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The Luckpot

A Short Story by Shaun A. Saunders

Image by Anthony Freda | anthonyfreda.com

A fiery cocktail of triumph and joy coursed through me:

I WON! I wasn’t dead anymore.

I laughed; inwardly at first, and then, like a scratchy record player, out aloud. Thanks to cryonics, I’d cheated death.

***

A rich, warm voice asked, “Can you hear me?”

As I started to turn my head, a more urgent, “No quick movements; not yet. Slow and easy.”

The speaker was past middle age — somewhere in that uneasy way station between experienced and elderly. He had short-trimmed, steel-gray hair, thin features, and wore a bland smock. Must be a doc.    

“How long?” I asked.

Doc smiled. “Perhaps you can tell us?" he said. "This is the year 2374.”

I whistled. “What a ride, 407 years.” I chuckled, “Best damn insurance policy I ever had.”

My good humour was infectious, for Doc grinned, too.

“You were frozen in nineteen sixty-seven?”

I nodded, still grinning.

“Marvellous!” Then, in a train-crash of words, “We really didn’t know — not much in the way of records left, but I had a feeling we’d hit the luckpot. That’s the right expression, isn’t it?”

“It’s close enough, buddy.”  

Solemnly, Doc replied, “You mean so much to us — more than you could imagine. A link with an age forever lost. Until now.”

***

Goodbye lung cancer, hello century twenty-four!

For a week, they wouldn’t let me out of the room — they couldn’t get enough of the twentieth century:

“…tell us about shopping centres…did every person drive a car?… what were people most interested in? … what was the general feeling about reproduction? … what did you want most in life?”     

All variations on a theme: my answers were simple:

“…like having Christmas every day…every family had at least one, those better off had two… themselves… practice as much as possible, and with as many partners as possible… More. Of everything.”        

I wanted to tell them about the Beach Boys, and Star Trek, but they just smiled.

***

Doc came to see me early:

“Today, we’re going to present you to the world. I brought this ceremonial robe for you.”

I soon learned that they lived under domes. Fuck! Some catastrophe, apparently. You’d think that by the twenty-fourth century people would be smart enough to fix anything…

So I stood on a raised dais, millions of viewers watching.

Doc was master of ceremonies: “I present to you the first revived person, from the seventh decade of the twentieth century.”

A sharp intake of breath swept across the auditorium. Doc placed a tight band around my upper arm and smiled.

A badge of honour? I sighed: more pomp and ceremony. Such is the lot of a celebrity! 

“And now, for our emotional healing, this travesty of humanity, this consumer of our future will be punished for crimes against the Earth and her children.”

There was a sharp sting as a concealed needle in the armband slid home.  

Fuck! –

***

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