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When I found out I’d inherited Mum’s ovarian cancer, I pounced on the chance to preserve myself. The Californian Institute of Cryogenics had a very expensive program, but it also had an experimental program. You had to pull together your own travel expenses to get there, but once you did, participation in the program was free, assuming you didn’t mind that the results were by no means guaranteed.
Mum was not impressed. “But that’s… that’s like suicide,” she pointed out, becoming visibly emotional. “You don’t need to do this – I survived my surgery, and look at me now.”
“But I’m not you,” I said, struggling to keep it together. “I don’t have kids or grandkids to look out for. Besides, what if it’s not operable? The absolute worst that can happen is that I go to sleep and don’t wake up. At least this way I get to say goodbye to you while I’m not too sick.”
There were arguments and recriminations, but eventually I persuaded my parents and sister to respect my wishes. We had a “wake” for me with my immediate family and friends, speeches were made, and we all had a bit of a cry. A couple of days later, I was off to Bakersfield and to being frozen like a clumsy pizza boy.
The process was unnerving, I won’t lie – I don’t even like MRIs, and knowing that I may never be coming out doesn’t make me any happier – but the Institute had a large amount of seemingly credible literature about their processes and succession plans for the long term, including vast swathes of investment literature, and the staff were absolutely lovely. I had one last Skype with the fam before going into the coffin (and I’m afraid that’s very much what it looked like – I had many strong words in the customer satisfaction survey before I went in).
Once in the coffin, I breathed deeply, trying not to panic. One way or another, cancer would be the least of my worries. I had had several friends go through chemo, and I reasoned that I could both avoid that experience and contribute to scientific development. Not gonna lie, though – there’s a very good reason they sedate the fuck out of you before you go down.
* * * * * *
I became conscious, rather than awoke. A voice, a female newsreader or radio announcer, was softly reciting… something… quite close to me. Lights flashed behind my eyelids, and involuntary tears pricked at my eyes.
Briefly, I wondered what was going on before I remembered the Institute and the cancer and my family. Fuck. What year was it? Had the Institute taken my money, laughed in my face and woken me up next Tuesday? Did I still have cancer?
“Consort Sha’ira has been named in the growing controversy over the forced retirement of General Septimus Oraka of the Turian Sixth Fleet. She has refused to speak to reporters, but it is suspected that she…”
Turian? But then, lots of new countries came into existence during my lifetime – The Czech Republic, South Sudan, Ossetia. Oraka sounded African – those guys had like a hundred countries, so it wasn’t any surprise if they had a new one. I opened my eyes.
A giant cat was sitting next to my bed, reading a smartphone. At least, I thought it was a phone – a display of some sort.
Maybe I hadn’t woken up after all.
The cat looked at me. “Shit.” We stared at each other for a few seconds while I tried to move my mouth. Not dropping her gaze, she stretched out her hand, which seemed to have an odd number of fingers, and groped for a buzzer at the edge of my bed. A hospital, then.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt. The cat hesitated, still staring at me, then buzzed again.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.
She was pressing it one more time when a young man who seemed to be a nurse rather than a doctor (for a start, he wore the same uniform as the cat) barged in snapping “yeah, yeah, I got it the first time. She’s awake?”
“I think so . She opened her eyes. I was only supposed to do this while -”
“It’s OK, Portia. I’ll take over from here. Gimme.” She got up and handed him the “smartphone”, which I now realised was… a stick. How was she reading that? “I’ll get Doctor Bek,” she said, and closed the door as she left the room.
I now realised I was in a single-person room. Nice. I tried to move my mouth to speak, but frankly it felt like the proverbial bear had shat in it, over several generations.
“Slow down, grandma. You’ve had an exciting time. Though I guess you don’t really want to rest up any more after a hundred years, ha ha!” He looked at some instruments – I had tubes in every orifice, just like Mum had had when she went in for her op.
A hundred years? So they really did it? They didn’t go broke and recycle all their patients into decorative office furniture?
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
“Hey, if Nurse Vakarian blew your mind, Doctor Bek’ll send these things buzzing off the scales. So I gotta tell you, Doctor Bek is a salarian. Like, a kind of lizard gecko sorta guy. He’s a brilliant doctor, don’t worry about how he’s taking care of you, but if you’ve never met any non-humans it’s a bit of a headfuck right there.” He could have been talking about the weekend’s sport. I certainly understood him about as well.
A knock came at the door and the nurse answered it. As soon as the doctor walked in, I saw what the nurse meant. He was sort of right, and sort of so wrong I wondered if he’d ever actually seen a lizard. The doctor was insanely tall, with… his features overwhelmed me and I couldn’t process it all. I got that he had a kind of vase-shaped head, with huge black eyes and short, horn-like protruberances on top. He was very, very thin, kind of pigeon-chested, and when he held his hand up, he seemed to only have three fingers.
I stared, then fainted. As I swooned I heard a high-pitched voice say “She awoke a little earlier than I would have liked. Find some music or movies from her era. If you’re not sure, go earlier rather than later. I’ll top up her….” I dipped back into unconsciousness.
* * * * * *
When I finally awoke properly, I was alone. Light streamed in through a window, light that was oddly… pinkish, though I assumed that perhaps it was sunset. The usual hospitally type things were in the room. It didn’t look particularly futuristic to me, but then, pretty much everything in a hospital looks futuristic. Maybe the nurse had been joking about the hundred years?
I tried to raise my head, looking around for a book or a newspaper, or maybe one of those sticks. Maybe it would have an on/off switch. My head whirled and I slumped back and stared at the ceiling.
I lifted my hands to see if I could. They looked strange – thin, dry, with long fingernails. My arms were withered and saggy, and I assumed my legs weren’t much better. I didn’t even want to think about how my face looked, but at least those cat and lizard people probably couldn’t tell whether I looked like shit. I wiggled my fingers. At least they seemed to respond normally.
Next, I rolled my head from side to side, very slowly. On my right, a digital display confirmed that it was 19 o’clock, then blinked and told me it was 74 degrees. This threw me a little until I remembered that I was in the US, and they don’t use Celsius. There was also a packet of tissues and a vase with plastic flowers of some sort.
On my left was my feed bag and a shit-ton of bleeping machinery, although not as much as I would have expected. A tube ran into my nose and up my arm. There was also the buzzer the cat lady had been pushing. I nervously tried to lift my arm towards it – nervously because I’ve always been phobic about needles in my arm, and specifically of them flicking out of my arm. It didn’t matter anyway – my arm was too weary to get anywhere near the side table.
I was wondering how I could discreetly find out what year it was (if it was still 2022, I didn’t want to make an ass of myself marveling about the miraculous properties of 3DTV) when Nurse Vakarian popped her head in. I waved briefly, then slumped, and she disappeared. The young man arrived a few seconds later.
“Oh hey, you’re awake! I made you a mixtape. Can you sit up?”
“Urrrrrghhhhh,” I said (this is about how smooth I was with attractive young men under normal circumstances, so at least that was familiar), but he pressed a button and slowly raised the bed until I was at about a fifty-degree angle. I peered at his nametag. “Jamil Mu.”
“I’m gonna try to give you some liquid refreshment by mouth, see if we can get you off the chaffbag. Now this isn’t exactly a new taste sensation, but it’s stupidly healthy, and the more you practice the quicker you can get back to steak and potatoes. There, you like that idea, huh?” (Even I could feel my face brighten up at that prospect.) “Suck on this.” He held out a covered cup with a straw and lay the straw on my lower lip. I had just about enough strength to suck quickly on it, discover that it tasted like new-mown grass, and pull a face. He laughed.
“Like I said, it’s no gourmet delight, but it’s a start. Come on, try just a little bit more for me.” His eyes widened and I realised that he reminded me of that dude who got kicked out of Saudi Arabia for being “too handsome”. I took a deep breath and tried to suck down as much as I could without tasting it, scrunching my face up the whole time.
“That’s great, you’re doing great,” he cooed. “Just a little bit more… OK. I’ll put this where you can reach it [he rolled a table over my bed and set the drink down]. Now, Doctor Bek asked me to put a movie on for you. Got any requests?”
All I could do was croak. “Nuh-uh.”
He picked up a remote, and a panel in the roof slowly whirred down, revealing a blank screen. It blinked to life and Jamil scrolled through a few options, then pressed play. The Warner Brothers logo appeared in black and white, and then the familiar titles of Casablanca. Yep, he’d definitely played it safe, but hey, good choice.
“’Ank-oo,” I groaned, reaching for the lawn juice.