Freeze Framing Novels & Stories

If you can't thaw someone, why offer cryogenic preservation at all? "Mr. Townsend, please listen to me carefully," Andre replied, his tone steady but firm. "Freezing and thawing are not the same process. "Freezing is relatively straightforward. As long as the temperature is lowered rapidly enough, a person's cells remain intact. Although the body is frozen, the cells are still alive, just inactive. The individual is frozen in that exact moment, suspended in time, and they'll stop aging. "But thawing is much more complicated. Ice melts easily with heat, but what if there's a hamster trapped inside the ice? How would you melt the ice without harming the hamster?

My blood freezes over numerous notifications immediately after the photo upload. "Oops,my bad" Freya's removes her foot. "Me too. Finger slipped" Bridgette giggles deviously.

"First, the Ion-Pulse Grenade. They rely on a sub-dermal neural mesh to stay connected to Silas’s commands. This grenade creates a localized EMP that fries that mesh. It doesn't kill them, but it traps them in their own bodies. They lose motor control for sixty seconds. It turns a god back into a statue." "Second, the 'Flash-Freeze.' It’s a concentrated version of the stabilizer you’ve been stealing. When inhaled, it triggers a hyper-calcification of the marrow. Its 'locks' their shift. If they're mid-transformation, they stay that way, fragile, brittle, and incapable of using their strength."

The reaction was instantaneous and violent. The vein, pumping superheated plasma at 1200 degrees, met a localized point of -200 degrees. CRACK. The sound was like a gunshot. The red vein turned grey, then white, then shattered into a million frozen crystals. The plasma inside flash-froze, expanding rapidly. The "ice" spread. It wasn't normal ice; it was an entropic frost that consumed the heat of the building to fuel its own growth. "It’s working!" Ben screamed, watching the frost race up the side of the tower like a fast-forward video of mold growth. "Look at it go!"

Ace glowered at him. Kellar tried to hide his disappointment with a sigh. “Nevermind. I’ll just go and get the key-” “Oh for heaven’s sake. We don’t need any key.” Stella got up and placed her hands over the lock and began to freeze it. “Lowering the temperature always makes the strength of materials weaker. If I lower the temperature enough to its freezing point then it should brittle enough that you can break it like glass.” As Stella continued to freeze the lock, Ace and Kellar exchanged confused looks at Stella’s words. Although they didn’t voice it out, Viex knows that they have no idea what she was talking about.

You couldn’t really afford to waste food when you only made a little more than minimum wage. I went to the door, and then he got up to follow me outside. I went around the back of the apartment building right to the edge of the pavement where there was some brush before the ground led down into a large creek behind it. I dropped the package on the pavement, and he watched as I put my hand out and with a quick flick of the wrist, it froze solid from the inside out. I was so powerful it happened in an instant, and my control was so perfect that the ground around it did not freeze, nor did the package of meat freeze to the ground.

“Okay, I’d say you finally snapped and need sleep.” “Jimmy, I didn’t put the tea in a fridge or some freezer. I touched it and it froze. Like, actual frost spread across the surface like something out of a damn fairytale. And I didn’t feel cold. Not in my hands. Not in my bones. Just… nothing. And this isn't the first time.” “Of you freezing tea cups?" Jimmy said before bursting out laughing. He stopped after he noticed I didn't laugh with him and just kept staring.

I was about to tell him to stop playing around when the massive flat-screen at the front of the room flickered to life. I stood up slowly, scowling at the screen. It was pure static at first, the hissing sound filling the room. I noticed the cables ran under the locked side door. Someone was in the next room, controlling the feed. I walked toward the screen. The static vanished, replaced by a grainy, handheld video. It looked like it was filmed on a phone. The camera was blocked by something dark for a second. "It’s live. We’re recording," a muffled voice said.

She sat in front of the freezer and opened the door. Then, she reached out and gently stroked the inside wall of the freezer. "Joy, I'm here to keep you company. This time, I know what it's like to be cold. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." She murmured, over and over again. Then, with finality, she curled herself up and lay down inside the freezer. Just like that seven-year-old little girl had all those years ago, the freezer door was gently pulled shut from the inside.

"That's some smart thinking, young lady. Go ahead and make it sound good so you can actually promote us!" Holding my phone, I slowly walked deeper into the cold storage. Under the pretense of introducing our wine, I made my way toward the freezer where the two were hiding. "These freezers are our latest in-house design with an incredibly powerful flash-freeze capability. It can drop the internal temperature by 68 degrees Fahrenheit in just three minutes. Let me give the viewers a quick demonstration." As I spoke, I reached out and flipped the flash-freeze switch. The freezer began to hum loudly to life.