The Prisoner (3 page)

Once in the nonexistent zones, center inmates waned into oblivion; it was as if they’d never existed. But not quite. The subroutine in the computer program that roused all inmates every few weeks and hoisted them to the medical labs for maintenance included center residents. Yet, a few years back, by mere accident, he’d noticed that Russo had remained in the tank—very much awake on account of the fluid rippling around his suspension wires—although the rest of its occupants had been taken to the labs in batches. Thinking it could be a glitch, Lukas had raised the director of the medical team, only to be fobbed off with a curt “I know. With some test inmates we carry out maintenance from here. A new technique.” Lukas had forgotten the event. But later, after Donald Duck enlisted his help, he’d pondered the issue. No scrubbing of the prisoner’s system, no maintenance, no repair. A death sentence, in truth.

On another screen, Lukas followed Laurel’s inert body. It
was dangling by thin wires from an overhead conveyor, like a carcass in an abattoir, stopping over the expanse of liquid in tank 913. She was cocooned in a net of transparent green cords fastened to a large doughnut around her neck. Not loose but not too tight, the flexible net allowed for a degree of movement in limbs, triggered by the computer to prevent muscle atrophy. The machine lowered the body next to the edge of the tank, barely disturbing the patent leather gleam of its surface.

When fluid closed over Laurel’s head, only thin wires and a hose—the umbilical cord keeping her alive—marked the point where she had sunk under the liquid. Lukas eyed the timer as it sprang alive and started its countdown to zero.
Ten minutes to reanimation
. He turned to the second screen.

After swallowing the coupling plug, Bastien lay inert on the molding bed. The shape holding Bastien went through a series of movements, contorting the body so that mechanical arms could strap a sling with wire supports around his chest and shoulders while another pair of arms secured protective goggles over his eyes.

On his left screen, another young man stepped onto the gray floor pad on his way to plugging.
Raul Osborne, 28, 6’1”. Caucasian. Lawyer. 913. Center
. All impressive, and all accounted for. Lukas tweaked Bastien’s mix, set another timer, and ran the complex schedule ahead in his mind. Once more, he glanced out of the fishbowl, this time to peer at a digital clock centered over the control panels: 17:17.

Standing straight, Lukas unbuttoned his lab whites, recovered the envelopes from the top of the wastepaper basket, sucked in his stomach, and slipped them under his belt.

After he finished tweaking Raul’s intake of chemicals and gases, it would be 17:20. Forty minutes later, the central computer would loop into the daily backup routine. The carrier truck would slam shut and processing would stop for ten minutes. Life support ran in dependently, and the computer shutdown wouldn’t affect it. His staff would stretch, perhaps walk out onto a catwalk to snatch a toke from a joint or grab a cup of coffee.

Lukas would have ten minutes to step outside, nod at
Josh or Martin, smile at Sandra, leisurely make for the rest rooms, and, once in the main corridor, run like hell toward tank 913.

17:27

“We’ve read the documents you sent and watched the film several times. Haven’t we, dear?”

Dear made a wry movement with his mouth and nodded.

Dr. Floyd Carpenter hated this aspect of his work. He attempted a reassuring smile and nodded at the couple sitting in his office. He would have chosen nearness and the sofa, to offer them some warmth for what might be the most difficult decision in their lives, instead of hiding behind a desk. But the company insisted on a protocol: Clients prefer sitting across from a doctor in a white overcoat.

“But there are some details we don’t understand. Right, dear?”

Dear didn’t move this time. The man was fading. Unless they reached a quick decision, there would be nothing left to hibernate.

Floyd glanced at the screen on the surface of his glass desk. Sarah Ward, 66, and her husband, John, 70—the latter dying of a fast-spreading bone metastasis. He checked the time: 5:28
P.M
. By six o’clock the labs would be deserted. Then he would have perhaps two hours to prepare a little-used operating theater and a reanimation vessel for a private patient due at around eight o’clock. No witnesses and no help. Plenty of time, he hoped. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“We are simple people,” she started. “I mean, all this technology is a little over our heads.”

Floyd had to agree with her caveat. Their business was
simple magic, not science. John’s tales of Theodore the Turtle, Tiberius the Gecko, and Bernard the Squirrel—lovingly illustrated by Sarah—had filled generations of American children with wonder.

“Will he dream?” she asked.

Simple folk ask unsimple questions
, as his father used to say. “Yes, he will. A live mind needs the exercise, but we select a proper mixture of sedatives to guarantee”—he was about to say
pleasant dreams
but corralled his tongue in time—”a peaceful slumber.”

“How long?”

Floyd leaned forward. “How long?”

Sarah darted a glance to her husband. John’s head lolled like a stalk of ripe corn before a breeze. The cocktail of sedatives and painkillers he swallowed six times a day must be playing hell with his biorhythms. “Yes. How long will he be in hibernation?”

“I’m afraid nobody knows.” Floyd slid a neat sage-green file across the glass, flicked it open, and pointed to a form. “That’s the reason we accept not monthly or yearly payments but a fund to guarantee your husband’s upkeep almost indefinitely.”

“But … can he die?”

Simple folk ask unsimple …
Floyd swatted away his dad’s memory and tried marshaling words to reduce the unexplainable to simple terms. “We all die, Mrs. Ward. Hibernation is a form of energy conservation. We lower the patient’s metabolism but don’t stop it. Patients age at a much slower pace, but they age, and their bodies continue to decay. Nyx Corp has the most advanced hibernation installations anywhere in the world—”

“Better than Hypnos?”

He would have to tread carefully. “We work under their license. They developed and own the technology, but there are differences. Hypnos runs the penitentiary hibernation stations and built their installations for economy, with large tanks to house many inmates. Our capsules hold a single patient, surveyed day and night by medical personnel—”

“Instead of wardens?”

“I didn’t—”

Sarah shook her head. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I keep interrupting.”

“Don’t worry. What I was trying to explain is that we’ve designed our installations to arrest your husband’s decline and hope that science discovers a cure for his ailment within a reasonable time.” He raised his hand a fraction to ward off her next question. “How long is ‘reasonable’? We don’t know. We’re in a race against disease. At this station, we hamper cell destruction, buy time.” Floyd drew a rigid finger across the glass. “But there’s a line beyond which your husband’s body will not recover. If he reaches that line before science can help, John will die.”

She nodded. “Thank you for your candor.”

John’s breath had deepened into a soft snore. Sarah tried to tug the hem of her skirt over dimpled knees encased in fine silk stockings. Earlier, when she sat, Floyd had caught a glimpse of a garter and mulled over the strange habits of some women. A girlfriend had once explained that garter belts were damn uncomfortable—okay for fun and games but not for every day. Sarah didn’t seem racy but, quite the contrary, almost demure. He puzzled over the contradiction.

“As I said before, we’ve watched the video, but could you explain the procedure again?”

Sarah had read the documents, probably knew every word by heart, and had watched the slides, films, and diagrams a thousand times. Floyd held her gaze. She must have been stunning in her day and was still a beautiful woman, not flashy but with a certain poise. With just a hint of makeup, her face had the serenity of a long-distance runner, in for the long haul with her chosen companion. Despite John’s harrowing predicament, Floyd felt a pang of envy. Her amber-colored eyes sparkled under a film of tears. Yes, though she knew everything, she needed to hear it in a voice modulated through living membranes.

“After admission we place a small sensor, the size of a hazelnut, below the skin in the patient’s neck—a procedure lasting a few minutes under local anesthesia.” From a tray on
his desk, Floyd picked up an oval object similar to a bird’s egg, its glossy surface rippling under the strong light, and laid it on the glass. “This sensor collects information from the body and relays the data to our computer via a receptor on a ring around the patient’s neck. After a battery of tests, we sedate the patient, seal his nose, mouth, and ears to prevent fluid entrance, and place a net of conducting jelly around his body. The net will ensure he can stretch his limbs and exercise his muscles thanks to the impulses delivered by the computer. This will prevent muscular atrophy.”

“Will J—a patient be able to stand after …”

“Yes. The procedure mirrors that of some hibernating animals. But your question is a good one, since a human wouldn’t be able to walk after a few months of lying in bed. However, just consider, by contrast, that a ground squirrel can be up and running quickly after six months of hibernation.” Floyd blinked, appalled at his tactless choice of example. He could have chosen chipmunks or raccoons among scores of hibernating animals rather than a squirrel, which was almost impossible to disassociate from one of their creations: Bernard, a squirrel decked out in a black-and-white-checkered waistcoat. “Our technology mimics such natural mechanisms.”

She reached for her sleeping husband and covered his hand with hers. John, her squirrel. Sarah’s lips didn’t move, but Floyd could have sworn he spotted the words flashing across her irises.

“After that, we immerse the patient into a capsule, holding fluid slightly above the freezing point, and lower his core temperature to between five and ten degrees Celsius—say forty to fifty degrees Fahrenheit. We use a harness and wires to handle his body. Once in the fluid, the wires relax, since the hibernation liquid has a precise density to guarantee the patient’s weightlessness. He’s ventilated through a tracheal cord and supplied regularly with lipids, minerals, and whatever else he may need. This stage we term
torpor
, as opposed to
arousal
.“

“Why do you wake them up every so often?”

Floyd didn’t answer at once. It had just occurred to him the
garters were a gift to her squirrel, perhaps for the last time, and the thought left him speechless.

“We must periodically carry out repair and maintenance of organs, tissues, and cells. Chemical degradation of macro-molecules increases over time, and each patient needs conditioning and dialysis regularly. From torpor, we promote an endocrine reaction and hyperventilate the patient to increase the oxygen in his blood. And to reduce carbon dioxide concentration, we must raise the body temperature from a non-shivering stage. Shivering begins above twenty degrees Celsius. We then increase the rate of warming until the patient reaches normothermy.” Floyd bit his lip; he was lapsing into jargon. “I meant normal temperature.”

Sarah blinked and her eyes smiled. “Will he wake up?”

“Of course not!” Floyd’s voice raised a fraction. Consciousness between the stages of torpor and arousal had almost doomed hibernating technology, until scientists understood its effects. Back in the thirties, during the first clinical trials, a few of those hibernated for extended periods suffered acute mental imbalances, paranoia, and dementia. Dr. Nemecio Chavez and his team at Caltech had discovered that, before the onset of hibernation, technicians should sedate patients with a carefully metered mixture of gases to guarantee a gradual loss of consciousness. The patient would then sink into torpor with a smooth brain-wave signature. Otherwise, after arousal, the gases dissolved in the patient’s bloodstream would interfere with the chemical equation. As a result, the patient entered torpor excited, his brain signature choppy and riddled with spikes. This triggered nightmares. “During periodic arousal and return to torpor, we change the mix of gases the patient breathes to ensure he doesn’t come out of his placid slumber. The issue shouldn’t concern you, Mrs. Ward. From the beginning to the end of hibernation, your husband will be in deep, tranquil sleep.”

Sarah Ward closed her eyes and breathed deeply, as if gathering strength. Then she caressed John’s hand for an instant, just a flicker of fingers, before straightening.

Floyd peered into her eyes and felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. There was uneasiness to her expression, and
something else he once saw on a little girl’s face when she couldn’t find her mom.

“Please, tell me where I should sign.”

She was giving her squirrel away.