A Life Without End

By Garland DeNelsky

A Life Without End is a fictional portrayal of Stan Miller, a man with a lifelong yearning for an afterlife that began as a child when his beloved pet dog died unexpectedly and he was too young to properly comprehend its death. Despite finding and marrying the woman of his dreams, raising a family, and establishing himself as a respected college biology professor, the finality and universality of death continued to haunt him throughout his entire life, triggering an exploration of several major religions, psychotherapy, and finally, science, all in quest of somehow eluding death and achieving immortality, or at least a greatly extended life span.

In his early sixties, Stan develops a fatal disease (ALS) and, despite his wifes many (thoughtful) reservations, ultimately decides to have his body cryonically preserved (frozen). He is returned to life sixty-one years later (in the year 2068) after a cure is found for his disease and discovers a very different world where the altered nature of human relationships are even more difficult to comprehend than the baffling technology surrounding him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984512048

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Garland DeNelsky.

ISBN:                   Softcover                               978-1-9845-1203-1

                            eBook                                      978-1-9845-1204-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/27/2018

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Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Description of Book

Dedication

To Jeffrey DeNelsky, whose life ended much too soon.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express special appreciation to those who read various drafts of this book including John Vargo, Carroll McKibben, Lee Weitz, Bette Matheny, and my wife, Ellen. Each of these readers provided comments containing valuable insights and suggestions that resulted in several revisions and hopefully helped me improve the final quality of this effort.

Special thanks go to Ellen whose steadfast support has never wavered in this and all my other endeavors.

Chapter 1

He slid into his soft seat in the boarding area to wait for the cruise ship to board. He had some rehearsing to do. Quietly, he began speaking to himself.

My name is Stan Miller. I was born 129 years ago, but I’ve only been alive for 68. Sixty-six of which were in the last century, two in this one. He repeated these sentences over and over to himself, hoping they would sound natural when he actually had to speak them. Stan always tried to prepare well for whatever he faced. But they didn’t really seem natural to him!

Stan’s first ocean voyage occurred when he was nine and on a holiday with his family. He had never seen a ship so beautiful as the one he boarded on that first cruise. He and his father had often gone down to the pier at Long Beach, so he was familiar with ships including the luxury cruise liners decked out in holiday splendor. An exhilarating mixture of excitement and delight rushed through him as he watched those proud ships glide away from the pier. The cheers and waving, both on the ship and the dock, sent a thrill down his spine. Oh, how he longed to join those happy throngs who boarded those ships most every Sunday!

When he learned his family finally was booked to cruise to Hawaii – on the Lurline, a name he would never forget – Stan had felt an eagerness and excitement weeks before the cruise began. He barely slept an hour the night before the cruise. And when he finally arrived at the waiting area, like the one where he was now sitting, a feeling of bliss enveloped his entire body. He expressed this overwhelming joy the way many nine-year-old boys might – he darted about like an excited fish in an aquarium at feeding time, despite the repeated admonitions of his parents to sit down and be still. When he was finally persuaded to sit and wait, the minutes passed too slowly. Now they were passing slowly again.

That first cruise with his family happened long ago. One hundred and twenty years ago, to be exact. Now, in 2070, as he sat in southern Florida waiting to board the Sunset Glow, he felt no sense of joy, no anticipatory excitement. But in a strange way he was looking forward to this cruise. A cruise would give him time to think, to reflect, to plan. He knew he had a major decision to make, a most fundamental decision about his future. He did not relish dealing with this difficult judgment, but he could no longer avoid it. He had to arrive at a firm conclusion, one way or the other. He had chosen this cruise as the place where he would squarely face this decision and not be distracted by the everyday details of living.

And then it struck him – in one sense he was only two years old this time, younger than he was on his first ocean voyage! He had been reanimated in 2068, one hundred and twenty-seven years after his biological birth. One of the first waves of reanimations. Until that first revival, two years before he was restored to life, most had viewed cryonics as a speculative science – a sort of fringe discipline – more like sci-fi than real science. Most people had heard of cryonics, the freezing of an aging or ill person until such time as that person’s body could be revived and restored to health. But few believed this possible. Many chuckled when Ted Williams, a famous baseball player who died in 2002, had his body preserved through cryonics, in hopes of returning to life at some later date.

By an ironic twist of fate, Ted Williams had not yet been restored to the living but Stan Miller had. Stan’s body was preserved for 61 years. So when he was reanimated he joined a group of people who became instant celebrities. At first Stan glowed in the spotlight. A few months later his attitude changed. He wondered about his future. Was it even worth pursuing?

As he waited for his name to be called to board the Sunset Glow, he watched three exuberant children scurrying about the neatly arranged chairs in the waiting area. Although his fellow passengers were strangers now, he knew from past cruises that some of these people would become familiar faces. He wondered which ones he might come to know. He was alone – his first cruise ever without a companion – and was feeling a heavy load of loneliness. After those first few weeks following his reanimation, when so many sought his attention, he now felt abandoned.

Stan realized that it would be several minutes before he would be called up to the registration desk. He stopped rehearsing his introductory comments, leaned his head back, and rapidly slipped into a light sleep. In a few minutes he was dreaming his most familiar and favorite dream, one he wished would come to him every night.

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He was in the hospital, Lea by his bedside. She reached into her purse, pulled out a tissue, and began to cry softly. She then reached over and clenched Stan’s hand. Stan slowly turned his head toward his beloved Lea and tried to smile at her. He desperately tried to speak but his speech was completely blocked. Instead he mustered up all his strength and attempted to squeeze her hand. That his efforts had some success was evidenced by the sight of her smiling at him through her abundant tears. He thought to himself, how striking she looks, even when she is crying! She looks as beautiful as she did the first day I met her at that lecture in college. He wanted so much to tell her that but found it physically impossible to even begin the sentence. He also wanted to tell her how much her support meant to him. Most of all, he wanted to whisper that his love for her was never greater than it was at that moment. But all he could do was keep holding her hand until a deep, peaceful sleep finally overcame him.

It was the last time he ever held hands with his dearly loved wife. He could still feel the soft, reassuring tenderness of her hand, the lovely aura surrounding her, the special warmth of her closeness. It was an image he wished he could keep in his dreams forever, one that would visit him each and every time sleep came to him …

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Stan awoke with a start. His name had been called and a wave of apprehension swept through him. He must arise from the chair in which he had been sitting for nearly an hour. Sitting for long times in one place created a stiffness in his body that was as difficult to describe as it was to experience. When he began to move, he was forced into a kind of super slow motion that attracted stares from others, seemingly reflecting emotions ranging from curiosity to sympathy. Every joint of his body seemed to conspire in unison to create a generalized resistance to motion. When Stan gradually -- and with considerable effort -- overcame that resistance it was replaced with an exquisitely painful dull sensation for which the familiar term, aches and pains simply did no justice.

Stan walked as rapidly as he could toward the reception desk standing as upright as possible. He once stood six feet tall but now barely reached five feet eight inches when he forced himself to stand as straight as possible. In his former life people would offer comments about how handsome he looked, with his full head of hair, fair skin, sharp features, dark mustache, warm smile, and athletic build. While he never really put much stock in these comments, he did enjoy hearing them. But since his reanimation, his skin was leathery, his hair was virtually gone, his features seemed less sharp and more exaggerated, and he stood and walked in a perpetual stoop. Who would have ever believed that many years ago, in a very different time and place, he was an athlete?

The two young women at the desk realized that the person whose name they had just called was struggling to make it to their table. One swiftly left her seat and began to walk down the aisle toward him. She was dressed in her crisp powder blue Sunset Glow cruise uniform, her walk a mix of efficiency and grace. Her weak smile reflected a blend of cruise line hospitality and genuine concern for the stability of this old, frail man. Holding out her arm which stabilized him and imparted some gentle forward momentum, she guided him toward the registration table. The children who had been chasing each other just a few moments earlier ceased all activity, frozen in silence by this unusual sight.

Stan enjoyed watching children but disliked having them gawk at him. A proud and private man, he detested the focus of sideshow-like attention. He feared unwanted audience attention at the ship’s registration desk.

When Stan arrived at the desk, he flawlessly recited his prepared statement. Questions followed, as he had suspected they would. Inquiry regarding his background that once called for automatic responses were now considerably more complicated to answer. When asked to verify the short information card that he had so painstakingly labored over earlier, this became quickly evident.

I think you have made a mistake here, Mr. Miller. What is your actual age? requested the woman who had remained seated at the desk. You can’t be 129 years old, that’s for sure, she chuckled, a faint smile on her attractive face. Shifted delicately in her chair, she awaited his answer. Passengers in the front rows smiled more broadly.

Stan straightened up as much as possible and tried to produce his most matter-of-fact voice. Although it does sound a little ridiculous, my actual age is a bit of a philosophical issue. I was born in 1941, and since this is the year 2070, I am technically 129 years old. But if you only count the years I have been actively living – and I am not talking here about the time I have spent sleeping, like all people sleep, I am 68 years old. You see, my body was frozen through the process of cryonics in 2007 and was reanimated – that means restored to active life – two years ago. So I guess you could say that I am really only 68. Whichever number you would prefer to use, actually.

The other woman behind the desk furled her brow, leaned forward and nodded in recognition of the mathematical complexities of Stan’s age. Only a few years ago the restoration of life to those preserved through cryonics had been headlines on every person’s personal information screens. Although she did not actually recognize Stan Miller from his several public appearances in the months following his reanimation, she did know of cryonics and had been considering it for herself. We’ll just put down 68 years old, she volunteered. And who are your next of kin that we should notify in case of emergency – you have left that blank?

Stan attempted a bit of humor. You keep asking me all these difficult questions, do you have any easier ones? he quipped. All my next of kin passed away years ago. I do have some people who are related to me, but they don’t really know me and they are not involved in my life.

As soon as these words had escaped from his lips, a deep wave of sadness overwhelmed him, a feeling with him nearly all the time. It was like an impenetrable soot-filled cloud, and when it surrounded him, he felt he might never feel the sunshine again. During his former life he had received so much joy from his relationships with his family. Now he felt alienated from his descendents to the point where he had difficulty naming them.

He at last finished his entry interview and returned to his former seat, waiting to be given further instructions. His thoughts returned to the next of kin question that had stumped him a few moments earlier.

One reason he decided to pursue cryonics was to spend additional years with his children. When he was frozen his daughter Deborah was 29, and his son Reuben 27. Reuben had passed away two years before his reanimation after a lengthy bout with bone cancer. Sixty-one years later, when Stan came back (the slang term used by many to describe reanimation), Debbie was still alive but had developed one of those rare types of dementia for which no cure had been found. He barely recognized her at first sight, and she had no memory for him, either then or later. Debbie had always been full of life, so pretty, spirited, verbal, and witty. It had been indescribably painful for him to see her profound deterioration. Disheveled in her wrinkled, ill-fitting dress, she spoke only a few disconnected words, and held a perpetually vacant gaze absent of eye contact. Stan had difficulty imagining that his once beautiful Debbie was in there somewhere. Even rudimentary conversation with her was impossible.

Their reunion was one of the most disappointing events of his life. It marked the first time he questioned whether extending his life through cryonics was worth all the trouble. That hollow feeling was magnified when he attended her funeral one year later and heard her friends and colleagues eulogize a daughter that seemed unrelated to the Debbie he had known and loved so deeply.

He did have four grandchildren, three of whom were still alive. He supposed that the name of one of these would satisfy the lady’s need for a next of kin, so he would provide it. But they were not really his kin as he remembered the meaning of the word. Yes, they were related to him did not really consider him family. As a consequence he did not consider them family, either.

There were several dozen more people waiting to be called so both women at the registration table moved quickly through the remaining questions, leaving blanks in their data banks whenever possible to expedite the process. His arm was scanned and the microchip under his skin quickly yielded his current medical condition, his medical history, and the various active medications he was taking. Both women seemed surprised when his list of medications totaled 27, but one expertly confirmed the data and downloaded it into the ship’s data bank. None of the medications he took were even around in 2007 and he was still trying to learn the names of each and what purpose they served. Stan marveled at how all of the 27 meds had been compressed into two small pills that he took each morning.

The children in the waiting area had gone back to playing. They did not notice as Stan was loaded into a handsomely upholstered mechanized transportation appliance (a fully-automated, high-tech descendent of the now-obsolete wheel chair), and transported to the deck of the magnificently appointed and polished Sunset Glow.

The Sunset Glow was quite different from any ship he had ever been on, but still recognizable as a cruise ship. Unlike cruise ships in his earlier life, this ship seemed strikingly similar to a well-appointed, modern home. The chairs were understated with muted colors, soft fabrics, and controls on each arm rest that permitted their occupants to make subtle adjustments which maximized comfort in terms of position, firmness, and ambient temperature. Stan never figured out how these complicated gizmos worked, and settled for maintaining whatever adjustments their immediately previous occupants had selected.

He was astounded at how technology had blossomed during the 61 years of his absence. The tiny microchip, the size of a grain of sand, buried in his left arm contained his long and complicated medical history. Sometimes he would pat his arm where the chip had been buried, amazed that below that skin lay information that in his earlier life would have required many hundreds of pages of paper contained in voluminous charts. Sometimes he would press his arm a little firmer to see if could feel the chip lurking there. He couldn’t, and that amazed him even more.

But exciting new technology was not the main reason behind Stan’s desire to return. As he grew older, and, hopefully, wiser, he came to realize a life of meaning was created through significant relationships and meaningful activities, not by acquiring an endless array of the latest technological toys. In the last analysis, love for his family motivated his decision to pursue cryonics.

But deep disappointment overtook him when his grandchildren – who once shrieked with delight when pushed in their swings and cuddled firmly into his side when read to – related to him the way they did following his reanimation.

His grandchildren seemed warm and interested right after his reanimation when they all appeared together on holographic television doing interviews. But as media interests in his reanimation cooled so did their attitudes toward him. Stan tried to be patient and understanding. After all, they had their own lives, their children, their grandchildren and all the customary concerns and worries these involvements generate. One day while visiting his grandson’s house he was sitting on the toilet (a place he spent a lot of time since returning; even after nine years and several medications, his bowels were still excruciatingly sluggish) he overheard a conversation that changed everything for him.

His grandson Mark was arguing with his wife, Jennifer, about finances. They had disagreements over many issues and seemed remarkably oblivious to the fact that their voices became louder with each heated exchange. Because Stan was so ancient (a term frequently used to describe him) many people in his life assumed that he must be terribly hard of hearing and could not overhear what was said about him. But people were wrong; his hearing was the best preserved of his senses.

During this argument, Mark described the recent meeting with his siblings Marv, Rachel, and Tony. It was their weekly teleconference, not an actual meeting; people rarely visited one another, they communicated mostly through various three-dimensional, holographic screens. Grandfather Stanley’s legal rights were being discussed. Serious concerns were raised that Stan might attempt to regain at least some of the property he owned at the time of his freezing. In the years that elapsed since his freezing in 2007, California courts opted to leave open the possibility that people who were reanimated could lay claim to their previous estates, including those distributed years earlier. After all, since these people were living again and had financial needs, why should the state have to support them, especially the previously wealthy ones? A court in San Francisco County had decided three months earlier that indeed these reanimates did have legal standing to sue those who had inherited their property, since they had not actually died (death being legally defined as an irreversible state, and since they were living again, it must not have been irreversible after all).

One of the first survivors from cryonics had recently recovered half of his previous assets in Fresno, despite a vigorous defense launched by his grandchildren, great grandchildren, and several of the most prominent attorneys in the nation. This startling story made a big splash and prompted many an animated conversation, especially among those whose relatives had chosen cryonics.

Then Marv uttered a statement referring to Stan that he would never forget. Why couldn’t that old creep stay in a grave where he belongs!

Stan was shaken to the core by that statement. He had pursued cryonics not just to elude death (although that had certainly been part of his motivation) but also to prolong the wonderful joys of family, especially those blissful times he had spent with his grandchildren. To now learn these grandchildren saw him as a threat to their financial futures, and would prefer him dead, was a cruel disillusionment. He felt the meanest of tricks had been played on him.

Stan had considered his financial future and had done some planning prior to his freezing in case he actually might be restored to life. He realized that he would be legally dead and his entire estate would naturally pass to his family. With the aid of lawyers skilled in cryonics issues he placed in his will a provision that one stock he owned – with a value of about $125,000 then -- would be held in a special trust, with all its quarterly dividends divided into thirds and distributed to his three favorite charities. Not only did this provide Stan with a warm feeling that he was doing some good with these funds, it also meant there would be no need for his estate to do income tax reporting on a yearly basis. One of these charities was the National Cryonics Center, the institute that held his potential future in its hands – and his body, in cryonic suspension, in its vaults.

Selecting which stock on which to pin his financial future – if indeed, he had any type of future – was not an easy task. He selected a stock of a major bank that had been around for many years, even though its name had changed five times. Sixty-one years and nine name changes later that stock had grown to over 17 times its worth at his (legal) death. This produced a modest but sufficient estate for Stan of over four million dollars. He felt set for life although he had no idea how long that might be.

His grandchildren had no knowledge of his financial resources. They never directly asked nor had he gotten around to telling them. Stan felt disheartened to learn that his grandchildren, so beloved to him in his former life, seemed desperately concerned with the financial threat his continued existence posed for them now. In listening to Mark and Jennifer’s arguments he could not help but realize that they would all be relieved if Grandfather Stan were simply to disappear again, this time for good.

Overhearing all of this produced the most difficult sitting Stan ever spent on the toilet. How he wished he had his wife Lea to share, process, and help him deal with this disappointment. A thought process began within Stan that, several years later, led to this cruise and the difficult decision he had to face.

Chapter 2

First days on cruise ships were unsettling to Stan. He had trouble learning his way around new places, and now he was not as young as he used to be, a glaring understatement he often used to highlight some of the special problems he experienced since his reanimation. He likened his predicament to those instances in his first life when he was forced to rely upon crutches after an accident or surgery.

This cruise was pleasantly different. Each passenger received a complete life application device, a hand-held apparatus that could do just about everything imaginable. In his cabin, it acted as a remote control for his entire audiovisual system. But this remote did much more. It was constantly monitoring his bodily systems including heart rate, blood pressure, and several dozen more measures of how his body was functioning. It was a positioning device telling him not only where he was onboard the ship (he usually could figure that out!) but also how to get to wherever he wanted to go. So when he wanted to go somewhere – dinner, for example – all he had to do was push the right button and it would tell him how to get there by either walking or by use of his Mechanized Transportation Appliance (MTA). The tracking was so sophisticated that he could authorize his MTA to automatically take him to wherever he might wish to go on the ship without him steering at all. Through complex sensors that baffled Stan completely but which worked like a charm, it would lead his MTA through crowds, in and out of elevators, to different doors and even through dense crowds of people. It could even steer him to the correct table. What really amazed him was that it never hit or even brushed another MTA, a person, or an inanimate object. It moved as skillfully – if not quite as rapidly – as a hummingbird flying full speed, darting about, through a dense grove of trees. It had an astonishing sense of where it was and what was around it.

When Stan first saw his complete life application device, he felt thoroughly overwhelmed. Although he had never really been what one might call cutting edge when it came to technology, he could grasp the intricacies of most electronic and mechanical gadgets in his former life. People often called upon him for help when their computers or stereo systems (both real throwback terms!) were giving them fits. Stan now felt hopelessly antiquated when it came to the latest gadgets. Part of this was no doubt related to his advanced years with its associated mental aging. But the greater proportion of it seemed to be the result of the incredible changes that had occurred during the 61 years his life had been dormant. He longed to see a computer as he remembered it, or even stumble upon a classic flat television set that only presented images in two dimensions, not in those amazingly realistic holograms that seemed to jump straight into the lap of the viewer. He still could not restrain himself from jumping when a batted baseball (or some other fast-moving object) seemed to be coming straight at him from his holovision set.

One of the best days he had had since his reanimation involved a visit to a museum featuring early Twenty-first Century artifacts. He felt a strange excitement and delight upon seeing familiar objects – a computer, a radio, an ancient cell phone, and motor vehicles that actually ran on a fossil fuel called gasoline and had to be steered by a person – and would now and then bump into each other, often with disastrous results! He never really had seen a smartphone himself, which looked a bit like a small, hand-held computer but he could sort of relate to it! Nearly everything he knew and loved in his first life was now ancient history. He felt like an alien from another, less-advanced galaxy longing for the pleasures of home and the simpler times that accompanied them.

Mr. Miller, I came to orient you to your Complete Life Application Device, the pleasant young woman in the softly tailored blue uniform said to him. Or perhaps you have already figured out that your device -- we call it CLAD for short -- is actually rather simple! You may wish to refer to it as your personal remote.

Stan looked up to see an attractive young woman with light brown hair, fair skin, and a soft, warm smile. Her face bore only a few wrinkles, and these served to highlight her smiling mouth and remarkably white teeth. Her eyes seemed kind and accepting. Her shapely body filled out her light blue and orange uniform quite nicely. There was no trace of condescension in the voice with which she addressed him. She actually seemed happy to see him. They really train these people well, Stan thought. A pretty lady like this acts as though she is genuinely interested in the welfare of an old relic like me, and does it convincingly, too.

No, Ma’am, I actually don’t have a clue as to how this contraption works. I’m afraid I won’t be able to use it much.

She smiled more broadly, and inched closer to him. Of course you will! It is completely insightful. It almost knows what you are trying to do. And once you confirm that it is right, it goes ahead and does it for you.

In all of his years of life, Stan had never heard an inanimate object referred to as insightful. Sophisticated,’ yes. Even intuitive. But never insightful. "Are you sure you are using the right word to describe this contraption? Heck, even most of the people I have ever met are not very insightful!" This elicited a small smile and a gentle nod from his pleasant tutor. That small smile and the agreeable nature of this woman aroused a trace of warm feelings within him he could just barely recollect from his earlier life and which had been totally absent in his current existence. He remembered how much he once liked to make people laugh, especially women. Now, eliciting even a small smile seemed a minor triumph.

As she smiled, Stan saw that she was indeed quite attractive from her fair skin and classically pretty face to her well-shaped figure. He chided himself for not having noticed this from the moment she sat down beside him. When her arm brushed against his for an instant it felt surprisingly pleasing.

This very agreeable woman then began skillfully demonstrating his CLAD. She moved at a relaxed pace, establishing that Stan had mastered one set of features before she moved on to another. Stan was amazed to learn that it indeed did seem to be insightful. For example, based upon the time of day and the time elapsed since he last ate, this device would feature dining choices in a special part of its display entitled most probable options. Once he clicked on the dining option – represented by a knife and fork, a symbol used way back in the old days – he was given a choice of where to dine, from casual to elegant. Once he chose that, he was given menu choices at each venue. He could even order room service if he so desired.

But his CLAD, or personal remote as Stan would come to refer to it, could do so much more than simply direct him to an eating venue and order his meals. It could transport him to any of the many features and services on this grand ship. It could take him to the nearest restroom. Indeed, it would learn and then compute the average time between his prior restroom visits, and enter restroom locations on the most probable options screen of his personal remote. It made similar calculations with meal times, wake up times, sleep times, and times he visited various lounges on the ship. It even monitored his health functions including heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, and fatigue index, gathering information from the chip buried in his arm! It seemed almost to think like a person who took great interest in him, learned some of the most miniscule details of his preferences, and then set out to satisfy all his needs and wishes, making sure he stayed healthy in the process. It was as though machines had been developed to replace humans helping each other.

"But what if I were to lose this contraption. I would be sunk, lost!’

There is no way you can lose it, even if you try! With that, the pleasant young woman handed him a small device attached to a colorful orange and red cord. "This is to be placed around your neck. You can take it off if you wish, but you don’t have to. You can keep it on even when you bathe.