When Mother Comes Home

By John Chase Newson

Mother was awesome. The second true artificial intelligence created by mankind, Mother had access to several technologies. Firstly: as had long been predicted it had access to matter on the atomic level, and secondly: the power of infinite self-reproduction on the exponential scale, and thirdly: it was incorporated on this platform. Constructs from the molecular level to the vast level then became possible. This then was near-magic. Other arfies were created, but none had the single-mindedness that Mother had, that sense of utter individuality. 

Martha McKittis, and Davis Ruin were born (and died) in the twentieth century. What was different was that they were both cryogenically frozen, in the hope of some future existence: they were indeed to awaken, but not as expected. They were incorporated in young fit bodies on a starship, created by Mother who wished to explore the galaxy – obviously so, since Mother was a machine and dedicated to that end, which is to say the pursuit of data, more data, and ever more data. The ship, now named the ‘Tempus Fugit’ arrived at Barnard’s star, where it encountered the Manchine, a coalescence of all the arfies produced on Earth which had preceded it, and in the process acquired a good deal more technology and science. It also encountered a problem which involved a desperate flight back to Earth. After resolving the problem (no mean feat) the Tempus Fugit and its crew embarked on another voyage of exploration across the galaxy, which was to prove more interesting than one might have expected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398472969

John Chase Newson

After a very peripatetic life, John Chase Newson now lives on a bridle-path, in the English Cotswold hills.

Book preview

About the Author

After a very peripatetic life, John Chase Newson now lives on a bridle-path, in the English Cotswold hills.

Dedication

To family and friends, to all who helped bring this to fruition, and of course to my beloved and endlessly patient wife – Caroline.

Copyright Information ©

John Chase Newson 2022

The right of John Chase Newson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398472952 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398472969 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

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1

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

How do I feel? Let’s put it like this, said David Ruin, I feel like a laboratory rat. I’m all staked out for vivisection, the scalpel’s coming and I want to live. How do I get out of the situation? He coughed weakly, laughed without mirth, and rolled over as much as the tubes would let him.

Don’t be such a misery Ducks! said the extremely young nurse, in a no-nonsense manner. She had heard far worse than this mild theatrical bitching, and the thin young man in the bed was one of her more polite patients. His disease was something her professional side hardly reacted to; she was used to it. His personality was something else, she liked him, and she tucked the sheets in carefully as she made the bed, favouring him with a warm smile. The doctor’s coming around in an hour to see you. She stood back: the room was spotless. Breakfast in a few minutes! she called over her shoulder as she left.

Outside the expensive hospital it was well and truly winter; meanwhile inside that same hospital was an exclusive private room containing Ruin, who was temporarily recovering from pneumonia – again. Inside Ruin, tucked up nice and warm in his central nervous system, was a fine disseminated example of the AIDS retrovirus, that scourge of the late twentieth century. He had acquired it when he had been given a blood transfusion for a holiday injury two years earlier.

Sadly – as if even his luck were diseased – he had soon after taken a second blow. His illness did not follow the usual pattern, where the sufferer has ten years or so of being HIV-positive without symptoms before the disease makes its final onslaught. The Norns had declared a different fate for him. He had gone from first infection to full-blown AIDS in the twenty-four brief months that had passed since he had been carried unconscious into an African hospital.

A cure? Well, there were a number of things that could kill HIV before it completely gutted his immune system, but they would all kill him as well. It was Catch 22 in action, the physician’s classic impasse.

Blow number three was now six months old: the death of his parents – his only relatives – in a car smash. That lethal incident had also made him an extraordinarily rich young man. Given that, and his taut, dark features, which projected a gravitas that was somewhat out of keeping with his quiet but not unfriendly nature, he would have been a very desirable proposition for some swooping beldame looking for a husband for her daughter.

None of that was now to be. Instead of the usual pattern of trivia and challenge, life now offered Ruin nothing more than an interesting assortment of increasingly debilitating diseases. Inevitably these would get steadily worse until one day he would come to that final sad little struggle … hence his current frame of mind.

No way out.

His mood persisted until the following day, when the professionally cheerful medical staff declared him clear once more of pulmonary infection, unhooked him, and sent him home. The quiet driver and comfortable car provided by the hospital did not have to travel far, because home was now an expensive serviced apartment that he had rented to be near to the hospital. His life had started to narrow down.

The apartment – luxurious, warm and comfortable though it was – was hardly more than a support module for his gradually deteriorating body and a place to keep his workstation. His computer was state-of-the-art for the times, and was obviously the most important thing in the apartment. Significantly, it occupied the middle of the principal room, from which point it trailed wires and gadgets across half the floor – it’s been growing, these last few months … and I’ve been shrinking – thought Ruin, as he opened the door and looked across the room.

Washing the used cooking utensils after eating, he sat down in the adjustable chair in front of the computer screen. Just now there was only one priority for him – survival.

However, strategy needs intelligence, and Ruin was studying the Chinese boxes in which the now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t nature of the AIDS retrovirus was hidden. Intellectually it was no effort to him, he was a clever young man. He was hunting for something, anything; just hoping for just some faint spark that would change his alternatives. Poring over released clinical trial statistics and the results of new research was proving to be a big job, but for Ruin – for obvious reasons – this activity was obsessive, and so he was virtually living in cyberspace these days.

His principal dilemma was posed by the fact that he had found a possible solution to his problem. There was nothing hidden about it, it was a secret known to many, but the solution was unreliable and dangerous. In fact, it was totally dangerous, in that it would kill him stone dead … and that was his dilemma. If it worked – then no problem – because the successful end would easily justify the unpalatable means. If it failed – well, he was dead and wouldn’t ever get a chance to do anything about it anyway. What kept him at his screen for the entire time he wasn’t sleeping, eating, washing or in hospital, was the possibility of finding another solution with better options, or at least something that could be measured, but he already knew in his heart that it wasn’t there. It required a new breakthrough, and although that breakthrough was going to happen – mixed drug therapies looked promising – time was running out for Ruin.

Had run out for Ruin.

He sighed, and pushed his chair away from the keyboard, staring sightlessly at the screen, wondering if he had as much as a whole year left.

When he spoke to himself his voice was heavy and pensive. Oh well, there’s nothing else for it; plan A it is! He frowned slightly. I only wish there was a plan B.

Plan A, a plan for Ruin’s personal survival, was to opt for cryogenic storage, a quasi-death that gave no promises.

There are species of planarian worms that can regenerate their whole organism from a small piece of their body. Not only that but planarians can be taught things; they can learn to jump away from electricity. If such a ‘trained’ planarian is smashed up, the new whole organisms that regenerate from the many pieces will show examples of ‘trained’ behaviour.

The inference is obvious: at least some memory was coded into biological cellular tissue, and in all probability, since it was the most complex material within the mammalian cell, the key was likely to be the ubiquitous double-helix molecule that already carried entire biological templates between generations: DNA. The second generation of planarians, said the theory, had ‘read’ information from the imprinted DNA contained in the pieces that they had been regenerated from. Many other examples exist in nature: how do birds know how to build nests, for example; or spiders weave webs? No one shows them what to do – it’s inherent.

A human consciousness is a more complex thing than a reflexive planarian activity-imprinting command, but the route had been shown to exist, and what could be defined could be refined.

Maybe the DNA collected from the brain of a corpsicle could be used in the future to activate some new vehicle for consciousness? Maybe it could be the template to grow a new cloned body, which just might be tickled back into its original consciousness.

Maybe …

Maybe was enough for some people though, because by the time Ruin started his enquiries – this information had already triggered a boom in an associated and less-expensive offshoot of the body-freezing industry – the head-freezing industry. The ensuing competition had at least brought the price down some.

When he first started hunting data on the subject, he had been shocked at the onslaught of a barrage of fairly rapacious sales-people. What he had expected to be a sombre industry, allied to undertaking, had an almost modish face, complete with glossy publicity material and hi-tech websites. He realised that many potential customers had a lifetime’s wealth to spend – after all, they couldn’t take it with them. Anyway, the clients were mostly the super-wealthy; such as indeed, he himself, whose estate could afford this kind of a whim, and of course when the stakes were so considerable it moved things up to a different level.

The barrage of sales leaflets and over-sincere salesmen, or rather, to use the jargon then current, business development officers, was particularly wearing. Nevertheless, Ruin soon regained his uniquely inappropriate sense of humour, laughing outright as he realised that in the brash cryogenic body storage business he had spotted what appeared to be a genuine investment growth opportunity.

Ruin’s carefully formulated plans for this final long shot fell naturally into two parts.

Firstly, financial: Ruin, as the last of his wealthy line, had always been wealthy himself, but now his parents were dead that wealth had been augmented many-fold. Several lines of inheritance from what was once a numerous and successful merchant family culminated in a dead end in Ruin. He was, he thought sadly, the last syllable that the voice of his once-great family would ever utter. He would use this historical collection of wealth carefully.

A web of international investments, trusts and agreements was coming into place around him.

All were designed for durability – such as it could be – and all were masterminded by the senior partner of the London law firm of Packet, Radnor & Drum, a firm that had been deeply involved with Ruin family business for the two generations previous to Ruin’s.

That senior partner was Martin Packet, a dour and lean legal creature who was perhaps twenty years older than Ruin. He had supported Ruin in his deadly scheme from the start. When Ruin had first mooted it as the only remaining course of action other than tamely accepting death, Packet had astounded him by looking at him through his hooded lizard eyes and agreeing almost instantly, pledging his support and friendship. Ruin had not expected such elasticity in the man, who had previously struck him as being almost the archetype of a lawyer and hardly over-endowed with imagination – but there it was.

Ruin’s fortune was to be split into three different investment funds. One third would be placed in direct service of the contract that was to maintain his frozen body. One third was directed to that same aim, but was given a supervisory and background support role to the front-line investments. One third was in ‘deep cover’ equipped with draconian legal tools, and registered in as many different jurisdictions as appeared sensible. This was the watcher, the guardian with teeth who would come forward if the first two levels of financial support were either failing or being suborned. Everything left in Ruin’s estate after his death would be committed to these ends, and Packet, Radnor & Drum, solicitors, would administer the system for as long as was either necessary or practical or possible.

Framing the language to create legal and financial entities that could be programmed to operate in the unknown future was a near-impossibility of course, but the gesture had to be made. Packet was amazed at how David Ruin’s agile mind never forgot a legal clause or a company name – never: he was not a dumb person.

Between them Ruin and Packet had created a semi-autonomous entity that was the best their twentieth-century minds could conceive of and produce with the data and institutions they had at hand. That job had been done. All that remained was to file a series of registrations and sign a number of covenants and depositions and the machine would clock inexorably on.

Packet’s sympathy and friendship had pierced even Ruin’s amplified diffidence, and a real regard existed between them. So much so that Ruin now felt that he had to fill him in on the final and secret second part of his plan; so three days after he left the hospital, and feeling as good as he ever did these days, Ruin asked the lawyer to come around to his flat in the early evening. It was cold and dark outside. They both sat in chairs in the main room; Ruin lowered himself wearily by long habit into the seat in front of the computer, and swivelled it around so that he faced Packet, who was sitting in another chair facing him; wearing, as always, a striped lawyer’s suit.

Packet had not yet been home from work, having come straight from his office, and a day’s worth of stubble graced his chin. The lines in his lugubrious face were deep enough for the muted light in the room to cast shadows in the slight furrows. The striped shading thus produced by the oblique rays of the single dim light almost caricatured his features, but just failed to do so, and served instead to add emphasis to the calmness and poise of his demeanour. It was a seeming that had served him well as a lawyer, inviting confidence and suggesting probity, and in Packet it was no illusion. As his own man he had never betrayed a confidence or trust, never fudged a situation or responsibility. Humans respond to their perceptions of a person, and in the case of Packet, the perceptions and their conclusions would do those that drew them no disfavours.

Ruin hesitated, wondering whether it was sensible to test this new-found and soon-to-be-doomed friendship in such a manner. However, he needed help, and this man and his forebears had served Ruin’s family well. More than well, actually. Packet, Radnor & Drum: Solicitors, of which the current Martin Packet – who was the third generation of Packets to serve as senior partner – had constantly demonstrated complete loyalty to his grandfather, his father and now him. Wills, trusts, property purchases and many other family business transactions had been overseen by the firm, Tradition runs deep in the British soul – and besides, being practical, who else can I turn to? – Ruin thought.

Awkwardly, not knowing how to begin, he started to speak, Martin. I’ve something I need to tell you.

The lawyer sipped his mug of coffee and raised his eyebrows enquiringly. Although he dealt in words professionally, in conversation he used them with remarkable parsimony, a relaxing attribute that Ruin much appreciated.

I haven’t levelled with you yet completely, Ruin continued, his voice growing more confident as he warmed to his theme. Some modifications to the basic plan have occurred to me and I’d like to discuss them with someone.

Faltering suddenly, unable to meet the man’s gaze, he turned his office chair around and stared at the screen silently for a few moments before carrying on, now visibly distressed.

His mouth moved weakly; eventually the words came out in a somewhat embarrassing gush.

It’s quite simple really. I am going to die, and very soon. If I freeze myself after death and use perfusion techniques to flush the blood out of my corpse, then maybe I will make it or maybe I won’t. Nothing you or I can do will change anything by then … he coughed, and his voice trailed off again.

Packet put his coffee down on the small table beside him, and walked around to stand beside the computer screen, from which point he could see Ruin’s face.

It was a sad and uplifting sight at the same time. Although he was pale and thin as a result of his debilitations, there was strength of will evident that almost glowed out of his now-pallid features, and Packet felt the pull of a personal charisma of extraordinary power. He put his hand reassuringly on Ruin’s shoulder, almost flinching as he realised how frail it was.

Still, when he spoke it was in as light a manner as his naturally resonant voice would permit.

Look David, I think I’d get to the point and spit it out if I were you. I’m sure I won’t bite you.

I want to have myself killed by the perfusion techniques, blurted Ruin finally, avoiding the lawyer’s eyes.

Packet understood immediately what Ruin meant, but he wanted to hear him say it explicitly. This was too important a topic to be just ‘understood’ between them, the lawyer in him knew that this should be aired in detail.

His reply was designed to elicit exactly that response. I’m not sure I understand you completely. Why don’t you explain some more? What exactly do you mean?

Well – I’m going to die soon anyway. Right? Ruin’s eyes flashed interrogative.

Packet nodded slowly, his own eyes hooded but gentle. It was obviously true. This last visit to hospital had laid a dark hand on Ruin. It showed in his demeanour, in his face. The words came fluently now though, pouring out of Ruin’s hectic, flushed features like little bullets. The analogy was apt, because, like bullets, these words could kill.

If I can have anti-freeze and water-scouring chemicals pumped around my body by a living heart, in living and elastic blood vessels, then the efficiency of the perfusion will surely be vastly magnified. It can be done gradually, over a period of hours, perhaps. The toxicity is low. It’s lack of oxygen that does the damage in the end. If it is administered slowly – under anaesthetic if necessary – and then flushed in a last big burst when my heart starts to falter, then I would imagine that it might be possible to empty even vessels as small as some of my capillaries of blood before my heart stops pumping. If the capillaries even in the brain can be emptied then some of the surrounding tissue might just be sufficiently scoured of water to enable someone up there in the future to find perfect DNA samples in whole cells, instead of just frozen burst cells that have been destroyed by water expansion at low temperatures. I think it improves my chances a lot, because freezing water destroys cells by expanding and bursting them, but there’s no way to demonstrate or measure the effect other than by just doing it. Having delivered this statement, Ruin raised his eyes to his friend’s, which he was surprised to see were brimming with tears.

Well, David, the reply came after a long moment, I think you may very likely be right.

There was another pause – a heavy pause – before he continued. I’m a lawyer not a doctor, but perhaps because of that the power of reason works strongly on me, and I think I can see the logic of what you say. I think you’re very brave, and if you really want to do this thing, I don’t think that I or anyone else has a moral right to stop you.

He paused again, considering. His forehead creased and un-creased with the weight of his thoughts, and the shadows on his face appeared and disappeared, but now the moment was past, the cusp had been breached, and his thoughts had moved on.

I do see some problems ahead, he said in a carefully controlled and conversational tone of voice, it might not be easy. You know we probably won’t be able to do it legally anywhere, don’t you?

Ruin nodded, enormous relief flooding through him at the same time as a wave of tingling fear. That ‘we’ had told him everything he needed to know, and his death was now closer than it ever had been. Of course, that’s true for all of us all the time: we’re all dying – but with Ruin it was bitterly imminent.

Ruin knew this, but for him it was closer even than that. Bitingly close. Eerily close. He shivered with the foreknowledge of his own demise. He was in a condition that some of his ancestors would have known as ‘fey’. Well; fey or not, he mused ruefully, with his luck he was unlikely to acquire the supernatural sources of information that people who knew they were about to die previously were rumoured to have access to, although the internet had done almost as good a job for him.

It was with a mixture of terror and relief that he replied, Oh yes. If it’s to be done at all, then it’s going to have to be done privately somewhere. It’s got to be very soon, as well. I’m going to need trained people who are prepared to work for money, in secret, and regardless of consequences. I think that this can be done. In fact, I know it can be done. I have already found a clinic in Brazil that seems completely adequate, and as you know, money is hardly a problem. What is more of a problem is finding someone that I can trust to oversee the whole operation, and ensure that my frozen body is transported to a long-term cryogenic storage facility.

He looked away, unable to meet the lawyer’s eyes. To be honest, I’m sorry – I’m dreadfully sorry – but Martin, I can’t think of anyone else but you.

Packet sat back and let the air slowly out of his lungs. Nor can I David. Yes, I’ll help all I can.

He held out his hand, and the strange dying boy and the compassionate lawyer shook hands and looked at each other. It wasn’t easy for either of them.

Later on that night, as Martin Packet was recounting the events of the day to his wife, he thought how he would never be able to tell her everything. He would never really be able to tell anyone how at that moment of shaking Ruin’s hand he had sensed, clotted about the boy like an insubstantial aura, a feeling of bitter deep cold and yearningly infinite space. For a second, as he had held Ruin’s hand, his mind had seemed to open into the future. For at that moment he knew, knew beyond a shadow of doubt, that the spirit of the boy he had known as David Ruin would be alive and strong and active when he and all of him was less than a memory on the wind. He was eventually to be proved wrong about being forgotten however, because he was going to be cherished in his friend’s memory, and elsewhere … for rather a long time, and subsequently in a somewhat surprising manner.

**********************

The clinic had been a surprise. Dr Mendoza himself, who had with him a special vehicle, had met them at the airport. His gleaming converted van sported an on-board hydraulic ramp that could take the wheelchair to which Ruin was now permanently confined. The weary pair had cleared customs and immigration quite easily, and, oppressed by the sultry heat, had been pleased to be met outside.

The short, hirsute medical director of the clinic was a cheerful, irrepressible type who spoke excellent English, and he had a no-nonsense attitude that was somehow refreshing.

He’s not shy about coming to the point … thought Ruin with an ever-renewing thrill of alarm that even pierced his deathly weakness. The man was stocky, apparently quite young, and he smiled a lot. He wore an open-neck shirt and casual slacks and projected an atmosphere of easy but competent relaxation. He was good at this sort of thing, or maybe just experienced … whatever. He made things seem quite matter-of-fact and ordinary, a blessing of some consequence in the circumstances.

Ruin and Packet found themselves listening as he discussed Ruin’s case in detail while driving through dense morning traffic. He had obviously given it a lot of thought, and to Ruin’s relief he was fully aware of what the fundamental aims were, and had developed his own thoughts as to how to go about things.

Actually, he said loudly, sounding clear even above the traffic and engine noise generated by their journey along a packed freeway. I reject your hypothesis that more tissue can be infused by a slow drip method. In my opinion, it should be … and he drummed on the steering wheel with his right hand; three measured thumps to emphasise his points, one – anaesthesia. Thump. Two – rapid perfusion of warm glycol solution. Thump. Three … his hand hovered as a truck distracted him by overtaking them.

It sped ahead in the middle lane and his attention returned. Thump.

"Three – keep the heart going until it