Frozen Asset
by Ahmed A. Khan
What is cryogenic sleep if not a form of time travel?
I have been asked by the Cryo Corp agent to record one day, moment or event of my life that I would like to remember most. It is a requirement of anyone who undergoes cryonics. This is not going to be difficult for me, because the day and time that I am going to record is fresh in my memory. It happened just last week.
It began as a very special winter night, a night with a very special moon and a very special snowfall. A night full of benevolent but potent magic.
Till that time, I had been a loner by nature, a shy boy who had difficulty in talking to girls, even though I felt that girls were attracted to me, probably not so much for myself as for the fact that I came from a rich and prestigious family. I think it is to my credit that I usually managed to hide my shyness behind a mask of seriousness.
That night, something in the air made me think of the ice skating rink. I dressed up, gathered my skating shoes, put them in a knapsack and hung the knapsack on my back. As I came out of my room, I saw my parents taking off the party decorations off the dining room wall where yesterday they and I, with lots of our relatives and friends, had celebrated my nineteenth birthday.
“Need help?” I asked.
They looked up. “How are you feeling?” Mom asked.
“No pain today,” I smiled.
“Going out?” Dad asked.
“I felt like a little bit of skating.”
“Go, skate,” he said cheerfully. “We will take care of the decoration.”
I hugged them one by one and came out of the house. I thought of taking my motorbike but the air outside was so invigorating that I chucked the idea and jogged all the way to the rink.
As I jogged, the wind played with my hair, snowflakes softly brushed my cheeks and my moving legs seemed to draw power from the very earth itself.
The slumbering, snow-tinged trees, the sleepily blinking far-away houses, the silent moonlit road, freedom from pain – everything reconfirmed my earlier feeling that this night was magic.
My legs pistoning powerfully against the earth, and my body cutting through the snow-laden air, I imagined that I could actually feel the earth rotate beneath my feet, bringing the skating rink nearer and nearer to me.
I could see the rink. And in front of me, I saw a graceful silhouette of a girl in a white dress, jogging in easy, zestful strides towards the rink. She had a pair of skates slung behind her back.
I slowed my jog and hung back, letting the girl stay ahead of me all the way to the rink. I saw her face clearly as she passed the lighted doorway of the rink and recognized her as a girl I had seen a few times in the town. I had always been fascinated by her loveliness and her look of innocence. Of course, I had never talked to her. No one had introduced us to each other and I did not have the guts to approach her directly.
Through the lighted doorway she passed into the rink and I followed her quietly.
On account of a beautiful moonlit night, the managers of the rink had sense enough to put off the artificial lights that normally shone over the rink. The pearly moonlight, falling on the ice, transformed the rink into a land of enchantment where faeries and elves danced with throat-choking grace.
She was a faery queen among all the lesser faeries skating around. The moonlight, when it fell on her ice-white dress, formed an aura of purity around her, and when it fell on her cloud-dark hair, gave it a lining of sparkling silver. The snowflakes were like stars in her hair.
A sudden impulse took complete control of my body and propelled me toward her, and my hands reached out and held her around her waist, and my lips said, “Mind if I skate with you?” And she turned her face to me and looked at me and I was bathed in the light of pure, joyful innocence and beauty and loveliness which made me catch my breath and made my heart strain against my chest.
And together, we skated around for an eternity which passed in an instant.
Gloriously tired, we then sat on a snow bank, talking and watching others skate. Playfully, I picked up some snow and threw it on her, adding more stars to her hair.
Then it was time to go. I walked with her to her house, and as I parted from her, I said, “I will call you.”
I did not.
The next day, my family physician informed me that all my test reports had come in and I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at a very advanced stage. I had just three to six months to live. That was when I decided to go in for cryonics and here I am.
***
She shut the screen and looked up at the Cryo Corp representative.
“He has a way with words, doesn’t he?” she said. “I like him, I will take him.”
“I am sure he will make you a good sex partner,” the Cryo Corp rep went into his sales pitch. “With her looks, she does need to buy a sex partner,” he thought. “She couldn’t get one any other way.”
“How long will the thaw take?”
“I am starting it right now,” he replied. “It will take two hours.”
She thought for a while, then remembered something. “What of his cancer?”
“That has already been radiated out.”
“And the time chip?”
“Installed in his brain, set for the standard three years. It will shut down all his life signs at the end of that period.”
“What if I get tired of him before the three years are done?”
“Just call us and we will shut him down sooner. Just remember one thing. There are no refunds.”
She assimilated all the information.
“I am glad that the cryos have been classified as nonpersons in spite of the vociferous protests from the humanitarians,” she said.
“Oh, these new regulations were inevitable,” he said. “With our existing over-population crisis, who would want to unleash more people into the world?”
The End
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July 26th, 2024 at 2:53 am
Wild ending!