Death -- Fiction; Immortalism -- Fiction; Science fiction
Raymond licked his lips. Tension mounted in the lab room. The senators
stirred in anticipation; the five staff-men scribbled notes furiously.
Harker felt dry fingers clutching at his windpipe. It was a sensation
he remembered having felt on two election nights, at that moment just
after the polls had closed--when, with the die irretrievably cast,
there was nothing to do but wait until the electronic counters had done
their job and announced the winner.
He waited now. Two white-smocked assistants rolled in an
operating-table on which a covered cadaver lay.
In a harsh, edgy voice Raymond said, "We secure most of our
experimental cadavers from local hospitals. We have permits for this.
The body here is approximately the one hundredth we have used in our
work, and the seventy-second since the first successful reanimation."
The covers were peeled back. Harker flinched slightly; the body was
that of a boy of about twelve or thirteen, and it was not a pretty
sight.
"This boy drowned late yesterday afternoon in a nearby lake," Raymond
said hoarsely. "All conventional methods of resuscitation were tried
without success."
"You mean artificial respiration, heart massage, and things like that?"
Senator Dixon said.
"Yes. The boy was worked over for nearly eight hours, and pronounced
dead early this morning. When I phoned the hospital to arrange for a
demonstration specimen for you gentlemen, I was allowed to speak to the
boy's father, who gave permission for this experiment."
Five minirecorders on five secretarial wrists drank in Raymond's words.
Harker felt growing anxiety; still, he had to admit that using a boy
for the experiment was a good touch--if the experiment worked.
He was not afraid of total failure; that could always be explained
away and accepted tolerantly. It was the one-out-of-six chance that
frightened him, the worse-than-failure of restoring the boy's body and
not his mind.
Raymond nodded to Vogel, who again was presiding over the reanimation.
The bearded surgeon clamped the electrodes to the boy's temples and
wrists, and lowered the great hooded bulk of the reanimator.
"The initial attack will come simultaneously through the electrodes and
through hormone injections," Raymond said droningly. "Heart massage
will follow, as well as artificial operation of the lungs. Keep your
eyes on these instruments; they measure heartbeat, respiration, and the
electrical activity of the brain."
The room was terribly silent. Vogel moved swiftly and smoothly,
confidently, without tension. He threw three switches. The archaic
light-bulbs overhead dimmed slightly at the instant of power-drain.
Driblets of sweat rolled down Harker's face. The five senators
watched eagerly; he wondered what they were thinking now, how they
were reacting as electrical currents rippled through a dead brain and
hormones raced through a stilled bloodstream.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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