Author : Jack Strange

Funny, I never saw myself going into showbiz.

I started out as a lawyer, would you believe? It was a good living. I was paid well and saved up a good-sized pension pot.

But not good enough, as it happens.

Because when I realised I was coming to the end of my life, and tried to buy myself a place in a cryogenic deep-freezer, I didn’t have enough money to pay for it. Not for my entire body, anyway. I could only afford to have my head frozen. And that took everything I’d got. Every last cent.

Then, when finally technology had advanced enough for me to be brought back to life, the first thing the technician said to me was:

“Where’s your money? How much ya got?”

“What’s that?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

“After you died, you were put into a deep-freezer, and that’s where you’ve been for half a century. I’ve just brought you back to life. Now I need to know if you can afford to pay to be kept alive.”

I was a little bit disorientated, but the realization of what had happened came to me quickly.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I said. “I paid to have my head frozen and be brought back to life.”

He crouched down so that his eyes were level with my own.

“Exactly,” he said. “And we’ve honoured your contract. We’ve frozen you and brought you back to life. But it costs an awful lot of money to keep you alive. So if you can’t pay for it, I’m going to have to pull the plug on you.”

“But – but – “

“No ifs or buts. That’s the deal. Unless – “

“Unless what?”

“Unless you have some special talent or knowledge you can use to earn money.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but you’ve got ten seconds to come up with something.”

“I’m a lawyer.”

He shook his head and reached for a red button on a console.

“Wait, wait! I can sing!”

“Okay, try me.”

I gave him a verse of George Gershwin’s Summertime.

“That’s not bad,” he said. “We’ve got some more singing heads here. We could put you guys together and make you into a barber shop quartet. It’s never been done before. You’ll take the music world by storm.”

So they put the four of us resurrected heads onto a wheeled table with all the fluids and tubes that keep us alive on a shelf underneath the table top. We go everywhere together. I’m sick of it.

Must go now. Just had the curtain call. They’re about to wheel us onstage.

See you in Vegas next month.