You’d be surprised how little your life changes after winning the lottery.

At least that’s the case when your lottery’s only windfall is the promise that a stranger would appear from the shadows upon your death to take temporary ownership of your lifeless body and proceed to shove it into a glorified freezer. To give CryoEterna some credit, the process was a bit more involved than loading slabs of meat into a cold-storage locker.

Following the conclusion of the raffle at The Vortex, I was almost immediately whisked away in a black luxury SUV by the CryoEterna spokesman and his gaggle of doting interns, “booth guy” included.

Given that I wasn’t actually paying for anything, the whole process was about as easy as signing divorce papers, or so I imagined having never been married (or subsequently divorced). A few signatures here, a dozen initials there, a thorough discussion on “the division of assets”, and within less than an hour I was done with the paperwork, and spit back out onto the Las Vegas strip. Just like that, the newest “Platinum-level client of CryoEterna” was out on the streets, walking among “the common rabble”.

I began the short walk back to the convention center and my car, as a sort-of comfortable numbness toward the outcome of today’s events began to set-in. The sales rep had offered me a ride back after wrapping up the paperwork, but for some reason I opted for the “reflective stroll past drunk people and panhandlers” option instead. Also, Capriotti’s was along the route, and the sandwich I had so carefully ordered earlier that morning had a set-pickup time that was now long past due. I picked up my slightly soggy sandwich, arrived back to my beat-up car, and began the drive back to my cozy one-bedroom apartment across from campus. Upon arrival, I was greeted by the small herd of cats I had collected in my spare time since moving to Las Vegas just a few years ago. “Ricky”, “Julien”, and “Bubbles” bombarded me with a harmony of vocalizations so clearly meant to convey a singular message. “Dinner service was late, and amends must be made”.

I fed and watered the cats accordingly, and it was finally time to feed the only remaining animal in the household. It was only after carefully plating up my sandwich, and conducting the small miracle that was perfectly pouring a pint of Guiness from a can into a chilled pint glass, that the gravity of today’s events hit my brain like an asteroid about to ruin the day of some big lizards. Following a series of minor panic attacks, some light snacking, and a whole lot of “cat petting for dopamine” later, I had started to come to terms with my new destiny, or rather the destiny of my remains.

Shortly after the whole “CryoEterna” thing, my life quickly returned to normal. “Normal” meaning the cloud of organized chaos that is the life of a person preparing to defend their PhD dissertation. To make a long story short, I soon came out the other side with a new honorific attached to my name. After dedicating over a decade of my life to the pursuit of knowledge, I was officially a “Rock Doc”.

It had been a little over 7 years since that fateful day in a sweaty Las Vegas convention center, and not much in my life had changed. Ok, actually a lot had changed. But none of it had anything to do with the small platinum business card in my wallet that I was now legally required to keep on my person at all times.

I was 32 now, still living in Vegas, however I was no longer the lowly research assistant that had just hit the proverbial “nerd-jackpot”. My status had since been upgraded to “the cool young geology professor”, after accepting the offer for an assistant professor position at my most recent Alma Mater. Also of note, my cramped one-bedroom apartment across from campus had since been upgraded to a one-bedroom HOUSE down the street, much to the enjoyment of my cats. It was official. I was moving up in the world.

I taught mainly introductory geology and earth science classes as an assistant professor, with most of my free time being dedicated to taming the ever-growing to-do list of research projects and papers I had agreed to throw my name on. I’ve gotta admit, while the research grind did get a bit tedious at times, I was consistently happy with my teaching responsibilities.

Since accepting the position, I had realized that the only thing I enjoyed more than learning about rocks was teaching other people about them! While I had found that I could usually win over most of my students to the “wonderful world of geology”, there were always a few holdouts I could never hope to convert. Actually, on my very first day of teaching a few years ago, the very first question I received upon the conclusion of my VERY first lecture as a college professor, was an ever-so casual,

“So how do you relate this all to creation?” delivered by a young woman sitting at the front of the class. The question had very visibly caught me off guard, so I followed up by asking the student for some “clarification”.

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Could you elaborate a bit?”, I said with an eyebrow firmly raised to its limit.

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“You know, creation! How do you relate this to the Bible?”, she said as if she wasn’t baiting me into a geologist’s favorite debate.

I had obviously expected some difficult questions from my students, but this was a different variety of challenge as a first-year college professor. One poorly placed anecdote to this student about the “monolith to ignorance” that was the “creationism philosophy”, and I’d be in the Dean’s office getting my ass chewed out in front of whatever smugly smiling parent indoctrinated them into the crap in the first place.

“All I’ll say, is that I tend to think on timescales a lot longer than 6000 years…”, I said as I felt the pulse of a previously unknown vein near my left temple. Apparently, I’d rolled a proverbial Nat-twenty on this speech check, as that response seemed to shut the whole thing down without further debate. While I’d received more than a few eyebrow raising queries from students over the following years, this interaction consistently stood out in my memory as the most baffling, and comical.

As far as “good days vs bad days” as a teacher go, today was already shaping up to be a major contender for the top spot in the “good day” category. After months of planning and careful coordination, I found myself with a van-full of my most recent crop of undergrads in my favorite place on Earth. Only a short 2-hour drive from Las Vegas, Death Valley National Park served as a truly “primo” field trip location for the University Geology Club.

Our small flock of rock enthusiasts had arrived at the park in the early morning, having left from campus in the wee early hours to make the most of our limited time in the “geologic holy land” that is Death Valley. While we had already hit a lot of the major highlights; Badwater Basin, Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes, and Ubehebe Crater just to name a few, we still had a lot of great stops on our itinerary for the following day.

We had made camp in, what was in my opinion, the best campsite in the entirety of the seemingly endless National Park. “Warm Springs” was a hike-in campsite (or “drive-in” campsite for those with a sweet off-road capable passenger van) in quite literally the middle of nowhere. It was admittedly a bit of a slog to get to, but over the course of taking now probably over a hundred students here in recent years, this small oasis in the harsh California desert had consistently proven to be a highlight of the trip for everyone involved.

After a quick review with the group on the significance of our previous stops and the highlights of tomorrow’s itinerary, as well as a forced unanimous agreement that we’d all be packed and ready to leave by 8:00am sharp, we all retreated to our tents to end the day.

Once inside my tent, I used my trusty rock-hammer to triple-check my sleeping bag for rogue snakes. I could tolerate a wide assortment of garden variety “creepy crawleys”, but I firmly drew the line at snakes, and not without reason. The faded scars of two small puncture wounds on my left ankle I’d gained as a child served as a constant reminder that snakes were not my friend. Once I was a hundred and ten percent sure my bag was reptile-free, I quickly drifted off to sleep.

It was now about 5:00am, and the sky had just begun to shine with that low muted glow that told you the Sun would soon be making its slow return to the horizon. While I would largely consider myself to be a night-owl by nature, something about being in the field just turned me into a “well and true” morning person. It probably helped that this region offered some truly spectacular sunrises, and today I was going to watch the sunrise in style!

While the campsite was completely off-grid, the “Warm Springs” site did actually offer access to a small hot spring in which one could attempt to melt away their sorrows. Despite what the name might have you visualize, the laughably small spring was incredibly remote, proving difficult to locate for most visitors. Having stayed here many times in the past, I was already well acquainted with the location of the elusive spring, and I had woken up on a mission to start my day with a hot soak.

The path to the hot spring, if you could even call it that, was a winding track of sand and other unconsolidated material, slowly creeping up the face of a large terrace of Jurrassic-age sandstones. As a policy, I generally discouraged my students from making this hike, as it was a “precarious journey” to say the least. In the dozens or so times I made the hike myself, I had nearly fallen down the side of the mountain more times than I cared to admit. After carefully moving myself up the path at a snail’s pace, I finally arrived at the top of the terrace where I could see the nearby natural jacuzzi that was the final destination of my pilgrimage.

A rock on the ground in front of me caught my eye. The roughly dinner-plate sized sheet of stone before me appeared to bear a consistent series of small indentations along its surface. It was in that moment that the synapses of my brain made the connection. They were FOOTPRINTS, and not just from any foot! From a distance, each impression on the rock appeared to show three distinct grooves which could easily have been the toes of any small, bi-pedal reptile.

I excitedly reached down to collect the prized specimen I’d so luckily stumbled upon, where upon lifting it, I found that the rock already had an owner. A small tan snake was awoken by the commotion I’d caused by attempting to steal its home to add to my rock collection.

My brain went into full-on “monkey mode” as I shrieked and began to back pedal as quickly as I could in the opposite direction to the vile beast staring me down with its cold black eyes. As I scurried backward, I felt my feet wrap up on each other like a broken slinky, and I braced for the coming impact with the ground.

When what felt like an eternity of time had passed and the moment of impact had still yet to come, I realized my mistake. I had inadvertently thrown myself off the edge of the cliff, and my body was now sailing down to the ground roughly 200-feet below at breakaway speeds.

I hit the ground with a loud “thump” that reverberated throughout my entire body, as I heard the crunching of my bones, shattering like glass.

As the pain overtook me, I felt the warmth of a sunbeam strike my face.

In an instant, the world collapsed into darkness around me.