Cryo-Man (Cryo-Man series, #1) (9 page)

I finally spot the cryo-room’s back wall through the freezing steam, where several of the chambers are missing their glowing blue light. One is even missing the medical folder from its slot; I look up to see several drops of condensation falling to the floor.
A red light suddenly begins to flash on the temperature gauge of a nearby chamber. I worry that I somehow caused this but the chamber is nowhere near where I stashed any body parts. The arrow on the temperature gauge begins to approach a line marked critical. I’m about to rush off to wake E but a tiny voice in back of my mind stops me.

Do I want another human/robot hybrid to be created? The thought of E focusing his attention on someone else causes a jealous itch to implant in the back of my mind. Do I really want E distracted from researching a way to get back my long-term memory?

I shake my head, disgusted that I’m actually having these thoughts. Who am I to play God and deny someone else a chance at life? Or at least having a chance at a robotic existence. I’m about to turn and rush from the room when I spot something out of the corner of my eye. I don’t know how but I can tell it’s important. I put the flashing red light out of my mind and head toward one of the first cryo-chambers in the room.

A body lies on a table outside the chamber, a mostly-normal looking body that has no discernible marks beyond the bluish tint. The only thing that makes this body unique is that the head is missing. I look from the body to my new robotic frame; somehow I know this body was once attached to my head.

For some reason, I feel more uncomfortable about looking at my body than I did the strangers. I hesitate to act and simply stare at it for a long time, hoping the sight of my former self will jog something loose in my mind. But nothing new comes to me, nothing but the memory of how that body failed and took me away from the young boy. I finally lift the frozen form and return it to the cryo-chamber. This is the first time I’ve felt okay about being part machine.

The floor in front of my chamber is slick but there’s not as much water or ice as I expect. A few more drops splash down on my helmet – tapping lightly against the glass – but I expected it to be worse. The slot of my medical folder is dotted with water but nowhere near filled. I look up toward the cryo-chambers above. They all appear to be fully functional, a bluish freezing glow emanating from all. Something doesn’t seem to be adding up.

“Your file was on the floor,” a voice says behind me, the suddenness nearly making me jump out of my metallic skin. E’s eyes are wider; I hope that means he’s more energized, not angry. I feel like I’ve been caught doing something naughty. I’m not sure what to say but E isn’t finished. “I assume the Institute’s employees realized some of the cryo-chambers would be more susceptible to malfunction over time. If I had to guess, I’d say they were in the process of making repairs when they finally abandoned the facility. There was all kinds of stuff thrown everywhere; your file was destroyed as well as the person’s next to you.”

I look at the chamber next to mine. The plastic rack for the medical chart is filled with water and wet pulp that was once a folder of paper, yet the cryo-chamber still glows blue, its temperature gauge well within a safe reading. I guess it’s tough to say why one person could remain safely frozen while the next person over is placed in mortal danger. I spin toward the blinking red temperature gauge nearby, ashamed to have forgotten it so suddenly. E’s eyes also turn toward the failing chamber.

“I didn’t do it,” I say quickly, my reaction making me sound guilty. “I was just about to come tell you about it.”

“We don’t have a lot of time,” E says as he turns to rush out of the cryonics room.

“I’ll check the chart,” I say. “To see what he or she was suffering from. That information might help.”

“Don’t bother,” E calls back. “I already know what’s wrong with her. I know what’s wrong with
everyone
here. I need your help carrying some stuff. Plus, there’s some things I should start teaching you in case I… well, just in case.”

I don’t like the sound of that but now’s not the time for questions. I rush after E, easily catching up before he reaches the hallway. I expect him to head toward the sterile surgical room or the huge cabinet holding medical supplies. But when he enters the room with the destroyed robots and grabs the laser cutting tool from earlier, it’s clear what kind of help he plans on giving the woman in trouble.

“You can’t bring her back as a normal person?” I ask.

E shakes his head. “I’ve tried bringing back plenty of them normally – tried using the drugs that CIFPOL has stored here – but it’s never worked. The Cryonics Institute tried developing molecular nanotechnology to reverse the freezing process and medicinally wake their patients, but I’m not sure it ever worked. The cabinets are stocked with cures for plenty of other diseases the medical charts once deemed incurable – several types of cancer, HIV, lupus, polio – but the reanimation process doesn’t seem like it was ever perfected.”

              E begins to hack apart several robots, starting with one of the largest models still mostly intact. He immediately cuts off the one part of the mechanical being he needs least: the head. He proceeds to the robot’s torso, opening up the power core in the center of its chest. He shakes his head at what he sees.

             
“I should’ve been more careful when yanking out their circuitry,” E says, as much to himself as me. He continues to shake his head before searching for another robot. “Foolish! The entire power core is totally fried, not enough juice to give the spark she needs in her brain.”

             
“So you can’t wake
any
of them back up? As humans, I mean? There’s no way to even try?” I ask.

             
“I never said that,” E says. “I wanted to do things the easy way at first. The medicine cabinet is stocked with syringes labeled
Reanimation Serum
. But I injected humans several times and the serum never worked, at least not fully. I noticed some signs of returned life on a few occasions but those effects were always temporary and the patients died soon after. I’m not sure if I used incorrect dosages or if the serum expired but I determined it was a waste of time and life to keep trying something that didn’t work, especially something so far beyond my area of expertise. This one looks better!”

             
He peers into the metallic chest cavity of another robot, pleased at what he finds. E proceeds to remove the head of this robot as well, tossing it aside like trash. I watch the robot head roll across the floor and come to a stop just in front of me. I slowly shake my head.

             
“Can’t you
try
to revive her first?” I ask. “And if that doesn’t work,
then
turn her into a… do for her what you did for me?”

             
E frowns, looking from the headless robot body to me and then back again. I can tell he didn’t even consider trying to bring back the woman normally. I expect him to brush off my idea but eventually he nods.

             
“Guess we don’t have a lot of spare robot parts anyway. If we’re going to try, we have to do it right away. She doesn’t have a lot of time,” E says as he leaves the robot body and heads for the door.

             
He rushes down the hallway and into the supply room, where he opens the large refrigerated medicine cabinet. I’d glanced through the tiny bottles and vials and syringes earlier without paying much attention to exactly what I was looking at. E searches through the bottom row of syringes, half of the slots empty. He grabs one and shakes it lightly, peering into the cloudy gray liquid.

             
“Tried these on other patients before,” he says. “I wish they came with better instructions.”

             
We hurry back to the cryonics room. E drags one of the tables toward the busted cryo-chamber and tells me to remove the body. I reach into the freezing hole in the wall and my glass dome immediately begins to ice over. The broken chambers where I stored body parts had already been open but inside this one is a large, sealed cylindrical tube. I look for a way to crack open the tube but I barely make a dent in the heavy metal, which does not budge.

             
“How does it work?” I ask.

             
But E has already noticed my struggles and pushes a button on the outside of the chamber. The cylinder opens slowly, unleashing a loud hiss of freezing steam that blows against my dome. It takes a few seconds for the cloud to clear before I come face to face with the body of an elderly woman. I carefully scoop her into my arms and place her gently on the table.

             
“She looks a lot older than the others I’ve seen,” I say.

             
E nods. “That’s why she’s not the best candidate for reanimation. At the time of her death, she suffered from severe dementia. In later years, most people with her age and condition would’ve been denied entry into the Cryonics Institute but she’d been a wealthy donor to the company during its infancy. There’s plenty of good medicine in the cabinet for neurological disease but even if we bring her back, I’m not sure how long she’ll last simply from being so old; from what I’ve read, scientists were in the process of creating an anti-aging remedy once the Robot Wars began. A pity they didn’t have time to finish that research.”

E shows me how to inject the syringe into the carotid artery. He has to push down extra hard with the tip of the needle to puncture the frozen skin and flesh near the old woman’s neck. He grimaces at the sound of cracking ice but it doesn’t stop him from slowly pushing the plunger. Once done, he admits to not knowing if that’s the intended spot for injection. In fact, he admits to not knowing much about the reanimation process at all. He found very little information strewn about the facility, only a few CIFPOL pamphlets that described the theory of nanotechnology as opposed to the exact use of it to reanimate cells at a molecular level.

“From what I’ve gathered, a person’s body stops working and dies, but the brain can continue to store cell structure and patterns, meaning certain memories and one’s identity can survive for preservation. What’s inside that needle is supposed to reverse the cryo-process and awaken that brain function,” E says. “But that’s about the extent of my expertise.”

“How long does it take to work?” I ask, staring down at the body, expecting the old woman to sit up and start talking at any moment. E shrugs. Every second that passes without a sign of movement or life makes me feel worse about convincing E to take this route.

“I have no idea; it never worked for me,” he says. “Like I said, I don’t know if the Institute
ever
figured out how to bring someone back.”

“We shouldn’t have done this,” I say after several minutes pass.

E remains stone-faced though his jaw is clenched.

“Turning you into a robot was certainly more in my comfort zone,” he says. “But as you saw from the bodies around here, I didn’t have much success with those transformations either, at least before you.”

I nod and suddenly have a greater appreciation for why E doesn’t want me taking risks. I never take my eyes off the frozen body, watching closely for the slightest rise of her chest, the slightest flutter of an eyelid, the slightest twitch of a muscle. But nothing happens and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out it’s not working. I notice in my peripheral vision that E doesn’t stop shaking his head the entire time.

“Should I get the robot parts?” I finally ask.

“Yes, the one I prepared,” E says as he takes out the laser cutting tool from his back pocket.

I run away just as he powers up the laser. I finally unleash the true speed of my robotic body and cross the large cryonics room in seconds, moving so fast that my feet never touch the icy floor long enough to slip or slide. I don’t slow down when I reach the swinging doors leading to the hallway. I smash through them, knocking one of the doors off its hinge. A loud crack echoes down the hallway and the door splinters nearly in half.

“Sorry,” I call out to E, my voice booming powerfully. I’m about to explain what happened but figure that explanation can wait until later.

I race down the hall, moving so fast that everything is a blur around me. Confusion quickly sets in and I have to open three doors before I finally find the one with the broken robots. I leap atop the pile in a single bound – the sound of crunching metal beneath my feet – and find the headless robot E had been working on before I changed his mind. I try to lift the robot from the pile but it’s entangled with the rest of the metallic bodies and limbs. With time running short and panic setting in, I yank at the robot, trying to free it. I finally pull so hard that when it comes free, I fall back and drag the robot off the high stack. I crash to the floor and hear the sickening crunch of metal and the smashing of glass. I worry I’ve broken part of myself but when I look at the robot, I see it’s missing the lower part of a leg, which is still stuck atop the pile.

“E can fix that later,” I say, hoping I’m right, hoping I haven’t damaged any other vital part of the robot.

More of the robot pile shifts and several busted parts slide down atop me. I push them out of the way just before I spot a dim red light starting to flash from within the pile. I stop and look at the robot containing the light, worried it might whir to life at any moment. When it doesn’t move, I convince myself it’s not a big deal and pick up the robot to bring to E. My body doesn’t struggle to lift the robot but it must be heavy since I can’t move as fast while carrying it.

I’m more careful when I push through the lone intact door of the cryo-room. I hear the high-pitched squeal of the laser and reach E just as he finishes cutting off the patient’s head. I turn away quickly, unable to watch the carnage, but I’m so clumsy that the robot smacks against the wall and more of its leg breaks apart and clatters to the icy floor.

“Sorry about that,” I say.

E looks from the robot to my body before shaking his head.

“The leg doesn’t matter but you’ve busted some of your panels, too,” he says. I look down at my torso and see several cracks. “We’ll worry about that later. Bring the robot here.”

I approach the table and try to figure out a spot on the table where I can lay the robot next to the woman’s headless body. When E sees me hesitate, he apologizes and shoves the frozen corpse to the floor. I hear the sound of breaking ice but don’t look down to see if it was part of the floor that cracked or the woman’s body.

Once the robot body is in place, E begins to laser open the back of the severed head, quickly chipping away parts of the frozen skull to expose the old woman’s brain. E continues to shake his head, even as he untangles a handful of different wires from the neck area of the robot.

“I don’t have time to go into details now; I’ll show you more closely later so you can learn,” E says. “But when I removed the robot’s head before, I was careful not to damage any of the wires connected to it. Now I have to remember which ones go where.”

He finally picks out the first wire and shoves it into the woman’s brain. Delicate is the last word I’d use to describe the way he connects the woman to the robot.

“Is that what you did to me?” I ask, glad that the mechanical tone in my voice masks the disgust I feel.

“I had a lot more time to work on you. You’re much younger and were in much better shape,” E says. “Like I said, I’m no doctor but even
I
can tell when a brain is starting off in bad shape. Check out the degradation of all this brain matter.”

He turns the old woman’s head for me to look into the back of her skull. I recoil and look away instinctively.