The Ups and Downs of Being Dead Page 2

  Stale exhaust fumes in the parking garage choked Robert, the low clearance closed in on him. He was practically running when he came out onto the open top level. The heat of the day washed over Robert, and his body sagged. He lurched to the edge of the roof, and looked out over Atlanta, the classic query drumming in his head. ‘Why me?’

  When Amanda heard he was dying, she rushed home from her shopping trip in New York. Robert was in his office, on the phone, when she burst in, her cheeks flushed, her eyes aglow. If he had to describe her expression in one word, it would have been exuberant.

  Almost overnight, she transformed into a loving, sacrificing wife who put everything on hold for him. She drove him to his chemo appointments. She waited patiently outside the bathroom while he puked his guts out, then helped him back to bed, tucking brand-new sheets under his chin. Death sheets, he’d called them. He was certain she’d agonized over just the right shade and design to go with cancer.

  She volunteered for the American Cancer Society, masquerading as a pillar of strength in front of other spouses of dying partners. She even participated in one of those walks – Amanda, who probably hadn’t worn a pair of sneakers since she was ten. And she never went anywhere without that goofy pink ribbon pinned to her clothing.

  Robert was sure the only reason she got so involved with the cancer organization was to get first-hand information on how soon he could be expected to croak. She couldn’t wait to get her hands on his millions.

  Wouldn’t she be surprised?

  * * *

  “Running clear,” someone said through his surgical mask.

  The blood washout was complete. Now came the tricky part. The surgical team would pump a preservative through Robert’s heart and into his body, so that every organ, every blood vessel, and most importantly, his brain would be protected.

  Water was the enemy. Alex had compared freezing liquid in blood vessels to the hoses in old style automobile radiators. Before anti-freeze, water was used in radiators to cool engines. But water molecules are pushy little buggers. As the temperature drops, water molecules like to congregate, squeezing other molecules aside. And as water turns to ice, it expands. In a car, this expansion cracked radiators, and ripped rubber hoses apart. In the body, freezing water created the same kind of havoc in blood vessels and in the tissue of the brain.

  Alex scoffed at a critic of cryonics who used the analogy of frozen strawberries that turned to mush when thawed.

  “That is certainly true, because of all the water in the fruit,” Alex had told Robert. “But we are replacing most of the water with our cryoprotectant. Your brain will not be mush when it is reanimated.”

  * * *

  “Don’t be nervous, Robert. It’s going very well.”

  Jumping back from the surgical table, Robert glanced quickly around the room. “What?”

  The old lady he’d seen in the lobby stood a few feet away. She raised her palm again for a wave. She looked even older up close. Her face was a mass of wrinkles, as though someone had wadded up her skin and then tried unsuccessfully to smooth it back over her skull. A slight woman, she stood maybe five feet, with bird bones that poked out at her elbows and shoulders. She reminded Robert of that little old lady who stepped up to the counter and asked, “Where’s the beef?”

  “Your procedure,” she said. “Everything’s happening just like it should.”

  His thoughts whirled. “You can see me?”

  “Yes,” she nodded.

  The gray-haired gentlemen from the lobby slipped up beside the woman. He nodded, too. The wear and tear of age showed in his sagging jowls. Liver spots dotted his face and arms.

  “How do you know my name?” Robert asked.

  Stepping forward, the man extended a hand, like he wanted to shake.

  “Sam Parker. This is Maggie Nelson. We’re here to help you with your transition.”

  Stunned, Robert mumbled, “My transition?”

  “From the living to the dead,” Maggie said.

  “But I’m not dead!” Robert protested. “I’m being cryonically-preserved—”

  Sam and Maggie both chuckled.

  “That’s right,” Maggie assured him. “And a hundred years from now, you’ll be right back out there, good as new.”

  The harsh scream of a drill drew their attention to the surgical team.

  “Ah,” Sam said. “They’re starting the vitrification process. That’s where they slowly replace the water in your body with the cryoprotectant, the anti-freeze.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Robert said.

  “Since you picked the whole body preservation, it’ll take close to three days for the fluid to get all the way to the tiniest capillaries.”

  “Didn’t you do whole body?” Robert asked.

  “Nah. All they really need is the brain since that’s the only organ that truly makes us who we are,” Sam said. “All the other organs, tissue, bones and blood will be recreated from the DNA they get from my brain.”

  “I don’t know,” Robert said, “The brain-only option gave me the creeps. What if someone in the future decides it’ll be easier to just pop my brain into an existing body? What if people become body donors? Or somebody bumps off cousin Louie and sells his body on the black market to make a quick buck?”

  “That will never happen,” Sam said, with a cocky bobble of the head. “Most likely, your brain will be transplanted into a clone grown from your DNA.”

  “Alex didn’t tell me that,” Robert said.

  “They didn’t tell me that either,” Maggie said. “I think the cryonics people stay intentionally vague, because no one really knows how we’ll be revived. But Sam follows all that technological stuff. He keeps us informed.”

  The surgeon finished drilling holes in Robert’s head.

  “Geez,” Robert muttered. “They sure tear your body up. I don’t think they’re going to sew my chest shut. Now I’ve got holes in my skull.”

  He wondered if he’d be able to part his hair after he was revived and show someone the scars.

  “The holes are necessary to monitor the brain for fractures,” Sam said. “As your body temperature drops, hopefully your brain will shrink slightly. They definitely don’t want swelling.”

  Maggie stood next to Robert as two techs lifted his body and lowered it into a special freezing chamber made of clear plastic. It was designed with two ports on one side where a tech could reach in to make adjustments.

  “By the time they’re finished,” she said, “You’re body temperature will be at minus 190 degrees Celsius: the temperature of liquid nitrogen.”

  “And then I guess that’s it,” Robert said. “They’ll stick me in one of those tanks and I’ll wake up some time in the future.”

  The wrinkles on Maggie’s face got even deeper as she squinched her cheeks. “Well, that’s not necessarily the case.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “You aren’t going to go to sleep,” Sam told Robert. His voice nearly chirped with enthusiasm, but behind the smile was something else.

  “I’m not?” Robert turned to Maggie for a confirmation.

  She shook her head. “I was frozen a year and a half ago. Sam’s been around for almost three years.”

  Panic washed over Robert. ““But they told me I’d go to sleep and wake up in the future.”

  “Yeah, well, surprise!” Sam said, raising his eyebrows. “They told us the same thing.”

  “You mean we just have to wait around in here for a hundred years?”

  “No, no, no,” Sam said, waving his hands. “We can go anywhere we want now. That’s why we’re here. To show you all the cool things you can do.”

  Robert stared at the stainless steel doors. “I’m not going to sleep?”

  “No, my friend,” Sam said. “Not for a very long time.”

  He tried to throw an arm over Robert’s shoulders in a show of camaraderie, but the gesture was useless. Robert felt nothing.

  “So what am I going to do?”r />
  Maggie and Sam both laughed. Did they find his question amusing, or his hysteria?

  “You can do anything, Robert.” Maggie motioned toward the steel doors again. “Well, almost anything.”

  As Sam walked Robert toward the exit, he raised a finger. “A couple of caveats. You can’t go forward or back in time.”

  Over her shoulder, Maggie said, “We don’t eat or drink or sleep.”

  “You won’t ever have to leave the ball game at the seventh inning to take a piss,” Sam confided.

  “Once you get the hang of passing through objects,” Maggie said, “You can go behind locked doors, into buildings that are closed for the day. You can go back stage at strip joints, inside women’s locker rooms.” She winked at him!

  “Why would I do that?”

  Robert gave her his best ‘stern’ look, complete with twitching eyebrow. Who was this cheeky old bag?

  She snorted. “That’s one of the first things most men do when they leave here. Go ogle naked women.”

  “Believe me,” Robert said. “I’ve seen plenty of models in lingerie and bathing suits. I have no desire to watch desperate women remove their clothes for cash.”

  “That’s right,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re the Audrey’s magnate.”

  “We heard you donated an extra two-point-five million to the center,” Sam said.

  “That was supposed to be confidential,” Robert scolded, but he was a bit flattered that the news had gotten out.

  “We’re not part of the general public anymore,” Maggie told him.

  “That’s right,” Sam added with a waggle of his eyebrow. “We hear private conversations, read confidential memos. And we’re not restricted by scheduled hours of business, or those locked doors. It’s really quite simple once you get the hang of it.”

  To demonstrate, Sam pushed his arm through the steel door. “Wooden doors are the easiest,” he said. “Glass is a little tougher, and these insulated steel doors can be a little tricky the first time.”

  Maggie and Sam passed through the door a couple times just to reassure Robert it was possible, but as he stood in front of the heavy steel obstacle, fear gripped him. What if he got stuck in the middle? What if he split into a million tiny parts and floated away?

  “Does anyone decide to just wait here?” he asked.

  “One of our patients stayed,” Sam said. “Once he learned how, Albert Jackson slipped into the stainless steel container with his body. Said he didn’t want to see all the changes in the world. He just wants to come back and be surprised. Like Christmas morning. He said that way, if the reanimation process doesn’t work, he’ll never know what he missed. Personally, I think he’s a moron.”

  During his tour of the center, Robert had been shown the storage area with rows of silver cylinders. The center called the 10-foot tall storage tanks Dewars.

  “He’s just in there waiting?”

  “Boring, huh?” Sam said.

  “Come on,” Maggie urged. “Suck it up, Robert. Let’s get you out of here.”

  For an old broad that barely stood five feet tall, she was pushy.

  “Start with just a hand,” Sam said. “Press your palm into the door.”

  “Just remember,” Maggie said, “there is no spoon.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you see the Matrix?” she asked.

  Robert shook his head.

  “Well, I highly recommend it. Put that on your list of things to do.”

  Sam cleared his throat to get Robert’s attention. “Imagine that there is no door.” His own hand disappeared into the steel.

  Shaking off his fear with a resolute jerk of his shoulder, Robert reached out his hand and whispered, “There is no door.”

  His fingers slowly sank into the metal. But a strange tingling sensation scared him and he jerked his hand back.

  “Weird, isn’t it?” Maggie said. “Kind of like when your hand falls asleep.”

  “It’s because you’re passing through the door at the molecular level,” Sam said. “You can sense your own essence being jostled by the atoms that make up steel and insulation.”

  “We’ve often said that the administrators here at the center should have set up a little obstacle course with barriers like windows and brick walls,” Maggie said. “You know, to sort of ease us patients into the whole navigation process.”

  “But they didn’t.” Sam was growing impatient. “So let’s go!”

  Planting his feet farther apart, Robert locked his elbows and charged forward. At the last second, when his face got right to the surface, he cringed and reared his head back. But his body continued in its forward motion so his head bent back onto his shoulders in an unnatural position. He screamed.

  His torso and legs reached the other side of the door before his head caught up. If he were alive, he would have messed his pants. Closing his eyes, he waited for the drunken wooziness to pass, and the tingle in his body to fade.

  “You did it!” Maggie exclaimed.

  “Yeah,” he whispered. He hoped he didn’t faint in front of this old woman.

  Outside the center, a brisk wind sent dead, brittle leaves scuttering in front of Robert. The night he’d arrived at the hospice, an icy rain had stung his cheeks, the cold wind whipping at his pant-legs.

  But now, Robert didn’t feel anything. In fact, he was quite comfortable strolling through the industrial park with Maggie and Sam.

  “So, are you two related?” he asked.

  “No, we just volunteered to man the center for three months,” Maggie said. “In case someone showed up. Like you.”

  “The temps take turns,” Sam said.

  “Temps?”

  “All of us who are waiting to come back,” Maggie said. “There are seventy-one temps at the center.”

  “Seventy-two now,” Sam said, “Counting you.”

  At the end of the street, Maggie turned right and the three made their way toward a busy intersection. Robert had never been much of a walker—he’d had a driver for the past twenty years—but he wasn’t the least bit fatigued.

  “We all meet twice a year, in June and December,” Sam said. “It’s the only way we can stay in touch with each other. You know, since we can’t use phones or e-mails.”

  Maggie strolled along with a wide step, her arms swinging briskly. She acted more like a twenty year-old, than a decrepit old woman.

  “The meetings are a lot of fun,” she said. “We catch up on what others are doing.”

  “Yeah, and we find out what folks have planned for the next six months,” Sam said. “One of our temps is hanging out with President Sherman, in the oval office. Another is on the NASCAR circuit, riding in the car with Donny Childers.”

  “I’m not into car racing,” Robert said.

  “Me either,” Sam said with a shrug. “I was a bit of a stuffed shirt when I was alive. I taught microbiology for thirty years. Then retired and moved to Maine with my wife. Tended a garden, waited for my grandkids to come and visit. Pretty boring.”

  Maggie turned and walked backwards. “I encourage our temps to try lots of things. How do we know car racing will even be around seventy-five years from now? Won’t that be something interesting to tell your new friends in the future?”

  “So are you going to the racetrack when your three months is up?” Robert asked Sam.

  “Well, no. Actually, I’m sitting in on a class on biochemistry at Stanford.”

  Robert choked out a cough. “Oh, that’s a lot more interesting than gardening.”

  “Hey, I went on a cruise down the Amazon last year,” Sam said. “Saw the rainforest, visited Machu Picchu. ”

  Directing his attention to Maggie, Robert said, “And I suppose you’ve got a quilting bee lined up.”

  “Oh, Robert,” Maggie said, shaking a finger at him. “You’re a smart aleck. I can see that we’re going to get along just fine.”

  “Better be careful,” Sam warned. “Maggie’s a psychologist.
Has been for…how long has it been, Maggie? Eighty years?”

  Throwing back her head, Maggie hooted. “Maybe more. My mother swore I was analyzing kids in my kindergarten class. My husband, Joe says I was born a busybody.”

  “Is he a temp, too?” Robert asked.

  “No, he’s still alive. But he is a cryonics member. He’s all lined up to be preserved when his time comes.”

  “What about you?” Sam asked. “Were you married?”

  “Yes I was. For twenty-eight years.” Robert amended that in his mind. It had been twenty-eight long years.

  * * *

  It was Spring, 1975. A friend of a friend had managed to get an extra invitation to Sherry McClintock’s post party for her debut at the New York fashion show. As it turned out, it was Sherry’s last post party as well. She’d thrown everything she had into her spring collection, so when the fall designs came out, her ideas were flat and lacked creativity.

  Naturally, Ralph Lauren and Bill Blass were throwing their own soirees, but Robert could never wrangled an invite from the big boys. At the time, he was flattered to get into Sherry’s somewhat dismal bash.

  Standing off to one side, Robert zeroed in on a voluptuous blonde working the room. She approached a guy who looked like he had just stepped off the dance floor in his bell-bottomed trousers and paisley polyester shirt with lapels halfway to his waist. The way the woman’s hips and shoulders swayed in a sensuous, fluid motion, she must have thought the man was someone important. When she spoke to Mr. Disco, her head cocked in a coquettish tilt.

  At that moment, Robert concentrated every conscious thought into willing that woman to come over and thrust her body at him. His friend of a friend caught him drooling and gave him a nudge.