ON ICE

The line of people stretched all the way around the block, under huge sun hats, baseball caps, updated do-rags and those new-fangled sun helmets Lululemon was turning out by the thousands, made to resemble bespoke animal heads. The crowds were no surprise. Who didn’t want to be frozen for future thawing in a far better (and cooler) future? The enthusiasm all started with those neighborhood cold plunges that had replaced old-fashioned swimming holes and pools in 2027.

What the hell, being frozen (“cryosized”) was free, wasn’t it? Well, unless management made their quota before they got to you and you had to start all over. Would she make the cut this time, Brie wondered as she mopped her forehead with another microfiber wipe from the ambulatory vending machine that looked like a snowman with a mock carrot for a nose. Weird. There was such a thing as carrying a theme too far. This was the third time this year she had lined up with no success. Would this time be the charm?

Brie stared at the parade of ice sculptures along the walkway leading up to the main entrance of the new BOHO CRYO headquarters –at the entrance of which was a gigantic mouth of a whale that you had to sort of pole vault through to get inside. It was a pretty impressive display. The sculptures were of Greek gods, gigantic sea creatures, and even one of Elvis in his rockabilly period. Of course, it must have taken a stunning amount of smart power to keep them frozen solid in the 100-plus temps that were everyday now in USIA territory 4. Scorching temperatures had been everyday since 2030. She had such an urge to reach out and run her fingers over the shiny ice surfaces of the sculptures, but the blinking sign said DON’T TOUCH in English, Braille, and two other AI-generated languages she didn’t recognize. And the penalty, she’d heard, was having your hands frozen like popsicles at several degrees below zero until they were pretty much useless. Or maybe it was just hearsay. 

The tiny screen in the chip embedded in Brie’s left wrist was also blinking (blue for moderately important). As though anyone but she knew what she considered important? She pulled her sleeve over the screen, silently telling it to go away. 

The line was barely moving, and her feet in her old worn-out pair of throwback earth shoes were not the best choice for a super hot day like this (it felt like a 9/1/2 on a scale of 1 to 10), She could feel the intense heat scorching the soles of her feet. Her palms were sweating. Had they turned off the cooling currents in the pavement again? Bad timing. 

“ You want to rest your bones? This may take a while.” It was a guy, beanpole tall and thin, dressed all in black with old-fashioned Beats headphones resting on his shoulders. Except for the headphones, he reminded Brie of those pictures of Abraham Lincoln she’d seen (minus the top hat) in her homeschooling days. Tall guy was unfolding a blue and white checkered instant chair from his pocket and setting it up beside her. He spread his hands as if to say “ta da!” He must have been a good six feet to her five-foot-two. 

“Sit down. You look beat. I”m Declan.”

“Thanks. I’m Brie. Like the cheese.” She sat down and gave him a tentative smile. Well, they had one thing in common. They both were willing to cut short the current life they had to arrive at a hopefully better life in a (supposedly) better future via Boho Cryo Cryotherapy. 

Brie caught her reflection in the slanted window overhead. Was anyone wearing neon pink pigtails anymore? Or ripped cargo shorts? At the tender age of 30? Was that too much of a throwback? 

At least the Nirvana tee would never be an embarrassment, would it?

“Nice to meet you, Brie.” Tall guy bent down a bit to give her a high five. “ I dig the tee. I had all their albums, even “Bleach”. I had to sell it when I was broke, really broke and out of work during that second wave of human workforce cutbacks in 2026. I really miss it, the album.”

“Wow. Me too. I mean, I had all 3 of their albums, vinyl copies. “ Brie gave him a closer look. Maybe they had a few more things in common. “Then I lost my job in data curation and moved, and they got lost in the shuffle. A lot of stuff got lost. You know how it goes.”  

“Lost in the shuffle,....” Declan looked as though he was having a painful flashback for a brief moment. Then he snapped to attention as her wrist blinked. Yellow this time.

“You should answer that, Brie.. Could be important.”

“Ah, it can wait. What brought you here? Are you just optimizing or is there some other reason?”

“:Maybe it’s the feeling of …” Declan, the lawn chair magician, pulled a second packet from his back pocket, turning it into another piece of minimalist sidewalk furniture. This one was all black and shiny like patent leather. 

“I have that feeling of being lost in the shuffle, all the time these days.” Declan gave her a thoughtful look from his six-foot advantage. “ And I just hit the big three-oh. It felt like time to start over. How about you?” 

The line was slowly starting to inch forward. Brie wanted desperately to sink her feet into a bucket of ice; her head was starting to spin. Had she eaten breakfast?”

 “Yep, I’ve lost track of what the shuffle is all about, like you. I mean sometimes I get to the end of the day, and I feel like, what am I here for, what did I actually accomplish today? Honest, Declan, the answer is usually not much. “ 

Brie tried a small smile. Did she just sound full of self-pity? After all, she had her allotment, her 3-room unit on a nice uni-row with a few real old-fashioned trees (that cost extra), and it was (away from all those damned mega data stations that kept getting bigger and bigger). And she had no dependents unless you counted her ball python “ Apep (named for that colossal serpent in mythology that personified chaos and darkness. Believed to constantly threaten to swallow the sun god Ra. Well, that didn't sound like a cheerful factoid about her, did it?

“Oh, and I’m looking at thirty, too. “

Declan gave her a long, serious look as though he was about to tell her her dog had died or her identity had been stolen. “You know, they’ll erase your past, all of it,” he said.

She could tell he was trying to sound nonchalant, not wanting to sound too much like a busybody. But maybe he was wondering (as she was) if there was a double homicide or armed robbery and not just a worldweariness in her past that had brought her here.

. “Does that bother you? Even a little bit? Giving up your past?.”

Declan. She liked the name. So he was Irish, too. Another commonality. He was a bit of a stringbean, but she decided she liked his curly brown hair and his calm demeanor. He had the air of a college professor, like in the old days when real college professors taught real classes to real people in real buildings, not in temporary pop-ups. He certainly didn’t have the air of a murderer, but then what murderer did? He looked like a professional. But a professional what?

“My past is past. I’m glad to get rid of it. How about you?” He gave his own wrist chip a quick glance, shook his head, and then turned to give her that serious Abraham Lincoln face again. 

 “Are you sure there are no kidnappings, terrorist bombings, espionage you’re trying to escape? Maybe that’s why your robeeper is trying to get your attention? Don’t worry/ I’m not the district police. Or even cryo security. “

Brie looked down at her wrist. Shit. It was another message from her departed parents. They had been frozen five years ago but had left a trove of messages to be delivered to her every week or so. It was meant to be comforting, to keep the bond alive, but it actually felt creepy. She marked it received, not read. Along with the other ten.

“No, no criminal here, cross my not-black heart. How about you?”

The line was actually moving forward, not creeping anymore. Declan took her arm and helped her up. Brie shook out both legs as he gathered, collapsed and pocketed both chairs. Her ankles felt swollen. The heat must have gotten to a 10.

“ Same. If I were a terrorist or a kidnapper, would I be in this line? Actually, I’m just an AI auditor. Yeah, one of those!”

“What are your plans after you go through the process here?”

After I am post-frozen? You’ll think I’m cray cray, but I’ve always wanted to become an aeroponic farmer, and maybe raise backyard chickens . I am so tired of that lab meat. Maybe even have a kid, a human kid, not a transhuman one. I had my eggs frozen a few years ago just in case. How about you?”

“Farming? Brie, We’re star-crossed. My grandparents were real farmers back in the early 2000s, real hands-in-the-dirt farmers with pigs and cows, way before lab meat and stem cell steaks.”

“Hey, maybe we could do it together; we could be a farmer and his wife couple. You remember that painting American Gothic?”

Brie was starting to feel even warmer, but in a good way. “Ok, you’re not a farmer or a terrorist. What do you do? “

“IT Platform architect. Yeah, one of those. “

“We’re getting close to the mouth of the whale, Declan. Maybe we’ll get in before the cutoff. So much for dirt farming“.

Declan nodded with a frown and grabbed hold of Brie’s wrist. 

“Brie. Did you read the contract before you signed it? I know, it's 30 pages long, but you should know what was in it.”

Brie shook her head. Now he was beginning to sound like a fussy professor or a bureaucratic jerk of a clerk. And all the time she had hoped he might be something more fun, a little more rock and roll. Like a musician, a tattoo artist or a mild-mannered smuggler. 

“Who actually reads those things? Don’t we all just skim them and sign on the dotted line?

“You could have agreed to something that will come back to bite you, Brie. Something you hadn’t planned on.”

“What I’m trying to say is you don’t get something you want without getting something you don’t want. Not with these powers that be. It's just a warning.”

“A warning? Maybe it's a little late to do any good. I signed the contract, Declan. We're here. Anyway, my conscience is clear. Mostly.’ I’ve killed a few pet turtles and a lot of innocent ferns. But no humans and no intelligent robots. Cross my heart.”

“Did you read your messages?”

“Oh, those. They’re just from my parents. My frozen parents. I get them all the time.”

“I mean the latest one.”

Brie looked down at her wrist. The tiny screen was blinking magenta. That meant critical. Not incoming messages. 

Critical in what way? From what or who?

Declan reached into his pocket and this time instead of a chair, he handed her a palm-sized AI-tablet . There on the screen was the contract she had signed. Almost five years ago.

“It’s a reminder. “Click on page 20A, Paragraph 3,. It says your parents will be defrosted and given a new life of their choosing (from the choices available) after year 5, but there is a fee attached. A condition, you might say.”

See you initialed right here.”

“I don’t remember any of this. Read it to me. Hey, how did you get access to my information anyway? I thought you were an architect.”

“That’s my day job. This is part of national service for the territory.”

“In exchange for their new lives, it says, you will surrender yours, with no option to freeze and return. Is that what you wanted? It means no future, no farming. No chickens, no kids...”

“Who are you, really?” Brie felt her heart beating faster and her palms sweating. What was happening?

Her robotbeeper was flashing red. It said, “I love you, Brie. Fresh or frozen. Come farm with me,”

“We didn’t make the cut.” Brie noticed the mouth of the whale beginning to close and the annoying synth music starting up that meant, That’s all, folks.  

 We didn't make the cut." Brie couldn’t tell if she was happy or sad. 

"Do you think your folks really wanted to come back??? Did their messages suggest that?

"Mmm, no. Now that you ask"

"And did you really want to take the final plunge and give up this life? I mean, cryotherapy is only 98.3% effective. And we’re only 30.”

"Mmm, no…””

"Brie, what if we didn’t optimize? What if we spent the rest of the years we have left .. together?”

The question hung in the air. Not like a question at all but like a statement of fact. Like an irrefutable fact. As solid as these ice sculptures around them.

No, more solid than that!.

Declan took her arm. And pointed at her beeper. “I meant it, Brie. Come join me.”

“But what happens to my folks?”

“You can apply for another donor to rescue your parents. One of those kidnappers or terrorists who is really at the end of his or her rope. Someone who really has nothing to live for. That's not us!”

 What was more magical than being frozen and defrosted? Finding love in line. 

It was time to turn her back on the mouth of the fake whale and find a better warmer human mouth. Time to say “I do.” and Brie did. And Declan did. They celebrated with a warm hug, not a cold plunge.

And the line of people, all wedding guests this time, wound around the block, (or rather around the beach). Not a single ice sculpture in sight. 

And the band played “Lithium” and “Heart-shaped Box”.