The Reawakening (1/3)

The doctor told me I had been in suspension for a hundred and forty-two years. It took me a while to process the answer against what I recalled of my instructions, then more time to remaster the control of lips and tongue to speak my first words.

“That’s too long. I instructed between forty and sixty. That was a conservative estimate on them finding a cure.”

“The cure had been found in twenty-five years, but other factors came into play.”

“Other factors?”

“All reawakenings were suspended. People began to argue over the ethics, some stirred up fears and it became very political. One government fell for the argument that bringing the bodies out of suspension would amount to restoring the elite of past years, so it imposed a ban; but it stopped short of terminations, worried it would amount to murder. It took at lot of changes of government and attitudes, then a lot of legal wrangling, before it became legal to bring you back to the world.”

“So we’ve all been kept here, despite our instructions.”

“Most of you. The reawakenings are being staggered. You were not in the first group, but you’re lucky, it hasn’t worked for everyone so far; a handful died. Others will have to wait a long time because there’s still no cure for their conditions.”

“What about mine? Are they sure the cure will work?”

“It has. They were able to treat you while you were still in suspension. It was a success.”

That was my moment. The doctors had given me no more than six months, but my wealth – I was part of the planet’s richest 0.0001% – had bought me the chance for a second life. It had paid off, even though it was later than expected. Then I had another thought.

“Does this mean none of my children or grandchildren are alive?”

The doctor shook his head.

“Life expectancy has increased, but not by that much. I’m sure the government archivists can produce the details of their lives, although I would recommend that you give it some time. Begin by getting used to the world around you. However, I understand that you do have descendants who have taken an interest.”

I suspected a good number. I had five children and two grandchildren when I had been placed into suspension. That provided scope for dozens, maybe hundreds, to come along in a hundred and forty-two years. The thought was overwhelming. The doctor looked as if he could guess what I was thinking.

“You need time,” he said. “We recommend weeks of quiet lessons and conversations for you to learn what type of world you’re in now. I’ll leave you for a while. Get some rest, but if you want some gentle stimulation just point at the screen.”

He nodded towards a thin sheet of glass fixed on the far wall that seemed to exude a mild shimmer, then began to leave.

“One more question,” I asked. “What do you know of my assets?”

“I couldn’t tell you in detail, and there have been disruptions in the world’s economy, but I understand you’re still an extremely wealthy man.”

That was enough for me to smile as he left the room. I pointed at the screen and it showed a movement of shapes and colours accompanied by an ambient sounds. They slowly settled into what appeared to be an unearthly landscape with strange buildings, enough to make me anxious and point again to turn it off. He had been right; I needed to rest.

 

Over the next few weeks I learned, slowly at first but then with my old mental agility, about the world into which I had been brought back to life. Its borders had changed, the result of armed conflicts, natural disasters, population movements and a couple of serious ruptures in the world economy. Britain had given up pretending it could go it alone and was now a semi-autonomous region of Bloc Europa, which extended to the fortified line with the anarchic wasteland that used to be Russia. There was no more USA, but a Republic of North America in which much of the population, economy and political weight had shifted north in what had been Canada. South America was just Brazil, Argentina and the Chile-Peru Pact. Asia was just China and India. Australia had dried up, causing a big movement of people to and a lot of trouble in New Zealand. Africa and the Middle East was under the control of a conglomerate that had once been the Gulf States, and with half the population of the previous century was doing OK. It seemed that the world had been through a bad patch but in the past fifty years had begun to control its populations, climate and technology and steadily improved.

Of course, the technology had moved forward – then been reeled back. I learned that every feature of the hospital, like every home, office and industrial building in the world, was controlled by AI system that had gradually programmed itself to make everything efficient and sustainable. But people had always worried about it, then became scared, especially after similar systems had blown up a handful of their own governments’ military bases and poisoned the food of a couple of presidents they had deemed to be a threat to humanity. It had prompted a worldwide agreement that imposed strict limits on the capacity for learning and independent action, backed up by the Global Human Control Alliance with its powers to terminate any company, or individual, caught stepping over the line. There was no such thing as TV or radio, just the InfoMesh that ran on something called air pulse transmissions. People still used screens for communal viewing, but gobbled up most of their information and entertainment on the 3D optical frames that looked just like early 21^st century glasses. They also had the Neural Studs pinned inside their left ears, tiny quantum powered devices that monitored signals in parts of the brain to help the user see more clearly, hear sharply, and instantaneously translate any unfamiliar language. The doctor showed me his and explained that English had evolved since my earlier life and he needed it to understand what I said.

“Will I get one of those?”

“It’s already been fitted. That’s why you can understand me.”

What affected me most was that almost nothing was made from metal or plastic anymore. The 2030s saw the development of febro pulp, derived from the fast growing, giant high yield plants and reconstituted into an immense range of materials that could make almost anything, conduct energy and store unlimited amounts of microdata, and they were now the world’s dominant manufacturing material. The carefully managed forests were in temperate and sub-tropical zones around the world, forty per cent of them owned by the Febrik Corporation, for which I had been a founding investor. That was what ensured that I was still one of the wealthiest people on the planet.

 

After a while I got to meet with two representatives from Febrik, a man and woman in early middle age with identical short hairstyles, heavy glasses and grey jackets with knee length trousers. They explained that Febrik had once gone through a bad patch that lasted decades, but had recovered, survived the climate crisis of the late 21^st century, then grown continually. It was now the world’s third largest business corporation and considered the eighth most powerful organisation in the world. There had been attempts to eradicate my stake in the business, with a series of legal battles over whether I should be considered alive or deceased, but the guardians of my estate, and the generations who had taken over from them, had put up a solid defence. My wealth had continued to grow.

They also told me I had plenty of descendants. Most of my grandchildren had their own offspring, and although the global birthrate had sharply declined, several lines of my family had continued to reproduce. They had all received shares of the trust fund I had left in place, and everybody except the spendthrift and stupid were comfortable. But it was it inadvisable to meet too many at once, and a filtering process had begun to assess which of the descendants had the strongest lineage and came from strands of the family that had managed their stakes wisely. The first meeting would hopefully take place in a couple of weeks.

It left me impatient. I had been fond of one of my ex-wives and four of my five children, it had been difficult to absorb the fact that everyone I had known was no longer in the world, and I was eager to find an emotional bond with at least a handful of those who were now here. But I agreed that it could it be troublesome.

“I could meet a lot of them over time,” I suggested.

“That’s possible,” the woman replied. “But the trust thinks that to start it may be better to keep it to a couple of small groups, five or six.”

 

I was in the house obtained by the corporation, supported by a handful of lifelike robots and a trio of human secretaries working in shifts, when the family visits began. The first group were at various stages of middle age, three men and two women, all first cousins to each other descended from my first wife. I thought the filtering process had worked well. They were all quite formal, respectful without being unctuous, eager to tell me of how their branches of the family had fared without any sob stories or grievances. But I also sensed they were wary of each other, and holding something back in the way that their great grandmother – or was it great, great grandmother – always seemed to do. No-one made any pleas for support or pitched for a role in the business, but there were mentions of issues with which a huge injection of cash could help. One of them, a guy with glowing skin and an unnatural smile named Ram, mentioned said he was involved in a programme trying to equip children from deprived communities with an educational device he described as a quanto box. Apparently they were soon to become a necessary asset for a decent start in life but were too expensive for many families. I listened carefully then asked a question.

“Do you have a stake in their manufacture?”

He paused and touched the neural stud in his ear, indicating that its translation function had stuttered.

“That thing’s worked perfectly until now,” I said. “Don’t pretend it’s just failed.”

He smiled awkwardly then replied.

“I don’t have a personal stake in any relevant business.”

“Personal; that’s a convenient word. What about your wife? Or maybe one of your kids?”

He tried to smother a frown and stopped short of a lie.

“I’ll investigate and give it some consideration,” I said, immediately resolving that he would get nothing from it.

The second group was mixed, from twenties to fifties in age, and descended from my second wife. Maybe that’s why I found them agreeable; she was the only one of three who left fond memories, partly because she had it in her to walk out on me because I had cheated on her. There were six of them, more casual in their dress and language, more ready to laugh, and more interested in me. They all knew why I had decided to go into suspension but were curious about how I had felt about retreating from the world, whether I had worried that I would never be reawakened, and how I could manage the adjustment to the new world. They agreed it was better for me to come out gradually, and made some suggestions about experiences – visiting a robograpple pit or having a virtualised fur wipe – that were clearly tongue in cheek. A woman named Aleezia asked if there was anyone from my previous life that I missed. I named my second wife, quickly adding that I regretted my misbehaviour, and our two daughters, and was surprised to feel a mild choke of emotion. They all seemed impressed.

I enjoyed the conversation until the young woman named Zanda – whose head was shaved bald on her left side and grown shoulder length on the right – took advantage of my standing up to fill my teacup to place herself beside me and speak quietly.

“How do you feel about the decisions you made?”

“I’d need to know which ones.”

“The febro pulp plantations in Canada, in the native people’s territory.”

I had to think for a moment. I recalled the investment in Canada, when I had persuaded the provincial government to clear swathes of existing forest for the first major plantation of febro plants. I told her didn’t recall anything about native peoples.

 “It took time,” she said, “but it did immense damage.”

An older man and woman came to her side and told her it wasn’t the time to raise the matter.

“He’ll have to know soon,” she said. “And take responsibility.”

“Responsibility for what?”

“There were consequences. Fifteen years after the first plantings the toxic moss appeared and spread along river banks and into the foothills of the Rockies. The damage was immense. And the remaining communities couldn’t survive.”

The woman stood in front of her.

“Zanda! Not now!”

“And those who managed to migrate were tainted and disfigured. They were isolated and kept on reservation prisons for decades.”

“Zanda! You know that’s unfair.”

Another man appeared and she was gently pulled away. All I knew was that I had been placed in suspension before those things had happened.

“I don’t understand.”

“So you haven’t been told?”

“Maybe you should have been.”

It created a discomfort that lingered after Zanda was led from the room, even though she turned to me and said: “I didn’t want to spoil the occasion, but it had to be said.”

A few embarrassed murmurs and apologies followed, but I insisted that if there was anything bad around me I would have to know sooner or later. The older people tried to play it down and divert me from the subject, but the younger man quietly asserted that now something had been said I should know what was happening. I had already taken a liking to him, as his name was simply John and he was dressed in what could have been a sports jacket  and shin length slacks from my younger days.

“There’s some truth to what Zanda said,” he told me. “For a few years everyone was happy with the febro plantations, then the toxic moss began to appear from a reaction that nobody understood. Over two years it did a lot of damage, not just in Canada but in plantations around the world. It took about five years for the scientists to develop a chemical compound that could kill it off, and another five for it be sprayed around all the infected zones. And by then there were populations around the world who had suffered. What happened to the native people in Canada was among the worst cases.”

There was a moment of quiet, concern on all the faces around me.

“And people blame me?”

“You among others, but all of those are dead now.”

“But if something was wrong, they must know that we didn’t understand at the time. The science, at least the science that was understood, was on our side.”

There was another quiet moment in which I noticed some uneasy glances.

“That’s the reasonable point of view. But there are people out there who want to attribute blame for all their problems.”

“But it was such a long time ago. Surely the world moved on.”

“It did. The local environments recovered and the survivors of those who were affected in different parts of the world were cured and rehabilitated. Most of them have found a place for themselves. But there are lingering grievances. And once the news of your reawakening got out they found a focus.”

“So they want something from me?”

“They want everything from you.”

Aleezia assured me it was only gossip and John let the subject drop, but it planted my first real worry since I had been brought back.

Continued part 2

Image by David S. Soriano, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0