Awakenings: A Fantastic Journey

Within minutes, they were climbing the steps of the weathered and apparently ancient cathedral. The cornerstone showed a date of 2016. The sound of shouts grew louder from behind them.

Inside, their eyes adjusted from the brilliance of the sun to the dark reverence of the vestibule. A short, round-faced man with white hair, dressed in a black outfit with a clerical collar, approached them with a whispered greeting. His disarming smile and twinkling eyes made Adam feel immediately at ease.

"This is the one I was telling you about, Father," confided Dr. Radcliffe.

"Ah, yes -- Sleeping Beauty," grinned the priest.

"They're still telling that story?" asked Katameros.

The padre nodded. "A classic. Though the means of conveying stories has been greatly altered from your time. But let's not get into that now. We have bigger fish to fry. Almost as big as the ones Jesus fried on the beach with his apostles after His resurrection."

"Speaking of resurrection, I have a lot of questions..."

"Quite to be expected," replied Father Brown, "especially from a man who never walked on water. At least I don't suppose you did..."

"I don't remember anything I did. I have no answers -- only questions. Like how I was dead for 89 years and now I'm not. Um -- I'm not, am I?"

"In the physical sense? No. You are alive and quite corporeal, as are the lovely doctor and I."

"So how did I not rot in the grave? I mean, eighty-nine years is a lot longer than three days."

"Ah, I see you have no recollection of the events precipitating your current state of unusual affairs. Perhaps the good doctor would be willing to recount the history. Let's take a seat in there." He pointed to the sanctuary, and led them to a pew where they sat in a row, a body's width of space between each. Katameros was in the center, with Dr. Radcliffe to his right and Father Brown to his left.

The doctor took a deep breath before she began. Adam noticed -- to his dismay, given the close proximity of the priest -- that it caused her breasts to jut out in taunting fashion.

"You were one of the early policyholders of the Cryonic Life Insurance Company," began Dr. Radcliffe. "Cryonic Life was the first insurance company to stumble onto the idea of providing a life insurance benefit that helps the person who died, rather than helping their survivors."

"Helps a dead person?"

"Right," interjected the priest, "Prior to that, life insurance buyers needed somewhat of an altruistic motive to induce the purchase. They never saw a dollar of their life insurance proceeds themselves, but rather it was paid to their survivors. But Cryonic Life, in the tradition of their capitalistic forebears, found a way to exploit the innate selfishness of the common man."

"How so?" asked Katameros.

"Well," continued Dr. Radcliffe, "as the name of the company implies, it's based on cryonics. It involves a process whereby a recently deceased person's body is frozen at very low temperatures, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible with future technology. And the future is now."

"So these bodies are just now being resuscitated -- and I'm one of them?"

"You're special," she answered, "You're the first. And we owe it to you to do more than resuscitate you. We need to help you heal, in every sense of the word."

God, I love a smart and caring woman, thought Adam. And her looks certainly don't hurt, either.

"That's right," interposed the priest as Katameros turned in his direction, "but what the good doctor failed to mention is that from the 1960's until after the turn of the 21^st century, the prospect of healing and resuscitation after post-mortem freezing seemed extremely remote in the court of public opinion. However, Cryonic Life succeeded in convincing the masses that such healing and resuscitation was in fact plausible and even to be expected as medical advances unfolded, in much the same fashion that organ transplants became a medical reality several decades earlier."

"How did that 'exploit the innate selfishness of the common man'?" asked Katameros with a sardonic smile.

He's really quite funny -- surprising in the circumstances, thought Dr. Radcliffe.

"It created a whole new market." she interjected, "People became willing to buy life insurance for their own desires, as opposed to buying it solely for their survivors. The insurance was to pay for the cost of cryonic preservation -- including time-of-death expenses similar to those for major transplant surgeries, as well as storage of the patient in liquid nitrogen into perpetuity -- the whole nine yards. Cryonic Life Insurance Company guaranteed that their clients' bodies would be maintained for healing and resuscitation in such a way that information-theoretic death would not occur."

"Information-theoretic death?" queried Katameros.

"Yes," continued Dr. Radcliffe, "Information-theoretic death is the physical deterioration of the brain and the information within it to such an extent that the recovery of what constitutes the original person is theoretically impossible by any physical means."

"Heavy stuff," commented Katameros. She returned his smile. His irrepressible desire for her surged again.

"Indeed it is," continued the doctor. "A central premise of cryonics is that long-term memory and identity are stored in durable structures within the brain, and that these don't require continuous brain activity to survive. You seem to be living proof that this premise is true."

"I guess I am," he replied, "although my memory is limited and I don't really know what my identity was before I died."

"Suffice it to say that you are at least not a blank slate," said the doctor, "which dispels the fear that brain death would be equivalent to formatting the hard disk drive on one of your computers of the twenty-first century."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Katameros quipped. "So, the fear of a formatted hard drive must have been overcome if people became willing to embrace cryonics?"

"Exactly," replied Dr. Radcliffe, "people had to believe in the possibility of restoration -- not only resuscitation, but recovery of identity -- before they'd take cryonics seriously."

The priest cleared his throat. "It took more than belief in the possibility of resuscitation and recovery -- there had to be trust in the storage techniques. Cryonics went from quackery to visionary almost overnight in the third decade of the twenty-first century," he added. "The end of its buffoonery took place with the onset of cryonics regulation, in the wake of the Ted Williams debacle."

"Wait a minute. Ted Williams -- the great baseball player?" He turned to Dr. Radcliffe and gave her a smile and a wink.

"Ah, so you do have some memories that precede your initial demise," affirmed the priest. "Yes, that leviathan of the ancient and now-obsolete pastime of baseball, the 'Splendid Splinter' -- who posthumously became known as the 'Decapitated Driller' -- was unfortunately at the centre of the inelegant case that ironically brought about the end of cryonics jeering."

"Yes, I seem to remember -- they froze his head separately from his body, and there was a big family fight about it," recalled Katameros. "To make matters worse, rumours of his frozen head being accidentally dropped and cracked spread like wildfire."

"Those charges were never proven," said the priest, "but soon after that embarrassing episode, regulatory agencies intervened to develop standards governing cryonic freezing and maintenance processes. Not long after, cryonics began to take on an air of legitimacy."

Dr. Radcliffe interrupted, "I don't recall the Ted Williams affair -- nor the game of baseball -- but I do know that public opinion in the early days of cryonics was against the practice of neuropreservation."

"Neuropreservation?" asked Katameros.

"Yes, the cryopreservation of the head, without the rest of the body. It later became much more fashionable, on the basis that the brain is the repository of the human consciousness. And in practical terms, neuropreservation was less expensive and less likely to cause damage during the freezing process. The head would be preserved, with the intention of the future re-growth of a healthy body around the brain -- using the same technology as for re-growth of a limb or organ, which was not possible in your day but is in ours. Alternate techniques which were once speculative but are now a reality, such as the development of a cloned body or an artificial body in which the brain could be housed, serve the same function."

"So is this my real body? Or is it a re-grown or cloned or artificial one?"

"No, you're built from all original parts, though the warranty expired a long time ago," she grinned.

Her smile elicited a tenting in his jeans. The warranty's good on at least one part, he thought.

"But seriously," she continued, "We repaired your body from the cause of death and from the damage of cryogenic freezing, and we genetically engineered it for the Methuselah Solution before resuscitating you, all using molecular nanotechnology. We needed the closest available proxy to a live human subject so that we could extrapolate the results of our genetic engineering to the general population. And a frozen head just didn't fit the bill," laughed the doctor.

Smart, beautiful, compassionate -- and funny, too. Damn, she's hot! thought Adam.

The sounds of shouting that Katameros had heard earlier began to grow in the distance. "That noise -- I've heard it before. Anyone know what's going on out there?" he wondered aloud.

"An unfortunate reaction," replied the priest somberly, "the masses are asses, and they are looking for you."

*****

"Me?" replied Katameros in unfeigned surprise. For the moment, the priest did not respond. Katameros stood and moved past Dr. Radcliffe, up the aisle and toward the altar at the front of the sanctuary. His hands were trembling as he turned to face them.

The doctor was the first to speak. "All part of the Cryonic Life story," she explained, "the company enjoyed great success for many decades. Its sales of cryonic life insurance policies exploded as people embraced the idea of future regeneration. People even overcame their sense of the macabre in relation to neuropreservation, bringing the practice of storing only the head into vogue in the last few decades. People saw advances emerging in molecular medicine that would indeed allow the re-growth of organs and limbs, and by going the post-mortem decapitation route they could significantly reduce the cost of cryopreservation and the attendant life insurance policies used to fund it. But then in the last decade, things began to go off the rails..."

"Heads began to roll?" asked Katameros with a nearly straight face.

Dr. Radcliffe rolled her eyes, her nose scrunching in mirth, then laughed so hard it caused her breasts to jiggle.

Adam's pulse quickened in outright lust. Or is it more? he wondered.

"No, heads didn't roll," she giggled. "It was all about money -- the financing began to fail."

"Human nature continued to fail," retorted the priest, "Self-interest drove the sales. Mispricing drove the financial viability of Cryonic Life into doubt. Greed drove the timing of your resuscitation. And the masses weren't prepared."

"Now I'm really confused," moaned Katameros.

"I think I can explain," soothed the doctor, as she stood and moved toward him at the altar. "You know about the self-interest. People bought the Cryonic Life policies because it gave them something for themselves -- really, Cryonic bottled hope for the future."

"Yes," said Katameros, "I get that, even though I don't remember doing it."

"Yes, your large gaps in memory, while recalling minor details on things like baseball and Ted Williams, are consistent with partial amnesia. Anyway, there's also the issue of mispricing -- that's another story," said Dr. Radcliffe. "Cryonic Life built their pricing on assumptions, some of which nobody could reasonably validate. Assumptions about investment earnings on the premiums they collected, to help pay for ongoing cryopreservation maintenance costs. But more importantly, assumptions about how long the freezing would need to continue until a viable healing and resuscitation solution could be developed."

"The Methuselah Solution?" asked Katameros.

"No, that's a more recent solution," replied the doctor. "Remember, that's the genetic re-engineering idea using ante-diluvian gene sequences..."

"Auntie who?" asked Adam.

"Ante-diluvian," interjected Father Brown. "It just means 'pre-flood.'"

"Correct," Eve continued, "And the idea of searching for the genetic patterns from Noah's forebears wasn't really contemplated by Cryonic Life or the forefathers of cryonics, like R.C.W. Ettinger or Evan Cooper. The idea of the Methuselah Solution, with life expectancies measured in the hundreds or even thousands of years, is a product of my generation. The wait for simple healing and resuscitation -- the arcane version of the Methuselah Solution -- is a product of yours. And the wait was longer than Cryonic Life assumed when they priced their insurance policies."

"How much longer?"

"They thought they were being conservative when they priced for fifty years on the early policies, and they've been reducing that assumption in the generations since. But you know it's been eighty-nine years for you -- a lot more than the original 'conservative' fifty-year assumption. They underestimated by forty or so years. Multiply that by the annual maintenance costs, and then again by the thousands upon thousands of policies they sold. I'm not exactly sure how to calculate the extra cost -- I'm no actuary -- but it adds up to a boatload of money. New sales of Cryonic Life policies have been funding old policy guarantees for the last decade. Even with premium increases on new policies, they're headed for financial ruin if the maintenance for old policies can't be terminated soon."

"Terminated?" Adam's uplifted eyebrow accentuated his quizzical tone.

"One of two ways -- let the corpses thaw and rot," smiled Dr. Radcliffe at her indelicate choice of words, "in which case Cryonic Life's reputation is shot to hell and there's no more market for new sales, or -- resuscitate the old policyholders en masse."

Does she think of me as a corpse? he wondered. The glint in her eye told him otherwise.

He ventured another question. "So what's the problem with mass resuscitations?"

"The timing is the problem. It's based on greed. Cryonic Life's greed -- they need to stop paying the long-term costs of cryopreservation on all their old policies. But we're not ready for mass resuscitations."

"And does that have something to do with the masses being asses?"

She rested a hand gently on his shoulder. He was sure his heart skipped a beat -- maybe two. "Adam, I'm afraid the masses are not ready for a single person from a century ago -- let alone thousands -- to be introduced into our society today."

"What are they worried about -- overpopulation?"

"That's a genuine concern, one that can be solved with inter-planetary development, but I'm afraid it's more ethereal than that," she replied. "The current generation is as concerned with the spiritual as it is with the physical. When news of Cryonic Life's plans for widespread resuscitations was announced, there were mass demonstrations in the streets. People with placards declaring 'Don't unleash the zombies!' and 'Cremation, not creation!' marched on government buildings. They're demanding that their voices be heard and that the resuscitations be stopped. And if not for the neat -- some might say shady -- way that the availability of cryopreserved bodies legally solved our dilemma for testing the Methuselah Solution, WCNMS would probably have yielded to the public pressure."

"But -- but why are the masses calling us zombies?"

The priest took over from his seated position, shaking his head. "It's because they believe in the separation of body and spirit at death -- that the spirit leaves the body and departs to its eternal destination. And you represent something fearful to them: either their theology is wrong, or you have no soul. They have no tolerance for either."

*****

Katameros stood in stunned silence. Dr. Radcliffe dared not speak. Finally, Father Brown moved forward from his pew.

"Don't allow the popular theology to unduly influence you, my son," encouraged the priest, "as I said, the masses are asses."

"I don't think I understand..."

"The issue is one of faith. And their view of God is simply too small."

"How so, Father?" asked Katameros.

"Let me follow the example of the Teacher and answer a question with a question. What is faith?" asked the priest. Again, there was a moment of uncomfortable silence.

Finally, Katameros offered, "I guess it's something you choose to believe."

"Exactly," said Father Brown, "but the basis of that choice to believe is all-important. It needs to be a basis that recognizes that God is God and man is man."

"So what does that have to do with me not having a soul?"

"Those who choose to believe that your soul has been separated from your consciousness, now that your consciousness has been restored to your body, have narrowed their understanding of God."

"Really? In what way?" asked Katameros.

"They have viewed your resuscitation as an act of man rather than an act of God. As if God has your spirit, but man was able to pry His hand off your consciousness when he -- or, more accurately, she -- resuscitated your body." Father Brown nodded in Eve's direction as he emphasized the word "she."

"I don't know about this God stuff, Father," said Adam. "As far as I can remember, I've never been a religious man."

"Nor have I," wisecracked Father Brown, "I'm instead a man of faith -- faith in a God who is not limited, not even by man-made constructs like the good doctor's 'information-theoretic' death."

"What do you mean?" asked Dr. Radcliffe, rejoining the conversation. "What about information-theoretic death?"

"You posed it as a point at which recovery of the person is impossible due to the physical deterioration or destruction of the brain," replied the priest. "My view of God is that no such boundaries exist for Him, even if the brain is completely physically destroyed. He who created man from the dust of the earth can surely recover and restore man from the dust of the earth."

"I -- I see your point, Father," she replied.

Add 'spiritually sensitive' to her lengthy list of assets, thought Adam.

"God can not only physically restore man's consciousness," continued Father Brown, "but He who breathed the breath of life into the first man can return the spirit to the recovered man," said the priest as he turned from Dr. Radcliffe to gaze meaningfully at Katameros.

He seemed to be assessing Adam's demeanour for signs of a reaction. Katameros was lost in thought when the shouts from outside grew very loud and sunlight streamed into the previously dark vestibule.

*****

"You two -- into the confessional," whispered the priest gruffly as he strode toward the back of the sanctuary and the vestibule beyond. Katameros and Dr. Radcliffe both hesitated, not sure what the priest had in mind. Father Brown stopped at the exit from the sanctuary and turned toward the pair. "Go," he mouthed, pointing to the confessional.

Katameros and the doctor moved to the confessional and entered, one at a time, as the priest left the sanctuary and entered the vestibule.