"But he's--was--my father!" Laura set the cooling mug of cocoa on a coaster and brought her knees up to the breasts filling out her shirt.

"Take a tissue, dear," Astrid instructed. "Your father still is your father, wherever he is. I knew him better than anyone else on Earth, and I have no idea why he did it."

"He missed mother?" Laura offered before blowing her nose.

"Your mother--God bless her--has been dead for ten years, Laura. And you and I both know he was too wrapped up in his research to notice anyone else, much less care about them. Why, having her head hacked off and put in whatever they call that--"

"Cryonic suspension."

"Just goes to show how much he cared about her."

Laura picked up her mug once more, and saw that "Heaven Can Wait" was the Saturday night movie. "What was father working on, Aunt Astrid?"

"Beats the hell out of me," the old woman replied.

############

Laura knocked on the slightly-ajar door to her father's office at the Boston Institute of Technology. "Is anyone there?"

When no one within answered, Laura looked both ways down the empty hallway, then pushed the door open further and stepped inside.