The Defrosted

In the year 2324, a spectacular discovery was made by chance. A sealed cavern was found containing hundreds of cryogenic chambers, each housing a frozen human from the year 2024, hoping to one day be resurrected. Some sought to cure an incurable disease, while the vast majority longed to wake up in a future where science had paved the way for extended lifespans.

As it turned out, their $200,000 was not entirely wasted. Technological progress had made it possible to thaw people from -197°C and revive them. The bad news was that the majority in the tanks were around 80 years old and filthy rich. So the planet suddenly had a flock of privileged individuals scurrying around smelling like old freezers that had never been defrosted. They might get their long-awaited 40 extra years of life, thanks to new diets and genetically engineered drugs. The fact that they still leaked like a sieve and had to wear adult diapers somewhat reduced the initial joy. The butt plug took on a whole new function.

Sadly, dementia was still not curable or stoppable, leaving many with decades ahead of them with the consciousness of a mandarin. Those who were still mentally intact were hugely annoying people who were used to being listened to. They demanded media attention and could never stop talking about how amazing and successful their lives had been. It soon became clear that the ultimate motive for the freeze was that they believed they had so much to give to future generations. A crash course in ruining the planet? someone asked and was met with a slightly frostbitten evil eye.

Relatives of the Defrosted were also allowed to meet their distant ancestors, which didn't lead to anything good. Small children were frightened out of their wits, and adults were faced with the dilemma of dealing with an ancient relative who demanded attention, service, and meat-based fast food. What the Defrosted people didn't realize was that in 300 years, humanity had evolved. Among other things, it had stopped being obsessed with the idea of living as long as possible. The optimum is to live as well as possible for as long as possible. The human body has an expiry date, just like any other living thing, a scientist told them matter-of-factly. The Defrosted shouted angrily that it was just an opinion and that they felt offended by having their dream questioned. They therefore demanded to be frozen again and thawed when scientists had learned to become more customer friendly and market oriented. So the Defrosted bitterly went back into their capsules for another dreamless sleep.

What they had forgotten is the indisputable fact that you can't defrost meat more than once.

Killing dogs.

I'm thinking about my dog today. She died a year ago. Died and died, by the way, we went and put her down at the vet's. She fell asleep in my lap and was clearly less affected by the moment than my wife and I were. We cried like children.

Signe was a beloved Jack Russel. In fact, I think most people liked Signe better than me. People cuddled with her, gave her treats, let her sit in their lap, jump up on the sofa where no other dog had ever been, etc. To be honest, I also liked Signe better than myself. She was our second dog, even though we swore never to get another one after our Labrador Gillis. He was also amazing in his own way and with an eating disorder that made him constantly hungry. An evolutionary defect that had the positive effect that as long as you held out something edible, you could get him to do anything. Unfortunately, his long-term memory didn't seem to be great, because he forgot what he was taught almost immediately. Or maybe he was so clever that he pretended to forget in order to get another bribe.

I don't know. But when you look into your beloved dog's eyes, you hope to catch a glimpse of intelligence, caring, keen friendship, or why not love? Anthropomorphism is the fancy word for attributing human characteristics to animals. But it feels like most of us only apply it to animals that we don't plan to eat. If we saw fragments of our own emotional register in other animals, there would probably not be any Christmas ham or turkey. Attributing animal characteristics to humans is called zoomorphism. Often it is negative characteristics that are emphasised. Eating like a pig, being slippery as an eel, being scared as a hare. Hung like a horse also occurs, but it’s unclear whether this is a compliment or a handicap. Yes, this is how my thoughts wander sometimes. Like a donkey. Anyway, we have decided not to get a new dog. Neither of us has the psyche to put another one to sleep.

However, there will be a turkey at Christmas

A second shot at life.

My old school recently discovered that the skeleton used in biology lessons and theatre performances is not made of plastic at all. Somehow, the remains of a real human have been given a second life. The school apologised, saying that they usually check their equipment but obviously failed in this case. A reasonable defense, I think. What else could they have done? Tried to make broth from the bone frame? Personally, I can't help but wonder if the mistake may turn out to be pedagogical gold. Both Hamlet and biology lessons suddenly take on a completely different tone. There's another person in the room. Who was this human who walked the earth for a while?

I believe this can be a groundbreaking step away from the academically dry and artistically dusty. Like a parachute jump into the deeply personal that only a lived life can offer. Suddenly, students are not staring into the plastic hollowness of a skull but meeting the gaze of a human. A life story. Hamlet is actually Mike Richards who fell asleep drunk in the rapeseed field and didn't hear the combine harvester coming early in the morning.

I see enormous opportunities for the country's teachers ahead of me. All schools should be equipped with real skeletons, and teachers should have free rein to come up with anything they want about their origins. We want to connect with people and need to create the history that education requires.

-Here comes George Washington.

Isn't that an opening for a history lesson that no one will forget?

-Kids, meet Jeanette, she died of tertiary syphilis. You can see it in the skeletal injuries here and here. (Sex education)

-Simon went to this school until he joined a criminal gang and was killed by a rival gang who cut off his genitalia and let him bleed to death. (Social studies)

This will revolutionise both education and theatre. It also leads me to think a little extra about my own death. I don't want to be cremated or buried. Not when there's an opportunity to enrich future generations. I want to live forever as a teaching aid and prop.

Labour on the dining table.

I am invited to a dinner party and end up next to a young girl who looks like she could give birth before the starter is served. Wise from experience, I don't comment on her condition but wait until she brings it up on her own. Then I act pleasantly surprised and pretend to discover her tummy for the first time. She is of course thrilled to be expecting her first child, just as I was. That magical combination of being part of the most universal course of humanity, while being such a unique and magical event in your own life.

-We are going to give birth naturally, she says enthusiastically.

-Really? What does that mean? I ask with interest.

-On our own. Just my husband and I, at home. That's him over there, she adds, pointing to an anaemic figure at the other end.

-How exciting, otherwise I've heard that you can get help from one of those Doulas, I say, showing that I'm neither judging nor out of touch with the present.

-No, we want to do it all by ourselves. As it was intended from the beginning.

-When women died like flies in childbirth, I respond before I can stop myself.

-It's my labour, she says abrupt.

-Absolutely. Sorry, I just get so nervous when people dismiss centuries of progress and call it natural. As if I would go to the dentist and refuse anaesthesia for a root canal.

-It's hardly the same thing.

-No, you're right. What does your husband do? I ask.

-He works at the National Land Survey, why? she replies irritably.

-So he's not much to count on if there's a breech birth, heavy bleeding or lack of oxygen?

After that we eat in silence. The dishes come and go. I feel a bit guilty that I didn't keep my mouth shut and just played along. Later, when the dance has started and I'm standing alone at the bar, her husband joins me. I think that this is my opportunity to compensate for my insensitivity towards his wife.

-So, I think your wife got a bit upset with me, I say.

-Yes, I heard, he replies.

-It was foolish of me to make comments ...

-Between you and me, he suddenly says in a low voice and grabs my arm. You're absolutely right. I can draw straight lines between properties, but I don't know shit about births or how to save lives. I'm fucking terrified of this.

Then suddenly his wife's water breaks on the dance floor and a doctor at the party offers to take them straight to the maternity ward at the nearest Hospital.

-You are saved, I tell the husband.

Much later I hear that they had a beautiful little daughter and that everything went well with the help of a wonderful midwife, nitrous oxide and an epidural anesthesia.

Our moment on Earth.

It doesn't look like we'll be able to keep the planet's temperature at a reasonable level. Doom, who has mostly been lying on his daybed picking his teeth with a poker, groans, gets up and starts his little walk in our direction. He's been busy creating and extinguishing some solar systems and sorting through all the Red Dwarfs. Perhaps he should stop calling them that and say Little Red's instead? It's unclear, but for now they'll just have to keep their name. Otherwise, he's mostly been dabbling in his favourite material - dark matter. It's the least judgemental material you can work with, as it lacks mass. A couple of pots, some serving plates and three teacups, but the one he is most pleased with is an abstract troll. It's a good pastime and sometimes, when he's in the mood, he thinks of his work as non-figurative art.

He has visited us on Earth before, giving us ice ages, meteorites and other life-destroying events. But he was younger then and enjoyed being cruel for no reason. Now he's more mature and more of a middle-aged janitor wandering around the universe trying to keep some kind of order. That little blue planet, he thinks, shaking his head dejectedly and adjusting his sex in his carpenter's trousers with one hand. It looked so promising for a while, a planet that managed to create a sustainable atmosphere and conditions for life. And life came, first as tiny, insignificant bacteria that with numbing slowness eventually transformed and created everything that grows and lives.

Eventually, a species evolved that came to completely dominate the planet, which was somewhat surprising given its complete lack of consequentialist thinking. It may have been the smartest species on the planet after millions of years of evolution, but on the whole it was just a bunch of idiots. Full of themselves and their own excellence. Even when faced with the threat of extinction, they refused to change their lifestyle. Self-annihilation, isn't that what it's called?

So Doom grabs a stool and sits down to watch the show from the front row. He thinks this will be a bit like popping popcorn. Maybe something surprisingly tasty and edible can come out of this too? He knows that the planet will survive and that life will return in a new form. But it's a shame that no one will be around to tell the new life forms what went wrong last time.

But maybe it doesn't matter, he thinks, every generation wants the privilege of making its own mistakes, right?

Greta Garbo's Eggs.

Dr Gregory Goodwin Pincus was the doctor who made his name in 1937 by artificially fertilising a rabbit egg. The idea was already controversial with the rabbit, so Dr Pincus continued to research in his spare time throughout his life to achieve artificial insemination in humans. Mainly by experimenting at home with his own sperm and eggs from a neighbour's wife who, in return, received free treatment for her varicose veins.

Dr Pincus' secret medical records were found in 2013 behind a loose plank in a closet in his former home in Boston. They revealed that Greta Garbo had visited him on several occasions to freeze eggs. The experiment with the rabbit had caught her attention in an article in which Dr Pincus suggested that in the future women would be able to freeze their eggs and then fertilise them at their convenience. Greta was 36 years old and had already decided that the flop 'The Twins” would be her last film. She had also long since given up the idea of having to live with a man and assumed that she would remain childless. Dr Pincus kept Garbo's eggs with the promise that when he solved the secret, her eggs would be the first in the world to be inseminated. He continued his research until it ended with him in 1967.

When Dr Pincus' house was further searched, a General Electric household freezer was discovered in a hidden part of the house's crawl space, still switched on and on maximum cooling. A dismembered deer and a large number of test tubes were found, four of them marked with the initials G.G, just as stated in his journals. The find was quickly moved to the Massachusetts General Hospital and taken care of by doctors who eventually found the eggs to be in perfect condition and fully viable. Since Greta became a US citizen in 1951, it was thought that ownership of the eggs was a non-issue. But when Garbo's will was re-examined, the somewhat heavy-handed lines demanding that her body be shipped and buried in Sweden took on a whole new meaning. The eggs belonged in Sweden.

The then Swedish government literally had the eggs on its table when they were flown home for storage at the Karolinska Institute. The government chose not to publicise the find because they didn’t know what to do with it. The Minister of Culture proposed a Greta Garbo museum where a transparent freezer containing the eggs could be the epicentre of the museum. The Minister of Finance agreed that Garbo's eggs were a cultural issue but also recognised the political opportunity. They all knew that an election loss was imminent and that only a miracle could save the government from losing power - Greta Garbo's unborn child.

Through secret contacts with the Writers Guild and the National Writers Union, the search for a suitable husband began. Unfortunately, the rumour spread quickly and a horde of self-proclaimed men of culture got in touch and gave long monologues about why their particular gene sets were most compatible with Garbo's. Many prominent men stood at the front of the line with their fly open. Even some men from the Sabelskjöld family, to whom Greta Garbo was related, thought they should have the right to fertilise Greta's eggs. When someone pointed out that kinship is hardly classed as an asset in the context of fertilisation, they got touchy and replied that parents with kinship was completely natural in their family. A number of younger cultural women also came forward and offered their wombs for the fertilised egg. Many brought letters of recommendation from their gynaecologists, attesting to the excellence of their reproductive organs.

When the rumour of Garbo's egg reached the tabloids, the entire government was forced to hold an emergency meeting. The Prime Minister agreed that Greta Garbo's children could be the deceptive manoeuvre he needed to hide the fact that the party had completely lost all ideas and any will to change. But he didn't want to contribute to cultural elitism, meaning that the semen issue must be decided more democratically. The Minister of Culture agreed and suggested that all men who wanted to contribute should be allowed to do so and that everyone's donation should be mixed in a pump pot thermos, which created a short but interesting discussion about the different types of thermos on the market. When the Foreign Minister suggested that semen could then be taken from an existing sperm bank, the female Minister of Agriculture got angry. She said that men who were so vain as to want to spread their seed indiscriminately, should not be allowed to have children at all.

The whole issue was naturally resolved when the Karolinska Institute suffered an unexpected power cut. The freezer with Greta Garbo's eggs died and so did the dream of the perfect child.

Penetrated and misunderstood.

There is a medical examination that we men need to do after a certain age. Something we joke amongst ourselves about with horrified delight. Anyway, my wife pushed me to make an appointment in the end. I didn't sleep well the night before and worried about the examination and the results.

When I get home after the appointment, I feel relieved and therefore also a bit happy. My wife is waiting anxiously when I (with a slightly shuffling gait) enter the kitchen and sit down.

-How did it go?

-Well, it was disgusting of course.

-Then you might understand how it is for us women to go for a mammogram or to the gynaecologist.

-It's not the same thing, is it?

-Why is that?

-Well, you do it all the time so you get used to it somehow.

-No, we don't.

-Alright, but this was all the same very hard for me. Even though she said everything was fine.

-She?

-Yes, it was a female doctor.

-Really? My wife looks at me long and searchingly.

-Well, that explains a lot.

-What do you mean by that?

-Nothing. But it was a bit convenient that it was a woman, don't you think?

-Well, the hospital chose who would examine me, not me.

-But you did get a name of the doctor before you went?

-Yes, of course.

-And it was obviously not Dr Lennart?

-No, and it didn't matter. I might even have preferred a woman to examine me.

-Yes, I can imagine that. That's why you didn't say anything to me before?

-Are you jealous...?

-Because a woman sticks a finger up your arse? I don't think so.

-Then there was the ultrasound too. A long fucking rod ....

-There you go. Like a dessert.

-Oh give me a break! Maybe I should have ignored the examination and suffered an unstoppable cancer later?

She just shakes her head in response.

-It was you who pushed me to go! I say.

-But I didn't expect you to come home looking like you got a refund on your taxes.

-Maybe I'm relieved that it's over? Isn't that a pretty normal reaction?

She thinks for a moment before she laughs and looks at me a little tenderly.

-Yes, sorry. You're right, you're right. Maybe I'm just a bit nervous about my own visit to the gynaecologist next week. Although Magnus is very good and easy on the hand.

-Magnus?