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A fantastic tale by Kilgore Trout

The year is 2450 AD...

From its modest start back in 1989, when two Baby Boomer American entrepreneurs formed the Reanimation Foundation of Liechtenstein --the world's first cryonics probate trust-- the cryo-trust industry slowly evolved and grew. The plan was simple: secure one's fortunes away from prying hands with the expectation of being reanimated in the distant future, when medical science had evolved to cure old age and terminal disease. And so quietly began the epic saga of the world's first Cryo-Boomers.

As more and more millionaires, then billionaires sought to secure their wealth beyond the grave --and beyond the grasp of the living-- the trickle of wealth began to accumulate. It grew slowly at first, but the idea gradually caught on, became socially acceptable and then achieved critical mass. The money trickle became a flood. Within less than three generations, virtually anyone with a substantial legacy stopped bequeathing it to living heirs or charity, and instead chose to bequeath it to themselves. In the centuries to follow, The Cryo-Boomer Trust Foundations (CBTFs) grew to become the wealthiest and most powerful institutions the world had ever seen. By the start of the twenty-third century, the CBTFs had amassed 98% of the world's financial and natural resources, including its real estate.

At first, humanity and governments generally yielded to the unprecedented power of the CBTFs, based upon the time-honored legal tradition of honoring the Will of the Deceased. Eventually, the living came to exist solely to service the dead and tend to its assets, in the exclusive employment of the CBTFs. Even more transformational to society was the burgeoning greed and megalomania of the Trustees, who came to regard the tremendous wealth of the CBTFs as their own. They began to wield their god-like power with cruelty and impunity and became increasingly paranoid and distrustful of the vast populations of disinherited living poor. As the world's wealth and assets became more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the masses of jealous bitter paupers (JBPs) grew fearful. This fear finally reached a climax, and the world's JBPs petitioned their governments to dissolve the CBTFs and seize their assets --their only remaining legal recourse.

Naturally, the CBTFs violently opposed such measures and moved quickly to gain control of the world's robotic armies. Almost overnight, they succeeded in overthrowing the world's governments and seized absolute power for themselves. The greatest battle in human history was over practically before it began. The result: The world's great mass of asset-less humanity became enslaved to a handful of omnipotent Trustee Overlords.

Not knowing what to do with 20 billion jealous bitter paupers, the Trustee Overlords faced a conundrum. Exterminating the defeated masses would collapse the economy, which by this time was entirely dependent upon cheap consumer credit and mass consumption of robot-produced consumer goods. Allowing them to live presented a real risk that the rebellion could reignite. Among 20 billion slaves, there were bound to be a few exceptionally clever ones, who might --given enough time-- find a way to crack the global robo-army's encryption and turn the tables on their Overlords. Both options were clearly unacceptable.

The solution came in the unlikeliest of forms: twentieth-century airship technology. The Trustee Overlords would command their robo-factories to mass produce millions of giant dirigibles, which could collectively house --and imprison-- the world's mass of debt-slaves. They would be continuously re-supplied with food, water, fuel and consumables by air-droids, which would also carry away the waste in a continuous re-supply feedback loop. The Trustees would retain sole dominion over the earth's real estate and natural resources. They would exercise the ultimate expression of land ownership rights: the permanent banishment of humanity from the earth itself.

The plan was elegant in its simplicity and seemed fool-proof. In the beginning it worked almost flawlessly.

But, then something unexpected happened...

The robo-doctors had finally developed cures for old age, cancer and other terminal diseases. Following their centuries-old programming, they began to revive the frozen Cryo-Boomers from their long slumber.

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