DEDICATION:

For my parents, who found science in nature

and

For my husband, who found science in technology

because

They love me, who found science in fiction.

Dei gratia.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes, That call me on and on across the universe…

… Nothing’s gonna change my world.

— Lennon/McCartney

DADDY SAID, “LET MOM GO FIRST.”

Mom wanted me to go first. I think it was because she was afraid that after they were contained and frozen, I’d walk away, return to life rather than consign myself to that cold, clear box. But Daddy insisted.

“Amy needs to see what it’s like. You go first, let her watch. Then she can go and I’ll be with her. I’ll go last.”

“You go first,” Mom said. “I’ll go last.”

But the long and the short of it is that you have to be naked, and neither of them wanted me to see either of them naked (not like I wanted to see them in all their nude glory, gross), but given the choice, it’d be best for Mom to go first, since we had the same parts and all.

She looked so skinny after she undressed. Her collarbone stood out more; her skin had that rice-paper-thin, over-moisturized consistency old people’s skin has. Her stomach — a part of her she always kept hidden under clothes — sagged in a wrinkly sort of way that made her look even more vulnerable and weak.

The men who worked in the lab seemed uninterested in my mother’s nudity, just as they were impartial to my and my father’s presence. They helped her lie down in the clear cryo box. It would have looked like a coffin, but coffins have pillows and look a lot more comfortable. This looked more like a shoebox.