Emergency

by Neil Strauss

  At the security conveyer belt on the way to New York, I did the airport shuffle—removing my shoes, belt, watch, sweater, and computer—and placed them in trays. That was when I noticed the posted sign: PLEASE BE AWARE THAT ANY INAPPROPRIATE JOKES TO SECURITY MAY RESULT IN YOUR ARREST.

  This seemed like more than just a violation of the First Amendment. It was an assault on my sense of humor. Warning people that all jokes would be taken literally would have been just as effective as actually making them criminal.

  On a previous flight, I recalled seeing a middle-aged Hispanic man in handcuffs led away roughly by three officers. When I asked a stewardess what had happened, she explained, “He made an inappropriate comment to TSA officials. They don’t have much tolerance for things like that anymore.”

  I felt my identity as an American—based on the lack of this type of state control over individuals—slipping out of my grasp.

  Because of the War Cards and the draft, the government became like John Wayne Gacy in my mind. It was yet another force that could rip my life from me without giving me any say in the matter—and with no regard for who I was or whether I was a good or bad person.

  The only thing that reassured me as I sat disillusioned on the five-hour flight was the knowledge that this wasn’t the first time in history when Americans had lost freedoms in times of conflict, with dubious results.

  In 1798, on the verge of war with France, John Adams passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, making it illegal to publish criticism of the government and giving authorities nearly free rein to deport foreign residents. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus and imprisoned over 13,000 suspected traitors without a trial. In response to a series of anarchist bombings during and after World War I, Woodrow Wilson ordered the arrest of 10,000 alleged radicals, deporting any who weren’t citizens. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt, 120,000 Japanese–Americans were sent to internment camps during World War II. And during the Eisenhower administration, more than 10,000 alleged Communists were blacklisted, imprisoned, or fired from their jobs.

  If I were ever drafted or hunted by the government, I told myself, I would run. I used to wonder whether Vietnam draft dodgers were happy in Canada or if they missed home. When villains in movies raced for the Mexican border, I always hoped they’d make it to freedom. And I was amazed that Roman Polanski was able to avoid the legal repercussions of having sex with a minor just by escaping to France.

  So perhaps the natural inclination to want both freedom and security from our government is too much to ask. Especially considering that, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll, these presidents (with the exception of Wilson) are among the ten most popular in U.S. history.

  Foreign countries began to represent safety to me. If things ever got bad in America, I knew there was always somewhere else to go where I could have new experiences and meet new people. War was for people who cared about power. Peace was for those who cared about life.

  But what happens when your government gives you neither freedom nor security?

  I would discover the answer to that question, as would every other American, when I landed.

  Whatever doubt remained about getting a backup citizenship was extinguished by the news I heard during the ride to my hotel. Hurricane Katrina had just laid waste to New Orleans. Instead of a press tour, I spent most of the next week in my room, listening to reports of bodies floating in the water, elderly people drowned in their homes, civilians shot in the streets, police looting stores, and humanitarian shelters turned into humanitarian crises.

  When it was all over, 1,836 people had died.

  More than the iris scanning, more than Bush’s reelection, more than the Iraq War, more than the destruction of the World Trade Center, this was what shattered every last illusion about my country that remained.

  Unlike 9/11, the government had advance notice that a disaster was threatening to hit one of its cities. And still, the greatest country on earth not only failed to take care of its own people but took five days just to respond appropriately. According to the House of Representatives committee that investigated the response, the disaster was too large for the city, the state, the federal government, and the Red Cross to handle. In the end, the report continued, the Federal Emergency Management Agency “did not have a logistics capacity sophisticated enough to fully support the massive number of Gulf coast victims.”

  And with a population of half a million, New Orleans is a relatively small city. So what would happen if an equivalent disaster struck a city of 3.8 million, like Los Angeles, or 8.2 million, like New York?

  Something changed in me, as it did for many people, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It felt like the day I first beat my father at arm wrestling. In that moment, I realized that he could no longer protect me. I had to take care of myself.

  An anarchist is someone who believes that people are responsible enough to maintain order in the absence of government. That week, I realized I was something very different: a Fliesian. I began to subscribe to the view of human nature depicted in the William Golding novel Lord of the Flies. After reading reports of the chaos, violence, and suffering in New Orleans, it became clear that when the system is smashed, some of us start smashing each other.

  Most survivalists are also Fliesians. That’s why they stockpile guns. They’re planning to use them not to shoot enemy soldiers, but to shoot the neighbors trying to steal their supplies.

  With almost every one of my book interviews canceled, I sat in the hotel room all week, fixated on the news. In other stories, more pictures of American troops torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib were surfacing; the value of the American dollar continued to plummet; Osama bin Laden still hadn’t been caught; angry Palestinians were setting the West Bank town of Taybeh ablaze; civilians in western Sudan were being killed and raped daily in a genocide the world wasn’t doing anything to stop; and President Bush was threatening Iran the same way he’d once threatened Iraq.

  It felt like a powder keg had been lit.

  It might blow tomorrow, perhaps a year from now, maybe in ten years. No one knows when exactly. But it will definitely blow.

  On my last night in town, my friends threw a small party for me at Tao, a bar near my hotel, to celebrate the release of the book.

  Eventually the cast dwindled to just five of us, sitting around a small table. Among them were two of my closest friends: Zan, a gregarious drinker and ladies’ man who’d flown in from Vancouver, and Craig, a heavyset Internet entrepreneur who devoured science magazines with the same excitement other men read Playboy.

  “Have you seen the new documentary about the Enron collapse?” Craig asked, unbuttoning the jacket of his baggy white suit. A tireless orator, Craig enjoyed turning me on to movies, music, and ideas in the hope that I would write about them. “It more or less proves that the California energy crisis was completely faked to drive Enron stock prices up. They play actual phone recordings of traders calling a California power plant and ordering it to shut down. Those traders didn’t care about making millions of people suffer in order to make a little more money. And that’s the problem with America. The people don’t matter anymore.”

  Like me, Craig was a runner. Except he had a different way of running. Where I wanted to avoid dying of unnatural causes, he wanted to avoid dying of natural causes.

  In a few months, he was going to visit the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a cryonics lab, where he planned to sign up to be frozen and preserved in the hope that a future generation would be able to thaw him. I had promised to accompany him—as a friend and, he hoped, as a potential freezermate.

  “If there were another terrorist attack in America—even deadlier than the World Trade Center—would you be surprised?” I asked Craig and my remaining friends.

  Every one of them answered no.

  “I’d be surprised if there wasn’t another attack,” added Craig.

  “And if it happened, do you think the government would
be able to evacuate you and restore order?” I pressed.

  “Definitely not,” Craig said.

  “So if the government couldn’t save one small city from a disaster it knew was coming, then how is it going to save all of us when the shit really hits the fan?”

  A babble of alcohol-loosened voices clamored with predictions about the next threat, but no one disagreed. Craig listened silently, preparing his next argument.

  “Let me ask you all a question then,” he interrupted after a few minutes. “Everyone pretty much agrees that terrorists hate America and Americans, and want to do everything they can to undermine or even destroy us, right?”

  “That’s definitely one of their priorities,” I agreed.

  “Most people think that they want to do this by terrorizing us—by blowing things up and making us scared to leave the house.”

  “That’s why they’re called terrorists.”

  “But have you ever stopped to think maybe that’s not their plan? Osama bin Laden is not as stupid and uneducated as most Americans believe. Maybe his plan is to destroy our economy. Because that’s the only way to truly put an end to America as we know it.” He put down his beer and paused to let his words sink in. He was in his element now. “And our government played into his plan perfectly, starting wars that cost hundreds of billions of dollars and have no end in sight.”

  “You should just come to Canada,” interrupted Zan. “You can stay at my house. Hotel Zan.”

  Craig ignored him and continued. “That’s why he bombed the trains in Spain. He wanted to scare our allies into withdrawing from Iraq, so we’d have to shoulder the financial burden of the war alone.”

  “Come to Canada,” Zan repeated. “Nobody hates us. Nobody thinks we’re stupid, except maybe Americans. Plus we have free health care, stronger beer, and you can get the good codeine Tylenol without a prescription.”

  “And he’s winning,” Craig went on, glaring at Zan as if daring him to interrupt again. “Our economy is dying. Look.” He held out a pudgy hand and hit his pointer finger. “We have a seven-hundred-billion-dollar trade deficit.” Then he hit his middle finger. “A seven-trillion-dollar debt.” Now his ring finger. “A recession.” Finally, his pinky. “And inflation. Gas prices went up forty-one cents the other day. People are getting angry.”

  “I’m out of here,” I blurted. I’d hit my breaking point. It was time to make good on the promise I’d made in Mrs. Kaufman’s class, the promise I’d made while reading War Cards, the promise I’d made after receiving my draft postcard, the promise I’d made when Bush was reelected. It was time to find a safe haven overseas. “I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

  “Stay with me,” Zan offered.

  It was the most depressing book release party I’d ever been to.

  If any kind of cataclysm should happen in America today, considering that 88 percent of the population doesn’t even have a U.S. passport, most people would be trapped here. But I wouldn’t have to panic when other countries closed their borders to fleeing Americans, nor would I end up stranded in a refugee camp at the border like so many others who’d been sucker-punched by history. With a second citizenship, I’d already be preapproved to live in another country.

  And if I ever found myself in a situation where terrorists were kidnapping or executing American hostages, I could use my second passport to prove I wasn’t a U.S. citizen and escape with my life. Even if nothing bad ever happened, I’d be able to more easily do things forbidden to ordinary Americans, like traveling to Cuba.

  As soon as I returned to my hotel room, I opened my laptop and searched for lawyers and companies specializing in immigration law, diplomatic passports, and second citizenships. Within a few hours, I’d sent fifteen e-mails and made ten international phone calls, setting off a chain of events that would change my life.

  PART THREE

  I must now go a long way…

  I must face a fight that I have not faced before.

  And I must go on a road that I do not know.

  —Gilgamesh, Tablet III, 2100 B.C.

  On the afternoon of January 12, 1967, James Bedford stopped breathing. As for whether he’s dead and gone or not, that’s a matter of debate. Because, thirty-nine years later, I was staring at the metal canister in which he was awaiting resurrection.

  Among those searching for immortality, Bedford is somewhat of a hero: the first frozen man. A psychologist and author, Bedford tried to cheat death by having himself frozen through an experimental procedure known as cryonic suspension. Some time in the future, after a cure for his kidney cancer was found, he hoped to be thawed and emerge, the oldest man alive. Until then, he will remain at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, floating in liquid nitrogen.

  I was here with Craig, who’d brought me to an open house at the facility to try to convince me to join him in cold purgatory. He didn’t want to wake up in the future alone. And though I’d come reluctantly, there was a man here who would give me the key I needed to escape America. A man I didn’t particularly care for. A man wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with an image of the World Trade Center in flames.

  A slender woman in her midtwenties with long, dyed red hair and large, ratlike front teeth wiped some sort of yellow mucus onto her lab coat as she brought Craig and me to the operating room.

  “If the patient has opted for neurosuspension,” she explained, “this is where we remove the head.”

  “Instead of getting a second passport, just get frozen with me,” Craig pressed as the woman showed us a travel case containing a pump the Alcor transport team uses to replace a patient’s blood with organ preservation solution. “We’ll come back when science has solved the problem of death and people have outgrown old-fashioned ideas like nationality and religion.”

  Craig clearly was not a Fliesian. Fliesians don’t believe in better times. They believe that all times are the same—only the names and faces change.

  “There are too many unknowns,” I told him. “What if the company goes bankrupt and the bank sells everyone at an auction?” Now the rat-faced woman was demonstrating the process of vitrification, in which the body’s vital organs are frozen not into ice, which forms crystals that damage the cells, but into a glass-like substance. “What if your brain is stuck the whole time in some horrible nightmare? Or, even worse, if it’s actually awake inside one of those canisters?”

  Craig had a well-reasoned answer for everything. Yet as much as I’d like to live forever, I don’t like the idea of dying during the in-between period. If the Mujahideen forces ever invaded, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation is probably one of the first western abominations they’d burn to the ground.

  When the lab tour ended, Craig and I were ushered into a parking lot outside the building, where the Alcor staff had set up a makeshift picnic for prospective customers. Übernerds, aged hippies, and half-mad scientists sat at folding tables, eating cheeseburgers. Most were wearing silver bracelets that instructed anyone who found them dead to “rush Heparin and do CPR while cooling with ice to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. No autopsy or embalming.” They seemed like poor ambassadors to the future.

  At a table in the center of the parking lot, a man with a natty beard trailing halfway down his chest was holding court. He talked rapidly, as if by squeezing twice as many words into each second, he’d double his lifespan.

  His name was Aubrey de Grey, and he was a hero to these people. In much the same way scientists have found cures for anthrax and syphilis, he had been working to find a cure for a condition that kills some 100,000 people a day: aging. Just the month before, he’d received a $3 million–plus donation from Peter Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal.

  “It’s about eliminating the relationship between how old you are and how likely you are to die,” he was telling a man and a woman who looked like they could use his help. The woman had long brown hair with strands of gray and was wearing a loose-fitting T-shirt advocating hemp use. The man had shaggy brown-gray ha
ir, a beard that rivaled de Grey’s, and a shirt with the words INSIDE JOB printed beneath a photo of the World Trade Center in flames.

  “Within our lifetime,” de Grey continued, “I’m fairly certain it will be possible to live thirty extra years.”

  Of course, that’s if you die of not-too-unnatural causes. If you perish in a fire or a plane crash or a bombing, no amount of life-extension therapy and cryonic preservation will save you.

  “You’re wasting your time with these people,” the man in the Twin Towers shirt said, turning to face Craig and I. He scratched the side of his long, porous face with the automatic movements of a dog irritated by fleas. “They’re more worried about what they’re going to do after they die than what they’re doing with this life.”

  I looked at his wrist. There was no bracelet. His wife, also braceletless, was taking twist-ties off three baggies in front of her. One contained baby carrots; the second a thick brown bar that seemed barely digestible; and the third a stick of some sort of butter substitute. In her lap was a canvas carrier containing a small, nervous dog.

  “There are more important things to worry about,” the man continued, scratching again. “I’m wearing this shirt to send a message: 9/11 was absolutely controlled demolition.” His wife nodded in agreement as she pulled a baby carrot out of a baggie and began spreading congealed buttery substance on it. De Grey wisely slipped away, leaving us alone at the table with the couple. “One hundred percent. Let me explain why. The press said the second tower pancaked down in eight point five seconds. That would be impossible.”

  I watched his wife continue coating her carrot obsessively. “Bush’s younger brother and his cousin had the contract for the World Trade Center… World Trade Center Seven was not hit by a plane… Four hours later it collapses on its own.” Craig escaped to buy cryonics life insurance. (To pay the cost of his preservation and storage, all he had to do was sign his life policy over to Alcor.) I was alone now. “Osama bin Laden was employed by the CIA.”