Bob Nelson

The memory of Geneviève's death and suspension was just too painful.

He said, a little ruefully, that the whole idea of cryonics might be a moot point anyway, given the state of the world.

The way things were going, even if the science panned out, there might not be a future to return to.

And then he told me something else.

That meeting at the airport Bob remembers so vividly.

Guy said it never happened.

So next I contacted Terry Harris, and I told him Bob's version of what transpired.

Terry, you know, as you know, Bob tells this very detailed story about coming to tell you that the capsule... Terry says Bob never told him about the failure of the capsule.

He had to hear about it from an article in a California newspaper that his aunt sent him in Des Moines.

Right.

So there was never a time when Bob flew out and met with you at the airport?

Terry Harris was in his early 20s when he met Bob Nelson.

He'd lost both his parents in a span of three months, and cryonics had seemed like this great thing he could give them in return.

He sometimes imagined what it would be like when they were all reunited as a family in some distant, dreamlike future.

It gave him hope.

And then everything had gone so wrong.

So I called Bob, and I told him about my conversations with Guy and Terry.

He was shocked, and he stuck to his story.

Later that day, he sent me a long, pained email calling the situation a heart-wrenching predicament.

He called Terry Harris a liar.