Rachel was left standing alone, idly, in her lab. Staring at the metal door after it shut with a loud click.
What the hell had just happened?
In less than five minutes, Reiff was now in the hands of Masten and Lagner. Willingly. She was left in stunned silence, feeling as though the rug had just been pulled out from under her. Not just the rug. The entire floor.
How was she supposed to get him out if he was with “them”? And even more importantly, what was Masten up to?
Her stomach began to churn in a growing sense of helplessness.
What in the world was the man thinking?
Eventually, her attention returned to the animals, who strangely had calmed down, and watched her in silence. No doubt able to detect the distress in her as she tried to think what to do.
In the hallway, Reiff appeared relaxed as he followed Masten and Lagner—almost cheerful. Strolling behind them with difficulty but still managing to keep up as they headed for the familiar elevator at the end of the hall.
Once inside, he remained quiet among the four, wordlessly examining each of them.
The larger men hadn’t spoken at all. Grunts. While Masten and Lagner continually glanced back at him. Politely, but with a strange air of apprehension. As though they couldn’t believe he had agreed to go with them so easily.
Otherwise, why the grunts?
Reiff knew he was in no condition to resist. Even if he wanted to. The weight of what Dr. Souza had revealed still had him reeling in a somewhat surreal state. She’d said it so matter-of-factly, but now the significance was beginning to take hold. To sink in. Along with the repercussions.
Twenty-two years. Jesus, twenty-two years! All while the world simply moved on. If true, it meant the entire planet was now twenty-two years older. In the blink of an eye. At least in the blink of his eye.
He suddenly had a strange thought—of prisoners being locked away and released twenty years later. How different would the world look to them? Probably not much if they had access to a television. But what about someone who didn’t? What about someone detached from each and every day? Not just from the world but from life itself.
Which led to another question. Did I actually die? Even Rachel wasn’t sure. He did remember the accident. Pieces of it. Enough to know it happened. He remembered being trapped in the bus, with water rapidly filling the interior. Death would have been the most likely outcome. But had he died first or frozen first?
They reached a lower floor, and the elevator made a loud ding before its doors parted with a low rumble. The five exited one at a time and continued forward down another hallway just like the others. Off-white and featureless—with gray tiling extending perhaps fifty feet to where, at the opposite end, the hall split both left and right.
Together, they passed several more locked and painted doors before reaching one that led into a decent-sized conference room with a table ringed by several leather chairs.
“Can I get you something?” asked Lagner. “Maybe to drink?”
Reiff picked a seat and lowered himself into the soft leather. “A beer would be great.”
“I meant some water.”
“Then why didn’t you say that? Fine. Just add a little fermented barley and hops.”
“Very funny.”
She motioned to one of the grunts, who grumbled and disappeared as she closed the door, selecting a chair next to Masten. The second grunt remained outside, expressionless and unmoving.
“Now then, Mr. Reiff,” she started. “How are you feeling?”
“How am I feeling?”
“Are you in any discomfort? Any pain?” she asked.
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“We can get you something if need be.”
“Don’t bother.”
Lagner lowered a pad of paper and a pen onto the table in front of her. “I’d like to start by testing your recall. Beginning with some recent things, then progressively moving backward. For example, can you tell me what you ate for lunch yesterday?”
Reiff didn’t answer.
After jotting the time and date, she looked up again. “Mr. Reiff?”
Still no answer, or movement, from Reiff.
Lagner studied him carefully before turning to Masten.
“John?”
He didn’t respond to Masten either. Not at first. Allowing the lull to linger before he finally replied, “I’m still waiting.”
“For what?”
“For my answers.”
“Listen, John. I told you we need to go through our assessments first. It won’t take long.”
Silence.
“I promise.”
Still nothing.
Masten huffed with a look of annoyance. “Fine. What were your questions again?”
“How did I get here?”
Masten gave a half shrug. “The truth is … we’re not exactly sure.” He quickly held up a hand when Reiff’s expression began to change. “Let me explain.” After a moment of contemplation, he continued. “This is probably going to seem hard to believe. Like everything else, I’m sure. But your participation in our program is a little fuzzy.”
“Fuzzy?”
“What I mean … is that some records were lost.”
Reiff’s eyes narrowed.
“We did save you. Let’s not forget that, okay?”
“How would I know?”
“Are you suggesting we didn’t?”
“All I know is what I’ve been told. And yet, I’m not in a hospital. But rather an experimental lab somewhere and seemingly unable to leave. While you claim I’ve been brought back years later. All without anyone telling me how I supposedly became part of your experiment.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You lost my paperwork.”
“We didn’t lose your paperwork!” said Masten, pounding the table with a fist. He stopped and seemed to regain his demeanor. “There is a great deal you don’t understand, Mr. Reiff. John. A lot has happened. A lot more than you know.”
“No kidding.”
Masten shot a wary eye at Lagner, continuing in a tempered voice, “The vast majority of what we’ve told you is true. Given some tweaks here and there. But that was for your own good.” He lowered his hands flat onto the table. “We knew it wouldn’t just be about reviving you. If we were successful. We knew there would also be some cognitive challenges. Assuming your faculties were even still intact. If they were, there would have to be a period of adjustment. Psychologically. To the realization that your accident didn’t happen last week. Or even last month.”
“So you decided to let me find out myself.”
“That was not our intention.” Masten sighed. “We just weren’t ready yet. Regardless of what you may believe, we are still trying to keep you alive. No one has ever done anything like this before. No one. Which means you’re it. You’re the first one. And the procedure, while so far successful, is far from perfect. Your system, unfortunately, has experienced a lot of damage.”
“You should have told me that in the beginning,” said Reiff.
“Told you what exactly?”
“What year it is, for starters.”
“Right,” scoffed Masten. “‘Hello there, Mr. Reiff. Rise and shine. It’s a miracle you’re alive, and we might lose you at any moment, but we wanted you to know that you’ve been dead for a long time.’ Yes, that would not have caused any trauma to your system at all.”
“Nonrecoverable.”
“What?”
Reiff smirked. “Dr. Souza said I was nonrecoverable. Apparently, being dead is a gray area.”
“Call it whatever you like. But there was a lot we had to take into consideration. A hell of a lot more than you know.”
Reiff tried to relax. Turning away and glancing around the room. “Okay. So why did it take so long?”
“Like I said, it’s never been done before.”
Nora Lagner spoke up. “Bringing a person back wasn’t just difficult, Mr. Reiff; it was an impossibility. Until a few weeks ago. It required years of development and testing, and there were many failures.”
Reiff turned away from the room and back to her. “How many failures?”
“Many,” she repeated.
“So, that’s why you have the animals.”
“Correct.”
“Which means the animals in the lab … would have to be the survivors.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s taken us a long time to get here, Mr. Reiff,” said Masten. “A very long time. A little appreciation would be nice.”
Reiff continued thinking. “So, you started the whole thing?”
“No. I was brought on six years ago to take over the project. Recrudesce was started years before by a man named Munn. He was a molecular biologist and talented scientist but a terrible businessman. When he died, I came in to overhaul the project. Tapping Nora here to help me. By then, all the theoretical work had been done, but making it actually work was a different story.”
“They needed someone to build it?”
“Design and build it.” Masten nodded. “And get it funded.”
Pensively, Reiff lowered his gaze. “And you said I’m the first.”
“The very first.”
He peered at Masten. “Why?”
The other man raised both eyebrows. “Why what?”
“Why me? Haven’t hundreds of people been frozen over the years? For this very reason?”
“Thousands,” corrected Lagner.
“Fine. Thousands. So again … why me?”
Masten leaned back in his chair. “Because cryonics is complicated.” With a sigh, he said, “In 1952, the first sperm cells were successfully frozen and used to inseminate three different women. It was a breakthrough. Then years later, a professor named Ettinger proposed the idea of freezing actual humans. From there, the idea snowballed, and five years later, the very first human was cryonically frozen. Since then, thousands have followed suit. Tens of thousands, actually.”
“So, why didn’t you resurrect one of them?”
“Because we can’t. And we’ll likely never be able to. The early patients will never benefit from the advancements cryonics has made since then and from what we’ve learned. Specifically, that being frozen causes severe and permanent crystallization in each and every cell of the human body. In other words, irreparable damage to all cell nuclei. Way beyond anyone’s ability to fix it. Probably ever. This eventually led researchers to develop something called cryoprotectants, substances that helped prevent this severe crystallization. Reducing cellular damage to levels experts hoped one day would be either repairable or survivable.”
“Like antifreeze.”
“In a way, yes. But created specifically for human cells.”
“So, how many frozen patients have this protectant?”
“It varies. Cryoprotectants, like all things, have also evolved. And improved. Gradually becoming more and more effective. Today we use a cocktail of them. Three different protectants that can often reduce a body’s cellular damage to below ten percent. Close to what some experts believe could be survivable. The next problem was thawing them.” He turned to Lagner.
“There are three problems in the thawing and resuscitation puzzle,” she said. “Speed, temperature, and tissue density. Heat a body too slowly or unevenly, and it dies from extreme hypothermia before it can be reanimated in time. This time forever. Heat a body too quickly, and you cause more tissue damage than the crystallization, pushing the subject back out the window of survivability.
“What we had to do was find a way to thread multiple needles at once. Not too fast and not too slow. Warming different parts of the body without overcooking others. Liquids like blood warm faster than denser tissue—say, an organ. Our early attempts reliquefied the blood but left the organs too cold to achieve refunction. Other attempts warmed the organs but simultaneously boiled pockets of the body’s blood and plasma. So, we had to develop a system that could heat throughout, but in accordance with cellular density.”
Across the table, Reiff remained listening. “That’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t answer my question.”
“It took years and tens of thousands of man-hours to perfect the technology. Or should I say, ‘achieve the ability’? It’s still not perfect, but we’ve finally reached survivability. Obviously.”
“In the end,” said Masten, “it proved to be a much bigger dilemma than the crystallization. But it still wasn’t the biggest.”
“And what was that?”
“Death,” Masten replied simply.
“Death?”
“Understand that, to date, everyone who has been cryonically ‘prepared’ has been so after they were pronounced dead. This is because it’s still illegal to freeze oneself before death. Before taking that final breath, when the brain’s synapses are still firing and the heart still pumping. All of which must officially end, clinically and legally, before a person can be cryonically frozen.”
Masten swiveled his chair, looking directly at Reiff. “Which brings us to you.”