Willomina put a hand to her chest. The gesture seemed as old-fashioned as her name, and definitely out of place in a cryonics company. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Surely your mother told you.”
“Jodi’s mother passed away several years ago,” Harry said. “I don’t think she knew about this either.”
“Oh dear,” Willomina said again.
She stepped around the packing box fort to make her way to a file cabinet. The cabinet was locked. Willomina took a key from around her neck and unlocked it, opened the second file drawer, and took out a large file pocket.
“I’m sure your father put down your mother as next of kin,” Willomina said. She rummaged through the folder, found a slim manila file and opened it. She flipped to a page in the back, then nodded her head. “Yes, here it is. Next of kin-Rachel Carnahan. Relation… oh.” Willomina paused. “Ex-wife. How unusual.”
She spent a few more minutes looking through the file. Jodi stood next to Harry, arms wrapped around herself, and waited.
Now that she was here, Jodi was less sure about pulling the plug on her father. It was one thing to think about it miles away with anger to fuel her decision. It was something else again when faced with the reality of Willomina and her old-fashioned concern.
“Well,” Willomina finally said. “Your mother is listed not only as next of kin, but also co-beneficiary of his trust. You say she passed away?”
Jodi nodded.
“Were you appointed her executrix?” Willomina asked.
Jodi frowned. That sounded official. “I don’t understand.”
“The executrix of her estate, dear. Were you appointed executrix by the court?”
“We didn’t have anything. When she died, it was just her and me. No lawyers or courts.” Jodi felt small, like she’d felt when it first hit her she was alone in the world. “It was just us.”
“Oh, dear.”
Willomina took off her glasses. They hung off a chain around her neck, cushioned against her ample breasts.
“Well, I’m no expert at this, but I’d say your mother had quite a lot, actually, when she died. You might need to see a lawyer after all, dear.”
Another person telling her to get a lawyer. “And pay him with what?” Jodi asked, frustrated with the whole thing. “I don’t have any money!”
“That’s not exactly true.” Willomina took something else out of the file. “I can give you a copy of the trust document. Have your attorney contact us, and let us know what arrangements you’ll like made for your father.”
Jodi waited while Willomina made the copies. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To know?
But it wasn’t all she wanted.
“Can I see him?” Jodi asked, her voice soft, barely audible over the sound of the copier.
Willomina frowned at her. “You can’t really see him, dear. Our tanks don’t have viewing windows. We’ve always thought it was better if the family remembered their loved ones the way they were. It can be upsetting to see someone after they’ve been preserved.”
“But that’s just it. I never met him. I don’t have any memories of him.”
“You never…”
For a minute Jodi thought Willomina was going to say “oh dear” again, but she didn’t. Instead she reached into the folder and pulled out a video cassette tape.
“Then I think it’s about time you met your father, don’t you?”
The viewing room, as Willomina called it, was a small, private theater with four rows of plush seats and a screen only a little bigger than some of the new flat- screen televisions Jodi saw at the mall. Jodi sat alone in a seat in the back row. She’d asked Harry to stay with her, but he said she should meet her father by herself for the first time.
“Next viewing, I’m right there,” he said, and he’d gone out the door with Willomina, leaving Jodi alone with a remote control.
She took a deep breath of stale air. Heart pounding, she pushed
The screen came alive with a shot of the Cryonomics logo, the same one Jodi had seen on the brochure, followed by a simple white on black title page with her father’s name-Andrew Sommersby.
And then there he was.
Jodi was amazed that he looked so young. On screen, he looked little older than Artemus Owens. Shouldn’t a father be old?
Andrew Sommersby had Jodi’s straight black hair, her thin face, and the same cleft in her chin boys had always teased her about. He had deep circles under his eyes, and his skin had a pallor to it. Jodi remembered what she’d read about cryonics-everyone who elected to undergo this process had an incurable illness. Her father had recorded this tape when he knew he was dying.
“Hello,” the Andrew on the tape said. “I’m Andrew Sommersby. I’m told I have to leave a video record of my wishes just in case someone wants to challenge my election to have myself cryonically preserved. So here’s the official part.”
He looked down at something, probably a printed form, and read what sounded like a canned statement. Kind of like how Jodi had recited the Pledge of Allegiance in school. She’d said it so many times the words lost their meaning.
“Now, that’s over,” Andrew said. He looked back up at the camera. “I can’t imagine anyone challenging my wishes. Rosie-”
Jodi’s breath caught in her throat. Her mother’s nickname had been Rosie.
“-you don’t even know I’m ill, do you, sweetheart?”
Andrew sighed on tape. It was such a forlorn sound, Jodi felt her chest grow tight.
“I know you’ll never see this, but I want to explain a few things to you. Probably more for you than me, but you know how I am. Belt and suspenders, you used to say. Belt and suspenders. That’s probably what this is all about, when you get right down to it. Belt and suspenders in the age of technology.”
On screen Andrew coughed, a raspy, painful sound. He paused to take a drink of water.
“I wish you could see the future as I see it, Rosie dear, but that was another thing we disagreed on. You always saw the technology of the future as fiction. I saw it as science waiting to happen. Just think of it. All the things we read about, all the things we grew up watching on television together-they’re all just waiting to be invented! Can’t you feel it? Don’t you want to experience that? See it take shape and form and substance? I know I do, but then again, I’ve always been the dreamer too. Odd combination, a dreamer who’s a belt and suspenders guy. But I don’t deny I’m an odd duck in a world full of swans.
“I hope you’re happy in your life. I’ve done what you asked when we divorced. I’ve stayed away from you. I’ve tried to send you money, but you always send it back. You were a proud woman. Independent as hell, as passionate as a man could ever want.”
Jodi felt her cheeks blush. She wondered if she should watch any more of the tape. She almost felt like she was reading a love letter not meant for her. But her father’s next words took her breath away.
“I’ve stayed away from our daughter too, like you asked me. It’s the hardest thing I’ve even done, and there have been many times I’ve watched her and wanted so desperately to walk up to her and say ‘Hello, I’m your father,’ but I didn’t. I wanted to be a part of her life. I admit a part of me hates you for taking that away from me, but that’s how much I love you. You have always been the love of my life. My only regret-
Jodi felt tears prick at her eyes again. On screen, Andrew held his hands out wide.
“If I can’t have that,” he said, “what have I done all this for? I’ve amassed a fortune thanks to a bit of ingenuity and good luck, but without living to see my grandchildren, what really have I done?”
Andrew rubbed at his face with one unsteady hand. It took him a minute before he looked back at the camera.
“So here, in my own words, are my wishes. I believe the technology will exist one day, maybe one day soon, to revive me and cure me of the cancer that’s invaded my bones. I wish to live to see that day. I want to be around to buy my grandchild a balloon in the park, even if he never knows it was his grandpa, and maybe ride in a car that floats above the ground. I want to see my daughter grow into an old woman, see her happy and healthy and loved as much as I loved my Rosie. And if that’s not enough of a last will and testament, I don’t know what is.”
The camera held on Andrew’s face for a moment, and then the screen went black.
Jodi put her head in her hands and cried.
The new apartment was twice the size of Jodi’s old place. She missed Harry’s techno music and his dirty dishes in the sink. He still came over at least once a week, and they ordered half-and-half pizza for old time’s sake. Tonight Harry brought it with him, along with a six-pack of imported beer.
“We’re celebrating,” he said, hugging Jodi after he put the pizza on her new dining room table.
“It was just an A,” she said.
“An A in psychology,” Harry said. “When did you ever get an A in any ‘ology’ class?”
Never. Science had never been her strong suit, but she’d been unusually motivated the last six months. She had the rest of the year to go before she had to declare a major, but she was seriously leaning toward some sort of bachelor of science degree. She might even go to law school. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
“Picked up your mail,” Harry said, dropping it next to the pizza box. The latest issue of
These days Jodi read everything she could about life sciences, particularly any advances in nanotechnology. The people at the Institute for Cryonics told her the best chance for revival of cryonically preserved people was in the area of nanotechnology. Science fiction meets science fact. Given what she knew about her parents, that was about the best way to describe her life.
She’d taken Willomina’s advice. She’d left Cryonomics and made an appointment with a lawyer specializing in trusts, shown him the document Willomina had given her, and let him earn his $300 an hour figuring out a way to keep her father in his tank and let her have something of a life for herself.
Jodi’s lawyer had earned every bit of his hourly fee. Andrew Sommersby had been transferred to The Institute for Cryonic Research and Studies in southern California, a non-profit foundation, where he was still happily frozen as he wished. Jodi had enrolled in college and kissed Hot Dog on a Stick goodbye.
Harry opened two beers and handed one to Jodi. “What shall we toast to?” he asked.
Clinking bottles to an A seemed kind of lame. Even if it was an A in psychology.
