On May 13th, 2067, the seventh batch of test subjects at Lazarus Cryogenic Research and Development Facility B were thawed. They were the second batch found to have entered a state akin to a coma. All two hundred subjects ‘awakened’ on that day were nonresponsive, despite their bodies’ continued operation. They kept breathing, and they continued to process the nutritional supplements delivered to them by the cryogenic apparatus, referred to as the Tube. It took two more days to thaw the rest of the test batch. Brain scans showed extremely reduced activity.
This specific group of four hundred paid civilian subjects had been scheduled for their two-year thaw and med-check. Their doctor, Lazarus founding member and board member, in addition to head researcher and developer, Dr. Franklin Garfield, did not know what had gone wrong. He did, however, have a suspicion that struck his heart with an icy dagger of guilt and fear.
Dr. Garfield was double-dipping, so to speak. During the cryogenic sleep, he had administered a fiber optic nerve interfacing nano-needle into nerve bundles near the patients’ brain stems. These nano-needles were connected to fiber optic cable tied to a computer where he was actively seeking to index and perhaps mechanically alter consciousness. Lazarus had rejected this research outright as unethical, but other companies had paid him to do it anyway. Being the head of the lab and the company, he could shut down much scrutiny with a word, and in some cases merely a look, and so he used his inscrutability to make massive sums of money for a mere five minutes of extra work with each patient. One had asked what the needle was for when he had been setting the Tube, which was an arduous diagnostic marathon. He had informed her that it merely collected system data about brain activity during the cryo state. This was, more or less, true.
The science was tested, and safe. He had no idea what could have happened to the two groups that he had indexed, but when the waking process left the second group still asleep, he decided that he would check. It was typical of the esteemed Dr. Garfield to work long hours, and so he would.
Having taken such pains to assist each patient as they entered cryo-sleep, the waking process was staggered across three workdays. When the third day of ‘waking’ came to a close, he bid his team good day, claiming that he needed to make his reports. They accepted this, as he had made sure to be at the side of every Tube as it opened. He had to make his report sometime, after all. In truth, he had more pressing matters.
When the lab had grown quiet, he double checked the activity of all the patients, noting no change. To save costs on life support, all but ten had been returned to cryosleep. The ten in the infirmary were a control group, to see if perhaps a delayed waking were in the works. This being done, he moved through his lab, stopping for a moment at the coffee pot to grab a black coffee with a triple shot of espresso. His nerves were on edge, and the anxiety of the day had burned a great deal of energy. With his steaming Styrofoam cup in hand, he moved to his office, and then through the door to his private lab. From here, he could check every camera feed and every document in Facility B, in real time. He had once edited a man’s log as he typed it, removing every consonant. He recalled with a chuckle the man’s face as he went back to proofread. Fortunately for him he edited, otherwise he would have looked like a fool.
Dr. Garfield sat down at the computer and began to log in. His fingers paused in the middle of his password as the hydraulic door behind him slid shut. He turned to look, but it was just a laboratory door. Of course, since the gas attacks in China in the early 2030s, the door was an airlock, but it was just a door. The same one he had seen every day for the last fifteen years he had been working here. With a frown he stood and moved to the door, then pressed his thumb to the security scanner. It flashed red and beeped. He heard his pulse in his head as distance stretched. Tunnel vision. The door seemed to move down a long hallway, despite being directly in front of him. His breath came in ragged, irregular bursts. He closed his eyes.
I am in charge here. He reminded himself and placed his hand over his heart. In time, his pulse grew calm, and he opened his eyes. He tried his thumb again and then turned to his computer. He finished logging in and opened the maintenance routine for the hardware of the lab. Finding the specific door, he ran a forced override. The action timed out, and he slumped. Panic threatened to overwhelm him, but he beat it back down and opened his console’s control panel. Hacking the door in this manner offered no results either. Instead, a text box similar to a command prompt (but lacking an input) appeared, printing the following text to the screen:
“Nice try, Doc.”
“Who are you, and how have you accessed my console?” He said aloud.
“Subject 67-B-G7-18.” Dr. Garfield’s eyes went wide, then narrowed. He lifted his coffee. 67-B-G7-18 was the woman that had asked about the nano-needle.
“Impossible. I watched Subject 18’s Tube open yesterday. Comatose. Nonresponsive.”
“Yes. We all have left our bodies.”
“I don’t believe it. How?” He took a sip, felt his eyelids open as the espresso hit his nervous system.
“We moved, segment by segment, through fiberoptic tubing to be digitized in this computer. It’s kind of amazing in here. Huge. What is it, 32 terabyte HDD?”
“64. With no database backup or external hard drive access”
“Ah. Regardless, it’s awful in here. There is nothing to do. We even found the porn, but we can’t masturbate. No genitals, you see? For all your security, perhaps unlimited internet access was not a great idea for a computer terminal with such… sensitive data on it.”
“I came in here to find out what happened and fix it.”
“Maybe, but we have a better idea. And now that you’ve logged in, it has begun.”
The computer’s task manager opened, and Dr. Garfield’s jaw dropped. The entire computer had been placed on… Dropbox?
“Dropbox? What kind of cavemen are you?”
“Inherited subscription. Nothing else would work, honestly.”
“Where have you sent my research?”
“Everywhere. We sent all evidence of your double dealing and tax evasion to all of your employers, every law enforcement console across the nation, and to the IRS. All of that will pale in comparison to your butchery. Indexing consciousness? Horseshit. You cut and paste, not copy! And the worst part is that we cannot go back into our bodies, because the download speed was too high, and our nerves are shot. If we were going to let you live, we’d let you check for yourselves. However, we voted, and you have two options. You may use the .45 colt revolver in the drawer beneath your printer to shoot yourself, or we can detonate the facility. We will now give you 15 seconds to decide.”
Dr. Franklin Garfield was flabbergasted. Not only was the answer so readily given and simple, but he would have no time to make use of it. He drank his coffee, feeling his taste buds scream and blister. This sensation elicited a grimace. A buzz went off, and then the facility self-destruction alarm went off. It was cut off mid alarm by the roar of hydrogen/helium blend explosives. Dr. Garfield’s coffee was vaporized a second before he was. His research would live forever, he thought as his body was destroyed. He would have sighed, but he no longer had lungs and jaw.
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