The Curiosity

by Stephen Kiernan

  My sister, Chloe, sent e-mails, her tone evolving based on the news coverage: how-did-idiot-you-land-a-job-with-people-so-smart became what-are-you-doing-up-there-anyway, then what-is-wrong-with-you-parasites. What is your role in all of this anyway? she wrote. I can’t decide which would be worse, you being at the center of this fiasco, or you being some peon gofer among the people who actually get things done. Gee, Chloe, aren’t you special.

  The cryogenics companies, whose freezers were stuffed with bodies, watched their stocks soar. A national news magazine ran a cover story, “Rebirth of the Biotech Age?” Our front desk fielded over six hundred requests for interviews, all declined. For reasons known only to himself, Carthage continued giving Dixon exclusive coverage of the project, putting his byline in newspapers around the world. Thus the reporter never gave anyone a moment’s peace. Twice I felt his humid breath as he leaned over my shoulder to watch me work. It took a long, cold glare to get him to back off.

  Then a security guard spoke to the TV cameramen clustered outside the front door like a pack of neglected dogs: “These people are secretive,” he said, taking his sunglasses off for once. “We don’t even work for the building’s owners. The project hired us so no one could snoop on whatever they’re doing in there. Who knows what they’re up to? Who knows what their plans are?”

  Carthage watched the news, raised an eyebrow, made a call. The security company replaced the guard while we began occasionally using the loading door in back to get in and out of the building. But the damage was done.

  Still, the postal service had to deliver our mail in a separate truck. It sat in the basement in wheeled canvas bins, envelopes to the brim till someone had time to open them. Gerber pulled one letter at random. It said the staff of the Lazarus Project was the spawn of Satan. He laughed till his crazy hair shook. Billings tried another, from a Texas billionaire wanting the Lazarus Project to revive his dead stud Thoroughbred.

  Meanwhile late-night TV comedians joked away: perhaps Vice President Gerald T. Walker should come to Boston, to see if the Lazarus Project could bring him back from the dead, too.

  Yet by noon of the fifth day, the Web comments primarily complained about how boring the video stream was. Don’t you love the world’s attention span? Bring a man back from a place beyond human conception, and people will be amazed for approximately one hundred hours. I sat down to read the postings, but after about ten I had to stop. Here was a ravenous beast with an insatiable appetite. I wondered how these people would have responded to the painfully slow work of Pasteur, who developed germ theory only after the deaths of three of his children. Or Fleming, inspired by the horrific rate of World War I infection deaths to work ten years seeking an antibacterial agent, only to discover penicillin by accident. Or Salk, chasing polio for eight years while tens of thousands of children were afflicted, their lives saved only by the prison of an iron lung. Ho-hum, very nice, now how about curing malaria by Monday?

  Gerber started a new protocol: editing each day’s tapes into ten-minute summaries. Carthage asked Dixon what time would be ideal for publicity, so the tape releases occurred to suit the noon and 6 P.M. TV news cycles. The media appreciated the editing, and most led their newscasts with our tapes. But just after the third release a madman shot up a mall in the Midwest. We became yesterday’s story.

  Carthage was disappointed but it was fine with me. We needed more time for science. Chloe, despite her digs, had a point. We did need to understand what we were doing. What was the goal? Also what would we do if the frozen man actually woke up, spoke, became fully alive in this new time?

  No one wanted to discuss these things. No one even contacted the research vessel, hunting hard-ice off southern Argentina, to say we had restarted a dead man’s heart. The crew was slaving out there in a frigidity I knew too well, as solitary as a satellite in space.

  One night I walked to work with an equally isolated feeling, like I was adrift in a vast sea. Maybe my mood was caused by the rain, a spring downpour that left puddles in the streets. Also the sidewalk protesters had become more numerous, thirty or so. One snarled at me as I hurried past. Then it didn’t help that Gerber and Billings were both so intent on their work when I arrived, they had not even paused to say hello.

  The all-night shift stretched ahead like a straight, flat highway. In minutes I had confirmed that the monitors were working fine, no adjustments needed. The video tracking changed angles on schedule. The counting clock marched onward. Various devices had begun their daily automatic backup.

  I surveyed the control room. Headphoned Gerber stared at his screen while typing ridiculously fast, waiting for an answer to appear from the ether, then bursting his next reply. Billings was inventorying samples, inking labels, thumbing them on test tubes.

  His obsession had created a distance between us. Days earlier I’d approached him in the lab for the lunch we shared every week since the bourbon-soaked train ride. “Hey, Graham, it’s almost one. Do you want Chinese or Italian?”

  “Is today Monday?” He kept his eyes to the microscope.

  “All day and part of the night.”

  “Truly sorry, lovely,” he said, turning his head while remaining bent toward the table, “but I’m right out flat. This little bloke on the slide won’t live but another hour.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Next week.”

  He didn’t answer, eyes already back to the lenses. Wandering back to my desk, I realized something: after the power failure during the frozen man’s reanimation, in which Borden had risked an explosion, Billings hadn’t returned to the main chamber once. Maybe he was avoiding lab politics. Or maybe he was excited by those small specimens. Billings had performed so many reanimations on tiny creatures, he was sharpening predictions of which organisms would wake and which wouldn’t, how to increase survival times, how to use less electricity. I’d read the notes, his typical staggeringly good documentation. Still, he’d moved his computer to a corner, dodged most monitoring shifts, skipped staff meetings unless Carthage himself called them.

  I considered Billings again from across the room. He slid a tray of newly marked specimens back into the portable freezing rack, then pulled out a fresh one: two hundred test tubes without labels. He coughed mildly, settling in his seat for the new batch.

  Finally I allowed my eyes to wander in the one direction where there might be something engaging. The chamber. The frozen man lay in there breathing as slowly and steadily as waves hitting a beach. Two days before he had wiggled a pinkie. The next morning the staff consensus was that it had twitched, the distinction being that it revealed only nervous activity, not intentional motion. I disagreed, but the final documentation called his move a reflex. Otherwise the man was as still as a statue of the Buddha.

  I went to the glass. The frozen man’s clothes were ragged but tailored. He still wore those signature boots. His sideburns looked almost comical, Spanish moss on his cheeks. Borden had proposed washing him, shaving him, dressing him in fresh garments. Carthage said not yet, no point in disturbing the body until it reached stability. Until then, no one was to enter the chamber without specific tasks or explicit permission.

  Yet there I was. Standing at the intersection of science and magic, fact and speculation, cold research and warm curiosity. Then the frozen man breathed—not the usual deep slow bellows, but a gulp, as though he had said the word hoop on an in-breath. I spied my colleagues, both absorbed, neither aware of my existence much less my temptations.

  Oh, temptations. Sometimes we give in after a long tussle with our consciences. Other times we surrender with a kind of glee. I hurried to the security panel, punched in the access code, waited for the door to hiss aside, tiptoed into the chamber.

  The cameras panned mechanically to face me, so I felt like a fool. Of course the monitoring system would record my every motion. The damage was done. Still, what misdeed was I committing? Breaking an arbitrary rule? I
could argue that I was responding to a change in the patient’s respiration. The video would confirm it.

  I approached the padded table on which he lay. His chest rose and fell. There was no other activity, no further “hoop.” Just a body in the deepest imaginable sleep. Leaning over, I studied the frozen man’s face. Deep lines crow-footed out from his eyes, as though he had spent a century not waiting in ice but staring at the sun. His jaw was straight and angular. Sideburns puffed from his cheeks like the tufts of a lynx. His expression was perfectly, inscrutably blank.

  I leaned down . . . who can say what possessed me? Call it curiosity, call it wonder. I brought my face closer to his neck, nearly to his chest, felt his presence. This man was not an abstraction but an actuality. Never in my life did I feel clearer about wanting to know about something. I took a good deep sniff. He smelled like leather, old leather.

  Suddenly I remembered finding my father’s briefcase in the back of a downstairs closet. I was thirty, it was ten days after he died, Chloe was preparing our childhood home for sale. The briefcase held no papers, it was as retired as my father had been. But when I lifted it to my face, the leathery scent contained the memory of him: a lovable round man who over the decades had encouraged me in every enterprise that captured my attention: dolls, dentistry, design, then dissection and doctoral studies.

  The frozen man’s smell was similar, but dustier, richer. Like an ancient dictionary. I should have brought a clipboard, to record my observations. But what value is there in documenting something as subjective as scent? I straightened with a sigh. In the morning, Carthage would demand explanations.

  At once I realized. Inadvertently—I will maintain that view till my final days—accidentally, I had placed my hand on his wrist. We were skin to skin. I jerked back as if stung. Or as if I had done the stinging. Had I washed my hands when I arrived at work? No, not since eating supper hours earlier. Then I’d walked through Boston, held stair railings, used my keyboard, swiped my security badge. My hand could have carried all manner of potential infections. I backpedaled from the table, then spun for the door and the quiet sanctuary of the control room.

  Billings had gone somewhere, the tube tray half filled. Gerber hunched forward, contemplating the floor between his feet while his forehead pressed the keyboard, one letter repeating endlessly on the screen: VVVVVVVVVVVVV.

  I sat at my desk and willed myself calm. I made a show of checking e-mail, not registering what was on the screen. My infraction might prove minuscule. Probably I had not done the frozen man any harm. Maybe where I’d stood made it impossible for the cameras to see.

  His skin was warm, like any man’s.

  I noticed something then, a grittiness on my hand. I rubbed my thumb and pinkie against each other; there were granules like sand. I brought my forefinger to my mouth. I tasted.

  Sure enough: salt.

  CHAPTER 10

  Contamination

  (Erastus Carthage)

  You are never the person who cannot sleep. Your life is so hectic, your hours so full, the end of the day has for decades provided a reliable routine, dull as it is effective: washing up, drawing drapes, slipping on an eye mask, and sleeping like a child. No nightmares, no waking till morning. Pity those whose sleep is a lesser experience.

  Yet here you are. You’ve stirred in your bed, watched the clock drip away a tedious hour, mashed your pillows and tugged your sheets, and still your mind can’t stop a cycle of thought that spirals only to the end of this project, straight to ruin. Unproductive, but rest draws no nearer. In capitulation, you’ve dressed, left the hotel, taken an appallingly filthy cab, and arrived at the Lazarus Project to find the place all but asleep.

  The control room is unmanned. Totally unacceptable. What if Subject One experienced distress? The monitors are off, breaking the video feed. What if Subject One began to move with intention? It would not be captured for posterity, nor for proving success, nor for persuading future benefactors. The only mildly reassuring discovery is that Gerber is away from his desk. You wondered if that oddball ever slept.

  The reanimation clock marches onward, now reading 11:14:46:22. Eleven and a half days gone already. Time is the enemy and you know it. If Subject One follows the pattern of every other creature revived by your lab, more than half of the opportunity with him has passed. Twenty-one days, that is the outermost life-span projection, based on the patterns of revived krill. Three weeks, and the man shall be once again dead.

  Moreover, you know well that sound research does not occur quickly. The scientific method is a taskmaster sterner even than you. Yet the project has mere days remaining, after which this costly reawakened flesh will frenzy itself back into uselessness. The media is already gone, except for the plaything you keep handy for propaganda. The extra animation staff returned to their regular lab jobs. You have even received offers from nursing homes—nursing homes!—as though Subject One were some weak-bladdered geriatric rather than one of science’s greatest achievements.

  Time may be measured in seconds but you feel its weight by the ton. Nonetheless, grains of sand are cascading through the neck of the research hourglass while the creature lies inert, there in the dimly lit chamber, his heart beating on like the world’s most expensive watch. Thus have matters at the Lazarus Project stood for eleven and a half days.

  You cross to the schedule chart, and observe that it is Dr. Philo’s shift. She has abandoned her post. Were she present, you would fire her immediately. But wait: there is an instructive power in dismissing someone in the presence of others. Tomorrow morning, with an attentive audience, heads will roll.

  Till then, the boss is on duty. A superstitious person would say you couldn’t sleep because you intuited that Subject One was unwatched. Superstitious people are fools.

  You turn the video monitors on, screens crackling as they warm up, and wonder how things could have slipped so far. Has frustration distracted you? The science was unimpeachable. The methods, if inelegant, were defensible. And the findings were revolutionary. Your discovery that cells whose functioning had ceased through rapid freezing were not dead but rather possessed a residue of latent energy, and your application of this revelation to raw material provided by the laws of chance and opportunity—these achievements ought to stand on a par with those of Einstein, Darwin, and Freud. Then why has Subject One not awakened? Why hasn’t this damned slab of meat opened his eyes?

  No danger of that happening anytime soon either. A yawn insists itself on you. The clock shows there are hours till morning. Which is better, then: for the next shift to come to work and see you covering the lapse, or for them to arrive and find no one here? In the former case, the implication would be that people can shirk their duties and expect a superior to compensate. You can’t have that. No, back to bed with you. But you will leave a note on the control desk, so that whoever has the next shift feels the fear of imminent consequences, and predictably conveys that concern to others in the project. Yes, that’s the way. There’s a pad and pen on the back table.

  Tonight upon inspection the control room was empty and video feed turned off. Worst, the subject was unattended, risking his life and the future of this project. Tomorrow, those who are responsible will face the utmost consequences.

  There. Three sentences. And no one can accuse you of being self-important. You didn’t even use the word I. You tuck the paper between rows of letters in the master control keyboard and start for the door. But at the last minute some movement at the periphery of your vision turns you back.

  You hadn’t looked since the screens warmed up but now it’s there on all the monitors. Dr. Philo is not absent: she is inside the chamber. She brought a metal stool, on which she perches like a bird. She’s wearing a white surgical mask, but otherwise has ignored sterility protocols and dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt. She’s looking the subject directly in the face. The motion that caught your attention was her arms, comin
g up to hug her knees.

  And then, from the video feed, you see her commit the unthinkable. She reaches forward and places her hand on the subject’s forearm. She has touched him, skin to skin. She has contaminated everything.

  You reach down for the switch that opens communication with the chamber. Someone has moved it. Impossible. You search the desk and cannot find it. There it is, under a sheaf of papers, Gerber’s clutter where there should be cleanliness and order.

  You press the button marked SPEAK. “Dr. Philo. Dr. Philo.”

  She does not turn or even blink. The chamber’s audio must be turned off somehow. How could you have missed the project’s weakening discipline? How has Thomas failed to keep you informed? Her hand remains foolishly on his arm.

  You feel an impulse to rush in there and—what? shout? assault her?—but any further intrusion would increase the contamination. Does this imbecile not understand about bacteria, immune systems, germs?

  Impulse suppressed. Options exhausted. You stand mute before her act of breathtaking ignorance. She has risked everything you have accomplished, your entire life, for some meaningless, sentimental gesture. How can she not see this? She sighs, you can tell even through her mask. You thought you had hired a genius; that’s the word Tolliver from the academy had used: genius. Instead Dr. Philo proves herself no more than a schoolgirl, fretting away over this inanimate subject like some strange reversal of “Sleeping Beauty.” It occurs to you: if she kisses him, you might kill her.

  But there is another motion, caught in the overhead video. Could it be? What? You grab the switch panel that controls the camera and zoom in on his face. Yes, there is no doubt of it: His expression is changing. His facial muscles work. They twitch, they frown. Praise the fates that you restarted the taping when you did. Here is history, witnessed by you and logged, in real time, on a tape that belongs to you alone. The images could be hawked online at prices that might subsidize months of hard-ice collection.