The Omega Expedition - Brian Stableford [14]
These were wise words. I could have judged them wise even from my own very limited experience of the fame I gained as the author of the definitive History of Death and the pioneer of emortal spiritual autobiography, but Adam Zimmerman provided a far more telling example himself. While he remained hidden from the world he was able to retain the status of a mere shadow on the page of history, an elusive myth — but the longer he remained in his chrysalis of ice the more certain it became that he would wake to find himself famous, with disastrous effect.
Five
Adam Zimmerman’s speeches warning against the hazards of fame and sermons on the benefits of thrift were sometimes taken by those who did not know him well as evidence of cynicism. Here was a man, his critics argued, who was notorious throughout the world as the greatest thief in history, who poured the billions of dollars that he stole into esoteric scientific and technological research. In contrast to the great philanthropists of Classical Capitalism, who had endowed universities, art galleries, and museums for the betterment of their humbler fellows, Adam Zimmerman seemed to care for nothing but the preservation of his own self, desiring only to become “immortal” in the crudest imaginable sense of the word.
What fools those mortals were!
“It is difficult for those who can see to imagine the plight of those who are blind,” Adam told me, when we discussed his treatment in histories other than my own, “but it ought to be impossible for any reasonable person of your day to entertain an atom of sympathy for my critics. It should have been obvious, even to my contemporaries, that I was the ultimate incarnation of the underlying philosophy of capitalism, as first set out in Bernard de Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Public Benefits — but I suppose we ought to be generous and remember that Mandeville’s writings were also misconstrued in their day, and prosecuted for the offense they offered to Puritan ideals.
I asked Adam whether he had had the remotest inkling, in the early twenty-first century, of the difference that his actions would ultimately make to the general human condition.
“Yes,” he said, unequivocally. “I knew perfectly well, from the very beginning, that emortality would become the privilege of all humankind — or, at any rate, all but the very poorest members of society. Some of the more shortsighted members of the Cartel were inclined for a while to think of it as something that ought to be reserved for the ultimate elite, but I tried to persuade them that it would be as unwise as it would be impossible to monopolise longevity. The whole point of their enterprise was to achieve economic stability, and there could be no other permanent guarantee of stability than universal, or near-universal, emortality. Before I was frozen down I advised them to make every effort to persuade their customers that emortality was imminent, that nothing was required for its attainment but loyalty and patience, and that once it was commercially available they should err on the side of generosity rather than play the miser.”
“Are you surprised,” I asked him, “that so very few of them followed your own example and put themselves into suspended animation to await the fulfilment of