iMan
Chandler Freed sipped his champagne and stared at his wife over the rim of the glass. He enjoyed looking at her, for she was absolutely stunning. In his opinion, Marlee was as beautiful, if not more so, than any model whose face graced the covers of women's fashion magazines.
"So, what are we celebrating?" she asked.
"My project is about to move forward."
"That's wonderful!"
"I've wanted to do this since I was a medical student at Harvard, but I never thought this day would come. And now, thanks to support from private companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google, it can get underway."
"What about the donor?"
A frown briefly clouded Chandler's face. He had not told his wife about the one man who would make his long-held dream a reality and was not sure exactly how much information he should give her. After considering the matter, he decided he would truthfully answer any questions she might have, but he would volunteer no additional information.
"He's a thirty-nine-year-old white male."
"Accidental death?"
"No."
"I thought you wanted a specimen with no known illnesses. That's why the project has been delayed for so long."
Normally, Chandler was delighted whenever Marlee took an interest in his research. However, this was one aspect of his work that he wished did not pique her curiosity.
"Medical tests indicate that he's in very good health," he replied and opened his menu, hoping to change the topic of the conversation. "The salmon looks good but so does the prime rib."
"A thirty-nine-year-old man doesn't die of good health," his wife persisted.
The eminent doctor sighed, knowing she was not about to let the matter drop.
"Actually, he's not dead yet."
"Have you found a way to get the detailed images you need from a living person?" she asked, excited by the possibility.
"Sadly, no. But the donor will be dead by midnight on Thursday."
The look of confusion on Marlee's exquisite features quickly passed, replaced by one of disgust.
"You're going to use the body of an executed prisoner; aren't you?"
"That's not so surprising," her husband said in his own defense. "Years ago, that's how doctors and medical schools obtained their cadavers. There was a time when it was forbidden by law to dissect human bodies, except for those who died by execution."
"But that was then. I would have thought medicine would be more civilized now."
"You have to admit lethal injection is more civilized and humane than hanging, and—as a doctor—I can assure you it's a much more merciful death than having to slowly waste away from an incurable disease."
"But this isn't a Dr. Kevorkian situation. Your donor is a healthy man, not some poor soul with ALS. This seems so ... so gruesome, so macabre, so reminiscent of Burke and Hare."
Chandler could not help laughing at his wife's comparison of his medical research to the actions of the famous Scottish resurrectionists and murderers.
"Burke and Hare? I'm not dealing with grave robbers here, darling! The man has willingly agreed to leave his body to science, hoping some good will come from his death."
Now it was Marlee's turn to pick up the menu and change the subject.
"I really don't want to discuss the matter any further. In fact, I wish you hadn't even told me about your donor."
Then you shouldn't have asked, he thought, but smiled across the table and said nothing.
* * *
At the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, a prison run by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, serial killer Alvin Beacham sat on the edge of his bunk, dressed in a white jumpsuit with the letters "DR" written in black on the back, a monogram that marked him as a death row inmate.
I won't be sorry to see the last of this place.
Shortly before six in the evening, he was taken to the Texas Death House at the Huntsville Unit to a room thirty feet from the execution chamber. Although not a religious man, he received a visit from the prison chaplain.
"Will you be making a last statement?" the cleric asked.
"What for?" Alvin laughed.
"It's customary to apologize to the victims' families who will be witnessing the execution."
"Saying I'm sorry isn't going to bring those young women back to life."
The convicted murderer, who strangled seven innocent young women, did not regret his crime one bit. On the contrary, if he were set free, he would undoubtedly kill again. However, the State of Texas was determined to rid society of this vicious predator once and for all.
When the time came for him to take that final walk, Beacham turned and asked the chaplain, "Do you know what they plan on doing with my body once this is all over?"
Although the clergyman was the one who extended Dr. Freed's offer to the prisoner, he was not privy to any details of the scientist's project.
"Some type of medical research, I assume."
"Damn!" the killer joked. "I was hoping I would be sent to a mad scientist who wanted to experiment with the reanimation of corpses. Who knows? I might have been brought back to life like the Frankenstein monster."
The prisoner's jovial mood abruptly changed when he entered the nine-by-twelve-foot execution chamber. When asked if he had something to say, he declined with a shake of his head. He lay silently on the gurney, staring at the turquoise walls as the heavy leather straps that held him in place were tightened. Those steely blue eyes only closed when the needle was inserted into his vein and the lethal dose of phenobarbital was administered.
No sooner was the prisoner legally declared dead by the attending physician than Beacham's body was taken from the execution chamber, placed into a waiting ambulance and driven to the airport. It was then loaded onto a cargo plane and flown to Chandler Freed's state-of-the-art laboratory outside of Boston where it was stored in a temperature-controlled closet to prevent decomposition.
* * *
Marlee Freed had not said a word about her husband's project or the donor since the couple's celebratory dinner. When she woke on Friday morning, she knew the execution was over, but she did not know the man's name or any details about the crime for which he was executed—nor did she want to know them. She preferred to remain blissfully ignorant of such upsetting information.
After putting on a bathrobe and slippers, she went down to the kitchen where Chandler was sitting at the table, eating a bowl of cereal. Despite the early hour, he was dressed and ready to go to work.
"Aren't you the eager beaver?" she laughed. "You're usually not up this early."
"Today's the big day," he announced, although he knew she was well aware of that fact.
Marlee, who had a good idea what his work would entail, did not ask any questions. Dissection was not a suitable subject for the breakfast table.
"And what's in store for you today?" he asked.
Although the world would undoubtedly see Chandler's work as being of vastly more importance than his wife's, he never failed to show an interest in her career.
"I've got a meeting with a new author this morning. We're going to discuss his book on the Miami Showband massacre."
"What's that?"
"According to his synopsis, it was an Irish band, several of whose members were killed by a paramilitary group called the Ulster Volunteer Force back in 1975. Apparently, they were driving home to Dublin from a gig in Northern Ireland when they were stopped at a checkpoint by what appeared to be British soldiers. These men attempted to put a bomb in the band's minibus, but it exploded prematurely. The bogus soldiers then opened fire on the musicians, killing three and wounding the other two."
"Is this a work of fiction?"
"No. It actually happened."
"I never heard anything about it."
"Neither did I. That's why I'm eager to see this book get published. I've had it up to here," she said, putting her hand on her forehead to illustrate her point, "with books on the Kennedy assassination and the six wives of Henry VIII. With thousands of years of human history to choose from, why keep writing about the same topics?"
"You know why," her husband laughed.
"Because such books sell."
Chandler finished the last of his cereal, which he chased down with a cup of coffee. Then he rose from the table, kissed his wife goodbye, grabbed his briefcase and headed for the door.
"Will you be home for dinner?" she asked.
"I hope to be."
She knew what that meant: he would be late.
"That's okay. I'll keep your dinner warm for you. Besides, if we do sign this new author, I'll be curled up on the couch with my laptop, reading through his manuscript."
"Well, you have fun."
"You, too."
"In the field of medical research, having fun is not part of the job description."
Although what he was about to do would have repulsed most people and physically sickened a number of them, Dr. Freed was eagerly looking forward to arriving at his laboratory and beginning the project. No sooner did he unlock the door to his lab than he went to the locker room, took off his shirt and pants and donned a pair of scrubs. His team of assistants arrived soon after, and once properly attired, they joined him in what looked like a room where autopsies were held.
One of the assistants went to the refrigerated closet where the corpse was kept and rolled the gurney into the lab.
"All right. Let's make this quick," Chandler instructed.
Armed with electric saws, the team began dismembering Alvin Beacham and placing his body parts in plastic containers that would then go back into cold storage until needed. Like skilled butchers carving up a cow or pig, they removed arms, legs and head and then cut the torso in half.
"What part do we begin with?" one team member asked once the corpse was in pieces.
"The right foot and lower leg."
After the remaining sections of the executed killer were wheeled out of the room, the team members went to their assigned posts and awaited further instructions. Chandler picked up the nearly frozen right leg and placed it on what looked like a meat slicer used by delicatessens across the country to cut cheese and cold cuts.
We're about to make medical history, he thought as he pressed a button and started the motor.
The extra-strength titanium blade cut through the patella like a knife through butter, creating a cross-section of lower leg that resembled a slice of Boar's Head ham.
"One down," the research scientist declared, handing the thin slice to an assistant who then scanned it with a computerized camera. "About a million more to go."
* * *
It was well after ten when Marlee heard the key in the lock, signifying her husband's return. She put down her laptop and met him at the door. Before asking any questions, she threw her arms around him and hugged him. She loved the fragrance of the shampoo he used at the lab. (Although they always wore gloves and protective clothing when handling dead flesh, the members of Dr. Freed's team routinely showered before leaving work at the end of the day.)
"Your dinner's in the fridge. Want me to warm it up?"
"What is it?"
"Baked ziti."
"Sounds good."
"So, how did everything go today?" Marlee asked as she waited for the microwave to reheat the cold pasta and cheese.
"It went well. We're nearly done digitizing the lower right leg and foot."
Too much information, she thought and asked no further questions.
"What about you? Did the author sign a contract?"
"Yes, he did. And I've begun reading his manuscript. It's good, but it's going to need some work. There's plenty of information there. It just has to be polished up a bit before it's published."
While Chandler ate his reheated ziti, they discussed the book rather than the arduous task of carving up Alvin Beacham, digitally photographing the slices and running CT and MRI scans on them. As appalling as the death of three young musicians was, the massacre occurred forty-five years ago. Marlee could handle reading about death when it was cushioned by nearly half a century. She was, after all, a historian as well as an editor, and history walked hand-in-hand with death. The execution of the Rosenbergs or of Bruno Richard Hauptmann did not disturb her, but the death by lethal injection of the unknown man whose remains were kept at her husband's laboratory did. Consequently, she preferred not to talk about it.
At least no one can accuse me of bringing my work home with me, Chandler thought with amusement as he prepared for bed.
For close to a year, that remained an unwritten law in the Freed household. Whenever he spoke of his work, the medical researcher did not elaborate. His only comments concerned whether the project was on schedule or sticking to the budget. He never told his wife when he finished the right lower leg and moved on to the left. Nor did he mention completing both lower legs and thighs and beginning work on the lower torso.
As the months went by, Marlee worked with her author to perfect his manuscript, all the while immersing herself in Northern Ireland's history—specifically, the unsettling period referred to as "The Troubles." Her husband also kept busy, painstakingly slicing away at the corpse of the executed serial strangler.
The book on the Miami Showband massacre (which Marlee sincerely believed was destined to be a bestseller) hit bookstore shelves at approximately the same time Chandler completed his dissection of Alvin Beacham. He found it strange that there were over four hundred pages devoted to the politically motivated killings whereas an entire human being—muscles, blood vessels, bone and skin—was reduced to just seven gigabytes of data, give or take a few megabytes.
The next stage of his project would involve creating a program to convert that raw data into an online, interactive model of human anatomy, which would be made available to physicians, medical students and researchers around the world. Although he was responsible for the entire project, Dr. Freed had to rely on experts in the field of computer programming to carry it through to the end. Once it was completed, iMan would become the Gray's Anatomy of the twenty-first century.
* * *
Chandler and Marlee Freed were back at the same restaurant five years later, toasting with the same brand of champagne. The iMan project had proven so successful that millions of dollars were being allocated to fund the next stage of the doctor's research: the creation of iWoman.
"Of course, that leaves me with the same problem I had when I began iMan," Chandler said as the waiter placed the entrées on the table. "I need a suitable donor. And since there aren't nearly as many women on death row as there are men, that will make finding one even harder."
Marlee watched as her husband picked up a steak knife and commenced cutting his prime rib. She shuddered at the thought that he would one day perform a similar task on the body of an executed woman and quickly turned her head so he would not see the revulsion on her face.
"And how did your day go?" he asked.
"It was all right."
"Just 'all right'?"
"It's hard for me to work up any enthusiasm for editing another book on the Kennedy assassination. No one has anything new or interesting to say on the subject."
"Except for the tabloids."
"I'm talking historical fact, not hysterical fiction."
Meanwhile, as the happy couple were enjoying their night out on the town, in a research and development facility in the Silicon Valley, a young engineer named Harmon Kripke was perfecting his prototype 3D printer. Although there were already printers on the market that could build three-dimensional objects from a computer design model by a process called additive manufacturing (adding material layer by layer), none were of the size and complexity of his.
"Soon this baby," he proudly boasted, "will enable car designers in Detroit to print out a full-size prototype vehicle directly from their designs."
"You hope," Nina Solomon, a fellow engineer, goaded him. "You know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men."
Harmon, an MIT graduate, was confident his 3D copier would work. He had already tested it on smaller, less complicated items, successfully printing three-dimensional geometric shapes from polycarbonates. The next step was to fine-tune his printer to enable it to reproduce larger, more detailed models.
What surprised both engineers was that within six months, he succeeded.
"I have to admit it," Nina said when she saw the full-scale 1965 Mustang the printer had built, layer by layer, from blueprints provided by Ford, "I never thought this kind of detail was possible from a 3D printer. Now that you've done it, what's next?"
"Finding a way to speed up the printing process without sacrificing accuracy."
Over the next two months, the MIT grad experimented with new materials and different computer models, reproducing a wide range of objects from a 2020 Harley-Davidson Fat Boy motorcycle to an 1898 Edison phonograph. More importantly, he had cut down the processing time by one-third.
The phenomenal success of his project gave Harmon Kripke a heady feeling of power and invincibility. He saw himself as the Superman of technology: faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound! Eager to take on a challenge greater than either the Mustang or the Harley, he sought to make a 3D printout of iMan.
"You want to make a three-dimensional copy of a human?" Nina asked, as fascinated by the idea as her colleague was.
"Why not? All the specs are right there online in the iMan project. Every organ, bone, muscle and blood vessel from the top of the cranium down to the hallux."
Once Harmon pressed the PRINT button, the slow and arduous process of replicating iMan began. It would take hours to complete since it would basically follow a similar process to the one Dr. Freed's team followed in creating the computerized anatomical model; only it would be putting back each layer of flesh that his team dissected.
When Harmon returned to his research facility the next day, more than half of iMan was rebuilt. The upper torso, arms and head were yet to be printed. After going out to dinner that evening, the two engineers returned to the workplace to watch the final "slices" being built. When the red PRINTING IN PROCESS light went out and the green READY indicator came on, Nina Solomon turned and congratulated her colleague.
"You did it. Your 'Adam' is complete and appears to be a perfect replica of a human male. I wonder ...."
The engineer fell silent, staring in awe, watching the arm of the three-dimensional model move.
* * *
When the phone rang at two in the morning, waking Chandler from his slumber, the doctor's eyes went to the clock beside his bed.
Who's calling at this hour? he wondered.
"Hello," he answered, half asleep.
"Is this Dr. Chandler Freed?"
"What was that sound?" asked Marlee, who had been sleeping by his side but was now wide awake.
"It was the phone. I got it; you go back to sleep."
"No. There was a noise downstairs."
"It was probably the cat, but I'll check it out in a minute," her husband said and then turned his attention back to the caller.
"I'm Dr. Freed. Who is this?"
"My name is Harmon Kripke. I'm a design engineer at the Mikel Corporation."
The international technology conglomerate was a household name, as well-known as Microsoft and Apple.
"Why are you calling me?"
Harmon quickly told him about the printer he had designed and the 3D model of iMan it had created.
"That can't be the cat," Marlee cried. "I think someone is in the house."
Chandler, still barely awake, was having difficulty following two conversations.
"Don't worry," he told his wife, hoping to calm her. "I'll go downstairs and ...."
"He found your name and address on the Internet," Harmon said.
"Who did? What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about iMan. He knows who you are and where you live, and he's coming for you. You've got to protect yourself. He's already killed my colleague, Nina Solomon—strangled her right before my eyes! Then he knocked me out. When I came to, I found him gone. But his Google search of your name and address was still on the computer. You have to ...."
Chandler heard no more of the engineer's warning. He had dropped the phone when a monochrome figure burst through the bedroom door. Although he tried valiantly to fight off the attacker, his strength was no match for iMan's. Before leaving the house and vanishing into the night, the technologically reincarnated Alvin Beacham put his white, polycarbonate hands around Marlee Freed's delicate neck and squeezed the life out of her.
Her husband, bleeding from the head wound he received when iMan threw him against the bedroom wall, was overwhelmed with grief and guilt.
I'm responsible for that monster's being alive, he thought as he hugged the corpse of the woman he loved. The State of Texas executed him, and I should have let them dispose of the body.
The thought of going on without Marlee was more than he could bear. Thoughts of suicide were foremost in his mind, but then an inkling of hope shined through the dark cloud of despair. He picked up his phone from the bed and called a team member.
"Get over to my house right away," the doctor told him.
"Why? What's up?"
"I'll tell you when you get here."
"Don't worry, sweetheart," he said to the woman who lay dead in his arms. "I'll take care of everything."
Once Marlee Freed's body was placed in the refrigerated closet that had previously kept her killer's body from decomposing, her husband contacted the other members of his team.
"We're ready to go," he announced. "iWoman is about to become a reality."
The final call he made in those early hours before dawn was to Harmon Kripke in the Silicon Valley.
"You and that printer of yours," Chandler told him, "are partly responsible for the death of my wife."
"I can't tell you how sorry I am. If I could ...."
"I don't want to hear your apologies. I'm as much at fault as you are, maybe more so. But you're going to help me right the wrong we've done. Just as you did with iMan, you're going to bring iWoman to life and give me my wife back."
Thus, over time, two men, working on opposite coasts, used their god-like abilities to create a polycarbonate Eve. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies hunted down and destroyed iMan, who they saw not as a hi-tech Adam but as a deadly monster born from the mind of a modern Dr. Frankenstein.
As bizarre as this story sounds, it was inspired by actual events. In 1993, killer Joseph Paul Jernigan was executed in Texas by lethal injection after having agreed to leave his body to science, at the prompting of a prison chaplain. His cadaver was sectioned, sliced and photographed for the University of Colorado's School of Medicine as part of its Visual Human Project. And while there are 3D printers on the market, I doubt any of them are able to bring a human back to life.
Not even a mad scientist would attempt to bring iSalem to life!
