Extended Expiry Date

Both a Poem and a Relative's Resurrection as part of a deadly obsession.

Hi there.

You may be aware I’m overly-keen on seeing what future reality might hold for humankind. I think I do it for the simple wonder, or an outrageous speculative vanity at hoping to be proved right. No matter the motive, to do this entails my brain and any attached eyes being functional at a randomly foretold moment.

If I do emerge dripping with liquid nitrogen from a Dewar flask in the future, I doubt it will be myself choosing which slice of time might be most appropriate. Instead, it will be a DNA-sharing descendant; or a lawyer; or an anonymous impersonal tender of my super-chilled self, who’ll get to decide when I should be resurrected. Only then might I see a new world – and know if it can stare back (either bravely or perhaps yawning) at a shivering, still decrepit me.

I wrote a monologue titled ‘The Hour’ more than three years ago on this topic. It’s linked to below, mostly for the benefit of my newer subscribers, for they now outnumber the loyalists who followed my pied-pipes into Substack land. Please be in no doubt I cherish you all.

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I’ve now added to my delaying death deviancy by writing the poem below in a similar vein, as it still plays heavily on my mind and continues to inform my speculative fiction. Perhaps others are right, and old age will indeed wither my desire to start again from where I left off – or perhaps just start again.

If only humanity could do the same.

Until next time,

JR

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© J. Reid

Extended Expiry Date (A Relative’s Resurrection)

Too expensive to hire.
Too young to retire.
I’m treading water
through limbo-danced fires.

Written cancellation of a funeral pyre,
willing avoidance of any slow death.
An anonymous flask to stash
my prematurely frozen head.

Prop me in a vertical bed of preservative,
liquid air for long hibernation.
A final prayer for energy bills paid
by future generations.

The mind damned to spend time
in eternal, tedious conservation.
Sharing a cold dewar in the dark,
dulled from sensory deprivation.

Memories rise at my scheduled resurrection,
to jaded jeers from future lives unbroken,
enduring squishy-fingered prods from
curious, great-great-great grandchildren.