Frost pressed his fingertips against the clinic window, leaving prints on the frosted glass. Beyond it, the preservation pod's surface caught the blue light in ripples, like the lake where he'd taught Sarah to skip stones twenty years ago. The memory surfaced: her five-year-old hands clutching pebbles, her triumphant squeal when one finally bounced three times across the water instead of sinking.
"The Lazarus-McKinnon process has come so far," Dr. Chen said from behind him. She kept her distance – they all did these days, as if his skepticism might be contagious. "Last week, we revived a patient who was preserved in 2041. His grandchildren had graduated college while he was under. They said it was like opening a time capsule."
The pod hummed its steady lullaby. Frost watched his reflection fragment across its curved surface, the gray at his temples scattered into constellations. At seventy-three, he'd watched preservation pods evolve from desperate gambles to commodity hardware, sprouting across the cityscape like silver mushrooms after rain.
His tablet buzzed. Another message from Sarah: "Dad, Mei's science project is about great-grandma's revival next month. She needs to interview family. Please call."
He slipped the tablet back into his pocket, but not before Dr. Chen glimpsed the notification. Her expression shifted – that familiar mix of confusion and concern he'd grown used to since the diagnosis.
"Your mother's preservation was one of our earliest successes," she ventured.
"I remember the day she went under," Frost said, his voice rough. "She said it was like booking a flight to the future. Always did love to travel, Mom did." He turned from the window, facing the artificial autumn of the waiting room, where holographic leaves spiraled in endless descent. "But some of us prefer to stay grounded."
"Be that as it may," Dr. Chen continued, "stage 4 pancreatic cancer has a very poor prognosis. Cryogenics while cancer research advances is what I recommend."
At home that evening, Frost dug through his closet until he found the old shoebox. Inside, paper photographs curled at the edges – relics from when memories were things you could hold. His mother beamed up at him from the top of the stack, caught mid-laugh at her preservation party. They called them "sunset celebrations" now, but back then they'd been heavy with uncertainty, more like funerals with forced optimism.
The doorbell chimed. Through the security feed, he saw Sarah shifting from foot to foot, a mannerism unchanged since childhood. But the man behind her made Frost's hands shake as he dropped the photographs.
Marcus stood in the hallway, looking exactly as he had the day of his preservation fifteen years ago. The same laugh lines, the same slight slouch to his left shoulder from their college rugby days. Only his eyes gave away that he'd lived through another decade while Frost's world kept turning.
"You still keep your thermostat at seventy-four," Marcus said as he stepped inside, his grin familiar and foreign at once. "Some things never change, Space Cadet." The old nickname hit Frost in the chest – from their NASA internship days, when he'd get lost watching the stars instead of running calculations.
Sarah's eyes darted between them. She had their mother's way of worrying, right down to the slight crease between her eyebrows. "Uncle Marcus woke up last week," she said softly. "He asked to see you."
They settled in Frost's living room, where the evening light caught dust motes swimming like chrono-particles in a preservation chamber. Marcus ran his fingers over the chess set on the coffee table – the same one they'd played on during college all-nighters.
"Remember that quantum mechanics final?" Marcus asked, picking up a knight. "You said time was just another dimension we were too limited to navigate properly." He set the piece down on a different square. "Funny how things circle back around."
Sarah touched the sleeve of Frost's cardigan. "Dad, when they diagnosed your pancreas..." She swallowed hard. "Mei asked me why grandpa doesn't want to meet her children's children."
He had no response.