2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

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The King:

I have strong issues with any version of immortality in time.

We will skim over the aging issue, the freezing the immortal at a particular growth point issue, the what do you do about resources and procreation issue, all of which [with many others] scifi has explored many's the time sometimes favorably and sometimes not so.

Forget even the what kind body or non-body this will be.

Go straight to what do you do with your 13th century.

Already - with a good bit of my first century left to go - I run into a lot of been there done that. I do not bore easily - find lots to occupy a not wholly inactive mind - but you got Hawking saying [misquoted? I would like to think so] all the good problems are solved. The more memory piles up, the more the days speed up like reel to reel tape or motion film when the takeup reel has a pile on it and the other gets smaller. Are we going to get extra disk drives for the excess memories? What's to do when I have learned all the languages?

Then there is the fact this IS a time-bomb universe. So we live to the heat death of the universe ... and what? You go to all the trouble of getting immortal and you get to experience going down with the universe. Big hairy deal. Or say you big crunch and my suster is right and we have God forbid to start over?

As for the frozen meat business:

My take: you gamble. You bet who knows how much money that you really ARE doomed,

AND that the company can really freeze you without turning you into mushy strawberries.

AND that they actually will maintain you in a steady state for a span of years [unlike my wife's "life membership" paid for in a Co-op that then redefined it as NOT permanent].

AND that there will be no natural disasters or acts of war or terrorism destroying the facility.

AND that there will not be power cuts beyond the capacity of their backup generators.

AND that when the time comes the technology to revive you will be in place.

AND that the deterioration from temperature and anticrystal chemicals will not be so much as to make you a vegetable [frozen peas?]

AND that medical science actually WILL find a way to cure your condition before the firm goes heels up or your deposit runs out and they have to dump you.

AND the government will not make any laws that convert you to hamburger or organs for senators.

I am not THAT much a gambler.