Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 4, July 2014 by Alex Hernandez George S. Walker Eleanor R. Wood Robert Quinlivan Peter Medeiros Hannah Goodwin R. Leigh Hennig Page A

society, which is the task our tutor’s set.”
    Damian turned to look her in the eye. “Seriously? You, of all people, are going for that angle?”
    Anna sighed and put down the book. “Just because you took the same class last year doesn’t mean you’re an expert on modern interpretations of myth.”
    “But the theme of suffering is still the main point, right? Prometheus, chained, degraded, undergoing nightly agony every time the eagle comes back to eat his liver…just so that it can regrow for a repeat of the torment the next day. Poor bastard. How can you interpret that theme without acknowledging that cryonics could eradicate suffering permanently?”
    “I think that misses the whole point of the myth. To me, it’s about the drawbacks of immortality. If Prometheus had been a man, he would have escaped in death the first time the eagle dined on his liver. He underwent countless years of agony before Heracles found him and shot the eagle. Prometheus’ immortality was his curse…the true depth of his punishment for daring to defy Zeus.”
    “Don’t you think Prometheus, the one who gave us fire, the god who was all about allowing humans to help themselves, would be the first to help us find our own immortality?”
    “I think he, of all the gods, would recognise immortality’s great downside. Aren’t we dooming ourselves to an eternal cycle of freezing and reanimating?”
    Damian could see where this was going. He shook his head in wry amusement. “Okay, I’m removing the soapbox before you get comfortable on it.”
    Anna opened her mouth to protest, but he grinned and kissed her to erase the sting of his words. She let out an exasperated sigh and pulled him closer, and they dropped the subject for the remainder of the night.
     
    #
     
    Damian found it hard to argue with Anna’s assertion that Prometheus would have given anything for the release of death when the eagle came yet again to pierce his flesh. As he tried to phone her for the fifth time in as many days, he began to recognise aspects of her view he’d never considered before. Aspects he couldn’t have considered before his own experiences with cryonics. He would not die of the illness that sent him to his cold chamber. But he was faced with finding his place in a world that had moved on without him. When he entered the care of the Cryonics Institute again, he would likely be facing that ultimate killer: old age. What vast time might pass between that moment and his next reanimation?
    Anna didn’t answer. He’d even tried calling her on Phyllis’ phone this time so she couldn’t ignore his number. Perhaps the reality of his return to health was too difficult to reconcile with her views. Maybe she was worried that he would talk her out of any decision that didn’t involve cryo. Whatever the reason, she had begun by asking for his help and now she was shutting him out.
    Her appointment at the Institute was imminent. When she finally contacted him via text message the following morning, his anxiety trebled.
    “I’m sorry, Day. I love you.”
    Her bedraggled body was discovered washed up on the shore of the city harbour, but not before Damian found her note. He rushed to her apartment after receiving her message. He found her door unlocked and entered, calling her name to no response.
    In the middle of her coffee table was a book he recognised with a pang of nostalgia. Trapped between its gold-edged pages was a piece of paper he mistook for a bookmark. He picked up the book, caressed the embossed cover, and opened it to the marked page. The story of Prometheus gazed back at him, and he saw that the slip of paper was more than a place marker. His heart lurched at its strange, brief note. Grief and solitude overwhelmed him as he took in the words, written in Anna’s precise hand:
    “I am mortal. Death, not science, is my Heracles.”
     
     
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    Eleanor R. Wood’s stories have appeared in  Bete Noire, Sorcerous Signals , and