Analog Science Fiction and Fact - Jan-Feb 2014

by Penny Publications

  That's not strictly true. It's just all I know of her. I have all of her. All that's left, anyway.

  From what I've read, her actual last words were nothing to write home about. She wanted her cat looked after. She wanted water, and was cold. That's pretty normal. "Cover my feet," she said to the nurse. "I'd like a drink of water," she said. "My mouth is so dry." Usually there is no wisdom imparted, no grand finale—we're cold, and we want to sleep. It was no different for her.

  Her final moments were uneventful, if you discount the cadre of specialists outside her door. It was after she died that things got serious.

  That was all a very long time ago.

  When the money ran out and it became clear that we couldn't sustain them all, we had to decide which patients we couldn't save. I'd been with the company for the better part of a decade by then. I remember Melanie breaking down in tears during the board meeting, and Bill having to excuse himself to be sick in the restroom. This was a failure that we took personally, so personally that for a while I was spending nights taking calls from colleagues and talking them out of suicide. You can see why they would consider it—it would have been a poetic kind of atonement. Generations of patients had placed their lives in our hands, and we'd failed them.

  The earliest patients had the lowest probability of success, due to the imperfect vitrification processes they used in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Eighty-three early patients were selected, their polished chrome dewars stacked against a cinder block wall and their data files updated. Distant descendents were tracked down and contacted, most of whom neither knew nor cared that they had an ancestor in suspension and weren't much interested in the disposition of their remains.

  She never had children, never got married. There was no one to call, and no one to care that the count had changed by one when I turned them over for disposal.

  The unit is fairly easy to maintain. The temperature isn't as well regulated as I'd like, and I can't get it as cold as we had at the facility, but I do what I can.

  Three years ago last August I nearly lost her to a storm that kept me away from home longer than expected. In my mind I could see the sweating canister as the temperature climbed, I could see that crimson hair hanging in lank wet strands, while decomposition set it—autolysis, cell rupture, her skin blistering, slippage, irreversible damage—everything we as mortal beings fear and everything that we had protected her from for the better part of a century.

  And her face, while achingly beautiful, was not the worst of it. If her brain began to thaw, what part of her would be lost first? Language skills? Motor function? Impulse control? Memory? I could imagine her life as a map, traced in sepia on immaculate folds of gray matter: the roads, waterways, borders, and landmarks of her heart erased one ruptured cell at a time. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. I had to get to her and stop it.

  I nearly knocked the basement door off its hinges, my heart pounding like a hammer, but there she was—enclosed, sealed, regulated, cold. Liquid nitrogen levels low but not dry. Cold enough. If I had been another six hours it might have been too late.

  That was the moment, knowing that I'd almost lost her. I could no longer pretend that I could store her here forever. I had to start planning for her revival.

  The next morning I came to on the floor, empty bottle just out of reach, my head pounding and my gut in revolt. When I opened my eyes in the half-light there was a face in front of me, like I'd woken in a bed beside someone meant to be there, and in my half-conscious state I thought it was her. I reached out to touch her, and my fingers struck the hard, cold steel of the dewar.

  I haven't traveled since.

  I bought a green pen. I wrote the words over and over again in a notebook that I used for nothing else, and I carried the picture of the laughing girl from room to room as I thought about what it meant to revive her.

  I practiced until I couldn't tell the difference between her handwriting and my own. I try to put myself in her place—young, unafraid, confident that the future will be better, brighter, and that she will be welcomed there. I write the words and for the six seconds that it takes I think I can feel what she felt in those moments. The stroke across the T is emphatic; the flourish on the d is full of anticipation of a day when all of her dreams will come true.

  They've been working backward, last-infirst-out. The synthetics are good, I've seen them. Like Lassiter. He was a neuro suspended not too long after her—thirty years, maybe—and he's taken to it fine. Everything about her that matters is still there. The memory of her first kiss, her last goodbye, all of the events that made her or broke her. All of the things that made her smile. What she really wanted, I tell myself, was to come back.

  I'll probably be fired. Who am I kidding? I'll definitely be fired. But once they know I have her, they'll have to do it, won't they? We don't talk much about what happened all those years ago. When we do, we refer to it as the Crisis, and we don't look each other in the eye. If they know that she's still here, and that they can bring her back, they won't have a choice. And they can't have me arrested, not when they would have destroyed her. If we believe our own marketing material, I stopped them from committing murder.

  I comfort myself with this thought and the last of the bourbon. I've laid in a bottle of something pink and bubbly. It seemed like the right kind of welcome. Whether or not she'll be able to taste it is another matter.

  Tomorrow. Tonight I'll pass out like I have every night, with her picture nearby and her words echoing in my head.

  It made about as much sense as wishing on a star. It could never be done. People who had never even heard of a stem cell thought we'd grow them brand new bodies just like their old one. We're not going to grow anencephalic clones in tanks and age them to their twenties. That's not how revival works. It's not how it's ever going to work.

  Her future was a place, and I am a native of it. I know the terrain; I know the weather. And I know that this isn't the future she wanted. This isn't what she meant.

  This is as I wish to be restored.

  It was a naïve hope on her part. I have a lot of hopes of my own, equally naïve. But the main one, the one that I cling to as consciousness fades away with her picture pressed against my heart, is this:

  I hope that she forgives me.

  * * *

  The Problem with Reproducible Bugs

  Marie DesJardin | 2944 words

  Reproducible bug: A failure in a program that can be reliably produced by repeating the same series of steps; useful as an aid in diagnosing a problem.

  "Vince? Vince?"

  Vincent fluttered his eyes. They seemed oddly heavy, gummed together.

  "It's Lauren. Can you hear me?"

  His eyes parted, and he winced. Light stabbed him like knives. He groaned, reaching up a hand. "Oh, my head."

  "Thank God you're awake. I was getting worried."

  Vince blinked at her. Something was flapping near his wrist, where he had reached up to shield his eyes. "What's this?"

  "IV drip."

  "Where am I?"

  "Hospital."

  Vince forced himself to focus. Lauren sat in a plastic chair near the IV stand. Her fresh young face and luxurious dark hair clashed with the sterile surroundings. Vincent, on the other hand, knew he was a perfect match. Age aside, there was his terminal rot—

  Angrily, he shoved the thought aside. "What happened?"

  "I found you on the floor of the lab, again."

  Vince's head felt about to split. "What do you mean, 'again'?"

  Lauren hesitated. "What do you last remember?"

  Thinking was hard, like trying to penetrate a white mist. "I was reading."

  "Where?"

  "In bed, as usual. I always catch up with my journals in the evening."

  Lauren nodded, but seemed as ill at ease as before. "And do you remember what day that was?"

  Vince's anger returned. "Of course I do. It was last night—Friday."

  Lauren no
dded thoughtfully, almost sadly. "I'll get the doctor."

  Vince caught her wrist. "What's wrong?"

  Lauren hesitated. "I shouldn't be the one to tell you."

  "Tell me what? "

  Lauren sighed. "This isn't the first time you were hurt."

  "Hurt." Vince stared at her. He'd assumed his collapse was due to his progressing malady. Even as he lay, he could feel his heart skipping beats. But why then would his lab assistant look so strange?

  "I found you Monday morning, passed out on the floor of the lab. You had a severe concussion."

  Vince frowned. "Monday..." Had he been lying there all weekend?

  "When you woke up, the last thing you remembered was reading in bed Friday night."

  "I don't remember our having that conversation."

  "I told you this was the second time you were hurt. That was Monday. Today is Wednesday afternoon. Earlier this morning I found you out cold on the lab floor. You'd suffered another concussion in almost the exact same spot. Each incident knocked out your short-term memories. Those less than forty-eight hours old are stored differently from long-term memories. All those memories are gone."

  Vince stared. "I have amnesia?"

  "Consecutive amnesia. You've had it twice."

  "I don't remember."

  "I know."

  "I know it sounds extreme," Lauren postulated, "but could someone be trying to kill you?"

  Vince snorted in disgust and sipped his tea. This was the thing he liked most about his home—this deck, built to overlook the pine forest that surrounded his little scrap of yard. The sunshine poured brightly over the cushioned chairs and potted plants—wooden tubs of petunias that the housekeeper kept up.

  "No one's trying to kill me." Vince breathed in the restorative vapor of the pines. Thank God they'd released him; how could anyone get well in a hospital?

  "What else could it be?" Lauren persisted. "Two concussions, each time when you're alone in the lab. Doesn't that sound suspicious to you?"

  "Why would someone attack me? You saw for yourself that nothing had been touched." His files were Vince's only real concern— those and his personal lab. But the files were in order, and the secret door had not been forced—not that Vince could actually try it with Lauren in the room. However, since the experiment would be of limited use to anyone without his data, Vince was fairly certain that no intruder had been present. He'd have to wait until he was out of Lauren's company to make a complete investigation. But their drive-by on his way home this morning had alleviated the worst of his fears.

  Lauren lifted her tea. "Dr. Chowdry won't be pleased with me for taking you there. You aren't supposed to go back to work until Monday."

  "Oh, pooh on Dr. Chowdry. I'm a bona fide curmudgeon, my dear. I break the rules as I please."

  "Not where your health is concerned."

  "Pish! My cardiomyopathy was hardly affected by my recent... bout."

  "But your head was. Vince, you suffered two severe concussions, two days apart. You have to let that heal—particularly as we don't know what caused it."

  Vince narrowed his eyes. "The timing is peculiar...."

  " I think so. You were hit two days apart at the precise interval needed to knock out your recent memories and make a contiguous gap."

  "My Wednesday injury knocked out my memories back to Monday—"

  "And your Monday memories were knocked out back to Friday." Lauren shook her head. "Vince, I can't see how you can't take this seriously!"

  "Maybe it's because I'm older and don't panic as easily."

  "Maybe it's because you're working against the clock, and would prefer to finish your research rather than explore what you consider to be a side issue."

  Vince looked away.

  Lauren softened her tone. "I'm sorry. We never talk about it, do we? But I've seen the changes in you this last year. Your... determination."

  Vince set his jaw. "How I arrange my exit from this world is none of your concern."

  "I agree. That's why I haven't said anything. But... I am concerned. You're brilliant, Vince. I hate to see you so fixated on going out with a bang."

  "Perhaps you'll understand better when you develop your own terminal illness. You can compare your altered behavior patterns to mine."

  "Spoken like a true scientist."

  "That's what I am."

  "I know, Vince."

  "If it weren't for the shortsightedness of the board—"

  "I know."

  "—we'd be doing a lot more interesting research right now!"

  Lauren patted his wrist. "Dr. Tungsten had a point about all the potential lawsuits. The university can't afford even one."

  "We use student volunteers all the time."

  "Not for experiments that are guaranteed to destroy their brains. I mean, college students are reckless, but they're not that reckless."

  Vince snorted.

  Lauren set aside her tea. "I should let you rest."

  "I won't need my brain when I'm dead, thank you."

  Lauren petted his arm, surprising him. He must look like hell; she'd never been this demonstrative before. "You do solid, consistently innovative work. It's a pleasure being associated with you."

  "For as long as my brain should last."

  "For as long as it lasts."

  His concussion forced Vincent to agree that some time off was probably to his benefit. He got woozy moving about the kitchen; trying to read only intensified his headache. All that day and the next, Vince talked soothingly to himself: he had noticed no obvious tampering with his work, Lauren hadn't discovered anything out of place, the security footage didn't reveal anyone violating the integrity of the lab. Much as he hated it, he really did need this time to recover.

  Friday was better than Thursday, and by the time Friday evening rolled around—about the time Lauren left for her regular aerobics class—Vince decided it was time for a little more unauthorized snooping.

  He got into the building easily; the guards wouldn't lock up until eight. As on any other college campus, the students had deserted en masse to celebrate the weekend. He got into the lab without anyone who would recognize him seeing him.

  He shut the solid door behind him and leaned against it, more blown than usual by his short walk from the elevator. The metal of the door was cold, the hum of the air-conditioning system a welcome murmur in the background. This was his place. Here had been the happiest years of his life, probing the mysteries of the human mind. In these coolers lurked his many specimens, the reagents and radioactive chemicals used to study them. In these files were crammed the lauded studies of his published work.

  He passed them by. Twelve years ago, when this facility was new, he had been rather good friends with the architect. She had built for him his own special lab, "Somewhere I can muck about and my research students won't." It was locked on the outside by a catch hidden behind the largest refrigerator on the rear wall. He now went directly toward this catch, giving the rest of the room only a cursory look. Scrubbed down, as usual. Lauren was an efficient lab manager.

  His fingers pressed the plate designed to recognize his fingerprints only. With a click, the whole panel of the wall swung open, revealing another room beyond.

  Instantly Vince could see that this had been the scene of the action. The light was on, for one thing. The rat cage along the rear wall gaped empty. His grossly overpowered computer that compiled the data for his neural simulator was still running, the monitor displaying a slowly revolving vector of a brain. Even worse, the chair for the antiproton gun and pion detector had been sat in, the release arm tilted outward and the plastic straps for the mapping collar dangling free.

  Quickly—as quickly as Vince could squeeze himself past the chair in the crowded space— he hurried to check the portable Penning trap mounted over the neural simulator. This is where he kept his treasure: a microscopic piece of pilfered antihydrogen ice. In fact, all the devices in his hideaway had caused him a world of trouble to obta
in, acting as he did without official authorization. No one who had any designs on his project would have left them unstolen. Antihydrogen could not be legally obtained anywhere, and the computer was simply too tempting to pass up.

  Rapidly, he checked the readouts on the equipment, then sagged with relief. Everything read green—everything he could instantly check, that is. He intended to run a full diagnostic, of course, but the basic setup appeared in order. Nothing that was supposed to be here was missing. It was as if someone had been running a scan, then bolted suddenly for the door.

  Vince's heart thumped irregularly. In view of the evidence, the only likely person to have been running a scan was himself. Had he perhaps had a seizure during the process? Isn't that why he'd designed the door to be opened with a push—so he could stagger out in case of emergency? He must have fallen as soon as he'd reached the outer lab; didn't Lauren say she had found him near the big refrigerator? He must have bumped his head going down. Yet the tests at the hospital showed no significant deterioration in his heart condition, nothing to indicate an attack had occurred. It was terribly puzzling.

  Uneasily, he clicked off the power to the neural mapping apparatus. Its long period of being on, despite the air conditioning, made the room unpleasantly warm. He felt sweat beading on his brow as he turned to the computer.

  His first impression had been correct: the display was showing a human brain. A partially mapped human brain. Two slices, specifically—the result of two separate mapping sessions. The brain was about 2 percent mapped. Below the image was the name of the subject: Vincent Barnaby.

  Vince rotated the mapping chair so he could sink into it. He had begun mapping himself. Sometime during those missing days, he had collected enough data that he'd felt confident enough to proceed. Despite the steady deterioration from his illness, he wouldn't have initiated such a step without a reasonable hope of its success.

  Steadying himself, he saved the precious file—he'd subject himself to no more DNA damage than he could help—then opened his journal. As he'd suspected, there were several new entries—entries he had no memory of making. Perhaps these would hold the key.