The Reincarnation

It was mid-morning. David was reading a Rolling Stone editorial about marijuana finally being legalized. Rolling Stone was elated about this ground-breaking legislation. It quoted a similarly ecstatic, although properly buttoned down editorial from The Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Persey came into David’s room. David looked up in alarm. Dr. Persey was indeed a large man, tall and big-chested, but not overweight.

“Well, how’s my boy? I hear you’re eating with gusto.” He clapped David on the shoulder, sending a shudder down his spine.

“Food never tasted so good.” David smiled weakly.

“It was vegan, of course.” Dr. Persey looked concerned.

“All I’ll touch, Jack.”

“Well you know what they say, Dave.” Dr. Persey looked at David conspiratorially.

“What’s that?”

“The Chinese had it right all along. You do take on the characteristics of the animals you eat.”

“How’s that?”

“The animals are dead and when you eat them, they make you dead, too.” Dr. Persey chuckled. David joined him, feeling better.

“Listen, David, if you’re up to it we could take a walk around the Lab. I could show you around.”

“You bet.” David looked at the gown adorning his body. “When can I get some jeans?”

“Well, and again only if you’re up to it, I could get the press in here tonight, and I don’t want them interviewing you in your laboratory gown.”

“Ah, a bribe.”

“If that’s what you call it. How ’bout a walk?”

David swung his thin legs over the edge of the bed. His feet were palsied, not used to the weight.

Dr. Persey pushed the machines away from David’s bed, clearing a path through them where David could walk.

“Take it slowly, Dave. Here, let me support you.”

With Dr. Persey’s arm around him, propping him up under his armpits, David was free of the bed.

“I see you’ve been doing your stretches in bed. Good. When the body’s vitrified it doesn’t shrivel up like it does for coma victims, otherwise you’d be crying with the pain right now.” David moved slightly. “There you go. Now, your first steps.” Dr. Persey’s look changed from concerned doctor to that of anxious parent, his eyes wide, his smile eager.

David shifted the weight of his right leg forward. His foot tingled as it hit the floor, but accepted the weight. With more a series of tiny falls, from one foot to the other, than actual walking, David was again mobile.

“Good show, Dave! You’re an inspiration to all of us.” Dr. Persey looked genuinely excited.

“Thanks. It feels good to be on my feet again. I forgot how tall I am.” David was elated.

“Well, gravity will have its way with you a little before all is said and done, but I’m astonished just the same. You could pass for a pedestrian.” He clapped him on the shoulder again, throwing him off balance. Grabbing him before he fell, Dr. Persey straightened him back up.

“Shall we go?” Dr. Persey waved his arm as if displaying the rest of the room, especially the door.

David had the doctor lead him out of the room. The lights in the hallway were much brighter than those in his room, and it took David’s eyes a moment to adjust. Walking down the hallway, he spied the nurse’s station ahead of him.

Halfway there, a cat ran up to David, rubbing his bare feet with its head. The sensation nearly made David faint.

“Kitty!” David cried, carefully bending down to scoop him up. The cat was happier than David, purring and crying uncontrollably. “Can I keep him?”

“Well, he wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for Peggy, the night nurse. And Laura, too, for convincing her to leave him here to keep us company. But be warned – no one makes the mistake of coming between Peggy and a cat.”

“But can I keep him?”

“I don’t see why not, if she’ll part with him. He may do you some good, get you feeling even better.” Dr. Persey looked at the cat, noticing it really for the first time, and was astonished by its bright, yellow eyes. The vertical slits of its pupils.

“What’s his name?” David asked.

“They tell me it’s Hannibal.”

David froze for a second, overwhelmed by déjà vu.

“Dave?” Dr. Persey reached his hand out to steady him. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, just fine. I think a goose just walked over my...freezer.”

“Vitrifier, David, not freezer – cryopreserver, if you please. Very well, then. Let me show you around.”

They continued down the hallway to the nurse’s station. Laura was on duty.

“Now, you’ve met Laura.” Dr. Persey extended his hand to Laura, as if presenting her for the first time.

David took advantage of the opportunity to extend his hand to hers. Once he grasped it, he bent his head down and kissed it, amazed at his actions – at the confidence he felt in them.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, madam,” David said, his head still down, his mind sorting out why it didn’t feel nervous at what it considered a bold act, yet pleasantly surprised by it nonetheless.

Color rose to Laura’s cheeks as she blurted out an embarrassed “Daaa-vid.”

“Well then,” Dr. Persey said, slightly shocked. “Let’s have you meet the rest of the folks on the floor.”

David let go of Laura’s hand, and let Dr. Persey lead him further down the hallway. David craned his head to watch Laura as he walked away. She returned his gaze, color high on her cheeks, until he turned forward.

David passed dozens of rooms that looked exactly like his; colorless, barren, aseptic. Reaching the end of the hallway, they turned right through some wide doors. The doors had shiny silver kick-plates on both sides of them, but they had no dents or scratches at all. The doors hadn’t been used yet, David surmised.

The doors led to an area that reminded David of a jail. There was a polished tile floor running up the center of the enormous room. On both sides of the room were smaller rooms, much like prison cells, at least thirty cells long, and five cells high. In each cell was a number of small boxes, perhaps twenty per cell, stacked up like cordwood. David walked over to the nearest one. It looked like a sarcophagus.

“David, meet your students. Students, meet your mentor,” Dr. Persey addressed the room. David gave him a confused look before turning back to the sarcophagi in the cell. The front of each was emblazoned with a huge cross with two snakes intertwining it.

Dr. Persey walked over to David and opened up the cell David was staring into.

“A few weeks ago, David, you were in a vitrifier quite like this one. Here, let me show you.” Dr. Persey tapped a button on the front of the box, and a shield slid to the side. Underneath another shield, this one clear, was a human face. Above the shield was engraved, “Glory Be To God.”

“Let’s see, Barbara Ann McKee, Age Twenty-six, Breast Cancer,” Dr. Persey read from a small tag on the box. “Shall I revive her next, Dave? Perhaps you two will get along well, have some children together?”

David anticipated Dr. Persey’s laughter at what David thought was a joke, but it didn’t come. Instead, the doctor went on.

“Oh, there’s so much I don’t know yet, David. So much yet to learn. Look around you. A few weeks ago, these were all cryonically suspended corpses. Now, thanks to you, they are all...waiting to be born. Waiting for God to take them from the dust of the ground, and breathe into their nostrils...the breath of life. Make them, once again, living souls. Every second that goes by brings you and me closer to death. For them, though, every second brings them closer to life. Isn’t it wonderful?”

David was flustered by Dr. Persey’s words, and didn’t answer his question. Instead, he asked one of his own, “How many people are here?”

“Here, as in, this room? Or here, as in, this facility?” Dr. Persey went on before David could answer. “As you can see, there are thousands of people here, but this is just one room of many. And this room only has people. I’ve got a veritable cryopreserved zoo here as well. You could say I’m a bit like Noah in some ways.” He laughed. The laugh had a tinge of mania to it. Dr. Persey, recognizing this, turned to David and spoke in a serious tone. “You are the first though, David. First vitrified, first revived. You’ll always be special to me because of that.”

David looked down at the woman in the vitrifier. He had a hard time seeing her as a person. She looked more like raw meat in cold storage. He noticed the date on the tag. It was only a decade ago. David noted this with chagrin, feeling lucky to be alive.

“How?” David looked up at Dr. Persey, who had a wild look in his eyes. “How is this possible?”

“The procedure? Simple, really.” Dr. Persey began to pace the room. “Keep the circulation going and replace the blood with cryoprotectants to prevent blood clots, bacteria growth, and –” Dr. Persey stopped and faced David, “prevent freezing damage. That’s the one that kept me back for so long. Needless to say, I’ve got it perfected now. They were always in such a hurry before, so sloppy. I –” Dr. Persey paused, as if he were about to say something he shouldn’t. “Well, I had time to do it right.” He flashed David a quick smile, and his pacing began afresh.

“Then, of course, I quickly cool the body, get the metabolism down.” His words came out faster, like they had been bottled up under pressure and were finally getting release. “Ischemia – oxygen deprivation, vitrification, nanotechnology, genetic engineering; all problems...no,” he raised a finger, “opportunities, challenges to be overcome. That I have overcome.” He stopped, facing David. “We were like children then, David; a decade later like grown men. And now, now...we are like gods.” Dr. Persey stood in the center of the room with his hands raised slightly, palms to the ceiling.

“Thanks for the tour, Jack, but I should probably get back to my room. My legs are kind of weak.”

“Of course, Dave.” Dr. Persey rushed to David’s side. “You should have said something. We don’t want anything happening to you, now do we?” His eyebrows rose as he said this, making his eyes open wide, showing the whites under his corneas.

David watched more of the films that afternoon and in a more alert state was able to stomach them better. The events in the film were still going from bad to worse, but the Church was becoming a major player in what was transpiring. From what David could tell, the Church had become one of the only sane voices left in the country. As much as he hated organized religion, he couldn’t believe all the good work the Church was involved in. He wondered if maybe his mother had been right about them after all.

He noticed a plaque on the wall he hadn’t seen before. He wondered if he simply hadn’t noticed it before, which he didn’t think was likely, or if someone had put it up last night while he was asleep. It was a quote from the Bible, lettered in Old English characters. It read:

Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years;

take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

Saint Luke 12:19

Laura finally convinced Dr. Persey to give her his password. Christ, she thought, relishing how un-Churchlike swearing in her head made her feel, he acts like a kid with a secret. Still, he couldn’t argue that he was too busy to go pull the records himself.

Laura descended the stairs to the basement, passed the containment cells, and walked up to the large metal door that led to the computer room. On her right was a keypad, and her fingers punched in a code. The door hissed, then opened inward. Laura went inside and closed the door. The room was filled with a humming noise, which Laura ignored, knowing it was the computers lining the floor. Instead she thought about what a paranoid organization the Church really was. The computer room was like a fortress. The walls were three feet thick, and the damned door looked like it could withstand an air raid if it came down to it. She guessed they were just careful about protecting their research.

She walked into the tiny alcove with the computer in it, glancing at the fuse boxes on either wall. The machine was already on, and Laura tapped the space bar to get the screen to light up. It immediately warned her to enter a password or an alarm would sound. She typed in “LAZARUS,” which came up on the screen as “*******.” It then warned her to confirm. She did by typing the password in again.

The computer screen filled with a colorful picture of the MCA Headquarters building. Around it were small circular pictures of areas to visit. Laura put her hand to the screen and touched the circle labeled “Patients.” The circle grew to fill the screen and asked her to enter a name.

Laura wanted to check David’s record before pulling the records of the other patients Dr. Persey wanted. He had even admonished her, “Just these patients” when he handed her the list in his sloppy writing. She thought he was a bit testy when he said this, but she didn’t care. She wanted to see a picture of David before he had lost so much weight.

She typed “Spelung” too quickly to notice the mistakes, and the computer brought up a list of patients that were the closest match. She paged down to Sperling and brought the record up.

A Latin American man’s smiling face came up on the screen along with his statistics. Must be more than one David Sperling, Laura thought, raising her hand to the screen to access the next record. No, this was Consuelo Sperling. She just wasn’t used to the program. But what was that? “Normal Weight: 185. Weight In: 135. Believes he had prostate cancer. Parents deceased. No siblings.”

What the hell did that mean? ’Believes he had prostate cancer.’ And like David, no immediate family. Massive weight loss.

Laura quickly paged down to David’s record.

The press was all over David that night. He had eaten twice since breakfast, and was digesting his food just fine. His color and stamina improved with each meal. By the time of the press conference, he had not only gotten his jeans, but he looked a little bit like a celebrity. The press responded by treating him like one:

“What was it like in the freezer?”

“Do you remember anything about your past?”

“Have they paid you anything for participating in the experiment?”

“What has changed the most since the time you went under?”

“Have you talked to anybody that you used to know?”

“Have you been outside yet?”

“What will you do now?”

For the first time in his life David found that he wasn’t nervous in front of other people. The confidence he had searched for in vain before he was suspended came to him now. It welled up from deep within him, like a second nature he could tap into and exploit. He answered their questions without even breaking a sweat. By the time it was over he was actually enjoying himself.

He went back to his room with his newfound friend, and slipped into bed. Hannibal, cautious at first, settled into bed with him and began purring loudly. David wanted to watch more of the films – he was still fifteen years behind the present – but was too tired. Petting Hannibal, he continued reading Rolling Stone until he fell asleep.

John woke up and immediately noticed a terrible stench surrounding him. Looking at the seats in front of him, he understood why. He got up and left the theater. Acutely aware the stench was also emanating from him, he went up to his apartment and showered, trying to get rid of the smell. It was futile.

He got out of the shower and flexed his sinewy frame at himself in the mirror, suddenly finding his voice. It was awkward talking at first, but he quickly sounded normal, if not charming.

He said, “I am the Lizard King. I can do anything.”