“He gave me a nest. In my own private room. He said he’d keep it for me in case I came back. If you talk to him… he doesn’t need to do that. I don’t want him to waste his whole life waiting for me to come back, when we both know I won’t.” It’s the most horrible thing he’s ever said. The bravest. That’s what it means to love someone more than oneself—to let them go and have the chance to live a good life.

If his father had loved him, he would have done the same thing.

His chest hurts, as if he’s been stabbed. His heart isn’t just broken but ripped out of his chest.

They don’t even go back to Daniel’s apartment. He’s taken directly to the airstrip and put on a plane to the Montana base where soldiers who are not fit to serve, but who the military doesn’t want to eliminate, go to be put into cryogenic stasis.

The flight is two hours. When he lands, he’s directly in the base and is taken to a waiting room that plays soft music and is reminiscent of a fancy hotel. He has to take a shower, is given a thorough enema, and the most horrible part is that he has to remove his cage. They won’t let him wear it into stasis. They put it in a box with the rest of his personal effects and tell him it will be stored until he comes out again.

Dr Chang asks, “Do you want me to send the cage back to him?”

“No. Let him think I got to keep it while I’m asleep,” Daniel says, and that’s when the tears fall and he breaks. How can his father hate him this much? Not even let him go to sleep with his cage? The only trace of the man who loved him?

He is escorted to a small room that contains his stasis chamber. There’s a large one-way mirror on the wall. Is anyone on the other side of that, watching his life end? Large double doors are behind him. When he’s asleep they’ll wheel him out into some giant warehouse, and that will be that. How many soldiers are behind that door, stacked on top of each other, blank and unknowing as the world passes them by?

This base is thirty years old. There are soldiers who have been on ice for decades and now Daniel will be one of them. He’s staring at the coffin. That’s what it is. Even though it has a clear glass top and lights on the outside of it, they all know what it is. The interior is white.

“Would you like a sedative?” Dr. Chang offers. “It will make the next bit easier.”