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The Returned

Rachel Kaniuk

    April 23rd, 2054
    The Island of Saint Hallie

    “Good evening, Mr. Garcia.” He shook James’s hand and motioned for him to enter his office. “Please come inside.”
    James and Dr. Johnson took their seats across from each other, and James looked around as the doctor took out his file. The office was made up entirely of white marble, with only several framed awards, the two chairs, and the doctor’s desk inhabiting the room.
    “I understand you have some concerns about the procedure. This is common, so don’t feel like you’re creating any inconvenience in coming here.”
    James nodded appreciatively. “That’s great to hear, doctor. I’m very excited about the procedure and I think it’s exactly what I need. I just want to assure myself that this is the best option...It seems almost too good to be true.” He said after a moment.
    “Well you’re in luck, Mr. Garcia. I’m on my break after your appointment so i’d love to take you on a tour of the lab. You’ll see that what we’re offering is indeed reality.”
    Dr. Johnson led James out of his office and into an elevator at the end of the hallway. They descended several floors to the level marked MAIN HOLDING CHAMBER. James took in the space. He guessed the walls were five hundred feet tall, and maybe three times that in its width, but the endless rows of metal boxes stacked from floor to ceiling made it impossible to tell. James heard a faint humming coming from the box nearest to him. He leaned his head closer to the thick aluminum wall to hear it better, but the doctor stretched out an arm and gently led James away from the box.
    “It’s important not to disturb the boxes. And there’s no need to determine their contents for yourself. They’re an integral part of the tour.” He continued leading James through the maze of humming metal as he spoke. “In each of these boxes lies a person, but we refer to both as one ‘egg’. There’re roughly 120,000 eggs in the chamber at any given time, but that number fluctuates from daily shipments, transport, and disposals. Before I explain the eggs any further, I’ll give you a quick history of our facility. The founder, Dr. Richard Hutchinson, was a psychiatrist in the Meadowview psychiatric hospital in Pasadena, California. He met with countless men and women who committed violent crimes, many of whom were sentenced to death. Years of working that job caused Dr. Hutchinson to start going to church regularly and read the Bible nightly. He was upset by the death penalty—he thought that to send a human being to their death was a waste of God’s handiwork. But from his working experience he also determined there was no way to save the soul of the person on death row. Well, one day his wife’s close friend came to his house begging for medication to ease the suffering she felt after her husband’s passing. And the idea struck him. Why not give a moral man a second life in the body of a condemned criminal? Dr. Hutchinson made his system a reality by 2028.”
    “So,” he pointed to a box, “the process begins with an inmate. There are around 1.5 million individuals across the world in the prison system suitable for the procedure, and they’re all part of an international database available to us. When you sent in the picture of your wife, we consulted this database to find her look-alike. It’s almost always necessary to surgically alter the face and body to make the lost loved one and the replica truly identical, but we try to look for close matches to keep the body as natural as possible. Originally, we only took criminals on death row, but we’ve since expanded to the clinically insane, political dissidents, and repeat offending drug addicts. But rest assured their minds are no more salvageable than the violent criminals.”
    James and Dr. Johnson arrived at the end of the row. In front of them was the chamber’s back wall, with three evenly spaced tunnels cut through it. They walked through the rightmost one. It was poorly lit inside, with sparse floor lights merely showing the outline of the path. Occasionally, however, the outline of one the doors lining the tunnel would glow. The blinking reminded James of fireflies, and he felt cozy as he walked.
    “Once a match is identified and surgically altered, he or she is restrained inside the titanium box, or ‘eggshell’, blindfolded, and given headphones that play 50 HZ static. They remain in the incubation period for a minimum of fourteen months, and their mind becomes a blank slate again. Typically the wipe is effective in one year, but the extra two months prevents mishaps. At present, we’re working on a method of identifying future criminals by monitoring chemical imbalances in the brain. Our scientists are determining how accurately they can predict what children will become dangerous criminals in adulthood. If they are successful, we can expand our customer base to the parents of dead children—quite an eager customer base for our procedure. Once the incubation is completed we move the egg to a life simulator.” He nodded to the door on his right. “Essentially a school classroom sized space that is controlled in its temperature, air content, and sound system. The egg is transported to this room in complete darkness and the outer layer is cracked and removed, leaving only the embryo. Then the accelerated life simulation begins. As you know, the customer provides as much information as they can about experiences they’d like their returned loved one to have had. We’ve gotten our fair share of complaints about our constructions not getting certain references. But we’ve worked on making our questionnaires more thorough to avoid that. Nevertheless there’s still a chance that there may be something missing, which is included in the terms and conditions, but it’s rare now and typically too small to lead to true discomfort. Our writers fill in any unknown or unspecified information about the loved one to make a complete life.”
    Peering through the window, James saw a woman sitting at a panel of controls. She entered a code on the panel’s keypad, then looked up to monitor the room in front of her, beyond a sheet of thick glass. A man with black goggles over his eyes was sitting on a height chair, being fed bits of a banana by a robot arm while twitching ridiculously.
    “Growth during childhood is achieved by a series of serums that paralyze certain lengths of the limbs, torso, and junctions. To an onlooker the person is fully grown. But to the subject, whose eyes only see the screen strapped to their forehead, their paralyzed parts are not there. Treadmills, stockpiles of textured fabric, a troop of robots, and a controller from without work together to simulate years worth of experiences within several hours. People usually ask whether this accelerated approach affects the person’s ability to live at a normal rate thereafter, but once a memory is created the person has no concept of how long or short the moment was. Content, not pacing, is important. And we’re lucky for that phenomenon, because it makes all this possible.”
    They stopped at the end of the tunnel next to a room marked 412. “Beyond this door is your wife. Her thirty-four years were completed this morning and she has been put to sleep. You can be put to sleep and your wife’s death can be removed from your memory. This option will incur a slightly higher charge, of course, but many customers don’t hesitate to pay it. Time is critical, so I need your decision now.”
    The doctor continued. “Would you prefer to live knowing she’s a replacement or would you prefer to live thinking she is your original wife?”

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