Martin Greenberg - The Future We Wish We Had

One harried-looking middle-aged woman looked up from a desk piled high with paperwork when Jodi and Harry walked in the front door. Cardboard packing boxes with open lids surrounded her desk like a fort. She was in the process of shoving papers into a shredder.

“Lawyers frown on that sort of thing,” Harry said over the whine of the shredder.

“What?” The woman pushed up her glasses and turned the shredder off, then glanced at the papers in her hand. Understanding dawned on her face. “Oh, this stuff.” She waved it at them. “I don’t think we need to preserve the office football pool from 1998 for posterity. Amazing the amount of junk you collect over the years.”

She put the papers down on top of another stack on her desk. The woman looked sad, Jodi thought, like she was saying goodbye to an old friend. Jodi wondered if she was losing her job too. Probably, if the company was closing.

“Are you from the bankruptcy trustee’s office?” the woman asked. “I don’t have the final figures for you yet. The judge gave us until next month.

“No,” Jodi said. “I’m… uh…” How to say this. “I’m the daughter of one of your clients. Andrew Sommersby. Your attorney contacted me.”

The woman blinked, then she smiled. “I didn’t know Andrew had a daughter. I’m Willomina Hardy.”

“Jodi Carnahan. Rachel’s daughter.”

Willomina shook Jodi’s hand, and then Harry’s. “Excuse the mess,” she said. “You’re the first relative who’s come out to visit. Everyone else has just made arrangements through the mail, or through their lawyers.”

“Arrangements?” Jodi asked.

“For transfer of their loved ones to a new facility.” Willomina pushed at her glasses again. “That is what you’re here for, isn’t it? Have you found a new place for your father?”

Jodi shook her head. “I’m sorry, but…” She took a deep breath and started again. “I didn’t even know I had a father until two days ago.”

Willomina put a hand to her chest. The gesture seemed as old-fashioned as her name, and definitely out of place in a cryonics company. “Oh, dear,” she said. “Surely your mother told you.”

“Jodi’s mother passed away several years ago,” Harry said. “I don’t think she knew about this either.”

“Oh dear,” Willomina said again.

She stepped around the packing box fort to make her way to a file cabinet. The cabinet was locked. Willomina took a key from around her neck and unlocked it, opened the second file drawer, and took out a large file pocket.

“I’m sure your father put down your mother as next of kin,” Willomina said. She rummaged through the folder, found a slim manila file and opened it. She flipped to a page in the back, then nodded her head. “Yes, here it is. Next of kin-Rachel Carnahan. Relation… oh.” Willomina paused. “Ex-wife. How unusual.”

She spent a few more minutes looking through the file. Jodi stood next to Harry, arms wrapped around herself, and waited.

Now that she was here, Jodi was less sure about pulling the plug on her father. It was one thing to think about it miles away with anger to fuel her decision. It was something else again when faced with the reality of Willomina and her old-fashioned concern.

“Well,” Willomina finally said. “Your mother is listed not only as next of kin, but also co-beneficiary of his trust. You say she passed away?”

Jodi nodded.

“Were you appointed her executrix?” Willomina asked.

Jodi frowned. That sounded official. “I don’t understand.”

“The executrix of her estate, dear. Were you appointed executrix by the court?”

“We didn’t have anything. When she died, it was just her and me. No lawyers or courts.” Jodi felt small, like she’d felt when it first hit her she was alone in the world. “It was just us.”

“Oh, dear.”

Willomina took off her glasses. They hung off a chain around her neck, cushioned against her ample breasts.

“Well, I’m no expert at this, but I’d say your mother had quite a lot, actually, when she died. You might need to see a lawyer after all, dear.”

Another person telling her to get a lawyer. “And pay him with what?” Jodi asked, frustrated with the whole thing. “I don’t have any money!”

“That’s not exactly true.” Willomina took something else out of the file. “I can give you a copy of the trust document. Have your attorney contact us, and let us know what arrangements you’ll like made for your father.”

Jodi waited while Willomina made the copies. This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To know?

But it wasn’t all she wanted.

“Can I see him?” Jodi asked, her voice soft, barely audible over the sound of the copier.

Willomina frowned at her. “You can’t really see him, dear. Our tanks don’t have viewing windows. We’ve always thought it was better if the family remembered their loved ones the way they were. It can be upsetting to see someone after they’ve been preserved.”

“But that’s just it. I never met him. I don’t have any memories of him.”

“You never…”

For a minute Jodi thought Willomina was going to say “oh dear” again, but she didn’t. Instead she reached into the folder and pulled out a video cassette tape.

“Then I think it’s about time you met your father, don’t you?”

The viewing room, as Willomina called it, was a small, private theater with four rows of plush seats and a screen only a little bigger than some of the new flat-screen televisions Jodi saw at the mall. Jodi sat alone in a seat in the back row. She’d asked Harry to stay with her, but he said she should meet her father by herself for the first time.

“Next viewing, I’m right there,” he said, and he’d gone out the door with Willomina, leaving Jodi alone with a remote control.

She took a deep breath of stale air. Heart pounding, she pushed Play .

The screen came alive with a shot of the Cryonomics logo, the same one Jodi had seen on the brochure, followed by a simple white on black title page with her father’s name-Andrew Sommersby.

And then there he was.

Jodi was amazed that he looked so young. On screen, he looked little older than Artemus Owens. Shouldn’t a father be old?

Andrew Sommersby had Jodi’s straight black hair, her thin face, and the same cleft in her chin boys had always teased her about. He had deep circles under his eyes, and his skin had a pallor to it. Jodi remembered what she’d read about cryonics-everyone who elected to undergo this process had an incurable illness. Her father had recorded this tape when he knew he was dying.

“Hello,” the Andrew on the tape said. “I’m Andrew Sommersby. I’m told I have to leave a video record of my wishes just in case someone wants to challenge my election to have myself cryonically preserved. So here’s the official part.”

He looked down at something, probably a printed form, and read what sounded like a canned statement. Kind of like how Jodi had recited the Pledge of Allegiance in school. She’d said it so many times the words lost their meaning.

“Now, that’s over,” Andrew said. He looked back up at the camera. “I can’t imagine anyone challenging my wishes. Rosie-”

Jodi’s breath caught in her throat. Her mother’s nickname had been Rosie.

“-you don’t even know I’m ill, do you, sweetheart?”

Andrew sighed on tape. It was such a forlorn sound, Jodi felt her chest grow tight. I’m not going to cry, she told herself. She never cried. Not anymore.

“I know you’ll never see this, but I want to explain a few things to you. Probably more for you than me, but you know how I am. Belt and suspenders, you used to say. Belt and suspenders. That’s probably what this is all about, when you get right down to it. Belt and suspenders in the age of technology.”