In Other Worlds - Margaret Eleanor Atwood [86]
I’ve selected five of these: “Cryogenics” is a dinner-table conversation about getting your head frozen—a motif that appears not only in the review of Bill McKibben’s Enough but also in Oryx and Crake, published—weirdly enough—at the same time. In “Cold-Blooded,” the Earth is visited by aliens that happen to be giant insects; in “Homelanding,” the aliens are being shown around by other aliens, who turn out to be us. “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet” is a riff on the time capsule theme so familiar to aficionados of classic SF. Finally, “The Peach Women of Aa’A” is an excerpt from The Blind Assassin—a spontaneous oral concoction presented by its male romantic lead to his lover in response to her demand for happy endings.
There were many other possible choices—the Lizard Men of Xenor, the attack of the Giant Sponge, the singing contest for world leaders, the Sasquatch, Man, and Two Androids … but some of the breadcrumbs should always remain in the forest.
Cryogenics:
A Symposium
A. When I’m sixty-five I’m going to get my head cut off and flash-frozen. They’ve already got the technology, they’ve set up the corporations … Then it’ll stay frozen until they’ve learned how to clone the rest of my body from a single cell, and they’ll thaw out my head and reattach it. By that time, I figure the environment and all that stuff will be through the downturn and things will be more straightened out.
D. More Pinot Grigio? An olive?
A. Thanks. Some people are doing the whole body, but right now all I can afford is the head.
C. Ah. Market forces at work.
B. I take it you think your mind will survive this process, memories intact?
A. That would be the idea. Information storage, then retrieval at a later date …
B. Mind, or brain? Some people think the two are not coextensive. For instance, your brain might be a sort of grey Tastee-Freez, while your mind …
C. How about freezer burn? Ever seen frozen eyes? They go the colour of …
D. Would your new body be sixty-five too?
E. This Chilean sea bass is yummy!
B. We shouldn’t be eating it. They’re wiping it out. They are actually strip-mining the entire ocean. They’re aiming for a huge underwater golf course.
D. I know, I know, but I forgot, and anyway it’s already cooked so we might as well.
B. I was thinking more like twenty-three, for the body.
C. So you’re going to have this wrinkly old head on top of a beefcake? Not very delectable.
D. I wouldn’t want to climb in the sack with something like that!
A. You won’t be around, honey-bunny. Anyway they’ll do plastic surgery. I’ll look great. But I’ll get to keep the wisdom I’ll have accumulated by then.
E. You are such a dreamer! This whole thing is sooo grotesque!
A. New scientific ideas always seem grotesque to the masses.
E. I am not the masses! Anyway, what would stop them from taking your money, then after a few years with your head in the freezer they’d declare bankruptcy, pull out the plug, and toss your head in the garbage? That’s what they’ll do!
A. No need to be rude. I have faith in the process.
C. I’ve got a worse idea! They unfreeze your head and hook it up to a monitor, and run your most painful memories on it as cheap entertainment. Your whole life would be as a sideshow freak!
E. Or there would be a natural catastrophe—an earthquake, a tornado—the grid goes down—your head rots … Could you pass the slave-worker poison-sprayed artificially ripened grapes, please, and yes, I know I shouldn’t have bought them. I did wash them, though. So don’t worry.
A. I’ve thought of that. They’ll have solar panels, with the lines running down into a shockproof underground cavern …
B. Look, let’s face it. Pollution, vanishing ozone layer, genetically engineered organisms go on the rampage, the