RESTORATION (a science fiction novel) (RESTORATION (the science fiction trilogy)) (6 page)

Everyone could tell from the demeanor of their Supervisors in their various departments that it was going to be good news.  The meeting was brought to order.  Tim, Dodge’s boss, was asked to make the announcement. 

Tim stood up.  “Good Morning everyone.”

A few people responded with “good morning.”

“Most of you know me, but for those of you who don’t, I’m Tim Stance and I head up the embedded micro team of the implant division.  I feel very honored today to have the privilege of bringing you such great news.  We have had a tremendous technological breakthrough in our biotech engineering division in California.  As you all know in the past Restoration after complete bodily death could only be accomplished in those individuals born on or after May 1st of 2038, the day when brain stem cell sampling became mandatory in all hospitals worldwide for all new born children.” 

“It’s common knowledge that the procedure must be accomplished within the first eleven weeks of human life after birth.  DNA from these unique cells must be used as the seed DNA for the surrogate’s clone.  Otherwise, the P-Source2, a.k.a. Soul, won’t transfer to the Clone and the Restoration process fails.” 

“For those of you who don’t recall, 38 was when our predecessors at Biotech discovered the eleven-week rule.  Even then, and with everything done properly, a person only has one hour after unexpected complete death to be restored and still retain their P-Source2.” 

“Now with our latest breakthrough our scientists have done it again.  They have discovered a hormone that is released in the brain during the first eleven weeks of life after birth.  This hormone alters the brain stem cells and locks the P-Source2 to the individual’s unique DNA signature permanently.  We don’t yet understand this process entirely but our Scientists have developed a working solution.” 

“When a cell sample is taken from the brain stem of a person older than eleven weeks, any age, and then subjected to the exact same hormone found in the infant’s brain it will result in cells that have the altered P-Source2 locking DNA.  Once the cells are altered by exposure to this hormone for a minimum of forty-eight hours they’ll work just as well as the cells of those individuals that had the procedure within the eleven-week period following birth.” 

“With this breakthrough we can now provide the same assurances that even a person born prior to May of 38 can have a complete Restoration even after an unexpected complete bodily death.  The same one hour rule applies but never the less this is a huge stride.” 

“Computer,” Tim instructed, “Large screen, front wall, load presentation.”  A huge holographic image appeared just off the front wall of the conference room.
          “As you can see ladies and gentlemen, the procedure is outlined here in this rotating diagram and graphical representation.” 

“Next image please.  Yes and here is the best part of all.  As you can see, the new ability will be offered to everyone in the world that already has one of our Lifecorder units at no additional charge and any new customers that are coming on board from this point forward.” 

“Notice here on this chart that the new feature is very affordable and it will boost our revenue by an additional 28.6 trillion dollars by 2058.”  The entire room broke out into a round of applause.  Everyone knew this was a financial windfall for ESS and no doubt large profit-sharing bonuses for everyone would follow. 

The fact that people born prior to 38 could not be restored after complete bodily death had been a real sore point with the sales department for years.  Because they had no cell sample within the eleven-week time frame, they could only be restored on a planned basis while they still had some living cells to retain the soul. 

Those people were disappointed with the system, especially those individuals that had very dangerous jobs like the Police and Fire Fighters.  Many of them in recent years had opted to make career changes to increase their chances of immortality. 

Tim called upon one of the financial officers to continue the presentation in regards to all the economic benefits of this new discovery.  As the man was speaking, Dodge’s mind began to drift.  He started thinking about the implications of what they were doing, was his Father right?  Were they playing God?  How good were the clones really?  The oldest one alive was now thirty-four and still seemed okay, at least for now. 

He was a 65-year-old terminal lung cancer patient that took part in a trial back in 2022 when it was still a top-secret government experiment.  Now his combined ages of 65 and 34 made is total life span 99.  The news said his family was planning a celebration on his 100
th
birthday coming up in a couple of months. 

He had recently been on Late Night with Harry Letterman and seemed to be in great health with no adverse effects.  So had man discovered the fountain of youth?  Had immortality actually been reached?  “
Only God knows for sure
.”  It was certainly looking that way.  The financial guy was done and now one of the Biotech guys was getting up.  Dodges’ interest was captured again, or at least partially.

  “Let’s take a look at how all of this works again.  The CELL signature and DNA of each person prevent any given individual’s Lifecorder data from being uploaded into another individual.  For example, let’s say someone wanted to steal a person’s Lifecorder unit to get this persons thoughts and memories out of it in an effort to get at technical prowess or talents, abilities, etc.  It would pretty much be useless to them because they would not have his clone to load it up into to get the information out.  I’m sure everyone  would really like to know how to do that but in a way it’s better that they don’t know, this difficulty and complexity provide built in layers of security for the whole system as it is a natural deterrent against criminal elements attempting to do anything with the data.” 

Dodge recalled a few news stories where people reported their LifeCorders stolen but it was of no consequence, LifeTech simply provided them with a new Lifecorder unit and it was fully updated that night as they slept and nothing was lost whatsoever. 

Medic-Star had just recently begun offering a back up service that allowed your complete lifefile to be uploaded as frequently as you wished.  The service was affordable and operated through your skyphone or other electronic devices with a minimum of 20KTB band width.  Now people could easily backup their life on the secure Medic-Star system with no worries of fire destroying it, or someone stealing it. 

The scientist was going on . . . , “We have decided to reactivate a previous security protocol in the next release of the new Lifecorder 3.  All LifeCorders have built in tracking devices that can be utilized should the unit be lost or stolen, and this feature is very helpful to authorities searching for the missing unit.  We had designed this feature into the original units but congress passed a law that forced us to disable it.  This was because so many of the units were issued through Medic-Star to the elderly and low income families for little or no cost.  The older generation complained that the tracking device was too big brother-ish and the low income group complained about added cost.  So we disabled it in the software.  Now that we have a law passed which allows it to be activated it can be accomplished through the skyphone network at no charge and so the function will become active in the older units with no additional effort.  All the new units will be distributed with this feature enabled as the default factory setting but instructions will be included for disabling that feature if the customer chooses to do so.”

Dodge knew pretty much everything about that tracking device.  His team was called upon to disable it in the software more than ten years ago.  Dodge felt that it should just be omitted from the hardware and then there would be no reason to mess with the highly sensitive software side of the design. 

Higher ups insisted that they could lobby through the right channels in congress and get the law pushed through, turns out they were right about that, “
money talks,
” and now they can reactivate all those tracking devices for people that want that feature and increase their profits even further.

  It took ten years but they must have finally got to somebody and pushed it through.  No doubt he would get called into his boss’s office sometime later this week.  He would probably be given the task of reinstating the tracking code into the software.

  Upon some reflection he remembered exactly where he stored the code and that he had backups of everything on a virtual server plus a third one at home that no one but him knew about.  Even though it was against company policy to take those materials home, Tim had allowed it because Dodge volunteered to work on it over the weekends to get the project done in time for the deadline more than ten years ago. 

That accomplishment got Tim a nice promotion and a huge increase in salary back at that time and Tim knew it was Dodge that really got it done.  To be fair he took Dodge along with him and saw to it that he also got a good salary increase, and many good bonuses and perks over the years.

Even though Tim had never openly given Dodge the credit for the software which several publications at the time labeled “the work of a true pioneer and genius” Dodge didn’t  mind at all, he really didn’t like that kind of attention and he still got rewarded very well financially for it. 

Thinking back about the project he remembered how tired he was when it was done.  He took a copy of it in on a Monday after staying up late all weekend trying to get the code stable and absolutely perfect.  He handed it off to Tim and went on with his other task of the day. 

Tim delivered it to the head of the development team for uploading into a test unit for some trial runs.  He came back later the same day and took Dodge out for a long lunch.
          “Dodge,” he said, “You knocked that one out of the park Buddy.  The development department loaded your code and it worked perfectly!”  I won’t forget this I promise!  They were both very excited and they went on talking about where it might lead to during their lunch and then returned to the office late.  In the excitement Dodge realized he never got the microdrive back and he was so tired the night before that he saved his final revisions to the microdrive and not his home PC. 

At the end of the day he left his office a few minutes early and headed up to see Tim but he had already left early for a round of golf at the club, no doubt he was celebrating with some of the higher brass due to their huge success that day.  Dodge grabbed another blank microdrive from his desk and ran down to the development lab. Everyone had gone now but several of the workstation computers were still running backups so he jumped on one to retrieve a copy of his work for safe keeping. 

He just realized in that moment sitting in this meeting that he never copied that file back to his home computer.  In fact he wasn’t for sure where he put the microdrive when he got home that night all those years ago.

The scientist had finished and another financial guy was up droning on about how this was going to make the company even more money and where they intended to invest it.  He looked across the room and noticed Tim was looking at him.  Tim made a hand gesture.  It was code for, “It’s Miller Time.”  Dodge smiled and gave him a subtle nod of agreement then they both returned to pretending that they were interested in the financial stuff.

  When the meeting finally adjourned, Dodge met Tim out in the hall.

“Man! Wow! Was that the longest and most boring ending to an exciting announcement ever or what?”
          “Yes, Yes it was!”  Tim agreed, “Let’s go get some lunch and have that beer, better yet let’s have two.” 

Dodge laughed, “Better make them light
beers, I have to come back to work.” 

“What!  No way man, look, I’m your boss and you’re coming with me to the club.  We’ll have a big sandwich and some chips and a couple of REAL beers and then go play nine okay?”
          “Well, all right you’re the Boss, but you know how I golf.  You gotta spot me my handicap otherwise I’ll never live down the butt whooping you’re about to unleash on me.”
          “No worries Dodge my man,” Tim said as he hung his arm on Dodge’s shoulder, “I’ll give you pointers and spot you ten strokes!”

Chapter
4
      It was nearly eleven p.m. when Dodge finally rolled up the drive at home.  He called Linsey earlier to let her know what he and Tim were doing.  Linsey didn’t mind.  She said, “Besides you never know with Tim, get a few beers in him and play some skins and you might just come home a lot richer!”  Dodge was glad that Linsey didn’t mind because he and Tim really did have a blast.  She was already in bed when he got in but she was still awake, she was too curious about the big announcement at work to sleep. 

“So how did it go?” She asked, as Dodge slipped into bed.
          “Well Tim Stomped me pretty good on the front nine, but I nearly caught up on the back nine after he had a few too many beers.  He still beat me though, even drunk.”  They both started laughing.
          “Good thing you’re not counting on golf for a living huh?”
          “No kidding, we’d be poor for sure!”

  Dodge knew what was coming next and he hated to lie.  He thought about it all the way home from the club.  He formulated a plan. He would lie, but as little as possible.
          “So what was the big break through you guys were celebrating,” asked Linsey, “Did you cure cancer or what?”
          “Whoa, well I wish, then a lot fewer people would need Restoration, it’s hard to believe we can clone people but we can’t cure cancer.”
          “So, what’s the deal?”           “Well they found out they can use the tracking again now in the Lifecorder units, remember that project that ESS worked on about ten years ago, the one that was on a subcontract with another company?”
          “Oh yeah,” Linsey had to think, “So why is that such a big deal?”
          “Well ESS will make a lot of money off the sales of the tracking services and that will make our company even more successful.”