“I think so,” Jim said. “I feel ready for something. I’m not having stage fright, if that’s what you mean. It doesn’t sound too hard, anyway. I just burn the book, right? As a pledge. And then I say I’m ready to become a citizen if everybody will have me. I make my testimony, and cross my fingers that they’ll all say yes.”
“No need to cross your fingers,” she said. “You’ve already done the hard part. I have every expectation that you’ll succeed today. You’ve made this last part just a formality. I’m very proud of you.” She pointed out the bus’s curved window. “Look, we’re nearly there now.”
Jim turned his head and saw a slender metal spire rising from one of those displaced tarns. Mercury-silver, the tower looked almost liquid itself. A door opened in the lake and the bus drove in. Shortly, they came to a brightly lit underground garage.
Alice led him out of the bus to a smooth elevator, which seemed to move in a variety of directions. They stepped into an immaculate hallway, so white it was hard to tell the bright lamps in the wall from the wall itself, but carpeted in neatly clipped green grass. He laughed when she brought him into the greenroom, which was green all over, not just the floor carpeted in grass but the walls and even the furniture upholstered with it as well. “It’s the greenest greenroom I’ve ever seen,” Jim said. “Now what?”
“Now you can rest, and prepare. You won’t see anyone else until you see everyone else. But look, a friend has sent you some flowers.” They were on the table, a giant bouquet of sunflowers and posies and daisies, all of them shivering, vastly more alive than any flower Jim had ever seen before. There was a card stuck in them, from Franklin. Break a leg! it said. Jim smiled, then winced and held his belly where he had a sudden pain.
“Lie down,” Alice said when she saw his face, leading him to the verdant couch. “You’re pale. It’s all right to be nervous.”
“I’m not nervous,” he said. “It’s just a little stomachache. I’m fine, really.” He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Alice was fixing something to his hair.
“A microphone,” she said. “The hall is very large. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And how is your stomach?”
“I think it was actually my heart,” he said. “But it’s all better now.”
“Excellent,” she said, with a beautiful smile. She stood him up and offered him her arm. “Then James Arthur Cotton, Polaris Member 10.77.89.1, let us proceed to your Debut!”
In no time at all they had passed down a hall, through a door, and up some stairs, into darkness and a noise he recognized as the susurration of an enormous crowd. She took him onto the stage and stood with him behind the curtain. There was a little brazier set up a few feet upstage, and next to that, on a little stand, a large tin of lighter fluid and a box of wooden matches. “I’ll be just over there,” Alice said, handing him his book just when he realized he had forgotten it in the greenroom. “Good luck, my dear, dear client. Remember, I’m proud of you! How do you feel?”
“Good,” Jim said. “I feel good. I feel ready.” Alice gave him a long, hard hug, and then withdrew. The curtain rose. A spotlight picked him out.
Peering into the audience, all Jim could see was the light on him, but he could hear a great variety of bodies, shuffling and breathing. People are very patient in the future, he said to himself as the empty minutes went by without a single catcall. Maybe because they have so much time, he thought, and then he began to speak.
“Thank you for having me today,” he said. “I’m so glad to be here. I mean, I’m so grateful. I really am. It’s been really charitable of you all, to take care of me like you have. I thought I should say that, before I get started.” He stood up straighter and cleared his throat, and held the book behind his hips with both hands. “My name is James Arthur Cotton. I am Polaris Cryonics Member 10.77.89.1. I am here to formally declare my readiness to enter your world, the world of the future, a world I have diligently prepared myself to understand. I have severed every lingering attachment to my old world, the old life, liberating myself to enter a new one.” He held the book up for them all to see, and then he held it tight against his chest.
“By these flames,” he said. “I ask you to let me in.” He put the book in the brazier and gave it a good soaking with the lighter fluid. His hands were shaking, so he got as much on the floor as on the book. Jim giggled nervously. “I make a mess when I pee, too,” he said to his audience. “So I always have to sit down.” Nobody laughed, but of course the toilets in the future caught the urine no matter how freely you peed. These people couldn’t possibly know what he was talking about. “Somebody used to get angry at me,” he added softly. He stood there a moment, until Alice whispered from stage left, “You should light the fire now!”
“Of course!” he said, and he lit a match, but not the fire. “A Viking funeral always was the best kind of funeral,” he said, staring at the little flame. “I think I should just say a few words, if that’s all right?” He was asking the audience, which remained silent, but Alice was shaking her head vigorously. “Funny to preside at a funeral for somebody you don’t know, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t even know what’s in there anymore.” The motion of pointing at the book extinguished the match, so he lit another one. “I forgot everything else, but I still remember what to do at a funeral. You just put your head down and try to bear as humbly as you can your good luck at still being one of the living.”
“It’s time now to light the fire,” Alice said next to him. She had come onstage while he was talking. He blushed. “You can’t stop now,” she said urgently. “In the middle of things.” She lowered her voice. “It’s dangerous. People have exploded that way.”
“I will,” Jim said. “In a minute. Just give me a second to say goodbye. This is what I do.” He stepped forward and began confidently. “My dear friends,” he said. “We are here together to celebrate a life. This man…” Alice was gripping his wrist so hard she was hurting him, but he pointed with his free hand at the book. “I mean, this woman.” But of course that was wrong too. So he said, “Always together. Never apart.”
“Listen to me!” Alice said. “I’m your social worker!” She lit a match and stepped toward the brazier.
“You listen to me,” he said. “She was my wife!” He tried to step in front of Alice, but she bumped him, and the brazier and book tumbled to the floor. Alice dropped her match into the puddle of lighter fluid, and the stage caught fire like it had been waiting forever to burn.
Through the flames, Jim could see the pages of the book unfurling and glowing, the covers spread wide. The ashes rose with the smoke, the plumes twisting into the words and stories and faces. There was something so attractive about the smell. He couldn’t help himself; he took a big heaving lungful of the smoke, and it was like sucking all the memories into his lungs. Or maybe they were just unfolding in him, never having been forgotten, only made incredibly small. In any case, he felt very full. And he felt, deep in his burning chest, that he had somehow found a way for both of them to live forever, a way for him to carry her forward with him and forget her at the same time. He opened his mouth to try to explain this good news to Alice as she ushered him away from the flames, but a hideous belch came out of his mouth instead.
“Oh, Jim,” she said. “You are definitely going to explode.” She was weeping now, and didn’t seem angry with him anymore.