Terminal Experiment Read Online Free PDF

done.
    “Okay — now you’re thinking, hey, what if that mugger had shot me in the head instead?” The pitchman lifted up a thin sheet of what looked like silver foil. “This is polyester-D5. It’s similar to Mylar.” He held the sheet by one corner and let it flutter in the air. “Less than half a millimeter thick,” he said, “but watch this.” He proceeded to attach the sheet of foil to a square metal frame, anchoring it on all four sides. He then produced a gun with a silencer sticking off the front. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got a special permit for this.” He chuckled. “I know how you Canadians feel about guns.” He aimed the pistol at an angle and fired at the foil sheet. Peter heard the pistol bark and saw a lick of flame shoot out of its nozzle. There was a sound like a thunderclap and something happened to the curtain behind the stage.
    The pitchman went over to the metal frame and held up the Mylar sheet. “No hole,” he said — and indeed that was true. The sheet was rippling in the breeze of the air conditioner. “Polyester-D5 was developed for the military and is now widely used in bulletproof vests by police forces all over the world. As you can see, it’s quite flexible — unless it’s hit at high speed. Then it tightens up and becomes harder than steel. That bullet I fired a moment ago bounced right off.” He looked back. His assistant was coming onto the stage with something held in metal tongs. He dropped it into a little glass bowl on the podium. “Here it is.”
    The pitchman faced the audience. “We coat the skull in a thin, perforated layer of polyester-D5. Of course, we don’t have to peel off the scalp to do that; we simply inject nanotechnology drones and have them lay it down. But with your skull protected by this stuff, you could take a bullet to the head, or have a car run over your cranium, or fall headfirst off a building, and still not crush your head. The polyester becomes so rigid, almost none of the percussion is transferred through to your brain.”
    He smiled brilliantly at his audience. “It’s exactly as I said at the outset, folks. We can outfit you in such a way that you will not die — not through aging and not through almost any accident you can conceive of. For all intents and purposes, we offer exactly what we promise: honest-to-God immortality. Now, any takers?”
    It was the first Sunday of the month. By long-standing tradition, that meant dinner with Peter’s in-laws.
    Cathy’s parents lived on Bayview Avenue in North York. The Churchill house, a 1960s side-split with a one-car garage, would have once been considered good-sized but now was dwarfed by monster homes on either side, causing it to spend most of the day in shadow. Above the garage was a rusting basketball hoop with no net attached.
    Cathy’s thumbprint worked on the door lock. She went in first and Peter followed behind. Cathy shouted out, “We’re here,” and her mother appeared at the top of the stairs to greet them. Bunny Churchill — God help her, that was her name — was sixty-two, short, trim, with gray hair that she refused to dye. Peter liked her immensely. Cathy and he headed up into the living room. Peter had been coming here for years, but had still never quite gotten used to its
    appearance. There was only one small bookcase, and it held audio CDs and some video laser discs, including a complete run of Playboy Video Playmate Calendars since 1998.
    Cathy’s father taught Phys. Ed. Gym teachers had been the bane of young Peter’s existence, the first inkling he’d had that all adults weren’t necessarily intelligent. Worse, Rod Churchill ran his family like a high-school football team. Everything started on time — Bunny was rushing even now to get food on the table before the clock struck six. Everybody knew their positions, and, of course, everyone followed the instructions of Coach Rod.
    Rod sat at the head of the table, with Bunny at the opposite