by Utley, Todd
They got up and headed for the TV room.
“Let’s watch one of those classic James Bond Agent 007 flicks, I love those old movies!” Dodge agreed as he chuckled to himself. “If he only knew!”
At some point during the movie Dodge dosed off. He awoke to the end credits rolling up the screen to one of those famous 007 sound tracks. He looked over at his Father and saw that he had dosed off too. He was relaxed it the recliner with his feet propped up on the footstool. He appeared to be sleeping peacefully but he looked so tired. The cancer had taken a toll on his body and spirit. There was no doubt in Dodge’s mind that his father was very near to dying. Thank God in just a few short hours he would be young and healthy again.
Dodge got up quietly and went into the guestroom and retrieved Alan’s Lifecorder unit off the bed side table. He brought it to where his Father was sleeping and placed it there beside him to make sure it got updated while he slept. He wanted his father to remember what a nice evening they had together.
He sat back down in the chair next to him, turned off the TV and went back to sleep. At about 5:45 a.m. Dodge heard the coffee pot time beep and smelled a fresh pot beginning to brew. He had set the timer for morning so that it would be ready when Linsey came down. He looked over at his Father who was just beginning to wake up and they both sat up in their chairs. Alan immediately began using his inhalers as he did every morning before attempting to get up and move around. Two of them were for helping him with his breathing and the other was a fairly new drug for relieving pain. It was specially developed for people that were in excruciating pain due to terminal illness. It was designed to make them as comfortable as possible until their time came to go.
Just as Dodge left the room he heard the sound of Alan choking, so he ran back into the TV room to make sure he was okay. His Father had his head over a small trash can that Dodge kept by his recliner.
“Dad, you okay?”
“Yeah, sometimes this happens in the morning. I’ll be okay, just go on about your business.”
It was only then that Dodge fully understood why his Father wanted to stay at his own place but by the same token no one should have to go through that alone. Dodge went into the kitchen and poured some coffee for both he and his father and by the time he got everything put on the table Alan was up and making his way to the kitchen.
Dodge carried their coffee out to the patio with his Father following. The sun was just peaking up over the horizon and so they just sat there together silently and watched it rise.
“Dad, I need to tell you something and it might just be the craziest thing you’ve ever heard.”
“Okay, Son, go ahead, whatever it is I can handle it.”
“You can’t tell a soul, not even Linsey knows this and it has to stay that way for a few more days. Even when she does know I don’t want anyone talking about it unless we have to. I want to tell you now just in case, God forbid, something should go wrong with your restoration. I would never forgive myself if you passed and found yourself looking down from heaven at me thinking, “Why didn’t my son tell me he was in such a mess?”
“You can tell me Son, what is it?”
“My team and I at ESS are actually secretly working for LifeTech. We developed the very system that is about to save your life and it has taken us more than ten years. During that time apparently one of our team members went rouge and installed a back door in the software and a wireless receiver in the unused space on the chip. Long story short, he’s dead, his parents are dead, and his doctor is dead. I’m being followed daily and I believe the family could be in danger. Alan was just staring at his son with a blank look on his face that could only mean he was in shock.
“Man when you say you need to get something off your chest, you aint jokin kid! How long have you been walking around with this on your shoulders?”
Dodge was almost embarrassed at the answer.
“Oh about two months I guess. But that’s because at first we didn’t really know how deep it went and we thought we might just be paranoid.”
“Who’s we Son?”
“Oh, well that would be . . . , Just then he realized he shouldn’t be speaking outdoors about all this and he decided not to use John’s name.
“Just a friend, I shouldn’t really say.”
“You don’t trust your own Father? Who would I tell?” “Dad, please, you should keep your voice down, you know, ears everywhere.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“Look, Dad, I really didn’t want to tell you this now because you’re about to go to your procedure today and I didn’t want you to worry. On top of that, I’ll have to get right back to working on who’s behind this thing and I wanted you to know that I might not be at the hospital as much as I’d like to be during your recovery.”
Alan reached over and slapped his son on the back hard. The man still had moments of strength even with being old and sickly.
“No worry’s Son,” he said. “I’ll recover quickly, and I’ll help you in any way I can. No one messes with my family while I’m still kicking! Right now I’m sure glad that I decided to go through with this. You may just need the younger version of me around to watch your back. Hey when’s the last time I showed you the gun collection? You know I added a lot to it during the pandemic. I thought if the criminals came for us looting and killing, they’d have one heck of a shoot out on their hands before they got us.”
Alan was always the “Be prepared like a Boy Scout, shoot them all and let God sort them out,” kind of a guy. He was in the military when he was a young man and was deployed twice to Iraq just after Sadam Hussein was toppled from power. He saw a good bit of action and was very pro gun. He saw firsthand how people lived in countries that didn’t have freedom and he was more than willing to die to protect it.
When the pandemic hit and the world began to go out of control things got very scary right there in Noblesville. The stock market crashed and had to shut down completely for months. A state of martial law ensued and the president of the united states made a decree that all prices on everything would be frozen and regular currency would be used and accepted in a normal means. In spite of the ruling people simply bartered instead, it was like jumping back two hundred years in time to trade a chicken for a quart of fuel oil.
The United States, Canada, and Mexico had pretty much become cut off from the rest of the world both for reasons of quarantine and the collapse of the world economy. In the early stages looting, riots, and criminals completely out of control were moving across the country in waves. People had lost their minds and taken up the “every man for himself” attitude.
When the National Guard and standard military battalions finally got control of the population again, tens of thousands had been killed and entire communities in some cases were looted out and burned to the ground. His Father and several other men from their neighborhood moved six families into the largest house in the neighborhood.
This house was on the highest ground in the area and was older brick construction. They barricaded themselves in the home with all their resources of food, water and weapons. They boarded up the windows on the lower floor and most of the windows on the second floor. They did all of this in the two weeks prior to the riotous gangs moving through the town. The men took turns at watch and sounded off if anyone suspicious came near their make shift fortress.
Only a few smaller gangs moved through the area. Anyone that came within two hundred yards received a verbal warning and then they were fired at. Needless to say every single one of them went packing off in a hurry. They only had to stay in the house for two weeks before the Calvary arrived.
Once the military presence was strong, everyone emerged. They hadn’t lost anyone in their group but there were people reported murdered as little as a mile from their location. They were very lucky that the men in the community were smart and resourceful in a tough situation.
Alan kept his guns all these years and was continuously adding to his collection
. He tried not to think about his days in Iraq and didn’t really talk about it very much. Dodge assumed that the memories were mostly bad and that his Dad simply didn’t want to be reminded. Dodge thought about his Father’s offer to help him.
“Sure Dad, I might just take you up on that. We may need some extra security around the house soon, you bought any more toys to add to your collection in recent years?” Alan grinned. “Oh yeah, I was up to 33 pieces last I counted and I have plenty of ammo too. Ya know I don’t talk about things much, but I left all those guns to you in my will and I want you to do the same someday for Bobby. Some of those pieces will be worth a small fortune some day and his son will be the fourth generation to have them, some pieces fifth because of those that my Father gave to me that had belonged to my Grandfather.”
“That’s great Dad I’ll make sure of it, I promise.”
As they continued talking, they noticed one by one the family was arriving in the kitchen. They just sat there and continued to reminisce about some of the things that happened when Dodge was a boy and they talked about his Mother and how much they both missed her. Soon breakfast was ready and Sarah called them in to eat.
They all had a wonderful time around the table eating and talking about how awesome it would be for Grandpa after today and Bobby told Grandpa in detail what to expect the day’s right after his Restoration and of course the details of the pink stuff you had to eat all over again.
The time had come to go to the Lifecenter. They all piled into Linsey’s taxi, as she called it, because it had the most room. They made sure they had Alan’s Lifecorder unit and they were on their way.
On the way Linsey announced to the family that she had bought them all a little gift. She had been saving up for something special and hadn’t decided what it would be just yet. Two days ago it hit her. She decided exactly what to spend her little nest egg on. It would be a gift that would last for a very long time and be money well spent. She bought the entire family a life time membership to the Medic-Star Lifecorder database. As soon as next week they would all be visiting the local branch to have their new LifeCorders with the uplink configured. From then on their files would be backed up to the main database twice weekly.
The new service would ensure that their files couldn’t be lost even if their Lifecorder units were destroyed and they were deceased at the same time. Everyone agreed that this was a great choice and a very thoughtful way to spend her money that she had worked so hard to save up.
When they arrived at the Lifecenter Alan was admitted and the family was allowed to watch the procedure through a window that separated them from the procedure room. The procedure was very safe and didn’t require any surgery so bacteria and germs were not an issue but the life centers had this separation just in case something went wrong.
In the event of a problem they could close the blinds on the window and spare the family seeing their loved one restrained and drugged. Within a few minutes they rolled Alan into the room on a very comfortable looking bed. They proceeded to strap him down to the bed but only gently and very loosely, it was merely a precaution and all part of the standard procedure.
He had on a blue terry cloth robe and was sitting up slightly looking very comfortable. His Lifecorder unit was already in the room and they turned it up to view the id tag on the bottom. They asked Alan to verify that it was in fact his unit. He looked at the tag and agreed that it was his unit. A technician with a sophisticated key device of some kind opened the unit and pulled out the memory bank and placed it into a control console next to the bed.
Alan saw everyone through the window and waved and smiled. He was ready to end his suffering and be healthy again. The doctor came in and checked him out briefly, they had a short conversation followed by the nurse handing him a white pill and a small glass of water. The pill was to put him to sleep while they brought the clone on line, uploaded his life file into the clone, and then wake it up. This would be followed by a series of questions and a motor skills test. If he passed both then he would be wheeled out to recovery for a visit with the family. After one hour the family would be moved into another room and questioned to make sure the restored person was acting completely normal. Once these steps were complete, the old body would be frozen and kept for up to 90 days.
It only took a few minutes for Alan to drift into a very deep sleep. The doctor checked his vitals one more time and ran a simple pin prick test on the bottom of his foot to make sure he was completely out. One of the nurses pressed a button on the wall and a curtain came down over the window. A few minutes later the curtain went back up. Alan was gone, they had rolled him out and then wheeled the bed containing his clone body in. It was placed in the exact same position and it had on a blue robe just like Alan did before. This switch was undoubtedly designed to prevent friends and family from seeing both bodies at the same time. Seeing them together might frighten or confuse some people especially children.
The lights were dimmed and there was some very soothing music playing softly so that the awaking person would feel comfortable in a relaxed environment. Everyone was amazed at how young Alan’s clone looked. He chose to have the appearance of age fifty in order to avoid being a youth again. It would have been too strange for him and the whole family if he were restored to a much younger age.
The Lifecenter staff had already advised Alan that in spite of appearing to be age fifty he would be as healthy as an eighteen-year-old and that his joints and muscles would be like that of a youth because the clone body was only exercised very lightly by computer programs. There was basically zero wear and zero injury, he should feel fantastic. His clone was also much thinner in build. This was normal and after first waking up the body would be somewhat weak but would build up very quickly as he became increasingly active and ate regular meals.
A long, robotic needle was moved close to the clone’s right ear, the general area where the implant resides in the base of the brain. The doctor loaded a program and hit the run button. A small sterilization laser popped out of the robotic arm and zapped the full length of the needle as it entered the clone’s head directly behind the right ear lobe. It stopped when it made contact with the chip at the base of his brain. The doctor loaded and ran a test program on the clone that caused the fingers to move in sequence one through ten from left hand to right hand to establish that the clone’s nervous system was healthy and working.
He ran a second sequence that caused the toes to wiggle one at a time and then the clone’s eyes blinked five times. Another sequence caused the left arm to rise when the doctor shined a pocket light into the right eye of the clone and then the right arm to rise when the light was shown into the left eye. The last program ran was the auditory test which caused the left leg to raise slightly when the doctor snapped his fingers in the right ear and the right leg for when he did the same in the clones left ear. The tests were all done very quickly; it was obvious this process was quite routine for the staff.
Dodge wondered how many people were restored daily in that very room; it must have been upwards of twenty. The Doctor rechecked the memory bank position in the console to make sure it was seated securely in the port. He typed in, what appeared to be some access codes, from a digiboard the nurse brought in and then hit the start button. The nurse quickly left the room and the Doctor stepped behind a little dividing wall and sat on a stool. He was viewing a monitor and while doing that he grabbed a bottle of water he had stowed back there and took a nice long drink without ever taking his eyes off the monitor. Thousands of lines were flying across the screen but it only meant something to the doctor and Dodge. Dodge knew what it was because of his involvement in the design of the system, but he still couldn’t tell anyone. The doctor was simply viewing parity bit checks for the communications link between the console and the clone’s brain, a clone that would soon be his Father.
Lines of code flying by were a good sign that the communications port was working correctly. Even if a bit of code didn’t copy t
he system would simply send it over again up to thirty times before it would halt the system with an error code. The entire transfer only took about nine minutes and then the screen showed a large “complete” message.
The doctor went to the console, ended the program, and waited as the needle retracted out and the robotic arm moved out of the way. He took some vitals on the clone and left the room. He returned a few minutes later with several staff members trailing him. They began loosening the restraints that were previously applied quite tightly. The clone already had an IV inserted and the nurse began to administer something into that connection as the curtain was lowered again.
A few moments later the curtain went up. What seemed to be a lifeless body just moments ago was now a living breathing Alan Kerrington. The staff had him raised up in a sitting position in the bed and had freed one on his hands. He was looking at all of them through the large window and smiling as he waved to them followed by an inspection of his own hand, the very one that he had just waved to them with.
The whole family moved closer to the glass in awe of what they had just witnessed. It was one thing to know that a fourteen-year-old boy died and was restored the same day when you’re sitting there looking at him, but it was a whole different thing to see an old, dying man restored into a much younger version of him right before your eyes!
They didn’t see Bobby restored, they only saw him after it was complete. This time they actually witnessed the whole process, amazing! The staff was already talking with Alan and asking him some test questions as a nurse was freeing him from the remaining restraints. The doctor walked over to an intercom and pressed the button.
“Congratulations Kerrington family and friends, your loved one is fully restored and doing very well. Please exit the observation area now to your left and proceed to room 876. He will be there in a few minutes for a visit.” Alan waved again as they were wheeling him out of the room on the bed.
As the Kerrington’s left the observation room, another family was waiting right outside. They were obviously a little nervous and the Kerrington’s were all smiling and talking. As they passed, the inbound family was curious.