The Ups and Downs of Being Dead (22 page)

Half an hour later, they cut over three blocks to the New
Amsterdam and its gaudy Disney marquee. And then they dashed across the street
to the New Victory for some steamy drama.

By midnight, overlapping stories and blaring music had
Robert’s head pulsing like an alien’s brain in a cheesy sci-fi movie.

“Can we go someplace quiet where everyone’s not shouting to
the back of the house?”

“How about Sardi’s? I heard that’s where all the cool people
hang out after a show.”

“Exactly,” Robert said. “And that’s why we’re not going.”

He found a nice, dimly-lit bar with few patrons. As he went
through the motion of slumping onto a banquette, Suzanne slipped into the booth
across from him.

Propping her elbows on the table, she said, “What a shame we
can’t order a glass of wine.”

“Or a double scotch.”

Lounging back, Robert took a moment to enjoy the quiet.

“So, let me get this straight,” he said. “The matriarch of
the southern family murdered the Lion King because he was planning to rob a
bank with his neighbor, who was having an affair with the anorexic teenager.”

The lilt of Suzanne’s laugh caused a flutter inside Robert.

“Why, Ro-but,” she said, using the same southern accent as
the woman in the play at the Shubert, “Ah do buh-lieve you enjoyed yourself
this evenin’.”

Oddly, she was right.

The instructions were simple. Anyone attending the December
meeting of the Cryonics Center temps was to show up at the Sky Club at LaGuardia
airport on the First. There, they would get more specific details on where the
meeting was being held, and at what time.

Inside the luxurious lounge, the comfortable leather chairs,
tastefully positioned for privacy, dazzled Suzanne. Glossy mahogany trim added
a touch of color to the modern décor.

“I can’t believe I’m actually in here,” she whispered, as if
she expected someone to eject her from the premises at any minute. “I tried to
peek in the door of the first-class lounge in Madison once, but I couldn’t see
anything.”

She wove through the lounge, past living passengers waiting
for flights, to check out the baskets of snacks strategically placed.

“All we got was a tiny bag of pretzels.” She swung around to
a sideboard. “And look at all the fruit! Is all this free?”

Robert nodded.

“What about at the bar?”

“Sorry. You have to pay for your drinks.”

Suzanne was pouring over the newspapers from all over the
world when Robert spotted a small group of people gathered in a back corner.
They chatted, laughed, nodded. It looked like a reception only no one had a
cocktail.

“Come on,” he said, holding an arm out for Suzanne. “Let’s
see if Maggie’s here.”

Sam spotted Robert first and broke away from the group to
bustle over.

“Robert!” he said, extending his hand. His eyes were on
Suzanne as he said, “Good to see you.”

“And you,” Robert said. “This is Suzanne Davis.”

After a slight bow of the head, Sam introduced himself. “I
wasn’t aware we’d gotten another new member.”

“I’m not one of you,” Suzanne told him. “Robert and I met by
accident.”

“Har, har,” Robert mumbled.

A majorly obese man waddled up next to Sam, holding out a
hand toward Robert for another ineffectual handshake. Again, his eyes were on
Suzanne.

“Wally Birnbaum, patient number sixty-eight,” he said. “I
had a BMW dealership in Passaic. Had a massive coronary just like my wife said
I would.”

He patted his belly to lay the blame.

Robert introduced himself and Suzanne. The moment he
mentioned Audrey’s clothing stores, Wally hooted.

“What kind of car did you drive, Robert?”

For a moment, he considered lying, but then admitted that
he’d driven a Mercedes.

“Well, you can thank me for that,” Wally said with a smile.
“With all the money my wife spent in your stores, I’m sure I paid for it.”

More people arrived; more introductions were made. Each
time, the temp gave their name and what number they were in the cryonics
process. Robert realized they were establishing the pecking order of who would
get thawed out when.

According to the administrators at the Cryonics Center, the
last people to be preserved would be the first ones revived. It had to do with
improved technology. As time went on, the preservation process would become
more sophisticated, more exacting. So basically, the last ones to be frozen
would be the easiest to thaw back out.

“Hey, Randy,” Sam asked one of the newly arrived. “What
happened Sunday?”

“Oh, man!” Randy made a gesture of rubbing a hand over his
bald head. “I was standing right next to Quomo when he told Pennington to throw
that pass to Williams. The Packers were already up by fourteen. They should
have gone for the field goal.”

“When I saw Pennington drop back to throw,” another man
commented, “I thought Quomo had lost his mind. So did the guys at ESPN.”

Robert listened politely, nodding and smiling. From what he
gathered, Randy had stood on the sidelines with the Green Bay Packers coach the
whole game. After the lengthy, and boring analysis of the game, one of the
other men turned to Robert.

“So, Atlanta. Guess you’re a Falcon’s fan.”

“Not really,” Robert said. “I never had much time to watch
football.”

Over the din of conversation, Robert could hear Asa Walker
regaling another group about some golf tournament he had attended that fall.

The man to Robert’s left chuckled. “It’s a good thing Asa’s
dead. Can you imagine him on the sidelines of a tournament, bellowing at the
top of his lungs like that?”

“He’s quite a character,” Robert agreed.

“So what was your handicap?”

Robert told the man he’d never learned to play golf, and
everyone around him suddenly fell silent as though he’d just admitted to being
a child molester.

Sam finally broke the silence. “Just as well. At least you
don’t understand the torture of having all this free time and not being able to
play.”

If Asa had arrived from the center, then Maggie must be
around somewhere, too. Robert was about to break away from the sports jocks
when an old gentleman with only a few remaining wisps of hair on the crown of
his head eased into the huddle. He extended a hand to Robert and introduced himself.

“Stuart Greyson,” he said, “patient number one. It’s a
pleasure to meet you, Robert. I’ll be introducing you at the meeting. We
usually bring new members up to the podium to say a few words, tell us your
interests, hobbies, obsessions. It gives us all an idea of what you might like
to do now that you’re free.”

He smiled, then turned to address them all.

“The meeting is at the Carlisle Hotel on the Upper East
Side. Our meeting committee did a fantastic job of locating our venue for
December, particularly since it’s a Tuesday. They found a Christmas party
scheduled in the Trianon Suite at seven o’clock tonight.”

Before each meeting, a committee arrived at the city chosen
during the previous meeting. According to Maggie, the committee searched hotels
for a first-class event being hosted on the First, the day of their meetings.
Once a venue was found, the temps held their gathering a couple hours before
hand, so they could enjoy the accommodations instead of sitting in some gloomy,
empty ballroom. A party at the Carlisle was definitely top notch.

“Be sure to check out the three-bedroom apartment in the
tower while you’re there,” Stuart told them. “It takes up the whole top floor
of the hotel. There are breathtaking views of Central Park as well as
Manhattan.

“Just remember we start at four o’clock. Don’t be late. The
wait staff will be bustling around making last-minute preparations by six
o’clock, so we want to be gone by then.”

Once Stuart moved on to the next group of temps, Robert
said, “Wow! He’s the first man to be preserved?”

“No,” Sam said. “He’s just the first member from the
Cryonics Center. Technically, the first patient was a man named Bedford, from
California, but he was just frozen, without any preservatives. There were a few
attempts at freezing bodies in the mid-sixties, but they were blocked by
families or hospitals. Even ministers. You can imagine how hard it was to
believe someone could be held in suspended animation. Hell, no one even owned a
computer back then.

“Another group tried to freeze a woman who had already been
embalmed, but obviously, that was a no-go.

“This Bedford fellow was a doctor who volunteered to be
frozen. He also agreed to spend his final days in a nursing home. The perfusion
was done right there, then the man was popped into the back of someone’s
station wagon and taken to a garage to be frozen. When the homeowner’s wife
found out there was a stiff in her freezer she went ballistic.”

A few of the group chuckled. Suzanne was aghast, but Robert
wasn’t sure if it was over the primitive process, or the frozen guy in the
chest freezer.

“I guess it was a real circus for a while,” Sam continued,
but eventually they got Bedford into a Dewar in Phoenix, and that’s where he
still is. I met him at an open house at their facility. He even sat in on a
couple classes with me at Cal Tech, but he started getting nervous about his
chances for a successful reanimation and dropped out.”

“What
are
his
chances of being brought back?” Robert asked.

“It’s anybody’s guess,” Sam said. “But the procedures were
so antiquated, even years later when Stuart was preserved. It will all come
down to what can be retrieved from his brain.”

“Come on, Sam,” Randy said. “Admit it. Bedford’s brain is
going to be pudding when he gets thawed out. There won’t be anything to
retrieve.”

Robert finally found Maggie sitting in a corner with another
woman who was wringing her hands in despair. He and Suzanne stood discreetly to
the side as Maggie assured the woman she was not at fault for something.

“I hope you’re right,” the woman told Maggie. “I’ll never
forgive myself if I caused that baby’s death.”

The woman glanced up, and when she saw Robert and Suzanne,
she hopped to her feet.

“It was an accident,” Maggie said. “You just happened to be
there to witness it.”

Relieved, the woman thanked Maggie and bustled away without
even introducing herself.

“Hello, kiddos,” Maggie said when the woman was gone. “Have
you been enjoying the sights?”

“Who was that?” Robert asked.

“Oh, that’s Brenda Fields. She hangs out with her son and
daughter-in-law most of the time. She caught the daughter-in-law cheating on
her son, and got a bit miffed. For the past two months, she’s been trying to
harass the wife. Finally, a couple days ago, the wife took a tumble down the
stairs. Brenda thinks she caused the fall. And to make matters worse, the wife
miscarried on her way to the emergency room. Brenda didn’t know she was
pregnant. I don’t think any of them did.”

“How awful,” Suzanne said.

“She’s feeling incredibly guilty about the whole thing.”

“Do you think she did cause the wife to fall?” Suzanne
asked.

“I really doubt it,” Maggie said. “But even if she did,
what’s the point in making her feel bad? Nothing can be done now.”

“Famous last words,” Robert mumbled.

An enormous Christmas tree draped in gold ribbon and adorned
with red satin balls stood in the lobby of the Carlisle. Maggie and Suzanne
passed right through the gold ropes cordoning off the tree to examine miniature
replicas of antique teddy bears and toy trains that dotted the tree here and
there.

And once inside the Trianon Suite, she and Suzanne fluttered
about, gushing over the white poinsettia centerpieces, and swags of garland
over an art deco fireplace.

Promptly at four o’clock, Stuart Greyson stepped in front of
the fireplace and asked everyone to take a seat.

When he thanked everyone for interrupting their busy
schedules to attend, the group tittered with chuckles. Then Stuart introduced
Robert as their seventy-second member, and motioned for him to come up front to
say a few words.

Robert had been anguishing over this moment since they’d
left the airport’s executive lounge. What did he have to say to these total
strangers? If he were addressing buyers, he’d be able to talk for hours about
fashion trends. Or if it was potential investors, he could extol the many
benefits of joining the Audrey’s team. But what did he have in common with
these people other than the fact they were all dead.

Rising to his feet, Robert waved off Stuart’s invitation to
come up front. Instead, he gave a brief nod to the crowd before quickly taking
his seat again.

Thankfully, Stuart let him off the hook.

“I know someone who never passes up a chance to speak,”
Stuart said. “Sam Parker, come on up here and tell us what’s happening in the
world of technology.”

Sam trotted to the front of the room, planting his feet
apart as though he intended to stay a while.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “We are living in an
intelligence explosion.” He paused to scan faces.

“Oh, boy,” Maggie muttered. “We’re not just getting an
update, we’re getting the whole Magilla.”

“Ten years from now, when I’m standing up here,” Sam
continued, “we’ll all laugh at what we thought were technological
breakthroughs, because everything will be so much
more
advanced. The rate of change we are experiencing in science,
medicine and technology is not linear—one, two, three, four. No, my friends. We
are seeing ever more rapid changes at exponential rates—two, four, eight,
sixteen.

“Our first computers filled rooms, now they fit in our
pockets and purses. And many scientists say that in the next twenty-five years,
a computer will fit inside a blood cell.