“Whoever died, I don’t care,” she said with her eyes closed. “Just freeze them and call me in the morning.” The voice on the other end answered her so clearly it was as if he were in the bed next to her.
“Neela, sorry to wake you, but you are the primary revive specialist on call for this week, and we have something that needs a sign-off.”
Neela sighed.
“Watanabe, this had better be good.”
“Neela, I don’t know what it is.” The genuine confusion in the voice of her contact made her sit up. The emergency rescue service always knew what was going on. That they now didn’t shook her out of her daze.
“All right, Ben, I’m on my way.”
“Don’t bother, Neela, we’ll have a flyer out to pick you up in ten minutes.”
“I know how to get to center, Ben,” she answered, with no small amount of disdain.
“That’s good, but you’re not going to center.”
“Ben, I’m no good at the medical end of suspension. I get them after they’re thawed, remember?”
“Trust me, Neela, you’ll want to see this.” Neela heard the soft pop that told her the phone was disconnected. She managed to prop herself up. In her semicomatose state she laid out in her mind what she’d wear. She decided on an all-weather outfit. It would be a little more cumbersome but would come in handy just in case this call led her up into the mountains. This day was becoming very out of the ordinary, and for someone with a daily routine as rote as hers, any chance to shake things up was certainly worth the extra effort required to drag herself out of bed.
She was gratified that she’d guessed correctly about the mountains, and was certainly not surprised to see evidence of a mine being cleared of rock. It was still dark as the flyer landed, but she could make out the entrance to the shaft only because it had been painted with Daylight, an amazing substance, she thought, that lived up to its brand name. About twenty rescue workers were operating heavy machinery, and she could see that a few more were spraying a fresh line of Daylight down the mine entrance leading into the tunnel. The pile of freshly cut logs stacked fifty yards away told her that this area had been heavily wooded until the crew got here.
Whoever’s in there must be important, she thought. That would explain why they wanted her here—the expert witness lined up neatly with the rest of the bureaucratic pawns so necessary to make sure the paperwork flowed smoothly. It was only after the flyer landed near the log pileup that Neela realized what was missing. There were no emergency medical vehicles. In fact, there was no medical setup of any kind, just a cleanup crew.
As she got out of the flyer she saw Ben coming forward to meet her. They exchanged formal waves.
“What’s going on, Ben?”
“It started when a company prospector was researching abandoned mines. He found this one by chance. All records of it had been removed from the official databases.”
“But that’s not possible,” she answered, scratching her chin. “No record of this mine means this site’s gotta be at least . . .”
“. . . three, maybe four centuries old,” continued Ben, “at least, according to the prospector we talked to.” Why’d they haul a reanimationist out here? wondered Neela. Her heart skipped a beat. No, she thought. Don’t even go there.
“So,” she continued, trying to contain her trepidation, “how did this mine rat—what was his name?—find it?”
Watanabe smirked, knowing full well what Neela was really asking, but he decided to play along. “His name’s Omad—a grade 7-B prospector. And, according to him, he found it because it was mentioned in the old mining reports of two other mines.”
They walked hurriedly into the now well-lit mine. After a few hundred yards Neela found herself at the point where the roof had caved in. She waved at some of the rescue team members she recognized, including Rita, a woman she’d helped with a revival trauma about three months earlier. Fortunately for Rita, hers had been a particularly mild death, requiring only a two-day suspension. At the end of the cleared tunnel Neela saw a circular chamber about forty feet in diameter with a ceiling of about seven feet. It was what she saw in the middle of the space that stopped her cold—a large rectangular box measuring roughly ten feet by five feet by six feet encased in some sort of black metal composite. The whole visible section of the box was covered with inscriptions that were carved into the surface and filled in with a red ceramic material. This gave the box an ethereal appearance that reminded Neela of a sarcophagus. She slowly circled the coffer, absorbing its every detail.
“Like something out of a legend,” whispered Neela.
“I know what you mean,” replied Ben. “Normally I’m not suspicious, but may my stock drop if I said that that,” he pointed to a specific inscription, “didn’t freak me out.”
Neela looked closer.
Some of the writing was in English, some in Chinese, some in Hebrew; there was even something that seemed to be a series of elevated dots and dashes. On what she now ascertained to be the lid of the case were a series of large characters with a very simple message:
THIS IS A LIFE POD. A MAN LIES SUSPENDED WITHIN.
She stepped back, took a deep breath, and nearly tripped over Ben in the process.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
Ben smiled and nodded.
“Holy, holy shit, Ben,” she repeated. Ask it, Neela. Ask the damned question! she prodded herself.
“Is . . . is it operational?” she asked, barely able to utter the words.
“Seems to be,” Ben replied, still smiling. “You still with us?”
“Uh . . . yeah . . . sorry, Ben.”
“You can see why we called you. And that’s not all,” he continued, pointing to the surrounding walls. “We ran a groundar to see if anything was stuck in the walls.” He waited a moment.
“Well?” Neela demanded.
“We found six hollowed-out chambers, spaced equidistantly around this main one. Get this—they were shielded.”
“So,” answered Neela, taking her eyes off the unit to look around the cavern, “you don’t know what’s inside, then?”
Ben hesitated for a moment. “Well, not exactly,” he answered, keeping his head low as he kicked one foot in the dirt. “We did open the one.”
Neela’s face lit up. “You did what? Are you nuts!? They could have been booby-trapped for all we know, or you could have destroyed precious artifacts!”
“Hey, take it easy, Neela,” answered Ben, “we only opened one, and entirely by accident, I can assure you.” Neela gave him a disapproving look.
“But you’ll never guess what we found inside,” he continued, knowing she’d soon forgive him in all the excitement of the find. “Gold bullion. Can you believe that? Imagine going through all that trouble just to store a bunch of gold. He may as well have left some rubble in there for all it’s worth.”
“Ben,” Neela asked, “how long do you think it’s been since gold was used as a commodity?”
“I dunno. I’m not good at history; maybe five hundred years?”
“You’re right. You’re not good at history,” she replied with a smirk. “It’s less than two hundred and fifty. And I’m willing to bet this man has been here for at least that long.”
“Long time to be down,” Ben replied.
“Did you get a doctor in here?”
“First thing we did. He didn’t know what it was . . . and neither did his DijAssist! He’s back at his lab running a search for info on a secure Neuro uplink.”
“And that’s when you decided to call me?”
“Well . . . um . . . yeah. Plus, I know you, and I don’t know anyone at the university, though that would have been my next call. So anyways, the billion-credit question is, can we move it?”
Before Neela could respond, Rita spoke up from the corner of the box nearest the door. “Uh, boss, I’m pretty sure we can.”
“And how do you know that?” asked Ben, as he glared at Rita. “Do you have a
degree in Unheard-of Technology I don’t know about?”
Rita returned Ben’s glare by pointing to the corner of the unit. “No, I don’t, Mr. Smart Guy. I know it because it says so right here.” They all gathered around to see what she’d pointed at:
THIS UNIT CAN BE MOVED WITHOUT DAMAGING THE
MAN INSIDE.
FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS WRITTEN BELOW.
The group started laughing at how simple yet ridiculous that inscription was, while Ben’s face reddened a bit. The tension that had made the place seem haunted was gone.
One of the rescue workers, a short, bearded man with a starburst tattoo on his nose, spoke up. “That’s definitely an operational suspension unit.”
“I know. I read the inscription, too. But I gotta tell you, it doesn’t look like any suspension unit I’ve ever seen,” Neela answered.
“It’s not like any you’ve seen,” he continued. “I don’t think it’s like anything anyone’s seen. But that’s a suspension unit, and I’d be willing to bet my next dividend that there’s a man inside waiting to be revived. What shape he’s in I couldn’t say, but he’s in there all right!”
“Well,” Ben chimed in, “he’d better hope that his insurance company survived the GC and still has a policy on him.”
“Why?” asked the guy with the starburst tattoo.
“This revive and extraction is going to cost him a credit or two, and if his insurance doesn’t kick in, he’s going to lose a good percentage come his quarterly report.”
“I don’t think so,” Neela cautioned, something beginning to form in the pit of her stomach.
“Why not?” Ben asked. “Everyone gets an incorporation report. He’s no different.”
“Actually, he is, Ben. If we’re to believe the inscription, and if in fact there is a man still in viable stasis, then he’ll be, providing we do our jobs right, the oldest man ever to be revived.”
“So?” Ben asked.
“So,” Neela continued, “he’s not going to get a quarterly report . . .”
“. . . because he’s never been incorporated,” Rita said, finishing Neela’s thought.
The haunted air returned.
Humans have better things to do than pretend to be machines.
—JUSTIN CORD, CEO OF ROBOAMP, AT THE OPENING CEREMONYOF THE FIRST ENTIRELY WORKERLESS FACTORY
Ferdinand had reached that stage in life where the dust was beginning to settle. He wasn’t about to start his own corporation, nor would he retire early. His self-percentage would be a lot better but for a wife who was a sucker for the frivolous little extras that were constantly being offered. But if she was happy, he was happy, right? After seventy-five years of working the same job, the only silver lining he managed to garner was that he could do basic background work slightly more economically than a computer. What was the old saying? You could lead a computer to data, but you couldn’t make it glean.
It was a simple job, really. All he had to do was process revives. Boring, routine, safe work. Every once in a while he’d get an interesting one. Perhaps a complication concerning religious scruples, or maybe even a conflicting liability. Joy. But most of the time raising the dead was predictable, just like it was supposed to be. He’d process the name and occupation of the revival subject, determine who was paying for the procedure, and then inform Legal of any outstanding debts or stock options due. All credit on the account would then be reactivated by the upper echelons at a later date. The trickiest part was informing current stockholders about the reactivation of potential stock in the revived, but that was handled by another department. He had enough on his plate, thank you. The programs for this type of operation had been in place for decades, and short of the rare “breakthrough” upgrade that entailed a little more learning, it was almost automatic. Ferdinand’s job was only to initiate the process and see that the procedures were followed. In this way he was able to facilitate the smooth flow of the frozen revive’s reentry into the corporate world.
He rubbed his eyes. It was only 11:00 A.M. and he’d already processed forty-two corpsicles. “Next,” he said to the holodisplay in front of him, not bothering to look up.
No response.
He repeated his request, but this time more irritably: “Computer, next revive.”
“Sending information now,” the computer chirped back.
Ferdinand looked up. “I didn’t ask you to send me information. Just tell me the revive’s name, please.”
“Unable to comply.”
Ferdinand, figuring the system was in prefritz mode, attempted an end around.
“Fine,” he said, rising to the challenge, “can you at least tell me who insured him?”
“Unable to comply.”
OK, a real challenge then, he thought. I’m game.
“Computer, access the subject’s genetic code for ID.”
Four seconds passed—an eternity.
“Unable to comply.”
“You didn’t get a sample of the DNA?”
“Sample received,” the computer responded. “However, no known correlation in any database available.”
Impossible.
Though Ferdinand prided himself on being able to solve problems before they became real problems, he knew when he was licked.
“Computer,” he said, letting out a sigh, “get me technical support.”
“Contacting technical support now,” the machine chirped back. “Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.”
Ten minutes later Ferdinand was interrupted by a bored-looking fellow staring straight at him from the holodisplay.
“Tech support, whadyaneed?”
“Are you guys running a beta test on the revive data procurement program and forgot to mention it to us poor slobs in Adjusting?”
“If we are, it’s news to me. Let me check.” The face dissolved into the background.
Ferdinand continued working.
After another fifteen minutes the tech support fellow’s face showed up on Ferdinand’s holodisplay.
“No,” was all he said, and before Ferdinand could ask another question the face disappeared.
Begrudgingly, Ferdinand returned to the task at hand. “OK, computer, let’s try this again. You’re telling me we have a revive?”
“Correct.”
“Do we know where this revive is?”
“The revive is located at the Colorado Mining Hospital in the city of Boulder.”
“Good, that’s a start. What’s the make of the suspension unit?” Sometimes in large disasters with many bodies, information could get lost temporarily. A good way of finding out who the person was would be to track the suspension unit itself.
“Unable to comply.”
“Computer, is this information restricted or unavailable due to prior command or restraint?”
“Negative. Unable to comply because the information is unavailable to all known databases. If you check the information I have sent, you will see an image of the unit as well as all known data.”
With a sigh of exasperation, Ferdinand called up the data. After ten minutes of scanning, he nervously keyed the button asking for his supervisor.
“What do you mean I’m going on vacation?!” fumed Neela.
Before her sat an impeccably dressed man seemingly impervious to the steely glare emanating from Neela’s eyes.
“Your passage to Luna City has already been arranged,” the man answered, too stoically for her taste.
“Luna City?! First of all, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly in control of my own portfolio here, and I don’t have the kind of equity to give up to go to a place like that.”
“Don’t worry,” the man said, not bothering to look up from his holodisplay. “It’s all paid for by GCI. Consider it a bonus for the good job you’ve done to date. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do.”
Neela stood quietly for a moment.
“I don’t want the vacation,” she blurted.
This got the man’s attention. He stopped staring into the holodisplay, shifted some papers aside, and looked at her intently.
“You like your work that much that you’d give up an all-expenses-paid vacation to a place most people only dream about?” Neela shifted uncomfortably in her place. “There’s the one-sixth-gravity waterfalls, wing nanites for the Galileo fly-through. The sex alone is worth the trip. Trust me, that I know.”
“It’s not the work,” she answered. “It’s this work. This find . . . right now. I never expected to be the primary reanimationist. I knew you’d bring in a Bronstein or a Gillette. But there’s never going to be another find like this. I have to be a part of it.”
“You’re really dedicated to this, aren’t you?”
“Completely.”
The man dived back into his holodisplay and typed in some commands. After a minute or so he looked up.
“I may live to regret this, but I’ve just bought a thousand shares of your personal stock.”
“Why’d you do that?” she exclaimed.
“I’m sorry. Most people would find it complimentary.”
“Well, I’m not most people. And I intend to buy back enough of my shares to make majority.”
The man let out a guffaw.
“Oh. You’re one of those. Well, look, I’m worth five times your value, and I’ll probably never see majority. Furthermore, why would you even try? All you’d get is some additional income—and a lot of headache.” He was starting to lose patience. “Look, you’re going on vacation whether you want to or not. It’s already been decided.”
Neela stood her ground. “I don’t mean to be a pain, and I know the company owns my ass, but I just don’t understand why I can’t take this damned vacation after the patient’s already been revived and socially integrated.”
This time the man stood up from his desk and looked her right in the eye. As he did this she heard the sounds of corridor traffic in the background—the door had opened behind her.
“Unless you’re willing to wait five years,” he spat, “that ain’t gonna happen, lady. This conversation is over. Good day.”
The Unincorporated Man Page 2