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Edwards is the Smiler? You make the call.
Mar. 2nd, 2004 03:02 am
Mar. 2nd, 2004
When I was a kid, my dad always said that tomorrow would be better. Didn't matter how good or bad things were, tomorrow would always be better.
He was wrong. Tomorrow is a nightmare.
In late 2004, I was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. I was given less then a year to live. I had the social life of the nouveau-riche, that is to say I had no real friends, only acquaintances, social contacts in the business world, my wife's social contacts in entertainment. My wife, my trophy wife, of the last few years left when she heard about the cancer. It wasn't socially acceptable or popular to have cancer.
There were two options. Death was the first. Can't say I liked that one at the time, but it may have been the better choice. The other was cryogenics. Only reason I even considered that was because I owned a decent chunk of a company experimenting in it.
So, a few weeks after the diagnosis, I had another complete physical, and they got a full-body chamber ready for me. They had a medical staff watching me day and night. Interfered with business a bit, but most of my colleagues were waiting for me to kick off so they could divide up my corporate empire, so I didn't care if it meant they were getting a few million less.
Then I died. The plan was that I would be placed in that cryogenic chamber, and revived at some point in the future where the cancer could be cured. I knew, of course, that going into it, I stood less then one chance in one thousand of really coming back from it. I only thought it was better then no chance at all.
I was wrong.
Just one thing made me wish I had just given up the ghost. The dreams. No one ever took that into account. The scientists here and now insist it isn't possible. I was clinically dead until they revived me. There was no brain activity, therefore, no dreams. They eliminated the cancer, made me look and feel years younger. But they couldn't take away the memory of the dreams. Or keep them from coming back.
I can barely sleep now without medication. It keeps most of the dreams away, but in a good night, I still wake up with my heart pounding, the sheets soaked in sweat.
I've been told I've got several decades left in me now. Modern health can keep me alive for so much longer then it used to. And I'm still a rich man. But I can't sleep. And I don't dare kill myself. Because I don't know if I'll stop dreaming after I die again.
He was wrong. Tomorrow is a nightmare.
In late 2004, I was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. I was given less then a year to live. I had the social life of the nouveau-riche, that is to say I had no real friends, only acquaintances, social contacts in the business world, my wife's social contacts in entertainment. My wife, my trophy wife, of the last few years left when she heard about the cancer. It wasn't socially acceptable or popular to have cancer.
There were two options. Death was the first. Can't say I liked that one at the time, but it may have been the better choice. The other was cryogenics. Only reason I even considered that was because I owned a decent chunk of a company experimenting in it.
So, a few weeks after the diagnosis, I had another complete physical, and they got a full-body chamber ready for me. They had a medical staff watching me day and night. Interfered with business a bit, but most of my colleagues were waiting for me to kick off so they could divide up my corporate empire, so I didn't care if it meant they were getting a few million less.
Then I died. The plan was that I would be placed in that cryogenic chamber, and revived at some point in the future where the cancer could be cured. I knew, of course, that going into it, I stood less then one chance in one thousand of really coming back from it. I only thought it was better then no chance at all.
I was wrong.
Just one thing made me wish I had just given up the ghost. The dreams. No one ever took that into account. The scientists here and now insist it isn't possible. I was clinically dead until they revived me. There was no brain activity, therefore, no dreams. They eliminated the cancer, made me look and feel years younger. But they couldn't take away the memory of the dreams. Or keep them from coming back.
I can barely sleep now without medication. It keeps most of the dreams away, but in a good night, I still wake up with my heart pounding, the sheets soaked in sweat.
I've been told I've got several decades left in me now. Modern health can keep me alive for so much longer then it used to. And I'm still a rich man. But I can't sleep. And I don't dare kill myself. Because I don't know if I'll stop dreaming after I die again.