LiveLater, Inc.

“FED UP WITH THE PRESENT?”

The question was elegant in its simplicity and design, laid out in bold eight-inch lettering, white Helvetica against a black background.

The overhead lights flickered and the subway car rocked as it rounded a bend in the tracks. The passengers swayed in unison. Daniel Feldman mouthed the words silently as he read and then nodded to himself. He looked around. Morning rush hour. Men and women on their way to the office, black and grey suited, ties in acceptably bland shades of blue and red. One nearly indistinguishable from the other, standing shoulder to shoulder on their way to Eastside Station. Daniel watched the flickering images playing on the insides of his fellow riders’ vidgoggles, their eyes moving rapidly bottom to top as they scrolled through their social media feeds. Nobody spoke over the clattering of metal wheels on aging tracks.

“Yes,” Daniel muttered under his breath in response to the query. “Yes, I am.”

The digital screen proceeded through its programmed rotation. An ad for the new Triple King Supreme from Burger Palace came with a health warning about the potential for coronary ailments and possible mood swings. A plea from a charity for a pledge of twenty dollars a month to save the final eight percent of the Amazon rainforest played over the image of a forlorn chimpanzee wandering through the denuded and still-smoldering wasteland. The next one caught Daniel’s attention. In the same font and color scheme:

“WHY NOT TRY THE FUTURE?”

Followed in smaller type centered along the bottom of the screen by the words “LiveLater Cryogenics Incorporated" and a web address. Daniel reached toward his temple and touched the arm of his vidgoggles. With the flick of his eyes, he booted up his browser and the neural uplink and set up a free consultation for later that day.

******

“It really is that simple! You tell us when you want to be reanimated and we take care of the rest!"

Howard Newman spoke from behind a podium in a small conference room at the back of a retail space on the third floor of an aging and unfashionable shopping mall on 23^rd Avenue by the Westside Freeway. He was sweating despite the coolness of the airconditioned room. The beige paint on the walls was peeling along the seams where someone had applied the color directly over the previous tenant's wallpaper. A foam acoustic ceiling tile had partially detached and was hanging on by the most tenuous of holds.

Howard was coming to the end of the LiveLater introductory sales pitch. There would be time for questions and answers following the slide presentation, he had assured his audience. In addition to being notably sweaty, Howard’s face had grown a sort of shade of maroon. He was middle aged and thirty pounds overweight and had an uneven haircut. Daniel felt badly for him.

The conference room was a sea of empty chairs. The only other audience member was a woman with large round vidgoggles and short brown hair. She had introduced herself as Susan, but something about the way that she said it made Daniel suspect that it was an alias. Howard delivered the memorized script to the audience of two. The final slide of the presentation read: “The End.”

Howard put down his clicker. He walked toward the back wall and turned on the overhead lights in the room and then turned back towards the mostly empty room.

“Any questions?” Howard asked eagerly. His head swiveled back and forth between Daniel and Susan. The conference room fell quiet except for the whirring of the wall mounted air conditioner.

“Well then, I suppose I’ve done such a good job with the—”

Daniel cleared his throat audibly and started to raise his hand. He wasn’t sure what the proper etiquette was.

“Yes, Daniel?” Howard called as he stood on his toes and pointed with his presentation clicker, which he had picked back up from the podium.

“Thank you, Howard."

"Call me Howie. My mother does.” He paused momentarily. “Well, she did, at least."

"Really great job with the presentation, Howie.” Howard smiled and his cheeks turned a slightly darker shade of maroon. “Very informative. I couldn’t help but notice, though, that in the pictures you just showed us the facilities looked quite—” Daniel looked around at the walls and ceilings, the scuffed podium.

“Modern?” Howard interjected.

“I was going to say, ‘different.’”

Howard looked down at the floor and then shifted his weight from one foot to the other, rocking slightly as he did. “We've had to downsize a bit,” he said, lifting his eyes slowly but not meeting Daniel’s. “Hard times of late, I'm afraid to say. Had to cut down on our overhead and whatnot. I suppose I should update the slideshow to reflect the changes.” Howard looked up and, mustering his most optimistic, power-of-positive-thinking tone of voice, he continued. “Rest assured, though, that the cryogenics unit is very high-tech and state of the art! All the latest gadgets and doodads. Did I mention that we have a seventy-eight percent survival rate? That meets or exceeds the safety standards on both the federal and state level! It’s on the side of the freeway, the cryogenics unit. Route 223? Just outside of Dunesbury?”

Daniel gave no indication that he had ever driven Route 223 either to or from Dunesbury, a place that sounded only vaguely familiar.

“You’ve probably gone past it a hundred times and not even known that it was there.” Howard continued. “Any who, we’ve been operating that facility for coming up on forty years. If you decide to sign up with us, I will personally give you a full tour!”

Susan fidgeted in her chair, which creaked loudly as she did.

“Yes, sir. Forty years since our first passengers went into the deep freeze.” He paused. “We call our clients ‘passengers,’ by the way. I started the company with my brother, Walter. He’s kicking around here somewhere. Grey haired guy. He's quite a bit older than me now. I keep telling him he should have retired by—”

“Sorry to interrupt, Howie.”

“Not at all.”

“So how far into the future could I actually go. How long can you keep people frozen?”

“Great question, Dan. Can I call you Dan?” Howard didn’t wait for Daniel to answer before continuing. “We don’t know exactly, but the engineers tell us it could be as much as a thousand years," he said, really laying the effect on the last three words to heighten the dramatic tension. The lights in the conference room flicked off and on. Howard glanced at the ceiling. “As long as we have electricity for that long, of course.” He tugged at his collar for effect and put on a canned comedic look meant to convey that he was in deep trouble. “If the power goes off, well—” He smiled, expecting a belly laugh from the audience that didn’t come.

Howard cleared his throat. “And what, may I ask, brings you here today, Daniel? What got you interested in LiveLater Inc.?”

Daniel sat back in his chair and shrugged slightly. “I don’t know, really. There was something about your advertisement. The one on the subway. It spoke to me.”

“Ah, yes,” Howard said. "We've gotten some good traction with that campaign. Lots of new inquiries." Daniel glanced around again at the nearly empty room as Howard's tone shifted to something that would convey a certain amount of compassionate concern. “Generalized anxiety about the state of the world, I take it. Let me ask you something, Dan. Does the news cycle feel overwhelming or depressing? Pandemics, hunger, war, or maybe the end of your favorite streaming series got you down? Does the normality of everything feel oppressive? Wonder why we can’t seem to talk to each other, let alone achieve lasting peace and harmony?” Howard was speaking once again from memorized script. “We see this a lot. It’s a very common reason our clients give for wanting to use our services.”

Daniel spoke. “A little bit of peace and quiet would be nice. Any idea when that might come around?”

Howard paused and considered the statement. Then he said: “Peace is a bit, well, it’s a bit tricky.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, Dan. A bit tricky, indeed. Mostly resolvable, though, with a good contract. It would have to be very specific, I imagine. The contract, that is. Are we talking about no major wars? Does a flare up in violence between two neighboring villages that results in an elderly man being wounded in the leg with a gardening tool count? You can see how complicated this gets." Daniel nodded along. "If we went with the precise definition of the term, I’m afraid that we might really test that thousand-year limit. And I don’t think you’d be very happy with that!” Howard chuckled. “Unless you want to live to meet your great, great, great, great, great, great…” he inhaled loudly. “You get the point. Grandchildren. We do have one potential client who has expressed a desire to do just that. Of course, there is the minor drawback of waking up and having everyone you know be dead.”

“You make a good point,” Daniel said, and then, because he didn’t know what to say next, he asked: “What would you want to be unfrozen for, Howie?”

“Another good question, Dan! And I guess I should fess up at this point. I’m not only the founder of LiveLater Incorporated. I’m also a client! The first passenger, as a matter of fact! Walter took me out of the cryogenics just a couple of weeks ago. I’m still, err, getting used to things, as you can probably tell.” Howard motioned toward the videocast machine he had just been using.

“I wanted to see my daughter all grown up. That’s why I did it.” His tone shifted into something wistful. “I was ill. I was going to miss her whole life. I’m trying to track her down, my daughter, but she changed her name and I’m having a heck of a time finding her. Her name’s Linda. She’s forty-six by now, which would make her just a little bit older than me.” He considered his words. “Older than me, my own daughter. What a world!”

Susan’s hand slowly went up. Daniel and Howard both turned their heads in her direction.

“Yes, Susan?” Howard said.

The woman started to speak, her voice quivering as she did.

“My name isn’t Susan.” She said shyly. “It’s Linda.”

******

“Now arriving at Eastside Station.” The voice of the subway operator startled Daniel, disrupting the ImagineApp neural feed to his vidgoggles and prompting an error message. “Doors will open on the right side of the car.” Daniel felt the forward pull on his body as the conductor applied the brakes. He was once again surrounded by his fellow passengers who were now maneuvering toward the exit doors.

Daniel shuddered. He stood and took his place toward the back of the scrum.

”I think I’ll stick with the present,” he muttered to himself. With a left glance of his eyes, Daniel reopened the website of LiveLater Inc. and cancelled his appointment.