Grandpa
3rd January, 2357
This page of my diary is going to be very different from others. It is on this day last month that I had seen the face of my grandfather the last time and I have been missing him all along. So depressed had I been that I did not write my ‘daily’ diary for a full month.
I won’t be able to forget grandpa even if all my organs are changed, including my brain. Let me mention here that concepts about humans are changing fast after the first full brain transplant two years ago. We have long achieved sort of immortality thanks to in-situ cloning of organs, organ transplants and what not. The concept of being a grandfather, even a father, has almost lost its meaning. Yet, only if you had suffered the loss of your grandfather – or grandmother if you were lucky to have seen one – would you realize their value in your lives.
Till the last moment of his life, grandpa was active like a child. Part of this energy, I am sure, he had regained from our child Coxy. He would play with her all the day till he and the child went to bed together early in the evening. He would tell her his real life experiences of the world he had lived in over two centuries ago and which Coxy often refused to believe.
Unlike others of his times, grandpa had decided to let scientists experiment cryo hibernation and resurrection on him. His only condition was that when he was made ‘alive’ again after two hundred years, he should be allowed to live as a normal human being and no experiments done on his body. He wanted to live naturally – as an old man of seventy years plus.
Scientists did succeed in resurrecting him – it is no great deal, but to chill an active man till he was nearly dead must have been traumatic for scientists in the twenty-second century. That shows in the chit they kept beside him, begging forgiveness of the almighty if the scientists were not able to bring him to life after two centuries.
After the last humanistic movement for not interfering with the nature was crushed by the ultra-progressives some hundred years back, all types of human engineering experiments have been taking place at a frenzied pace. Almost nobody dies these days. Whosoever dies too does not die in the old sense of death: each of his or her organs is used for either research or transplantation. But grandpa was destined to die, as per his will he wrote in his own hand, in an English almost alien to us today. By the way, Coxy says, grandpa spoke ‘wing-lich’.
Grandpa’s ‘untimely’ death has shaken my family no end. Sarah’s and my parents died almost unnoticed, we being too busy in our daily routines of near-mechanical precision. When Sarah’s father – the last of our parents – was declared dead, his organs were immediately disposed of. We had felt sad, maybe for a couple of days, before we completely forgot him. One consolation was that his organs would be ‘living’ on others for a long time.
In this age of scientific overkill we are bothered and excited only about the inventions taking place by the minute. We are a totally integrated inter-celestial village now, with every required information on our wearable computers. Anything can travel at lightning speed to any corner of the globe and the space colonies. Our spaceships reach a new galactic object every week. In fact, writing about what all we are achieving every day is of no relevance – by the time you read it, it starts looking ancient. Only I must be writing a diary, and I hope I will keep my old-world habit in spite of my busyness.
‘We have become zombies’ – grandpa had made his last remark on our generation when both me and Sarah had received a dozen mails and calls on our computers in a span of an hour and we had to leave the dining table halfway through the breakfast. Reverting to an olden relaxed lifestyle is not possible, and yet we have adopted a number of old-world habits from grandpa. For example, we do take breakfast instead of gulping food pastes and tabs.
That fateful day, grandpa must have left home for my office after Coxy had slept in the afternoon. Like always, he would have thought to return home before she woke up a couple of hours later. Despite his contempt for control of everything by technology, his visit to our lab a mile from our house to ‘watch you play with your tech tools’ was as regular as his morning walk and a silent prayer at one corner of his bedroom. Walking along the path briskly with the help of his stick, the fully grayed grandpa must have been a weird sight for whosoever saw him [if anybody had time for that]. There were signs that his frail heart and shaking limbs would not last long; in fact, Sarah had been pleading that he allow them to be replaced, but grandpa always affectionately told her to wait till he felt the need for that.
Grandpa did not reach my lab. Instead, Sarah and I received a flash on our computers that he was in the emergency ward of the city hospital. We reached there in a few minutes. Grandpa was on life-saving equipment.
“Mail his will in ten minutes or he will go waste,” the doctor told me when I insisted that beyond treatment and efforts to save his life, there should be no experimentation on him. I searched the will from the data warehouse and transferred it to the doctor’s computer.
The doctor examined the ‘live’ reports on grandpa’s body coming on a dozen screens by his side. All the while, Sarah kept on accessing details about the accident on her computer. Graphic presentation of the accident was available on the local web-TV. The fully automated van had lost tract due to a rare metal failure and instantly caught fire. The adults ran out of the emergency door but two children remained trapped inside the kid box. Nobody could go near the vehicle due to fanning flames and fumes. Even firemen took their time getting ready to approach the van. Suddenly, an old man with pre-historic features appeared from somewhere. He managed to reach the van, break the pane of the kid box with his stick and pull the children out. And then he fainted and got trapped under the chassis that had now collapsed.
After a quick video conference, doctors declared that grandpa’s life could be saved only if his vital organs, including part of his brain were replaced by artificial organelles. “He must live. We must save him at all costs. International Medical Research Board also wants that. We must not be sentimental.” The doctor said. “I want your final word, and now.”
I looked towards the bed – a mass of flesh existing on artificial life. It was not grandpa.
“Do switch off the equipment,” I said with heavy heart.
The doctor gave me time to think again.
I had nothing to re-consider. “Go by the will,” I said.
The considerate head of the medical team then asked Sarah. “He is right,” she said briefly. “Let grandpa die.” Her moist eyes were paying tributes to an immortal grandpa.
This page of my diary is going to be very different from others. It is on this day last month that I had seen the face of my grandfather the last time and I have been missing him all along. So depressed had I been that I did not write my ‘daily’ diary for a full month.
I won’t be able to forget grandpa even if all my organs are changed, including my brain. Let me mention here that concepts about humans are changing fast after the first full brain transplant two years ago. We have long achieved sort of immortality thanks to in-situ cloning of organs, organ transplants and what not. The concept of being a grandfather, even a father, has almost lost its meaning. Yet, only if you had suffered the loss of your grandfather – or grandmother if you were lucky to have seen one – would you realize their value in your lives.
Till the last moment of his life, grandpa was active like a child. Part of this energy, I am sure, he had regained from our child Coxy. He would play with her all the day till he and the child went to bed together early in the evening. He would tell her his real life experiences of the world he had lived in over two centuries ago and which Coxy often refused to believe.
Unlike others of his times, grandpa had decided to let scientists experiment cryo hibernation and resurrection on him. His only condition was that when he was made ‘alive’ again after two hundred years, he should be allowed to live as a normal human being and no experiments done on his body. He wanted to live naturally – as an old man of seventy years plus.
Scientists did succeed in resurrecting him – it is no great deal, but to chill an active man till he was nearly dead must have been traumatic for scientists in the twenty-second century. That shows in the chit they kept beside him, begging forgiveness of the almighty if the scientists were not able to bring him to life after two centuries.
After the last humanistic movement for not interfering with the nature was crushed by the ultra-progressives some hundred years back, all types of human engineering experiments have been taking place at a frenzied pace. Almost nobody dies these days. Whosoever dies too does not die in the old sense of death: each of his or her organs is used for either research or transplantation. But grandpa was destined to die, as per his will he wrote in his own hand, in an English almost alien to us today. By the way, Coxy says, grandpa spoke ‘wing-lich’.
Grandpa’s ‘untimely’ death has shaken my family no end. Sarah’s and my parents died almost unnoticed, we being too busy in our daily routines of near-mechanical precision. When Sarah’s father – the last of our parents – was declared dead, his organs were immediately disposed of. We had felt sad, maybe for a couple of days, before we completely forgot him. One consolation was that his organs would be ‘living’ on others for a long time.
In this age of scientific overkill we are bothered and excited only about the inventions taking place by the minute. We are a totally integrated inter-celestial village now, with every required information on our wearable computers. Anything can travel at lightning speed to any corner of the globe and the space colonies. Our spaceships reach a new galactic object every week. In fact, writing about what all we are achieving every day is of no relevance – by the time you read it, it starts looking ancient. Only I must be writing a diary, and I hope I will keep my old-world habit in spite of my busyness.
‘We have become zombies’ – grandpa had made his last remark on our generation when both me and Sarah had received a dozen mails and calls on our computers in a span of an hour and we had to leave the dining table halfway through the breakfast. Reverting to an olden relaxed lifestyle is not possible, and yet we have adopted a number of old-world habits from grandpa. For example, we do take breakfast instead of gulping food pastes and tabs.
That fateful day, grandpa must have left home for my office after Coxy had slept in the afternoon. Like always, he would have thought to return home before she woke up a couple of hours later. Despite his contempt for control of everything by technology, his visit to our lab a mile from our house to ‘watch you play with your tech tools’ was as regular as his morning walk and a silent prayer at one corner of his bedroom. Walking along the path briskly with the help of his stick, the fully grayed grandpa must have been a weird sight for whosoever saw him [if anybody had time for that]. There were signs that his frail heart and shaking limbs would not last long; in fact, Sarah had been pleading that he allow them to be replaced, but grandpa always affectionately told her to wait till he felt the need for that.
Grandpa did not reach my lab. Instead, Sarah and I received a flash on our computers that he was in the emergency ward of the city hospital. We reached there in a few minutes. Grandpa was on life-saving equipment.
“Mail his will in ten minutes or he will go waste,” the doctor told me when I insisted that beyond treatment and efforts to save his life, there should be no experimentation on him. I searched the will from the data warehouse and transferred it to the doctor’s computer.
The doctor examined the ‘live’ reports on grandpa’s body coming on a dozen screens by his side. All the while, Sarah kept on accessing details about the accident on her computer. Graphic presentation of the accident was available on the local web-TV. The fully automated van had lost tract due to a rare metal failure and instantly caught fire. The adults ran out of the emergency door but two children remained trapped inside the kid box. Nobody could go near the vehicle due to fanning flames and fumes. Even firemen took their time getting ready to approach the van. Suddenly, an old man with pre-historic features appeared from somewhere. He managed to reach the van, break the pane of the kid box with his stick and pull the children out. And then he fainted and got trapped under the chassis that had now collapsed.
After a quick video conference, doctors declared that grandpa’s life could be saved only if his vital organs, including part of his brain were replaced by artificial organelles. “He must live. We must save him at all costs. International Medical Research Board also wants that. We must not be sentimental.” The doctor said. “I want your final word, and now.”
I looked towards the bed – a mass of flesh existing on artificial life. It was not grandpa.
“Do switch off the equipment,” I said with heavy heart.
The doctor gave me time to think again.
I had nothing to re-consider. “Go by the will,” I said.
The considerate head of the medical team then asked Sarah. “He is right,” she said briefly. “Let grandpa die.” Her moist eyes were paying tributes to an immortal grandpa.
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