Freezing People is (Not) Easy (11 page)

Marshall Neel drew up the papers that donated Louis Nisco's body to CSC under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, along with the capsule, and Marie signed them. I called Ed and informed him that I would drive to Arizona to retrieve the Nisco capsule the next day.

He asked, “Did she give you any money for me?”

When I responded no, he said, “Come and get the fucking thing before I do something I'll be sorry for.”

Ed was paying for the liquid nitrogen himself, something he detested. He confided, “I'm getting out of this fucking business. It's all a bunch of crazy people and crazy problems.”

I'd never met anyone so contradictory with his name—nothing about him made me think of hope—
Ed Avarice
would have been far more appropriate. I told him the CSC was prepared to give him the fifteen hundred dollars owed by Marie upon picking up the capsule. Suddenly we became very popular with Ed.

I rented a heavy-duty truck and trailer and set off to pick up the capsule. A close friend, Fred Martin, joined me for the ride. Fred was an insurance wizard who was developing a plan to provide coverage for suspension costs. We arrived at Cryo-Care on a Saturday morning, and Ed treated us to breakfast at his favorite hangout. Mouth agape, I watched him devour a huge stack of blueberry pancakes along with three eggs, sausage, bacon, two huge scoops of vanilla ice cream, milk, and countless cups of coffee. Yes, Ed Hope was a big man. For me he was a reinterpretation of Scrooge's comment to Jacob Marley: “There's more of gravy than of grave about you.”

We started back to California that same morning. On the way, outside some little Arizona town, we ran out of fuel thanks to a faulty gas gauge on the rental truck. I was debating my options when I saw a highway patrolman in my rearview mirror.
Great!
I looked over at Fred and raised my eyebrows, trying to signal to him to play it cool.

The officer pulled up alongside my window. “What's the problem?”

Thinking of our unusual cargo, I tried to act nonchalant; but I was sweating from the heat. “I'm not sure. It feels like we ran out of gas, but the gauge shows we've got a third of a tank.”

The policeman perched his sunglasses in his hair, rolled up his sleeves, and lifted the hood of the truck. After a few minutes of tinkering, he confirmed we were out of gas. I just sat there, sticking to the fake leather seat and dreading that he'd ask me to step out of the truck to show him what I was hauling in the trailer. Instead he pulled out a clear plastic hose from his trunk and hooked it up to a special spot on his carburetor. Out rushed gas directly into my tank, three gallons free of charge, courtesy of rinky-dink Arizona. As we drove off, I asked our cargo, Louis Nisco, to say good-bye to the officer.

Back at Joseph's mortuary, our luck hadn't changed. Marie broke all our agreements and never gave the CSC the monthly payments she promised. Not long after we transferred the capsule to the mortuary, she sent me a handwritten note that she was leaving the fate of her father to me and whatever happened was in CSC's hands. We needed the income badly, but in a way I was elated. Her letter freed me from worry over her possibly discovering I had used the capsule for several people, as well as any liability. Or so I thought. I didn't hear from Marie again until years later, under far different circumstances.

I felt the curious warmth of hope mingled with apprehension. However, I should have refused Ed Hope's offer to take ownership of the capsule and keep its patient at -320°F for the next several hundred years. This prototype leaked badly and required a vacuum pump continuously to maintain a half-decent vacuum between the outer wall and inner chamber. The liquid nitrogen needed replacing every week instead of just once a month, but the allure of placing our four patients into this single capsule was far too thrilling to turn down. Hauling dry ice a hundred miles every week for two years was a nightmare of labor and expense, especially since only Russ had left any money to pay for this journey.

On a cold morning in March 1969, I met Joseph Klockgether in his mortuary garage with a huge agenda for the day. We were opening the Louis Nisco capsule and placing the other three patients inside. I couldn't sleep the night before; I was too worried about this daunting task. If not sealed perfectly, we risked making an already leaky, decrepit capsule even worse.

These patients—Marie, Helen, and Russ—had been our friends and our kindred spirits in the cryonics movement. This was the first time in history anyone had attempted such lifesaving efforts; we respected this maiden voyage and did everything possible to honor them. It was my fervent hope this capsule would save these people who were gambling on future technology.

Ray Fields, a welding expert, had called me to offer his services. After examining his credentials and prior work, I agreed. He was eager to help, arriving at the mortuary garage before I did. We needed three hours to open the capsule, as the cut had to be perfect so that it could be welded back exactly as before and sealed correctly. During this time, Marie, Helen, and Russ remained in their temporary storage container with dry ice. New to our mission, Ray stared in awe at their perfectly preserved bodies.

Ray hovered over the capsule with his diamond saw, preparing to make the first cut. His face was scrunched up, looking concerned. “Is he going to be okay?” he asked, gesturing to the now-drained capsule with Louis Nisco still inside.

I was pouring some coffee for Joseph and me from the percolator. “Don't worry; a body at liquid-nitrogen temperature doesn't thaw in a few hours, so we have plenty of time. Just think about Thanksgiving turkey. Every year, my wife Elaine leaves a fifteen-pounder on our kitchen counter overnight to thaw. In the morning, its center is usually still frozen.”

Ray nodded, understanding, his attention focused on the sliver-thin cut progressing along the stainless-steel capsule.

I felt a little odd talking turkey, but I had needed to reach for strange analogies to explain cryonics principles over the years. “Now imagine that same bird weighed 120 pounds and was frozen at 320 degrees below zero; that turkey would be frozen solid for days. Louis is quite safe—as long as we don't spend a week trying to get this perfect.”

We began by releasing the vacuum between the two chambers. A cryogenic capsule is a giant thermos bottle with a vacuum drawn between the inner and outer cylinders. I explained to Ray that vacuum was the best possible insulation to maintain the four-hundred-degree temperature difference between the inner capsule and the Southern California weather. “It's interesting that humans can't survive in a vacuum or in liquid nitrogen, but both are necessary ingredients to preserve these lives.”

After Ray cut open the capsule and we spent four exhaustive hours positioning our friends, we had all four patients inside the rickety Nisco capsule. After the capsule was bolted and sealed, we connected the vacuum pump, recharged it with liquid nitrogen, and said a little prayer.

After checking the capsule every day for two weeks, I knew we were in terrible trouble. The vessel was worse than before. Even with the vacuum pump running continuously, the liquid nitrogen was disappearing quickly; I knew I couldn't maintain the expense for very long. I felt frustrated and abandoned. I tried hard to not snap at the people helping me, especially Joseph and my wife Elaine.

We intended to keep the capsule at the mortuary until the vault was completed, but the health department was pressuring Joseph to relocate the frozen bodies. In May 1970 we moved the capsule to the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth. Instead of placing the capsule into the vault, which had no electricity or ventilation, we placed it in the heavy equipment yard alongside the huge thirty-man capsule. If that were operational, it would solve all our problems, but instead it sat empty, silently mocking me. Frank Enderle gave me almost free rein at the cemetery to accomplish a goal that was becoming harder and harder to achieve. But failure was not an option; I just had to keep pushing forward.

Sometimes opportunities ride in on the wind, and sometimes they tap your shoulder. Months passed while the vault remained unfinished. Then late in the year, I befriended a gentleman named Frank Farrell. Frank was an anomaly, a defiant deviation from the standard order of human beings—he was exactly the opposite of what he appeared to be.

I was at a Santa Monica engineering office, trying to build a steel frame for the convertible top of my 1952 Porsche. Mine had been stolen while the Speedster was parked in downtown Westwood, and I was looking for someone who could fabricate this part for me. The frame had been unavailable from the Porsche dealer for more than ten years, and I had spent a year to find it.

I had just been told the usual “no way” by some so-called expert when Frank, who had been standing behind me, introduced himself. He looked as though he had just climbed out of a Dumpster. His clothes were a mess and likely had never seen an iron. Frank was about six feet tall, had poor posture, and could not have weighed an ounce over 120 pounds—a hunched human scarecrow. He had an enormous Adam's apple, and his top front teeth protruded from his smile.

He announced that he could build me the part if he could copy an original. I was doubtful at first, but as we talked I could see this was no hobo. We had lunch and conversed for hours. Frank had no interest in the material trappings of life. He had no home or automobile. He lived intermittently with each of his three daughters. He made good money as an engineer and supported all three of his daughters but owned nothing of his own, except for a paper shopping bag he toted around in his filthy hands. Technical expertise aside, I wondered how his employer tolerated his appearance.

For one hundred dollars, Frank fabricated a perfect copy of the frame I needed. He installed it on my vehicle with a special bolt system so that no one could steal it again.

The man was brilliant. Over the course of a half-dozen years, Frank proved himself to be a magician in mangy dog clothing. He helped build the cryonics vault and skillfully maintained the rickety cryogenic capsules, along with our six testy high-vacuum pumps. He averted disaster countless times.

Frank refused to budge about his hygiene though. Sometimes I cringed, but I would put an invisible clothespin over my nose and remember the olfactory fortitude I had developed when I was a homeless teenager. Remembering those days, I couldn't fathom how someone would choose to live with that stink. Nevertheless, he was a gift from heaven, a lovable friend who knew everything about everything.

He fixed each problem one by one. He brought in an aqualung and fans to improve air circulation. Also, I was paranoid about security. We didn't want anyone knowing about the vault, entering the vault, or taking pictures of the vault, so Frank installed a high-tech lock that required a key turned a specific way or an alarm would sound.

I had recently seen
2001: A Space Odyssey,
which had these mysterious black monoliths that were endowed with mystical powers of creation. Frank showed me plans for our vault cover, about ten feet long by five feet wide, which was a replica of the monolith on a sliding track. The steel plate was a perfect marker for the CSC vault, not bold or gaudy but a work of art.