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

Right. Before they go too far with this, Barry needs to ask a few more hard questions. In life as in
business, you never go to a meeting unprepared, but you understand that no CEO is ever perfectly
prepared. Things happen. Circumstances change. Better sort this out before I do this... Wait a minute,
he says and is surprised to discover that nothing about him moves. His lips aren't moving. There is no
vibration in his larynx. No air pushing out of his lungs to power the voice. Wait, he cries, but no sound
comes out.

He sits up and begins waving his arms, shouting. Hold up a minute, he cries desperately. Stop! And like
a soul floating toward the white light he sees the whole thing from a fresh vantage point at the apex of the
dome: figures working over his inert body on the table, silent and intent in their lavender scrubs.

Cold, he realizes. And trapped. He is not feeling peaceful, as the company promised, something's gone
wrong with the anesthesia. He isn't feeling liberated; he's just tired. Tireder than he's been, and instead of
the thrill of euphoria the brochure promised would come as the V.S. recycling pumps chill Barry's blood
and combine it with elements he should have studied more carefully, he is bushwhacked by encroaching
dread.

Mercifully, unless this too is part of the process, he shudders when his body temperature drops below
acceptable levels, and passes out.

You don't get to be a rich, successful man like Barry Whittimore without being a positive person, and in
the last second of his past life as he knew it, as the bright strains of Vivaldi pour into his head, Barry tells
himself, the worst is over. Now sleep. You'll be young and raunchy and good as new when they
wake you up. But there is running along underneath a chord of chagrin. This is nothing like I thought.



The first thing he knows when he wakes up is that you're not supposed to wake up. There are V.E.
attendants orgying in every scrap of his coming-out wardrobe, even the gold leather Fiorucci flares. The
next generation, he thinks, judging from the air of abandon, the long cobwebs trailing from the operating
arena lights. Their hair and some of the makeup is surprising but they all seem to have two ears, a nose,
ten toes and ten fingers, just like him. That's all they have in common, he can tell by the lolling tongues
and the idiotic grins.

The second thing he knows when he wakes up is that you're not supposed to hear. By this time the
orgiasts are singing and dancing in a ring-around-the-rosey pattern, circling the operating table on which
miniature goats cavort and miniature monkeys play. When is this, anyway? Where are the director and
his dependable staff? "Corpsickle, corpsickle," they sing, as if they get this loaded and sing this song
every night, which as he'll find out soon enough, they do, "we love you. We love all your clothes and the
paychecks too..."

The third thing he knows is that a tremendous amount of time has passed. All the music and all the novels
and self-help books stored in his megapod have played themselves out and expired, all while he was too
zonked or whatever that was they did to him to enjoy a single chapter or a single tune. Note to self, he
thinks, clicking, clicking, clicking. Next time arrange backup player, plus regular re-load of
megapod.

Next time?

Night clouds rush across the sky outside the dome, streaking it with eerily unfamiliar colors. In the movie