Immortal (7 page)

He recognized the familiar logo on the truck's panel:
Aurora Life Extension

Chapter 20

Josh arrived home, closed the
door behind him and locked it. His eyes wandered to his recently purchased bookshelf and the stack of books and periodicals on it.

He wasn't going to need them for a while.

He walked over to the coffee table and picked up a copy of Neurology Today and flung it across the room. It slapped harmlessly against the wall and fell to the floor. The gesture didn't make him feel any better. In fact, it made him feel worse, and the effort exhausted him. He picked up the magazine, smoothed out a few wrinkled pages, then dropped it back on the table. Plopping down in the armchair by the window, Josh stared vacantly out at the cactus, whose spring flowers were in full bloom. He was gripped by overwhelming sadness. He knew he had better shake this self-pity if he was going to accomplish anything. Josh struggled with a deepening sense of self-doubt. By undermining his confidence, he worried that maybe Hench was right. Maybe he had erred in administering the drug that killed his patient. Maybe he had used the wrong concentration. Maybe Cynthia Harwell's death was his fault.

Hours slipped by as Josh's preoccupied mind wrestled with a growing sense of worthlessness. Everything he'd ever done seemed stupid and pointless. He'd spent years grooming himself for a top position in his field, and just when he's made it, it's all taken away in an instant.

Josh watched the sky change from powdery blue to dark crimson as the day ebbed, and night approached. As he sat there in the gathering gloom, he suddenly had an idea. He wasn't helpless despite the fact he felt that way right now. There were some things he could do to affect his destiny. With a renewed sense of resolve, Josh pushed himself out of the armchair and went to the desk drawer. From it, he yanked out the phone book and scanned the pages for the number of Kelly Frock; the nurse who'd cared for Cynthia Harwell the night she died.

He wasn't going to let Hench get away with ruining his career. At least not without a fight. He held his breath as he ran his index finger down the names. He stopped at K. Frock in Scottsdale. That was promising. He punched the number into his cell and waited. The phone rang once, twice, then a third time. He was ready to hang up when a cheerful voice came through the receiver.

Josh realized he hadn't given a thought as to how to begin. Abruptly, he said hello and gave his name. He wasso unsure of himself, he was afraid she might hang up, but before he had time to think about it any more, he heard her ebullient "Hello, Dr. Logan!" She sounded genuinely glad to hear from him.

"I'm glad you called. I was hoping you would. I heard about all your problems at the institute."

"I'm sorry to call you on the spur of the moment like this, but I was wondering if we could meet somewhere and talk?"

"Well, sure," Kelly said.

"If it's inconvenient, I could-"

"No, no! It's fine. Come on over," Kelly said before Josh had a chance to finish.

Then she gave him directions to her house.

Chapter 21

The Aurora Life Extension compound
lay amid tall desert cactus, its grounds encircled by an electrical fence, its entrance guarded by expressionless young men wearing side arms. The majority of its laboratories and storage facility was secured underground; the compound was a place commuters passed every morning without noticing. Its featureless exterior discouraged speculation about what went on inside.

Victor Stone, a name he had taken after being smuggled out of Soviet Georgia years earlier, arrived there before eight every morning from his small, lonely house in Phoenix. He showed his ID badge and security clearance at the gate, then used his passkey to move through the reception area.

This same key granted him access to an unmarked restricted elevator that serviced only one building's underground level. One story down, he used his pass again to open the thick steel door that guarded Aurora's most heavily secured labs.

Once inside this nest of PhDs', high tech equipment and haze of fluorescent light, he reached a door housing a numeric punch pad. He felt the same sensation as he always did as he passed through these doors ... that he was entering the realm of the future.

Inside the vaulted lab, the three hundred pound Russian sensed the faint echoes of hushed conversations all around him, as if the words were filtering down from the offices above.

Here, in Stone's private research area, is where the real future of Aurora lies.

Nanotechnology, like all great scientific advancements, had been born of necessity. During the 1980s medicine witnessed a revolution in surgery with the advent of powerful microscopes and advances in microsurgery. Surgeons had advanced from stitching wounds and amputating limbs to repairing hearts in the tiniest of patients. Yet even the best microsurgeon cannot cut and stitch finer tissue structures. From a cellular perspective, even the most delicate surgery is still a butcher job. Only the ability of the cells to abandon their dead, regroup, and multiply makes healing possible.

With the development of the atomic force microscope in 1985, manipulation of biomolocules and subcellular components on the molecular level became a reality. The implications for repair of damaged tissues with such nanotechnological devices are profound.

Aurora saw the future of cryonic suspension in nanotechnology. A technology that could dexterously manipulate individual atoms could restore any injured tissue to a state of healthy function. This even solved the problem of brain tissue injury from freezing, the main criticism of cryonics by its most hardened opponents. Despite the opinion of many of Aurora's former scientists that nanotechnology was still in its infancy, the director invested heavily in equipment and personnel.

In truth, nanotechnology was not in its infancy, at least not in Russia. Only the Soviet Union had a more sinister plan for it. They wanted to use it on the battlefield. It was a silent and invisible killing machine, able to attack unseen and with the minimum of effort by the attacker. Jacob Crane, the unfortunate board member had found out just how deadly it could be, two days earlie. The
insect
he felt sting him was not an insect at all, but a small microscopic flying robot, armed with a hypodermic needle a hundred times smaller than a human hair. What it injected him with was obviously catastrophic. Aurora, however, had a more ultimate purpose for it:
immortality.

The moment of truth had come two weeks earlier. Stone had implanted a few nanobots into one of the cryo patients. The patient's brain was infarcted in every major region after being 'frozen' for ten years. Despite this, after a two-hour nanosurgery, every area of infarct had been cleared from the brain tissue.

Today, Stone would take the next step.

Resuscitation
.

Chapter 22

Kelly Frock's house was a
charming rancher with a view of the mountains. It was painted tan with white shutters. A two-car garage sat on the left and a screen porch on the right.

Josh stopped in the street across from the house and pulled up to the curb. He sat there and studied the house for a few minutes while he thought of what he would say. Never before had he gone to someone's house looking for credibility and an ally. What if she didn't want to help him, despite her warmth on the phone?

Gathering up his courage, he put the car in gear and pulled into Kelly's driveway. He went to the front door and knocked.

Kelly opened the front door before he had a chance to ring the bell. She was dressed in cut-off jeans and a white sleeveless t-shirt. "Dr. Logan, come in." She held his gaze for a moment, then added "How about a beer?" She shoved the door closed with her bare foot.

"Beer would be great. I'm still not used to this stifling heat."

Kelly grinned. "You never get used to it."

Josh found himself in a wide archway that led to a huge great room on the right. The house was much larger then it had appeared from outside. Inside, the house was spotless.

Kelly returned a minute later with two beers and handed one to Josh.

"Thanks," he said, popping the tab.

Kelly sat Josh on a leather couch. He put his beer on the coffee table.

"So, I take it you wanted to talk about your dismissal at Ford," Kelly said.

Josh nodded. "Is that what they're calling it? Dismissal?
Shaft
would be a better word."

"I agree," Kelly said. "Hench had me in his office yesterday. Grilling me about Cynthia Harwell."

Josh nodded. "Figures."

"I've been doing some checking of my own," Kelly said. "The maintenance man said he saw someone entering Mrs. Harwell's room the night she went bad. He didn't recognize them, he was on the other end of the hall, but he said it was a tall man."

"That could have been one of her other doctors checking on her."

"True, but it is something to look into. I don't believe for one minute the story Hench is circulating about wrong drug dosage," Kelly said.

Josh heaved a sigh. "I always double-check the dosage on any medication. That's a type of reflex behavior that's hard to specifically remember. I can't believe I used 20 milligrams. I really need the post op records."

"I think I can help with that," Kelly said.

Chapter 23

Inside Aurora Life Extension,
Dr. Victor Stone stood expressionless as he stared at the lifeless corpse. Despite all his hopes for a success this time, he was unable to reanimate the subject.

He turned to a central panel behind him and flipped off a series of switches. The high-pitched whine of machines soon ebbed and then the room was quiet. Beside him, the Director gazed at the gurney where the corpse lay.

"W into. Ient wrong? he asked.

"It has something to do with the AV node conduction. His heart wouldn't conduct an impulse long enough to get a stable rhythm started."

"Seems simple enough."

"It is. I'll have to autopsy him and look at the ventricles. I'll have another try at it in a couple of days."

The director frowned. "You know, Stone, you keep costing me money and more money. Now I hope you can show me something more positive than that lifeless lump of crap over there, next time. I'm tired of waiting. There are others in your field, don't forget."

After the Director left, Stone heaved a deep sigh.
So he had failed this time.
He knew he was closer than ever. Inability to resuscitate was never conclusive proof that it was an impossible prospect.

Stone mused. Only a few years earlier, before electrical shock to the heart was the norm, medical science considered a human being "dead" when the heart stopped. Now that "dead" definition has been changed to "resuscitable".

Soon, he thought, I'll show them ... soon ... soon.

* * *

The Director seldom felt weary, but today had taken its toll. Nothing had gone as anticipated-the tragic discovery by Hench that his new doctor at Ford, Josh Logan, was an anti-cryonic suspension advocate; the difficulties of keeping Aurora's sensitive information a secret; and now, the latest failure in the lab.

It was supposed to be finished by now.

It seemed ironic that the most technically difficult part of the plan had turned out to be the least problematic. The tissue repair, completed months ago, and healing of the ischemic injury had come off without a hitch. Once the anomaly in the subject was repaired, all that remained was to finish the nano-removal and cardiovert the patient. Stone was slated to have the first subject resuscitated and then move on to the important work. The real work of Aurora.
The GPO.

But the cardioversion didn't work. When the Director witnessed that failure, he realized that the whole plan was in jeopardy. Without a cardioversion and test subject resuscitation, soon, the vitrification process they were using would make all the suspension subjects useless frozen meat. Using an innocent test subject to pursue his dream had been the beginning. Now things were unraveling fast.

Jim Davis, Klein, and a host of others. All under the desert sand. Plus the kill that had just taken place at Ford.

Soon to be added to the list: Marty Branigan, Josh Logan, and the nurse snooping around Ford trying to undermine Hench.

There is no other way,
the Director thought, fighting growing remorse.
Far too much is at stake.

Chapter 24

Kelly Frock was a runner.

Nearly every morning between seven and eight o'clock, Kelly put on her white gym shorts with the blue reflective stripe on the side, tucked her hair under a ball cap, laced up her Nike running shoes, and ran ten miles. She was thirty-five but looked ten years younger, a fact that she attributed to her lifetime commitment to running.

Sunday morning, she left her house at seven and ran four blocks north to Palm Avenue, the main street through Desert Cove, her development tucked in the middle of Scottsdale. She turned left and headed down Los Oslos Boulevard toward the empty desert. The shops along the street were closed except the obligatory twenty-four-hour donut joints, whose neon lights were perpetually lit. Few cars were on the highway and not another person was in sight. Scottsdale was a bustling desert city, but this particular Sunday morning it seemed everyone had deserted the town. As she ran down the main street, shallow pools of water from the early morning lawn sprinklsplashed up on her legs as she picked up her pace and began to find her stride.

She loved getting up at dawn to run, and in the summer it was more pleasant to put in her ten miles before the thermometer began to climb toward the usual one hundred degrees. Heat or not, she simply loved the early morning and the promise of a new day.

Now she reached the Phoenix Avenue loop at the foot of the mountains, sprinted across a time-share parking lot and back toward the boulevard. Above, the sky held only a few scattered clouds and the sun's yellow radiance was just beginning to warm the asphalt.