Remembering Nachius Vilsen Freisenborg

Hrungnir, Pluto, Kuiper-Oort Authority -- 12 Apr. 2057:  A virtual wake was held this day to commemorate the life of Nachius Vilsen Freisenborg, who was found frozen to death in an exhausted envirosuit last month.  Mr. Freisenborg died at the age of 12 person-years, having lived and worked in the Hrungnir Hydrogen Collective for 3 years.  He is survived only by  his genedonor, Christian Freisenborg; he did not leave a data ghost.  The wake has attracted significant system-wide attention due to the status of Mr. Freisenborg as the first person to have died on Pluto, and due to the efforts of Debtslave, an activist group which opposes the practice of corporate indenture.  Mr. Freisenborg's death, which has been ruled a total suicide by the KOA Department of Public Safety, is widely attributed to the impending possibility of indenture proceedings by the bank Mutual Providers of Barsoom, to which he owed over 600 microcredits.

Nachius Vilsen Freisenborg was decanted on 22 July 2026 at the Aarskog Memorial Clinic in Trondheim, Norway; his genetics were redacted from those of Christian Freisenborg, an automobile mechanic, and his husband Gunnar, a moose hunter.  After Gunnar was killed in the Battle of Armstrong, Christian took his young son to live in the burgeoning settlement of Primus on Ganymede.  "Vilsen was always one to run," a partial imprint of Christian remembered in his eulogy.  "It seemed unfair to confine him in a hut beneath the crushing ice; but he adapted better than me, perhaps.  I could not keep him in the house, that boy.  He had to run.  He was always living such grand lives in his head, but he understood too the necessity of life in the real world, this world of ice and fire."  Mr. Freisenborg achieved full legal personhood on 7 May 2046.  He worked as an ice miner for his entire life, mining water ice on Ganymede and in the Tachtenstaffel mines in the Ring of Saturn before moving on to Pluto.  His workmate Bliff Snadmer described him as "a steady, conscientious worker; polite, friendly, distant but always with a kind word.  Everyone liked Nachius, but I was maybe the closest thing he had to a friend.  He wasn't political, he wasn't an agitator; all he wanted here was to break ice and take his share.  The one thing he really loved, those old twencen movies -- you know, gangster flicks.  The Heist, Ocean's Eleven, The Italian Job.  He could sit and watch that stuff all night.  I dunno, I shoulda seen it coming.  He would take long walks out on the ice.  Eccentric, but who knew?  I miss the hell outta him."

KOA Symposiarch Palmus Nickelstan delivered a brief address to the assembled mourners.  "Every time human mortality touches another part of the universe, we are reminded again and more sharply of how small and how fragile our lives are.  We are reminded that we must make the most of every moment we have, and that we must continue to strive to defeat the scourges that rob us of our best possible lives.  Nachius Vilsen Freisenborg will live on in every life he has touched, in every contribution he has made to civilization."  Nachius Vilsen Freisenborg was interred under a cairn carved from the ice of Pluto, in the same location where his remains were found.

No comments: