"Kit Reed - Freezing Geezers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Kit)

He's beyond ready. When he woke up this morning his left arm had frozen so he couldn't bend it and
when he looked back at his pillow it was matted with fallen hair. The girls don't know it but his Mr.
Funboy hasn't spoken to him in weeks.

Barry is ready in other ways as well. When you plan to pre-die, you also need to pre-plan. His staff has
stored a thousand books and hours and hours of music in his Megapod for easy listening, in case he can
hear anything, and if he can't... It will be more like a long nap, which is what the facilitator promised. No,
Barry is no sucker ripe for the plucking. Before he acted, Barnett Whittimore researched this thing and
V.E. is definitely the best provider, with longterm plans for preservative suspension and continued care
and staff lined up into the next five generations to back it up. On top of which he extracted certain
guarantees from the director before he signed.

"You will never be alone," the director said. Barry cut him a check to guarantee that. Then, because
every C.E.O. knows to smile at everyone and trust no one, he cut another check to guarantee the
services of several generations of his personal staff to make sure everything goes right. Annual payment
contingent on fulfillment of obligations in the year prior and annual renewal of vows. Then he hired a slew
of Pinkertons to follow up on that.

Now he is, as they say in the V.E. suspension business, ready to roll. Beyond ready, with his half-million
hours of books and music and his outfit ready for the great day when he wakes up in the new world.
Several outfits, in fact, because life may be eternal but high fashion changes every week. If he turns his
head he can see them hanging on their rack outside the cylinder where he will spend the next part of his
life. Hard, perhaps, being deprived of so many things he's used to but restful. Even the most loving
women are untrustworthy and every year after thirty personal maintenance is a terrible, geometrically
progressing chore.

Barry's girlfriend isn't necessarily pleased by this but it isn't really a problem. Amy's barely thirty but her
body has begun to sag that first (predictive) bit. Another few months and she'll be flabby enough to fail
the pencil test. Her face is cobwebbed with beginning lines and face it, he was over her anyway. He'd
just as soon forget her, he'll pick up in the near future with somebody fresh and new when everything's
curable, by which time Amy will be either too old to talk to or many years dead. When they bring Barry
back and they fix him up he will walk into a whole new generation of beauties waiting-- whenever that is.
He can afford to be patient.

In addition to plenty of money, Barry has nothing but time. Before he came in here he cleared his
calendar and liquidated his assets. Not counting the emergency cache of Krugerrands, his money will go
on making money for the next thousand years. As a fail-safe, he arranged for the place where he will
sleep until his caretakers wake him to be fitted with a pay-by-the-day cash dispenser of his own design.

Around him, the curved operating theater is banked with glass cylinders designed to contain human... he
doesn't want to think bodies. As nearly as he can see, through the thicket of tubes and drains and busy
personnel surrounding him, the tubes look empty, but you never know. Of course they aren't empty, the
others he's joining are probably surrounded by protective fog; soothing vapors, maybe, perfume or some
absolutely amazing psychotropic drug that brings unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged. There will
be others. Otherwise the director could not have made the assurances he made. The pre-dead are
actually still living. Imagine a gentle, hibernative state. Those glass cylinders are filled with other humans,
Barry concludes, wondering why when they guaranteed round-the-clock monitoring for as long as he's
out of commission, there are no living arrangements for support staff in the room.