Part 7 (1/2)
J.B. took one of Mildred's hands and squeezed it tight. ”Millie, those people in those chambers died over a hundred years ago. Not a d.a.m.n thing could be done for them then, or now.”
”Any idea who they were?” Ryan asked.
Mildred went back and starting tapping keys on the keyboard. ”From what I can tell, this place was designed with one purpose in mind. Preserve some of the finest leaders.h.i.+p and military minds until the conflict was over. It's not the worst plan I ever heard, but as usual the x-factor came stomping in and trod all over the best-laid plans of mice and men.”
Mildred stood, gesturing toward the units housed inside the gla.s.sed-in area.
”At some point in time, the power here must've gone off-line. I'd say it happened within days after the bombs fell. Could've been a fluke, but my guess is a techie took particular offense at being left behind to die in the brave new world once the bombs actually started falling, and he or she sabotaged the chambers. Once the damage was done, he turned the systems back on to cover his actions, or perhaps a fail-safe device came online and reactivated. Either way, the end result was the same. I suppose, in retrospect, I should be grateful the same thing didn't happen to me.”
”h.e.l.l of a way to die,” Ryan said, peering inside the sterile room. ”You think you're going to take a long nap and pull a cheat and, boom, you die a second time in your sleep.”
”Well, no matter how you look at it, half of them were dead the minute the war broke out,” Mildred replied enigmatically. Ryan turned to look at her. ”How so?”
”Doc, you were asking about those smaller containers, the barrel-shaped ones?”
”Yes. What is the concept behind those?” he replied.
”In those casks are twelve more cryo subjects.”
”I don't get you,” Ryan said, perplexed. ”The twelve smaller tanks held human heads, Ryan, awaiting possible future transplant onto new bodies.”
Chapter Seven.
Mildred sat in the swivel chair behind the main comp bank and began to type at the keyboard once more, pausing only to move the mouse to click onto new screens of information.
”You know what they used to call freezies back in my day?” she mused aloud. ”The 'frozen chosen.' Like you were saying, Ryan, we were the ones lucky enough to cheat death and waggle our fingers bye-bye at man's final frontier. We were being put on ice to await the coming of the new technologies, capable of saving our dying a.s.ses.”
A screen blinked and a set of tiny speakers beeped, indicating the search of the data bank Mildred has asked for was finished.
”No wonder health care was so expensive in my day,” she said. ”Most of the people in that room who underwent the cryo process weren't even sick. I'm talking about the ones with bodies, not the headless hors.e.m.e.n. I see three senators, a governor, four millionaires and some other names and rankings I don't recognize here listed as being put into the program within hours after skydark.” Doc slowly shook his head. ”More madness.”
”Not true,” Mildred replied. ”You forget, Doc. I was one of the whitecoats involved in cryo research. Cryonics was a complex, controversial medical procedure that stored either the whole body or just the head of a clinically dead person in liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of minus 196 degrees Celsius. After the big chill, a suspension team prepared the body for its icy descent into a large Dewar flask, where it was stored until time for revival. Doing so took some effort to mount.”
Mildred turned from the screen and ran her fingers through her long beaded hair. She looked very sad as she started to remember, and to speak.
”We were all mavericks in cryo research back then, driven by an insatiable urge to stop time and restart it on a schedule we dictated, not the predetermined one set by fate or nature. Looking back, I guess I was considered one of the tamer pract.i.tioners. Others, like Saul Kent, one of the founders of the Cryonics Society of New York, had his own mother decapitated and frozen in the hope that she could be reanimated sometime in the future.”
”Geez, he chopped off his own mom's head?” Dean asked. ”Gross.”
”Who better? I mean, let's face it. The prospect of immortality inspires the unusual. He loved his mother, she loved her son, ergo, she willed her body to science and upon her death, he decided to test his theories. If it had worked out, he could have saved her life. Brought her back from death as we understood it.”
”I cannot help but comment that all of this sounds most grotesque, Dr. Wyeth,” Doc said with an exaggerated shudder. ”The removal of the head and brains and dropping them into cold storage puts me in the mind of the most outlandish of Lovecraftian horror.”
”Why not? Lovecraft was predicting this sort of thing in many of his short stories. Course, I didn't read them until when I was in college,” she replied. ”No, my interest in this branch of science came early. I was in an accelerated program in school and had an adult's library card with full access to all of the closed stacks. I guess that's where I first found Professor Robert Ettinger's book called The Prospect of Immortality . That book came to be considered the flashpoint of the concept of life-extension technology. He believed in it so strongly, he froze his mother, as wellin fact I guess he was the first.”
”Entire generations suspended in time. Barbaric.” Doc declared.
”I thought it was marvelous, although some of my more religious kin didn't find the suggestion of avoiding the hereafter by sticking your body in a freezer a proper way of following the plans of the Lord.”
”Your father was a preacher,” Krysty said. ”I'd say he had trouble accepting some of the more fantastic theories you were spouting off.”
”Actually my father wasn't the problem. He didn't care for the idea, but he let me be. Most of my grief came from two meddling aunts, the old biddies. They were always coming to him as his concerned sisters, worrying about my welfare. My brother, Josh, after he became a minister like our father, also showed more compa.s.sion and understanding of my chosen career.”
”Yeah, relatives can make your life a living h.e.l.l, b.a.s.t.a.r.d quick,” Ryan observed, thinking of his own corrupted family ties.
”Professor Ettinger's book suggested that people could be frozen in 'suspended death' until medical technology was able to cure what killed them and breathe new life into their bodies. No big deal to us now, but at the time, it was considered all-out voodoo,” Mildred mused. ”See, his problem was, his attempt to achieve immortality conflicted with some of the most conventional truths modern science had been built upon up to that point, including the premise that death is final in a world of mortals.”
”Nothing is absolute,” Ryan said reflectively. ”Trader used to say that.”
”Correction, my dear Ryan. One thing is absolute, and that is if there is a cliche for the occasion, the good Trader was wont to have uttered it,” Doc muttered as he slumped down like a weary scarecrow into one of the free chairs near Mildred.
”You're just jealous, Doc,” Krysty said.
”Pray explain,” Doc said with mock severity.
”Trader's the only man in the Deathlands with more arcane sayings than you.”
Doc sniffed. ”The mantle of Trader is not a t.i.tle I envy.”
”In Ettinger's book, I remember his saying that mankind had been conditioned to accept death for thousands of years. However, he grew up in a new world expecting that one day old age would be preventable and reversible. And the man practiced what he preached. Ettinger was a pioneer and helped in the formation of cryonics.”
”Pardon me, but I thought the term was cryogenics.” Doc said, unable to pa.s.s up the opportunity to correct Mildred in her own branch of science.
Mildred shook her head and smiled wistfully. ”No, Doc. Common mistake. Cryonics was, and is, a more radical branch of cryogenicscryogenics being really nothing more than the recognized field of cold-temperature medicine. You know, research contributing to the aging process, the best way to preserve human organs for transplant, bloodless surgery. Nothing half-baked or hidden about it.”
”Cryogenics. Like the swapping of organs for the tech Lars h.e.l.lstrom was so fond of back at Helskel.”
”Exactly, but with more humane intent. But cryonics went further in design. Cryonics were designed to slow and eventually halt the process of death. In my case, putting me under saved my life until I was found and awakened by all of you.”
”Sounds good to me,” Dean remarked, entranced by the story Mildred was telling. ”Who wouldn't want to live forever?”
”Out of the mouths of babes,” Krysty said, winking at Ryan.
”Indeed,” Doc added. ”Trust me, young Cawdor. As a man who has spent over two hundred years bouncing around this mortal coil, I can say that immortality always comes with a price.”
”Yeah, but you're old,” Dean protested.
”Not as old as you think, young man.”
Mildred grinned at Dean. ”In a discussion like we're having, the idea of beating death does sound promising. It's when you start putting such ideas into motion that people get nervous. The world was different in my time. In the mid-1960s, cryonics advocates were a small fringe group. The structure of some organizations was rocked by scandal, sometimes at the hands of incompetent people and equipment, and other times because of sensational media coverage.”
”Media?” the boy asked.
”Newspapers. Video. Tabloids. The media. They broke all of the news stories that made people nervous stories such as how in the early days of the programs, scientists were having to make do with storing bodies in the surplus wingtip fuel tanks of Air Force jets. No big deal, until it got out that the tanks weren't 'one size fits all,' and when they had people too obese to fit, they'd chainsaw their arms off and stick them in that way.”