Chapter 3

Doctor Mendez was a tall, tough looking gentleman who appeared, to Ken's eyes anyway, to still be in his teenage years. He was wearing the same thing Dr. Jerico had worn, namely a pair of white shorts and a plain cotton tank top. Except for the lack of earrings or jailhouse tattoos, he looked exactly like a Latino gang-member from south San Jose. He came in the room shortly after Dr. Valentine's revelation regarding her lineage and asked if it would be a good time to perform the medical examination. Though his features were unmistakably Latin American in origin his accent was far from what Ken expected. His annunciation and terminology was very similar to that of Valentine and Jerico.

Strangely, as Mendez was about to begin, Ken had a sudden attack of modesty at the thought of being naked before Valentine, or Karen, as he was beginning to think of her. True, she had undoubtedly already seen him in all of his glory many, many times and true, he had felt no such self-consciousness before he had known that she was his granddaughter, but there it was anyway. "Karen," he said softly, feeling a blush rising to his face, "would you mind... you know... uh..."

"Certainly," she said, seeming to catch his drift. "I'll step out until Dr. Mendez is done."

"Thank you," he said gratefully. "I know it's stupid, but..."

"Don't think twice about it," she reassured him. "Here on Mars we believe in honoring a person's desires without questioning them. I'll see if I can go dig you up some clothes to wear while I'm gone. If you're up to it and if Dr. Mendez agrees that it's all right, we'll take a little walk around the facility, maybe go get you some food from the roach pit."

"The roach pit?" he said, not really liking the sound of that.

"Uh, what you used to call a..." she thought for a second, "... a cafeteria I believe."

"Oh, of course," he said, nodding doubtfully, but nevertheless excited at the thought of seeing something other than this room. "That sounds like a good idea. Thanks."

She flashed him one last warm look and then disappeared through the door without another word. As soon as it slid shut behind her, Mendez opened a small plastic case he carried and began to lay instruments - some familiar looking to Ken, most unfamiliar - out on the table next to the bed.

"I'd just like to say, Mr. Frazier," Mendez said as he picked up a small plastic device and turned it on, "that it's truly an honor being allowed to talk to you after all this time. I have been your primary physical physician since you were removed from storage and I don't usually get to talk to such people after treating them."

"You mean cryogenic people?" he asked, nervously eyeing a piece of equipment that looked suspiciously like a taser gun.

"Right," Mendez agreed. "I've been working with Karen for quite some time now on this project. I handle putting the bodies back in shape and she handles putting the mind back in shape. I don't know if she told you how rare it is for us to get someone back."

"She said that I was number six out of a hundred."

"A hundred and twelve to be exact," Mendez corrected. "And though I've only talked to you for a few minutes here I can already tell that you're the best-recovered so far. The other times I've done the post-awakening exam the patient has been pretty gorked still."

"Gorked?" Ken said, raising his eyebrows a tad. It was going to take him a while to get used to these Martians' expressions.

"Uh... lethargic," he translated. "The first three took more than a week before they were even able to remember their names. The last two were a little better but it still took them quite some time before their memories and thoughts came back. I guess that new warming sequence Karen developed had a beneficial effect."

"I guess it did," Ken agreed, looking at the doctor thoughtfully. There was something about the way he was saying Karen's name every time, some lilt to his voice. "If you don't mind my asking," he said, "just how old are you anyway? You'll forgive me if I say that you don't exactly look old enough to be a doctor."

"I assure you I'm old enough," Mendez smiled. "On my last birthday I was seventeen years old."

Ken almost choked for a moment until it occurred to him the doctor was probably referencing the Martian calendar instead of the Earth calendar. "Seventeen," he said, the number sounding strange on his lips. "So that would make you... uh..."

"About 32 on your calendar," he said. "I graduated with honors from the New Pittsburgh school system and went on to get my master's degree in biological engineering here at Whiting University. From there I was accepted into the medical school, which I also graduated from with honors, and I then performed a two-year residency in internal medicine. My primary job is as an internist here at the medical center but I've been helping Karen with her project since it's inception. I look so young to you probably because of our medical techniques. We have managed to make significant advances in the reversal of the aging process."

"It would seem so," he agreed. He shifted nervously on his bed for a moment. "You and Karen," he finally broached. "Are you... that is to say, have you... uh..."

"We're very good friends," Mendez said, somewhat mysteriously. "We've worked closely together for quite some time. She's a brilliant physician and a very warm person. She has good common sense too."

"Good common sense?" he asked, wondering what that had to do with anything.

Mendez looked at him for a moment and then chuckled. "Sorry," he said, "it's hard for me to remember that you're not familiar with a lot of our sayings."

"Imagine how it is from my end," Ken told him.

"Yes," he said, nodding. "I suppose it is fairly difficult for you as well. Anyway, common sense is kind of a sacred concept among us Martians. It is what our constitution and all of our laws and practices are based upon. It is considered one of the highest complements to say someone has good common sense."

"I see," Ken said a little doubtfully.

"Of course it is also a compliment that is not given lightly. We have sort of a cultural taboo against jerking someone off with that expression. It is generally not said unless it is really meant. On the other end of that thought, it is considered a very grave insult to tell someone that they don't have any common sense."

"So if I want to get my ass kicked in a bar," Ken said, "then I tell someone they have no common sense, right?"

"Those would certainly be fighting words," Mendez agreed, "although the penalty for assault and battery is rather severe here, so watch what you do."

He nodded, wondering what the doctor meant by severe. He would ask Karen later perhaps.

"Now then," Mendez said, picking up one of his instruments. "Shall we begin?"

"Fuckin' aye," Ken told him. "Do your worst."

Mendez chuckled again. "You're a fast learner, Mr. Frazier. A very fast learner." He looked up at the ceiling. "Computer," he said, "run general physical diagnostic program for an adult male please."

The computer answered with its typical acknowledgment and they began.

The exam itself was a curious mixture of old techniques he was familiar with and newer, more high tech methods of deriving information from his body. His reflexes were tested with a rubber mallet upon his knees, his eyes and ears were examined with a small penlight type of device, and his abdomen and legs were palpated by a bare hand. Mendez asked him a serious of questions about whether anything hurt, did he have any nausea, was he dizzy. He answered them all truthfully, unable to shake the sensation he was being examined by a juvenile hall inmate. Several scanning devices were also passed over his body, with Mendez peering at the computer screen behind him as they made their journey. The entire process took about twenty minutes.

"Lookin' pretty static, Mr. Frazier," Mendez finally announced.

"Static?" he asked carefully. "Would that mean good?"

"It means good," he assured him. "All of your vital functions are well within operational parameters. Most of them are near the top of the chart. Were you in good physical shape before you were put in cryogenics?"

"Yes," he said. "I used to run twenty miles a week and lift weights."

"That might have contributed to your overall recovery," he suggested. "When I first started putting you back together I noticed you were in remarkable shape for someone from that era. There was the liver damage of course and the crude stapling and tying of the various arteries and veins surrounding it, but aside from some light vessel and organ necrosis from the toxins in your blood, everything else was in static shape. That might even have been the reason you were able to live through the original injury in the first place."

"I'm glad all that running came in handy for something," he said. "I used to hate doing it. The only reason I did was so I could keep my blood pressure down without taking pills. Hypertension ran in my family and they made you take a physical every year to maintain your pilot's license if you were diagnosed with it."

"Yes," Mendez said, "I noted the hypertensive gene when I first examined you. I shut it off for you."

Ken blinked. "You... shut it off?"

"Well, sure, why wouldn't I?" he asked, seemingly afraid he had violated some sort of etiquette. "Was that all right? I also shut off the genes that would have led to nearsightedness and rheumatoid arthritis in a few years. I can turn them back on if you wish, but..."

"No, no," Ken said, shaking his head. "That's all right. It's just that... well... they couldn't do things like that back in my day. You were pretty much stuck with the high blood pressure and the arthritis and the failing eyesight. It was all part of getting old."

"There's a lot of things that we do that were unheard of back in your day, Mr. Frazier," Mendez told him. "We have managed to isolate and eliminate almost all of the traits of aging and almost every disease process. No longer do people die of cancer or coronary artery disease or chronic respiratory problems. We've eliminated diabetes, epilepsy, and all birth defects. We can cure or prevent any bacterial or viral infection. The average human lifespan has been increased tremendously in the last 21 years and a lot of the techniques we use started with Dr. Marjorie Valentine, your relative. Once we were free of WestHem influence and able to concentrate our energies without interference, medical science advanced exponentially."

"How long do people live now?" he asked, fascinated.

"We don't have a very large statistical base yet," he replied, "since it's only been 20 years or so. But eighty years seems to be where we stand at this point in history for an average lifespan."

"Eighty years?" he asked. "That would be by the Martian calendar, right?"

"Right. About a hundred and fifty years by the WestHem calendar. The limitation to our ability to eliminate disease entirely lies within the brain. We can fix just about everything that could go wrong with a person's body but the brain is different."

"That's what Karen said about the revival process," he said.

"She should know," Mendez agreed. "The problem is that we still have no idea just how the brain stores memories, thoughts, information, and all of the other millions of things it does. What seems to happen at about seventy-five years of age or so is the brain simply gets too full. It loses the ability to store any more information and therefore starts purging some things. The more intelligent a person is, the sooner this process occurs. Senility sets in and quickly becomes worse, month by month until the point is reached where the autonomic functions start to go."

"It's like Alzheimer's disease," Ken said.

"Exactly," Mendez told him. "That is basically what the disease known as Alzheimer's was back in your day. It struck your people earlier than it does ours because the factor of a healthy body and support system was not there in your day. The aging of the organs that supply the brain seems to have a lot to do with the onset of the process. We have managed to push the disease back considerably but not eliminate it entirely." He brightened a little. "But we're working on it. Karen is heavily involved in the research towards those ends. If she and her team can crack the code by which the brain stores information, we can manipulate it and prevent the onset of senility. Human beings will become almost immortal."

"Wow," he said, shaking his head a little in awe. He was now living in a world where he could expect to be alive for another 120 years or so. He wasn't really sure how to feel about that. The loss of Annie was still heavy on his heart and he wasn't sure that he really wanted to go that long without seeing her again. He had never been a particularly religious man in his old life but a big part of him did believe that there was something after death, some place in which loved ones would meet again. Hadn't he told his partner that just after he'd been shot?

"Are you sure it's okay to go out in public dressed like this?" Ken asked Karen doubtfully as he modeled the gray shorts and brief half-shirt she had dug up for him. The shorts were very high upon his thighs, the hem only inches below his crotch. There was no underwear of any kind to go with them. Like a swimsuit from his day, the underwear was included as a portion of the shorts.

"Of course it's okay," Karen said, amused by his discomfort. "This is what everyone wears on Mars." She tossed him a pair of moccasin type shoes. "Here, these go with it."

"Everyone wears this?" he asked in disbelief. "Are you telling me that lawyers, businessmen, accountants, and people going out to eat in fancy restaurants wear little shorts and a half-shirt?"

"Well," she said, "here on Mars we don't have very many lawyers and we have even fewer businessmen and accountants, but, yes, they wear exactly what you are wearing to their offices and when they meet with their clients. This is how we dress here. Why would we dress any different? The temperature is always 22 degrees. It never changes, it never rains, and there's never any wind. Of course those who work in the agricultural greenhouses dress in long pants and longer shirts, and the police officers wear body armor and guns, and the soldiers wear biosuits when they have to go outside into the environment, but those of us who stay in prefer to be comfortable."

"There are no business suits or anything like that? No special dressing up for certain occasions?" he asked. "How about job interviews?"

"Nope," she said. "Such trappings were part of the WestHem system of elitism. Whether it was conscious or unconscious, the manner in which a person dressed evolved into a status symbol, a reminder that some people thought themselves better than others because of their profession or their earnings."

"And having everybody dress like Chippendale dancers and hookers has eliminated that?"

She scratched her head a little. "Well," she said, "I'm not quite sure what a Chippendale dancer is and we don't refer to prostitutes as hookers anymore, but no, the manner of dress has not eliminated those problems. Dress differences were only a symptom of a much larger class struggle, a struggle we have tried to take care of in many other ways. We Martians believe that dress should be for comfort and so we dress comfortably. These shorts and cotton shirts are comfortable for our controlled environment and do not imply any sort of superiority to others."

"Well why isn't everybody naked then?" he asked. "Wouldn't nudity be even more comfortable than wearing anything at all?"

"There are some parts of our planet where nudity is practiced in public," she said. "Eden is a much more liberal city than New Pittsburgh and there are large sections where nudism is acceptable. As for the rest of us, I would put it down to several factors. In the first place, I won't deny that some habits from our early history die hard. We have not eliminated all of the problems of WestHem life, not by a long shot. We still have crime here on Mars and we still have greed to a certain degree and we still have people who think only of themselves and how they can manipulate our system to their best advantage at the expense of others. We also still have some aspect of modesty in exposing our breasts and genitals to others. Another factor in dressing like this is sexual in nature."

"Sexual," he said slowly, finding himself acutely embarrassed to be discussing sex with his granddaughter.

"Our sexual mores are quite different than what you are used to," she explained to him. "We do not treat the act of intercourse and the study of sexuality with the same... oh... squeamishness that those from your century treated it with. But all the same, the idea of exposing one's genitals to everyone is somewhat frowned upon, at least in the casual pubic setting. It is believed that these exposures should be reserved only for those whom we elect to have sexual relations with. It maintains a sense of mystery and exclusiveness to the act. For that reason we keep them covered up in public."

"I uh..." he stammered, his face blushing, sorry that he had brought this up in the first place. He decided to change the subject. "Why don't we go for that walk now, shall we?"

She laughed, patting him on the back. "Sorry to make you blush, Gramps," she told him. "But you'll see what I mean when you get out there."

"And please," he pleaded, "don't call me 'Gramps. I'm only 33 years old for god's sake. That's much too young to be called gramps. Especially by a woman who is only a few years younger than I am."

"Okay, Ken," she corrected. "Whatever you want. That's the way we like it here. But I would stop calling yourself 33 years old if I were you. You might as well start getting used to our calendar. Here you are about... well... let me ask the computer. I'm horrible at doing math in my head."

She looked up at the ceiling to ask but Ken stopped her. "Do you mind," he asked a little hesitantly, "if I do that?"

"You mean ask the computer?" she said.

"Yes," he said, smiling a little sheepishly. "I've never talked to a computer before."

She shrugged. "Kick your ass," she told him.

"What?" he asked, confused.

"It means go ahead," she clarified.

"Oh," he said, looking up at the ceiling. He took a deep breath and said: "Computer?"

Nothing happened.

"What's wrong?" he asked her. "Why didn't it answer me?"

"Because you didn't ask it anything," she said. "Speaking the word 'computer' activates the voice recognition system for the room terminal but you have to follow it up with something. After you say the word, you then just go ahead with your command."

"Oh," he said, nodding, "I see." He tried again. "Computer, how old am I on the Martian system of measurement?"

"Please specify who you are and what your current age is," the computer's voice replied. "I do not have your voice print in my data banks and therefore I'm not down with your identity."

He turned to Karen. "It's not down with me," he said, causing both of them to giggle a little.

"Tell it your name and how many earth years you have been alive," she suggested, "and then ask it to convert that to the Martian calendar."

"Right," he said, looking up at the ceiling again. "Computer, I am Ken Frazier. I am 33 years old under the earth system of measurement. How old does that make me in the Martian system?"

"You are 17.557 Martian years old," it instantly replied, "assuming of course, that today is your birthday. And I have logged your voice print for future recall."

"Thank you," he said, pleased at the result. Of course it wasn't his birthday but that ballpark figure was close enough for his purposes.

"Fuckin' aye," the computer shot back at him.

"So I'm seventeen and a half," he said to Karen. "Amazing. I remember thinking that I'd kill to be seventeen again a time or two. Guess I got my wish, huh?"

"In a manner of speaking," she said.

"By the way," he inquired, "why do we look at the ceiling when we talk to the computer? Do we have to do that?"

She began to laugh, though seemingly not at him.

"What?" he asked.

"Sorry," she said, still chuckling. "It's just one of those cultural things people do, something stand-up comedians like to make fun of. There's no real reason to look up at the ceiling when you talk to a computer. It can hear you perfectly no matter how quietly you speak or where you happen to be looking. But in most buildings, in most rooms, the microphone is installed in the ceiling. We humans have an unbreakable desire to look at whomever we're talking to."

"So it's a human nature thing," he said.

"Exactly. Good old human nature. Where would we be without it?"

"Where indeed?" he asked.

"Come on," she beckoned, heading for the door. "Let's go show you around."

He hesitated a little. "Are there going to be a bunch of people out there staring at me and asking me a bunch of questions about what its like to come back from the dead?"

"No," she said firmly. "Believe it or not, not a lot of people even know what the circumstances behind your presence here is. This is a busy hospital and Martians tend to mind their own business about most things. You'll just be another person in the halls, I promise."

"So there's no media or reporters or curious workers out there then?" he asked, not quite sure whether to believe that or not.

"Not a single one," she assured him. "Are you ready?"

"I guess so," he said, stepping towards her.

The door opened up when she approached it, once again showing him the tiled hallway beyond. This time however, he was able to walk through the door and see the whole thing. In a way it was a bit anti-climatic. The hallway stretched off in both direction, with doors spaced every ten feet or so. Each door had a number printed in black upon it. At one end of the hall was a perfectly normal looking nurse's station staffed by a young dark skinned woman who was speaking softly towards a computer terminal before her. They walked that way, their moccasins squeaking softly upon the floor.

The young woman looked up as they approached. "How they hangin' today, Karen?" she asked, giving a friendly smile.

"They're hangin' in there," Karen returned. "Ken, this is Loretta, one of the nurses on this floor. If you need anything when I'm not here she'll be happy to help you. All you have to do is ask the computer to alert her or push the button on the rail of your bed."

"Okay," Ken said shyly, casting his eyes downward as she smiled at him. He still could not believe he was walking around in a public place dressed in brief shorts and a half-shirt.

"Zeal will be your night shift nurse," Loretta said. "She comes on at 1806 and works until 0600. It's nice to see you up and around so soon."

"Thank you," he said, casting a suspicious look at Karen.

"Loretta is your nurse," she said, catching the meaning of his glare. "She has to know what your condition is."

"Uh huh," he mumbled.

"We're gonna go take a little walk, Loretta," Karen told her. "We shouldn't be too long."

"Okay," she returned. "I'll see if I can arrange for a shower and a rubdown when you get back. How does that sound?"

"Uh... fine," he said.

"Very good."

With that, Karen continued down the hallway. Ken hesitated for the briefest moment and then followed.

The hallway was not perfectly straight, instead gently curving inward, as if the building was cylindrical. There were no windows to the outside. Several times they passed other people who were shuffling from one place to another. Ken was comforted by the fact that all of them, males and females alike, were dressed almost exactly the same as he was. Every thirty feet or so along the walls a yellow warning sign was posted stating BLAST DOOR - STAND CLEAR WHEN ALARM SOUNDS. In the floor and ceiling near each of these signs was a groove about two inches wide that stretched from wall to wall. The floor groove was outlined by bright yellow lines on either side.

"You'll get used to seeing those real quick," Karen told him when she noticed his interest in them. "They're everywhere on Mars. Every ten meters in buildings constructed since the revolution, every twenty in buildings built before it. You'll also find them every thirty meters on every street. If there is ever a decompression problem in the section you're in, a very distinctive alarm will sound and arrows will flash on the ground pointing you out of the affected area if that is still possible."

"What if it's not possible?" he asked.

"If the leak is severe," she said, "the doors will slam shut instantly and seal off the section before other areas lose compression as well."

"And if I'm still inside?" he wanted to know. "Do oxygen masks drop down or anything like that?"

"No," she said pointedly. "If you are in an area that loses compression, you will die whether you have supplemental oxygen or not. The outside atmospheric pressure is so low that your body will not be able to tolerate it."

"How nice," he said, feeling claustrophobia creeping through him as he imagined dying in such a way. It occurred to him for the first time that he was now living someplace man was not meant to live in. "And what if I happen to be going through the door when it shuts?"

"It will sever anything in its path," she told him. "They are designed to create a seal no matter what." She smiled a little, trying to make light of this. "Just try to make sure your torso is through. If your legs get cut off we can clone you some new ones."

"Christ," he mumbled. "You people have learned to live with the fact that a simple hole in the ceiling will kill you all?"

She shrugged. "Our engineers, even before the revolution, were quite fanatical on the subject of safety," she told him. "In all of Martian history the only time any sort of decompressions occurred was during the Jupiter War about ten years before our revolutionary war. Those came as a result of deliberate laser shots fired from enemy attack craft and even then the blast doors worked exactly as they were supposed to."

"But what if the power goes out and your oxygen extractor things stop working?"

"The power does not go out here," she said confidently. "Every system that runs our cities has multiple built-in redundancies. Both the artificial gravity and the power generators run off of a series of fusion generators that are fully automatic. If everyone died right now for some other reason, those generators would continue to run on their own until their fuel was exhausted. That is at least ten years, maybe more, depending upon when it was loaded."

He shook his head, not very much comforted. "You're completely dependent upon technology," he said. "Unlike on Earth, your people cannot continue to live without it. If there were a collapse of civilization for whatever reason, everyone would die here. It wouldn't be possible for anyone to survive."

She did not seem terribly fazed by this argument. "Well, we'll just have to make sure our civilization doesn't collapse now, won't we?"

Shortly they came to a bank of five elevators. Karen touched her finger to a small panel, causing it to light up. A display on a small screen just above this showed the current location of the various cars. Ken looked at this display carefully for a moment and wondered if he was reading it correctly. "Are there really 118 stories to the building we're in?" he asked carefully.

"Yes," she said. "This building encompasses not only the Whiting Medical Center but the entire university campus as well, including the dormitories. There are more than two million cubic meters of floor space."

"Wow," Ken said, impressed. "That's an awfully big building."

"Not really," Karen replied. "Here on Mars we tend to take advantage of vertical space instead of sprawling out horizontally. High rise buildings are the staples of our life. There are buildings here in New Pittsburgh that are more than two hundred stories tall. The old Agricorp building in Eden is 278 stories tall. It used to be the headquarters of the most powerful of the corporations that ruled us. Now it's an upper-end housing complex."

"278 stories?" he said, trying to imagine a building that tall. "That's... uh..."

"Just over a kilometer," she said. "I've been up to the observation platform on top a few times. The view is quite impressive from up there."

While he was pondering the unsettling thought of a pressurized building that stood more than a half a mile high, the doors of one of the elevators suddenly slid open revealing an eight foot by eight foot compartment. Ten or twelve people, all of them dressed in shorts and skimpy shirts, were inside. Some of them were chatting amongst themselves, all in the trashy accent Ken was starting to become accustomed to. None of them paid the least bit of attention to the two new passengers.

Karen and Ken stepped inside and the doors slid shut behind them. Another display above the doors showed the floors that had been chosen as stops and the current floor that the elevator was on. It stood at 33 when they got in. "Serenity level," Karen said and a pleasant, female computer voice replied: "fuckin' aye."