Waking the Zed - By ML Katz Page 0,5
actually believes she can wake up dead people. She’s so paranoid she thinks I’m here to steal her secrets. The only buyers might be science fiction or horror fiction publishers. Pamela had assumed the Dr. Klein had just become a cynical charlatan in her old age, but now she wondered if the woman was actually deluded. She looked at her employer in alarm and asked, “Have you even actually tested this on animals?”
“Of course,” Ada said with a dismissive wave. “I sacrificed a hundred mice before I began to see any results. First I woke up a dozen of the little fellows before I moved on to dogs. Then I finally revived primates. The animal labs are in another part of this building, and are manned by an entirely different crew. Perhaps you, with your rustic background, would have been more comfortable working there. Didn’t you mention that you had grown up on a farm?”
“The animals died, you froze them, and then you woke them up?” Pam asked again. She tried to picture the experiments in her mind. Did the mice have little individual capsules or did she just throw them in a freezer?
Dr. Klein’s explanations just continued to make Pam feel more stubborn. She refused to be baited by Dr. Klein suggestion that she was somehow primitive because she had grown up on a farm. She was a successful pathology doctoral candidate, and if she decided to work with animals, it would be for some sane reason.
“Your summary is simplistic, but essentially accurate,” Dr. Klein said again. “You know that the current regulations prevent us from harvesting our human clients until they have actually been declared dead. In my opinion those regulations are unfair and restrictive. They hamper my work and increase the risk. But I had to operate under the same constraints when I tested my serum on animals.”
“You killed the healthy lab animals in order to attempt to revive them?”
The doctor shrugged carelessly. “I consider the sacrifice of laboratory animals regrettable but absolutely necessary. You’re no vegetarian, Ms. Stone. You don’t mind sacrificing animals for your burgers or soup. But you have options. I actually am a vegetarian now, but in this case I had no alternative.”
Dr. Klein sighed as she thought her assistant was becoming tedious. At first, the young woman’s round eyed expression of disbelief had been humorous. It turned Pam’s interesting face into an almost comic caricature. But now, on the brink of a life-changing scientific breath through, Pam was quickly growing tiresome. “Ms. Stone, I tolerate your questions because you are, after all, a student. I even credit you with possessing a better than average intelligence and scholarly reputation for so young of a student. That’s why I gave you this opportunity. But we are still worlds apart. I really just require your ability to follow my instructions. May we proceed? “
Pam stopped herself from mumbling an automatic apology. She was not quite ready to be silenced but she knew that she and the doctor were not standing here today as equals. She bit back an immediate reply with an effort.
Still, if the day came when science had ever advanced sufficiently to revive the long dead, which Pam doubted would ever happen she expected the deeds to be performed in hospitals and attended by a large team of doctors and scientists. There might even be mobs or reporters waiting outside. The science and ethics would certainly be discussed in the news. Political and religious leaders would probably hold heated debates. She certainly did not expect a historical event like this to first happen in a quiet room, located in a private lab, attended by one scientist, perhaps a mad scientist, and one reluctant laboratory assistant.
Pam unconsciously bit her lip as she watched the serum from the small tank replace the existing fluids in the bodies of Mr. Barnes and Mrs. Bell. So far nothing had changed except for a slight tinting of the liquid in the capsules where the dead floated. Except for the awful waste of the lab animals, maybe nothing has really changed that much. Then Pamela glanced at Dr. Klein and saw that other woman was watching her, her mouth set in an impatient line.
Pamela shrugged. She did not want to raise the temperature. She did not have to be a scientist to know that warm dead things rot unless they are preserved in some way that is incompatible with life. But these people were, after all, actually dead. They