She asked the journalists to move over to one side of the entrance. After a little settling, there appeared to be nine people in that category.
The few people left included several who were hoping for a tour. She apologized to them, citing the confidentiality of Staze’s technology.
Finally, there was a young man who wanted to sell his proposals for various uses of Stade. “Are you hoping to be paid for such suggestions?” she asked.
“Of course! These’ll make you billions of dollars!”
“Um, sorry, we can’t do that,” Arya said. “There’s an excellent chance we’ve already had those same ideas, but it’d be difficult to prove our prior recognition of such concepts. So, we can’t accept your suggestions. We do plan to make stazing available to other companies in the future, so you may wish to continue developing your ideas so someday you can buy a stazer and go into business for yourself.”
He scoffed and turned angrily away. He called back over his shoulder, “You’re going to regret this! You won’t have thought of most of these ideas and they’re going to be killers.”
Arya responded quietly enough that he wouldn’t hear, “Well then, asshat, you should make a killing with them once you can buy a stazer.”
Once he’d gone, Arya turned to the last two people, women who, from the way one had her arm protectively around the other, appeared to be a couple. The protected woman looked wasted and ill. Oh, damn… Arya thought, embarrassed that she hadn’t recognized the smaller woman was sick. Then she abruptly started worrying about what they wanted. She forced a smile, “And what are you folks looking for?”
The striking, tall, healthy-looking woman gazed down at the wispy one she supported with affection saying, “I’m Grace. This is my wife, Simone. She’s th-the love of my life. But… ovarian cancer’s killing her. She’s had chemo and the niraparib and bevacizumab combo and it helped, but they’ve stopped working. Th-there’s a new treatment in trials, a really promising monoclonal antibody that attacks the cancer directly, but Simone didn’t qu-qualify for the trial.” Her voice broke and tears started pouring down her face. She wiped at them, then looked down at Simone. Looking back up at Arya, voice cracking, she said, “It won’t get approved until next year at the earliest. There’s no way Simone’s going to live that long. We’re begging you to staze her until it’s approved.”
I was afraid of this, Arya thought. When, in Kaem’s talk, he had mentioned stazing the terminally ill to await the development of new treatments, she’d immediately begun to worry about whether they’d get requests and whether they could legally staze anyone. She didn’t have any idea what regulatory body you might apply to for permission. She realized she’d been standing, staring at the two women for long seconds. Long enough that they had to be wondering what was going through her mind. With a start, she said, “I’m sorry—” she interrupted herself when she realized that uttering those words might be what she’d do before denying their request. She cleared her throat, “I’m so sorry that you’re having… such a difficult time with your disease. Come on inside so you can sit down. Um, can I help you up the steps?”
Simone gave a weak nod, so Arya stepped to her right side, across from Grace on her left. She took Simone’s arm which seemed mostly bone in a thin, soft flesh wrapping. Getting up the steps with Simone was a struggle that made Arya wonder whether Simone would last days, much less until next year sometime.
As they went in the door, one of the journalists shouted, “Hey. What about us?”
Arya turned and, in a tone that expressed some of her contempt for a person who couldn’t see how desperately ill Simone was, said, “Have some mercy.” She sighed. “You’ll have to wait a bit, or you could come back some other time. It’s up to you.”
She let the door close and helped Simone to one of the chairs in the anteroom. “Do you need to lie down? We could line up several chairs.”
Simone nodded weakly, looking as if she were about to pass out.
Grace and Arya quickly pulled up chairs on either side of the one Simone was on and got her stretched out across them. Arya pulled up a chair for herself and another for Grace, then sat. She glanced back and forth at the two women, then spoke tentatively. “You understand we’ve never stazed a person before?”
Grace blinked. “You haven’t?”
Simone tiredly said, “I didn’t think you had.”
Grace stared at her wife, “You didn’t? Why’d you agree to come down here then?”
“It’s be stazed… or die. Not much of a choice.”
Grace turned her eyes back to Arya. “You’ve done some bigger animals though, right? Dogs, pigs, monkeys… something?”
Arya shook her head, “No. The biggest we’ve done is that chick you saw in the demonstration.”
Grace buried her head in her hands, crying.
Simone said, “Start with me then.”
Grace’s head jerked up. “No!”
Simone snorted, “Why not? What’s the worst that could happen? That it might kill me?”
Grace lowered her head down till it touched her knees, breathing deeply.
“I’ll sign whatever you want,” Simone said. “Just, please, staze me. Now, before it’s too late.”
Arya glanced at her watch, Where’s the rest of the team?! she wondered. Returning her focus to Grace, she said, “If we staze Simone, um, what’re you going to do…” uncertain how to continue, Arya waved weakly at Simone and said, “um, with her… Stade?”
Grace’s eyes widened, “You don’t keep it here?!”
“It’d still be, um Simone. Shouldn’t you keep it… I mean, her, with you?”
“Oh,” Grace said, thoughtfully. “Would that be legal?”
Arya shrugged, “I’m pretty sure there aren’t any laws about people in stasis yet.” She turned to Simone, “You’re thinking you still want to do
