The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1) Page 8

  Chuck just smiled at Teague and said, “Bah, it isn’t like you haven’t had the practice. I figured you would’ve taught him how to pilot a flyer by now.” The smirk on his face made it clear that he took no offense to anything the doc said to him. “Jack, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, but I need to hit the rack. We can chat later this afternoon or tomorrow, after I’ve caught a few hours.” He got up from the table, set the now empty bottle on the counter, and headed toward the door. As he passed Teague he slugged him on the shoulder and said, “Don’t fill his head with too much of your bullshit doc, he seems like a decent guy.” Teague just shook his head as Chuck left the room, letting out a decent belch that echoed sharply down the hallway.

  Jack was kind of dazed by the whirlwind encounter with the man. He had about a hundred questions, but he hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise. He looked at Wendy, half expecting her to get up and follow Chuck out of the room, but she gave him a look that said she wasn’t leaving just yet. “I suppose you told Doc here all about last night?” she said a little tentatively, in a not too accusing tone of voice. Teague was taking the bottle that Chuck had emptied and putting it in a stainless steel looking cabinet that had a few other bottles and a couple dishes from breakfast in it. He closed the door and pressed a button on the top of the door, and a whooshing sound was faintly heard coming from within the cabinet.

  He looked at Wendy and said, “No! I mean, I told him that you visited last night but not...” He stopped mid-sentence because he realized that even though he hadn’t shared any more than that, Teague pretty much knew what went on. He blushed a little, feeling embarrassed that he had let the cat out of the bag. “I mean, he sort of figured it out and I...” once again he stopped because there was no good way to say it.

  She gave him a look as if she was offended and Jack sort of withered in his chair, but then she smiled and said, “Don’t worry about it; I knew Doc would get it out of you, I just wanted to make you squirm a little.” Jack was relieved that he hadn’t made some social misstep and relaxed in his chair a little. Wendy leaned in and gave him a peck on his cheek and whispered in his ear, “I had a good time last night, maybe I’ll visit you again later.” And with that she got up and walked out, not meeting either man’s eyes.

  He looked up at Teague as if to ask if the last few minutes in the room was normal around here. Teague just smiled and said, “People here are always a bit odd around the new guy. Nobody is sure what to say yet.”

  Jack had picked up on a lot in the last few minutes. The first thing he noticed was that the two new strangers’ speech – well, Wendy wasn’t quite a stranger – was a little different than Teague’s. He couldn’t exactly put his finger on specifically what was different, except maybe Teague spoke a little more ‘formally’, with much less slang. Jack was never good at picking out accents or dialects, so maybe there was a subtle difference in accent he could only sense when comparing the two side by side. Whatever it was, he filed that piece of information away in his head for future use. Just another piece of the puzzle.

  Next, it was obvious he was not the first one to be here under these ‘circumstances’, and it was also obvious he was not here because someone felt charitable or wanted his company. He was here for a reason, and now on top of figuring out where he was and how he came to be here, he wanted to know why he was here. That might be the most important question, he thought to himself.

  Perhaps sensing that Jack was working some details out in his mind, Teague let the silence linger for a few more moments. Finally, he broke the silence, “Well, now that you have tasted a bit of the local culture, shall we continue?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “So as I was saying, the war put research into cloning on hold for about a hundred years. As a matter of fact, the only research going on in that time was either on how to kill people, or how to save them.”

  Jack wasn’t ready to get back into the story yet, so he asked, “Doc, why am I here? I mean, it’s obvious I’m not just a hobby for you, there has to be a good reason you went through the effort you did to...” He searched for the right words. Saying they ‘cloned’ or ‘grew’ him felt kind of weird. “You know what I mean. Can you just cut to the chase and tell me why I’m here?”

  Teague hesitated. “I don’t want to drop too much on your brain and make you process it all at once Jack. I’m not saying you will, but people have snapped by hitting them with too much at once. I feel like you have accepted that you are not in 1966 anymore, even though your memory tells you that less than twenty four hours ago you were heading into surgery. Until you know how you came to be here though, you probably won’t understand the why.” Teague was pacing again, and again Jack had the impression that he was more of a psychologist than a medical doctor. He was phrasing his words carefully. “Okay, I will tell you this much. You are here for a reason Jack. We need help, and we think you are – qualified – to do what we need, in more ways than one.”

  Jack accepted the answer, not really expecting to hear anything different. Nearly all his life he had been ordered to do things, and he was used to doing what was required of him, even when it meant his life was on the line. He was a square peg and if there was a square hole, he could fit in it. There were still a million questions however, and one in particular had been burning in his mind for a while now. “Do I still have cancer?” It was simple question, but the implications of any answer weighed heavily on him. Three days ago he was told that his life was coming to an end, and now it appeared he had some kind of second chance. The idea of being told that was not the case was a bit frightening.

  “No, Jack, I can happily say that not only do you not have cancer, it is extremely unlikely you ever will. Not only that, but any other genetic defects you might have had were cleansed from your system before you were reconstructed. As things sit right now, you could very well live to be a hundred years old.”

  A weight lifted from Jack’s mind and emotion gripped his heart. He didn’t realize how tense he was in waiting for that answer, and the relief came so quickly that he actually teared up for a second. He looked away from Teague and closed his eyes.

  Not sure if he could trust his voice, and not wanting to look so damned vulnerable, he cleared his voice and simply said, “That’s good to hear doc, thanks!” There was a pause as he struggled to change the subject. “Was that really beer that Chuck was drinking?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. I imagine you would not think it tastes like beer any more than you would think that our water tastes like a Pepsi.” Teague chuckled at his own attempt at humor. Jack got it – there probably hadn’t been a human alive who had tasted Pepsi in hundreds of years. Teague was a bit of a nerd. “Some of the guys set up what they call a ‘micro brewery’ a few years ago. The ingredient we use in our food is combined with some specific bacteria and some vegetable matter and allowed to ferment. Once processed, the resulting beverage is said to taste something like ‘root beer’. It has a ten percent alcohol content. It is a popular drink around here, especially considering the alternative beverages, but it is in pretty short supply. I would prefer you wait until later today to try one, we have a lot to go over today and I need you staying sharp.”

  Jack smiled and said, “I was just curious doc, I was serious when I told Chuck it was too early for a beer. Speaking of Chuck, there seemed to be a little tension between you two. Care to tell me why?”

  “Bah. Chuck and I get along fine, he is just a soldier through to his core, and doesn’t really respect the more... educated people. I guess you could say he is sort of a bully.” Teague seemed to think about the word bully and nodded. “He is a good man though, and I can honestly say he would lay down his life for me. Even so, I don’t take his crap, and I give it back just the same.”

  Jack knew the type, and easily accepted the explanation. He could tell that the doc was anxious to get on with his story though, so he finally relented with the questions and said, “Okay Doc, continue.”

  * * *

/>   Teague looked at his notepad to find where he left off. “Without getting into too much detail about the war, society had degraded to what you might think of as the Dark Ages. There was no ruling government, and people had about run out of reasons to fight. To make this worse, the population of the world was probably less than ten million.” He paused to watch the reaction on Jack’s face.

  “Oh, my Christ in heaven.” Jack whispered to himself. The thought was sobering. He tried to imagine a world where billions of people had died fighting for who knows what. “How could so many people have been killed? There were what, four billion people before the war?”

  “Closer to eight billion. At first you could number the dead in millions, but when the bombs dropped, the gloves were off. Biological warfare was the weapon of choice after the nukes, and in the process, entire continents were nearly wiped out. To this day there are entire cities filled with dust and bones lying where they dropped as invisible plagues swept through, killing nearly everyone in their path. Some of these plagues killed instantly, and some left people dying a horrible agonizing death, but they all accomplished the same thing in the end.” Teague fell silent for a full minute, and Jack took the opportunity to say a silent prayer. He knew it would take a long time for him to really appreciate that nearly the whole world was dead. Right now, he could only do what he could to understand his own situation.

  Teague finally broke the silence by clearing his throat. “When things settled out, there were many small communities, but nothing much larger than a few hundred people, only a few that numbered in the thousands. Most of the world was a wasteland filled with radiation or worse, completely uninhabitable by anything living. There was little food, few animals had survived the devastation, and those that did were usually tainted in some form, either radiation or biologically. People lived by scavenging what they could, but it was not easy. Although there was little reason to fight, it was truly a matter of only the strong surviving. If you were stronger than the next man, you could take what he had for yourself. The communities had rules, but it really came down to using everything you had to survive.

  “Then something changed. About the year 2100, give or take thirty years, a new type of community appeared. They called themselves ‘Enclaves of Science’ or EoS for short, and they were all led by groups of scientists and engineers. Nobody was really sure how these groups were related, or where all the scientists came from. Some people theorized that they were a network of people who had survived by living underground in old military bunkers for a few generations, and once they determined that the fighting was over, the educated descendants emerged to try to recreate civilization.

  “The fact was, they had some real talent in their numbers, and they had some real technology. It did not take long for their communities to grow. After all, if you had been living day by day, foraging for food and safe water, freezing in the wintertime, and fighting off people that would just as soon take everything you have and leave your body to rot as to help you, and someone said ‘come live with us, we have fresh water and electricity to heat our homes’, you would probably drop what you were doing and go have a look for yourself. All you had to do to live with these people was follow the rules, and rule number one was: everyone contributes. If you couldn’t or wouldn’t contribute, they showed you the door, and if you didn’t accept that, they killed you and hung your body at the gates of their cities to remind everyone that their rules had consequences.

  “It might sound harsh but given the conditions people had survived, it was like a paradise, and the EoS flourished. Soon they were powerful cities, and they sent out expeditionary groups to search out old technologies that had been thought lost in the war. Within a handful of years they had ascended to the level of technology that existed before the war, and soon after, they far exceeded it.”

  Jack was captivated with the history. He had questions, but he didn’t want to interrupt the doc to ask. Teague continued on. “In the cities, they had running water, electricity, and all the amenities of a modern civilization. Crime was almost non-existent, as punishment for committing a crime was either death or banishment. Banishment was the worse of the two. Inside the cities it was safe, and populations grew to tens of thousands. There were about a dozen cities in total, and each one shared their technology with the others, trading it as if it were currency. It was a completely open society, where wealth and status was measured by your contribution to the collective population.

  “However, as with anything on this world, life in the EoS was far from perfect. First off, there was no moral guidance. The entire population had come from poverty so overwhelming that human life itself had no value beyond a person’s ability to contribute. When life is not sacred, you have no moral ground to stand on. There were laws, like don’t murder, don’t steal, et cetera, but those were not in place because it was wrong to do so, they were in place because murdering your neighbor takes away his contribution to society and stealing creates tension and lowers productivity.”

  “What about religion? Surely there were religious folks who believed in an afterlife and the consequences of living an amoral life.”

  Teague was quick to answer, as if he had spent a lot of time considering this very point. “Have you read the Holy Bible Jack?”

  “More or less, I was in a Catholic orphanage for part of my life.”

  “Are you familiar with Revelations?”

  “The Apocalypse, yes…” Jack was seeing where this was headed.

  “Anyone who survived the devastation and still believed in God pretty much believed that they were the ones left behind, unworthy of heaven, destined to live a life of Hell on earth. Few people were inclined to pass that on to their children. Why teach a child about Heaven when you know they can never reach it? In their minds, God had abandoned humanity. So they abandoned God.”

  Jack shivered. His faith was never strong, and his taste of religion in the orphanage kept him from spending too much time even thinking about religion or God. But despite his weak faith, he couldn’t imagine a world where nobody believed in a higher power.

  Teague let that sink in for a moment before continuing then said, “With this lack of a moral base, science had no restraint. Technology grew at a rate that was almost uncontrollable. When computer processing was elevated beyond that of the human brain, things really heated up.”

  Jack interrupted again, “Computer? The last computer I saw was the size of a room but it could do math faster than any person I knew. What made these new machines so special?” When Jack was first in the army, a ‘computer’ was a man or woman who was really good at doing math, and he or she sat around all day computing things. Soon after the war, electronic computers came into existence and the last couple years had seen huge advances in that field. “I mean, I don’t know much about computers, but if it can multiply two numbers faster than me, isn’t it already smarter than me?”

  Teague tried to explain. “A lot of people confused the ability to crunch numbers with intelligence, but the fact is, a biological brain is an incredibly powerful processor. Are you familiar with math Jack?”

  Jack nodded. “I know a little bit, enough to do a little engineering on a job site.”

  “So you know what pi is? For finding the circumference of a circle?” Jack nodded again. “Well, pi is an infinitely long constant, and a human can spend weeks crunching numbers to get to a hundred decimal places, where a computer can figure pi to a million decimal places in a very short amount of time. On the other hand, a human brain can discover pi in the first place and then apply it to other mathematical equations to learn even more. A computer just couldn’t do that. By 2012 that computer you saw that took up a whole room could be put on a piece of silicon the size of a tip of a needle. The first IBM computers had transistors that numbered in the thousands; by 2012 they were making processors that had billions of transistors, but they were still just glorified calculators, and a simple rat’s brain could out think a computer. The scientists
in the EoS studied biological brains and used that knowledge to create computers that could think like humans, and soon they could learn like humans. It paved the way for some incredible discoveries.”

  The subject went way over Jack’s head, so he took the doc’s word for it. “So when did they figure out how to clone a person?” Jack was interested in the history, but he really wanted to get back to the point: How did he get here.

  “I’m getting there Jack, just have a little patience.” Teague said it with a smile, and Jack nodded, knowing that if he jumped ahead there would only be more questions. Better to answer those questions now.

  “Well, now they had computers that could think and learn faster than the smartest scientists, and hence the development of technology was accelerated a great deal. The biggest boundaries in science at the beginning of the twenty first century were breached and it seemed like there was no end to how advanced things could get. Medical science in particular leapt forward to imaginary heights. Cancer was cured. Disease all but eliminated, limbs and organs could be recreated with mechanical devices that were far better than what God himself had created. They did hit a limit however. They could keep a person alive by keeping his organs working, but they couldn’t stop the aging process, nor could they reverse it. Eventually the brain would age to a point where it no longer functioned, and you can’t replace the brain with a machine. And of course, they couldn’t create life in the first place.

  “They figured that if they were ever going to discover a way to do these things, that cloning was the technology that will lead to it. So they started playing with cloning again. The first approach was to see if they could make a perfect copy of someone, memories and all. They found the same thing that scientists from before the war found. You can make a perfect twin easily enough, but it’s the environment that makes a person what he is, not biology. Since you cannot recreate the experiences of a person, you cannot recreate that person.