The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1)

by David Kersten

  Jack reflected on that in silence. He wasn’t sure what a laser guided bomb was, but it wasn’t really important, he understood the gist of Tiny’s fate.. What he was interested in was how many people, or rather frozen bodies, were in the ‘Freezer’. The place was huge, but he had no point of reference for how many dead people you could store in a facility that large. Was the whole thing one big freezer or did they add rooms where the bodies were stored? Just another question to add to the rapidly growing list.

  Teague interrupted his thoughts and said, “Jack, you look like you are done with breakfast, let’s go on that tour shall we?” Jack nodded.

  As they were walking out, he turned back to Tiny and said “Good to meet you Gunny. Or would you prefer I call you Tiny?”

  “Gunny is fine, whichever suits you really, I respond to either. What about you? You prefer Jack? Or maybe Sir?” The last part was said with a little bit of a grin.

  “My newest troops called me Sir, my friends called me Jack. You can call me Jack, or if you prefer, some of my men called me Mad Dawg back in Korea.” He chuckled and left the room before Tiny could respond to that.

  * * *

  They started the tour in the hallway. “Okay ‘Mad Dawg’, we are going to talk about your new home.”

  Jack shook his head, Teague seemed like a smart guy, but socially he was a bit of a nerd. “This facility is geographically located somewhere in what was once eastern Nevada. I can show you on a map later if you want. I’ve found that some reborn are more comfortable knowing exactly where they are.”

  “Eastern Nevada? I don’t recall anything military around that area of the state.”

  “What makes you think this was a military complex?”

  “Obviously we are underground, and who else other than the military had the kind of money to build something underground?

  Teague nodded and considered this. “It was built after the war started, before the nukes were used. From what we learned, it was relatively secret, most of the government, or what was left of the government at the time, didn’t even know about it.”

  Jack filed that one away for later, he didn’t really feel up to talking about the war yet.

  “The facility is made up of six levels, all underground, with level one starting forty feet from the surface. The EoS city that we came from discovered it before things got really bad there, and a few members of higher standing used their resources to retrofit the facility with some more advanced equipment, like the frictionless plumbing and a power supply that will likely last another thousand years before needing to be replaced or even fed with more fuel. Some of the equipment, like the air filtration system and the heating and cooling systems are old, and require constant maintenance.”

  He took Jack’s datapad and tapped a few buttons, bringing up a wireframe schematic of the bunker. He showed Jack how to use his finger to spin the schematic so he could examine it from any level, and then how to zoom in and zoom out so he could see the inner workings of the place, as well as all the key points. When looking at a side view of the entire complex fully zoomed out, it resembled a stack of pancakes. Each level was an individual pancake, a large thin disc, with six discs in the stack. When he turned his viewpoint axis so he was looking down at it at an angle, the pancakes revealed themselves to be more like spoked wheels. Zooming in revealed the outer ring of the wheel to be a corridor with rooms coming off both sides, and the spokes to be passageways that converged on a central shaft. The shaft was like a big axel, centered on all the wheels. The spokes were not symmetrical though, some were spaced further apart, and between the spokes were larger rooms. Level four only had two spokes with long rooms on each side of the central shaft. Levels two and three had one large shared open space that occupied an entire half and even extended up to the top level. There were rooms that looked like full apartments surrounding this common area.

  “We are here now, on level five.” He pointed to a section on the fifth disc down from the top. This is mostly a medical level, with some small apartments like the one you are in now. We use this level for the newly reborn before easing them into regular living quarters. Those are up on levels two and three, along with some family housing. Level four is armament and training, and level six is mostly utility and control. Level one is primarily an activity level, with some very large rooms for simulation training as well as entertainment. There is even an underground park with a fake sun that rises and sets.” He pointed to the huge open space on levels two and three. “That park alone covers an acre of area. There are some community facilities on level one as well, and on top of all that it is built to be a first line of defense for if any enemy should breach the actual bunker.” As he talked about it, he manipulated the schematic on Jack’s pad to show what area’s he was referring to.

  Jack pointed to what looked like a long tunnel coming off of level one. “What is that?”

  Teague zoomed the schematic out and pointed to the other end of the tunnel. “This is a railway that connects to our flight deck. It is about five miles long. Externally, the bunker is built near some natural rock formations, with well camouflaged ventilation and access points.” He brought up some exterior drawings and even some photos of the area.

  Jack was struck by the scale of the place. An acre? And that is only one half of the diameter of this place? This was larger than anything he had ever even thought about building. He was no engineer, but even he wasn’t sure how they could construct a building like this. “Any ideas on how they built this place?”

  Teague shrugged, “Not really my area of expertise, but we think maybe they drilled it out then reinforced the walls with concrete. Look at the corridors, they are all tubular on the outside, and square on the inside.”

  Jack wanted to study this for a while, but there was much to see yet. He asked how to get back to this on the pad before they moved on.

  “Let’s head to the medical facility on this level. It’s down this main corridor, and past it is one of the two lifts that you can use to access different levels. As we walk, you can start asking questions. We have most of the day, and then we have some work to talk about.”

  Jack didn’t waste any time. He pulled up his notes, took a moment to review them, then said, “Okay Doc, first question. You said an engineered virus wiped out the ability for the scientist’s children to reproduce. Why is it you can’t just reverse engineer it and cure the problem in yourself? You said you cured Cancer, and even for me you said my DNA was altered so I would never get it. Seems after all that a little problem like infertility would be a walk in the park.”

  “Well, you just jump right to the tough questions, don’t you! To answer this, I will need to summarize a few technical details.” Teague mulled it over for a moment before starting. “When cloning a person, you take a fertilized egg, remove the DNA, and replace it with the DNA of the person you want to clone. From there, nature more or less takes over, with the exception of the acceleration process and the part where we write in your memories.” He paused to make sure Jack was following.

  “DNA is made up of millions of pieces, and certain sequences of those pieces make up your ‘genes’. We can modify genes to a certain extent, but it is a very limited science. Usually it just means looking for certain genes and rendering them ineffective. To change a gene from one sequence to another is far more difficult. Usually we use a modified virus if we need to change something, but the research to get to that point took many years and required very specialized equipment to create. What we have here is a fairly basic setup of predefined modifications we can use to fix things like your cancer. We also have modifications that can make you more healthy, allow you to live longer, and even give you better vision and better motor control. We no longer have access to the computers and equipment that allowed us to create new fixes and cures. But even if we did, it isn’t as simple as making a cure.”

  They stopped at a doorway marked with the same symbol he had put on Jack’s datapad to get in touch. “Befo
re we go in I will finish the explanation, so that we don’t get sidetracked.

  “The reason we did not know of the virus’s effect for so many years was because it took out a chunk of DNA in the next born child, yet everything else remained the same. The child grew up healthy and normal, and our screening processes only looked at a few thousand genes for known problems and defects. However, at puberty, the part of the DNA that tells the body to start making sperm was there, but it was being suppressed by another gene. There are still many genes we have never identified because instead of being responsible for something developing in the body, they are responsible for suppressing something from developing in the body. Remove the right combination of these genes from our DNA and we might grow wings, for all we know. Our current level of technology just isn’t sufficient to experiment on this level. Some scientists have tried, and the results were, well, we can talk about that later.

  “The last research done that I know of suggested that the virus caused a series of genes to change, on top of removing a key piece of the DNA. Technically it’s possible to splice the missing gene back into the DNA strand, but if those researchers were right, it would also require manipulating some other combination of genes. Given enough time and an incredibly powerful computer, it might be possible to figure out how to restore the proper sequence of genes and cure someone like me, but it is so incredibly complex that nobody has bothered to try. Even if they found a way to do it, the only reliable way to introduce the cure would be by cloning, and if you haven’t figured it out by now, that wouldn’t do anything for me, just for the next copy of me. If we hadn’t found some fertile men and an immunization for the virus, we might have continued on that path, but for the few of us left, it is a waste of effort. There is one more reason as well – risk. When splicing genes, you can’t be completely sure of the results. We only get one shot when transferring memories from a dead body to the clone. If we tried it, and it failed, we would be permanently damaged, or worse. As old as I am in my head, I am not ready to die willingly, even if it gave me a shot at having a child of my own.”

  The explanation was a little over his head (and he imagined it was dumbed down for him already), but it made enough sense to him to satisfy his curiosity. He did get the feeling that Teague wasn’t telling him the whole story, but it seemed irrelevant. He scratched the question off his list and moved on. “Okay, so yesterday you told me how they used to make twins of living people, just with their DNA. Why aren’t there a dozen little Teagues running around?”

  “That one is really simple. What would be the point? Another version of me without my knowledge would just be a waste of resources for another infertile man.”

  “Sure, but it would be one more person who could be working on the problem. After all, you are obviously intelligent, and that isn’t a learned trait, even I know that.”

  Teague looked a little uncomfortable, and Jack wasn’t sure if it was the subject, the compliment he just paid, or something else. He decided not to press the issue and shifted the question slightly. “So what about making twins of the fertile men you found? If the issue with making twins of yourself is that they are infertile like you, what about those men who aren’t? Seems like having thirty or forty of them would be better than only having eleven.”

  Teague shook his head, “Same problem, you see, the issue we have isn’t in each fertile man being able to spread his seed, it is in the variety of DNA. Multiplying one fertile man doesn’t add to the gene pool, so again his value to the community would be nullified, and hence a waste of resources.”

  He let that hang in the air for a few heartbeats, then said, “Now, shall we go see where you were born?”

  Chapter 16

  The room was substantially larger than Jack had expected. He had to blink a few times before his eyes adjusted to the brighter, more natural light. The walls, ceiling, and floor in this room were all painted white in stark contrast to the raw concrete on the rest of the level. Large machines made it difficult to judge the scale of the room, which at first glance appeared to be about fifty feet square. Teague walked over to one of the machines, looked at a glowing panel, tapped a few buttons, and then headed closer to the center of the room.

  The room layout was simple, really. There were four massive machines, one in each corner, and in the middle was two large desks, a few pieces of unidentifiable equipment, and some workbenches. On one of the workbenches was an apparatus that Jack could only assume was a complicated chemistry set. The four large machines reminded him of a large distillery he once visited; wide upright cylinders with pipes and other bits of equipment attached around the sides in a seemingly random fashion. As he walked past the two flanking the door, he realized that they were far larger than he first thought. Easily over ten feet tall and twenty or twenty-five feet across, his earlier estimate of the size of the room was way off. With ten feet of empty space around each machine, and the large desks, workbenches, and other equipment taking even more room between them, the room had to be at least one hundred feet long in each direction and not a single supporting column anywhere. Jack’s experience in building underground bunkers told him this just wasn’t possible, at least not with the technology he had available in 1966

  Teague stopped in the middle of the room, spread his arms and said “This is it. Four artificial wombs. We call them tanks, and that one over there,” he said pointing to the machine to Jack’s right, “was yours.” Teague paused for effect, then continued, “It took about eight weeks to get you to the age you are now. Currently we have four buns in the oven, three men and a woman. The next will be ready in a week. Do you want to see him?” Jack nodded. They walked over to the far left hand tank and he pushed some buttons on the panel. A window, about two feet square, went from black to clear, showing a red tinted liquid behind it. Teague pressed a few more buttons and the water began to glow, brighter and brighter until Jack could see a body about the size of a nine year old child in the murky water. There was a tube running from the edge of the tank wall that ended in the child’s mouth. The body twitched a couple times and Jack jumped back, the hair on his neck standing up.

  “Jesus Doc, that is creepy. I didn’t expect him to move.” Teague smiled and pressed a few more buttons. The light dimmed and the window went back to flat black. “Why is there a tube in his mouth and not his belly?” Jack was no doctor, and his only point of reference here was remembering his baby girl coming into the world, the doctor handing him a scissor and telling him to cut the umbilical cord.

  “After he grew to the equivalent of nine months old, his body told him it was time to start breathing, so we had to disengage the umbilical cord and put a tube in his throat that would provide him with air and food. The tube also delivers chemicals that essentially force the memories we scanned from his old brain to grow in the new one. The murky water he is floating in is a catalyst that uses careful mixtures of hormones, steroids, vitamins, minerals, and some special types of bacteria to force his body to age. The accelerated aging process causes his body to generate a lot of heat, and the water temperature is about ten degrees below normal to keep him from overheating and expiring.”

  Jack just nodded slowly, feigning understanding. “That’s, um, pretty cool, doc.” He tried to sound enthusiastic, but Teague seemed to sense both his disinterest and discomfort and steered them toward the door.

  They exited the room and took another turn down the hall to a similar door. “Behind this door is an identical chamber to the last one. We are working on building four more tanks, so we can increase the rebirth rate of the subjects in the cryogenic facility. There are a few key components that we need, however, and they have been difficult to acquire.” He didn’t go into more detail but Jack made a mental note to expand on that at a later date.

  As they headed further down the hall, Jack looked at the list of questions on his pad and said, “So when I talked to Tiny earlier, he remembered events just hours before he died. How come is it I lost nearly a whole year
of my memory?” Knowing he had lived another year beyond his memory was like a thorn in his side. Even amidst the chaos of questions in his head, the need to learn what happened was difficult to ignore.

  “Well, you remember when I told you that you were the oldest one there that we had revived?” Jack nodded. “In the sixties and seventies, when they went to freeze a body, they simply replaced the blood with some alcohols and then put it in the freezer. Every so often, over the next couple decades, they would try to revive one of the corpses, and in their failures, they learned it was harder to freeze a cell without damaging it than they had originally anticipated. Did you ever have a pipe burst from freezing?” Jack lived in Montana; it seemed like a rhetorical question, so he didn’t answer. “Your cells are filled with water just as a pipe, and when frozen, they tend to explode. The stuff they put in the bodies back then helped but if the body were put in too cold of an environment it would completely destroy the cells.

  “By the nineties, they had come up with some chemicals that were really good at keeping that from happening. We attempted to save a couple of the older bodies we found, but it was no use. Their brains were just too badly damaged to get any memories, and the results were not desirable. You were the first one from your generation we were able to recover. It was a stroke of luck, really, or fate, if you believe that.”

  “What made me different from the others?”

  “I think it was the chemicals your doctors used when trying to fight the cancer. Chemotherapy was pretty new when you were at the Mayo Clinic, and something they pumped into you toward the end really ended up helping to preserve your cells. It is surprising that it didn’t kill you, to be honest.”