Freezing People is (Not) Easy by Bob Nelson, Kenneth Bly, PhD Sally Magaña

or eleven o’clock in the morning to avoid the worst of the traffic during my fifty-mile trek on the Ventura Freeway between my home in Woodland Hills and the Rennaker Mortuary in Buena Park. The ninety-minute trip could extend to three hours, the dry ice slowly subliming in my backseat. The cold permeated the seats and froze the upholstery on my Porsche Speedster; eventually the leather seats looked like black prunes.
    One Saturday I was sitting in traffic, watching the dry ice slowly disappear in my rearview mirror. I wanted action, and yet all I seemed to be doing was sitting, waiting, and accomplishing nothing more than my friends lying in stasis. In an effort to move, to do something, I pulled my car over to the freeway shoulder and buried my face in my hands. “Am I crazy?” I said aloud. “What the hell am I doing? This is madness.” My breathing grew shallow and fast as I fought the temptation to take the dry ice from the backseat and shuck it off the overpass. It would be an ending.
    I balled my hands into fists so tight that my nails cut into the fleshy part of my palms and tried to calm myself. I repeated memorable lines from Professor Ettinger’s book, from his appearances, and from our conversations. I made a mental checklist of all the supporting documentation about cryonics and convinced myself again of its logic. I looked out the window and marveled at a weed growing from the narrowest imaginable crack in the dry asphalt. “Yes, this is logical,” I resolved. “But it’s also crazy. Life is crazy. And life always finds a way.” I shrugged, resigned once again to my fate of these weekly sojourns of dry-ice replenishment and feeling confident that these were messy but necessary steps toward our goal of future reanimation.
    At the mortuary I pulled up to the garage and unloaded the dry ice. Marie’s container was kept below a wide shelf on rollers so it could be pulled out. I removed the lid and placed the dry ice around her sides, which gave me the opportunity to visually inspect her condition every week. I wanted to make sure she was still solidly frozen and she didn’t have skin burns from the dry ice. Her face and features looked identical to when we had our last conversation. There was no deterioration or alteration; not even her blue pantsuit seemed changed. Once satisfied, I covered her with the remaining dry ice, starting with her face and then working down to her feet. Finally I replaced the lid and rolled her container back into place. The procedure usually took about forty-five minutes.
    I dreaded trying to find Joseph at the mortuary. I wandered around the facility calling for him, but I inevitably located him in the embalming room. Many times I’d gone there and found Joseph standing over a body on the operating table. In those moments, the macabre reality of death came upon me. Sometimes the corpse was cut open, the intestines lying on the table.
    I hoped that with all my efforts, embalming would be reduced. That practice seemed horrendously wasteful—it only temporarily preserved the appearance of life, while we wanted to preserve life itself.

    When remembering the history of the cryonics movement in which I was privileged to participate, I could not forget a frail, tiny lady named Helen Kline—the woman who hosted our first California cryonics meetings. While in the final stages of lung cancer, Helen read The Prospect of Immortality. She was a motivating force from the beginning. Although only in her mid- to late fifties, she was quite frail. During the meetings in her home, she often excused herself with her frequent coughing fits.
    One time she asked me to accompany her to the grocery store. When we arrived at the market, she kept her arm hooked in mine and paraded around the store instead of actually shopping. I noticed all her friends staring and whispering about me. I realized I wasn’t providing assistance but rather arm