Daikaijuzine

“We’re not freezing our baby!”

“Margaret, you’re being old-fashioned.” Chad guided his wife away from the Hologram TVs. She glanced back over her shoulder at the looped video display of a baby grabbing and stuffing a toy in its mouth. “Cryonic technology,” he continued, “has been approved by the FDA. There’s no danger.”

“No?” She squirmed free of her husband. “The FDA also approved Home Rhinoplaster, should we re-arrange your face?”

“Margaret, relax.” Chad gripped both her arms. “I’m just trying to open dialog here. To talk about decisions and purchases before I make them, like you wanted.” He let go of her arms, looked at his hands, and quickly tried to hide them behind his back. “Like Dr. Espinoza suggested. We’re just talking, OK?”

“Our shrink said to communicate, which also involves listening. But whatever,” she said. “Go ahead and talk.”

“Cryonics won’t damage, or re-arrange, a baby. It just puts them on pause for a bit.”

“Pause? Forget about freezer burn and other possible side effects, Chad, and explain why the hell you want to pause–”

“Freezer burn only happens when people don’t follow the instructions. Look!” Chad bounced away. “A new model! Amazing.” He stuck his head deep into a four-foot long semi-translucent box that somewhat resembled a coffin. “This one is huge!”

“Attention deficit, loss of memory, and emotional instability.” She waited but her husband did not respond. “These are all problems associated with casual cryonic freezing, you know.”

“What?” He pulled his head out of the box, glanced at his wife briefly, and then began flipping through the unit’s user manual. He stopped at the only page with a picture. “Lots of people who were never frozen have those problems. Look, family size! Hah! We could have up to three children. Forever!”

Shuffling over to an air conditioner box, Margaret supported the weight of her belly in one hand and sat slowly, using the other hand to guide her butt. She pulled a fat envelope out of her purse and snapped the edge repeatedly with her thumb. She cleared her throat. Her husband seemed not to notice.

“I think we need to talk about this,” she said, waving divorce papers in the air.

“Not today, honey,” said Chad. “We can only buy one thing per day. Your new rule, remember?”

What did he think she was holding? Brochure for an ionic juicer? She slapped the papers on her empty palm. Chad pushed random buttons on the freezer. “Don’t you want to watch them grow up?” she asked.

“We can’t watch him now.” He gestured to her belly. “Can we?”

“That is so different, Chad.” She unfolded the papers and flipped to the last page. Her lawyer’s name sat below a blank line. She sighed. Chad had already turned away, hypnotized by the freezer. She had a brief, horrid vision of her child coming home from a mandatory week with dad, remembering nothing.

Margaret dug out a pen and scribbled in an additional bullet point: _Thou shalt not freeze baby on custody days._

“Are you okay?”

She was crying. How had she not noticed her own tears? “I think so,” she said. Chad still showed no curiosity at all for the papers. She stuffed them back into the envelope. “This is stressful for me.”

“Oh,” he said. He rubbed her back aggressively, as if more rapid massage would force the stress out more quickly. “Well, of course we don’t have to do this freezer thing. Not if it gives you a backache! We’ll just kind of look at the units, okay?”

“Fine,” she said. Getting off her butt took tremendous effort this close to delivery, and though it annoyed her she accepted Chad’s help standing. “Doesn’t it scare you?”

“Oh, no. Not something tested like this! Think of the possibilities our parents didn’t have.” He released her. “People always say how they love babies ‘at that age’ and whatnot, as if it were a shame when they turned into vicious pre-teens. Look!” He opened the manual and flipped to a callout on page five. “It takes only three seconds to freeze with modern cryoprotectants, and fourteen seconds to completely thaw. We could freeze them when your mother calls!”

“Chad! That’s not–”

“Actually,” interrupted a salesman lingering within earshot, “PermInfant recommends freezing a maximum of once a day. But you can leave them in for as long as you want, as long as the time under cryonic freeze overlaps as much sleep-time as awake-time. You can’t simply use it during phone calls or overnight, you see. But it’s great for vacations.”

“Vacations! I hadn’t thought of that. Margaret, we could still take vacations! Have some romance, you know? Make more babies!”

“But isn’t there risk? I mean–”

“Our anniversary and the New Year, every year, in a different place! Oh boy! What about this model, honey?” Chad climbed in and seemed pleased at its comfort level, though he had to bend his knees to fit. “The newest model. Up to three children, and transparent!”

“Chad,” Margaret said, settling back onto the air conditioner box. “First of all, we only have one child on the way. Second, I really don’t think freezing a baby is a good idea at all.”

“Honey,” Chad got out of the freezer and stood there, eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose. When he took his hand away, his eyes sprang open. “Tulips!” he shouted. “You like tulips?”

“Huh?”

“Of course you do. But remember the time I bought you a potted tulip? You hated it, and you let it die.”

“But they only bloom once a year.”

“Right. Now imagine if you could freeze that flower whenever you aren’t looking at it, which is almost always. It would be in bloom almost forever! Babies are sort of like that.”

“Huh?”

“Am I right?”

“But you just bought me plastic flowers after that. You think we should just get a doll or something?”

“No! You’re twisting my words,” he said, sounding hurt.

“I think I’d like to look at my kid more than a damn flower.”

“Yes, of course, our child is not a flower.” Chad sat next to his wife and took her hand in his. “Think of our child! Think of his development and his feelings. Imagine if all the time you spent with him was quality time, and whenever you’re at work or busy or have adult things to do you could press a pause button. Then your baby would get _only_ quality time!”

“Well…” Did a working woman have enough quality time for her kids? Was there even an answer to that question? Margaret grew less determined, now, to fight back. Why bother? She hugged her purse, careful not to bend the papers inside.

“And they’d be much happier. And you’d never have to say things like ‘too bad they couldn’t stay this age’ or whatnot.”

“I guess, but–”

“And the opposite would also be true.”

“Huh?”

“Teens. We could freeze ourselves for their teen years and wake up after they became adults!”

Margaret laughed out loud. Just disappear when they need us most? Was he for real? But she said nothing. Her lawyer would take care of everything for her tomorrow.

Except for the money Chad managed to spend before that time, of course.

“Could we take this home today?” Chad asked the salesman.

“Oh yes. However, we don’t have cryoprotectants in stock. We’d have to ship those to you next week.”

“Cool.” Chad looked at Margaret. “Well?”

“Can we pay for the cryoprotectants after we actually receive them?”

“Honey,” said the saleman, “you can pay for all of it after you receive the cryoprotectants. It wouldn’t be fair to make you pay for a product you can’t enjoy yet.”

“Well then,” she said, patting her belly with one hand and clutching her purse with the other, “go ahead.”

“The family model?” He jumped to his feet and grinned.

“Why not?”

###

In just under ten minutes Chad filled out all the paperwork and purchased their PermInfant freezer. However, other shoppers had placed orders of all kinds that day, and the wait to actually have the freezer brought out to their EcoWagon would be almost an hour.

“Too bad they haven’t made freezer queues, yet,” Margaret mused. “We could just get frozen for an hour or two and not waste any time while our order was being prepared.”

“Don’t be silly. There’s lots of other shopping we need to do.”

Margaret cringed. How much of her money could he manage to spend before tomorrow? In just an hour, with his patented method of guerilla shopping, probably enough to hurt. Could she encourage him to keep it small?

“Maybe we should go easy on the purchases,” she said as they got to the register. “Or maybe think about the stuff we’re buying, you know?”

“Relax. These are on sale. And if we don’t buy enough of them, his outfits will get worn out long before he outgrows them.”

“Oh.” She watched him pass the plastic and resigned herself to accepting the purchases from here, while thinking desperately for a way out of looting every children’s store in the mall. “I guess he _will_ wear them out before he outgrows them.” An idea came to her. “But we won’t need bigger sizes for years! And we won’t need shoes at all, not for years. Or toothbrushes, or even spoons! This is great.”

“Yes. That’s right. Cryonics will save us time _and_ money.”

“Oh my god, diapers!” Margaret laughed out loud. “When they are frozen they won’t use any diapers at all. If we run out, we’ll just freeze them. Ha! And we’ll even have more time to do laundry, so we’ll need even less clothing,” she said.

Chad looked in their cart at the bags of infant clothing just purchased. Margaret slapped one of the bags with her hand.

“I guess we’re done shopping, huh?”

“Yeah… I guess we could return some of it, too.”

“Oh,” she said, trying not to look too pleased. “I could always come back later to return stuff.”

“No, I’ll return stuff now. Redundant stuff, you know? You’re pregnant, you should relax.” He pointed to the end of the aisle. “Wait over there by the receiving dock, okay?”

Margaret walked the short distance to the dock and waited. No bench. She watched shoppers walk by arm in arm, love radiating to and from each other. Why couldn’t her own marriage have a little more love and a little less radiation? _Soon_, she promised herself, _I’ll fix that soon enough._

She thought again about this whole thing, this freezing of babies, and her gut twisted up like a corkscrew. By the time Chad returned and the sales clerk met them, her water broke and she fell into her husband, clawing into his torso to keep her own body off the floor.

“Whoa, you okay?” he asked. The corkscrew became a piston, pounding her gut mercilessly. Margaret squeezed tears from her eyes and tried to speak but nothing came out but a wheezing breath of air. He looked down at the puddle gathered round their feet. “Oh god,” he shouted. “Hurry the hell up!”

Chad managed to get her into the passenger seat and quickly ran around to the driver side and took off. She had no idea whether the freezer or the clothing made it into the back. Suddenly they were flying down the highway weaving in and out of traffic.

“You just ran a red light,” observed Margaret.

“I know! Sorry. You okay? Oh god, I’m sorry.”

“Slow down–”

“You’re having a damn baby! I’m not slowing down!”

The light turned yellow ahead of them. Chad punched his foot down on the accelerator. Horns blared but soon faded far behind them.

“I’m divorcing you,” she told him.

“Shut up! What?” A car nearly pulled into the street in front of them but slammed on its brakes, its hood bouncing as they zipped by. “What?” Chad asked again, more gently this time.

“I got a lawyer. The paperwork is right here in my purse.”

“You didn’t want to talk about it?” he asked.

She sighed. “Waiting for you to listen is like watching a pot boil.”

The light turned red. Chad stopped and waited, silently, until it turned green again. He pulled forward slowly. Gently. From the corner of Margaret’s right eye the grill of a fuel truck flashed briefly. The truck had a red light, but seemed intent on getting through anyway.

Glass beads rained on her face like a blizzard of sleet, but she felt no pain, as if her mind detached from her body. Sort of like going under for her wisdom teeth. Or getting overly drunk as a teen. Or spinning too much and falling dizzied as a child. Or like the time, as a young girl, she had slipped near a pool and cracked her head on the side before sinking in. She nearly drowned. This felt exactly like that. Her eyes shut tightly, sound deadened to far-off echoes, and a feeling of peace embraced her.

She dreamed of her childhood bedroom the night of the pool accident. Lying in bed she watched a glow of light creep under the door. Mommy wanted her to sleep, but she wanted to stay awake. And daddy feared she might sleep forever. Beyond that door her parents were talking and clanging plates and arguing. She reached for the door but could not get out of bed. Could not move. Too tired. Too hurt. But she could hear them, sometimes enough to pick up a word or two.

She listened now, not quite remembering what happened, where she was, or how old she was, but intent on piecing together the puzzle. These voices were not her parents. She listened desperately for anyone familiar to her.

“Get moving,” a stranger commanded.

Sirens blew in slow motion, like foghorns.

Radio static choked on and off.

Wheels rolled on pavement.

Beeping.

“Not good,” another stranger muttered.

A car door slammed shut.

“…she’s pregnant…”

“…I don’t usually do caesareans in the field, but…”

“You have to do something,” she heard her husband say. It was very clearly Chad, close by and trying to help her. His voice cracked. _He’s going to snap_, thought Margaret. _Look out._

Margaret felt a pinch in her arm and she drifted away. She dreamed of the ocean: relaxing but loud, violent but peaceful. Her dream body walked the length of the beach, for hours, alone, before she recognized the sounds and smells of the city once again.

“Nothing more we can do. I’m sorry,” she heard a woman say.

“Freeze her?”

“We can’t bring her downtown now,” said the woman, “road’s closed.”

“…too late…”

“…freezer burn…”

Wheels rolled on pavement again.

“That’s not designed for an adult,” said a man.

“It’ll work just fine,” said Chad.

Coldness shocked her, but only very briefly.

###

When Margaret woke she found herself in a hospital bed with a stranger sitting in a chair across the room. The man wore a suit, kept his thinning hair cut very short, and seemed to be always reading charts. Nurses and doctors came in periodically to whisper with the man, whom she came to think of as head of the hospital. Staff dragged him out of the room frequently and his cell phone seemed to be in a perpetually ringing state. He rarely answered it but always looked at its screen. She had questions but could not muster the energy to speak or keep her eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time. Someone brought the man coffee. Margaret fell asleep.

The next day she forced her eyes to stay open for several minutes. They burned with dryness. The man caught her staring.

“You’re awake,” he stated as bland fact. He tapped a finger on her charts. “Right on schedule. You feel OK?”

“Sort of,” she croaked. The man set his papers aside and approached the bed.

“You will be fine,” he told her.

“My baby?”

“Fine,” he said.

“Where’s Chad?”

The man sat on the bed next to her. His hand hovered over hers briefly, then tightened in a fist. He pulled it back. “You have to understand some things,” he said. “Your accident. It was bad. Very bad. Your head and upper chest were crushed. They did not have the technology, back then, to fix you. The tanker created such a mess on the road they couldn’t get you to a hospital for proper freezing. At least not before you–”

“Then? When?”

“Your ex… your husband at the time happened to have the baby freezer, and he froze you out on the street. Right after the field medics gave you a caesarean. Your frozen body was moved to the basement of the hospital and stayed there until advancements were made on the brain, until we had artificial bones your body wouldn’t reject, and–”

“Where’s my baby? Where’s Chad?”

“Your husband failed to use a cryoprotectant,” he continued. “He didn’t have one. Said the store hadn’t been able to give him one that day. It added a complication they didn’t have the technology to overcome back then. That delayed things, too. But he–”

“Please,” she begged the man. “I want to see my baby. And where is Chad now?”

“That was sixty years ago,” he said. “Chad processed the divorce papers in your purse. He contested nothing. Gave you everything you wanted, even the notes scribbled in at the bottom.”

“So…” Margaret mulled this over. “I don’t remember scribbling anything in. I don’t… really remember very well. Chad remarried?”

“Yes,” said the man. “Four times, in fact.”

“Ah.” Sixty years seemed like a long night of sleep to her, but it had been a long, long time. “And my son?”

The man gave her an odd grin but no answer. Her eyes burned and she squeezed them shut again. Chad would be 89. Her son would be…

She vaguely recalled the note she scribbled in, that panicked note as Chad picked out a PermInfant freezer. Suddenly it dawned on her who this man had to be. She pried open her burning eyes and studied him.

He had Chad’s hands.

Her eyes.

Chad’s mischievous grin.