"I promise all of you a better life on a new world!"
Abner's family rejoiced. To leave the overcrowded, dying earth for one of the new proposed colonies around a distant star. It seemed a dream too good to be true. Of, course, the journey would take centuries, but they would not age a day as they slumbered in cryogenic bliss and dreamed through the voyage.
Abner kissed his wife Ashley, so beautiful she still was! If one did not know better, an observer would never guess that she was forty-four, ten years younger than Abner. She had an enchanting trim figure and an angelic face under a cascade of red, almost scarlet curls. Abner knew he was blessed. He hugged his daughters, twenty-year-old Bernice and eighteen-year-old Felicia and considered how closely they resembled their mother. Both were radiant, scarlet-tressed beauties. The men of earth were unworthy of either of them. What could any man offer them in the face of a rapidly destabilizing environment, food shortages, and water wars? In another century, more likely, fifty years or less would not the world revert to barbarism. No, that was no future for his children and grandchildren!
**
"Yes Mr. Davis, you must remove everything, including your jewelry. Your valuables will be placed in ship's storage, and you can reclaim them when we reach your destination in five hundred years."
"My wife and daughters?"
"Already slumbering in the women's wing. Now you will feel a tiny pinprick..."
**
"Up at at 'em ice back!"
The words took a while to penetrate Abner's consciousness. It hardly seemed as though he had closed his eyes. Someone was violently shaking him.
"We haven't all day, old man!"
The words formed in Abner's mouth, "Are we there?"
Raucous laughter was the only response.
**
"Things have changed since you all started or your journey," stated the officious looking gentleman in strange garb as his image was projected to all parts of the sleeper ship. "Shortly after you left earth, hyper drive was discovered. An act that put much of the Milky Way Galaxy within easy reach. Earthmen fled the dying earth hinder and yon through all parts of the cosmos. Earth, dried up and dying, was left behind, a fond memory for some, but a bad memory to most. In the subsequent settlement of new planets and the development of old ones, the fleet of sleeper ships was forgotten. Once these ships were remembered, the pressing question became, "what to do about you?"
Abner's body was still stiff from his long slumber, but his mind was making sense of things.
You are all centuries out of time with the rest of the universe. You have no skillsets of any use to us, and we certainly don't need your intellects. In short, you ice backs are an unwanted burden. But new worlds have new rules. Your ship and all its contents were purchased by Shing-Ya salvaging. We will find a place for you. We will assign you jobs that are within your limited capabilities, get you settled and put you to useful purposes. Fortunately, there are some jobs, that technology has not nor ever will supersede, such as courtesans and trash haulers. In a short while we will be landing on Altair IV and your processing will begin. Welcome to the Shing-Ya family folks!"
**
"What does it all mean, dad?" asked Bernice as they stood within the fenced-off landing zone. Every member of the Davis family gawked at the skyline of New Brooklyn. It was a shimmering city of crystal and steel, with green spaces, majestic buildings, and neat rows of single-family homes. Neither earth nor old Brooklyn had looked anything like this for a very long time. To say it was an attractive city was only to state the obvious. This was the Ur city, the abode of man philosophers and geographers had been shooting for since man's exile from Eden.
"Ice backs! Ice backs, go home!" was a chant arising from a mixed group of men and women. Some carried protest signs bearing the same phrase and others that were equally uncomplimentary Eden still had snakes contemplated Abner, but are they the snakes or are we the snakes? The fact that the notion put him at sea, confounded Abner who was used to putting all aspects of life in little checked boxes.
"We don't need you, dumb shits here! Ice backs! What are they good for? Nothing!" The crowd seemed united and paradoxically in the face of such spewed vitriol, amiable!
The Davis family felt phenomenally self-conscious in their centuries-old clothing as they spied the unusual, brief, and flashy attire of the passing citizenry and the closer guards.
"I don't know, Bernice, but just look at that beautiful city. There MUST be a place for us there."
"I wish I shared your enthusiasm, Honey," stated Ashley, "They are clearly hostile, and not a welcoming committee."
"We've been out of the loop for over three centuries," opined Felicia, "We know nothing of current events or technology. We're time travelers."
"That talk of courtesans. They were kidding, right?" put in Bernice.
"I certainly hope so," said Ashley
"We don't know anything yet," put in Abner, "But remember the early immigrants to New York? They came from all sorts of political and cultural backwaters but nearly all of them succeeded in finding a place at the table."
"This isn't New York, darling," stated Ashley flatly. "How do we know that humanity itself has progressed with its technology? A great deal can happen in three, almost five centuries."
"We just have to have faith," stated Abner with as much conviction as he could muster.
**
Abner found himself before a young female doctor.
"Strip ice back and into the analyzer."
"My name is Abner Bozeman Davis."
"Do I look like I give a shit? As if my regular duties aren't enough, the company steals even more of my time for the likes of you. Now get into the analyzer!"
The device closed about Abner, leaving him in total darkness. There were bright lights, various noises, what felt like needle pricks and probing of his every orifice. After a few moments the device opened like a clamshell and a dazed Abner walked out.
"Your old but healthy enough," shouted the doctor as he tossed a robe at Abner. "Move or to the next room, follow the line painted or the floor."
"My clothes?"
"Confiscated! Now get moving!"
In the next room Abner was instructed to sit at a desk opposite a severe-looking man. As he sat, some sort of transparent screen appeared between them, and the man began peppering Abner with all sorts of questions. Complicated math problems appeared on the transparent screen as well as images of faces and objects, most of which were unfamiliar to Abner. At last, the screen vanished, and the severe looking man stated, "If a sleeper ship ever contained anyone above a middling intellect, I've yet to see it. Proceed to the next room."
The next room turned out to be a waiting room. Men filed in behind him and women filed in the opposing door. After a long interval, Ashley, Felicia, and Bernice strode in, clad in just very short robes, shorter even than Abner's. It occurred to him that he had not seen so much of his daughters since they were small girls. There was no question that they were women now.
After a long interval, while the family stood in a daze, they heard, "Davis family, exit through the blue door.
Through this door, the family encountered a youngish Asian man behind an opulent desk.
"Mr. and Mrs. Davis, young women, have a seat." He pushed a button on the desk and four chairs materialized out of the floor. The women and Abner had to sit very carefully to prevent exposure.
"I am Kingston Woo, I'll be your resettlement director."
Abner sighed with relief. Things would happen now of that, he was sure.
Shing-Ya salvaging is an arm of the Greater Shing-Ya corporation. Altair IV is a wholly owned subsidiary of Greater Shing-Ya. In practice as well as legally, you are now owned by Greater Shing-Ya."
"Now see here!" began Abner.
"You are here as a courtesy, Mr. Davis. I advise you to listen carefully.
Abner quieted down.
"You are already familiar with the unfortunate term, "Ice back?" I cannot say that the company condones it, but the public will not stop using it. The prerogative has been applied to people like yourselves, those who have spent centuries in the ice and silence of the army of sleeper ships that fled earth at its moment of crisis. If not for the serendipitous discovery of hyper-drive, you would have left all of earth to die. As it was, the resources needed to produce new ships was almost non-existent because so much material was used to build the ships that carried people such as yourselves. There was much disorder until resources could be mustered to provide the first wave of colonization and return to earth the materials necessary for the rest of the population to flee. Companies like Shing-Ya Consolidated were at the forefront of this movement. While all of you were blissfully sleeping, the galaxy evolved around you. There are now millions of settled worlds.
A great resentment has settled in against all of you sleepers. You are centuries out of your time, generations behind the rest of us. It is doubtful that any of you could find work in our traditional industries. Robots make and service most things, we need programmers, physicists, medical professionals, astrogators, hyper-drive probability engine coders and a host of other fields you could not hope to comprehend. In short, sleepers provide nothing to our society and culture yet use up resources, just as it was when you began your journey. Even the most gifted intellectually of all you sleeping passengers would find no place at our table. Your writers? Your philosophers? Your artists? None of them can hold a candle to our least gifted hologram writer."
"Where does that leave us?" asked Abner.
"At the bottom. Greater Shing-Ya however thinks that you can be put to productive work. We have not written you off as so many other corporations have.
"What sort of work?" asked Ashley warily.
"Work that requires little intellect but is always desired."
"Such as?" asked Abner impatiently.
"After assessing all of your talents and physical attributes we are prepared to house you at the Morning Star Casino near the spaceport. For you Mr. Davis, we have selected the job of robot liaison. For you ladies, waitressing and intimate hosting duties."
"Intimate hosting duties?" repeated Ashley
The casino is a gathering place for space pilots, tourists, gamblers, folks with lots of money to spend on rest, recreation, and reinvigoration."
"I don't like the sound as to the direction of this conversation," injected Bernice.
"Young lady, let me put it this way. This is your only option. If you reject this offer, you will simply be fed into a converter so that your organs can be harvested and cloned. Or many settled worlds, ice backs are not even given the dignity of being roused and are simply harvested while still asleep. Some argue that genetic material is the only asset ice backs possess.
