139 Years to the End of the World

Year One, Part Five

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.