Upsized Savior
Hi! I’m Zack Sunstrom. You may remember me as the captain of the first faster-than-light mission to Alpha Centauri. Since coming face-to-face with death, I’ve had a special appreciation for life. I got a second chance, you should, too.
That’s why I worked with the scientists behind the latest cryogenic technologies to create the world’s only suspension animation chamber that protects the sleeper whole: The Sunstrom Cryo-Pod!
Available to the public for the first time, you no longer have to deal with the fluid draining or brain removing the other cryogenic companies offer. No, you’ll awake to a new world and a new you!
If you or someone you love is terminally ill, and you can’t wait for a cure, then come on by my New Mexico complex. I’ll personally give you the tour of our sleep chambers.
In the blink of an eye, you could wake up a whole, healthy person.
Sunstrom Inc.: Life—at the speed of light!
The info-stream finishes as I study my visitors—a family of four—secretly from my office. The husband is the terminal one; his skin is sickly-white with dark red splotches on his hands and neck. The wiki he filled out listed AIDS, now in its last stages. I wonder if he got it from bad blood or sharing a needle or a hooker. I always wonder, but never ask.
I join them. “Hi, thanks for being so patient. I’m—”
“Look, kids! It’s Zack Sunstrom. Just like I promised.” Dad does his best to sound upbeat, but it costs him. His wife lays a hand on his back as he spews into a handkerchief already spotted with blood. Luckily, the children are so fascinated by me, they don’t notice their father’s plight.
“Zack! Zack!” cries the younger of the boys; a five-year-old with hair the color of barley.
“Is it true you went to another solar system, Mr. Sunstrom?” the other child asks; thick glasses covering intelligent, hazel eyes.
“Yes, son. And you call me Zack, too. The Centauri Project took me over forty-one trillion kilometers and back in just three years.”
Both their jaws hang loose. “Wowww!”
I approach their parents, hand extended. “Hello, Mr. Fitzpatrick, Mrs. Fitzpatrick. Welcome to my home.”
They shake my hand in turn. Mrs. Fitzpatrick says, “Please, call us Hank and Barb. We appreciate you seeing us on such short notice.” Her platinum hair is cut short, and there isn’t an ounce on her body to suggest she carried two children. I hold her eyes for a moment; long enough to show appreciation, but not too long to seem like a come-on. She blushes. I’m still considered attractive despite my advancing age. Her husband takes no notice, wrapped up in my persona, like his kids.
“I remember watching your take off and the recovery of your pod. I’m so sorry about your crew. The eulogy you gave at the memorial … w-we both cried.” Hank holds his wife’s hand, as if my tragedy bound them closer together. I’ve read essays to that effect. Turns out, “The Sunstrom Effect” happened all over the world. Those words were the best—and most expensive—I’ve ever spoken.
I act melancholy, as is expected, “Yes, it was a great loss. I just wish I could have brought their bodies back for a real funeral.” I give it the proper amount of silence, about twelve seconds, and then smile warmly. “Let’s go see where you will be sleeping, Hank.”
The drive is a quarter mile from the welcome center to the slumber house, so we pile into one of the company’s air-conditioned vehicles. It’s another scorching hot New Mexico day. If I didn’t require the solitude of the desert for this work, I would’ve chosen someplace nicer, like Northern California. Life often takes you places you’re not prepared for.
We descend to the parking area. My potential border and his family follow me to the visitors’ overlook. The kids gape at the magnitude of the operation. Thousands of cryo-pods fill the warehouse below. Hundreds of lighted aisles connect each sextet of pods. Cryo-technicians move among them, checking gauges and the like.
“I’ll be down there? It doesn’t look very … I don’t know … comfortable?”
“Oh, the pods themselves are very comfortable. You’ll sleep without a single concern for as long as it takes to find a cure, whether it’s next week or two hundred years from now. Shall we go down to the show floor?”
On the main level, I direct them to stay within the white lines that indicate the visitor’s area. I touch the communicator hanging from my lapel. “Hey, Gus? Can we bring up pod 71834 to the viewing room?”
I receive an affirmative. As we pass in front of the pods, the children stare at the naked bodies within. Frost licks the edges of the glass portal. A woman lays in suspended animation, encased in a purple mass. Next to her is a man frozen in red gel.
“Why are they different colors?” This from the hazel-eyed boy.
I kneel down by him. “Each fluid is specifically designed for our individual resident’s illnesses. This adds an extra level of protection to them while they sleep.”
“What color will daddy be?” asks the younger one.
“Your daddy will be surrounded by a yellow fluid, if he chooses to stay here.”
Hank joins his sons. “I like yellow. I’ll have a nice, long, yellow sleep.” He draws them into a tight hug. The family is close to falling apart. A hundred years since the discovery of AIDS, and it’s still destroying lives. There is no justice in the universe.
We reach the viewing room where the yellow cryo-pod waits. The family walks around it, touches it, and I let the kids draw smiley-faces in the frost. Potential sleepers have a lot to mull over, and I never want to appear pushy, so I slide back out of the way. The hard sell doesn’t work in this biz.
About eight minutes later, they call me over.
“How often can we visit?” asks Barb.
I hate to talk monies with the kids present, so I’m subtle. “The storage fees cover two visits a month for the first year, one visit a month after that. Extra visits are available at a nominal fee-per-visit.”
Hank scans his wife with a hollow gaze. Either way they chose, he doesn’t have long. He talks to me without moving his eyes off of her. “Can we see the process?”
I lay a careful hand on his shoulder. “Sure.”
We drive out of the facility. In the alcove of the processing chamber, everyone puts on safety gear to avoid chemical exposure. The kids role-play being astronauts while their mom tries to calm them down. I take it upon myself to help.
“It’s okay,” I assure her. “Hey, boys? These suits are just like what I wore in space, only thinner. What you’ll see next is also very similar to what was done when I flew to another planet. I, too, was in suspended animation. Since then, we’ve redesigned these pods to work on Earth.”
“Hear that boys? Your sick ol’ dad is going to be just like an astronaut.”
“Cool!” they say in unison.
“Cool is right!” I second him. “Let’s show you how we do what we do.”
Once we enter the demo room, we remove the suits. A Sunstrom employee stands in the center holding a scruffy yellow-haired dog by its leash.
“Her name is Sadie.”
Sadie is just one of many strays we acquire for this part of the tour. The boys crouch down on the floor cautiously, but after Sadie licks their faces, the trio go into full-on play mode. We only pick the healthiest, most well-behaved dogs from the shelter; ones that bond easily with kids.
“Okay, boys. Sadie needs to go to work.”
The boys look in horror as the employee takes Sadie to a smaller version of a cryo-pod. They protest, even beg their parents not to let anything happen to their new friend. I assure the kids that all will be fine.
“We wouldn’t harm such a good doggie, just like we won’t let anything happen to such a good dad.”
We place Sadie in the pod and close the lid. A fast-acting anesthesia mist pours into the pod. Once the dog’s safely asleep, a yellow fluid fills the chamber.
The mom whispers to me, “What keeps her from drowning?”
I whisper back, “It’s a perfluorocarbon; same as they’re using for undersea mining. It acts just like air.” After the pod completely fills, the fluid turns solid.
The younger boy, tears forming at the corners of his big soulful eyes, nervously inquires, “Is she dead?”
“No, son. She’s sleeping. We’ll bring her out of stasis before you leave.” To the adults I say, “Let’s talk.” An employee will entertain the kids with snacks and video games while I discuss the agreement with their parents.
“This isn’t an easy decision,” I say, “It’s almost the same as dying, but with the slim hope that one day Hank can be restored to full health. It might not even be in the lifetime of your wife or children or their children. The world you wake up to may be very different. You may not like it.”
He shakes his head. “No, we’ve talked about all that. What happened to me was a big mistake. I—”
I interrupt. “No offense, Hank, but I prefer not to know anything about your medical condition that doesn’t directly correlate to the procedure. We don’t judge and treat all our clients the same.”
Barb wraps her hand around Hank’s arm. He winces, but I don’t think she notices. “It’s just … this was an accident, and we both feel that Hank was robbed of his full life. We’ve anticipated the possible outcomes. We’re going to lose him, one way or another. By doing this, we hope to give him back what he was supposed to have all along.”
It’s not uncommon. People rarely accept their fate, especially if they deem it unfair. Luckily, I provide options that feel like they’re evening the score. “This is a sizable investment. Can you cover the cost?”
“No problem,” Hank assures me, “We’re both pretty well off. Barb inherited quite a bit from her father’s estate, and I was in entertainment. I did pretty well in the twenty-sixties.”
I already knew that. My people had worked up a financial on them before I’d even invited them to visit the facility. “And you’ve downloaded the contract and read how to set up the trust?”
They nod. I give Barb the hardest part. “And you read that under no circumstance can your husband be awakened, unless a cure with a ninety-eight percent success rate is developed? No weekends home. No one last thing you want to tell him before you die. No witnessing the birth of his first grandchild. Once he’s in, that’s it. He’ll be dead to you until we can guarantee the extension of his life. Are you okay with that?”
She hesitates a moment, biting her bottom lip so hard, I think it might bleed, but she, like so many others, acquiesces.
We turn at the delightful squeals of their children. Sadie has been unfrozen and cleaned up. She bounds into the room and puts her paws on the shoulders of the older boy, knocking him over. We all laugh.
I hold my hand up beside my mouth, conspiratorially. “If you sign today, you can take Sadie home as a gift.”
I wave as the family pulls away from the center, Sadie’s head poking out from the side window. Hank has three days to get his affairs in order and say goodbye before he’s due back here. The doctors assured him he had that much time, at least.
I sit in my office and look over the daily paperwork. My digi-pad sounds with the special tone. I wasn’t expecting a drive-up customer so soon, but that’s the problem with the “other” service I provide.
“Peopsicle Queen. May I take your order?”
The gargantuan aliens of the Centauri System are not pleasant to look at. I keep my screen off and just listen to their voices as translated through my special phone.
“Um, yeah, hi. We need an order to go.”
“Sure thing, sir. What would you like?”
I can hear their alien spawn in the back of their ship arguing.
“I want a cherry-cancer.”
“That’s what I was going to order, copy-cat.”
“I want a cherry-cancer!”
“Dad!”
“Settle down you two, or I’ll turn the ship around.”
“Fine! I’ll have the Lou Gehrig-grape instead.”
“Did you get that?”
I reply, “Yes, one cherry-cancer and one Lou Gehrig-grape.”
“Honey, what do you want?” the husband asks.
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll get what I usually get.”
“My mate will have a lemon-AIDS. I’ll take M.S.trawberry.”
“Would you like to upsize that to a six-pack,” I suggested, “since you’re making the long trip out here, anyway?”
“Sure, why not. Throw in an orange-organ failure and a tumor-twist.” Under his breath he says, “Maybe that’ll keep them quiet until we get home.”
I repeat the order back to them and arrange for the pick-up time. They’re already half-way here. I grab the intercom. “Hey, Gertie. We’ve got a pick-up at eleven. I need a variety pack.”
“Sure thing, boss. We’re running low on strawberry, though.”
“Did the Fabrication Department finish the copy on Mr. Leiber from last October?”
“Yeah, but I though you said no one goes out of here for at least a year after they’re frozen?”
“Leiber has no kin. He wasn’t even sick. Just rich. Wanted to live forever. I hate those guys. I’ll make an exception this time.”
“Whatever. You’re the boss, boss.”
I am. And not just that. I’m the savior of the Earth.
Sure, it might appear that I’m some sort of monster; selling hope to human beings, then turning them into food for the Alpha Centaurians. I had no choice. They popped open our ship like a happy meal. My crew had been devoured first. Poor bastards didn’t have a chance.
One of the Centauri children accidentally let my pod defrost. Using my quick wit, I was able to work out an agreement with the adults. Despite their gigantic size, they are low in numbers compared to us. A war between our races would be costly for both sides. My plan keeps everyone happy. Luckily, the long trip lowers the demand, like walking from California to Vermont for maple syrup.
There’s no cure in sight for these terminally ill and, with the plan I established, at least my frozen peeps now die anonymous heroes, instead of the afraid-of-death cowards they really are. I made sure my contracts are ironclad, so no family member would ever thaw their loved ones out and discover the pseudo-clone that was inside. Too bad clones didn’t taste as good to the Centaurians. I learned that the hard way.
Nope, after five years of doing this, I have all the bases covered.
My communicator beeps again. Luckily, it’s just Gertie.
“Go for Zack.”
She sounds frantic. “Boss? You better flip on the newsstream.”
I activate my pad. A scroll below an attractive reporter reads, “Breaking News.” I do my best to catch up.
“… just finished the press conference here in Switzerland, Mike. It’s still so much to take in.”
“But they’re sure?” came the anchor’s question.
“Yes, they’ve run countless tests and this nanotechnology works almost every time, with a two-percent margin of error. So far, it’s shown results in curing lung cancer and AIDS, plus it’s done tremendous work with organ repair. Who knows what other diseases it will ultimately cure? There hasn’t been a medical break-thru this big since the polio vac—”
I turn off the stream.
“Oh, fuck.”
David Boop is a Denver-based speculative fiction author. He’s also an award-winning essayist and screenwriter. His novel, the sci-fi/noir She Murdered Me with Science, returns to print from WordFire Press after a six-year hiatus. Additionally, Dave is prolific in short fiction, with over fifty short stories and two short films sold to date. While known for weird westerns, he’s published across several genres, including horror, fantasy, and media tie-ins for The Green Hornet, The Black Bat, and Veronica Mars. His RPG work includes Interface Zero, Rippers Resurrected and Deadlands: Noir for Savage Worlds. David regularly tours the country speaking on writing and publishing at schools, libraries and conventions.
Copyright © 2025 David Boop.