Futures Near and Far Read Online Free PDF

cyanide, as I recalled too late, is so fast that it’s easier for the little
machines to let a person die, wait for the air to clear, and then revive the
corpse.
    “So long, Ma,” Cheryl
said as stars flashed behind my eyes. Their light filled my vision, leaving me
blind as my knees crashed to the floor. I was out before my head struck.
    I woke up to the hiss of steam. Groaning, I rolled over to
search for the source of the sound.
    It was Jacques. He was enveloped in a cloud of mist. No
doubt his docs were accelerating the thaw.
    I scanned the room. Cheryl was gone, leaving her “friends”
behind.
    The first thing I did was toss the hanged girl over the
balcony. Jacques followed, fingers and all. I didn’t give a hoot what the
neighbors thought of bodies on the lawn.
    Then I sat down, right on the carpet, too drained to make it
to a chair. The shuddering started.
    I’d done it. Dr. Branson would be proud of me. I’d called
Cheryl’s bluff.
    If it were a bluff.
    The shuddering turned
into sobbing. The tears burst out of me like rivers. My throat felt as if I’d
swallowed thistles. I grabbed the end of the carpet and tried to wipe my
face, but all that did was soak the tassels. I cried until I couldn’t breathe,
and then I cried some more.
    When I could finally
stand up, and later, when I could finally walk, I stumbled into my bedroom. I
recoded the picture frame on the nightstand to the scene I’d kept there for the
past half century or so: my daughter, blowing out the candles of her birthday
cake as she turned four years old.
Daughter
    Earth is glorious from a hundred miles up. At least, I’ve
always thought so. Especially when I’ve exited my pod, told the craft to return
to the planet, and I can just float there, suspended above that big blue sphere
with nothing but a body shield, a cartridge of oxygen, and my surfboard to keep
me company.
    This was one vista I’d never shared with anyone, not even
Jacques or Giselle. Oh, they knew about Earth surfing. After all, it had been a
fad for centuries. Jacques had even told me about the portable scanner I could
use to record and transmit my cusp-of-death configuration to the Net, so that
when I was reconstituted my new body would remember
as much of the emotional high of the experience as possible. The two of them indulged in the sport as often as I.
    But never with me.
This was my own, my favorite, my private means of suicide.
    I hadn’t activated the scanner this time. Why should I
record experiences that weren’t going to be plugged into a new body? This was it .
    Oregon and the western coast of North America had just
emerged from the terminator. Morning, the thirtieth day. If my eyesight were good enough, I could’ve spotted my mom
down there.
    Not that Monica mattered. She hadn’t answered my Link call
when I arrived up here. She really didn’t care.
    “Access suicide petition,” I murmured.
    The Net’s clear tenor voice responded with shocking speed.
“Suicide petition active. Day thirty. Upon your confirmation, your nanodocs
will be disengaged and your scan will be transferred to archival storage.”
    Fog shrouded the Golden Gate. The jet stream poured its
usual funnel of rain clouds across Puget Sound. The Willamette Valley warmed to
the rays of the newly risen sun. I’d lost sight of Portland as dawn had doused
the lights of the city. Now it hid in the greens and browns of the continent,
as if it didn’t exist at all.
    What was one city in the
history of a planet five billion years
old? What was one more woman in the miasma of the human race?
    No one would miss me. Just tag me as a fetus, aborted in its
two hundred forty-ninth trimester. A statistic. Check me off the list — it’s
the only way left for humanity to make room for new folks, not counting spewing
them into the colony worlds.
    So big a planet. So little a me.
    “Do you confirm?” asked the disembodied voice.
    My surfboard itched for the press of my Velcro-soled boots.
My mind