One of the many perks of living in Las Vegas is that there’s always something to do. To most people, that means binge drinking from comically oversized plastic cups and proceeding to throw hard-earned money straight into the pockets of billionaire casino owners, but “The City that Never Sleeps” did occasionally provide opportunities for more cerebral forms of entertainment.
As I entered the convention center floor, I was greeted by all the usual sights, and smells. Virtually every science-fiction character in existence could be found somewhere in this room, and as with most conventions of this type, an uncomfortable percentage of those in costume seemed to be unacquainted with the modern marvel known as “deodorant”. Doing my best to acclimate to the odor, I looked up to see squadrons of Stormtroopers walking peacefully among roving packs of Jedi Knights. Starfleet crews were seen taking selfies with the occasional rogue Borg. Hell, I half expected to turn around and see a Xenomorph and a Predator high-fiving! It was like I’d walked into “nerd-nirvana”!
While I was never the cosplayer type myself, I had been obsessed with science fiction for as long as I could remember, so I could still appreciate the efforts of those who did choose to come in character. Some of my earliest memories were of my family gathered around the TV set watching Star Trek TNG reruns, so it only made since that I turned out to be a huge science nerd as an adult.
The Vortex SF convention had become one of my favorite annual activities since moving to Las Vegas for graduate school 4 years ago. While most people come to Vegas to engage in the typical assortment of debauchery this town was so famous for offering, I actually moved here to learn, and no, not to learn how to count cards! I moved here to study one thing, rocks. Yes. Rocks.
For anyone willing to skip the yard-long margaritas and make a short drive outside America’s favorite money pit, this corner of the world offered up a truly phenomenal selection of geologic points of interest. To the untrained eye your typical rock is no more interesting than the dirt it likely was picked up from. Unimportant, unremarkable, and let’s face it, a bit boring. However, one thing I realized very early on as a student of geology, was that “every rock tells a story”. For the lucky few of us who learn how to read that story, the Earth begins to casually reveal its deepest secrets in each boulder, pebble, and grain of sand.
While driving through the winding desert roads outside Las Vegas, a person will find themselves surrounded by towering walls of rock, forming miniature canyons. To most people, the only remarkable thing about these outcrops would be the shade from the harsh Nevada sun they occasionally provided, however to a geologist like myself, each of these roadcuts served as a floor-to-ceiling window into our planet’s enigmatic past. Out here, one could easily find rocks ranging in age from a few thousand years old to a few BILLION years old, and the knowledge of that fact had undoubtedly played a big part in my choice to accept the offer into the Earth System Science PhD program at “Sin City University”.
As with most people in their final year of a PhD program, I didn’t exactly have “a lot” of spare time. So when I did get a chance to get out of the lab, I tended to pounce on it like my cats did to essentially anything besides the overpriced cat toys I bought them. While my sometimes seemingly endless workload as a research assistant had prevented me from attending the first day of the convention, I made sure to arrive as early as possible for day two, determined to make up for the lost time.
I looked beyond the meandering horde of my fellow nerds to find a schedule board for today’s panels and Q&As. Across the room I saw a pack of Wookies disband after taking a group photo to reveal the schedule board I was looking for. As I made my way to the board, a hand holding a flashy brochure reached out and blocked my path. I looked up to find that the hand was attached to a young man, probably early twenties, wearing a finely tailored suit and sporting the grin I can only compare to that of a used car salesmen.
“Good afternoon sir!”, said the booth worker in a unnaturally chipper tone. “Do you have a few moments to learn about the future of cryonics?”
While my response in this situation would typically be to quickly say “No thanks!” and scurry away as fast as possible, his casual use of the word “cryonics” had admittedly piqued my interest.
“Give me just a few moments of your time, and you could win one of many great prizes as a part of this year’s company raffle!”, he said while gesturing to a nearby folding table littered with corporately branded swag, ranging from beer koozies to pens to entire iPads and everything in between!
I stopped dead in my tracks. I was never one to pass on an offer for free convention swag, so if he didn’t have my attention before with the whole “cryonics” thing, he certainly had it now. It was only then that I read the logo carefully placed on each item in the proverbial “pile of booty” laid out before me.
“CryoEterna”. The name was familiar. They were a small start-up based here in Vegas, or at least they had been. As I recalled the company was founded only a few years before I had moved to the city, however, in the four grueling years I’d so far spent working to complete my PhD, the company had exploded in growth. While smaller cryonics companies were already scattered across the country, CryoEterna was able to find a relative niche in an already niche market. If I remember correctly, their first major client was breakout Saturday Night Live star, Pete Davidson, who I can only imagine made the commitment after one hell of a bender on the Las Vegas strip. The company quickly went viral with “the youths” after the media caught wind of the story, and their popularity kind of just snowballed from there. While the company’s early success could be attributed to catering to the rich and famous (emphasis on famous), within a few years of opening their clientele suddenly shifted away from the “Pete Davidson’s” and “Kevin Hart’s Dogs” of the world, to the young millionaires and billionaires out of Silicon Valley looking to gamble their unfound wealth on a chance at cheating death. Eventually the company was bought out by some Wall Street hedge fund for an amount of money that thinking about alone made me cringe, so needless to say, the start-up had grown up a bit since it’s humble beginning just a few years ago.
“Sure, I’ve got a few minutes to spare.”, I said in a calm tone trying to hide my lust for free stuff. I knew I could never afford the service this kid was about to try to sell me, but I could afford to stand here for 5 minutes if it meant a new beverage insulation apparatus in my near future. He smiled and began his obviously pre-rehearsed speech.
“I’m a representative of CryoEterna, the world leader in cryopreservation technology! Our services are at the forefront of this fascinating journey into the future. By entrusting our company with the preservation of your biological material, you’re investing in a future where medical breakthroughs could pave the way for renewed life. It’s a choice that transcends the boundaries of conventional thinking and embraces the limitless possibilities of science!”
The sales-creature continued with his speech on the benefits of cryopreservation while simultaneously presenting accompanying graphics on his tablet explaining the whole process from start to finish.
“We offer many different packages to accommodate the final wishes of all our customers. While our most popular option is our Gold Membership package, I’m glad to announce a new reduced rate for our deluxe Platinum Membership!”, he said in his uncanny customer-service voice.
He looked at me, seemingly waiting for a response.
“So what’s the difference?”, I said trying my best to sound as un-sarcastic as possible. He perked up again and continued his pitch.
“Through a simple and painless procedure following the cessation of vital functions, we’re able to offer our Gold-level clients the dedicated preservation of their synaptic tissue.” I stifled a chuckle. “The Walt Disney Special”, I thought to myself while trying to keep my composure, unable to stop myself from what I said next.
“So let me get this straight... Rich people PAY you to cut off their heads?”, I asked with my eyes wide. “I take it you don’t get a lot of French customers, huh?” The booth worker looked at me with complete confusion.
Without skipping a beat, he continued with his People-Popsicle corporate propaganda as I realized my joke had just sailed straight over his one-hundred dollar haircut.
“While full-body preservation is available for our platinum-level clients, the gold package still provides many of the same potential benefits. We’re also happy to offer the attendants of The Vortex such as yourself a special 10%-off discount, with gold packages starting as low as $72,000!”
Seventy-two THOUSAND DOLLARS! And that was with the “special discount”?? If the lower tier package cost this much, how much did the Platinum Membership cost? Needless to say, I wasn’t signing up for anything today, not on the measly stipend the university paid me.
Chalk it up to “morbid curiosity”, but I found myself asking the booth worker about the price of the Platinum membership, knowing good and well that just hearing the amount spoken alone would probably leave me nauseous. “So how much is the Platinum Package?”, I said trying to conceal my internal disgust with his previous statement.
“Our Platinum Memberships now start as low as $250,000, however with additional services---”, he continued talking but my brain tuned out after I heard the number. Suddenly, it made sense why a cryonics company was soliciting in a Sci-Fi convention. They were here hoping to catch the eyes of a few well-endowed nerds and sell them a ticket to “The World of Tomorrow!”. I wondered if anyone here at The Vortex could actually afford to be a client of CryoEterna? I mean it’s not exactly a challenge to sell a sci-fi nerd on the whole cryopreservation thing, but I imagine the hard part is finding one that can actually pay for it. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that one of these Vulcans or Ewoks running around were just one bad car crash or heart-attack away from joining a recently-thawed Pizza Delivery Boy and a drunk robot in “New” New York.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
I took this as a natural opening to bring the conversation to an end. “Well, while I admit I find the whole idea of cryopreservation intriguing, I will almost certainly never be able to afford your services, so I better let you get to finding a real customer!” I moved to take a step forward but was immediately met with more enthusiasm.
“Don’t be so sure!”, he said with all the vigor of a bad day-time game show host. He pointed to the end of the raffle prize table, where a small silver card sat inconspicuously.
“By taking the time to hear me out today, you’ve been entered into a chance to win a pre-paid CryoEterna Platinum Package!”, said the booth worker. I had been too busy ogling over free beer holsters to notice the real prize on the table.
“All I need from you is your contact info!”, he said presenting a pen and clipboard. While I knew that providing my info would most definitely result in some additional spam in my inbox, I figured that was a small price to pay for a shot at life after death. I took the clipboard and scribbled down my info without hesitation. I immediately noticed that the clipboard was already full of random names and emails. Each page held easily 40-50 names, and I was writing on just one of a dozen already full pages. Apparently the CryoEterna booth had garnered a lot of attention from curious geeks like myself yesterday. Perhaps this raffle would be harder than I thought? He took the clipboard back while trying to read my name as casually as possible.
“Thank you for your time…. Mr. Scott! Please feel free to keep that pen! It’s got all of our contact info on it in case you ever do want to enlist our services!”
Yay! Free stuff! I happily pocketed the pen knowing full-well that I would never call the number so carefully engraved into the side of my new writing utensil, but I gave him a grin, shook his hand, and went on my merry way. As I again started my march toward the panel schedule, the voice of the sales rep rang out behind me. “The winners will be announced at the end of today’s panels! Enjoy the rest of the convention. And good luck!”, he said.
I turned my head back toward him, gave him a little courteous head nod, and continued walking. Had I just wasted five minutes of precious CON time? Probably. Was I going to win the “CryoEterna Platinum Package”? Probably not, but hey, I could always use another beer koozie.
I finally arrived at the schedule board, which concisely presented the 3-day convention’s wide array of panels and talks. I read through the titles of what I’d missed on the previous day. Thankfully, it looked like I hadn’t missed too much of the good stuff, however there was one talk in particular I was already salty about missing. “Exploring the Galaxy: the technological and economic prerequisites to get interstellar probes into space” must’ve been an absolutely incredible panel. I had been reading the work of the panel’s main speaker, Lawrence Vienn, for years now, as had a likely majority of folks attending this convention. He was not only one of the most prolific science-fiction authors of our generation, Vienn also held PhDs in both Electrical Engineering and Astrophysics. His background as a scientist gave him the uncanny ability to ride the line between hard science and science fiction in his many best-selling books, which was undoubtedly a major source of his success as an author. While I was disappointed that I’d missed the chance to attend the panel in person, I knew that someone had most likely recorded the talk and put it online. I made a mental note to track down a video of the panel when I got home later that night, and to pick up a sandwich from Capriotti’s on the way home to pair with this new-found evening entertainment.
After spending a few minutes on my phone placing an order for my favorite sandwich, I realized my “A-D-D was showing”, and I was again wasting valuable CON time! I caught the attention of the nearest Klingon and asked for directions to the closest Trek-themed anything. He seemingly lit up at the human contact, whipped out a near-perfect replica of a TNG tricorder, and proceeded to gleefully offer directions to its source.
The rest of the day was spent bouncing between different booths and panels, and I eventually found myself in the last panel of the day. It was a talk by “Dr. Märta Anders” on the recent advances in Artificial Intelligence. As a person with only a minor level of knowledge on coding and computer engineering, a lot of the more technical talk went right over my head, however there were still a lot of interesting points being made. AI research had come far since the time of IBM’s Watson, but as the speaker pointed out during her talk, it still had a long way to go. Dr. Anders specifically emphasized the often-overlooked value of neurological research in advancing modern AI systems.
“The human brain is nothing more than a biological computer”, said the speaker. “If we ever hope to create true AI, an AI which is indistinguishable from a living human, we must continue studies of the brain!” “While it’s true the human brain is limited in its capacity for growth and adaptation, a highly detailed scan of the brain’s neural pathways could serve as the template on which we can build a true AI!”
Using the brain to build a human-based AI? The concept was intriguing but sounded more like science-fiction than actual science. The logic of it made sense; use the human brain as a “source code” of sorts to build a sentient AI. Sounds great! Right? However, capturing a detailed scan of the brain’s individual neural pathways was a lot easier said than done. I mean perhaps the folks of the 22nd century would find a way to crack the problem, but I had little hope that us stuck here in the 21st century would ever see the solution come to light. Then again, perhaps I’d be revived by another corporate drone from CryoEterna in the 22nd century and eat my words! Yeah right!
Dr. Anders made her concluding remarks, and the moderator of the panel made his way to the podium.
“What an incredible talk by Dr. Anders!”, said the moderator with a sincere grin sprawling across his face. “Thank you for taking time away from your research to come share your expertise. Just promise me you won’t name your AI Hal, okay?” The crowd chuckled in unison at the moderator’s cheap joke.
“Now unfortunately we’ve gone a bit over on our time, so there will be no time for the Q&A portion of the panel.” Again in unison, the crowd let out a “Booooo!”, with the loudest boos coming from those who were already standing in line for questions.
“I know, I know.”, said the moderator trying to calm the crowd. Most of the crowd had seemingly booed in jest more than anything else, but there were definitely a few people who seemed genuinely upset by the situation. Apparently, this topic was of keen interest to more than a few audience members.
“Now, to conclude another successful day of The Vortex, I’d like to welcome our newest sponsor CryoEterna to the stage for a brief presentation on the future of cryonics, and the results of their incredibly generous raffle!”, said the moderator. There were murmurs among the crowd. Some folks stifled a laugh at the announcement, some voiced their hopes for winning the raffle to their friends, and others continued to vocalize their disappointment in the lack of a Q&A for the previous talk. I sat in silence, waiting patiently to receive my free swag. I wondered what type of beer I would christen my new “CryoEterna” branded koozie with when I got home?
A CryoEterna rep walked up to the podium and began to speak. This wasn’t the same rep that I’d spoken to at their booth earlier, but the two did share an uncanny resemblance to one another. He rattled off roughly the same spiel I’d received earlier.
“In closing, I just want to thank each and every one of you who made the time to stop by our booth this week. We know that cryopreservation seems like science-fiction, but with the hard work of our researchers, and the open minds of those attending The Vortex, we here at CryoEterna are turning science-fiction into science-fact!”
“Open minds, and open wallets.”, I thought to myself as the crowd clapped around me.
“Our raffle today includes many wonderful items, but only one lucky sci-fi fan will be taking home the big prize… A prepaid lifetime membership to the CryoEterna Platinum Package!”
“Firstly, the winners of the CryoEterna beer koozies have just been emailed. Please stop by the CryoEterna booth on your way out to claim your prize!” The room was suddenly aglow with the light of hundreds of smartphone screens, each attendant frantically checking their email, myself included. As I refreshed my inbox for the 5th time in as many seconds, I heard the disembodied sounds of celebration from around the room. By the sound of it about 20-30 people had won a koozie, and apparently, I was not one of them. “Shit.”, I said under my breath. Now where would I put my beers??
The speaker gave the room a few more moments to check their emails before continuing.
“Next up, we have the tablets!”, said the speaker while holding a shiny new iPad as the crowd “oooo’d” and “aaaaah’d” accordingly. Personally, I wasn’t a big fan of Apple products, but hey, free iPad! The speaker produced a small glass jar from beneath the podium, seemingly filled to the brim with fortune cookie sized scraps of paper. He reached a hand into the jar and began to pick out the names of the winners.
“The winners are…. Tyler Williams, Donald Gill, and finally… SAM—”, I sat on the edge of my seat, waiting in anticipation. “SAM-son Swenson!” Three people in the crowd shot straight up; presumably being Tyler, Donald, and Samson. He really had me going there for a second.
The speaker congratulated the winners and again directed them to visit the CryoEterna booth to redeem their prizes. No koozie, no iPad, and no realistic chance I was going to win the grand prize, right?. I remembered the bulky clipboard I’d signed at the booth this morning. It easily had 500 names already on it, probably more, and that was this morning.
“As a reminder, the winner of this final drawing will receive membership to the CryoEterna Platinum Package! This package includes full-body preservation upon death, and the establishment of a trust in the winner’s name to secure the continued cryopreservation of their remains for a guaranteed minimum of 100 years!”, he said as the crowd erupted with cheers. Apparently the potential of winning a free ticket to the future was enough to win over a crowd of sci-fi nerds. Who would’ve guessed?
I eyed the nearest exit and began to formulate my escape plan. Once the winner was announced there would undoubtedly be some additional cheers, immediately followed by a stampede-like movement of the crowd to the exits, and the bathrooms. I reached down to collect my bags of miscellaneous (& overpriced) memorabilia from which I was already beginning to feel buyer’s remorse, when the CryoEterna rep reached into the jar and pulled out a strip of paper.
“And the winner of our CryoEterna Platinum Membership is…”
“Mr. Samuel Scott!”
The crowd remained silent as the speaker swept his gaze across the room.
“Mr. Scott! If you’re here, could you please stand up for us?”, said the speaker.
The bags dropped from my hands as I began to gradually rise out of my seat. The crowd again let out a wild cacophony of cheers (and swears).
As the realization of what had just happened started to slowly creep into my brain, I looked down at the blue pen sitting neatly in my shirt’s breast pocket.
I guess I would be needing that contact info after all.