A Story of Their Lives

Chapter 1

Two years ago, I was watching my parents go inside the freeze pods: oblong dark blue containers, trimmed with soft high-quality white faux leather on the inside and designed to accommodate one person. They would maintain the lives of my parents for the following years.

As the nurse prepared them for the freeze, my mom was once again enumerating all the things I had to do while they were sleeping – taking care of their plants for a decade, looking after their house (which I definitely didn't mind), and keeping in touch with my sister, who lived abroad and couldn't be here to say goodbye to them. To be honest, we all knew that she was too upset about our parents' decision to disappear from our lives for ten years, but it was their choice after all.

It was certainly a strange feeling. They would be completely gone, and I would miss them a lot, but I knew that at least it was temporary. Although the thought of me dying in the meantime and them finding out only once they're done with the freeze crossed my mind, I tried to suppress it as much as possible. Otherwise, I would break down right there and beg them not to go.

"I am already excited to see all your achievements when we're out again! Surely, you'll be married to Michael and have kids by then," my mom said, standing next to the pods and wearing a funny tight suit, which everyone had to put on before entering the pods. I shook my head. Michael and I were on the verge of breaking up but there was no point telling my parents about this before their sleep. I did find it unbelievable that one of the last things she had to say before leaving for a decade was putting more pressure on me to accomplish everything she'd planned for me. They gave me a hug and I watched them enter the pods.

"See you in ten years, guys," I said, as the anxiety caused my stomach to drop. The nurse closed the doors to the pods, and they got sent away to the storage facility. My parents were frozen. I slowly walked back home, missing them already.

A week prior to that my friend Isaline decided to try the freeze as well. Most of the people I knew went into the freeze one by one for different amounts of time and it felt like I was the only one left behind.

Nothing, of course, stopped me from following the trend as well. In fact, even though I didn't tell my parents, the idea of skipping ten years, waking up in the future but still being relatively young appealed to me a lot. I almost had enough savings to afford that, especially now that I didn't have to pay rent. I'll give myself two years, I thought back then.

And so, two years later, I was sitting at the office, pretending to perform my exciting data entry job. We had another health and safety meeting earlier that day about using dishwashers and kitchen utensils in the office kitchen correctly. The day before the HR team hung posters with our top managers saying "thank you" to all of us for our hard work and one of those was annoyingly close to my desk. I looked at it again and knew immediately that I reached my tipping point.

The entire day all I could think about was meeting Isaline that evening. After spending the last two years in the freeze, she wanted to gather all her friends to catch up. I was looking forward to having dinner with her and seeing whether her experience would be the last convincing argument for me to take that risk.

Isaline's house was located in the suburbs. It was a two-storey English-style brick house with a cute little garden, already decorated for Halloween even though it was a week from now. Wondering where she even got the time for that, I rang her bell. My hands tightly gripped a brownie I bought from a French patisserie: I was notorious for dropping things on the floor. Our friend Clara opened the door and let me in as Isaline ran towards me from the kitchen to hug me – she hadn't changed at all.

"I just wanted to postpone turning thirty," she said once we all sat around her table, "Now most of you are already thirty and I am still in my twenties."