AlterWorld

"We’ve been in business since 1960s in the US alone. Now we’re offering a large spectrum of cryonics services in dozens of our centers all over the world. It’s our fifth year worldwide, so you’ve come at the right moment to enjoy our a

"Excuse me," I butted into her pitch. "Could you please tell me about the procedure? And, er, about your price range."

"Absolutely. Once the contract is signed and the payment clears our bank, we fit you with a sensor which feeds your data to our ER team. If your condition becomes critical, the team will remain on standby twenty-four-seven. Once you’re pronounced legally deceased, they begin the cryonics procedure in order to-"

"Wait a sec," I faltered. "What do you mean, legally deceased? Are you going to wait till I die?"

The manager gave me an understanding nod. She’d obviously heard the question hundreds of times. "We can’t freeze you alive, can we? Legally, it would be murder. So first we need to obtain a proper death certificate. Following that, our team of experts will perfuse a client’s tissues with our cryoprotective solution and begin freezing his body before transporting it to our cooldown facility where it is stored under liquid hydrogen in an individual cryostat container. The body remains there for the duration of the contract - usually, until the arrival of a resuscitation technology."

She beamed, delivering the good news, as if they’d already brought me back to life. I wasn’t so impressed, though. The prospects of me waiting for myself to die didn’t sound like a promise of immortality.

"So how much would it be in total?"

The girl produced the price list. Zeroes flickered before my eyes.

"Our a

She saw my raised eyebrows and hurried to add, "There is an option to only have your head stored for as little as twenty-five thousand. And for just six thousand we can preserve your DNA sample which will allow the science of the future to grow your clone. Our analysts believe that it might preserve part of your personality."

I stared at her. What was she saying? All they seemed to be doing was milking terminal patients for their last buck. Having said that, wasn’t official medicine doing the same? Their job was making more money, not helping us recover.

"I… I’ll think about it."

I stood up, ending her rosy pitch of incredible generosity. For a brief moment, the girl lost her sales drive and looked straight at me as she offered me her hand. "I have a fu

"Thanks," I said, looking for her name tag. "Thank you… Olga. I’ll be all right."

I gave her another smile as I let her soft palm linger in my hand. Wistfully I released my fingers, turned round and strode out of reception. Interesting girl. A dark horse. Yesterday I’d have probably tried to get to know her better. You never know, it might have worked. But today… damn this cancer!

In any case, I had to look into it further. At least this cryonics stuff gave you half a chance. I couldn’t afford to dismiss any ray of hope, however ephemeral. The alternatives were too bleak to even start to contemplate. Had I had enough money, I’d have risked it: you couldn’t take your wallet with you, anyway. But I’d never been lucky enough to see so much dough, let alone possess it.

For the last two years, I’d finally gotten my act together. I’d prized my ass off the computer chair and began looking around, learning to mix and fit in while keeping my eyes on the ball. Fu

Anyway. Back to the drawing board. I needed money. My immediate goal was to leave Mom with as much as I could. After Dad had died in that wretched car accident, she’d been in a bad way, what with her heart and leg problems. She was a brick, was Mom - she’d even moved into Granddad’s old country house not far from Moscow. If you believed her, the country air did her good. But her miserable disability pension came nowhere near my recent assistance. Without my help, Mom would soon be living hand to mouth: clutching a few pe

My ultimate goal, however, was to find enough money for this cryonics thing. I needed a chance. I could always lie down and die if it came to that. Now where would I get hold of a hundred thousand dollar bills? Could I maybe rip off a get-rich-quick scammer or corrupt functionary? I had no qualms whatsoever about doing so, but even then you had to agree that moneybags weren’t that easy to approach these days. Without proper training, you couldn’t really penetrate their guarded residences. I was likely to get busted before I even started and spend the last weeks of my life behind bars - if their bodyguards didn’t put me to rest in a local graveyard before that.

Next. Could I win some money in a lottery? Or in a game? Chances were minimal but you can’t win if you don’t try. I made a mental note to set aside a few hundred for a casino. Let’s see if Lady Luck had the hots for me.

Now. What else? Where could you find lots of money in one place? A bank sounded about right. So should I maybe go around shoving scribbled notes to unsuspecting tellers, Put all the money in a bag—I have a gun? Wonder if they're trained to deal with that sort of emergency? Bullshit. So they’ll offer you a few handfuls of whatever they happen to have in the till, big deal. Even if you manage to escape unscathed, you’ll have to rinse and repeat the whole procedure a couple dozen times.

Besides, Mom would end up taking the money back to them. Which was where they’d fleece her for every pe

The teller sent me directly to the manager. He was the one dealing with large loans and he turned out to be a lively gray-haired gentleman with a definite Jewish air about him. He listened to me rather skeptically and began leafing through my paperwork, pouting his lips. He must have come to a decision as he nodded.

"Very well, young man. We seem to have finally left the credit crisis behind us. The President is all for supporting small businesses and we’d be stupid not to listen to him. In your case, I believe I can see some potential. If you keep applying your head as you’ve been applying your hands, you might get something out of it in the end. A hundred thousand is a bit too tall, don’t you think? You just won’t need it so we’re not giving it to you. But twenty… say, thirty thousand - I think we could manage that. So let’s see what we can expect back from it."