The Future We Wish We Had

The receptionist took Jodi into a conference room with dark walls, thick burgundy pile carpet, and the same indirect lighting. A huge, dark wood table with a top so polished it looked mirrored dominated the room. High-back, black leather chairs surrounded the table. Jodi felt like she was sinking in black tar when she sat down.

The room was probably meant to soothe clients with an impression of old money, like in some of the movies Jodi had seen, but all it did was remind her of the little chapel in the hospital where her mother had died. Only here the room smelled like stale coffee instead of burning candles.

Mr. Owens didn’t keep her waiting long. Jodi had been expecting someone old. Weren’t old guys the only ones who got their names on the letterhead and sat around in offices like this? Artemus Owens, Jr., looked like he was thirty-maybe-and he wasn’t even wearing a tie. He had dark hair and kind eyes and looked like he could have been a manager at one of the stores in the mall, only nicer. He even shook her hand like she was a grownup.

“I understand you’re here about the Cryonomics bankruptcy,” he said as he sat down. “What can I do for you?”

“About this letter.” Jodi pushed the letter toward him across the glassy surface of the conference table. “I don’t get it. Does this mean my father’s alive?”

Mr. Owens glanced at the letter, looked up at her. “Well, not exactly ‘alive’ in the accepted definition of the word. He’s been stored at the Cryonomics facility for the last ten years.”

Stored? That made her father-her father; god, how odd it was to even think that she actually had a father-sound like some unwanted piece of furniture locked away in a storage shed.

“I still don’t get it. What does ‘stored’ mean?”

Mr. Owens tented his fingers on the table in front of him. “You don’t know about any of this, do you?”

Jodi shook her head. At least his voice was kind. He didn’t make her feel like one of her high school teachers when she’d given a wrong answer in class. “I didn’t even know I had a father,” she said. Jodi’s mom had never mentioned him, not that she wanted to share that gem with a relative stranger.

Mr. Owens pushed a button on the phone and asked someone named Shirley to bring in two bottles of water. “And one of those Cryonomics brochures we have in the file.

“OK, it goes like this,” Mr. Owens said to Jodi. “Cryonics is the process of preserving people who are dying so that at some unknown time in the future they can be defrosted when technology exists to cure whatever’s wrong with them. Some call it science, others call it desperation. Cryonomics made a business out of it, although not very successfully, as it turned out. The specifics about the process and the company are in the brochure Shirley’s bringing in.”

Jodi actually knew a little bit about cryonics. She and Harry had Googled Cryonomics, and in turn cryonics, after he’d come home from work.

After she’d whacked him on the arm when he wouldn’t stop laughing.

After he’d realized the letter was serious.

“That’s…” Jodi shook her head. “That’s just science fiction. I mean, it was in one of those old television shows my mom used to watch. Nobody really believes that stuff, do they?”

“At the time Cryonomics filed for bankruptcy, they listed twenty-three individuals who’d submitted to the procedure. Your father was one of them.”

Twenty-three frozen corpsicles. And here Jodi thought religious cultists were gullible. Her father had done this? Why hadn’t her mother ever told her? Had she even known?

“I didn’t know,” Jodi said in a small voice.

The conference room door opened, and one of the women from the elevator brought in the water and a thick booklet. Mr. Owens pushed one of the bottles and the booklet across the table to Jodi along with his letter. She started to thank the secretary, but the woman had left the conference room as silently as she came.

“Do you have an attorney?” Mr. Owens asked her. His voice was still kind.

Jodi shook her head. “Do I need one?”

Not that she could afford to hire an attorney. Not on what she made frying corn dogs.

“You might want to look into it. I represent Cryonomics, so I can’t represent you. The reason I sent you this letter is to advise you that your father’s body, for lack of a better word, the trust fund he set up for its continuing care, and the machinery he’s stored in are considered assets. The bankruptcy court views Cryonomics as a high-tech mortuary, essentially. The bankruptcy trustee is going to require Cryonomics to liquidate its assets. Do you understand what that means?”

Jodi understood maybe one word in three. All of a sudden she felt like the dumbest kid in the class.

“Just tell me what I’m supposed to do,” she said.

Whether she’d do it or not… well, there was something to be said for not having a parent around-a living parent, anyway-to tell her what to do.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” he said. “That’s what you need an attorney for, to help you figure it out. But I will tell you this. Cryonomics is going out of business. Cryonomics has been storing your father’s body, but they’re not going to be able to do that anymore.”

He took a long drink out of his water bottle. Jodi wondered if he did that on purpose, to give her a chance to figure out what he meant. He didn’t have to. She got it. This time she knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“You’re going to have to figure it out on your own. What to do with your father. Before the court decides for you.”

“You mean they’d let him thaw?” Harry said. He shivered, only partly for effect. “That’s just disgusting.”

Jodi and Harry sat on the couch devouring a half-and-half pizza, Jodi’s side black olive and mushrooms, Harry’s side sausage and onions. They usually only had pizza once a month, but tonight made twice in one week. Jodi felt the emotional upset of finding out your father was a popsicle in a pressure-controlled tank was a sufficient reason for splurging.

The Cryonomics brochure lay open on the coffee table next to the pizza box. She’d studied it until she thought her brain might explode.

“I don’t know what to do,” Jodi said. “I mean, it’s my father, right? I can’t just let him die.”

“Technically, you know, he’s already dead.”

“He didn’t think so.”

“How can you know that?”

She pointed at the brochure. “Kind of obvious, Captain Oblivious. He must have bought into this whole idea.”

It still sounded like a scam to her. Paying someone to store your body in deep freeze after you died just on the off chance that you might be cured someday. Not that California wasn’t chock full of odd cults and scam artists ready to prey on the gullible, but this had to top everything Jodi had ever heard about.

Then there was that whole paying thing. As far as Jodi knew, her father had never paid one cent to help support her. Help pay her way through college. Help her get the hell out of Hot Dog on a Stick.

And another nasty thought-did he even know she existed?

How could she decide what to do with a complete stranger, even if they were related by blood? Not every father was a father. Hers certainly wasn’t. Did she really owe him any of this angsting over his future? If he even had a future?

“You could just walk away,” Harry said, like he’d read her thoughts.

Harry was weird like that sometimes, like he was the sorta-kinda brother she’d never had. Maybe when you didn’t have a family, you created one.

“But then there’s all that money,” Harry said, voicing the other nasty thought Jodi had been trying to ignore.

Trust fund, Mr. Owens had said.

Jodi might not know legal stuff, but she knew that trust fund meant money. Her father had set up a trust fund to keep himself frozen for as long as it took. That must mean a lot of money.

“I don’t think I could walk away from all that money if it was me,” Harry said.

Harry didn’t walk away from much, actually, but Jodi loved him anyway.

“It might not be anything,” Jodi said. “The company is going bankrupt. That means they’re not making any money. Maybe he didn’t leave enough.”

Harry ate another bite of pizza. “Only one way to find out,” he said around a mouthful of sausage.

Jodi put her piece of pizza back down in the box. “I’m not going back to that lawyer.” Mr. Owens might have been an okay guy, but she still felt like he’d talked down to her at the end, and she wasn’t about to go back.

“So don’t,” Harry said. “Listen. He told you the company listed the trust as an asset, right? Well, if it’s listed, that means it’s got to be part of the court’s records. All that stuff’s public record.”

Harry had dated a reporter for the local newspaper a few months ago. The guy had tried to impress Harry with how important his job was, but it turned out all he did was report births, deaths, court filings, and an occasional human interest story so dull it usually put Harry to sleep. But Harry had learned more about how the court system worked than Jodi ever would. What would it hurt to look? At least then she’d have some idea what, besides her father the popsicle, was at stake.

“You feel like driving me up there?” she asked.

Harry patted her on the arm. “That’s my good girl,” he said, and finished off the last of his slice of pizza.

Jodi just looked at hers.

My good girl.

Wasn’t that what a father was supposed to say?

The bankruptcy court was in one of the crumbling old buildings downtown, one complete with marble columns covered in decades of pigeon droppings, not that far from the law offices of Billingsly, Wendham & Owens. Jodi felt a little more self-assured this time venturing into the world populated by lawyers. Maybe because she had Harry with her, and he’d actually worn what he called his straight clothes-khaki slacks, a navy silk polo shirt, and freshly polished loafers. Nothing like blending in with the natives.

Jodi let Harry guide her through the maze of room after room of files and paperwork. Harry explained that most of the documents were on computer, but there was a per-page charge for even looking at the files online. This was supposed to save the court staff from wasting time dealing with paper files and the public. But Harry just had to flirt with one of the clerks, a pretty girl he had no interest in, to get her to bring the appropriate file for his “sister” to look at.

“Just one of my many useful bartending skills,” Harry whispered to Jodi after the clerk left with a little giggle.

It took a while for them to find the right document in the huge Cryonomics bankruptcy file. If Mr. Owens was getting paid by the word, he was making a mint on this case.