In fact, all the news coming out of his business was worthy of admiration. In 2075 they prepared a new freezing-unfreezing technique on mice that brought them back to life while still being able to navigate mazes they had learned before they were frozen. By the summer of 2076 they performed a similar experiment on a chimpanzee nicknamed Lazarus who could sign more than two hundred words. Following his death and rejuvenation, he could still repeat the signs, and trainers said his personality appeared unchanged. These, of course, were the experiments they made public. There were thousands of failures behind those successes.
Rejuve began gathering government funding, and hundreds of thousands of people started filling out contracts intending that their bodies be cryonically frozen if viable (i.e., if they died in a way that allowed their brain to be preserved promptly after death).
In September 2076, the first human was frozen using Rejuve’s patented technique, and after that they were freezing dying people every day. The demand was so high that they asked the government to fund some new storehouses for the bodies, and the government didn’t dare say no. Unlike the advent of cloning, cryonics did not have a clear majority opposed to the concept. There were many evangelicals who found the idea repugnant, who felt that bringing humans back from the dead was the province of God, not mortals. But the primary reason it had been derided was because it was considered too farfetched to be real. Now that it was only near-fetched, people were lining up for a chance to play hide-and-seek from the Reaper.
And, of course, everyone was going nuts to see what would happen when the first human was brought back from the dead. Myself included. I had looked into the eyes of my dead mother. Were her eyes seeing something mine couldn’t?
What followed were months of breathless waiting. Gossip was rampant that they were going to thaw out legendary baseball great Ted Williams and his son Roy, but Rejuve tried to make clear that they could currently only bring back people who had been frozen using their new methods, and the likelihood that people frozen using the cruder methods could be resuscitated with their brains still perfectly intact was doubtful. As for those frozen since 2076, there was no reason to rejuvenate any of the “hibernating” humans until there was a cure for what killed them, so Rejuve waited until a new cure was found for someone who had recently died, or until their brain could be transplanted into an artificial body that our company was rushing to perfect. Ironically, much of the unfreezing side of their business would, in the near future, depend on our success.
The wait wasn’t long. The chance came that winter. The date for attempted rejuvenation was set for Christmas Eve of 2076, and if that was successful the patient would be brought back to full consciousness on New Year’s Day.
Despite our family’s history with Lyle, we were as captivated as everyone else. Perhaps more so. In December, Cain was a junior in high school while concurrently wrapping up his first semester of college courses at UCSD towards a degree in astrophysics.
As his mother’s struggle against death grew more desperate, he began to study both religion and science. He often accompanied Evelyn, Hannah, and Martin to temple, read all manner of religious texts, and dove into his study of cosmology with the same consuming fascination that my c-father had for genetics in his youth. Cain was determined to know as much as possible about the nature of our universe and of the multiverse in which countless universes existed together – something whose presence had recently been proven by experiments in string theory and gravitational waves. The math was challenging, especially for someone who hadn’t taken a strong interest in academics until his sophomore year in high school, but he finished his first college semester with a respectable 3.2 GPA.
“This is reality!” Cain exclaimed during dinner in mid-December as he studied for one of his finals. “If we want to know whether there’s a God, and if we have a soul and what’s our place in the universe and in the whole of reality extending to the multiverse and beyond, it has to come from physics because God is being so silent on so many details.”
Evelyn and I were his eager students. If God existed and he wasn’t going to tell us explicitly why we were created, then we had to use our brains and tools to find out for ourselves. Maybe that’s what he had in mind all along, pushing our curiosity to come find him using science, like a father who throws his kid into the deep end to make him learn how to swim. On the other hand, if God didn’t exist, then in a sense we were the minds and eyes of the universe, studying itself to find its own identity. Perhaps discovering that, as a universe we were not alone, but a part of the even larger reality of the multiverse, was our first purpose. Our second purpose might be using that knowledge to create an ever-greater reality. A new earth, as the Book of Revelation put it, better than the one before. Some believed we should wait for God to create it. I believed, while we were waiting, we should strive to create as perfect a world as possible.
“So what’s the answer, Mr. Astrophysicist?” Evelyn pressed. “Does God exist?”
“Well, there are two main schools of thought on the subject,” Cain said, assuming an exaggerated air of scholarly speech as he pointed with a forkful of broccoli.
“Yeah, the schools of ‘Yes’ and ‘No,’” Evelyn finished for him.
“Exactly,” he said, leaning over the table to muss up her hair. “But seriously, it’s clear that our universe is uniquely adapted for life. Out of all the possible physical laws a universe can have, the chance of one existing that would allow for the likelihood of life is very small. So one possibility is that there’s an almost infinite number of universes, and with so many universes it’s only natural that a few of them would be specially adapted like ours and allow us to exist. The other possibility is that an intelligence created this universe specifically so that it would eventually develop intelligent life. It could be a human-like intelligence that is millions of years ahead of us technologically and figured out how to manufacture new universes, which is a theoretical possibility for us too in the far future. Or it could be a more spiritual intelligence. The sort we normally associate with God.”
“And which theory are you leaning to?” Evelyn asked, only half playing with him.
“I lean toward the idea that the very existence of the multiverse is too amazing to not have been designed by some intelligence. I think there’s a reality beyond the multiverse, and that an intelligence there, probably a society, views and contemplates the entire multiverse it’s created.”
“And the next question,” I asked, “is why did they create it?” Did our son know the purpose of our existence? I was more anxious than I realized.
He gave me a confident nod. “Simple. The answer to that is ‘forty-two.’”
“Seriously!” Evelyn slapped his shoulder with the back of her hand, evidently doubtful of the speculative Douglas Adams theory.
Cain smiled. “I think we cover that next semester,” he answered. “But I’d guess it’s partly out of curiosity, and partly to give other things the opportunity to experience life and see what they do with it.”
“Will they give us an afterlife?” she asked.
Cain briefly hugged his mom from around the edge of the table. “If it was your multiverse, would you give them an afterlife?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Then hopefully God cares as much as you.”
She smiled. It was then that I first supposed, rightly or wrongly, that his entire reason for studying cosmology was to give his mom logical hope for an afterlife.
“So any theories as to what’s going to happen when Rejuve wakes up Daryl Scott?” I asked.
Cain nodded. “Something unexpected.”
And he was right.
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Daryl Scott was a nineteen-year-old giant of a man who worked part time on a California chicken farm. He was patient zero of the 2076 “American Hendemic” – the severe flu passed from American chickens to humans after an unnatural viral mutation widely believed to be terr
orist-related. Not everyone bought into the story. Oliver Stone-2 and other conspiracy theorists, not to mention a few not-so-paranoid scientists, believed our own government orchestrated it, possibly to assure a rally-around-the-leaders sentiment for the troubled majority party right before elections. Still others thought it might have been developed by Rejuve, Ingeneuity, or one of the other AIS companies as a way to scare the bejesus out of everyone not protected by artificial immune systems.
Daryl hadn’t used any form of AIS, but it might not have saved him anyway. More than 246,000 Americans died, including over ten thousand AIS users, as the mutant flu bug proved at times too ferocious and slippery for the artificial immune system to fight until we could study it and update everyone’s AIS. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Both Ingeneuity and Rejuve doctors worked together with flu experts to contain, stabilize, and eventually win the battle against the Hendemic.
But the battle took more than a month to win, too late for Daryl. He was autopsied virtually and cryonically frozen even though he had no cryonic contract. The doctors, confused by the resistance and fierceness of the virus, wanted to keep him intact in case they needed more information than the virtual autopsy could reveal.
Both because he was the first victim and because he hadn’t specifically requested to be brought back, it was decided that he would be a good candidate for the first attempted rejuvenation. If it didn’t work? Well, he hadn’t expressed an interest in being brought back to life anyway.
Rejuve showed some guts, allowing a media crew to broadcast live footage of the attempted rejuvenation at six o’clock the night of Christmas Eve. Lyle-2 must have been extremely sure of success. If it worked, it would be one of the greatest marketing schemes ever drawn up. If it failed, it could severely blunt the interest and credibility of cryonics for years.
No dramatic buildup here. As most of you must know, it worked. When the lungs were cleared and the heart was prompted back into beating, the little “beep” on the heart monitor lit up, and people around the world cheered (except for those crossing themselves in horror). The doctors cheered as well, and one of them turned on Elton John’s Someone Saved My Life Tonight.
Within an hour, their updated AIS had destroyed the Hendemic virus, and all body functions were at or quickly approaching normal. Thirty minutes later, everything checking out well, they closed their program with Karen Carpenter singing Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas about reuniting with dear friends. Not to mention it being a nice Christmas carol to let the world know that Rejuve wasn’t a bunch of crazed atheists pretending to be God by raising the dead.
They kept Daryl sedated for a week as his brain cells went through an extensive healing process, and they watched to make sure no surprises occurred. On the morning of January 1, 2077, the world tuned in again to see the first man wake after verifiably being dead. And dead for nearly four months, at that. The world was tuning in for a miracle.
This time one of the hipper doctors put on Gloria Gaynor’s disco classic I Will Survive for the big moment. That big moment began with Daryl’s eyes fluttering. Then he opened them. The world collectively gasped. Was he okay? Had he seen the other side? What did he see? What would he do? What would he say?
What he did was look around the room, clearly puzzled, before fixing his eyes on the stereo speakers. What he said was, “What is that crap?”
So Daryl Scott wasn’t exactly Neil Armstrong. In retrospect, maybe Rejuve got a little carried away with their musical programming, and should have simply let the miracle speak for itself.
After the embarrassed head doctor ordered a laughing nurse to turn the music off, the situation sobered up considerably. The doctor explained to Daryl about the flu, how he had died, been cryonically frozen in case they needed more information from his body, and just become the first human to have ever been restored to life from cryonic freeze.
“Fuck,” Daryl said, rubbing his face with his right hand. “Well then that explains the reporters.”
“Yes,” the doctor replied, hoping the video feed was on time delay so the censors could clean it up a bit. They did, and at the time nobody except the people in his room and at the media studios heard the expletive.
“So it’s New Year’s already?” Daryl asked, still groggy and confused.
“Yes,” the doctor answered. “And see here,” he stood rigidly and pointed his index finger at a tray of cards surrounded by several bouquets, “we have thousands of holiday cards sent to you from all over the world.”
Daryl glanced at the huge pile of cards. “Okay.”
The doctor paused several seconds to see if Daryl wanted to say anything else. Nothing else was forthcoming.
“Good,” said the doctor. “Now, let’s talk about your experience. How did you feel when you woke up just now?”
“Hung over,” he responded, shaking his head wearily.
“Interesting,” replied the doctor. “And what’s the last thing you remember before you woke up?”
Daryl paused for a while, trying to remember. “I got real sick,” he said slowly. “Docs said it was probably from the chickens.”
“Yes.”
“And then I remember all these chickens pecking at me. They were real big and I was small, and they were really hurting me, and I was beg—telling them to stop, you know? But they didn’t stop until Jesus came, and He said, ‘Stop, chickens. Peck on someone your own size.’ Isn’t that weird, Doc?”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “And what happened then?”
“Well, they stopped. Then Jesus led me out of the big chicken coop, and I was out near the farmhouse where I work. And He said, ‘Just hang here for a while, Daryl. I’ll be back later.’ Then He left, and I waited in the boss’s farmhouse, and then I heard that stupid music playing and woke up here. Wild, huh?”
“Wild,” echoed the doctor, moving his lips around the word. “Would you care to say anything else to the world before we let the reporters go?” The offer was a few degrees short of enthusiastic.
“Yeah,” he answered. He turned to the cameras and smiled, as if something really good to say had just occurred to him. “One more thing I forgot Jesus said. He said everyone should eat a lot more eggs!”
“Thank you, Mr. Scott,” the doctor added swiftly, and nodded to the reporters indicating that was a wrap.
There was little consensus as to what to make of the event, except that Daryl clearly wanted to impress his boss. But had Daryl’s real visions occurred before his physical death, when he was waking, or during his freeze when his brain was truly dead? Would other people have similar visions? Could he have had a glimpse of some sort of fowl purgatory? Or had God, or Daryl’s own subconscious, simply used images in Daryl’s mind to protect him from the trauma of rejuvenation before sending him back to the world? Or, as one comic suggested, had Jesus allowed this man-made type of resurrection so he could proclaim to the world the one thing he’d forgotten to say in the gospels – that everyone needed to eat more eggs?
The incident sparked excited theorizing and ended up benefiting everyone involved. Rejuve instantly became a household word. Not only did they begin receiving a flurry of orders for cryonic freezing, they were swamped by calls to bring back the other victims of the Hendemic and by requests from the media to broadcast each one in a reality show format. Countless writers begged to be the company’s official scribe who would relate the tales of all the dead brought back to life. One college opened a new program in its Philosophy department dedicated to the study of cryonic visions and what they may tell us about the soul and the afterlife. Saturday Night Live had prep nurse Tina Fey-2 thawing out the patient with a blow dryer while Doctor Billy Crystal-2 borrowed a line from his clone-father’s movie The Princess Bride, explaining that Daryl was only “mostly dead.” Daryl Scott was indeed offered a full-time position with the chicken farm, and he was also hit with requests to publish his story and make a movie out of it. And yes, as I’m sure you’ve guessed,
the egg industry had a rebirth.
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In early February, I came home to find Evelyn sitting at our dining table. Her old backpack sat beside her. There was a partially written letter to her clone-daughter in front of her.
“I recognize that,” I said, picking up the pack and running my fingers over the faded and rough denim, the variety of patches she’d added to it, and the remnants of paint.
She smiled up at me and nodded. “It was like a dream,” she said. “Walking into the classroom. Seeing all the spray paint on the wall. And then at my table and on my backpack.”
I kissed her on the cheek and sat down next to her. “Were you scared?”
“I’d never felt so alone,” she said, taking the pack from me and tracing the faded pink triangle and yellow star, “but it also made me feel closer to you.” She nudged me. “And just the Monday after one of my favorite memories.”
I reflected on the repercussions of our first marriage. The vandalism. My mother’s death. Her father’s death.
And then I allowed myself to think of the possible repercussions of our second marriage. Watching her slowly die. Seeing her writing a letter to her clone-daughter who would have to take her place.
“It’s one of my favorite memories, too.”
She sighed. “And then you said we were getting a divorce.”
“I know,” I said, feeling myself flush. “I was such an idiot.”
To my relief, she laughed. “Yes,” she agreed, nodding. “But you know, that led to you defending me on the playground, and me talking to your mom and you meeting my dad. So I’m glad you did.”
“Me too,” I said, grateful for that day, and for the woman who married me.
She nudged me again. “Good. Now get lost so I can—” She winced.
“Are you okay?”
“Just some pains today,” she said, a little wearily. “They come and go.”
I held her shaking hand. “Do you want to go to the hospital?”
Evelyn gripped her backpack till her knuckles were white, then drew in a sharp breath from the pain.