The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1) (9 page)

“See, the bodies they grew had been alive for four to eight
weeks. Their brains were growing but there was no input to make them develop. Humans
have very few native instincts and rely on the parents to teach them how to
survive, and that takes years. Nobody was willing to sacrifice time and
resources to “raise” a full grown human body that consumed as much as an adult.
It could take years before it could contribute on its own, and the sacrifice
was too much, at least when you look at it in raw terms of contribution versus
consumption.”

“Without the morality that religion brings, people looked at
it in the simplest of views. A human body that cannot think on its own and
survive without the aid of others is simply not human, it is just a mass of
biological organs, an animal that can provide something for humans.”

Jack had to take a drink of water just to keep from vomiting.
“This is making me ill, Doc. What about a newborn baby? A baby can’t survive on
its own, what is the difference?”

“Don’t forget that at the core, we are biologically
programmed to procreate and care for our offspring. Nobody gave birth to these
bodies. And if you looked at it from the purely mathematical perspective, a
baby does not require many resources to raise, at least compared to what a full
grown person requires, and while it requires sacrifice to raise a child, it is
a worthy investment that will return far more than the sacrifice.”

Jack understood this part, but it still left a nauseating
feeling in his gut. “Do they still do this?”

“Oh no, the EoS no longer exists. It was ironic, but the
policies that they put in place to become so successful were their ultimate
downfall. Regardless of the medical advances, the original founders of the EoS
realized that they would soon be unable to contribute to society themselves,
and be turned away from the very cities they built. They had to come up with a
way to change a lot of people’s minds in a hurry if they were going to remain
in power.

Teague paused here, almost as if remembering the events
himself but perhaps as if this was a turning point of some kind and needed a
dramatic pause. “The history they had learned from the spoils of the technology
hunters showed them that the fastest way to change a culture was with religion.
The tool they chose was Christianity.”

Jack frowned. “You say that like it is a bad thing.”

“Jack, don’t get me wrong, but if you look at history you
will see that some of the worst atrocities were done in the name of God. Religion
is a powerful force.”

“I don’t disagree with that, but religion can also prevent a
lot of atrocities. The world you have described is sickening to me, truly a
Hell on earth. Surely if people hadn’t given up their faith things would have
turned out different.”

“Perhaps, but to use a phrase you might be familiar with,
that is neither here nor there. Things happened the way they did.”

“Okay, go on.” He wasn’t happy with this, but it made sense.

Teague moved on quickly, “First, they brought forth a new
discovery. They declared that their inability to create life from nothing was
irrefutable proof that there was a God, a being that created life on earth, and
then created man. They used scripture from the bible to convince people that
the Great War that decimated humanity was in fact the Armageddon. The End Times
had come and gone, and all the people who deserved to spend eternity in Heaven
were taken and the rest left to rot on earth until they perish and spend
eternity rotting in Hell. They taught that they were all the descendants of these
damned, and they themselves were damned to an eternity in Hell as well. But
then they offered redemption, a way to cleanse their tainted souls and gain a
shot at getting into Heaven. All they had to do was follow the rules set forth
by God, given unto them, the scientists, to spread to the forsaken. They wrote
their own book of the bible, a new age warranted new rules.

“The general population had not been raised with religious morals,
but after a couple dozen years of living in the prosperity and comfort of the
cities, the idea of having an all-powerful God to watch over them and protect
them and give them eternal life was appealing. Nobody wanted to go back to the
way it was before the EoS came along. The most appealing aspect of religion,
however, was that God had created life, and therefore only God had the right to
end life. This meant society could not turn people out when they were no longer
able to contribute to society. Contribution was written into the new book of
the Holy Bible as an unbreakable rule, but once you were no longer able to
contribute, you could retire to enjoy the fruits of your labor. The popularity
of this concept grew very rapidly.

“Again, however, the creators of the EoS had stepped on
their own foot. The power shifted from the people who controlled the technology
to the people who controlled the church. At first these were the same people,
but the personalities best suited for scientific work were not necessarily
suited for religious leaders. Those previously in power formed and funded their
own churches, each with slight variations, but in most cases they lost control
of their creations when someone would come along who had the right personality
to rally people to their beliefs. The more people who joined their church, the
more power that church had. Lines were drawn, and tensions began to build. Each
new church had more lenient rules and better rewards in heaven. The struggle
for power eventually led to the same result most struggles end in: religious
war. Only, this time the technology was much further advanced than in 2012. Within
another decade, all that technology had been focused on eliminating each other
from the face of the planet. The EoS lasted about forty years in total before
they were completely destroyed.”

There was a minute or two of silence as this sunk in. All
this information made sense, but it still didn’t explain how he came to be. “So
the EoS died off, where does that leave me?” He took a drink of water and tried
to relax.

“Oh, I’m sorry Jack, you had asked if the EoS was still
around and... oh never mind, I just got side tracked. Okay, in a way, the most
important discovery
ever
came from the formation of these
churches within the EoS. Every so often, someone comes along that just looks at
things in a different way than anyone else. There was one scientist, we know
him as Christopher, who had quietly worked for years on studying the
development of the human brain. His research focused on teaching computers to
be creative. He figured that the key was in the way a person views things, or
more simply put, his upbringing. To learn how various events in one’s life lead
to being more or less creative, he studied how the brain stores memory. His
goal was to give computers a history, or a set of memories, so they would
develop goals for themselves rather than be slaves to the creativity of the
person programming the computer. In the process, he figured out not only how
the brain creates memories and personality, but also how to duplicate the cells
that have memory stored in them, and cause those cells to develop in another
brain. Unfortunately the only way to ‘read’ the memories was to destroy those
cells, which would kill the person whose memories you were reading. Because of
this he could only use freshly dead people in his experiments, or people who
were about to die. In his first successful experiment, he took the memories from
a person who had just died, and grew them into another person’s brain so that
person now had the memories of the dead person. It was something of a success,
and that person now had some memories from the one who was dead. However, the
conflicting memories drove the person insane in a relatively short period of
time.

“With the success and the knowledge that two personalities
in one brain is a bad idea, Christopher wanted to take that technology and
apply it to a brain that was a blank slate. The only blank brains he knew of
were the clones that were being grown to replace people’s organs. They were
perfect candidates, but if he grew a full set of memories into them, then they
were no longer just meat, now they were people who could contribute to society,
and of more value than just an organ. Keep in mind that wealth and power were
gained from the contribution that your technology gave to the society, and the
scientists who were making cloned body parts were enjoying a very high status
in the EoS. Because of this, they did not allow Christopher to experiment with
their cloned bodies for fear they would lose that status. His research on
creating memories came to a halt and he started to look back to applying the
memories to the thinking computers.

“Then along comes the religious folks, saying that God gave
us the gift of life, and we need to treat human life as the most important thing
on earth. In other words: no more making humans just for spare parts, even if
they couldn’t think for themselves. The power shifted away from the scientists
who cloned and the door was open for Christopher to grow a person and copy a
brain from a freshly dead person into the newly growing brain.

“Again, Success! And again, a failure. The first time they
did it, the person woke up, remembered that he was dying, and that triggered
his body to die again. That was an issue.”

Teague paused and took a drink of water. “So he spent some
time figuring out how to determine the new memories from the old memories. Once
he got that down, he transplanted all but the last few days from a dead man’s
brain into a new brain in one of the clones. Another success, and another
failure. The successful part was that the clone didn’t have memory of dying, so
he didn’t die right away. For all intents and purposes, he functioned normally.
It took a few hours for his brain to reconnect with the rest of the body,
something to do with the way the body was grown at such an accelerated pace,
kind of how it takes a baby time to really see things, and to move and figure
out how to use its body. Like the accelerated growth of his body, his brain
learned quickly and soon the person was up and moving, even walking and
talking.”

Jack understood that this was why it took him time to see
and move the previous day. “You said it was another failure though. What
happened?”

“It was quite simple, actually. The man’s memories did not
match his body. They put his memories in someone else’s body. In the first
experiments, Christopher was able to put some memories into someone else’s
brain, but that person had already established his identity. His brain knew
exactly how his heart worked, how all his organs worked, and most importantly,
who he was physically. He didn’t die, he just went insane from the conflicting
memories. In this latest experiment, he put an incompatible set of memories in
a body, and within hours, the man’s heartbeat was irregular, his breathing was
out of sync, his liver and kidneys started to fail, and eventually, he died. The
subconscious memory was too unfamiliar with the body and it caused him to shut
down. Like I said earlier, the mind is an incredible computer. It knew those
things weren’t right and rejected them.”

Teague took a final drink of water, then got up and put the
cup on the counter. He started pacing again as he finished the story. “So it
was obvious at that point you had to put the memories into an exact clone to
get it to work, and when he tried it, it worked! He cloned a freshly dead man,
accelerated his growth, implanted the memories, and he had the first successful
true clone of another human being.

“Christopher had done what nobody had ever been able to do,
and he never would have been able to do it if it hadn’t been for the religious
groups that outlawed the harvesting of the cloned bodies. In a manner of
speaking, God had been the catalyst that led to the success.”

Jack looked at him in silence for a full minute, taking in
the whole sequence of events that led up to the ability to re-create a human
with all his memories, then finally asked a question. “So how come you said it’s
the most important discovery ever?”

Teague stopped pacing, sat down across from Jack, looked him
in the eye and said, “Quite simply because it will save humanity from
extinction.”

“Come on doc, isn’t that a little melodramatic? How is it
that cloning will save humanity?” Jack was skeptical of the idea. Humans had
been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years without the need to clone; he
found it hard to believe that it was now that important. The story behind it
all was logical enough that he could buy into it, and he was pretty much
convinced that Teague was telling him the truth here. How else could he explain
where he was? This would have to be the most elaborate hoax ever, if it were
not true. There was only one thing he could think of that didn’t make sense. Teague
was about to try to answer his question when Jack blurted out another question.
“You said that Christopher had to use a freshly dead brain to clone, how is it
that you used mine after three hundred and fifty years?” Jack leaned back,
convinced that he had knocked a big hole in Teague’s story.

“That’s a good question, and it ties in with your first
question.” Teague said it like he was proud to have gotten this far. “First let
me go back to the EoS. I told you that they used their technology to try to
wipe each other out. Well, they pretty much succeeded. One religious group in
particular was sort of hell bent on wiping out humanity. They figured that God
had meant for humanity to become extinct in the first big war that started in
2012. They genetically engineered a virus that took out the gene in male DNA
that allows for reproduction. It was a time bomb virus that only affected male
babies that were conceived by men and women who were exposed to the virus. So
it took over fifteen years before anyone knew that it had happened, and by then
there wasn’t a human on the planet that hadn’t been exposed to the virus. There
was about a one in six thousand immunity rate, but it was so incredibly small
that humanity didn’t stand a chance. The next generation was nearly the last to
be born naturally. On top of this, all the biological warfare still going on
was killing people by the thousands.”

“Are you saying that it wiped out everyone? Then what about
you and the people here? Are you the last people on earth?” This had taken Jack
by surprise. He hadn’t seen this one coming. He could deal with a world torn
apart by nuclear fallout because even radiation had a half-life and eventually
it would be gone, and humans could once again rebuild. But infertility, how do
you overcome that?

“Remember when I told you that the EoS shared its knowledge?”
Jack nodded. “Well, once Christopher was successful in a complete clone, he
published his work and traded it for status and wealth. The power may have
shifted away from the scientists, but this was a pretty big deal and while it
didn’t give him much political status in the EoS, it afforded him better
facilities to work in and a better lifestyle. By the time the information got
to everyone, however, the power struggles had already begun, and most of the
scientists were either creating new ways to kill people, or finding cures for
the stuff the others were making. When the fighting was over, and only a
handful of people were left in each city, it was clear that the only way to
survive was to use that technology to clone each person as they died. I and a
handful of people that live in this bunker are cloned descendants of those few
survivors.”

Jack thought about that for a second. “That would mean that
you have all the memories from all the copies of yourself since...”

“Yes,” Teague said, “according to my memories, I have been
alive for one hundred and eighty years. I am the third clone of my original.” Teague
got up and excused himself to use the restroom, and to let Jack think for a few
minutes.

* * *

Jack was deep in thought when Teague returned. In a very
short time a huge amount of information had been delivered, but it was still
just information, it didn’t feel like a history, and certainly not a history of
the world Jack had lived in. Many events in his life had changed his
perspective of people, his country, and the world in general, but nothing like
this. Billions of people dead from unnatural causes. The near extinction of
humanity and the destruction of most life on earth. These were not things that
were easy to accept. He needed a break, time to come to terms with it, but
there were still questions that needed answers before he could take a break.

Teague refilled their water glasses and took a seat across
from Jack. He didn’t speak for several minutes, perhaps waiting for a cue from
Jack, or maybe because he was collecting his thoughts. Jack finally ended the
silence, picking up as if they hadn’t paused the conversation. “Well, that
explains how you know so much of the history. But that still doesn’t explain
how I got to be here. How did you clone me without a fresh body?” That term
still bothered Jack, but he just wasn’t ready to process it yet.

Teague nodded and said, “Let me go back to some history from
your time.” Teague settled in the chair across from Jack again, and began. “Sometimes,
the creativity of a story teller can spur a scientific discovery. Someone comes
up with an idea that is out of this world, and years later someone else decides
that it isn’t too far-fetched, and figures out how to do it. You got to see a
lot of the race to get into space between the Russians and the Americans. You
missed the moon landing by only a couple years.”

Jack smiled at this. “We made it huh? And we beat the
Russians?”

“Yes. You did. My point is, there were stories for decades
about traveling to the moon. Eventually, it happened. Another popular science
fiction story line was where someone is frozen, maybe in an avalanche, and is discovered
and brought back to life in the future. In 1967, a company in the United States
opened its doors based on this premise. They were selling immortality. They
figured that in the future there would be a way to cure all illnesses, and if perfectly
preserved, a person could be brought back to life when the cure for whatever
killed them was discovered. It was quite popular among the wealthy, and the
company thrived.

“Unfortunately for them, the facility was destroyed in the
war. Furthermore, nobody had ever figured out how to revive someone who had
been dead for more than a few minutes.” Teague looked at Jack and said, “Jack,
do you recall that last project you were working on, not too far from the city
of Great Falls, Montana?”

A tingle went up Jack’s spine. He
knew
that had
something to do with him being here. “Yeah, is that what that place was? They
froze people?”

“The facility you were building before your last memory was
completed in February 1967. It was designed to house a cryogenic storage unit
for experimentation. The military was freezing soldiers who died in battle and
some who died of incurable diseases like cancer, in order to try reviving them
when medical technology improved. The cryogenic capsules required very little
power, and originally a small hydroelectric power plant was built a few miles
away to power it. In 2010 the facility was made to be self-sufficient and a
small, automated nuclear power source was placed in the lower levels with
enough fuel to last hundreds of years, as long as nothing went wrong. They
sealed up the complex with the plan to go back in a few generations when
medical science progressed further.”

* * *

Jack didn’t know what to say. It all made sense now. Somehow
Phil had gotten him in as a candidate, and here he was three hundred plus years
later, exactly as planned. But the revelation didn’t quench his curiosity, at
least not quite yet. “So you found me and cloned me, and with a frozen brain
you were able to recreate my memories?”

“Yes, it was a stroke of luck, or fate, or whatever you want
to call it. We were all that was left of humanity, basically waiting until
enough accidents happened where there were not enough of us left to keep
cloning or when the equipment we use to clone ourselves irreparably breaks down.
I told you I have been around for a long time, and for many decades we have built
machines to scour the earth looking for other survivors. It is a bleak task that
yielded very low results, and in the past two decades we have not found a single
undocumented survivor.”

“If people were unable to bear children, how are there any
survivors at all?”

“Women are carriers of the virus but are never infected,
they don’t have the gene that the virus attacks. Only the men born of these
women are infected and end up infertile. If a man was immune to the disease, he
could father children, but since all women are carriers, every baby is a
carrier as well. This leads to an exponential infertility rate across the
generations.”

“Exponential?”

“Yes, the chance of a male child never exposed to the virus to
be immune to it is about one in six thousand. The chance of that man to father
an immune child is about one in twenty. Before this virus, it was estimated
that nearly six million people existed on this continent. With the ascendancy
of the EoS, birth rates were up and for each person alive, at least one new
child was born before that person died. After the virus infected the entire
population, around 10,000 men of the next generation were fertile. Between the
wars going on and the still relatively high rate of infection, fewer than a
thousand fertile men were estimated to exist after the cities began to fall.

“Hundreds of communities across the continent, mostly small
in population, were formed by survivors. By the time we had the technology in
place to start looking for survivors, the total number of fertile men were
estimated to number in the hundreds if not less.”

“Doc, I am no mathematician but you make it sound like
humanity doesn’t have a chance, even with those few hundred fertile men.”

“In a way you are exactly right. But that doesn’t mean
humanity hasn’t tried to find a way.” Teague said this with a hint of a smile.

“What exactly does that mean?” He suspected he knew, but
wanted to be sure before he gave his initial suspicion any merit.

“Basically, it means that once they knew that most babies
born would be infertile, they started having a LOT more babies. In the
communities we found, it wasn’t unusual for fertile men to father dozens of
children, sometimes hundreds, and from dozens of different women. The culture
changed very dramatically mostly because of the instinctive need to preserve
the species. People could no longer afford to hold any taboo or conservatism
toward sex, and monogamy was out the window as well. The only insurance of
continuation of the species was to copulate far more frequently and to spread
the virile seeds as far and wide as possible. Most communities didn’t have the
knowledge or equipment to check for fertility, so as soon as a boy reached an
age where he was fertile, he was expected to attempt to get as many women as
possible pregnant. In many cases this started as young as eleven years old, and
until it was determined that they were infertile, they were encouraged to continue
trying at least until about twenty years old. Because of the immediate
necessity to keep the population alive, recordkeeping was seldom accurate as females
were often encouraged to have sex with many different males during each of
their cycles. So, successful fertilization was not always a sign of a man’s
fertility. Sex became a regular part of life in a way no other human culture
has ever seen.”

“Do you find this as disturbing as I do? Holy shit, Doc, you
are telling me that for the last hundred and fifty years humanity has whiled
away its days in one big orgy?” On the surface, it sounded like a dream for any
man, but his conservative Catholic background still made it seem incredibly
immoral, unclean, and unsavory.

“That would be a crude way to put it, but yes, sexual
relations became as common as a handshake. And I can understand why this is
disturbing to you. However, I grew up in a completely different time than you,
where certain things were necessary for the survival of our species. I was
never exposed directly to this sort of culture, I was born infertile so there
has never been any pressure on me to impregnate women, at least not to the
degree that many of the communities since the fall of the EoS have had to
endure.”

“So how many of these communities are still out there?”

“Well, despite the low rate of potency in the population, the
efforts of the community to keep the fertility rate up led to sizeable
populations, at least compared to what would have been if they had stuck to a
monogamous culture. But even so, each generation held fewer and fewer fertile
men. Plus, the lack of control over this cultural change led to some pretty
major issues. Inbreeding and disease were two of the larger issues. After a
couple generations, it was extremely likely that the man who is getting her
pregnant is a half-brother or cousin.”

“That is just wrong Teague, any way you explain it.”

“I agree, and from my viewpoint, one of science, it disturbs
me to think that this sort of activity, while having the right intentions, was
executed so poorly. Some decent records would have gone a long way toward
keeping inbreeding to a minimum. Many of these communities have failed over the
years as a direct result.”

Obviously Teague’s sense of morality was far different from
Jack’s. This was neither the time nor place to point that out, however, this
line of conversation was both interesting and disturbing and it was time to get
back on track. “So you have made an effort to find these communities and rescue
them?”

“Yes, with a little success. Over the years we managed to
find about a hundred survivors and bring fifteen of them in. Not everyone was
interested in living with us or the other communities like ours. We represent,
to some, the EoS, or at least the remnants of it. Our groups are mostly made up
of cloned infertiles. Like I said, in the past two decades we have failed to
locate any more undocumented survivors. We try to get along with the other
communities, but each group is very protective, and for good reason. We don’t
know exactly how many fertile men each community has. We have done our best to
keep inbreeding to a minimum, and part of this effort involves arranging virile
men to impregnate women from other groups, in exchange for the same from them. Even
so, of the breeding population here, most are related at least as second or
third cousins. After over a hundred years, we have expanded our group to about fifty
people; about eleven of them are virile men, able to father children. Despite
careful selection of mate combinations, there just wasn’t enough diversity in
the gene pool, and things have slowed down.”