who had loved him so much she had
frozen him in time.  He cried for the son that he would never see.  And he
cried for the life that he had left behind forever.





*****





He demanded that they leave the room, that they allow him to be alone with
his grief.  Despite all that had happened to him, all that he had to sort
out in his mind, he was still enamored with the macho code of his time that
demanded that he not be observed weeping.  They obeyed his wishes, telling
him apologetically that they would come back later to answer any questions
that he might have.  With that they walked towards a door in the room and it
slid silently open before them revealing a remarkably normal looking
hospital hallway outside.  The walls were sterile white and the floor was of
industrial looking beige tile.  They stepped out into that hallway and the
door slid back shut a moment later, leaving him alone.



Though he suspected that they were watching him through hidden cameras of
some sort, it didn't matter.  Just the mere illusion of being alone was more
than enough.  He let it out of him, crying as he never had before, the sheer
power of the outpouring both surprising and frightening him.  He was a man
that - in the course of his career - had seen atrocities capable of driving
lesser men mad.  Never had he done more than silently weep while alone.  And
only then during the worst of them.  But this was something new, something
beyond that gentle release of stress.  This was sheer agony manifesting
itself.  This was unfathomable loss making itself known.  This was
flirtation with catatonia.



Eventually, after what seemed forever, the sobs petered out a little,
powering down to sniffles and coughs, more out of sheer exhaustion than out
of any sort of lessening of the grief.



"Annie," he whispered, wiping his face with the back of his hand.  "I know
you meant well.  I know you did it out of love, but you should have let me
go.  You should have let me go."





*****





Doctor Valentine came back in about thirty minutes later, the door whisking
open before her.  She carried a plastic cup full of a clear liquid in her
hand.  He looked up at her, his face expressionless.



"I thought you might like something to drink," she told him, stepping to the
bed and offering the cup.  "It's soda water sweetened with sugar and lemon.
I believe you used to call it ginger ale."



"Thanks," he said tonelessly, taking the cup from her.  "I haven't had a
drink in almost two hundred years you know."  He brought the cup to his lips
and took an experimental sip.  It was cold and tingled on his tongue.  The
taste was exactly like good old Canada Dry.  There was a slight pain in his
tonsils as it slid down his throat. "So what happens next?" he asked her,
setting the cup down on a plastic table next to the bed.



"What happens?" she asked, taking a seat next to him once more.



"Yes," he said.  "Am I going to be some sort of freak show exhibit or
something?  Or are there going to be pay-per-view events where people get to
talk to me?"



She scratched her head a little.  "Pay-per-view?  Freak show?  I'm sorry,
I'm not quite down with your phrasing."



He cracked a little smile, a weak one but genuine.  "You don't follow my
terminology, huh?" he said, shaking his head.



She smiled back.  "I guess it's probably mutual at times, huh?" she said.
"If you're asking if we're going to exploit you for commercial purposes
however, the answer is no.  Our society is not quite the same as what you're
probably used to.  Here you won't be harassed or bothered by anybody that
you do not wish to talk to.  We do have a few historians who would probably
be interested in meeting you but it will be entirely up to you."



"Where will I go from here though?  You probably don't fly helicopters
anymore, right?"



For some reason this was amusing to her.  "No," she said.  "We don't have
much use for helicopters here."



"So am I just going to be thrown out on the street?  You wake me up, tell me
everything I care about is gone, and then kick me out to beg for food?  Is
that how it is?"



She seemed shocked by this suggestion.  "We're not barbarians, Mr. Frazier,"
she said sternly.  "I apologize for the loss of your family and friends,
truly I do, but we do not throw people out on the streets here.  Is that
what they would have done back in... well back in your time?"



He looked at her, trying to detect signs of deceit.  For the first time he
began to wonder just what sort of society he had been awakened into.  Nearly
two centuries had gone by.  Was he smack in the middle of an Orwellian-type
of environment?  Had mankind's worst nightmares come true?  "Had somebody
from the eighteenth century been awakened in my time," he told her, "they
would have been ruthlessly exploited and commercialized.  There would have
been endless talk shows and television programs.  There would have been
movies of the week.  There would have been scale model action figures and
children's cartoon shows.  Everybody would have been fighting each other to
try and figure out a way to make a profit from the poor slob.  And the
funniest thing is that most of the public wouldn't have believed the story
in the first place."



"You lived in a world of greed and mistrust," she said.  It was not a
question.



"No shit," he replied, taking another sip of his ginger ale.  "Are you
telling me things have changed?"



"No," she said.  "Things have actually become worse in WestHem.  Huge
corporations own and control everything, including the government itself.
The quest for profit is the driving force and the main focus of all aspects
of life.  The government is hopelessly corrupt and is on the verge of
collapsing under the weight of its own greed."



"WestHem?" he asked.  "I've heard you say that a few times.  What exactly is
WestHem?"



"The Democratic Alliance of the Western Hemisphere," she clarified for him.
"It consists of, as you might have guessed, the population and landmasses of
the Western Hemisphere of the planet Earth.  It was formed during World War
III as a desperate strategic alliance in order to drive the Asian Powers out
of North America.  After the war it became an official consolidation; a
single country.  The United States was the head of it of course.  Believe
me, the Latin American nations did not benefit much from becoming a part of
WestHem.  But they didn't have much choice in the matter.  Though they
allied with the United States voluntarily during the war, out of
self-interest you understand, they joined the official merger under force of
arms."



"I see," he said slowly, trying to absorb all of this.  "So WestHem consists
of the western half of the planet.  North America, South America, right?"



"Correct," she confirmed.  "Also most of the South Pacific islands,
Greenland, and a large colony on Callisto."



"Callisto?" he said hesitantly.  "That's a moon of Saturn, isn't it?"



"Jupiter actually," she corrected.  "Our society uses the hydrogen and
methane from the atmosphere of the gas giants as a conventional fuel and as
a propellant for fusion spacecraft.  The trade and shipment of this fuel is
one of the keystones of modern life.  Surface to orbit craft, military
vehicles, and interplanetary ships all rely upon it.  It is to our society
what oil was to your society."



"I see," he said again.  "But what about the other half of the earth?  Who
controls that?"



"That would be EastHem," she said.  "Also formed during World War III and
also for the purpose of driving out the Asian Powers.  EastHem and WestHem
were allies during the war but, just like America and Russia after World War
II, they became bitter cold war enemies when it came to dividing up the
spoils."



"EastHem," he said, nodding.  "Of course.  What else would you call it?  And
EastHem are the good guys right?"



"Wrong," she told him.  "EastHem is just as corrupt and greedy as WestHem,
maybe even more so.  And, just like WestHem is controlled by the United
States, EastHem is controlled by the dominant powers of that part of the
planet at the time."



"Russia?" he asked.



"No," she said.  "Russia all but ceased to exist during the war.  It was
overrun and occupied by Chinese and Indian troops in the first two weeks and
has never been an independent nation, or even much of a political force,
since.  The dominant members of EastHem were the so-called European Union.
England, France, and Germany were most prominent.  The consolidation of
Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East was a very difficult, very
bloody undertaking.  To this day they still have vicious uprisings among
their people."



Ken rubbed his temples a little bit, massaging at a tension headache.  "So
the Earth," he asked, just for clarity, "is divided essentially into only
two countries now, is that what you're saying?"



"That's right," she told him.  "EastHem and WestHem."



"And they're both corrupt?"



"They are both atrocities to mankind," she told him.



"But you don't think I'll be exploited?" he asked sarcastically.  "Aren't
you contradicting yourself a little?"



"No," she said.  "You see, our society is quite different than that of
EastHem or WestHem.  We have learned from the mistakes of the disastrous
experiment in capitalism your country started in the eighteenth century and
inflicted upon the rest of the world.  Our society is based not on personal
wealth, not on greed, but on the betterment of our species.  We worship the
principals of common sense and fairness here and all of our laws, our very
constitution itself, is written with them in mind."



"Sounds like a few lines I've heard before," Ken observed.  "The politicians
in my day used to swear that they were working for us common people.  They
used to swear that even as they were stealing the food from our mouths and
protecting the criminals that raped and murdered us."



"I realize that," she said.  "Considering the climate in which you were
brought up and educated in, your mistrust of my words is quite normal and
expected.  As time goes by however and as you spend some time in our
society, I believe you will find I am being entirely truthful with you.  We
are quite proud of our laws and our constitution and we believe they should
be a model for all of humankind.  Of course the leaders of WestHem and
EastHem, who are in power because of the very greed we abolished, do not
agree with us on this point."



"And just what society is it that I'm now a part of?" he asked her.  "You
said that the earth was divided into EastHem and WestHem.  So where are we?
Did you and your ideal society guys get Australia or something?"



She took a few deep breaths, as if debating with herself whether or not to
say something.  "No," she finally said, "we didn't get Australia, they're
part of EastHem."  She paused for a moment.  "We don't have any holdings at
all on the planet Earth."



He looked at her, chewing his lip a little as that statement made its way
through his brain and the ramifications of it became clear.  "Are you
saying," he said at last, "that we're not on Earth right now, at this
moment?"



"No," she confirmed.  "You are not on Earth.  You are in the Whiting
University Medical Center in the city of New Pittsburgh..." Another pause.
"On the Planet of Mars."



He continued to look, continued to chew.  "Mars?" he said blankly.  "You
mean... Mars?  The red planet?  Fourth from the sun?"



"Yes," she said.  "We were once a colony of WestHem but our people revolted
21 years ago - about 40 years ago on your calendar - and we have been
independent ever since.  Of course WestHem didn't just let us go peacefully.
We were much too valuable a possession.  They invaded and tried to jack the
planet back from us."  She gave a predatory grin.  "It took us almost two
years but we kicked ass.  Though their armed forces were bigger than ours,
they couldn't beat us on our home ground, especially not at the end of long
supply line."



Ken sat up a little straighter and began massaging his temples again.  Just
when he thought he had received all of the shocking information that could
be thrown at him, another piece came soaring in.  He was on Mars!  It was
two hundred years in the future, his wife and family were all dead, and now
he finds out that he is on a different planet.  A planet that had been
almost completely unexplored yesterday from his point of view.  "Mars," he
said again, as if saying it over and over would make it sink in.  "I thought
there was no breathable air on Mars.  If we're on Mars, where is all this
air coming from?"



"Oxygen extractors," she said.  "There are several in every building.  They
pull the trace amounts of oxygen and nitrogen out of the atmosphere and pump
them inside.  The buildings themselves are all airtight so they can be
pressurized to standard Earth sea level pressure.  Each building is, in
effect, like a spaceship sitting on the planet surface, complete with blast
doors on every floor in case of a leak or a breech in the integrity of the
seal.  In between the buildings there is a street level which is also sealed
and pressurized."



"Wow," he said, feeling numb, disconnected.  "You're serious right?  I mean,
you're not making this up to screw with me?  I'm really on Mars?"



"You are really on Mars," she assured him.  "As I told you earlier, we
brought you here from Earth orbit where you were in storage.  We have
another storage facility set up in Triad - that's our orbiting space city -
and we kept you there until we were ready to try reviving you.  Once we were
ready, we loaded you into a C-12 lifter craft and brought you down to the
New Pittsburgh spaceport.  A special delivery truck brought you here to the
hospital."



For the first time since being told that Annie was dead, Ken found himself
becoming slightly interested in his surroundings.  He was on Mars!  He was
on a different planet than the one he had been born and raised upon.  He
had, through no effort of his own, become an astronaut and traveled to a
distant world, something that most men in his time could only dream about.
"Gravity," he said suddenly, as something occurred to him.  "Why does the
gravity feel the same?  Shouldn't we be lighter here?"



Valentine seemed pleased at his question.  "We should be," she told him,
"but you're right, we aren't.  We have an artificial gravity field in place
that allows us to live at a standard 1G, just like on Earth.  All space
habitats, all non-Earth settlements, and most spacecraft have this feature
built into them."



"Artificial gravity," he said with reluctant wonder.  "Amazing." In his
previous life (as he was already starting to think of it) he had been an on
again, off again science buff.  It had been conventional wisdom back then
that artificial gravity that was not related to acceleration or centrifugal
force was impossible.



"It was discovered in the early 21st century," Valentine explained, "that
human beings cannot live indefinitely in much less than 1G.  We start to
suffer loss of bone density and muscle mass, losses that become critical
after a few years.  The development of artificial gravity generators was
what opened up space for mass habitation.  Without it, we'd all still be
stuck on Earth."



"How does it work?" he asked.



"It's pretty complex," she answered apologetically.  "I'm not a physicist so
I don't have a very complete understanding of it.  I know it's a principal
of particle physics and electromagnetism.  The field is powered by a serious
of fusion reactors and is achieved by pumping current through special
conduits that are a part of every building and street in the city.  This
field serves to increase the natural gravity within it to the desired
level."



"Ahhh," Ken said, offering another smile, a little stronger than the first
one, "you mean its FM."



"FM?" she asked.



"That's what we used to say about our computers and our nav equipment and
all that other electronic crap that we had in the police department.  FM.
It's fuckin' magic."



She laughed at this and he joined her.  For a moment he felt the depression
that was engulfing him lift a little.  Just a little. "Fuckin' magic," she
said.  "I like that.  Where would society be without the fuckin' magicians
that know how to build all that FM shit?"



Suddenly something else that he had heard her mention several times became
clear to him.  "The different calendar that you keep talking about," he
said.  "It's a calendar based on Mars, isn't it?  On the revolution of Mars
around the sun instead of the Earth?"



"Right," she said.  "We used the Earth based calendar until the revolution.
The Earthlings insisted that we stick with their system of time keeping even
though it was very inconvenient for those of us that lived here - or so I
was told anyway, I wasn't alive then.  When we became independent, one of
the first things we did was cast that calendar aside and adopt the Martian
one as standard.  Now our winters are always at the same time every year and
our days are always the same length."



"What did you do?" he asked.  "Did you put in more months, or more days of
the week, or what?"



"Neither," she told him.  "It's pretty simple actually.  It takes our planet
687 days to make a trip around the sun.  We kept this year divided into
twelve months, January through December, and the weeks seven days in length,
just like the earth system.  But we added days to the months themselves.
There are 57 days in our months except for March, June, September, and
December, they each have 58 days."



"That makes for pretty long months," he said.  "Doesn't it kind of drag on?"



"It's all that I've ever been used to," she replied with a shrug.  "And
really, what difference does it make?  A calendar and a clock are only
methods used to measure time passage, to keep track of it.  Time is time and
it passes at the pace that it does no matter what system of categorization
we utilize to mark how much has gone by since yesterday or since last
winter.  Our day to day method of measurement is different than that of
Earth as well."



"Day to day?" he asked, his head swimming with this concept of different
time.  "What do you mean?"



"Well," she said, "the passage of one day is marked by how long it takes the
planet to rotate once on its axis, right?"



"Right," he said, seeing where she was heading with this.  "And Mars doesn't
rotate at the same rate as Earth, does it?"



"No it doesn't.  It's remarkably close, but not the same.  Our day has an
extra 37 minutes in it.  That is 37 minutes that has to be accounted for.
This was actually much more inconvenient than the differing revolutionary
period.  When we were a part of WestHem and on their system the actual,
official time had no relationship to what time of the day or night it was.
That extra 37 minutes jacks everything up.  0330 could just as easily be
high noon as it could be the early morning hours.  1700 could just as easily
be the middle of the night as it could be the end of the workday.  It
required the assistance of a computer to figure out if an appointment you
were setting for a few weeks in the future was actually during business
hours or not."



"That sounds pretty damn strange," he commented, trying to imagine living in
a world where day and night did not coordinate with the time every day.  It
was hard to even conceive of what that was like.



"Yes," she agreed.  "Again, I'm a post-revolutionary child so I never
actually experienced this, but from what I've been told it left people a bit
disassociated with things, even generations after leaving Earth, even when
they had never experienced anything else."



"So how did you account for that extra 37 minutes?" he wanted to know.



"Each hour between 0600 and 1700 has 61 minutes instead of 60," she
explained.  "And each hour between 1700 and 0600 has 62 minutes.  That adds
an additional 37 minutes to each twenty-four hour period and insures that
1200 hours will always be the middle of the day and 0000 hours will always
be the middle of the night.  You'll notice that we placed the majority of
those extra minutes in the traditional non-working hours."



"Yes," he said.  "I did notice that."



"It was felt that if we had to extend the length of the day it would be
better to add as many minutes to the recreational and sleeping periods as
possible instead of to the workday.  Extending the work period would have
been a very WestHem thing to do."



"Wow," he said again, picking up his cup for another drink.  To his surprise
he saw that it was empty.



"Would you like a little more?" she asked him.



"Please."



She picked up his cup and left the room, exiting through the sliding door
once more and into the tiled hall.  While she was gone he tried to sort
through all that he had been told.  He was very confused, full of
conflicting emotions.  Dominating his thoughts was a black depression that
wanted to crush him and reduce him to a blubbering mass of flesh.  Having
one's old life swept away seemingly in an instant was a shocking thing.  He
had not just lost his wife but everything and everybody else that he cared
about.  His parents were gone, his friends, his career.  He was quite
literally a man out of time, out of his place in the great scheme of things.
But just underneath the depression, straining to come to the surface, was
curiosity and excitement.  He could feel the desire to learn about this new
reality that he found himself in, to explore it.  How much had changed in
the past two hundred years?  How many discoveries had been made?  There were
a thousand questions to ask, a thousand things to know, to find out.



But underneath the excitement of discovery there was also a distinct dagger
of suspicion and cynicism at what he had been told so far.  He had been
awakened from a two hundred-year cryogenic state at what was undoubtedly
considerable expense and effort.  Why?  Though Doctor Valentine - she of the
trashy accent and the trashy clothing - had assured him that it was simply
because of his late wife's wishes, that was somewhat of a hard sell in his
opinion.  In the world as he knew it, people did not spend money and waste
research time just to fulfill a long-dead woman's wishes.  If they went to
all the trouble to wake him up, then they must want something from him.
Whether it was commercial exploitation, as some sort of expendable freedom
fighter, or something that he could hardly even conceive of, it had to be
something.  They wouldn't have awakened him just so he could enjoy their
so-called common sense oriented society and the clean Martian air.  And who
was to say that he was really on Mars in the first place?  What proof did he
have of that?  He had seen nothing but two people calling themselves doctors
and an admittedly advanced hospital room.  Was this all some kind of
elaborate charade for some unknown purpose?  Though he had no proof of that
either, he certainly could not rule that out.  He could not rule anything
out.  He would have to keep his eyes and ears open and watch for deceit.  As
a former police officer he was an expert at identifying deceit.



When Valentine returned to his room she handed him his fresh ginger ale and
then resumed her seat next to his bed without waiting for an invitation.
"So tell me," he asked her after taking a sip and setting the cup down, "how
do you know so much about me?  I mean my personal life.  You knew my wife's
name and her wishes, the history of my son.  Do you become such an expert on
all of your patients?"



"As a matter of fact," she replied, "I do.  It helps ease them through the
waking phase if the doctor knows something about their lives.  Most of this
information is easily obtained by looking up old records or, in your case,
news stories.  Since you were a police officer killed in the line of duty
there were quite a few stories available in past issues of the San Jose
Tribune.  The text of all of this is available in our historical data
banks."



"Really?" he asked, his eyes searching her face.  He could sense that she
wasn't telling him the complete truth about where she had gathered her
information about him.  Why wasn't she?  What was she leaving out?  "The man
who shot me," he inquired.  "Was he convicted of murder?"



"No," she said.  "He was shot and killed by the police officers that arrived
to take him into custody.  The accounts of what happened were variable,
depending upon who was telling the story.  The police officers say he came
out of the house with the rifle in his hand, brandishing it at them.  A
witness down the street states he came out with his hands up and they shot
him anyway.  The official department ruling cleared the officers of any
wrongdoing.  There was a brief spate of editorials and articles about the
police taking the law into their own hands and then the issue was forgotten.
You, however, were hailed as a hero.  You were given a posthumous medal of
valor by the police department.  They even named a park after you."



"A hero," he said, shaking his head a little.  "What's so heroic about
getting shot?  I did something stupid and got too close."



"But you also managed to get your partner down alive," she reminded him.
"Most of the articles dealing with your heroics mentioned that aspect over
and over."



"And my wife?" he asked next, feeling the tears trying to well up inside of
him at the mere mention.  "What became of her?  You told me she died at 68
of this Ebola thing, but what happened in the meantime?  How did the rest of
her life go?  How did my son's life go?"



"Ken," she said gently, "why don't we talk about that later?  After you've
had a little time to..."



"It's all right," he interrupted.  "I can take it.  After all, she's long
dead and gone, right?  Just tell me what happened to her.  Did she remarry?"



"She remarried," she said reluctantly.  "She met a man and moved to Texas
about five years after your death.  That was where she lived out the rest of
her life.  But even after that, she made sure that your son would pass on to
his descendants the drive to one day restore you, to make sure that your
body was kept safe.  Even after remarriage, she was still obsessed with you
and was still in love with you."



Though it seemed like he should, he could not develop any strong emotions
for the thought that Annie had married another.  He was, in effect, tapped
out.  He was on mental overload.  Too many things had happened, had been
revealed on this very strange day.   "Did she... did she have any more
children?" he asked, unsure why that was important to him but knowing it
was.



"No," Valentine told him.  "Ken Jr. was her only one.  I don't know the
exact reasons why she didn't have any with her second husband - he was
childless as well - but World War III started a few years after the marriage
and she might not have wanted to bring a child into that world.  That would
have been quite understandable.  You see, things were pretty jacked during
the war years.  Millions were killed, millions more were starving, a large
part of the western United States was occupied by the Asian Powers, and
American cities were subjected to constant bombardment.  The outcome of the
war was very much in question until nearly three-quarters of the way through
it.  And after the war, the birthing restrictions were put into place in
WestHem."



"Birthing restrictions?" he asked numbly.



"One child per female," she said.  "It was strictly enforced to control the
population problems.  If a woman got pregnant a second time she was
compelled to have an abortion or face having the child taken from her and a
year in prison.  This is something still enforced even today in WestHem and
EastHem.  Of course here we have no such restrictions.  We want babies on
Mars.  We want our population to grow and spread."



"Who did she marry?" he asked, refusing to be drawn into a sidebar about
birthing restrictions and population problems.



"Ken," she said gently, "are you sure that you want to hear this?  This must
be terribly painful for you."



"I want to hear," he insisted.  "I just want to know that she was all right
after my... my death."



"He was an investment counselor," she finally said.  "His name was David
Brown.  He was educated at the University of Texas and owned a fairly
successful private firm in Corpus Christi.  He wasn't a millionaire but he
was comfortable.  They met while he was visiting San Jose and... well...
they seemed to hit it off very well together.  Their courtship period was
only a few months in length.  She moved to Corpus Christi to be with him.
Ken Jr. didn't care too much for him at first but eventually grew to treat
him as a father.  He died in the same epidemic that killed Annie."



"Well," Ken said, sighing a little and wiping a tear from his face, "I'm
glad she found happiness after me.  I wouldn't want her to... you know... to
become a spinster or anything."



"She was happy," Valentine assured him.  "And, like I said, she never did
stop loving you and obsessing that you would one day be revived.  Your son
became a doctor because this obsession was passed onto him."



"A doctor?" he said, feeling a twinge of pride in the son he would never
meet.  "Really?"



"Really," she said.  "Ken Jr. was thankfully too young to serve in World War
III.  He was only six years old when it started, sixteen when the cease-fire
was signed.  He graduated with honors from high school and was accepted into
the University of Texas the next year.  In a way it's kind of ironic that
your death was a big part of why he was able to go to medical school."



"My death?  What do you mean?"



"Annie received a considerable amount of money as a result of your line of
duty death.  Between the pension settlement and the contributions from the
San Jose Police Union fund and several state groups, she was given more than
a quarter of a million dollars, plus a lifetime pension.  When she married
David Brown he was able to invest that money and make it grow.  By the time
Ken Jr. was ready to go to college, money was not a barrier to him as it was
to so many other families in that period of history.  You see, by the end of
the war, college was a luxury that was available only to the offspring of
the wealthy.  Ken Jr. probably would not have been able to attend had you
still been alive and working as a policeman.  You simply would not have been
able to afford it."



Ken snorted a little, not quite sure how to take that.  "I'm glad I did him
such a favor," he said.



Valentine gave him a sorrowful look.  "Sorry," she said.  "I didn't mean for
that to be so blunt.  We Martians usually say what's on our mind."



"Don't let it keep you awake at night," he responded.  "This is all just
kind of bizarre.  I'm sitting here listening to you talk about my family and
about events that haven't even happened yet from my perspective as if
they're history.  It's disconcerting.  It just seems like yesterday I was
putting my hand on Annie's belly and feeling my son kick me from inside of
it.  And now you're telling me about Annie's new husband and about Ken Jr's
college experiences from the perspective of hundreds of years after they
happened."



"Would you like me to stop?" she asked.  "We can continue this discussion
later.  Or we can just talk about something else.  Surely you have a
thousand questions about things that have happened from the year 2003 on
Earth to the year 21 on Mars."



"No," he said, shaking his head and taking a drink.  "I'd rather hear how my
son fared in life.  Was he a good doctor?"



"He was very good in his field," she told him.  "He became an internist,
concentrating on diseases and trauma to the vital organs.  It seems that
Annie's influence upon him might have steered his choice of specialty,
wouldn't you say?  From what I understand, Ken grew up worshipping you.  He
married relatively young for a person of his class in that day and age.  He
was 28.  Most upper class men married closer to mid-thirties or early
forties.  It seemed Ken found the perfect mate however.  She was a fellow
medical school student.  They had their one child in 2036 and named him
Joshua."



"A grandson," Ken said softly.  For some reason he had not even considered
that he might have had family beyond his son.  It was just too strange of a
thought.



"Yes indeed," Valentine told him.  "Things were very happy for Ken Jr.
during this part of his life.  Things were considerably jacked in the world
at large, but with the Frazier family, things were pleasant.  At least for a
while."



"What happened then?" he asked.



"The Ebola epidemic I mentioned earlier.  Ebola is a virulent, hemorrhagic
disease that is very contagious and very lethal.  A strain of it hit WestHem
in late 2038, popping up in the ghettos and killing millions.  By early 2039
it spread beyond the ghettos and killed millions more from all walks of
life.  Annie and her husband, as I've mentioned, were among them.  So was
Ken Jr.'s wife, Michelle.  Joshua and Ken both contracted the disease but
were among the five percent of those infected that were able to fight it
off.  When it was all over, your son and grandson were alone in the world."



"Poor Annie," he said sorrowfully, imagining her dying of a hideous bleeding
disease.  It was a physically painful thought.  "And poor Ken Jr.  As if he
hadn't had enough sorrow in his life already."



"Yes," she said, "but, like many events in life, this one had profound
effects upon the state of your family in the future."



"What do you mean?"



"Ken, along with a sizable amount of other people of above average
intelligence for the time, strongly suspected the Ebola epidemic was a
deliberate act by the WestHem government."



"What?" he said in disbelief.  The government starting a deadly epidemic
itself?  That was a paranoid delusion, the ravings of a madman.  What was
this woman trying to feed him?



"Sounds rather shocking to you from your point of view, doesn't it?" she
asked him.  "I'm sorry to say that Ken's suspicions about this were more
than likely correct.  By 2038 overpopulation was a very serious problem in
WestHem and EastHem alike.  Unemployment was at its highest level ever and
inflation was completely out of control because all of these unemployed
people had to be housed and fed at government expense.  There were simply
too many people and too little jobs and resources to supply them."



"But to kill their own people?" Ken said, searching her eyes for signs of
deceit and seeing none.  She was either an exceptionally good liar or she
really believed what she was telling him.



"Why wouldn't they?" she asked him pointedly.  "The welfare recipients were
a drain on their profits and a detriment to their economic system.  WestHem
corporations and the WestHem government were the ones to benefit the most
from having more than half of the welfare class suddenly die."



Ken shook his head.  "Just because someone benefits in some way from a
tragedy," he said, "doesn't mean it's a conspiracy.  That would be like
blaming a homeowner that wanted a new house for a hurricane that knocked it
down and allowed him to collect the insurance.  When you start seeing
government plots behind a natural occurrence like an epidemic or a flood..."



"With all due respect, Ken," Valentine interrupted, "you really don't know
what you're talking about.  The Ebola epidemic was not a natural occurrence.
There was never any doubt that it was a deliberate act, not even when it was
occurring.  The outbreaks began in the ghettos of more than sixty major
cities across WestHem, all within days of each other and mostly in the Latin
American portion of the nation.  Sau Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City,
Tijuana, and Havana were the hardest hit.  Ebola is a disease that, if it is
going to infect a population naturally, will start from a single point and
move outward from there.  It would not magically pop up in over sixty major
cities at once, nor would it tend to infect those in the ghettos first since
it was a disease that would have first arrived by aircraft from the Africa
region of EastHem.  Unemployed ghetto inhabitants of that time did not have
much contact with people that would have been on an international airliner."



"Terrorists then," Ken suggested, refusing to accept that a legitimate
government, no matter how corrupt or how soulless, would even consider such
a thing, let alone initiate it.  "Couldn't terrorists or these EastHem
people have started the epidemic?"



"They could have," Valentine allowed, "but why would they target the
ghettos?  Terrorists generally fight the wealthy and the elite.  They would
not have targeted the hopeless and the unemployed.  It is that class of
people in whose name they commit their acts of terrorism.  Nor would EastHem
have done such a thing either for much the same reasons.  EastHem would have
targeted the armed forces and the government leaders, not the poor.
Terrorists were of course blamed for the outbreak and a group was even tried
and executed for the crime, but the evidence was very lacking and completely
circumstantial.  The suspicious fact remains that the WestHem elite were the
only ones to gain any sort of advantage from the outbreak.  It was the
ultimate manifestation of the evil of that system of government."



"Christ," Ken said, frustrated and scared.  "What kind of place did I wake
up in?  Either I'm in the hands of a bunch of conspiracy theory freaks or
I'm living in a world... excuse me, a solar system, where governments kill
millions of their own people just to beef up the economy."  He shook his
head.  "Whichever way it is, it's not a pretty thought."



"The governments on earth are not very pretty," she told him, "and they
never have been.  These kinds of atrocities are not just limited to the post
World War III era.  Governments have always looked at the common people and
the poor as nothing more than pawns or lab subjects."



"But you folks are different, huh?" he asked cynically.



"Yes," she said matter-of-factly and without the slightest hesitation, "we
are.  You will see that in time, Ken."



"You'll forgive me if I don't start singing your national anthem just yet,"
he told her.



"Of course," she said.  "And besides, we don't have a national anthem.  We
don't have a flag either.  It is our belief that such displays of patriotism
serve only to encourage prejudice against others outside of the group.  It
is our hope that one day all of humankind will be united under our
constitution or one similar to it.  We do not teach our children to look
down on those that are not from Mars.  We teach them that we are all one
species and that all are worthy of respect and fulfillment."



Ken felt his nervousness kick up a few notches as he heard this Manson-like
outpouring.  Did this woman really believe what she was spouting?  Did she?
Somehow, the thought that she did was more frightening than the thought that
she was simply bullshitting him.  "That was quite a speech," he told her.
"But it sounded kind of... uh... programmed to me."



She shrugged, unoffended.  "Take it for what you will," she said.  "I'm
confident you will change your mind about us once you see our system in
action.  But we have digressed a bit, haven't we?  We were talking about
your son."



"Yes," he said, nodding, "we were.  He believed the Ebola epidemic was
deliberate.  So what did he do about it?  Did he become the founder of this
new religion or government of yours?"



"No," she replied, "not quite.  In that day and age there wasn't much a
simple doctor could do about something like that.  He never even made
official his suspicions.  He continued to do his work and to raise his son
the best he could.  But the outbreak left a very bitter taste in his mouth.
When the colonization of Mars began in 2048, Ken Jr. applied for and was
accepted as one of the physicians at the settlement.  He and Joshua, who was
12 at the time, climbed aboard a ship and made the trip here, to New
Pittsburgh, which was the first Martian city.  He never went back."



"So my son was an original Martian?"



"He was," she said.  "In those early days Mars was a very pleasant place to
be.  Since it was expensive to ship people halfway across the solar system,
only those with employment guaranteed upon their arrival were allowed to
make the trip.  For more than fifty years, through the steel mining boom and
through the agricultural rush that followed it, there was virtually no
unemployment on our planet.  Since there was no unemployment, there was very
little crime.  Your son established himself here during those days and
became a well-respected member of our early society."



"Good for him," Ken said.



"He was successful enough in his practice that he was able to send Joshua
back to earth to be educated at Stanford University and Harvard Medical
School.  He became the second generation Dr. Frazier.  While he was in
medical school he met and married an attractive, though rather shallow young
woman whose goal in life was social climbing.  He brought her back to Mars
with him when he established his practice.  The marriage did not last for
very long but it did produce a child in 2067.  Marjorie Frazier, your
great-granddaughter, stayed with her father after her mother divorced Joshua
and returned to Earth."



Despite his earlier skepticism at her words, Ken now found himself
fascinated by them.  Listening to someone explain what one's descendents had
done in their lives was a unique and exhilarating experience.  How many
people throughout history had had the chance to listen to such a lecture?



"Joshua, like his father, became interested in the field of longevity and
organ repair and replacement.  He joined a research team that searched for
ways to extend human life.  This put him somewhat at odds with WestHem
authorities at times.  You see, WestHem was not particularly interested in
the field of human longevity.  Despite the Ebola epidemic they were still
struggling with a horrendous population and unemployment problem.  The last
thing they wanted to do was support research that would make people live
even longer.  Many of his group's findings were suppressed or redirected
into less harmful directions.  Joshua managed to avoid any really nasty
confrontations with them over the years, partially because of other pursuits
that he was passionate about."



"Other pursuits?" Ken asked.



"He was appalled by the fact that he had to go to earth to learn how to be a
doctor.  As a direct result of his persistence and fund-raising abilities,
Mars' first accredited medical school was established in Eden, our largest
city.  His daughter, Marjorie, would attend it eventually."



"Three generations of doctors," Ken said whimsically.  "Who'd of thought?"



"Who indeed?" she agreed.  "It was a pretty near thing with Marjorie though.
By the time she was ready for medical school she was barely able to get into
it.  Though she was an excellent student and though her family had more than
enough money to put her through, the school was mostly attended by
Earthlings at that point."



"Earthlings?"



"The children of the corporate managers and businessmen that were running
things here on our fair planet.  Our medical school quickly developed a
rating that was among the best in WestHem.  After all, its facilities and
equipment were the most modern available.  Since the board of trustees and
the admissions staff were all Earthlings as well, it became almost
impossible for someone of Martian birth to get in.  You see, by then
Martian-born people were the subject of pretty intense prejudice in most
aspects of life.  We were thought to be stupid, inferior, lazy, criminal -
you name it, we were accused of it."



"Why would they think that?" Ken asked.  "You were all originally from
Earth."



"Why do human beings think anyone inferior to themselves?" she returned.
"It doesn't take much of a reason for stereotyping and prejudice to get
started.  If there's one thing we humans like to do more than think about
money it's to look down upon others.  In the case of us Martians, we were
thought to be lazy and criminal because the majority of our people came here
from the unemployed class of WestHem."



"You mean from the ghettos?" he asked, surprised.



"Fuckin' aye," she said, nodding.  "The Frazier family was in the minority
of our early immigrants.  Well over ninety-five percent of those that made
the trip had been unemployed on Earth, most for generations.  That was why
they came here.  They didn't want to live out their lives in squalor and
doom their children to generations of public assistance and public housing
buildings.  They came because Mars was where the jobs were and they were
willing to leave their home planet behind so they could work and live like
human beings."



It was obvious, by listening to her, that Dr. Valentine had tremendous
reverence for these early Martian settlers.  "Kind of like the pilgrims
coming to the New World in the seventeenth century, right?" Ken asked.



"In a way," she agreed.  "They came because there was nothing left for them
on Earth.  Mars was a new start."



"Your accent," he said.  "That explains why you talk the way you do."



"You mean our manner of speech?" she said, smiling once more.  "I suppose to
you it sounds like we are all... what would be the term you would have used
on earth?"



"Trash," he said, slightly apologetically.  "You sound like the street
people I used to deal with when I worked in a patrol car.  Even some of your
phrases are the same: "fuckin' aye" and "down with it".  Those were slang
terms back in my day.  They seem to have become accepted methods of English
language here.  Even your computer uses them."



"We sound like ghetto dwellers because most of us were ghetto dwellers when
we came here.  The speech patterns were passed on, parents to child.  Did
you know that to me you sound like a cocky, arrogant, puffed-up corporate
Earthling?"



He laughed loudly, finding that amusingly ironic.  "Turnabout is fair play,
huh?"



"Fuckin' aye," she told him, making him laugh harder.  It was the warmest
moment that they had shared since his awakening.



"So what happened to Marjorie?" he asked when it was over.  "Did my
great-granddaughter finish medical school as well?"



"She did," Valentine confirmed, a queer smile upon her face.  "She was near
the top of her class in fact.  She was very much her father's daughter in
every way, up to and including her choice of specialty.  She became an
internist with interests in research.  Her passion was longevity studies;
ways to extend human life."



"Just like her father," Ken said.



"Only a little more aggressive," Valentine added.  "Marjorie was quite
driven when it came to her work.  She did not take very kindly to having her
studies suppressed or her funding cut off just because she was working on
something the WestHem government didn't like.  She continually ran afoul of
her superiors and the powers that be.  She was removed from several projects
early in her career and was eventually forced out of the research field
entirely.  She ended up working as a general surgeon at the Eden welfare
hospital.  It has only been since the revolution that some of her work and
theories have seen the light of day."



"It sounds like she was a very headstrong person," Ken observed, trying to
imagine her.



"Yes," Valentine agreed, again with a strange smile, "headstrong is a good
word for Marjorie.  Even during her exile at the welfare hospital she
continued to create a headache for WestHem authorities.  She became somewhat
of a political advocate for the poor and the unemployed.  You see, by that
time the agricultural rush had pretty much come to an end and the mass
layoffs of construction workers, steel workers, and other, related
professions was in full force.  Ghettos sprung up in all of our cities for
the first time.  Marjorie tried to help push through a form of socialized
health care for these people that was something other than the mess that was
the welfare system.  She tried to initiate jobs programs and push for the
abolition of the birthing restrictions.  Unfortunately these clashes would
eventually lead to the revocation of her medical license on trumped up
charges.  As you can probably imagine, the Martian Medical Licensing Board
was made up entirely of WestHem doctors.  She would never practice medicine
again."



"She was railroaded," Ken said, unsurprised.  When you stepped on the wrong
toes too many times, as Marjorie apparently had, measures were taken to get
rid of you.  That was the way the world had worked in his when and that was
apparently how it had worked in his great granddaughter's when as well.



"Railroaded?" Valentine said thoughtfully.  "Is that what you called it?"



"Yes," he said, nodding.  "I believe the term refers to the rapidity by
which a person is moved from one place to another; as if they were on
rails."



"We call it getting fucked," Valentine said with a completely straight face.



Ken could not contain his laughter.  "I think your term is probably more
apt," he said.  "So what became of Marjorie after she was... uh... fucked."



"Well," she said, "before I go any further with this, there is one thing I
should probably tell you about her."



"What's that?"



She licked her lips a few times, again seeming to debate whether or not to
release some little bit of information.  At last she said: "Marjorie met and
married her husband just before she entered medical school.  He was a fellow
Martian, top of his class both in high school and college, and with
ambitions towards the field of medicine.  Unfortunately he was not allowed
admission to med school with her.  This was because of that anti-Martian
prejudice I was telling you about.  Stuart did not have any family
connections to help get him in.  But Marjorie was not a snob by any means.
She loved Stuart and she married him anyway.  He would end up working as a
nurse in various hospitals, mostly on an on-call basis since he assumed the
role of caregiver when their child, Dale, was born in 2090."  She took a
deep breath and looked at him levelly.  "We Martians have cast aside many of
the traditions our Earthling ancestors used to hold dear.  We did much of
this even before our revolution.  But one tradition that has survived, even
to this day, is that of a woman taking her husband's last name upon
marriage."



"Okay," Ken said carefully, wondering what this had to do with anything.



He soon found out.  "When Marjorie got married to Stuart, her name changed
from Frazier to Valentine."



It took a moment for that to sink in.  "Valentine," he said at last.
"That's uh... that's your last name, isn't it?"



"Yes it is," she confirmed.



"Are you telling me," he asked slowly, "that you are... related to me?"



"I am Marjorie's great granddaughter," she told him.  "A direct descendent
of your bloodline.  I am, in fact, your fifth generation granddaughter."



"Jesus," he said slowly, looking at this blonde woman before him.  His
distant granddaughter?  He examined her face carefully, with the eyes of the
career police officer he had been.  The family resemblance was not terribly
obvious but, once he knew to look for it, it was unmistakable.  Her nose was
shaped just like his and the curve of her cheekbones was quite similar to
Annie's.  He knew instinctively she was not lying to him.  He simply knew
it.  "My granddaughter," he said, trying the word on for size.



"Welcome back to your family," she told him, a tear running down her face
now.  "It's been a long time, but we're still here."



Unable to help himself he leaned forward and took her into his arms.  She
came willingly, giving a hug that had been waiting for five generations and
188 years.







Continued next week in Chapter 3

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