PRL Serials

The PRL Event: Darker Resurrection 3

Maria is beautiful, and she can insert and operate an endoscope to assist a doctor with brain surgery. She can remove the skull flap herself, Eakran had trusted her to do that before she left for Durham, North Carolina, and she has a steady enough hand that Eakran can focus his attention on the view on the screen. She is familiar with stereotactic navigation systems and she had been performing brain biopsies for Eakran for months. She was a natural, or she was persistent. She practiced on complex replicas of the human body that Eakran had created himself and that were startlingly lifelike, before she graduated to corpses and then the patients in the basement laboratory at the Institute for Brain Function. She progressed quickly because she spent all of her free time in Eakran’s invisible mansion practicing. 

So impressed with the potential of his new assistant, Eakran grew to trust Maria in a way that he had never trusted a previous assistant. He’d told Dr. Moss about his alien origins, but she had never seen his house and in all the years that he had lived on Earth, he had never trusted a human being to see the house where he lived, not even his closest personal friend and former business associate, the now deceased Darker. 

For all of the affection that Eakran has for Maria, for all of the time they have spent together over the past year or so, working and sharing meals, laughing and watching the sunset, Maria has developed just as much hate inside of her for Eakran. The man, if that word even applies to what he truly is, Eakran, has no regard for human life. He treats his patients like guinea pigs and it is Maria’s responsibility to ensure that they go outside and have physical activity, that stuff is an afterthought to Eakran. Maria has to alert Eakran when they have been in surgery for more than five hours. He seems to have unlimited stamina for the work, on his feet and concentrating with small tools on the most sensitive part of a human being, and Maria has developed back pain trying to keep up with him. 

By the time she is at the impressive medical campus with Dr. Roy Worthington, Maria is a burgeoning medical assistant though she was right to be nervous as she drove across the state of North Carolina to the austere medical campus where Dr. Worthington is based. She only had an address where she would meet the doctor and she was honestly surprised when she encountered the medical campus for the first time; she would have expected to get a name of the facility if it was as reputable as it appeared to be with its three story brick buildings arranged in neat rows of three and connected by long corridors that a person could pass through without seeing the light of day. She was sure that she was out of her depths when Dr. Worthington ushered her inside and the facility was just as big and intimidating on the inside as it looked from the outside, with stark white walls and trimmings and perfectly polished hardwood floors that she thought would be slippery but were not. 

He gave her a quick introduction to the campus and in lieu of a tour, he stood with her at a huge map that hung in the main reception area that was as big as the foyer of a mansion. The place was not busy, but it was not dead either and occasionally doctors in white coats passed by in conversation, or nurses wheeled patients silently through the front door before they disappeared into the body of the main building or made their way to any of the other buildings in the extensive network of covered hallways that is like the cardiovascular system of the entire campus.

The US Consortium of Human History Southeast Branch; the words were in bold black across the top and the map was like a blueprint of the campus, or like the giant maps at the entrances of malls complete with the “You Are Here” arrow. All of the resources in the main building are dedicated to Worthington’s active projects that he did not go into much detail about during his introduction, though Maria is aware that he is an immunologist and he has in incredible understanding of contagious diseases.  

“This will be your home for the duration of your stay here. There are comfortable rooms for the doctors on the third floor, I have chosen the best for you. The other buildings are doing similar research with variations. This facility has never seen so much practical work in all of its existence. The men who founded it were scholars, thinkers, influencers, not necessarily doers. Today, this Consortium branch is putting theory into action and I believe that the work we are doing here will save mankind from itself.”

The man smiled, and he could have been handsome if he wasn’t so serious and the hard rims of his glasses didn’t add to his aura of a taskmaster, like a school principal who hated his job. He had enthusiasm for his work for sure, and something about him unnerved Maria. It was clear that she was meeting a real peer of the peculiar Dr. Thomas Eakran who was only an affable man when he was talking science. Maria sensed a detachment from the cares of regular people in both men.

And then it begins. Maria tries to focus on the work, to channel that detachment that she has observed so closely in Eakran as Worthington desecrates a human body in the name of science. 

There is no artifice in the afterlife. There is just freedom. Or, there can be freedom, that is one option for the human soul after death. Freedom is the reward of the fortunate. 

There are complex rules that direct the soul after it departs the body. The biggest factor is the location of the physical body at the time of death. Depending on the place in time and space, and influenced by the parallel of reality in which it exists, the soul’s destiny post mortem can seem to be predetermined. 

Darker was no longer Darker after the initial shock of being shot, the sting of the bullet wound, and then the release from the bounds of the physical. He wasn’t Evens Joseph, the baby that his mother gave birth to and raised into his late adolescence before illness forced her to depend on him. He wasn’t just that man anymore, no amount of transmutation could stamp out the decades on Earth that the energies of his soul formed into Evens “Darker” Joseph, it is the reason his soul retains the masculine pronouns. 

A human soul untethered from its body is like clay released from its mould, the impression of the cast that held it for long enough to corral the metaphysical energies that make it up. These energies permeate the universe and the thin membranes that separate the layers of perception that house realms such as the mental realm of existence, and the dark space in between realities. 

He slipped easily away, as though he was called to something, pulled there like a metal to magnetism, through the shade that separates the physical realm from the mental one, and through the shadowy veil that put him physically outside of the bounds of our universe and into the in between dark space, and he felt the force there struggle to hold him and he felt the very being of himself scream with horror at the things he witnessed until the spark of light in the darkness that he was pulled through and into a place bright enough to hurt his eyes and with the steady hum of what sounded like a chorus that filled the audible space in that bright place, and then he was pulled up, jerked at a speed that would have sent his body to dust, and before long he is just still and he knows no bounds. Darker had achieved real freedom for reasons that are impossible to explain, impossible to fathom, and he drifted as himself, sometimes remembering, sometimes aware of others with similar experiences that he never knew in his life but instantly felt a kinship and a bond, and he could choose to feel and be anything when he wanted for what felt to him as long as he wanted, including the ability to not be, to not perceive until he was ready again. It was real bliss. 

Until suddenly, he was attacked, accosted, seized upon, and he felt kinship with wild animals suddenly covered in nets and dragged away by poachers, with the bull made to panic on demand for the sport of men, with the bug squished by an unseen foot as it searches for food to bring back to a family. He was dragged, pulled, and he felt his bounds return as he descended, down to the light and the hum that accosted his senses, and back through the dark veil that cowered away from the light that filtered in long enough for him to be pulled back into the mental realm, and then tumble into the physical one where he crash landed in the hard and sterile floor of an operating room. He was a man again, he was Darker, but without the body, though his new doctors are working to remedy that.

Maria understands Worthington’s diagram well enough, but it is hard to take it seriously, even coming from the doctor who had explained it all very seriously as though it was settled science. 

“From there, we know that there is an unformed place, like a region of space with the potential for everything that can exist there and waiting for the push to become whatever, but this is all metaphysical, Maria.”

She stands in her sterile gear, head and mouth covered. She had watched and assisted Worthington in completely dismembering the remains of the man and storing them carefully in containers of a blue liquid that was almost as viscous as a gel. It smelled unlike any substance used for preservation she has ever smelled, but Worthington explained that it was a wondrous substance supplied by the head branch of the Consortium. As the bones are suspended, Maria preps with Worthington for the second stage of the process and she honestly feels that this man is a lunatic.

“And not essential to comprehend in order to assist with the next step. I can see your incredulity. We will bring a man back to life. I just thought you might appreciate an understanding of what he must have experienced before we do. His soul could be anywhere, it could be here with us now, and I was content not to believe this type of drivel before I came to do the work that I am today, but I have seen things, Maria, I have brought life into this world countless times, and though it has generally been a horror, it has existed as my creation. I could do this with no assistance, I am sure, but what we are attempting this weekend has never been done before with a human being. It has been done before with very special care and I based my procedure on detailed notes of the most brilliant scientists in the universe, but never to a human, and I was given the honor to try and I will not fail. We will bring this man to life, and we hope that this gesture will impress your Dr. Eakran to truly join our ranks.”

Worthington stood then and clapped his hands. 

“It has been hours now and I want you to brace yourself for what you are about to see.”

He grabs a container that had held the decomposed foot, and he reaches in with a gloved hand, then produces what appears to be the otherwise healthy severed foot of a black man. Maria marvels at it. 

“Stem cell technology may catch up to this one day, but even then it would be a paltry comparison, even then it would only be a wonder to the human race. The brilliant minds behind this wonder have created something capable of revitalizing organic tissue, but only to the condition in which it existed before the start of decomposition. Like a universal stem cell if you will. Though it’s uses to date are limited to regrowing limbs, functional artificial limbs I should say, that requires replenishment in the gell to sustain over long periods. It is a small penance for a limb that looks and feels like the real thing.”

Worthington talks as he empties the newly formed pieces of the body from their gel containers and places them on the table where he will be reassembled. 

“I wish I understood why we can’t all see and speak with the souls of deceased people. But some people can, and that baffles me even more. It is a mental condition, that’s what tests on the verified mediums suggests, their brains are wired to frequencies that are not common. It’s possible that this man’s soul was somewhere else, far off in that unformed space, and now he has been drawn back. This man is practically alive already.”

As he says this, Worthington lifts a fully formed heart out of the gell. It doesn’t beat, but Maria can sense that it wants to, that it is twitching in anticipation.

“I have specialists in anatomy lined up to assist with the next part, but I implore you to suit up and pitch in when you can. Eakran will just love it. Your hands in this man’s resurrection. He will be so pleased.”

Maria decides to take this as an offer of a break; Worthington intends to call his assistants down now to commence with the next stage. 

“I’ll sleep and then join you,” Maria says and Worthington nods her out. 

“I will be here!” he says cheerfully. 

When she is out of the operating room, and she takes off the masks and garb, she walks the long hall to the second floor stairwell. The place is massive and it makes Maria feel small, though she hopes that doesn’t show as she moves around and pretends to belong there. In her room, that is like a hotel room for one, Maria collapses onto the bed. She is legitimately exhausted, she hasn’t slept since before she left Georgia, and she is eager to power down, to turn her mind off. But not for too long. Everything is strange for sure, there is something very creepy about this facility, but Maria had helped to bring a man back from death and she is eager to see it. 

The parts of the man’s body were arranged on a surgical table, still caked in the gel that kept then from bleeding. The gel was blue, but it was clear enough that Worthington could see that the flesh has regenerated and where appropriate, blood and other bodily fluids filled them out. When he was properly arranged, three surgeons worked to stitch the pieces together with sturdy wires that they didn’t intend to hide. They worked through the layers of gel, and when they were done, it adhered to the body like the newly formed man had been lifted fully intact from a vat of the stuff. 

Maria rejoins Worthington as he sits alone with the body covered in gel.

“Soon enough,” he says when he notices her. “You can see the heart beating, pumping life through his viens.”

“He’s not breathing,” Maria says and she startles when the mouth opens and he gasps like he has been holding his breath for over a year. 

The body on the table suddenly convulses and then falls from the table. Worthington sounds an alarm for assistance and Maria watches in horror as the man jerks around uncontrollably. 

After he crash landed, Darker knew that he was back on Earth, he just didn’t know where. It looked like a hospital room, and then he was horrified to see the surgeons diligently working to sew his body together. When they were done and there was just the one doctor left who stared at him like he was a son he had given birth to, Darker approached his body and stared at his face that he did not quite recognize through the gel. And then it felt like a vacuum was pulling him down to the table, like his body was absorbing him, and it was. As the vessel slowly returned to the physical realm, so was the soul that had inhabited it, and Darker’s soul was reunited with the vessel that had been made for it, whether he wanted to be or not.