LUDIC LOG

It was September 24, 2002, when I closed my eyes for what I thought would be the last time. The cancer, the ravenous malignant baby that was birthed in my stomach through no act of love, had done its awful work; it had eaten until there was nothing left to eat and I defeated it the only way I could: by death. I almost smiled as I saw last light, knowing that the horrid thing would starve. I will miss you, beautiful world, I thought, and then my heavy lids did their final lift and shut forever.

Until June 9, 3406.

It was the same old light that greeted me in fluttering bursts as my vision was called upon to work after 1400 years of rest, but not the same old beautiful world. Death (which I had thought to be the end, but which turned out to be an interval no more meaningful than an eyeblink) had not killed my senses: I could tell immediately that I was in a hospital. It was not the machines that tipped me to the when of the matter, for they were as incomprehensible to me as the ones that lurked over me in my long-past final days; nor had the smell, the sound, the light and feel of a place for the sick. Mostly, it was the outfits. I was sure I had seen brown jumpsuits before, on the deliverymen who shuttled manuscripts back and forth between my publishers and myself, but I recalled them having short pants like a young boy's, and they didn't shine like these. These were no angels who attended my dying bed: these were men and women of mortal life, with skin the color of coffeed cream and a demeanor like that of a child on Christmas morning.

"He's waking up," said the oldest (and he could not have been more than twenty-five). "Fetch Dr. Zugash." On his word one of the young women, eyes wide like a new sun, scampered from the room, her odd shoes squeaking against the floor. The older man spoke again. "Arthur Kenyon?"

I was startled enough to not answer immediately: surely they knew who I was? "Er...yes," I finally gasped, my voice teetering on atrophied legs. "I'm Arthur Kenyon. Where," I hesistated, and finally decided it was as good a place to start as any, "where am I?"

"You are in Boston," he replied, and before I had a chance to feel the comfortable warm sense of home, he pushed me out of my safe space by adding, "and it is early summer of the year 3406." Once I regained some sense of reality (a state which was in no way speedily attained) he explained that over the last several months, the medical technology of the United States (I was at once relieved and unnerved that my nation of birth still survived, in what I would learn was much its former state) had reached a sophistication at which the eternally hoped-for possibilty of life after death was truly a reality. The process, however, was a bogglingly complex, difficult and expensive one, and only a select few -- thought to possess extremely rare and valuable insights into the time in which they lived -- were chosen for the process. It is impossible, even now, to attempt a catalogue of the emotions I felt: honor, terror, shame, joy, exuberance, wonder, sadness, nostalgia, regret and the thrill of new discovery were only a few of the crush of combatants in my heart and mind. The young man (an intern, I learned, named Shifkin) seemed anxious to speak to me before his superior arrived.

"Please tell me, Mr. Kenyon," he said, his eyes skipping nervously towards the door, "what was Michael Richards really like?"

I was at a loss. "Who?" There was a tangible chill in the air, a suspended moment that seemed like a physical blow to the earnest young men and women in the room. "I'm afraid I don't know any Michael Richards."

It seemed like hours before anyone spoke. I had lain in the arms of death for over 1404 years but that passed as nothing before this terrible silence. Finally, one of the other interns nearly screamed at me, in a voice as much anger as panic: "KRAMER! It's KRAMER, for fuck's sake! Michael Richards is...don't tell me you don't know any Michael Richards!"

"All right, Ronwell, calm down, Jesus," said Shifkin. "There's no need to go crazy here. I'm sure it's just some sort of short-term memory loss, like happened with Kitty Kelly. Sir, do you remember Newman? The soup Nazi? The Drake? Do you remember 'master of your domain'?"

I hadn't a clue what they were talking about, and told them so. They instantly erupted into a frenzy; one of the young women left the room. Several of the aides simply collapsed into chairs and buried their heads in their hands. "I thought," hissed Schifkin, "that you said you were Arthur Kenyon."

"I am," I said, almost pleading. I was terrified, and I had no idea why.

"Then why don't you know anything about 'Seinfeld'?" he spat. "You are the author of Not That There's Anything Wrong With That: Four Element Seinfeld'! It's the single most comprehensive guide to the whole mythos in existence!"

I gathered my wits. "'Seinfeld', the television show, you mean?" Hostile stares answered me, but they contained affirmation. "I'm afraid I never saw it. I'm not what you'd call an avid television watcher. Is there perhaps another Arthur Kenyon?"

If I hadn't already been dead for a fistful of centuries, the look that young Shifkin gave me would have killed me on the spot. "Yes," he seethed, "I suppose there must be."

"I don't know if this is helpful to you," I answered, wishing to give them something to brighten their mood, "but I was a rather well-respected author and academic. I wrote a number of books on the early development of computer languages and systems and was the head of the history department at the Massachussets Institute of Technology."

"That's terrific," shouted Ronwell. "That's fucking terrific. Thanks a LOT, Braniac, that's just what the 35th century needs, someone who knows all about how calculators were invented." He turned his back on me in a gesture of censure.

"Christ," sighed Shifkin in an access of helplessness, "it's the Linus debacle all over again. Nobel Prize-winning chemist, my ass, I said, where's your goddamn blanket?"

It's been a few years now, and I'm adjusting pretty well to life in this less than brave new world. I have a job as a waitron at a quite high-quality Chinese restaurant that keeps my head above water, and I have befriended a fellow from my time named David Thomas, who was faced with a similar situation when our ungrateful hosts discovered that he was an avant-garde singer rather than the hamburger magnate they had expected. It should have been no surprise that a future so phenomenally advanced would have no use for my century's science, history, philosophy or thought, and would focus exclusively on its popular culture. Still, it's hard to get along at times; I feel much more isolated from the main than I did in my old life. At times, when I see a beautiful young girl waiting at the restaurant bar, I will casually mention that I'm more than familiar with the works of Philip Glass, or that I once shook hands with John Updike. But it's just not the same.