59

Daryl Scott was a nineteen-year-old giant of a man who worked part time on a California chicken farm. He was patient zero of the 2076 “American Hendemic” – the severe flu passed from American chickens to humans after an unnatural viral mutation widely believed to be terrorist-related. Not everyone bought into the story. Oliver Stone-2 and other conspiracy theorists, not to mention a few not-so-paranoid scientists, believed our own government orchestrated it, possibly to assure a rally-around-the-leaders sentiment for the troubled majority party right before elections. Still others thought it might have been developed by Rejuve, Ingeneuity, or one of the other AIS companies as a way to scare the bejesus out of everyone not protected by artificial immune systems.

Daryl hadn’t used any form of AIS, but it might not have saved him anyway. More than 246,000 Americans died, including over ten thousand AIS users, as the mutant flu bug proved at times too ferocious and slippery for the artificial immune system to fight until we could study it and update everyone’s AIS. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Both Ingeneuity and Rejuve doctors worked together with flu experts to contain, stabilize, and eventually win the battle against the Hendemic.

But the battle took more than a month to win, too late for Daryl. He was autopsied virtually and cryonically frozen even though he had no cryonic contract. The doctors, confused by the resistance and fierceness of the virus, wanted to keep him intact in case they needed more information than the virtual autopsy could reveal.

Both because he was the first victim and because he hadn’t specifically requested to be brought back, it was decided that he would be a good candidate for the first attempted rejuvenation. If it didn’t work? Well, he hadn’t expressed an interest in being brought back to life anyway.

Rejuve showed some guts, allowing a media crew to broadcast live footage of the attempted rejuvenation at six o’clock the night of Christmas Eve. Lyle-2 must have been extremely sure of success. If it worked, it would be one of the greatest marketing schemes ever drawn up. If it failed, it could severely blunt the interest and credibility of cryonics for years.

No dramatic buildup here. As most of you must know, it worked. When the lungs were cleared and the heart was prompted back into beating, the little “beep” on the heart monitor lit up, and people around the world cheered (except for those crossing themselves in horror). The doctors cheered as well, and one of them turned on Elton John’s Someone Saved My Life Tonight.

Within an hour, their updated AIS had destroyed the Hendemic virus, and all body functions were at or quickly approaching normal. Thirty minutes later, everything checking out well, they closed their program with Karen Carpenter singing Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane’s Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas about reuniting with dear friends. Not to mention it being a nice Christmas carol to let the world know that Rejuve wasn’t a bunch of crazed atheists pretending to be God by raising the dead.

They kept Daryl sedated for a week as his brain cells went through an extensive healing process, and they watched to make sure no surprises occurred. On the morning of January 1, 2077, the world tuned in again to see the first man wake after verifiably being dead. And dead for nearly four months, at that. The world was tuning in for a miracle.

This time one of the hipper doctors put on Gloria Gaynor’s disco classic I Will Survive for the big moment. That big moment began with Daryl’s eyes fluttering. Then he opened them. The world collectively gasped. Was he okay? Had he seen the other side? What did he see? What would he do? What would he say?

What he did was look around the room, clearly puzzled, before fixing his eyes on the stereo speakers. What he said was, “What is that crap?”

So Daryl Scott wasn’t exactly Neil Armstrong. In retrospect, maybe Rejuve got a little carried away with their musical programming, and should have simply let the miracle speak for itself.

After the embarrassed head doctor ordered a laughing nurse to turn the music off, the situation sobered up considerably. The doctor explained to Daryl about the flu, how he had died, been cryonically frozen in case they needed more information from his body, and just become the first human to have ever been restored to life from cryonic freeze.

“Fuck,” Daryl said, rubbing his face with his right hand. “Well then that explains the reporters.”

“Yes,” the doctor replied, hoping the video feed was on time delay so the censors could clean it up a bit. They did, and at the time nobody except the people in his room and at the media studios heard the expletive.

“So it’s New Year’s already?” Daryl asked, still groggy and confused.

“Yes,” the doctor answered. “And see here,” he stood rigidly and pointed his index finger at a tray of cards surrounded by several bouquets, “we have thousands of holiday cards sent to you from all over the world.”

Daryl glanced at the huge pile of cards. “Okay.”

The doctor paused several seconds to see if Daryl wanted to say anything else. Nothing else was forthcoming.

“Good,” said the doctor. “Now, let’s talk about your experience. How did you feel when you woke up just now?”

“Hung over,” he responded, shaking his head wearily.

“Interesting,” replied the doctor. “And what’s the last thing you remember before you woke up?”

Daryl paused for a while, trying to remember. “I got real sick,” he said slowly. “Docs said it was probably from the chickens.”

“Yes.”

“And then I remember all these chickens pecking at me. They were real big and I was small, and they were really hurting me, and I was beg—telling them to stop, you know? But they didn’t stop until Jesus came, and He said, ‘Stop, chickens. Peck on someone your own size.’ Isn’t that weird, Doc?”

“Yes,” said the doctor. “And what happened then?”

“Well, they stopped. Then Jesus led me out of the big chicken coop, and I was out near the farmhouse where I work. And He said, ‘Just hang here for a while, Daryl. I’ll be back later.’ Then He left, and I waited in the boss’s farmhouse, and then I heard that stupid music playing and woke up here. Wild, huh?”

“Wild,” echoed the doctor, moving his lips around the word. “Would you care to say anything else to the world before we let the reporters go?” The offer was a few degrees short of enthusiastic.

“Yeah,” he answered. He turned to the cameras and smiled, as if something really good to say had just occurred to him. “One more thing I forgot Jesus said. He said everyone should eat a lot more eggs!”

“Thank you, Mr. Scott,” the doctor added swiftly, and nodded to the reporters indicating that was a wrap.

There was little consensus as to what to make of the event, except that Daryl clearly wanted to impress his boss. But had Daryl’s real visions occurred before his physical death, when he was waking, or during his freeze when his brain was truly dead? Would other people have similar visions? Could he have had a glimpse of some sort of fowl purgatory? Or had God, or Daryl’s own subconscious, simply used images in Daryl’s mind to protect him from the trauma of rejuvenation before sending him back to the world? Or, as one comic suggested, had Jesus allowed this man-made type of resurrection so he could proclaim to the world the one thing he’d forgotten to say in the gospels – that everyone needed to eat more eggs? 

The incident sparked excited theorizing and ended up benefiting everyone involved. Rejuve instantly became a household word. Not only did they begin receiving a flurry of orders for cryonic freezing, they were swamped by calls to bring back the other victims of the Hendemic and by requests from the media to broadcast each one in a reality show format. Countless writers begged to be the company’s official scribe who would relate the tales of all the dead brought back to life. One college opened a new program in its Philosophy department dedicated to the study of cryonic visions and what they may tell us about the soul and the afterlife. Saturday Night Live had prep nurse Tina Fey-2 thawing out the patient with a blow dryer while Doctor Billy Crystal-2 borrowed a line from his clone-father’s movie The Princess Bride, explaining that Daryl was only “mostly dead.” Daryl Scott was indeed offered a full-time position with the chicken farm, and he was also hit with requests to publish his story and make a movie out of it. And yes, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, the egg industry had a rebirth.