Immortal Mistakes

a safeguard against permanent death

The body lying in the glass case was Henry. Chloe didn't recognise him. How could she? It looked nothing like him, bloated and grey from days of floating in a lake, but the genes didn't lie, it was him. 

She ran her hand down the glass. She wanted to touch him. To say she was sorry she hadn't been there, when he was caught in a fishing line, struggling for breath, alone. She had seen the scenes in his memory file. It hurt, death. It was scary. Chloe could forget that, let it wash over her, when the bodies were anonymous, but not when it was Henry. Her best friend. She should have been there. Someone should have been there as water sliced through his lungs.

Chloe had a decision to make. She combed through her mind, feeling the edges, trying to work out if she had been here before. Had she already made this decision? Did she have a memory of this somewhere, hidden away out of reach? Her mind was blank. As far as she knew Henry had never come into her Rejuvenation Clinic. None of her friends had.

She stood before the decision unarmed, unaided. She had no idea which was the right choice and which was the wrong one. Henry had asked her to give him all of his memories if he ever came through the clinic. To finally try their synthetic memories in a human.

"Shit," she said, into the stillness, smelling the stench of Henry's decaying body even though she knew it was trapped behind the glass. It filled her mind and reached down into her stomach making it churn. She looked around to make sure there was no one else in the printing room. The machines sat silent, under the bright glare of overhead lights, waiting to turn DNA and memories into people. 

Sounds of laughing conversation floated in from the lab next door. Chloe walked over to the side wall and shut the door between the lab and the printing room, pressing the bioreader to lock it.  The smell of death seemed to fill the room and she shuddered as she walked across the cool stone floor - it was always cool in the old stone building even in the middle of summer - and down the steps to the basement that stretched the entire length of the building. Rows and rows of metal shelving, with tiers of trays containing tiny vials filled the basement. A genome and memory file for each Queensland resident, a safeguard against permanent death. Chloe picked up two vials. Each contained a speck of white powder - DNA encoding all the information needed to create a human body, and all the memories to turn that body into her Henry. All the memories except a small nest of ideas that Chloe had protected, deleting them from Henry's mind and hiding them away ready to hand back to him when the time was right.

She was creating more memories that would need to be hidden but she couldn't think about that now.

Chloe put the vials in the left pocket of her skin suit and walked to the end of the basement, checking over her shoulder that no other researchers were there. If no one could see her, there would be no recording. She bent down and eased up the flagstone in the corner. It was synthetic and easy to move. Appropriate, she thought. She ran her finger over the vials nestled in the earth, hooking her nail under one and flicking it into her palm. The motion was quick and familiar. Had she done this before? She slid the vial into her right pocket, replaced the stone and went upstairs to the regeneration room, brushing past the bioreader on the glass case on her way to the copier. 

The case hummed at her touch and a smooth voice said, "Hello Professor."

"Hello ROD," Chloe said, giving him a pat. ROD was the latest Rejuvenation-on-Demand model, shipped in last month. A big glass box with a small control panel and long robotic arms and a brain of sorts. An ability to understand and communicate and to do things that humans could not.

"Rejuvenation required for Henry Kim. Genetic maintenance engineer. Body found in Lake Wivenhoe."

Her voice faltered as she said, "Be with you in a minute." She inserted the genome vial into the copier and pressed her finger to the bioreader. Her DNA code spurred the machine into action and a minute later she held two tiny vials. She slipped one back into her left pocket and replaced it with the memory vial from her right pocket. There was never a choice really. She would do what Henry had asked.  

Chloe inserted the vials into ROD's control panel and pressed his bioreader. Sequences flashed up on the glass. The ID codes from the vials lined up with the DNA sample taken from Henry's body. These were the right vials. Chloe closed her eyes and tapped her hand against the control panel. "Start printing," she said, holding her breath. The glass became opaque and a wave of heat spread over her as ROD incinerated the body inside his walls.

The glass cleared and ROD started to hum as the genetic code revealed its secrets. It was easy to forget that he was only a machine. When he printed a body, he seemed like a sculptor, gently working to create a final perfect form. Proteins and tissues assembled into a new human in thirty minutes. Chloe had seen it many times, but the process always mesmerised her. A robot could take a string of letters and turn it into a human. This was why she was a scientist.

She watched until ROD's metal arms stopped whirring and Henry stood in the middle of the printing machine. He was there, her friend, and he was almost alive again but his brown eyes were dull and staring. He couldn't see her standing in front of him, heart pounding.

"Ready for memory insertion," ROD said.

Again Chloe pressed her finger into the control pad. "Start memory insertion," she said, stepping back and waiting. Blood pulsed in her ears as one of ROD's hands clamped down on Henry's head transmitting electrical impulses, giving him back his memories, his thoughts, his self.

ROD's front glass panel swung open and the smells of blood and muscle and death and life swept over Chloe. Henry's eyes cleared. He turned around in the box looking lost until he saw Chloe. He gave her a tiny, almost smile and quick nod. His hands reached for his head, feeling the shape of it. Feeling it fill with thoughts and sensations, with smells and sounds and ideas. He moved his arms and legs and turned his hands over in front of him examining the palms. They all did that, the clones. Chloe choked back a sob. He was fine. Henry was fine.

He stepped out of the printer and enveloped Chloe in a hug. "How?" he said into her ear.

"Fishing accident."

"And the memories?"

"All there."

Is that what happened? Chloe was sure that's what she saw happening after the machine-brain interface, the connection between ROD and Henry, turned DNA into electrical impulses, impulses into thoughts, and thoughts into memories.

But once the memories were in place, Henry didn't look around and start asking questions. He didn't recognise her and realise where he was. Instead he lurched forward, stumbling onto his hands and knees and retched. He held his head in his hands, rocking back and forth and screamed, a low long sound of pain. Tears streamed from his eyes. He started convulsing, eyes flickering and rolling back.

Ice pooled at the back of Chloe's neck, running over her chest and clamping, clamping so she couldn't breathe. She forced the words out through the chill, "ROD, start emergency procedure."

Thanks so much for reading. Do you think Chloe made the right choice? What would you have done in her situation?