October 3, 2013, -- Toledo, Ohio

Tony trotted down the narrow driveway, his body hunched over the basketball that thumped between his palm and the frigid cement.

"Shoot!"

Unfazed by Jake's taunting, Tony spun around with his back to the hoop and dribbled the ball in place. Despite the cold autumn air, sweat trickled down his forehead, drops of it stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. Jake pressed close to him, his hot breath blasting against Tony's neck as they scuffled their way to the garage and the basket above it.

Jake leaned in closer. "You're stalling, man." Spittle flew with his words, wetting the side of Tony's face. Tony risked a sly peek at his friend, then winced at the cool, mischievous eyes staring back.

Jake slapped the ball away. He let it bounce against his knees, then his hand while dribbling it on to victory. "Ha!" He leapt up and slammed the ball through the hoop.

"Twenty-two to four." Jake grabbed the ball before it could roll into the scraggly branches of a dying juniper hedge. "Best two out of three?"

Tony breathed out puffs of white clouds while panting his refusal. "Nah. What's the point? You'll win anyway."

"Ah, come on. We're just warming up." Jake batted the ball at him, then quickly snatched it back. "The exercise is good for you."

Tony shook his head and trudged over to a smooth patch of dead lawn beside the porch steps of Jake's house. He plopped down and hugged his knees, rocking back and forth to warm himself against the chilly afternoon air.

He snuffled through air filter plugs in his nose and lifted watery eyes to the gray-green haze above. Tony squinted and wiped his face, then glanced at his hands to see if there was blood on them. He should have worn his goggles today. The smog became so bad at times, like now, that he thought his eyes might bleed. He spread his fingers and noticed streaks of brown running across his knuckles. Not blood, just grime from junk that drifted through the thick Toledo air like plankton in the sea.

He lay in the dry grass and watched Jake dodge back and forth beneath the hoop, the ball in constant motion. His friend's sinewy limbs stretched as he leaped, and Tony noticed the rippled muscles on his friend's back where his shirt hiked up. Slim and fit, Jake made an unconscious mockery of Tony's fat, flabby body.

Tony ran his hand through a forelock of hair, using his sweat to slick it back. He smelled his fingers and grimaced, the pungent odor a mixture of perspiration and something like burnt rubber.

"Finish your homework?" Jake asked before lunging toward the hoop for another lay-up.

"I'll do it in the morning during access period. I got plenty of time."
"You'll catch shit from Spence if it's late."

"Who cares." Tony plucked blades of dead grass between thumb and forefinger. "It's our last year and I'm cruisin'."

Jake stopped his merciless pounding on the ball and stood, hands on hips, staring down at Tony. "If you don't ace Philosophy, you can forget about getting Spence's referral to the Tech Academy. He's serious about this essay." He trotted back toward the hoop.

"What'd you write?" Tony called out.

Jake threw him a withering look before launching another perfect dunk. "Once a dead body, always a dead body."

"How do you know for sure? They could do it, Jake. Reanimate all those corpsicles stacked up in Labriola's deep freeze for the last thirty years."
"Ain't gonna happen," Jake said.

Tony considered the ethics of immortality, the question Dr. Spence had assigned his philosophy students to ponder. The idea for this assignment sprang from the latest news sweeping the country: the impending revival of thirty-year-old corpses who, before they died, had dreamed the dream of living forever. At some time today -- perhaps it had already happened -- the first cryonic zombie would be zapped to life in the twenty-first century. Project Resurrection. Tony had followed updates about the Project for months. He would give anything to be in Angakok, Alaska right now to witness the event.

"Do you believe in Heaven, Tony?"

"I don't know. I mean, I want to believe in it. If it exists, it's where I wanna go when I die." Only Tony didn't believe and never would. Too bad Jake couldn't share his agnostic views.

"If someone brought you back from Heaven years after you died, how do you think you'd feel?"

"There's no proof we go anywhere after we die." Tony sprawled his plump body across the dead lawn. "It's nice to imagine some great beyond where angels play harps and your spirit lazes around on clouds all day. But who's to say death isn't like drifting into a dreamless sleep that lasts forever?"

Jake peered at him through a lock of black hair that hung over one eye. His expression was sympathetic, as though he felt sorry for Tony and his bleak perception of the afterlife. This made Tony think about his dead parents, who'd been gone five years now -- completely gone, forever. If their bodies had been frozen instead of buried, he could look forward to meeting up with them again someday. Only it would be in this world, during his lifetime. Not in some fantasy afterlife.

"Hey, Jake. I gotta go."

"Already?" Jake dribbled the ball again, bouncing it down the driveway. He ventured as far from the hoop as he could get without going into the street. "Betcha five I can make it from here."

Tony stood and brushed grass from the back of his sweat pants. He felt sticky and just wanted to go home and take a shower. Thinking about his parents had depressed him. "A sucker bet. You never miss."

Jake laughed and slouched over the bouncing ball. The foul air was cold and still, carrying no sound but the pat-pat-pat of inflated rubber against pavement. He scowled with concentration as he stared down the driveway, eyes fixed on the loop of bent metal above the garage.

Bored now, Tony turned from him to focus on the awaiting basket. Seconds passed. Jake never took this long to send the ball flying, the hoop attracting it like a magnet.

"Any day now," Tony said, the hairs on the back of his neck starting to prickle. Something was wrong. "Come on and make the shot so I can --" He glanced over his shoulder and saw his friend clutching the ball to his chest. An expression of pain and surprise distorted Jake's face. "Hey, Jake! You okay?"

The ball slipped from Jake's hands. It bounced mildly in place a few times before rolling down the driveway and into the street. When Jake didn't move to go after it, Tony sprinted toward him, an odd sense of panic tightening his chest.

"I'm so hot," Jake said, sounding breathless, his knees still bent as if ready to launch his free-throw. He grabbed at the front of his sweatshirt with both hands. "I-I-I'm being sucked out of my body. I can feel it, Tony. Something's p-p-pulling me, pulling, pull..."

END CHAPTER 1