Bob Version 1.0

TL;DR: Fresh off selling his software company, Bob Johansson signs a head-only cryonics contract in sun-blasted Las Vegas and is killed hours later in a crosswalk, mid–wisecrack.

Spoilers through Chapter 1.

Chapter in one sentence

In the neon hush of a Vegas convention hall, a wry software millionaire buys a bet on his future brain—and the city repays him with a blare of brakes and a flash of chrome before everything goes dark.

What happens

In a carpeted Las Vegas hotel ballroom, banners promise forever and a blue-lit stainless dewar sweats frost like a sci‑fi prop that finally made it to market. Bob Johansson ambles up, trades dry jokes with the cryonics rep, and—pragmatic beneath the humor—opts for a head-only plan. It’s oddly mundane: glossy brochures, lanyards, and a signature that fits neatly on the line labeled “Next of Kin: None.”

He’s shepherded into a glass-walled side office where the world sounds like air-conditioning and carpet. Bob wires money into a revival trust, signs thick paper with real ink, and watches the Strip’s electric glow smear across the tinted pane. A life’s work—sold, banked, and now aimed at a possibility.

Stepping into the desert glare, heat peels the cool from his skin. The Strip is a kaleidoscope: tourists, palm trees, LED billboards the size of buildings, an Elvis in white sequins preening near a pretzel cart. The WALK icon clicks white. Bob steps off the curb with a quip on his tongue.

There’s a shriek of tires, a hard sparkle of sun off a chrome grille, and the scene sharpens into a single merciless frame—the kind a brain takes when it knows it won’t get another. His wisecrack never lands. Black.

Key moments

• The frosted dewar at the cryonics booth: tactile, present-tense proof that immortality is for sale, not just theory.
• Head-only contract signed: Bob chooses mind over body, telegraphing where he thinks “self” lives.
• Revival trust paperwork: quiet, methodical prep work that makes the gamble feel businesslike, not mystical.
• Crosswalk impact: squeal, glare, blackout—fate cuts the scene mid-joke, snapping the chapter shut.

Character shifts

• Bob Johansson: Moves from breezy, sardonic browser to someone willing to stake real money on a future he’ll never see—then is forced to confront mortality in the half-second between sun-glint and impact.

Why it matters

This is the ignition spark: the practical, almost bureaucratic purchase of a second chance immediately colliding with dumb, loud chance. The chapter establishes Bob’s voice—funny, grounded, data-minded—and pairs it with the stakes of the book: what survives when the body doesn’t.

The Vegas setting sharpens the irony. Neon gloss and sales patter frame a decision about death as just another upgrade package, right up until the universe overrides the transaction with a horn and a hood ornament.

Themes to notice

• Betting on the future: cryonics as Vegas gamble, odds unknown, table open.
• Control vs. randomness: careful paperwork meets an uncontrolled intersection.
• Where the self resides: choosing head-only preservation signals a belief that mind outranks flesh.
• Humor as armor: jokes as a way to handle the unbearable—until there’s no time left for one.

Book club questions

• Why head-only? What does that single choice reveal about Bob’s priorities and his definition of “himself”?
• Does the sales-floor normalcy (lanyards, brochures, wire transfers) make cryonics feel more credible—or more unsettling?
• How does the chapter’s last-second visual—sun on chrome, then blackout—change the tone of Bob’s humor up to that point?
• If you’d just sold your company, would you sign the same contract that afternoon? What would stop you?
• What details of the Vegas setting sharpen the irony of the ending for you?

Visual memory hook

Think of the white WALK figure lit against blistering daylight, Bob stepping out as an Elvis shimmers in peripheral sequins, heat rippling the asphalt; then a grille lunges into frame, sun flares across polished chrome, and the world blinks from overexposed neon to sudden, total black.

Up next

After that hard blackout, the story shifts from desert noise to a quieter, stranger kind of room.