Waking The Zed

by Katz, ML

  But now that Pamela knew he had passed on her chatty comments to Dr. Klein, she felt uneasy instead of attracted. He had looked so handsome to Pamela before, but now his features just appeared artificial and rubbery. His features were even, true, but Pam noticed that the pores on his nose were rather large. His dark mustache looked too even, like it was a fake one that had been pasted on. She suppressed a sudden grin at the thought. She tried to cheer herself up by imagining Enrico with different types of pasted on mustaches and beards.

  He barely nodded at Pamela but smiled openly when he turned towards Dr. Klein. The older woman smiled back and something in her suddenly open body language reminded Pam of her earlier sense of unease. They’re a pair. The realization that Dr. Klein and Enrico Sanchez were probably already lovers abruptly shoved its way into her consciousness. I’m a fool. It was a sudden and shocking thought. Dr. Klein had to be thirty years older than either Enrico or Pamela. But as Pam mulled the possibility, she instinctively knew it was true. Dr. Klein had a young lover, and it was the same person Pam thought was attracted to her! Then she shrugged. I must be losing my instincts.

  Pam forced herself to settle down. The pair had every right to love whom they pleased.

  “I have the recovery room almost prepared,” Enrico said to Dr. Klein. “The technicians can complete the rest. Should we move the capsules now, Doctor?”

  “We still have a few hours to wait,” she said. “After all, even I can’t be a hundred percent certain this will work. It’s important to take each step in the right order. That way I can document all my results to determine if anything about our process caused a failure.”

  “Hmm,” Enrico said. “Well, if you have a bit of free time I have some new designs I would like you to review.” He shot Pam a quick and condescending look. “If you think Pam here can handle her station, that is, I really do have an urgent need for your attention.”

  He kept his eyes on Pam for a moment. As she met his eyes, she was sure his thin smile communicated triumph. Then he glanced back at Dr. Klein, and his oily features seemed to transform themselves instantly. He looked at the doctor with an expression that approached adoration. Pam quickly looked down to focus on her work station to hide her distress. She was glad he had attached herself to Dr. Klein because she certainly had no use for him now.

  “I think I can be spared,” Dr. Klein said. “There’s nothing particularly difficult to attend to at the moment.” Pamela stared at her monitor, but she could hardly tune out the conversation. If they weren’t trying to speak in code for arranging a little work break for hanky panky, I must have hatched from an egg yesterday.

  Dr. Klein turned to Pamela. Her tone was simply stern and businesslike. “Just send a text message if anything minor happens. If you think it is urgent, call me. Please, try to handle any routine matters yourself if you can.”

  “Sure,” Pamela said, glancing up at her boss. The arrogant smile told her that her boss knew that Pam had suddenly guessed at her relationship with the young engineer. Everyone had always told Pam she was too transparent.

  The situation deteriorated rapidly and Pamela finally firmly decided against showing up for work the next day. She would simply leave her resignation in a text message later tonight after she had shared a glass of wine and a good rant with some of her friends. Hopefully the company would still send her final payment, and she could be off attending to business somewhere else. Pam started wondering if there were any friends or relatives she could tap for money. As a last resort the university’s financial aid office would certainly find her an on-campus job or a loan.

  The younger woman tried to keep herself from biting her lip as she said, “I will do my best. I believe I understand your instructions and can handle my station.” Though Pam attempted to keep her tone neutral, she was sure her facial expression betrayed her discomfort.

  “Of course you can,” Enrico said pleasantly. Suddenly Pamela forgot why she had ever found him attractive. Instead of looking handsome, his features simply struck her as oily and plastic. He suddenly reminded Pam more of an old science fiction TV show monster who could change faces at will than a romantic leading man. He’s as creepy as Dr. Klein. They belong together.

  Enrico gazed meaningfully back at Dr. Klein, Pamela actually thought he looked at the much older woman with the soft expression of a man in love, but there was oiliness about his manner then as well. Just a day ago, she would have sworn he had looked at her with the same deep interest. Feeling foolish, she turned back to her monitor and pantomimed the actions of somebody who was very interested in taking detailed notes.

  The pair left, obviously absorbed in each other, and perhaps a little giddy over lording their relationship and power over Pam. Narcissists need an audience. Not for the first time that day, Pamela considered getting up from her chair, replacing the lab coats, and leaving the premises. She could not remember the last time she had felt so discomfited by other people.

  But she had been raised with a solid Midwestern work ethic. Some petty squabble, or even a troublesome co-worker, did not excuse getting up and leaving her responsibilities in the middle of the day. Plus, I’ve got a lot of bills to pay. So far, Dr. Klein had, at least, helped her pay her bills with this job.

  Let me just get through today, and I can think tonight. I can get paid for this month’s work and worry about next month’s work next week. A moment ago, she had been determined to quit. Now she wasn’t sure. Exhausted by her cognitive dissonance, Pam decided to focus on her work for the moment and put off her decision until later.

  As time passed, the cylinder temperature started to rise noticeably. Warming threads in the face plate kept them from frosting so the faces could always be viewed. However a strip of the same study transparent material that ran around the actual body was always frosted over. Pam noted that the condensation was clearing and she could begin to see vague outlines of the bodies. Her scientific curiosity overrode her angst as she peered at the capsules.

  As the two cylinders warmed, Pam felt as if the room warmed a bit too. But there were still six more frozen capsules, so she figured that had to be her imagination. She wondered if her clammy palms and suddenly dry throat were simply caused by nerves. Very little had actually happened this morning, but it had already started out to be a day of revelations.

  She found herself studying the warming subjects in the capsules. Mrs. Bell seemed built like Pamela, with a sturdy frame and athletic limbs. Mr. Barnes was tall and long limbed. He looked like one of those lanky, but deceptively strong farmer’s sons she had known growing up. They still floated silently in a bath of some complex chemical solution. Before it had been clear, but now it was tinged with a rose shade that seemed to sparkle as it caught the light.

  As far as Pam could tell the bodies remained perfectly still. She never expected them to do anything else. But something bothered her. There was a difference in the appearance of Mrs. Bell and Mr. Barnes but Pam could not immediately describe it. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light caused by the slightly different shade of the new solution.

  Apparently the new solution contained, among other things, enough liquid oxygen so a live person could actually “breath” in it. Dr. Klein assured her that she had tested it on herself and dozens of other volunteers. Pamela tried to imagine forcing herself to breath in liquid even if she been assured it was perfectly harmless. According to Future Faith Cryonics brochures, the bodies should not degrade more than one percent every hundred years.

  Pamela remembered that she had originally read that in the company literature and asked herself, “Who cares? They are still just bodies.”

  Pam considered herself a spiritual if not particularly religious person. Souls passed on but bodies stayed put. That’s how she could work on cadavers without squeamishness or moral qualms. To Pam they were just remains, like waste, left behind after that which formed the core of an individual had been released. Whatever happened to souls was a question for priests, ministers, rabbis, or m
ystics, but not scientists. Then her mind wandered. Even if Dr. Klein could wake the dead, what part of their souls would remain to inhabit them?

  But then she shook her head and tried to get back to the business she was being well paid to perform. Dr. Klein had made her duties quite clear. She didn’t pay Pam to judge, but just to monitor. Pamela made notes of the monitor readings and her observations. After several minutes, she tired of making notes and stood up to view the bodies from a closer angle.

  She stared down at Mrs. Bell first. The woman’s features appeared pale, but lifelike. Pamela figured that she had already had some work done to improve the line of her jaw and reduce wrinkles. Her records indicated that Mrs. Bell had been forty-eight when she had met her tragic end. She looked like an athletic thirty year old taking a nap.

  Mr. Barnes’s face looked worn and craggy, like he had spent a lot of time outside. He had a nice strong jaw, pronounced cheekbones, and a proud nose, but Pamela did not find him particularly handsome. She judged it a good, homely face, like Abraham Lincoln’s.

  She squinted as she studied him, and she almost thought that there was a bit of a flush on his cheeks. Startled, she looked more closely, but then dismissed it as a trick of the light.

  Pam glanced back at Mrs. Bell one more time. Both bodies were very pale. But now she felt sure that the woman’s cheeks were slightly tinged with pink. Perhaps it’s a chemical reaction from the new serum. Maybe it’s just a trick of the light.

  She was about to turn back to make a note on her tablet computer. The frozen woman’s full lips parted slightly. Pamela had never seen any of the bodies move at all before, and she took an involuntary step back, startled for real this time. As she stared, the lips almost seemed to quiver. Then one eyelid popped open to reveal a striking blue eye. Pam forced herself away from Mrs. Bell’s capsule to examine Mr. Barnes again. His lips had parted slightly too. Both of his eyes remained closed.

  “It’s got to be a change in pressure from the temporary tank,” Pamela muttered to herself as she hunched over the narrow desk and made a quick note. The last thing she wanted to do, right now, was to contact Dr. Klein sounding like a hysterical teenager.

  She had just convinced herself that everything she saw had some simple and natural explanation when she stood up to view the bodies again. Clearly, through the transparent strip along the side, she saw Mrs. Bell’s fingers move. Pam swallowed down a gasp and decided it was time to pick up her cell phone. If it was just a change in pressure, her whole arm would move, right?

  She tried to put a call through to Dr. Klein but there was no answer. Then she sat down to compose a text message. As she glanced up, she saw a thin stream of bubbles near the heads of both bodies. They can’t be breathing. She looked back at her phone. What do I say?

  Romancing the Dead

  As soon as Enrico had waited for Dr. Klein to step out of Preservation Room 17, and then closed the door behind the both of them, he turned to her and smiled. “Your little farm girl seemed a bit shaken.” He shrugged and waved a hand dismissively. “She is still quite rustic for all her education.”

  “Well, she’s actually a bit above average, I suppose,” Dr. Klein allowed. Then her expression almost appeared coquettish. “You know, I was concerned that you might find her attractive. She has that wholesome and sturdy look of a young Midwestern woman. To be fair, she’s also quite accomplished. I’m hard on her to keep her in place. I admit that I was also a little jealous. It was obvious that she found you attractive. Of course, what woman wouldn’t?”

  “Ah, she’s just a peasant,” Enrico said, waving his hand dismissively. Then he fixed Dr. Klein with his dark eyes. “I pride myself on being a man of good taste and sensibility. When I am in the room with an actual lady like you, all I can see is that lady.” His hand went up to cup her chin. Then he artfully moved his fingers to brush her ear. Dr. Klein felt years younger and charged with emotion and desire. She had to stop herself from touching him back. They were, after all, standing out in the hallway and anybody could round the corner.

  “You are a perfect man,” she said. “I think we might have time to visit my office for a few minutes. You weren’t serious about needing to show me something about work, were you?”

  “Of course not,” Enrico said, bending down to whisper in her ear. “Everything is firmly under control. All I want to show you is my love.” He moved closer again and brushed his hand against her arm. She led him down the hallway to her large office suite.

  First she turned to her assistant who looked busy answering emails in the outer office. “Karen, why don’t you take off for lunch after you finish?” Dr. Klein glanced meaningfully up at the clock. “In fact, take the afternoon off. I’ll need my office for an important experiment. Besides, I have driven you pretty hard over the last few weeks. You deserve a break.”

  Karen, Dr. Klein’s administrative assistant, looked surprised. Pam was a plump woman, just on the other side of forty, and she kept herself tidy, but dressed in a sort of careless and dowdy way that did not compete with the doctor. “I have a couple of dozen emails left to answer, and I know you like me to be prompt. Also, I haven’t run the data backups yet, and you told me they should run every afternoon no matter what.”

  “You’re always prompt and reliable,” Dr. Klein said generously. “So just this once we can let your correspondence go for another day. Don’t worry. I won’t dock your personal time for this. Run some errands, get a pedicure, or just take a nap before your husband gets home from the university.”

  Dr. Klein turned to Enrico. He stood passively but looked impatient. “Karen’s husband works in the university’s information technology department, and he helped us set up our remote data backups in his spare time. Karen, herself, used to teach technology classes at the local high school before I spirited her away to assist me. They’re a lovely couple.”

  “Your ability to put together a perfect workforce continues to amaze me,” Enrico said.

  Karen still paused, somehow made uncertain by this unusual magnanimous gesture from a boss who paid her much better than the local school district but still expected a lot.

  Dr. Klein opened her petty cash drawer and removed ten twenties. “Here, go buy a treat or something. When your husband gets home, you can surprise him with dinner reservations. It’s a bonus for a job well done.”

  “Thank-you,” Pam nodded as she accepted the tidy pile of cash. She still looked like Dr. Klein’s unusual buoyant mood and generous actions made her feel uncertain. Even the doctor’s administrative assistants had been hired because they had good reputations for being exceptionally bright. But figuring out that Dr. Klein wanted the office to be alone for romance with Enrico just fell too far out of her life experience.

  She and her own husband had married, shortly after meeting in a college technology class. They had never been able to have children, but had been everything to each other for almost twenty years. They were the type of plain, but pleasant people who were always up for a science fiction convention or renaissance fair. Karen and her husband had plenty of like-minded friends, but never had a thought for enjoying romance with anybody but each other. It was particularly that innocence, combined with the talent to do perform her many tasks that had made Dr. Klein eager to hire Karen in the first place.

  The woman tried to understand the unspoken message between the lines, but failing that, she wondered if she was being replaced somehow. Uncertain, Karen carefully placed the money in her wallet, picked up her purse, and then left after repeating her thanks.

  Then she carefully locked the outside door to her office suite. Finally, she let Enrico sweep her into his arms. First his lips brushed her brow, and then her ear, and finally he planted his lips firmly upon hers for a long and passionate kiss. His hands kneaded her neck and back, releasing the morning’s tension.

  Finally he released her and said. “Let me rub your back, Ada. Your muscles are knotted. You know that you work much too hard. You need to find more time t
o relax.”

  “Oh, you know I would love a massage,” she said. “Then maybe I can rub you a little bit.” She spoke breathlessly and finished with a flirtatious wink. The pair settled down on the large sofa she kept in the outside area of her office suite. Enrico’s clever hands kneaded Dr. Klein’s neck and shoulders gently, seeming to find all the right places to touch and caress. She felt as if her muscle’s natural tension dissolved under his warm touch. She leaned back into his body and felt his lips graze her neck and ear. Despite her age, Dr. Klein felt enveloped in a cocoon of protection and desire created by the handsome young engineer.

  “Ada, I’ve been eager to talk to you about something. Maybe we should drop this charade,” he whispered into her ear. The kiss of his breath on her skin seemed to draw all resistance out of her body. No man had made her feel this way since she had been a student no older than Pam Stone. But those young lovers had been fickle, and Dr. Klein had learned to subsume romance under her ambition. She had done that for three decades until she encountered Enrico, who must have been a very young child when she first prefaced her name with the title of doctor. Pam had not even been born yet.

  Though Enrico seemed completely engaged in Dr. Klein, he allowed his thoughts to roam elsewhere. Enrico supposed that his employer must be a millionaire several times over. He made a very good salary as a biomedical engineer for this firm, and he could have his pick of jobs all over the world. But he pictured another lifestyle for himself. If she succeeded in rousing her frozen clients, her income might be limitless. Every family with enough money would be eager to consign their loved ones to Future Faith Cryonics. He assumed she would still allow her work to absorb most of her time, and he would have plenty of time to enjoy her money and whatever other amusements that would bring him.