The brain secretes consciousness the way a kidney secretes urine. When the CryoKeep team told me that, I imagined an empty chamber gradually filling with thoughts and sweet memories; but it wasn't like that at all. It was more like a long, slow climb, a confused ascension under duress; more as if I were being dragged from nothingness, up through hellish cold and finally into drugged agony. It wasn't pleasant. But when I emerged -- when the bladder was full -- I found the memory of my wealth. And I went to it like a babe to a breast.

It gave me strength, that memory, in those early days, when I seemed to float, half blind, in a sea of drugs and pain. That primal fact - I am rich -- made the physical torment take on its true significance: it's just part of the price you pay. Hell, I can almost hear the vicar back home in Wales, when I was a kid: Death, where is thy sting? I can answer him now -- it's gone, man! Pulled by strength of purpose; blunted by brute persistence and determination; a thorn extracted by human will!  Or, rather, by the indomitable will of this human. By Meirion Jones, no less. Yours truly, Mark II.

And beyond the triumph and the riches, there's the relief. I am free again. Free of cancer. Free of my first life. Free of Karen.

God, that feels good. It's worth the pain, every second of it. And when they bring me my body, hell, I'll be truly free. I'll be out of this damn Perspex box, where they keep me like a fish in a tank. I'll be out there jumping the girls like I used to before I married Karen. And afterwards, too, to be honest; but Karen always knew what I was like.

Yes: I don't know how long I've been under, but girls are still girls, I'm pleased to say. You see, there's not much to do in the resurrection suite, except when Dr. Newton turns up for one of her little pep-talks, so I just watch the nurses. Weird how they can still be beautiful when they're all masked and gowned. I haven't seen a single one of their faces, and yet I love them all, in their pastel blue trousers and tunics and face-masks. Like that short, cuddly nurse who changes the bags they've got hooked up to my throat. She's a sweety. When I'm out of here, watch out, little Miss Short and Cuddly. You won't be able to sit down for a week, when I've got my body again.

Although that's a bit weird too, because I'm talking about the new body like it's mine, but I don't have it yet, and when I get it, it'll be someone else's, I suppose; though to be honest I'm not sure of the mechanics of it. I never got to grips with the details of the CryoKeep technology. To be honest, I never cared. Why should I? I'm more of a big picture person; I don't need to know how a clock works to tell the time. I didn't get rich by fussing over small things.

And I didn't get rich by letting people renege on their contracts, either, and I'm damn well not going to start now. CryoKeep owe me a second life, and I always collect my debts. Always. Which is why I'm happy to see Dr. Newton approaching. She's masked and gowned like the others, but I recognise her by her walk. Officious and bossy; like a bloody kindergarten teacher. Maybe today she'll give me some good news. It's about time.

I watch her walk past the banks of instruments, the gleaming arrays of tubes, the bottles with gin-clear liquids, the screens with perpetually-changing read-outs. One screen has a real-time image of the inside of my head, as though it had been cut down the middle; I know that, because when I move my tongue, I see a grey mass move on the screen, flopping in and out of the plane of section like a fish in a ditch. She pauses by this screen, looks, and nods. Then she walks over to me and sits in front of my Perspex cage and gives me a little wave. What the hell does she expect me to do? Wave back? It's like a dentist asking you questions when he's got his fist in your mouth. Man, as soon as they hook up the air supply to my larynx she's going to get an earful. She switches on the intercom, and the sounds from the resurrection suite, previously dulled and dampened by my fish-tank prison, suddenly come into sharp focus. The hiss and hum of machinery that keeps me alive; the slow bubble of filtered fluids; the faint ping of electronic sensors; the quiet conversations of medical staff.

"So, Mr. Jones, this is just another little check-up. I expect you know the routine by now, don't you?"

And we go through the usual stupid bloody procedure so she can verify that everything is working. Roll your eyes. Open your mouth. Stick out your tongue. Raise your eyebrows. Now frown.

Jeez. If they just fixed it so I could talk, I could tell her what works and what doesn't. More importantly, I could ask: Where's my frigging body? And it's doing my head in, the way I'm getting no information about it, so when we get to the end of the facial exercise routine, I start glaring at her and making my eyebrows go up and down, so that even she realises there's something on my mind. She puts her face close to the wall of my box. I look at her clear, healthy skin around the edge of her mask; she has a tan. God, I haven't seen the sun for so long.

"Is there something you want to tell us, Mr. Jones? Use the code that we agreed, if you can."

The code is one blink yes, two blinks no. So I blink. Then there's a tedious guessing game: Are you thirsty? Are you in pain? And so on. But she never gets there, the dumb cow, she never asks: Do you have questions about your new body? She just closes the discussion with some waffle about how they'll have some special news for me tomorrow. And that's even more infuriating than being told nothing. Like when I was a child, and another kid would say I know a secret; but they wouldn't say what, even when I beat the crap out of them. So Dr. Newton just pins that simpering smile on her face, tells me how well I'm doing, how brave I am, and buggers off.

She doesn't get it; I can buy CryoKeep and make sure she never works again. Ever. That's what wealth -- serious wealth -- does for you. It makes everything possible. Everything. Even immortality.

It was a no-brainer for me, really. The cancer had spread into my bones and liver. Twenty-first century medicine had failed me. But not twenty-first century science. And not my money. Damned if I go gentle into that good night, I thought. Damned if I do! And now, the night is over. Soon, I'll be outside, with sun on my skin. The very idea sends a shudder of ecstasy through my body. Or rather, through the phantom flesh that my stubborn nerve-endings still seek. I want to shout with joy, but without lungs I can only gape like a moron.

No matter. It will come. I remember the CryoKeep team warning me about this. Suspended animation by cryogenic preservation, in those days, was a black art. They had worked out how to deep-freeze and revive small mammals, intact, but not how to preserve something the size of a human body. So for people, they just preserved the head. Nothing wrong with that. If you are anywhere, you're in your head, right? You wouldn't say, doctor, doctor, just freeze my liver and spleen, so I can come back and digest again another day, would you? No. If you save your head, even just your brain, then you're saving the only bit of you that is You in any meaningful way. So I was happy with that. But there are disadvantages to being a head in a box, and, frankly, being unable to talk is the least of them. I push the pain down, yet again.

To give CryoKeep their credit, they had always been very open. They even gave me a demonstration of the cryoretrieval process with a macaque. Up it came, the carefully bagged ape's head, up from the liquid nitrogen, trailing cold mists heavier than air; a billowing fog that cascaded to the floor, lapping at my ankles, chilling my feet through their sterile overshoes. I watched as they joined transparent plastic tubing to pre-positioned connectors on the throat's stump; I smelt the tang of antiseptic; I followed the cold blood substitute as it slowly rose through the tubing that fed the brain's blood vessels. Then the controlled thaw: the slow rise in temperature inside the sealed observation chamber, where the head sat on its sterile pedestal. The first shuddering pseudo-gasps, when the jaws open and strain, as though to pull air into lungs that no longer exist. The attempts to move eyes that are stuck fast in their sockets. The dry, lolling tongue exploring cracked lips and crumbling teeth. The first grimaces, the silent yawn of pain. Now I know why they didn't hook up the artificial lung to the macaque's larynx--if they had, we would have heard it screaming.

Not that they fooled me; I was under no doubt that the awakening, my awakening, would be uncomfortable. I went into this with my eyes wide open. And as they said, by the time technology had advanced enough to permit human cryoretrieval, there would be fixes. Like improved saliva substitutes, and better pain relief, and more precise feedback control of the mechanical lung to allow near-normal speech. Yes, you can be sure of one thing, they said; technology will fix the problems. Like, how to put me -- my brain, that is -- into a new body. A body free of cancer; a young, healthy body; a body attractive to young, healthy girls. A body that's up for another go at the best that Ferrari can offer. So it'll all be worth it, in the end.

And it's funny, but now, remembering how I've got here, it suddenly hits me, how lucky I am, how ridiculously, improbably fortunate I am to be granted a second life. Maybe it's the drugs, I don't know, but I am almost overwhelmed by joy, by a desire to embrace the world and everything in it. Yes, Meirion Jones, who's always had to fight through shit for everything - he feels love. For everything.

It's weird, this new feeling. I even start feeling sorry for Karen, for the way I treated her, poor cow. And you know what, I shut my eyes and make a promise to myself, a promise that when I get my body, I'll be different. I'll be nice.

But only after I get my body. Until then, there's still too much potential for the buggers to screw you over. So let's not get carried away, I think. So I file the love, and start visualising the new me: my new arms that can hold, my new legs that can run. Yes, at times like this, when the analgesia holds back the pain roaring up from my severed throat; when the pain-killers stop the pain without also smothering thought; when I can think and dream: then I dream of my new body.  But, oh God, I'm tired of dreaming!

They are probably letting me recover completely first, so that I can make an informed selection, with a clear mind. That will be why my head is still on this monkey-pedestal, in this sterile cage, looking out at the gowned nurses in the resurrection suite. Soon they will come, with a catalogue of anatomies, perhaps, for me to examine and assess, or a detailed questionnaire. 'So Mr. Jones: What colour skin and hair would you like to have? What colour eyes? What age? How tall?' I can just imagine it.

And I can just imagine Karen's face, if she could see me now. You're not twenty-bloody-five any more, she always used to say. You can't act like a playboy now, boyo. Can I not, then? Just watch me, love. Just watch me now.