Cryonic by Travis Bradberry Read Free Book Online

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    One by one, the butterflies emerged from their cocoons. Each one looked around the room, confused and sedated. Then they smiled when they saw me, and started chatting. Barry was the first to wake up. Boy, did he have some stories to tell. Barry was the frail gentleman I’d thought was in his seventies. Turns out he was only in his early sixties when he died. Barry was the only child of a heavy-drinking oil tycoon who succumbed to alcoholism at an early age. That left Barry a trust fund baby, and he sure would’ve made Papa proud. Every moment of his life was spent drinking, doing drugs, and chasing women. He had died just twelve years ago. Barry signed up for cryonics when alcoholism had taken its toll and he knew he didn’t have much time left. Medicine at the time Barry was dying could treat alcoholism easily. Organ farms produced petri dish livers and whatever you needed replaced, unless you were an alcoholic. A conservative movement in the government banned organ transplants for alcoholics. So, Barry found a loophole. The research at the time suggested they’d be reanimating cryonics in a hundred years’ time. Barry wasshocked to find himself alive and rebuilt a little more than a decade after kicking the bucket.
    Elliott awoke next. It wasn’t five minutes before he and Barry were carrying on like a couple of frat boys. Elliott was an investment banker born in nineteen eighty-one. He’d amassed great wealth by running a large brokerage house through what he and Barry called “the greatest bull market in history” during the “roaring twenties.” Elliott was so into cryonics that he had set aside investments carefully selected to mature in the long term. He figured once he was reanimated, and people knew cryonics worked, they’d be signing up for it in droves. So, Elliott planned on building a cryonic estate planning business. He’d help people build an investment portfolio that would serve their needs from the great beyond. Upon reanimation, his clients would be far wealthier than when they died. Elliott didn’t die of a heart attack. By the time he died in twenty thirty-five, heart attacks had been all but eradicated by non-invasive laser cleaning of the circulatory system. So, he was a glutton most of his adult life with little consequence. Elliott did have trouble sleeping, though, and he was pretty sure he kicked the bucket by drowning in a pool while on sleeping pills. At least that’s the last thing he remembered.
    By the time Janet joined the fray, we had a regular party going. The youngest of the group, Janet died in twenty thirty-one at the age of thirty-eight. She’d worked as a chief nursing officer for a hospital system, and had signed up for cryonics because she wanted to see the future of medicine. Janet was visibly disappointed when I told them it was twenty forty-seven. I suppose the people at Restora who figured reanimation would be possible at the end of the century didn’t count on the Chinese military developing the technology half a century sooner.
    Janet was such a nice lady—a real spark plug. She got over her disappointment pretty quickly. And why shouldn’t she? She had a second chance at life and didn’t know she was a prisoner of the Chinese military. The three of them were all so happy to be alive. I couldn’t spoil that. When they asked about the world, I told them I’d just been reanimated myself and didn’t know much. I figured they’d have plenty of time for despair. Plus, I hated being a buzz kill. Lord knows Alex was plenty good at that. He’d be in soon enough to set them straight.
    Or so I thought. No one came back to our room until people started getting sick. Elliott came down with it first. It was that same evening, a little while after we’d all fallen asleep. Elliott was moaning so loudly we all woke up. He said his arms and legs ached terribly. The machines near the bed