Ways to Live Forever

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Recording!

Don't look at me, this was your idea.

Today is January the seventh.

This is my first diary entry.

This is a video-book,

and everything I write down here...

I'm going to record on this video

so my memory will live forever.

What you do that for!!!

Go and fix it.

Me?! You go and fix it.

Actually, the idea

for the video book wasn't mine,

it was Mrs Willis...

though everything really began

a long time before that...

the afternoon I came home.

Five facts about me.

One, my name's Sam;

two, I'm twelve years old;

three, I collect stories

and fantastic facts;

four, I have leukemia.

And five:
by the time you see this,

I'll probably be dead.

Sam

It's your new room.

So you don't have

to climb the stairs...

This diary is a collection

of stories, images,

questions and facts...

and it's also my story.

Good.

As for the way I look;

Mohave hair.

Last year it all fell out

because of the medicine I was taking,

but it's grown back.

It's brown...light brown.

I've got green eyes.

I've got tons of bruises.

It's not my fault,

it's what happens

when you get leukemia.

Oh!, I forgot.

I have a birth mark the shape

of a four-leaf clover on my knee,

but it doesn't grant any wishes.

What's the point of being ill

if I have to study?

It's our first day, Felix.

And it could be our last.

So?

Doesn't it say anything

to you at all?

The question has gnawed away

at humanity for centuries...

How no to dying.

Come on then, think of ways

to live forever.

Get turned into a vampire,

and that's you.

As long as you don't run

into Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Very good, Sam?

Get them to freeze you.

Then in hundreds of years time

a company will find a cure

for cancer and the secret

of eternal life,

and then they can defrost you.

What a load of rubbish.

The safest way is

to copy your brain onto a hard disk

and live eternally on a computer...

and hope you don't get a virus.

Over the centuries,

humans have discovered

that living forever isn't possible,

but there is something eternal

we can leave behind.

Works of art.

Mrs. Willis told us about

how works of art lodge themselves

into people's hearts.

She told us we should write

something about ourselves.

I know you both like to read,

she said to us.

We like reading because

there was no telly in the hospital.

My sister Ella is seven.

My Mum called me Sam 'cause

of Samson from the Bible,

and my Dad chose Ella

for my sister after an Aunt of his.

They didn't realise Sam n' Ella together

sounds just like...salmonella.

Is Sam still sick?

She asks too many questions.

Sam isn't going to the hospital anymore.

He's going to stay at home with us.

So, why isn't he going to school?

I don't have to go back

to the hospital or to school,

because I'm going to die.

Darling, don't say that.

Dying is the most waffle thing

in the world.

No one knows anything.

You ask them questions

and they cough and change the subject.

If I grow up, I'm going

to be a scientist.

I'm going to work out the answers

to all these questions no one answers.

Now I'm going to give

some information about my illness.

People say I've got leukemia,

but I like to say I have granular,

spheroidal globules.

Some guy called John Hughes

Bennett discovered leukemia.

In 1850, he looked at some kid's blood

through a microscope

and said it was full of colorless,

granular, spheroidal globules.

They were white blood cells,

but nobody knew that back then.

The reason it took so long

to diagnose children

was that they didn't used

to let kids into hospitals,

'cause they thought they carried

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