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FILE 123 · VOL XX · The Dead Are Still Working
The First Man Ever Frozen Has Been Waiting Since 1967. Someone Signed Him Out.
You paid to be woken up in the future. Nobody said who would be doing the waking.
Based on: Cryonics
Intake record
| Recovered from | Maintenance office of a cryonics storage facility, Arizona, during a staffing audit |
|---|---|
| Contents | A dewar temperature log, a visitor sign-in sheet with one impossible entry, a revival contract, a security camera still |
| Finder | Marcus Tull, overnight facility technician |
| Status | Cryonics is real and legal. No person has ever been revived. The sign-out on the log is not explained. |
Recovered file
When you die, most people are buried or cremated. A few thousand people around the world have chosen something else. They have had their bodies, or just their heads, frozen in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius, in the hope that future science will be able to bring them back to life. [1]
It is called cryonics.
The idea was made popular by a physics teacher named Robert Ettinger in a book called The Prospect of Immortality, published in the early 1960s. He argued that freezing the dead could hold them, unchanged, until medicine learned to cure whatever killed them. [1]
On January 12, 1967, a 73-year-old psychology professor named James Bedford, who had cancer, became the first person ever cryopreserved. [2] He is still frozen today. He has been moved between facilities several times. He is now kept by a cryonics organization in Arizona. [2]
He has been waiting for more than fifty-eight years.
Not everyone who was frozen has stayed frozen. In the 1970s, it was discovered that bodies stored by a cryonics group in California had thawed and decayed because the group ran out of money to keep them cold. [3] The families had paid. The bodies were found ruined in a cemetery vault. [3]
In 2002, when the baseball legend Ted Williams died, his body was sent to a cryonics facility in Arizona. Some of his children fought over it in court and in public. One wanted him cremated. Two wanted him frozen. He is still frozen. [4]
There is no evidence that any frozen person can ever be revived. Most scientists say the freezing itself does serious damage to the brain. Cryonics companies say that future technology may be able to repair it. [1]
The people in the tanks have bet everything on that word. Future.
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 123 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
Built on real, cited records. The stories are dramatized. Disclaimer · If you are in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988.