Cold Storage 1

"I want my body frozen."
"Let me explain about our fees," said Dr Piers, trying hard to be polite.  He did not know
much about Ken Spoors but he could see the old car he had brought into the car park,
next to the old abandoned car the council were due to tow away.  The two cars looked alike.
"We're talking hundreds of thousands of pounds."
"I bought a house in London in 1964.  I'll leave it to the practice when I die."  One thing
Dr Piers tried to avoid was being rude to people who were going to give him a lot of money.
This wasn't something he had come across before, working class men in Ford Fiestas
having their bodies frozen in return for a house they had bought in their youth.  But it seemed
like a brilliant idea.  Why had no one in the practice thought of it before?
"Yes, yes certainly, we could consider the house as payment.  Get a proper will made by a
solicitor."
"Tell me a little bit more about the process," said Ken.  "If you froze someone's body,
wouldn't their veins burst?"
"It's all done very carefully.  Liquid nitrogen is used to replace the water in your body.  Any
ice formation, as you say, would just blow things to pieces.  But that doesn't happen.  How's
your health?"
"I have nothing seriously wrong with me, Doctor, I am 80 years old and simply don't expect
to live a great deal longer.  I could live another nine or ten years but I need to get this sorted
out."
"Indeed you do, Ken.  That is the situation with many of our patients."
"Do you think they'll ever find a cure for old age, Doctor?"
"Not a complete cure but maybe a way of slowing down the ageing process.  The immune
system deteriorates as you get older, that could be sorted out.  You can replace hormones
that disappear as people get older.  People tend not to die of old age as such, they usually
have something else wrong with them like a weak heart or cancer, all things scientists will
be able to understand better as the centuries go by.  Cryonics is still worthwhile from that
point of view."

"Wake up Mr. Spoors," said the doctor.
"What year is it?"
"It's 2602."
"Wow!  That's nearly 600 years in the future."
"Your future, Mr. Spoors, my present.  We are already in 2602."
"Can I have a cup of coffee?" asked Ken.  "Coffee is all right, isn't it?  I've been unconscious.
Do I have to have nil by mouth for 24 hours?"  The doctor was laughing.
"No, no, we don't have that sort of problem now.  No need to worry.  We don't have any
coffee, have a drink of Swayvent."  The doctor poured a bottle of thick milky liquid into a cup
and closed it inside a box which he turned on.  The drink became hot.  Ken drank the
Swayvent and coughed.
"It tastes as if someone has taken uncooked bread dough and mixed it with the chemicals in
a chemistry set."
"Swayvent contains all the vitamins and nutrients essential to a healthy diet."
"It must do, Doctor, all healthy things taste horrible."
"Do they?  I've never heard anyone say that before."
"Mmm.  I'll say one thing.  This drink is satisfying.  You feel as if you've had a big meal.
Doctor, I need to get myself sorted out.  I need to get a job, I need to buy a house."  The
doctor began laughing again.
"Ken, I can call you Ken, can't I?" asked the doctor.
"It's my name, isn't it?"
"Life isn't really like that any more.  Some people have jobs, some people have their own
houses, but the vast majority of people don't."
"Don't have houses?  They must live somewhere?"
"They have their own pod."
"A pod?"
"You would call it a cubicle, Ken.  Like a toilet cubicle with a bed in it.  A pod."
"If nobody works how does anything ever get done?"
"Ken, I didn't say that nobody worked.  I said that very few people worked.  The rich work.
People who work are billionaires.  They earn billions of dollars a year."
"If the rest of the world is on welfare who pays for the welfare?"
"People like me, Ken.  People who work.  A doctor pays a thousand times as much tax as
they would have paid in your lifetime.  The Cryonics laboratory pay my wages and
half of my wages are handed over to the state as income tax."
"All right for you doctors but who empties the bins?"
"Bins convert dirt into electrical energy.  They don't need to be emptied."
"Who grows the food on the farms?"
"Food is cultured in laboratory dishes and put into packages by machines."
"Who brings it to the house?"
"You order food from Yamazoogle and it comes in a little helicopter which flies itself."
"What do people do, Doctor?"
"They're students.  Finish your drink and we'll enrol you in the local university this afternoon.
And they'll give you a little pod."
"If I'm going to be a student I need a computer."
"You need an Iwatch, Ken."
"Can I have a leather strap?  I can't wear a metal strap.  I've got very thin wrists."
"What do you mean?"
"You wear a watch on your wrist.  I have difficulty getting one that fits."
"Oh, I see.  Six hundred years ago a watch was something you wore on your wrist.
Ken, an Iwatch is something you wear in your eye."  The doctor opened a little box and took
out something that looked like a contact lens.  He picked it up on the end of his finger and
put it into Ken's eye.  Ken could see a woman standing in the corner of the room.
"I am Melinda," said a voice.
"Melinda is the Iwatch interface," said the doctor.
"The interwhat?"
"Like a computer keyboard.  If you want the Iwatch to do anything you ask Melinda."

Ken finished his drink.
"We'll put on our snow boots, coats, hats and gloves to go outside," said the doctor.
"Is it very cold outside?"
"Yes Ken, it is very cold outside."
"You said it was the year 2602.  What month is it?"
"The month is July."
"Have the seasons changed?  Is it winter?"
"No Ken, it is still summer in July."
"Why is it so cold?"
"Ken, the world has entered another ice age.  I assure you, it's even colder in winter.
There's a light covering of snow on the ground today."
"So global warming never happened?"  The doctor laughed.
"They stopped calling it global warming, Ken, they started calling it climate change.
Climate change is what happened.  Not global warming.  Melinda," he said to Ken's Iwatch,
"show this man the way to the Gordon Brown building."
"Is Gordon Brown remembered?"
"He thought his government had created a recession.  What they had actually created was
the beginning of a new world economic order."  Ken and the doctor trudged through the
snow to the Gordon Brown building.  The walls on the ground floor were covered in posters.
The posters showed the faces of students and descriptions of their achievements.  The
pictures kept changing.
"What are these?" asked Ken.
"These are the photographs of students from this university who have jobs."  Some words
appeared on one of the posters.
"90 out of a million students at Sheffield University get jobs," read Ken.  "Is that all?"
"Ken, that's not a bad rate.  That's not a bad rate of students getting jobs for a university at all.
The other question is whether the figure is actually genuine.  Sounds a bit high to some
people.  Not everybody believes that it's really so many.  How can 90 out of a million
students get jobs?  Are you trying to tell me that one person in ten thousand has a job?
That's what most people would say.  But actually, it's just about true that one person in ten
thousand gets a job eventually."  The doctor led Ken into one of the apartments.  It looked
like a Ladies' toilet.  The beds were inside the cubicles.  The shower room was where the
sinks would be.  In the middle there were students sitting on chairs.  "A new student today,"
said the doctor.  "Ken has been in cold storage since the 21st century."
"Hi.  I'm Clive," said a student who looked about 50.  "How are you finding 2602?"
"A bit hard to know.  I've only been awake half an hour."
"Hi.  I'm Suzie," said a woman who looked about 25.  "You'll get used to it."
"Hi.  I'm Harry."  Harry looked like a man apart from his brightly coloured clothes.
"Are you a man or a woman?" asked Ken.
"Neither.  I've made a lifestyle choice."
"But you must have been born a man or a woman."
"Surgery," said Harry.
"Sex change operation?" asked Ken.
"That was how they did it in the old days," said Suzie.
"Penis donor," said Harry, smiling and not looking embarrassed.  "What's your work plan?"
"He's only just woken up," said Clive.
"What kind of job do you want?" asked Suzie.
"I don't think I'll be able to get one," said Ken.
"You've got to have a dream," said Clive.  "What about all the people on the posters
downstairs?"
"They're one in ten thousand.  I can't be bothered.  Couldn't I just watch films or something?"
"You've got to have a dream or they stop your benefits," said Suzie.  "I've done a degree
in Politics and History and I'm training to be a student counsellor."
"I've done degrees in Physics and Engineering and I'm designing an aircraft that can land on
snow," said Clive.
"I'm trying to make Swayvent taste nice," said Harry.  "Soya, whey protein, vitamins and
lentils.  All things good but it tastes like raw bread dough dipped in chemicals from a
chemistry set."
"Yes, that was what I thought," said Ken.
"I want to make it taste like tomatoes," said Harry, with a huge smile.
"Do they still have tomatoes?" asked Ken.
"Yes," said Clive.  "We order some old time food a few times a year."
"When there's a party we celebrate with fish and chips or pork chops," said Harry.
"What would you like to do?" asked Suzie.
"I've no qualifications," said Ken.
"In that case you have to start at level one and go up to level ten in your chosen subject,"
Suzie explained.  "When you've got level ten you can do a degree, or more than one
degree."
"I'll have to think about it," said Ken.
"You've got two weeks to think about it," said Clive.
"Is there a church around here?" asked Ken.
"You're a Nazarene," said Suzie.
"A Nazarene?  That's what the muslims called us in Syria."
"Yes Ken, that's probably when the term came about.  It's not an insult," said Suzie.
"Did the muslims win world war three?"
"No, they didn't.  All religious groups are registered with the World Council of Faiths.
What you would call Christians are now called Nazarenes.  Melinda," Suzie said to Ken's
Iwatch, "Where is the nearest community worship centre?"  The woman who was the
interface to Ken's Iwatch appeared in the corner of the room.
"The nearest community worship centre is in Blair street," she said.  "The Nazarene service
is on Sunday morning at 9.30 AM."
"Did Tony Blair change history?" asked Ken.
"He changed religious history," said Suzie.
"There's an interest," said Harry.  "There's something you could study.  Religion."

On Sunday Ken arrived at the Community Worship Centre.
"Hello," said the minister, a middle aged man wearing a black suit.  "Are you new to the
parish?"
"I've lived here for six hundred years."
"Oh, how is that?"
"I had my body frozen."  The minister laughed.
"Of course.  That explains it.  How does it feel to be awake?"
"Very strange."
"It must be.  The world is a completely different place. You'll get used to it, I expect."
"What is it like to be a church minister?"
"It's a fascinating job.  I lead a study on the book of Mormon on a Monday night.  I'm a
spiritualist medium and I lead a seance on a Tuesday.  I do some evangelism with the
Jehovah's witnesses on a Wednesday.  I lead prayers with the Muslims on a Friday and
we have a synagogue service for the Jews on a Saturday.  Nazarene mass is on Sunday
morning. I have Sunday lunch with the Humanists and Sunday tea with the Hare Krishnas.
At special pagan festivals I'm also a pretty formidable practising witch."
"Don't you believe in anything at all?"
"What do you mean?"
"How do you manage to believe in all those contradictory philosphies and hold them
together in your mind?  That is just nonsense.  You would go mad."
The minister looked offended.  "They are not contradictory.  All religions believe in the same
moral ideals.  They all encourage people to connect with something greater than
themselves."
"That something might be the power of God or it might be the power of Satan.  Even if all
religions are of some merit they can not possibly all be correct."
"God doesn't punish people for their theological inexactitude with eons of torment," the
minister shouted.  "I am reporting you to the police.  Please leave the centre."  Ken went
outside the church building into the street where there was still a light dusting of snow on
the ground.  A police helicopter landed.  A policeman looked at Ken.  Ken got into the
helicopter.  They arrived at the police station.  They sat together in the interview room.
"Are you sending me to prison?" asked Ken.
"We don't have prisons anymore, Mr. Spoors, we reeducate people," said the policeman.
"You were a Nazarene a long time ago.  Your views are the views of a religious believer
centuries ago.  You haven't been taught about religion the way it's understood in our
society.  You need to do a course in modern theology."
"I'm going to need a subject to study," said Ken.
"I suggest that you study theology.  That's a vocational degree.  You can claim your benefits
if you do that.    We won't take any proceedings against you if you do a degree in theology."

When Ken got home he told Suzie what had happened.
"You were a Nazarene a long time ago, weren't you?  I'm not surprised he called the police.
Modern religion is more tolerant of other people's beliefs.  Do a theology degree with the
Tony Blair Foundation."
"These things happen," said Harry.  "The police are only trying to help.  Try some of my
tomato flavour Swayvent."  Harry handed Ken a cup of red thick fluid.  Ken drank it.
"It tastes like tomato Cupasoup," he said.
"Like what?"
"We used to have a drink like that in the 21st century.  Pretty much like that."
"Excellent," said Harry.  "I'll get this on to the university network.  Get crowd funding.  I can
use the university printer to produce a thousand free samples of the soup to send to
people who wish to invest in my company."
"Melinda, get me the Tony Blair Foundation," Ken said to his Iwatch.  A picture of Tony Blair
appeared standing in front of St Paul's Cathedral.
"I believe in winning.  We need a church that appeals to a wide range of people.  We must
stop doing instinctively what we know to be wrong and start doing what we know to be right.
That is how we win."