Chapter I: Front Matter

SIXTY-YEAR EXTENSION

By ALAN E. NOURSE

_They told only half the story to Daniel Carter
Griffin when he volunteered to die. They told him
of the glories of life re-born; youth re-captured;
love re-won; of Free Agenting around the cosmos.
Of many things, they spoke about ... but never
once did they mention the lurid second death._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

It occurred to Griffin as he sat waiting in the office that he had forgotten what day it was.

It was a silly thing, and it upset him all out of proportion to its importance. At first it had been no more than a disturbing flicker in the back of his mind, an uneasy half-thought, not even consciously formed. He had been waiting for Cranstead for a quarter of an hour, and he hadn't been thinking very coherently about much of anything. His right arm was still a bit sore, but mostly he was aware of a curious feeling of strength and exhilaration as he eyed the cool gray walls of the office. But something bothered him, nibbling away deep in his mind; he crossed and uncrossed his legs, feeling a trifle impatient. And then, with a shiver, he realized that he didn't even know what the date was!

He pulled out his wallet with a frown, and searched for the pocket calendar he carried. He glanced at it, and then put it back with a grunt. It didn't help him a bit. He didn't even know what month it was, or even year, for sure. He leaned back, trying to remember what day it was, and his mind was abruptly flooded with the implications of the staggering thing he had done--

That they had done--

He stood up and threw open the door into the reception room. A girl sat typing at the desk. She typed on for a moment, then paused and looked up.

"How soon will he be ready?" Griffin asked, trying hard to keep the panic out of his voice.

The girl smiled professionally. "I'm sorry, Mr. Griffin. He won't keep you waiting long. Can I get you something to read?"

He shook his head. "No--I'll just wait. I'll tell you what you can do, though. You can tell me what date it is." Suddenly he felt very foolish.

"Certainly. This is the seventeenth of July."

He nodded, feeling slightly numb as he returned to his seat. The seventeenth of July! It had been December when he had come here. Or had it been a year ago last December. Or ten years ago? He couldn't remember. His broad forehead wrinkled into a frown as he tried to think. They had told him that his memory would be somewhat incoherent over the period that he was there, but he hadn't realized how helpless he would feel to have eight months of his life suddenly reduced to a jumbled series of unconnected events. And how could he straighten them out? He shook his head, the chill deepening in his chest. Maybe they never would be straightened out--

He stared at himself in the mirror that hung on the wall, more in the spirit of appraisal than curiosity. That first shock of looking at himself was behind him now; not that he could ever forget it as long as he lived, but he was no longer jolted by the face that peered out at him from the mirror, the short dark hair without trace of gray, the broad forehead, the heavy face--not a bad face, really, a curious, young-old face that looked like that of a twenty-year-old until one examined it closely, and then utterly defied age-identification with an infuriating complacency. His face, beyond doubt, but not the face he had seen in the mirror eight months ago. More like the face that had looked out at him from the mirror some thirty years before.

* * * * *

The office door banged open, and a tall, gray-haired man walked in, dropping a pile of papers on the desk. "Hello, Griff! Sorry to keep you waiting. Never can tell when you'll get stalled in a place like this." John Cranstead dropped easily into his chair behind the desk and eyed Griffin quizzically. "Feeling excited? Or just scared out of your shirt?"

"A little of both," said Griffin, uneasily. "I don't know quite how I feel."

Cranstead grinned, and popped his glasses out of his pocket. "Ah, well. Don't worry about it. Martha says you wondered what day it was."

Griffin flushed. "I couldn't remember it."

"You'd have been remarkable if you could," Cranstead chuckled. "It went pretty well with you. Eight months is almost dead minimum for a complete job. But then they told me you cooperated very well."

Griffin shrugged. "Naturally."

"Well, it's over now. As of--" he peered at his wrist watch for an instant, then jotted the time down on the top sheet of paper--"3:15 P.M., 17 July, 2173, I can no longer call you Dan Griffin. You're a Free Agent now. Or you will be." He picked up the paper, glanced at it, and handed it across the desk to Griffin. "Don't let it throw you," he said.

Griffin glanced down at the paper, with a terrifying feeling of unreality, as if this were all part of a very bad dream. They had told him, of course. They had explained it all very carefully. But then, they had told him so many things. At the top of the paper he saw the Hoffman Medical Center seal, and just below it, in heavy Gothic letters, he read:

CERTIFICATE OF DEATH

His eyes ran down the page to his own name. Daniel Carter Griffin, male, aged 53. Cause of death: Subtotal Prosthesis, Voluntary. And below that, somewhere near the bottom, a line marked "signature."

Griffin looked up at Cranstead's smiling face. "I'm supposed to sign this?"

"That's right. There are a few other forms to sign--legal claims papers for the Metropolitan Death Insurance Company, a few other customary papers--" He broke off with a smile. "Don't look so horrified. It's really not as paradoxical as it seems. After all, Dan Griffin _is_ quite dead. You'll certainly agree to that."

Griffin nodded, signing the papers rapidly. "When do I get my name back?"

"At the end of your Free Agent period, if you want it back. Or any other name you choose. That's up to you." Cranstead smiled. "And of course, as a Free Agent you can use any name you like."

"I can't see what's wrong with the old one. I was quite happy with it."

Cranstead shrugged. "You may find yourself quite a different man now."

"Well, I don't feel any different." Griffin's voice had a sharp defensive edge, and his eyes were suddenly bright with anger. "I feel fine; just the same as I always felt. Why all this ridiculous rigmarole?"

Cranstead sighed. "Take it easy, Griff. How do you know how you feel? You haven't been outside the hospital walls since the prosthesis started. You haven't met anyone or reacted to anything other than carefully controlled hospital conditions. Don't be impatient. You don't know yet what you'll want because you're literally a new man. You've turned in your old worn out body for a new one. Give it a try before you get excited."

Griffin scowled. "But why this insinuation that things will be different? I remember my old life perfectly well. I liked it. I want to go back. Why make it so difficult?"

Cranstead tossed him a cigarette. "Look at it this way," he said. "If you hadn't come here to the Center for prosthesis, in about five years, give or take a little, that death certificate would have been valid in a very, very final sense. You'd have been gone and there'd have been no bringing you back. But you did come here to the Center, under your own steam, and submitted to a very thorough repair job; a repair job that will last you another sixty to eighty years, starting now--"

"All right, I know that," snapped Griffin. "I still don't see--"

Cranstead held up his hand. "Wait a minute--you don't quite realize that you may indeed be very dead to the world you knew before. The doctors can't predict the personality changes you may have undergone. Except for certain very broad limits, they can't predict how you'll act. So we have to protect you, as well as the world you left when you came here. The prosthesis is almost a total job--replaced organs, replaced vascular system, replaced glandular system, even some repaired nervous tissue. Some men come out almost exactly as they were before. But some come out vastly different--"

Griffin blinked and stared at the death certificate. "And this," he said slowly, "protects me."

"It makes the old Dan Griffin with the leaky heart and the bad kidneys legally dead. Just as the death insurance protects your wife and family. You can't be forced back into the old mold if you don't fit, so you're cut loose as completely as possible. You have a year to adjust; a year as a Free Agent, to go anywhere you wish and do anything you like. You no longer exist in the eyes of the law. If you go back to your old life, that's fine. And if you don't go back, and find yourself a new life, that's fine too. It's up to you."

Dan Griffin stood up, a coldness growing in his mind like nothing he had ever experienced; a sense of utter aloneness and total helplessness. "It's hard to get used to," he said softly. "I don't know what to think." He walked to the window and stared out at the city that spread out for miles, and saw the shadows of the tall Upper Level apartments falling across the busy curves of the throughways. "I just don't know--"

"We'll help you in any way we can," said Cranstead. "But nobody but yourself can influence your ultimate decision. You're a Free Agent. The decision must be yours."

"It's frightening," said Griffin.

John Cranstead gave him a long look. "It may be the most frightening thing in the world," he said.