Extensis Vitae

Chapter 17



He was walking down one of the featureless corridors again, but something was different this time. The sounds of distant machinery were present, like usual. The walls and floor looked normal, but there was a slight difference to the design. The motion was different, as well—there was something a little too smooth about his movement.

Looking down, Reznik saw that he was back in the wheelchair again. He was in uniform, with neatly pressed ACUs and shined boots. He noticed the rubbery skin of the prosthetic hand sticking out of his sleeve. He glanced behind him and saw a young airman pushing his wheelchair. “MORGAN,” the name patch read. Reznik recalled the airman being a likable young kid.

Noting his glance, Morgan asked, “Doing all right, Sergeant Reznik?”

“Fine, thanks,” he replied.

Reznik had been assigned to DARPA’s Project Fallere Mortem for about three months now. True to his word, Gerald White had somehow gotten him transferred out of Walter Reed after he had finished his year in rehab. He was still collecting his full active-duty pay and benefits along with full disability. How that worked, Reznik didn’t know, but he didn’t ask any questions. Not that it mattered, since he wouldn’t be around long enough to collect on any of it, anyway. Since he had been given plenty of time to get his affairs in order during the past year, he had had his lawyer put everything except a small allowance for living expenses into a trust fund. Nash’s sister, Allie, had been designated as the beneficiary. He didn’t have any close family of his own that he would have preferred to give it to, and he knew that Nash would have approved.

Even though it had been over a year since he had woken from the coma, two things continued to haunt him. The first was his friend Nash’s death and his inability to save him. Even if he could have grabbed hold of Nash and prevented his fall out of the chopper, that effort almost certainly would have been in vain. Reznik still carried around that burden of guilt no matter how he tried to rationalize it.

The second thing that haunted him was Amanda, and the look on her face as she had fled the hospital. That still stung even more than a year later. He had looked her up online recently, and discovered that she was apparently happily engaged to some Denver lawyer now. He tried not to think about that—it was better if she was happy with someone that she would have a future with.

He and Morgan approached a massive set of elevator doors. Morgan stopped the wheelchair close to the badge reader and Reznik swiped the badge hanging from his neck. The reader beeped, and the muffled sound of the elevator starting up came from behind the doors. Morgan maneuvered the wheelchair in front of the doors and quickly swiped his own badge just as the elevator arrived and the doors slid open.

“Ready for the big day, Sergeant?” Morgan asked as they got inside. The elevator began its slow descent.

The deep freeze, Reznik remembered. This would be it. “Ready as I’m ever going to be,” he replied aloud.

He thought back to when the retired General Winston had been cryogenically frozen a month or so back. The general had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and had only been given a couple months to live. The man was considered a military genius, and his connections to the DARPA program had allowed him to volunteer himself for the project. If it worked, it would be a win-win for DARPA and the general. DARPA would have its first human guinea pig, and the general would have another chance at life when medicine and science were able to figure out how to cure cancer. Reznik had not watched the actual procedure of freezing the general, but he had seen him in the cryochamber afterward plenty of times. He was always struck by how peaceful the man looked—as if he were in a deep sleep, instead of being clinically dead, his body frozen at a temperature near -196°C.

The elevator came to a gentle halt and the doors slid open silently. Morgan resumed pushing the wheelchair down a similar hallway. At the end of the corridor was a large door that looked like an airlock. “LABORATORY 1” was marked in large block letters across the door.

Reznik and Morgan swiped their badges again and the massive door groaned as it opened. They entered and the door slammed behind them. A large blower turned on, and they were blasted with air to remove any contaminants.

The interior door then swung open and they proceeded into the laboratory. The entrance to the lab was a platform along the second floor of the room. The wheelchair vibrated as Morgan pushed it along the metal grated floor.

The laboratory looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Along the far wall, ten large cryochambers lined the room. They were massive, coffin-shaped vats with a tangle of tubes and wires running out of them. The upper third of the vats had thick windows. The first one was sealed, and inside Reznik could see the face of General Winston illuminated by a cold light. The second chamber was open and lit up inside. The remaining eight vats were dark and empty.

Several technicians in white lab coats were bustling around the laboratory, working on computer terminals and checking the equipment. Supervising all of it was Gerald White. He walked around giving occasional orders and reading over paperwork on a clipboard.

Morgan eased the wheelchair down the long ramp that led down to the floor of the lab. White looked over as they approached.

“Well, my friend, how are you feeling? Are you ready for this?” A smile creased his kindly face. Reznik was again struck by the fierce intelligence burning in the blue eyes behind his thick glasses.

“Well enough, Mr. White,” he replied. “Ready to get on with it.”

White clapped him on the shoulder. “Everything is just about set. Just remember, it will be like falling into a deep sleep. I take it you’ve put all your affairs in order? Are there any last things you need to do?”

“I’ve put everything in order. Let’s do this before I lose my nerve,” he said.

White nodded. “First we need to take care of the legal matters, which we spoke about before.” He tapped a few commands on a keyboard and pulled up some legal documents on the screen. “Just review these documents, and if you agree, then go ahead and apply your digital signature where appropriate.”

Reznik started skimming the documents. “So this is where I get to sign my life away—literally, huh?”

White chuckled. “Well, yes, since you put it that way.”

Reznik smiled in return. He applied his digital signature and entered his PIN code in several different places. “Okay, done.”

“All right, people, let’s get him prepped!” White called to the lab techs. “Bring him over to the cryochamber and help him get undressed,” he told Morgan.

Morgan wheeled him over in front of the vat where a chair had been pulled up along with a plastic footlocker. He helped Reznik out of the wheelchair and into the other chair. Reznik fumbled with his bootlaces with his good hand. Morgan assisted him, and pretty soon he was sitting in just his underwear. All of his clothes and possessions had been placed neatly into the footlocker. With Morgan’s help, he removed his prosthetic limb and set it on top of his clothes, since it would be damaged by the deep freeze.

They assisted him into the vat. A band was strapped under his arms and around his chest to hold him in an upright position against the back wall of the cryochamber. A smaller band was placed across his forehead.

A lab tech came up and attached an IV port to his left arm above the stump. Reznik understood that it was up to him to attach the line from the bag of anesthetic fluid into his IV port, since it would in effect amount to assisted suicide if someone else did it. For legal and ethical reasons they weren’t allowed to do it. Reznik could empathize with the fact that nobody would want that weighing on their conscience.

He took the end of the tubing and secured it to the port in his arm. Then he rotated the little wheel and watched as the anesthetic fluid began to drip into the line that ran into his vein. The anesthetic cocktail would travel through his body and put him into a deep sleep and eventually stop his heart.

Another lab tech began attaching additional IVs and sensors to his body to monitor his vital signs. These additional IVs would pump the cryoprotectant chemicals into his body after he was clinically dead to prevent tissue damage from the freezing process. After that, the chamber would be filled with liquid nitrogen.

The crew he had worked with for the past three months filed past to wish him well. He shook hands with Morgan and the rest. The last to approach was Gerald White. Reznik shook his hand warmly.

“Thank you for giving me another shot, Mr. White,” he told the man.

“It was my pleasure. Like I told you a long time ago: a life for a life. You saved mine, and now I am returning the favor. I am fully confident that you will eventually get fixed up and be as good as new again. Well, this is it—are you ready?”

“Yes, sir. Let’s do this.” Reznik was starting to feel the effects of the anesthesia and was getting drowsy.

White gestured and a tech punched a couple buttons on a computer. The cryochamber hissed and small servos whined as the lid began to swing shut.

“Remember, your future is a blank slate—it has yet to be written. You can leave all of this in the past and make of your future what you will. Think how many people get a chance like this! Rest in peace, my friend. Until we meet again!” White called out. The massive lid sealed with a boom of finality like a coffin slamming shut—which, in effect, it was. White looked in through the window and gave him a solemn salute, then was gone.

Reznik could barely keep his eyes open. His raspy breathing echoed loudly in the silence of the cryochamber. Any minute now, and they will begin pumping ice water through my veins, he thought.

After a few seconds, his mind began to drift and the cold light of the LEDs was replaced by the warm light of a sunny summer day. He was a young boy again, and it was summertime at the lake, and he was stealing a kiss from a girl with a flower in her hair. The warm light bloomed around him and receded, and then it was nighttime and he was driving down the highway, rocking out to some heavy metal on the way home from a concert, his friends in the car head-banging with him. The approaching headlights of another vehicle became bright enough to engulf him, and then he was standing on top of a mountain, laughing and holding hands with Amanda. She kissed him, and he smelled the clean scent of her hair as the cold breeze blew it into his face. The bright sun intensified with a flash, and he found himself looking into the flame of a candle as he sat at a table eating Thanksgiving dinner. His friend Nash was giving him a dirty look across the table as the dark-haired girl next to him blushed from a compliment Reznik had paid her. Next, he was standing at attention in front of his unit and the commander was pinning a medal to his chest. “Master Sergeant Michael Reznik, you are hereby awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for acts of extraordinary heroism in action against an enemy of the United States.” The group erupted with cheers and applause. The light got brighter, and then the cheers and applause intensified and became the thunder of an explosion, and flames bloomed at the edge of his vision. Nash’s face had turned to one of horror as he fell backward out of the open doorway of the Black Hawk. The flames momentarily blinded him until they coalesced into bright afternoon sunlight streaming into a sterile white hospital room. Amanda’s large blue eyes were wet with tears as she said, “I’m so sorry, Michael.” She turned and fled the room. The bright light began to dim, and this time, all that remained was blackness.