The oversized grey shirt and long grey pants they had me wear handled like silk. I can only describe the feeling of wearing them as being hugged by water, smooth and fluid, rubbing each other without much friction. Leah explained that the clothings were made from special materials designed to help regulate and properly distribute the heat while I was frozen to prevent any nerve damage from body parts being cooled separately. It sounded fancy enough that I just straight up trusted the explanation without question. The shirt had a hood to cover my head; and the sleeves and pants legs were made to be buttoned up to encase my body entirely in the material. Unbuttoned, they were slightly longer than my arms and legs and I looked like a child in a grown man's pyjamas.

I walked out of the changing room, pants legs dragging slightly along the floor, to the laughter of my family. Leila said I looked like a blue stick insect. Even my dad, serious as he was, cracked a chuckle. I must have looked really ridiculous, but I was okay with that as long as my family was happy.

“Milton,” Leah called out to me from the giant machine that is the Cryo-Tube. “It's time.”

With those two words, the light hearted daze that had lifted our spirits dissipated from the room almost instantaneously, and a fog of grimness settled in its stead. I nodded to Leah and approached my family, my feet dragging the ground more than my pants.

I went up to my parents first. My ever cheerful mother and stern-faced father. “Thanks for getting me here,” I told them from the bottom of my heart.

Whatever held up my mother must have snapped, for she broke into tears and embraced me. “Take care of yourself, Milly.”

Returning the hug, I looked up to my father who could only manage a nod, one which I returned. I said, “I'll see you again.”

She pulled apart from me, wiping at her tears. Once her eyes were relatively dry, she said between sobs, “I love you son.”

“Love you too,” I replied.

I ripped my gaze away from my parents, the pillars that raised me and groomed me to the man I am today. I could not have been more indebted to anyone else in my life. I faced my wife Joan, the light of my life.

She smiled to me and said, “Hey you.”

“Hey yourself,” I replied. Those were the first words we said to each other when I accidentally knocked into her on the streets all those years ago.

Joan placed her hands on my cheeks and I closed my eyes. Even though I could no longer physically feel, the memory of her touch welled up inside my head and I could imagine the warmth of her hands spreading through my face. I opened my eyes to see tears slowly rolling down her cheeks. I wiped them from the familiar curves and creases and gently kissed her.

With my best smile, I said, “See you soon?”

She smiled back, though holding in her tears made her squint. “Not if I see you first.”

And then it was time for the most painful part of the day. I knelt down and turned to my daughter. I'm impotent, which meant I could never have a child. But Joan and I talked about it when we married and wanted one anyway. We went to an orphanage and there she was. Leila, my daughter with her auburn hair, scribbling drawings on paper after paper.

I looked at my little girl, a frown that never suited her worn on her face. She asked, “Are you going now, daddy?”

“Yeah,” I replied, choking on tears that can never surface. “I'm going away for a long while now.”

“When will you come back?” she asked.

That question tore at me. I had requested to be back, by earliest, her eighteenth birthday. But there were no guarantees if the freezing process would even work, or if the uncertain future would prove too uncertain to even happen.

Instead, I redirected the question, “When I come back,” I said softly, “We'll go to Hillbury and play with snow again, okay?”

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It worked. A small smile crossed her face as she lighted up slightly with an enthusiastic nod. It was a blatant lie though. Hillbury was, by flight, almost half a day away. To go there and return back to the Cryo-Tube in a single day was impossible. But I wanted the last image of my daughter to be a smile instead. A little selfishness on my part.

She wrapped her small arms around my neck and hugged me. I returned the hug, tighter than any I've ever given before, kissing her tenderly on her forehead. Painfully, my heart wretched as I pulled her apart. That was more painful than any other pain I could ever feel physically with my nerves.

I smiled at her and said, “Take care of your mother okay?”

Without a verbal reply, she nodded her head. I got to my feet and turned to face the Cryo-Tube.

“Okay,” I mumbled to myself. Agents G and Matthews came to my side. I nodded to them to show I was ready. “Let's do this.”

The short walk to the machine felt longer than it looked. By the time I reached the stepladder, it felt like I had left a whole lifetime behind, yet I could only wished that I had more time to spend walking there. Up close, the machine was about twice my height, which was towering in scale. It was large, rounded, and metallic, like a boiler that had expanded. Everything seemed to have been made with stainless steel, even the foreboding looking ladder.

With the Agents' help, I climbed slowly up the ladder. My prosthetic legs fought to hold my weight as I ascended. By the time I got to the top of the machine, I was panting slightly, but otherwise fine. It might have been due the cold temperature underground but I did not sweat either. G and Matthews followed me up and we stood on the platform above.

Matthews pointed to a noticeable, one meter in diameter circular plate on the top of the Cryo-Tube and said, “Stand over there if you will,” I followed his instruction.

“Okay man,” G said, “Once the Prof gives the green light, the plate will lower you into the machine. Don't panic when that happens okay?”

I replied with a nervous, “Okay.”

“Milton,” Leah called out from below us. She was standing beside one of the control panels to my right with two other scientists. “When you're in the Cryo-Tube, a panel will seal you in from above. Once inside, there will be an oxygen mask. Put it on and press the button.”

“What button?” I asked.

Matthews answered for her, “You'll know it when you see it,” he took what I recognized as a palm sized ECG from his pocket and said, “This will hurt a bit,” he pulled my shirt collar down slightly and placed the ECG in the middle of my chest. My body jerked as the device latched itself to my skin with a needle and suction, but I felt nothing.

Slightly surprised, G said, “Maybe not.”

Leah continued, “The chamber will start to flood with the preservation liquid. Don't worry though, your mask will pump in anaesthetics and oxygen once you are half submerged. Just tell me when you're ready and we'll start.”

I looked to the two agents who gave me light nods of acknowledgement of what I'm about to do. Buttoning up my clothes and pulling up my hood, turning my hands and feet into wrapped up stumps, I turned to my family. All of them, including my daughter, gave me the smile that one puts on their faces when at a funeral. The look meant to support the loved ones who lived while they buried their dead. I found myself in the position of being both.

Without taking my eyes off my family, I gave a firm, “Ready!”

“Lower panel!” Leah shouted across the room. The people on the other reacted, and the platform jerked and started to rumble and descend.

In seconds, I was knee deep in the machine. Waist deep. Chest deep. The last image I saw before my vision was blocked was of my family, standing hand-in-hand, a strong smile on their faces. With the same jerk as it had when it started, the panel came to a stop. A circular button lit up green in front of me, the oxygen mask, with a tube connected to it, placed in an alcove beside it. I picked up the mask and stuck it to my face. It was one of those with surgical glue that allowed it to be sealed tightly against the skin, but easy enough to remove with minimal tearing. A little like a bandage really.

“Milton,” G called out. I looked up to the opening above to the agent peering down. “Good luck,” he finished. I saw him pushed something – a button presumably – to his side, and a steel cover slowly slid shut overhead, covering the last shred of light I have to the outside world.

With no other source of communication, I looked to the glowing green button, my only source of light in the otherwise fully sealed tube. I could hear my own heart pounding, echoing and reverberating within the sealed container. With my wrapped hands, I pressed the button and the glow disappeared, plunging me into completes darkness.

I could not feel the liquid filling the tube, but I could hear it sloshing around me. It must have been cold, for my body shivered and teeth clattered. Perhaps it was out of fear. I started breathing deeply in an attempt to calm myself down.

And a sudden thought came to me. Did I turn off the kitchen stove when I left home for the surgery?

Before I could get further into that thought however, the panel above me slid opened. The light from the outside was blinding after being submerged in complete darkness, and my prosthetic camera eyes took much longer than a real eye would in adjusting to the change in brightness.

The shadowy figure of a man popped his head over. “Milton?” I recognized the voice as G's.

“G? What happened? Did something go wrong?” I asked, feeling slightly disoriented.

“What are you talking about?” he replied confused. I imagined him talking in my head. The ruffled brown hair. The horn-rimmed glasses. The scar on his lips. “Did something happen?”

“That's what I'm asking you,” I replied, slightly irritated now. My eyes finally started to settle into the light and I saw G clearly. With a buzz cut. And another scar across his nose to add to the one on his lips. His glasses were still the same though. “What the-” I mumbled in surprise.

I looked down and realized I was slumped against the corner of the tube, my body and clothings soaking wet with light blue liquid. As the situation started to dawn on me, I looked back up to G who seemed to have pieced together my thoughts from my reaction as well.

Unsure of what to do, I peeled off the oxygen mask – painless of course – and awkwardly said, “So uh...long time no see?”

“Yeah,” G replied, equally clunky in tone. “Seven years is pretty long.”