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thought of them carrying Paul's lifeless body across the barren moonscape toward their cryonic
chambers. Paul's frozen body was their monument to him, the ultimate expression of their feeling for him
and their regard for his work.
Ed slumped over his desk and placed his head on his arms. He would have to accept Paul's death, deal
with it somehow, then go on. He could not stand the limbo in which he had remained for the past days
much longer. He would have to accept it and watch part of himself and the others die with that
acceptance. He would be deluding himself with anything else.
He did not realize he was crying until he felt the moisture on his face and arms. He managed to wipe the
tears away and reached over for his violin case. He removed the instrument, tuned it, and rubbed some
resin on his bow. Then he lifted the violin to his shoulder.
He drew the bow over the strings, losing himself in the music, trying to become a part of it, retreating
from the confusion around him to another world, a more precise, ordered one, a world of structured
beauty where death, at least for a time, did not exist.
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"Another source of irreversibility is the changes in the most fundamental aspects of human existence, such
as man's biology, or his psychology, that the decisions may involve. As we shall see in some specific
instances, such changes necessarily intensify certain aspects of human life at the expense of others. In the
new situation that will then be created, some new possibilities will exist, but some old ones will vanish."
—Gerald Feinberg
THE PROMETHEUS PROJECT
"Each of us is someone's monster,"
—Paul Chauchard
3. James: 2020
AS Jim Swenson left the brightly lit doorway and walked outside, the shadows embraced him, hiding him
from the girl he knew was watching him. He looked back and saw her raise an arm. Her face was
hidden. She was a black shape outlined by the lights behind her.
"Moira," a voice called from inside the dormitory, and she disappeared.
Jim walked toward the path leading through the wooded area around the dormitory, then stopped and
looked back. The circular building was surrounded on three sides by trees and faced a large courtyard.
Other cylindrical dormitories, several stories high, overlooked the courtyard. Beyond them, in the
distance, Jim could see the tall towers that housed the library and various research facilities of the
university.
His birthplace was among those towers.
Jim turned and walked on through the woods. The shadows beneath the trees shielded him from the
moon, where scientists lived and labored in an attempt to carry on the work of his father, where Paul
Swenson lay in a cryonic vault colder than that rocky and desolate surface.
They should have buried him here, in the earth, among trees and flowers, not left him in the
sterility of that dead world. On the earth his spirit, if it existed, might roam its old haunts, warming itself
in the sun. But perhaps Paul's spirit had outwitted its captors after all, returning to a sphere of souls
around the world, watching over the children who were pieces of itself.
They had left the memorial service almost four years before, where Paul's friends had spoken a few
simple words, Jim holding Kira's arm, his three brothers following closely behind. Looking up, Jim had
seen them, as he knew he would, crowded in a herd a short distance away. The newspeople did not
have to come close to record accurately the grief written on his face. Their equipment would memorize
every detail of his sorrow and transmit it to a billion newsfax sheets and millions of holographic screens.
The newspeople had huddled in the distance, ready to swoop.
He thought of Moira.
"A newsfax man came around," Moira had said, her black eyes smiling at Jim. "I guess someone told him
we were seeing each other, and he wanted a personal story or something, what it's like to go with a guy
who…"
"What did you tell him?" Jim asked, grabbing her arm. Moira looked at him, her eyes wide.
"Why, nothing," she said. "I have better things to do than discuss my personal life with the press."
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