RYT Medical Center * Boston
* December 17th, 2025
“Good afternoon, and welcome to RYT.” Doctor Carlton Ryan clapped
his hands together and scanned the auditorium. Out of two hundred students, seven
bothered to glance up from their phones. “I’m here to speak about our current
projects. First off, I’d like to introduce you to our friend Charlie.”
He ran backstage then reappeared holding a blue-tinged rat
encased in dry ice.
“Charlie is a two-year-old white rat that we—”
In the rush, Carlton stumbled. The rat slipped from his
gloves and shattered into fragments across the stage. Several people gasped and
screamed, and the first few rows got to their feet. Carlton regained his
balance and took a deep breath.
“As I said, I’d like to start by introducing you to our
friend Dave,” he said with the same level of enthusiasm. “Sit tight. It might
be a minute.”
He dashed behind the red curtains again then slowed to a
stop. Confused murmuring and laughter began to build, and he grinned.
“Takes a lot to gain their attention these days, doesn’t
it?” a man asked. Startled, Carlton turned to face him. “Rubber mouse?”
“Yeah,” Carlton replied, deciding based on the man’s suit
not to correct him on a fake animal. “Are you with the university? You look
familiar.”
The gray-haired man shook his head and held out his hand.
His grip hurt, even through Carlton’s gloves. “Paul Thurman.”
“As in the Thurmans who put the ‘T’ in RYT,” Carlton replied
in an uneasy tone. Thurman resembled his grandfather, whose photo was displayed
in the main lobby along with a dozen other co-founders. “Am I fired?”
“Not today, son.” Thurman laughed and slapped Carlton’s back.
“What are your plans after this? There’s a project I’d like to discuss with
you.”
Carlton hesitated and looked at his phone. It was almost one-thirty.
“I need to pick up my kids from daycare,” he explained then
gestured toward the exit. “My wife and her team will finish around six. She
works in the bionanotech division across the street. If this isn’t extremely urgent,
I can clear my whole schedule tomorrow. We can—”
“I understand,” Thurman interrupted and held up one hand. “My
wife and I have a ten-year-old daughter, and I know things are hectic when
they’re young. Do you have anyone who can watch them tonight? I’d like to take
you and your wife out to dinner. It would make things easier than you having to
repeat the details.”
“I guess that could work.” At that point, Carlton’s lab
assistant James was gesturing to the stage. Carlton had lost track on how long
he’d been gone. “Give me twenty minutes
to finish this, and I’ll make some calls.”
In trying to buy time, James had already wheeled a cart with
Dave’s cryopod onto the stage. The pod’s outer shell was made of stainless steel
and roughly the size of a watermelon. Carlton unlatched its hinges, and the
inner seal opened with a hiss.
“Just so there’s no confusion, Dave is real,” Carlton said,
and he was gentle in moving the rat to a modified incubator. The room went
quiet, and a handheld camera operator approached and zoomed in for the stage
monitors. Within minutes, the rat began to shiver and twitch. Carlton removed
his gloves and placed his bare hand into the clear container. With its eyes
still shut, the rat gripped two of his fingers and tried to curl into his palm.
A few people let out an aww, and Carlton smiled. “My wife and I met while
developing this experiment. For several rounds, her experimental groups had the best survival rates despite all other factors. We figured out it was
because she did this. Now these guys never wake up alone.”
“But what happens once your little experiment is over?” a brunette
woman asked in a sharp tone. “Are they euthanized?”
“No,” he replied, but she still glared at him. “We’re also
studying the long-term impacts of cryopreservation, so most of our subjects
live out full lives of about one to three years after they’re revived. They’re not
pets, but I’d like to think we go above the minimum standards for lab animal
treatment. Any other questions?”
“How long before you’re able to do this with humans?” a
young man shouted from the back. James ran to him with a microphone. “My father
is being held in a cryonics facility in Alaska. I’m just curious on how a human
clinical trial would work with this—who to contact to get on a waiting list.”
This question came up several times a year, and it was never
easy to answer.
“We’re partnered with thirty-two cryonics companies around
the world, but I can’t give you a time frame,” Carlton replied. “With rats, we have
full control over the process. We take multiple scans of their bodies in a
healthy state, something to give the nanobots a reference. We’re also allowed
to place them into stasis alive, which is decades away for humans from a legal
standpoint. Once they’re revived, the cellular damage is minimal. The NBs
repair what’s needed then deactivate.”
This reminded Carlton to pull his hand out of the container
before Dave released his bladder. The charcoal-colored streams and puddles
could be washed out of clothing, but hospital protocols had meant incinerating
several of his favorite shirts.
“So you’re saying that because my father was put into stasis
after he was pronounced dead, this process could never work?” The young man was
too far away for Carlton to see his face, but the pain in his voice was
heart-wrenching. “I know it was what he wanted, and I don’t want to give up.
It’s just…I don’t know what to do from here.”
“All I’m saying is that we have a long way to go.” Carlton
walked away from the incubator and sat down at the base of the stage. “When I
was a kid, people died waiting for organ transplants. Now nearly every hospital
in the world is within a hundred miles of a preservation bank. What we take for
granted today would still be impossible if no one ever pursued it, and there’s
always hope when people are passionate about solving a problem. I hope that helps.
Anyone else?” Someone clapped, and it spread. “If you want to apply to our cryobiology
or nanobiology internship programs, visit our site. Feel free to contact me or
my wife Doctor Catherine Ryan through our profiles if you have any questions.
Thanks.”
When Carlton returned backstage, Thurman had left. James
handed him a business card.
“He said to meet him at Poseidon Oyster at eight and bring
Catherine. He wouldn’t tell me anything
else—other than we definitely want to be on this project.”
“Everyone says that,” Carlton replied, but he looked at the
card. Representative Paul Thurman of Georgia was contacting a cryobiology team
from Boston instead of Atlanta. Even with the thin family connection to the
hospital, this seemed strange. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”
Silo 1 * 2065
“Hey, Turkey Man.” Jones waved his hand in front of Hal’s
face. “Are you in there?”
“Yeah.” Hal pinched the bridge of his nose. The sandpaper grip
of fingers and the faint smell of grease bothered him, though he couldn’t place
why. “Sorry, I haven’t been sleeping well. What were you saying?”
“The middle thirties are having recurring power loss and
connection problems, but Austin told me it seems to be local. If you’re not
busy, I was wondering if you could help me narrow it down.”
“I’m caught up for now,” Hal replied. He walked with Jones
to the elevators and pushed the non-express call button to go up. “Best
approach would be to start with the floor reporting the worst issues—work our
way through the access panels until we find the source of it. Last time, it was
rats nesting in the wires. I couldn’t patch most of them and had to rerun
everything for two floors.”
Jones sighed. “Fantastic…”
“Are you all right, kid?” Hal asked. Jones was twenty,
barely older than the boys still in stasis. He seemed to alternate between
eagerness and sulking whenever a problem occurred. “Operations floors have a
back-up power supply, and I reckon we have enough spare wire and cable to last
a few hundred years. Plus in another week, it won’t be your problem anyway.”
Jones frowned and looked down at his boots.
“Merriman and Victor asked if I’d pull a double this rotation,”
he replied as the elevator doors opened. “They need someone to learn the power
plant as well as Austin since he’s slowing down. All I can think about is
walking out of this place an old man—no offense.”
“Hey, I’m younger than I look,” Hal replied. Jones raised an
eyebrow. “Could an old man do this?”
He turned and danced backwards into the elevator. Jones shook
his head and stepped inside. The elevator doors eased shut.
“That just proves you’re so old the fear of embarrassment
has left you,” Jones said. Hal shrugged as if he agreed. “Can I ask you something?
I know you said you don’t mind the nickname, but…”
“Is it about this?” Hal asked. He pinched the loose flap of
skin at his neck. Jones nodded. “Someone accidentally bumped my pod, and my NBs
settled—only repaired me from the shoulders down. I’m going to ask Henson to
freeze me upside-down next time to see if things will even out.”
“Seriously?” Jones asked, but then he glared as Hal chuckled.
“Never mind. Forget I asked.”
“To be honest, I don’t remember much before orientation,”
Hal admitted. He stared at the elevator buttons until Jones selected the one
for Level 34. “The pills have blocked everything.”
“I thought they were only supposed to block out the bad,”
Jones said, and then he shuddered. “Do you think maybe they got your dosage
wrong or something? Maybe that’s why you can’t sleep.”
“Maybe.” Hal forced a smile. The elevator dinged, and the doors
opened again. “Let’s get to work, kid.”
Poseidon Oyster
Restaurant * Boston * December 17th, 2025
If Thurman was disappointed that Carlton showed up alone, he
didn’t show it. He asked the waiter to remove a third chair from the table then
ordered a bottle of wine Carlton was sure cost more than his car.
“To celebrate,” Thurman explained, though there was a sudden
sadness in his tone.
“What if we don’t take your offer?” Carlton asked.
Thurman leaned forward in his chair and folded his hands on
the table. “Then I was wrong about your idiocy being an act.” The Congressman’s
southern accent had all but disappeared, and Carlton wondered if Thurman could
turn it off and on at will. “How much does your wife know about Project
Windmill?”
Carlton tensed and glanced around them. The majority of the
room appeared to be there for dates and business meetings. Was this some sort
of trap? Carlton took a deep breath and tried to recall what he was supposed to
say.
“I was involved in a failed Mars mission just before
Catherine and I met. I’m not legally allowed to discuss the details with anyone.
Not even her. Not even you. I don’t—”
Thurman lifted his elbow and pushed a physical folder toward
him, and Carlton opened it. Most of the text had been censored, but the
illustrations of the cryopods were still intact. Carlton fought the urge to
crumple the entire thing and burn it in the restaurant’s fireplace.
“You didn’t design those pods, did you?” Thurman asked,
sighing when Carlton wouldn’t answer. “Somebody like me brought you in once it had
all gone to hell, and you still blame yourself for it.”
The waiter approached to get their orders, and Carlton
picked the rib-eye at random. Thurman laughed at this and insisted he add
lobster and scallops. The southern accent had returned. The sinking feeling in
Carlton’s stomach made food the last thing he wanted.
“By the time I figured out the problem was in the seals,
twelve people had died,” Carlton said once the waiter had left, half-expecting
federal agents to burst into the restaurant at the admission. “Two more died on
the return trip. We barely managed to save one out of crew of fifteen, and the general
public can never know any of it happened.”
Thurman nodded as if this wasn’t new information to him. “Do
you know anything about the man you saved? His photo is in there.”
Carlton turned the page. “I was never given names or any
personal identifiers about the crew. It was supposed to help me be objective,
but—”
“David Keene,” Thurman said as Carlton held the astronaut’s
photo. “Now General David Keene. Married. Two kids—a boy a little older and a
girl a little younger than my daughter. When this project came up, he said for
me to do everything I could to find you. That’s why I’m here and not anywhere
else on the planet. Do you understand?”
Carlton closed the folder, not looking at anything else.
“What do you want from us?”
“Let’s start with a human-sized pod and revival system with
a better survival rate than seven percent,” Thurman replied. Carlton relaxed,
realizing this had to be a space-related contract. Maybe whoever was in charge
wanted to do things right this time. “How long would it take you to create a
functional prototype, something we can contract out for production?”
“How many do you need total?” Carlton asked. If it was less
than twenty, he planned to say they could do it themselves and control the
quality. He reached for his water. Thurman waited until he’d set the glass
down.
“About five hundred thousand.”
Silo 1 * 2065
“I have two younger sisters,” Jones said. He took a panel cover
from Hal then placed it against the opposite wall. “My parents divorced when we
were young. Mom is down below. Dad moved to California. Do you think there are
other places like this?”
“Yes,” Hal replied, but it felt like a lie when he said it
out loud. This was how he got answers from himself. Yes, he’d been married.
Yes, he’d been a father. He hadn’t brought himself to ask the harder questions
yet, but it would need to happen eventually. “What did your mother do? Do you
remember?”
“She worked for a grocery chain—helped track inventory and
deliveries,” Jones said. “One day, this British guy named Eric approached her
with a better job offer. We were barely making it after Dad left, and she
wanted me to have a chance to go to college. Just before all of this happened,
we were doing great. Maybe that’s why I can still remember.”
Hal nodded and shined his flashlight into the open space
behind the wall. There was no sign of damage to the electrical wires or data
cables, so he gestured for the cover. Jones handed it back and then moved on to
remove another about three spaces over. As Jones pulled it away, he brought his
arm up and started coughing into his elbow. Hal stood and walked over beside
him. Even several feet away, he had to fight a gag reflex.
“You found it, kid. You get to take it down to the farms.
That’s the rules.”
“If that’s the case, how many other people have found it and
then put the cover back?” Jones asked in a strained voice. “I think I just
threw up in my mouth a little.”
He looked at Hal, not just disgusted by the dead rat. The
frustration and pain were deeper, a boy feeling sentenced to a life he didn’t understand.
Hal couldn’t shake the idea it was somehow his fault.
“Look, I’ll take care of it,” Hal replied. Jones’s shoulders
relaxed. “Find the breaker and shut it off for me—and remember this the next
time anyone tries to talk you into a double shift. I go under in two weeks and
won’t be around to help you if this happens again.”
Jones jogged away, and Hal noticed a faint hissing sound. He
followed it to a narrow pipe about the diameter of a straw. The rat had knocked
opened a valve before electrocuting itself, and Hal was able return it to its original
position. The released vapor felt freezing through his gloves and appeared
metallic, possibly some sort of mineral coolant for the servers. Hal made a
mental note to tell Merriman in case IT needed to know.
“The breaker is shut off,” Jones said. “I shut off the
neighboring ones, too—just in case.”
“Thanks,” Hal replied and adjusted his gloves. “We’ll need
to set traps, too. If they find a food source, these things could breed until
we’re overrun.”
Hal reached for the rat. To his surprise, he felt muscle
flex and its head move. Startled, he dropped it and backed away several steps.
“Feel gross?” Jones asked and glanced around. “Maybe I can
find a bag or something.”
“I don’t know how, but it’s still alive,” Hal replied. Jones
smiled. “I swear I’m not joking this time. The thing moved in my hand.”
“If you don’t want to take it down, I think I can do it,”
Jones said and hardened his expression. “I’m not afraid, Hal. I just hate the
smell. Reminds me of when my sister Kelli burnt her hair with our mom’s curling
iron. She was the book smart one but had no—”
“Jones, I wouldn’t touch—”
Jones picked up the rat then immediately dropped it and
backed away. This time, they could see its tiny chest moving up and down.
The dead rat was breathing.
The Silo Saga: Thaw is available on Amazon.com here.
No comments:
Post a Comment