Frozen(ish)

**Part 2 in the Pajamalist™ Investigation series**

The elevator at CryoCore descended with the enthusiasm of a narcoleptic sloth. Seventeen floors down, I adjusted my business-casual disguise: khaki skirt bought from a thrift store that smelled of mothballs and the kind of regret usually reserved for aging boy band members, blazer with shoulder pads wide enough to land small aircraft, and a name badge proclaiming "Dr. Harmony Bliss, Workplace Morale Architecture & Synergistic Paradigm Facilitation."

I'd crafted the title by picking random words from a LinkedIn influencer's profile.

For the record, I do not have a doctorate in anything except perhaps making questionable life choices.

The security guard had barely glanced at my credentials before waving me through. CryoCore might freeze people for kicks, but their hiring protocols were straight from the 1980s.

My nametag flickered. This morning, I'd retrofitted it with an RFID cloner that quietly vacuumed up door codes while I wandered around looking concerned about everyone's feelings. The device came from an Estonian hacker whose day job involved designing casino slot machines for retirees—work he considered "less ethically compromising" than most tech gigs.

The doors parted to reveal a holographic receptionist who materialized at a desk fabricated from what appeared to be solid light.

"Welcome to CryoCore, where tomorrow is on ice!" Her smile contained too many teeth. "I'm Delores, your digital liaison to the future! May I scan your biometrics for a more personalized experience?"

"No thank you," I clutched my purse containing seventeen protein bars, a soft pretzel rolled around caffeine gum, and three burner phones. "I'm Dr. Bliss, here for the HR consultation."

Delores's face glitched momentarily, her smile stretching beyond human anatomical possibilities. "Wonderful! You've been reassigned. Report to Sub-Level 4 for your new position as Division Head of Cryo-Animal Ethical Viability Studies."

Wait. What?

"There must be a mistake," I stammered. "I specialize in human resources, not... animals."

"CryoCore values adaptability!" Delores chirped. "Your credentials in transgenic neural pathway mapping were quite impressive!"

My what now?

I'd pulled random technical terms from a bioscience journal for my fake resume. Apparently, I'd accidentally qualified myself for something far beyond "making employees feel valued while we secretly freeze them."

"Of course," I nodded sagely. "The transgenic... pathways. My specialty."

Delores beamed. "Wonderful! Also, your predecessor disappeared under mysterious circumstances that legal assures me were completely unrelated to the job! Here is a map to your new office!"

My "office" resembled a veterinary clinic designed by someone whose only reference was sci-fi movies with terrible endings. Glass walls separated examination areas filled with equipment I couldn't name. Screens displayed vital signs for creatures I couldn't see.

A man in a lab coat spotted me and rushed over, his badge identifying him as Dr. Pritchard Zloff. His hair resembled Albert Einstein's after a particularly rough night, and dark circles under his eyes suggested he hadn't slept since the Obama administration.

"Dr. Bliss! Thank the cryogenic gods you're here." He pumped my hand vigorously. "We're having a situation with Specimen K9-X13. He's refusing the neural firmware update again."

"How inconsiderate of him," I replied, trying to sound like someone who knew what a neural firmware update entailed.

Dr. Zloff nodded emphatically. "He's demonstrated remarkable cognition post-enhancement, but his attitude..." He lowered his voice. "The translator chip gives him quite the vocabulary."

"The translator—"

Before I could finish, a commotion erupted from a side room. A lab assistant burst through the door, yelping as a tiny brown blur attached to her ankle.

"He's loose again!" she wailed.

The blur detached, skittered across the polished floor, and skidded to a stop in front of me. One eye—the left—stared up with unmistakable contempt. The right socket contained what appeared to be a tiny camera lens. A thin metallic collar encircled his neck, blinking with multicolored lights.

A Chihuahua. They put me in charge of a cyborg Chihuahua.

"Specimen K9-X13," Dr. Zloff sighed, "meet your new handler."

The dog growled, the collar lights flashing. A mechanical voice emanated from it: "Me llamo SPECK, pendejo. ¡Mierda! I smell pretzel in your bag."

By noon, I'd learned several important things:

1. Speck belonged to deceased arms dealer Ruben Calderón, who'd invested millions in canine cognitive enhancement before his yacht mysteriously exploded.

2. CryoCore had acquired Speck as part of their new venture: CryoPods for Pets, allowing wealthy clients to preserve their beloved companions alongside themselves for future resurrection.

3. He swears in Spanish, It’s his preferred language for outrage.

4. Speck absolutely refused to participate.

"I'm not getting in the popsicle box," the translator barked as he paced my office. "I've seen what happens to the humans. They go in babbling about bonuses and come out colder than corporate empathy.”

I scribbled notes while pretending to review his file. "What happens to them, exactly?"

Speck's mechanical voice dropped to a whisper. "They replace them with robots. Bad robots. They smile wrong."

Great. The only witness to corporate crimes against humanity is six pounds of fury with a God complex.

Dr. Zloff returned with a stack of forms. "Your daily inspection schedule. Each cryogenic unit must be checked hourly." He tapped the top sheet. "And don't forget mandatory Cryo-Emotional Neutrality Training at three."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Our therapist specializes in helping staff reconcile their feelings about cryo-freezing coworkers and pretending it’s a wellness initiative,” he chirped "Also, you'll need to wear this." He handed me a wristband labeled "MOOD MONITOR 3000."

It immediately beeped: "TODAY YOU ARE: ANXIOUS DETERMINATION WITH NOTES OF DECEPTION."

Dr. Zloff nodded sympathetically. "We all feel that way on Tuesdays."

After he left, I examined the lab schematics on my tablet. According to the floor plans, CryoCore had five subterranean levels, though my security clearance only granted access to three.

"There's a secret floor," Speck growled. "Employees go down, popsicles come up."

"How do you know?"

He tapped his mechanical eye with his paw. "I see infrared. Body heat signatures disappear on the elevator, then reappear colder. Much colder."

I crouched to his level. "Speck, I need your help. I'm not really Dr. Bliss. I'm—"

"An undercover reporter who writes about crime in her pajamas." He sniffed. "I read your blog. The Tillinghast case was sloppy work."

My jaw dropped. "How—"

"WiFi connection in my brain chip. Also, you smell like someone who eats dinner over a laptop."

Rude, but oddly accurate.

"I need to find evidence," I whispered. "Will you help me?"

Speck considered this, then peed on my fake credentials. "That's a yes. But I expect payment in pretzel form."

Cryo-Emotional Neutrality Training took place in a room that could only be described as "minimalist hellscape." Fifteen employees sat in ergonomic chairs that adjusted automatically to their anxiety levels. Mine kept trying to fold me into the fetal position.

Our therapist, a robot named CARL-9 (Cryogenic Adjustment and Resilience Liaison), wore a cardigan and glasses despite having no eyes. He never blinked, creating the disconcerting impression of a mannequin possessed by the spirit of Mr. Rogers.

"Welcome to emotional processing," CARL-9 intoned. "Today we discuss healthy responses to accidental thawing incidents."

An employee raised her hand. "Is this about what happened on Level 5?"

CARL-9's head rotated 180 degrees toward her. "There is no Level 5, Jennifer. Your perception requires adjustment."

Jennifer smiled vacantly. "Of course. My mistake."

"Remember," CARL-9 continued, "if you discover a colleague has been replaced with Management 2.0, the appropriate emotion is gratitude. Upgraded colleagues require no birthdays, vacations, or oxygen."

The employees nodded in unison. My chair tried desperately to curl me into a ball.

After the session, I followed the janitorial staff through their rounds. The head custodian, Bruno, pushed his cart with the weary resignation of someone who'd seen things no amount of industrial-strength cleaner could remove.

"These new management types," he muttered, restocking his cart with biohazard bags. "They don't even use the bathrooms anymore. Just stand in closets recharging."

"Recharging?" I prompted.

Bruno glanced around, then tapped his nose. "Not human. The real ones are downstairs, on ice." He pulled a sticky note from his pocket. "Found this inside Freezer Unit 37. Third one this month."

The note read: "Still conscious. This is hell. P.S. If found, tell my wife I hate her meatloaf."

Bingo.

Bruno sighed. "Corporate says they're practical jokes. I say nobody jokes about meatloaf."

As we approached the restricted elevator, Bruno "accidentally" swiped his keycard, triggering an error. While the system reset, my RFID cloner captured the override code.

"Clumsy me," he winked. "Better not go down there tonight around midnight. Maintenance does temperature checks. Nobody around. Would be terrible if someone saw something they shouldn't."

Back in my office, I found Speck standing on a stack of manuals, examining specimen slides.

"These cells aren't human," he growled. "Synthetic organic compound. They're growing replacement skin."

I examined the slide. "For the robots replacing the frozen employees?"

"Affirmative." His mechanical eye whirred. "Also, someone's watching your office. Camera in the air vent."

I casually moved to my desk, pretending to review files while scanning for surveillance. Sure enough, a tiny lens gleamed from behind the ventilation grate.

"We need a distraction," I whispered.

He trotted to the center of the room, sat down, and began howling at a pitch that made my fillings vibrate. The collar translator amplified his voice to eardrum-rupturing levels: "EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY! SYSTEM PURGE INITIATED! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!"

Alarms blared. Sprinklers activated. Within seconds, the lab descended into chaos.

"That should buy us twenty minutes," Speck barked over the cacophony. "They'll blame it on my neural implant glitching. Again."

In the confusion, I slipped out with Speck tucked into my purse, heading for the restricted elevator. My cloned access card worked, revealing a button labeled simply "B5" – a floor that officially didn't exist.

The doors opened to a cavernous chamber filled with rows of sleek metallic pods, each displaying a name and date. Frost covered the observation windows, but I could make out human forms inside. A massive screen displayed vital signs for each occupant.

"Told you," Speck growled. "Popsicle people."

A separate area contained smaller units labeled "CryoPods for Pets – PROTOTYPE." Marketing materials on the wall showed smiling families alongside their frozen companions: "Preserve Your Best Friend Forever!"

"That's where they wanted to put me," Speck's mechanical voice trembled. "Forever is a long time to be cold."

I photographed everything, downloading data from an unattended terminal. According to the files, CryoCore wasn't preserving people for the future – they were harvesting neural patterns while keeping the original bodies in stasis. Those patterns powered their Management 2.0 replicas upstairs.

As I copied files, Speck growled softly. "Another heat signature just blinked onto my map. Not maintenance."

I frowned. "Could be a returning tech."

"Could be trouble. The air's too still."

"We need to—"

¡Carajo! That’s her!" Speck hissed. "I smell ethically compromised perfume."

"What are you doing here, Dr. Bliss?"

I spun around to find a woman I'd never seen before. Her badge read "Carmen Valdez – Ethics Compliance."

"I could ask you the same question," I countered.

Carmen smiled. "I know you're not Dr. Harmony Bliss. There is no Dr. Bliss. I've done my research ELODIE!" She tapped her badge. "I'm not Carmen Valdez either."

She peeled back her ID badge to reveal a second one beneath: Neural Oversight Division – Tier 1 Surveillance.

"I'm here to make sure CryoCore’s secrets stay buried. That includes you, Ms. Sharp."

Well, shit.

"Then who are you?"

"Someone very interested in why Elodie Sharp is snooping around my facility with an enhanced Chihuahua."

My blood turned colder than the cryopods. "How do you—"

"Your pajama blog has quite the following in certain circles." She stepped closer. "The question is: what are we going to do about your unauthorized investigation?"

"¡Hija de puta! Touch her and I’ll reprogram your kidneys." Speck growled, translator forgotten as he bared his teeth.

Carmen laughed. "Your little friend can't help you now. Perhaps you'd like to experience cryosleep firsthand? We have an opening in Pod 714."

"ALL HAIL THE HYPNOTOAD!"

The intercom system blasted the phrase, startling Carmen. Speck had somehow connected his neural implant to the building's communication network.

Carmen reached for an alarm panel. I lunged for her security badge, ripping it from her jacket as Speck launched himself at her ankles with the precision of a furry missile.

"Run!" he barked, holding Carmen at bay through sheer napoleonic determination.

I dashed for the elevator, Carmen's access card clutched in my hand. As the doors closed, I glimpsed Speck disengaging and scampering toward an air duct.

Upstairs, chaos reigned. The sprinklers had soaked everything, and employees milled about in confusion. I slipped through the emergency exit, heart pounding.

I had the evidence but lost Speck in the process.

Outside, snow fell in thick sheets. A blizzard had rolled in during my underground adventure, blanketing CryoCore's campus in white. I trudged toward the parking lot, defeat weighing on me, tears welling in my eyes.

A snowdrift moved.

Speck emerged, shaking powder from his fur. "Took the scenic route," his translator chittered. " Pinche maintenance ducts."

I scooped him up, relief washing over me. "You magnificent tiny terror. I was so worried!"

"Save the sweet talk for your blog." He snuggled into my coat. "Did you get what you needed?"

I patted my pocket containing Carmen's security badge and my phone full of evidence. "Everything except answers about who she really is."

"Worry about that tomorrow." Speck yawned. "Today, we don't become popsicles. That's a win in my book."

Three days later, a snowstorm paralyzed the city. CryoCore initiated emergency protocols, activating their backup generators. Nobody noticed when their primary power mysteriously failed around midnight, causing a systematic temperature malfunction in the cryogenic chambers.

The defrosting process awakened thirty-seven employees who'd been reported as "resigned" over the past year. Their simultaneous emergence from the secret sublevel during CryoCore's "Future of Management" investor presentation created what company PR later described as "an unfortunate scheduling overlap."

It might have ended there—corporate money tends to freeze investigations faster than nitrogen—except someone had reprogrammed all the Management 2.0 replicas to respond to any question with "I'M DEFINITELY A REAL HUMAN WHO POOPS REGULARLY."

Even venture capitalists have limits to what they'll fund.

TRUE CRIME PAJAMA PARTY BLOG

🔍 FROZEN ASSETS, CORPORATE HIBERNATION & ROBOT REPLACEMENTS

By Elodie Sharp, Investigative Pajamalist™

Greetings, fellow insomniacs and truth-seekers! Pour yourself something caffeinated and settle in—this exposé will chill you more effectively than CryoCore's liquid nitrogen chambers.

For those who missed the breaking news: Yes, that biotech darling promising "revolutionary human preservation technology" was actually freezing inconvenient employees and replacing them with synthetic duplicates programmed for maximal productivity and minimal bathroom breaks.

Their defense? The employee handbook technically never prohibited "temporary cryogenic reassignment during performance improvement periods."

Legal experts remain divided on whether this constitutes wrongful termination or simply extremely cold suspension.

🧊 The Science Behind the Scam

CryoCore's actual technological breakthrough wasn't preservation—it was replication. Their "Management 2.0" program created convincing duplicates using harvested neural patterns from the original humans, who remained conscious inside their frozen prisons.

Former employees report experiencing what they describe as "the longest, coldest meeting that never ends." Several have developed unusual abilities, including advanced sudoku skills and the capacity to identify artificial sweeteners by smell.

Side effects also include "aggressive warmth-seeking behaviors." Seven ex-popsicles have relocated to Death Valley, where they reportedly wear parkas in 110-degree heat.

🐕 The Unlikely Hero

The whistleblower who cracked this case? A neurologically enhanced Chihuahua named Speck, whose testimony proved crucial in the federal investigation.

Speck has received multiple adoption offers from tech billionaires seeking a "compact security system with attitude," but has instead chosen to remain with me as what he calls my "journalistic integrity advisor."

He would like me to note that he prefers the title "Canine Investigative Specialist" on his business cards, which yes, he now has.

❄️ Corporate Fallout

CryoCore CEO Maxwell Prendergast insists he had "no knowledge" of the freezing program, despite maintaining an office at 52 degrees Fahrenheit and referring to lunch breaks as "temporary biological maintenance shutdowns."

The SEC has frozen the company's assets, creating what financial analysts call "meta-irony in the preservation sector."

🔮 What's Next for This Pajamalist™?

Have you heard of VitalSync? Its a meditation app that supposedly aligns your consciousness with successful people? Users report waking up with memories of vacations they never took and skills they never learned.

Three subscribers recently attempted to pilot helicopters despite having no training, each insisting they definitely remembered how to do this in someone else's body.

Speck says their server security is weaker than gas station coffee. We're already packing our investigation kit: pretzles, protein bars, and enough caffeine to power a small country.

Until next time, stay warm, stay wary, and keep your consciousness where it belongs—in your original body.

P.S. New Pajamalist™ merch just dropped: Pretty Fly (for a Cryo Spy) limited-edition tee—approved by one very judgmental cyber-Chihuahua. Quantities are scarcer than ethical HR practices at CryoCore, so grab yours before they go on ice.