Day One - Awakening

She didn't want to open her eyes. She didn't dare. Her eyelids were closed but some kind of strobes were going off, in front of her face, and even with her eyes screwed shut the flashes were so strong that they were painful.

She screwed her eyes tighter still, and moved her head from side to side and murmured, 'Cut it out!'

"She's coming around," a voice said.

"Right on schedule. Good," said a female voice.

"Cut it out... it hurts.''

"Sorry. It's necessary at this stage of the thawing out," said a male voice. "Otherwise it can take months. Be brave."

"Ow!"

"We'll only do it every hour or so, until you're completely thawed," said the voice.

He stopped the strobe.

"It worked," she said.

"The strobe? Oh, yes, it wakes you up faster. It got you talking, in no time."

"I mean cryogenics. It worked."

"Your resuscitation, you mean. Yes. Well, so far so good. We're not out of the woods yet."

"What's wrong?"

"There are always side effects."

"Why can't I open my eyes?"

"Not yet. They're bandaged."

"When?"

"All things in due time. We have a schedule. You can sleep now."

She fell asleep immediately.

........................................................................................

"Cut it out!"

"Necessary. You're coming along nicely."

"Ouch!"

"Just another minute or so."

"It's awful!"

"Try to think of something else."

The painful flashing of the strobe burned through the bandages over her eyes and drilled into her brain, clearing the cobwebs. She moaned.

"Come on. Be brave. Be tough. It's only another couple of minutes. You're strong. You can deal with it. Try thinking of something else."

"What year is it?" she asked.

"Fifty-five."

"What fifty-five?"

"Fifty-five after Fronz."

"Is this a game?"

"No, the year numbering is different now. Since Fronz."

"Since Fronz."

"Yes, President Fronz. But he prefers to be called just "Fronz."

Congress passed a law starting the calendar again from the birth of Fronz."

A female voice chimed, "In gratitude for all the things he did for America and the world."

"Oh, it's stopped," she muttered. " Thank God! So Fronz was president. Of America."

"He's the reason we've thawed you out. It was one of his executive orders, on day forty-four of his term, 'Thaw them all out.'"

The female voice said, 'Fronz has high hopes for you. All of you, the 'chillies', he calls you. Says obviously only a superior kind of intelligence would have itself frozen in order to wait for a better future. He says we can use your DNA, and do mankind a lot of good. And he said that since he's recently totally transformed the world, it's time to bring you all back among then living anyway. Aren't you glad?"

"I guess I am. But I could do without that strobe."

"It can't be much worse than the dentist," said the male voice. "Try to put it in perspective. As soon as you're fully awake, we'll stop."

"I am awake."

"Not quite."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now she was sitting up, and could see some dim light and forms, but it was all a blur.

"That's normal," he said. "It'll take a while. And who knows? The eyes don't deal with the freezing as well as the rest of the body... we may not be able to restore all your vision."

"Price you pay," she said. "There's always a little extra charge on the bill, at the end."

"Hey, you're alive. When you went under, no-one knew for sure if you chillies could be dethawed successfully. You're alive. It's rather miraculous. Count your blessings."

"Hmmm. Fronz."

"You'd still be frozen stiff if it weren't for him. You ought to thank him."

"DNA?"

"Let's skip that for the moment."

"And that's not a joke? About the date? It's really Fifty-five after Fronz?"

"It's no joke. He's a great man. He totally changed the world, in a couple of days. Made life better for just about everyone on the planet. And of course he stopped all the wars."

"The wars."

"You know. All over the planet. And massacres of civilians. He stopped that, too. Well, he said that the only real thanks he wanted was that one thing. He wanted the world to start counting again at one, because he modestly figured that his solutions had done as much or more to improve life on earth than those suggested by a philosopher from the Middle East two thousand years ago whom we were still honoring with his name in our date. Fronz wanted that honor."

The female voice chimed, "It felt good to be starting at again. My daughter was born in Fifty-four."

"And it's Fifty-five now."

"Yep."

"Am I dreaming, or did I hear you say he did this in days?"

"Yes, he did it all in forty-nine days. I mean, some of the solutions took a while to take hold but they were all applied, set in motion, in those seven weeks."

"Solutions."

The nurse said, "Oh, yeah. Fronz has incredible solutions for everything. Bye!"

"Whoa. Slow down."

She heard the sound of crepe soles on linoleum, and the subtle whisper of some clothing in cotton, and a door opening and closing.

"Crime, hunger, health care, unemployment, justice, education, economy, ecology, crime, you name it," said the male voice.

"And you expect me to believe all this?"

"When you can get up and move around you'll see it's true."

"No no no no. This doesn't make sense."

She heard his voice change, become more personal. "But isn't this what you really hoped for?" That when they thawed you out things would really have changed for the better?" I mean, didn't you hope, when you gave up your life, back then, and had yourself frozen, there'd be a better world when you awoke?"

"Of course."

"Well, your dream has come true."

"It worked."

"Thanks to Fronz."

"Phew."

"You took quite a risk."

"I guess I did."

"Welcome back to the world."

"Fifty-five after Fronz. Has a nice ring to it."

He sang it. "Born in Fifty-five."

"Fine, let me put the question another way. How long was I frozen?"

"Fifty-one years"

"Then it's only..."

"That's right."

"What? I didn't get very far into the future, did I?"

"Oh, you did. Fronz has changed things so much, it's as if you'd slept a thousand years."

"Hmm. You said no more war?"

He chuckled in a deep, warm, quiet voice. "Oh, that's nothing. I mean, that

was just one of Fronz's great solutions."

"Look, doctor..."

"Frank."

"Frank, Why, this is not only unbelievable, but it's confusing me. Maybe if you started at the beginning."

"That's really what I'm here for. I'm more your guide than a doctor. Guiding you back into a world which has changed immensely. Your educator, officially appointed for that."

"So go ahead, teacher."

"Well, it was a something like a military coup. No-one to this day knows how he did it, not exactly. But one morning, suddenly, there he was, Fronz, on the TV, on most of the channels, saying he was the new President and that the old President was in chains."

"Whoa!"

"Nobody knew him from Adam. But there he was, on all the screens. And the old President WAS in chains. In a cell somewhere in the Pentagon."

"You're kidding."

"Fortunately not. Fronz said he'd just taken over the Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard at 7 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, and on that basis was taking over the job of President immediately. Said the world was in such a mess, and in such a spiral of destruction that he felt justified in stepping in a few days after the election, when people were geared up for a change, anyway."

"Amazing tale. And you're not making it up?"

"Who could make this up? Fronz then promised he wouldn't stay in the job long, saying he had had better things to do. He just had some solutions to America's problems he felt like implementing. He'd set them rolling, then retire, go fishing, and the country could replace him with someone else."

"And did he?"

"Oh yeah, Fronz is the kind of guy who keeps his promises. He was out of the White House almost before you realized he'd moved in. Or rather, had moved out of his tent on the White House lawn."

"A tent."

" Said that so many monsters have recently slept in The White House, he wouldn't feel comfortable sleeping there. Said it was no hardship, it was a pleasure, that the French made great tents, and the White House lawn was beautiful."

"He sounds like a character."

"It was quite a tent, alright. Had several little rooms, floors in it, you know."

"Really. President Fronz camping out."

"He was good on TV, alright. The inimitable Fronz. I mean, it wasn't so much his voice... it was his showmanship. Like when he followed his announcement by destroying every toll booth in the country. Suddenly he held up a little remote control in his hand, and..."

His tone changed, and he said, in a voice she knew was his imitation of Fronz's style,

"Fellow citizens, when I press this little red button, you're going to see the effectiveness of America's fighting forces. Some Navy frogmen have mined this toll-booth plaza in New Jersey with plenty of explosives and when I press this plunger, well, let's see if the boys have done their jobs."

Then, back in his normal quiet voice, he said, "And it all went up. Boom. And when the dust began to settle, Fronz explained that all over America our fine military were performing similar operations on all the toll-booths in America. From now on all the byways of America were free."

"It was about time. Wait a minute. You say he got command of the military? How, exactly?"

"Fronz’s story was that he just talked to a few key players over there at the Pentagon. On the QT, he said, and that they had liked his solutions. He pointed out that it was a bloodless coup. In fact no troops had been employed anywhere, not a shot had been fired, hardly anyone had even drawn a gun. That when all was said and done the Military was boss in America, it was so in every country, so he had gone right to the Boss with a proposal. And for America's good, they'd accepted it."

"Hard to believe."

"It happened, though. And every day after that Fronz would suddenly appear on the tube, on all the channels, with some surprise or another. He figured politics was show biz. But behind the events, there were his solutions, and of course they worked. Just as he promised."

"Like what?"

"Like everything. He changed everything."

"As I said, start from the beginning."

" Okay... day one, for example, he signed five executive orders. First, of course, he'd explained executive orders to the American public."

" After blowing up the toll booths."

"Yes. Fronz said that thanks to executive orders, he was going to be able to fix the United States' problems in very little time. He explained that since the World War Two the power of the Congress had been steadily diminishing, while the power of the President had been climbing. Bill Clinton, for example, had written three hundred eighty seven executive orders during his term and some ten thousand had been written since World War Two.

"Fronz said these executive orders were as good as law, and in fact replaced much of what had once been done by the Congress. They were like royal Edicts. The President writes, 'It will be thus' and it's unquestionable, it's done. Obviously, Fronz said, this power was easily abused... particularly in the last few years. However, in the hands of a solutions architect like himself, these orders were a very positive thing, because things that would take years or decades in the legislature could be done in a few days with executive orders."

"Solutions architect?"

"Yes. He spoke about a professor of his, Augie Fry, who'd said that we're always blaming men for being bad, but what if it were the systems? What if you design a bad system, and then put a good man into it? Then what happens? Why blame the man? Bad systems are the source of evil."

"Yes, that makes some kind of sense."

"Fronz said that this had put him on a lifelong quest to design better systems. Or rather, to look at our systems, figure out how to improve them. That comment by Professor Fry turned him into a systems optimiser at age twenty-one, and since then he'd been trying to design better systems for everything. And that after all these years, he'd had time to figure out good solutions to just about all the world's problems."

"Modest fellow."

"Personally, I think that maybe a little arrogance is better than false humility. Anyway, Fronz said that he was probably a genius in this one specialty, solutions architecture. "

"Problem solver."

"It was his 'gift'. He'd been intrigued by Fry's remark and all these Fronz solutions had grown from there.

"Fronz begged the American public to see beyond the obvious benefits of his changes, and to see the bigger picture: he was actually now going to rebuilt our reality in a way which would eliminate evil, or at least most of the evils which beset us."

"Taking on the Devil himself."

"Perfectly put."

"Bad systems are the cause of evil in the world? There's no Devil, just bad systems design?"

"That's a nice summation, yes. Fronz would probably like that."

"What were the other executive orders that day?"

"There was AIDS. Obviously top priority, Fronz said. Free AIDS medicine to every victim of the disease anywhere on earth. He signed the "Immediate AIDS Relief" executive order giving the patent holders plenty, to buy them out. Uncle Sam now owned all the patents and would start providing a mountain of AIDS medication to be made available free at every US consulate in the world."

"What's AIDS?"

"Oh, that's right, you wouldn't know, it came along shortly after you were frozen. A deadly disease, usually but not always sexually transmitted, that has already wiped out tens of millions."

"How awful!"

"Yeah, Fronz said that the way our world was letting fifty million people perish of AIDS, in agony, without medicine, was far worse than the twentieth century murder of six million people in the gas ovens. Worse, he said, because we couldn't stop the ovens, not for years, whereas all that it took to stop these deaths or at least deter them, was a hundred twenty million little pills a day, just a few tons of chemicals. . . that could be made for peanuts in a single factory."

“Hmm."

"He was broadcasting from the tarmac of a Baltimore airport, and behind him was a plane being loaded with crates of medicine. Fronz said that executive orders were wonderful things, here it was early in the morning on the first day of his presidency, and these drugs were already underway."

"He didn't waste time."

"No, he said that his motto was "Right now, with what you have on hand. And so, on day one, he was also abolishing almost all the traditional taxes in America, with another executive order."

"No more income tax?"

"No more income tax, no social security tax, no more inheritance taxes, capital gain taxes, corporate taxes, payroll taxes, all abolished with a stroke of the President's pen."

"Holy smokes. I'll bet there was dancing in the streets."

"A lot of partying, you bet."

"So how did he propose to finance the government?"

"Oh, he said that was easy. A single new tax: the T-Tax, would replace them all."

"What's that?"

"Like a lot of Fronz's optimisations, it was extremely simple. A transaction tax. A floating percentage which is extracted from every monetary transaction. Every time money changes hands, by wire, checks, draft, credit card, ATM, etc. the government takes a percentage. The percentage or the curve is adjusted daily to enable the tax to pay for all the government's activities. To the penny."

"So then there's no need for deficit spending."

"Hmmm. Your brain is warming up nicely. Yes, the T-tax did totally eliminate government borrowing."

"All this on Day One. Pretty startling," she said.

"Fronz said that with the T-Tax, Government no longer needed to borrow. That eliminated a lot of waste. Fronz said that waste was evil. It was his pet peeve. And that filling out tax forms and filing receipts etc. was a waste of everyone's time, since with our computerized systems we could collect all the money the government needed without anyone ever again having to write anything down on paper."

"Without anyone having to do anything at all, if I understand correctly."

"Oh, it was Liberation Day. Fronz said that just as he'd liberated us from those stupid time-wasting and fuel wasting lines at toll-booths, he was liberating us all from a heavy stupid drudgery which had been on our backs for far too long."

"No more forms, no more receipts, no more April fifteenth... well, well!"

"No more lying on your tax forms. Fronz said that not only were those forms a waste of time. They were also a powerful incentive to prevarication and had turned America into a land of liars. When President Richard Nixon cheated on his income tax, Fronz said, it was perfect proof of exactly that."

"The other advantage of this T-Tax, I imagine, is that it's hard to cheat."

"Impossible to cheat. Tax fraud is no longer a possibility. A thing of the past when Fronz signed the executive order."

"Clever."

"Simple, thus ironclad."

"So you pay taxes every day, but you never notice."

"You got it. Not every day. But every time you use your credit card, or write a check or extract cash from a machine. And you do notice, say 'ouch' when you see what the T-Tax has extracted from a transaction. Taxes, even in their least annoying form, are still no fun. But at least now they're no work for anyone. And fair."

"At last. And before you buy something expensive, you look in the paper at the day's T-Tax rate, and decide whether you'll buy or not, because the T-tax is down a little bit today."

"Very good. Were you an economist, by any chance?"

"You must be joking. If you are in charge of my thawing out, I guess you know about my past."

"Nothing at all. There was no information about you in the vault.. This is a journey of discover for both of us."

"So?"

"Well, Fronz said that his whole life had been changed the day he heard a New Zealand genius named Peter Adams say that there was plenty for everyone, if only we didn't waste anything. This important observation was a dominant principle in all Fronz's designs for improving our systems in America. Government had been creating waste, Fronz said. It almost seemed as if that was its purpose. Fronz said that Adams taught him that all systems had to be re-designed to eliminate waste."

"Optimised."

"Exactly. And Fronz said you had to take the word 'waste' in all its senses: not just waste of time, but of talent, strength, resources, and human lives."

"Too many wasted lives, alright. But how can you remember all this so well?"

"Oh, it's all on disk. The 49 days of Fronz, each on a separate disk. I've watched them all, many times, and of course I saw most of it, myself, when Fronz was on live. It wasn’t that ago. I remember it quite clearly."

"I see. And what's a disk?"

"A kind of movie on an LP"

"Oh. Interesting. So, what else on day one?"

"Wasn't that enough? But, yes, good guess, there was more. Fronz showed up on TV that evening sitting on the White House lawn, in front of tent, having a mint julep. Fronz said it was time to party. Fronz said he'd just signed the "income tax amnesty" executive order, so you didn't need any papers from the past, at all. He encouraged everyone to take their income tax records out in the back yard or out in the street and burn them. He asked all Americans to celebrate the abolition of the income tax. People had neighborhood bonfires you wouldn't believe. The country was alive with fires coast to coast. The whole continent was lit up that first night of Fronz's presidency."

"I can imagine."

"Fronz said he had come to set Americans free. That he would leave all American people freer than they had ever been. Today he had freed them from a mountain of tax forms and tax worries. And he promised that it was only the beginning."

DAY TWO - End of Unemployment

Federal Credit cards

Health Care Transformation

Now they had her in a wheelchair. She could move her arms pretty well, but her legs were still very heavy. Frank had been away for three days, and the nurses weren't talking. They all said 'Hush' when she tried to open up a conversation. Mostly she slept.

She was surprised how glad she was to hear his voice, at last, when he arrived. She could make out some tall, dark form on the screen of her vision, but nothing more.

"Am I ever going to see?"

"Oh, we'll see."

"Is that a joke?"

"No, a prediction. You'll see. I know it's hard waiting."

"I'm glad you're back. Are you going to tell me about Day Two?"

"Sure. Whenever you want."

"Don't you have to examine me, or something?"

"Not today. I have it on authority you're coming along right on schedule."

"Good."

"Day Two," Frank said, "Fronz was back on the tube again. At breakfast time. Holding up a handful of executive orders. Said while we'd been sleeping the best morning hours away, he'd been busy, as usual, and had written us a nice set of executive orders to start the day. First of all, he said he had abolished unemployment."

"Hey, that's good! But could he do it?"

"Oh, he did it. That morning before anyone got up. Fronz said if there was any greater waste of human life than being unemployed, let someone show it to him. Since he'd declared war on waste, unemployment had to go. Fortunately, he said, it was easy. First, and foremost, the "Federal Scholarship" executive order said that people who were not otherwise employed in America were to be immediately classified as students. The moment you lose a job, you become a student. You get your government credit card immediately, if you don't have one, and start receiving monthly scholarship payments, which vary from very low for lazy students to quite generous for the top students. Fronz insisted these are not handouts, these are really salary. Fronz said that Australia has been doing something similar, paying its students salaries, for decades, and he was just extending the idea a bit."

"Everyone a student?"

"Not everyone, just regular students plus the people we used to call unemployed. Fronz said, "They've got brains and talent. Send them to school.""

"What if you're unemployed and didn't want to or couldn't become a student?"

"Oh, Fronz said that was easy, too. He was creating another profession which you could do in that case. Federal public driver. Fronz said the system of public drivers had been used in Istanbul in the 1970s and it was time we had it in America. In this system, any vehicle can become a taxi or public transport and any driver of such a vehicle can become a Public Driver, merely by hanging a checkerboard flag or checkerboard decorations on his vehicle. So if you lose your job, you just get in your car every day and go looking for passengers."

"Yes, I see. This takes people who are out of work, and puts them to work moving the people who still have jobs, which improves the efficiency of the latter."

"Yes, waste reduction. Or "conservation", as Fronz liked to call it. Fronz said that in the Seventies Istanbul had virtually no public transport but was the easiest city on earth to get around in. Said five vehicles with a seat empty would go by you every minute in each direction. Flag one down anywhere, and you never had to walk to any bus stop. So much efficient."

"And better for the elderly, and mothers with tired kids.”

"He had more professions or things you could do, too, if you wanted. Fronz said if neither student nor driver suited you, and you were unemployed, you could become a Federal Freelancer. Another executive order that day, "Freelancers", created a government agency where you could get money by making a proposal. You could offer to clean up a dirty vacant lot, or write a guide to New York, or build a shelter for homeless people. Plant some flowers, etc. Just about anything. Just phone in for approval, then collect some money and then go out and do it."

"Well, that sounds like fun."

"Sure, but not just fun. Fronz said that it was one more way to reduce waste, the creative energy that was wasted when humans are out of work. Since industry doesn't need them, let people dream up the work they'd like to do and let the government finance it.

"He said to the TV audience, on day two, 'You're all going to be stunned by what these formerly unemployed people are going to dream up for us and do for us and build for us in return for a fair day's pay and the chance to do it'"

"And all these people were all to get government credit cards?"

"Oh, yes, that was something Fronz was really hot about. His "universal credit" executive order that morning was to see that every citizen of the country who had no credit card would be given one, in right away.

"What kind of country is it, he asked, where some people have a privilege card and others don't. "That stinks," he said. He told people to try a month or two without a card to see what he was talking about. 'In this country you'll be lucky to get a hotel room, even,' he said. 'Believe me, I've been there.'"

"Yes, that's one interesting thing about Fronz. He certainly sounds unusually honest."

"Well, who knows. But he certainly was non-pretentious. He figured he was a good systems optimiser, but that other than that he was no better than anyone else he know. He never talked down to people."

"I like that."

"Yeah, a charming guy, you might say."

"Not the normal politician's charm."

"I say again, a showman. Good looking and always saying droll things. And very unpretentious."

"So what else did Fronz think up for day two?"

"Oh, he was just getting warm. That same morning, he was back on the TV screens by noon, waving a new handful of Executive Orders. This time he had completely transformed health care in America."

"Free medical care for everyone, at last?"

"Oh, sure, but that wasn't the main point."

"What? What was?"

"Elimination of waste, of course. Conservation. Fronz said that health care was fraught with waste, which was one reason that so much money was going for health care. 'They're just pouring it into a hole in the ground' was the way he put it. He said the only way to deal with it was by doing a total transformation."

"Total? Transformation?"

"Every couple of days, Fronz would spring these little lectures on the American public, suddenly appearing on everyone's TV screen and 'educating them to some political realities,' as he called it. And the question of transformation was a big one."

"Now I'm really lost."

"Fronz maintained that our system was still stuck in the Marxist frame of mind. In fact, he said that the world had fallen into Marx's spell, and had never really awakened since. He said that it didn't matter that Russia had outlawed the communist party in the 1970s... because the philosophy remained entrenched, not just in Russia, but right across the planet."

"But America's not a communist country."

"Well, Fronz might disagree with you, there. He pointed out that the graduated income tax and the inheritance tax were both invented by Karl Marx, and cited in his Manifesto as two of the important steps in the Communist takeover of the world. And yet those two communist principles were the backbone of the American tax system until Fronz came along and repealed them."

"I guess that makes some difference."

"Fronz said that the basic Communist philosophy involves bulldozing everything and starting over. The post office doesn't work? Rip it down, or blow it up, and then build a new one. According to Fronz, this approach is the very heart of the revolutionary philosophy engendered by Marx and the more rabid socialists. The assumption that effective change is only wrought by destruction.

"Fronz said that in the Communist mind, hatred of the capitalist world boils over into bombs and violence. Before you build, clear the site. Raze it. Don't like the government in power? Attack it and hang all the leaders. He said that this naive approach to reality was the Achilles Heel of Marxian thinking."

"But Americans don't think like that!"

"They don't? Well, Fronz would argue with you, there. He pointed out America's approach to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq over the last century. Use bombs to solve everything. Flatten the country, destroy all the institutions, and imagine that a happy democracy is going to grow out of the ashes. What is this but the Communist philosophy of destruction and rebirth at work?"

"Are you telling me the USA has bombed all those countries while I was frozen?"

"Yes."

"I'm glad I didn't live through it."

"You should be. Anyway, Fronz said that Communism preferred to burn the post-office, rather than fix it. He said that was the second Achilles Heel of Marxian thinking."

"And he said, fix it instead."

"He said, Transform it. He said that the reason the world worked so badly and ineffectively was that none of its systems were working anywhere near top efficiency. Friction everywhere, and as we know, friction is a form of waste. Fronz said any system could be optimised, if you applied some brain power, and most systems should be."

"What's the difference between fix and transform, then?"

"Oh, a vast difference. Fronz said that his experiences as an optimisation engineer had revealed to him that if a system were optimised completely, it would change so much that it would become virtually unrecognisable. It would have changed so much that it was no longer 'the old system.' Fronz said that this was the magic way and the only intelligent way to destroy something, and it didn't take bombs and cost lives."

"Don't blow it up, transform it. "

"Not just fix it, but tune it, refine it, so much that it's unrecognisable."

"I get it. Optimise."

"Health care, for example. As a demonstration of how bad our health care system was functioning, Fronz showed the US public a newspaper article in the Chicago Tribune, from 1988, indicating that the last emergency ward on the South Side of Chicago was closing down."

"The black neighborhood."

"Precisely. Almost two million people, in a major city, were left with no emergency care at all. Fronz said that if you got ill or shot or burned on the South Side you'd have an hour in an ambulance before a doctor would ever get a look at you. He said he considered this situation obscene, and that it had been one of the things which had motivated him to take action, get into the White House eventually, and set things right. He said this decision by the Chicago city authorities was just one of many across the country which were having similar effects on people's lives and chances of surviving an injury. He said this wasn't health care, this was health neglect."

"So?"

"Well, his first executive order declared that all pharmacies in the US had to be open 24 hours a day and seven days a week, with no exceptions. Moreover, these pharmacies had to be expanded to include an emergency care facility, which had to be staffed at all times, day or night."

"I see. First aid goes back into the South Side."

"Oh, better than that, medical care moves much closer to the recipient. It's clear that the sooner you get to a doctor, the better your chances are. Fronz's transformation moved the doctor out from behind the hospital walls and put him somewhere on your street where you could get to him in far less time, day or night."

"And where did he get all these doctors?"

"Oh, that was another exec order. Easy, said Fronz. His " Alternate Medical Corps" executive order brought in recruits from overseas who worked for modest wages but who had excellent medical training. They were chosen from a world-wide competition in English and general medical knowledge. Fronz brought about thirty thousand physicians to the States in his first month in office."

"Holy smokes."

"I love that expression," he said.

"Well, what else can you say? This story is astonishing."

"No, it's logical. What's the big deal about building rooms onto the pharmacies and staffing them with capable doctors? There was a clear need, he answered it immediately upon taking office."

"I guess."

"Well, then Fronz showed the US public some amazing medical machines which were basically being kept from them in their current health care system, but which he was going to put at everyone's disposal."

"What kind of machines?"

" Blood test machines. Fronz said he had stumbled across these devices when he fell ill in Sudan in 1993. The doctor at the Japanese embassy took a few drops of his blood, put them on two slides, stuck them in two machines, and the machines printed out the results of about fifty different blood tests in less than a minute.

" Fronz showed the machines on TV, took a few drops of his own blood, and ran the tests.

"He said that the Trekkies watching him should rejoice: Dr. McCoy's Space Age machines now existed: here they were, in our fortunate day and age. But right now they were only benefiting a small percentage of Americans."

"And his plan?"

"Oh, of course now every pharmacy in the country is equipped with these Space Age test machines, and a battery of others, as well. Medicine has really entered the Star Trek age and thanks to Fronz, that technology has gotten to the greater population."

"Clever Fronz."

"The Alternate Doctors, besides doing first aid and emergency care from the pharmacies, also now do most of the medical screening that used to be done rather inefficiently or not done at all. Fronz said that there are very few diseases which cannot be detected with these machines and the others in the pharmacy clinics. So, if you're getting Medicare, then every three or six or twelve months, depending on your condition, you will drop into your nearest pharmacy, give a few drops of blood and urine, and undergo a ten-minute stripped visual check by a doctor. Fronz said that this screening would catch at least half of the illnesses in America at a much earlier date than our current methods could."

"Meaning lower medical costs overall."

"And many Americans getting better instead of dying, and getting better sooner."

"Yeah, Fronz!"

"Alternate systems are an excellent technique for optimisation. One of Fronz's favorite solutions. He pointed out how this Alternate Medical System takes pressure off the doctors in the regular system. They now have more time to see each patient ."

"Which improves their work, certainly."

"Look at how simple this transformation was. That was the real beauty of Fronz's solutions, their stunning simplicity. Fronz said anyone could dream up 'solutions' which were too expensive or too unwieldy or simply unrealistic, and that such solutions were worst than worthless, because they created false hopes and provoked useless action. He said real solutions had to be relatively inexpensive, quick and easy to implement, and practical. He said that if you examined every one of his solutions, you'd see that it was doable, affordable, and mostly off-the-shelf technology. Fronz quoted his motto, which he admitted had been the motto of his hero, Teddy Roosevelt."

"Right Now, with What you Have on Hand," she said.

"Yep."

"And a couple of executive orders are all it took to transform medical care completely?"

"Yes. There were a couple of others, of course. One executive order said that every citizen under Medicare would have his complete medical history on his government credit card."

"No kidding. Is that possible?"

"Sure, and it saves lives."

"I guess it would."

"Fronz said that here was a perfect example of off-the-shelf technology which was not being harnessed correctly. Just like the test machines. The Smart card technology had been perfected decades ago, and people 'talked' about using them for medical records for decades, but it was just talk. Someone just had to sign an order in the White House for it to become reality. Since that order by Fronz, on day two, every test you've ever had, every medical visit, every x-ray in your life, are now stored in your credit card. The doctor sticks it in a slot, and he's got every medical fact known about you at his fingertips."

"Save him a lot of time."

"Save him a lot of mistakes. Fronz pointed out no professional can do a thorough, effective job without all the information concerning the patient. Which until Fronz was not usually available."

"And this all worked?"

"Oh, death rates began to decline almost immediately."

"Really?"

"Drastically."

"No wonder they changed the date for him."

"Plus, of course, the regular doctors have more time for each their patients, and that has also improved the recovery rate."

"Plus, the doctors get to spend a little more time with their families."

"Fronz also said he had just signed the "anti-intern" executive order , which he promised would also decrease the death rate in hospitals. Fronz said that before this order, most hospital care was being dispensed by sleep-deprived underpaid, wet-behind-the-ears zombies known as Interns. The order simply limited interns to forty hours a week at the job."

"Better judgment calls."

"Good. Yes, Dead on," said Frank. "Doctors who are less stressed make fewer mistakes. Now isn't that's about enough Fronz for today? Why don't you just close your eyes again and go to sleep?"

She did as he said.

....... . . . . . . . . . . ........................................................................................

She still could only see forms. Now she had the strange feeling they were drugging her, and putting her under again. Each time she awoke she felt vaguely that she'd been asleep for days, maybe weeks.

The little clocks that run in one's brain seemed to be out of whack in hers, or were they keeping something from her?

Her legs were just as heavy. And she was still in the chair. And Frank was spooning some nice-tasting stuff into her mouth.

"What can we do but take care of you and wait and see? If I were you I'd be glad my mind were functioning pretty much normally... The rest is just baggage."

"Great. I'm paralysed."

"For a while only, let's hope."

"When can I get out and see the real world?"

"Well, you could hear it, but seeing is another matter."

"Damn."

"I'm your window, I guess, for a while. For the moment, you're not going outside."

"And no TV?"

"Sorry, none."

"Why not?"

"We'll get to that later," he said.

"Radio?"

"Not yet."

"Damn!" she said.