The Ups and Downs of Being Dead Read Free Page B

“A
couple of caveats. You can’t go forward or back in time.”
    Over her shoulder, Maggie said, “We don’t eat or drink or
sleep.”
    “You won’t ever have to leave the ball game at the seventh
inning to take a piss,” Sam confided.
    “Once you get the hang of passing through objects,” Maggie
said, “You can go behind locked doors, into buildings that are closed for the day.
You can go back stage at strip joints, inside women’s locker rooms.” She winked
at him!
    “Why would I do that?”
    Robert gave her his best ‘stern’ look, complete with
twitching eyebrow. Who was this cheeky old bag?
    She snorted. “That’s one of the first things most men do
when they leave here. Go ogle naked women.”
    “Believe me,” Robert said. “I’ve seen plenty of models in
lingerie and bathing suits. I have no desire to watch desperate women remove
their clothes for cash.”
    “That’s right,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re the
Audrey’s magnate.”
    “We heard you donated an extra two-point-five million to the
center,” Sam said.
    “That was supposed to be confidential,” Robert scolded, but
he was a bit flattered that the news had gotten out.
    “We’re not part of the general public anymore,” Maggie told
him.
    “That’s right,” Sam added with a waggle of his eyebrow. “We
hear private conversations, read confidential memos. And we’re not restricted
by scheduled hours of business, or those locked doors. It’s really quite simple
once you get the hang of it.”
    To demonstrate, Sam pushed his arm through the steel door.
“Wooden doors are the easiest,” he said. “Glass is a little tougher, and these
insulated steel doors can be a little tricky the first time.”
    Maggie and Sam passed through the door a couple times just
to reassure Robert it was possible, but as he stood in front of the heavy steel
obstacle, fear gripped him. What if he got stuck in the middle? What if he
split into a million tiny parts and floated away?
    “Does anyone decide to just wait here?” he asked.
    “One of our patients stayed,” Sam said. “Once he learned
how, Albert Jackson slipped into the stainless steel container with his body.
Said he didn’t want to see all the changes in the world. He just wants to come
back and be surprised. Like Christmas morning. He said that way, if the
reanimation process doesn’t work, he’ll never know what he missed. Personally,
I think he’s a moron.”
    During his tour of the center, Robert had been shown the
storage area with rows of silver cylinders. The center called the 10-foot tall
storage tanks Dewars.
    “He’s just in there waiting?”
    “Boring, huh?” Sam said.
    “Come on,” Maggie urged. “Suck it up, Robert. Let’s get you
out of here.”
    For an old broad that barely stood five feet tall, she was
pushy.
    “Start with just a hand,” Sam said. “Press your palm into
the door.”
    “Just remember,” Maggie said, “there is no spoon.”
    “What?”
    “Didn’t you see the Matrix?” she asked.
    Robert shook his head.
    “Well, I highly recommend it. Put that on your list of things
to do.”
    Sam cleared his throat to get Robert’s attention. “Imagine
that there is no door.” His own hand disappeared into the steel.
    Shaking off his fear with a resolute jerk of his shoulder,
Robert reached out his hand and whispered, “There is no door.”
    His fingers slowly sank into the metal. But a strange
tingling sensation scared him and he jerked his hand back.
    “Weird, isn’t it?” Maggie said. “Kind of like when your hand
falls asleep.”
    “It’s because you’re passing through the door at the
molecular level,” Sam said. “You can sense your own essence being jostled by
the atoms that make up steel and insulation.”
    “We’ve often said that the administrators here at the center
should have set up a little obstacle course with barriers like windows and
brick walls,” Maggie said. “You know, to sort of ease us patients into