Reanimation Man

Even if, like most lottery players, McIntyre never actually gets there. Because bottom line, the cryonically achieved, nanotechnological future of physical immortality shapes up as the same kind of heaven-or-hell, devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea crapshoot that has always characterized humanity's speculation about an afterlife. Maybe McIntyre's body won't be iced on time. The cryonics organization that's storing him could go bankrupt. A futuristic extremist group could destroy the facility. Or the people of the 24th century may have neither the technology, the money nor the willingness to reanimate him. And there's a chance there will be no people in the 24th century—disease or warfare or doomsday extremists may have wiped them out.

In other words, when it's McIntyre's time to die, he's still going to face a leap into the unknown.

"When I'm on my deathbed, I'll be thinking that it's probably better than a 50 percent chance I'm coming back, but I'll have to admit probably not more than a 90 percent chance," he says. "And I'll just be wondering: Do I have 80 billion more years to do the things I want to do—or is this truly it?"

McIntyre pauses, considers, allows the ramifications of that waiting-for-all-of-us question to sort themselves out. And when he finally speaks, it's softly and with a contented smile: "Yeah, there are still lots of variables. Although, when you feel like you've given yourself your best chance and done all you could, you know, you wouldn't have too much remorse or second thoughts about it."