touched the body-the leg-before the broadcast and it was either a real corpse or the most realistic artificial one ever created. And having spent some time in morgues for his special on medical malpractice, Donald wasn't sure it was possible to fake that good ol' dead body smell.
The next segment was a pair of prerecorded interviews, one with a New York pastor expressing his outrage at this blasphemy, and one with a college professor and award-winning author who felt that this was the dawn of a glorious new world. After another commercial break, they went to a series of grammatically questionable comments by normal people on the street. After another set of commercials and a segment on the protestors, the show returned live to the resurrection room.
'Let's talk about what exactly is going to happen,' Donald said.
'Though again the science involved is very complicated, the procedure is relatively simple.' Brant patted the top of a large black cylinder, which held the other end of the tubes that were in the corpse. 'This machine will deliver the chemicals in the proper doses into the subject. That should take exactly three minutes and eight seconds. From then, we'll expect the corpse to return to life within several minutes.'
'And if this works, what condition will the specimen be in, mentally and physically?'
'To be completely honest, we really don't know.'
'Let's say it doesn't work. Could you then just hook another dead body up to the machine?'
'Ah, that would certainly be convenient, wouldn't it?' said Brant with a smile. 'Alas, it's not quite that simple. Someday in the future we'd like to be able to just slap another body in the machine and return them to life, but for now, Mr. Dabernath is our only hope.'
'So let's say that nothing happens tonight. Where does that leave Project Second Chance?'
'Well, first of all, it leaves us looking rather foolish on national television, as well as yourself, if I may be so bold.'
Stick to the cue cards, funny guy, thought Donald.
'Beyond that,' said Brant, 'I don't care to speculate.'
'Fair enough. Now, does the thumbs-up sign that the other scientist is giving you mean that we're ready to begin?'
'It does indeed, Donald. So I'm going to have to ask you and your camera crew to leave.'
Donald blinked. What the hell?
'I'm only kidding. Just thought I'd add a touch of humor to an extremely weighty moment in human history.'
'Ah, well, I'm sure millions of viewers out there found it highly amusing.'
Brant walked over to the machine and placed his hand on the lever. 'And so we begin,' he said. After a dramatic pause, he pulled it.
There was a loud hissing sound, several multi-colored lights began to flash, and a motor began to whirr as the machine started pumping chemicals into the cadaver. Donald felt a tingle of excitement that did a bit to offset his horrible stomach cramp.
What if this worked? What if this body really did come back to life? He'd get to witness it firsthand, see this miracle of human accomplishment with his own eyes.
For a brief moment, all thoughts of his career vanished as he stared at the corpse, watching its closed eyes.
Then he remembered that he was on live television and supposed to be saying something. 'Now, can we expect to see any signs of change at this point in the process?'
Brant shook his head. 'Nothing until the chemicals have been fully infused into the body.'
Donald watched the corpse anyway. The cameraman remained focused on it as well, and Donald knew that the television viewing audience was seeing a clock counting down the time remaining until this stage was complete.
For the next two minutes, Donald explained what was going on for the benefit of those viewers who were just tuning in.
'We're at three minutes,' announced the other scientist.
Donald silently counted down the final eight seconds, and then the machine stopped.
The corpse lay still.
'I need to remind you, nobody knows exactly what's going to happen, or how long it will take,' Donald said into his microphone. 'It could be seconds, it could be minutes. But whatever you do, do not take your eyes off the screen.'
Donald was sweating so profusely that it was dripping off his nose, but that didn't matter. The camera wasn't on him.
He took his eyes off the corpse for just a moment and looked at Richard Brant. The guy was so excited he was practically twitching. Donald wondered if he'd cackle and shout 'It's alive…it's alive!' if this worked.
When it worked. He needed to stay optimistic.
'One minute,' announced the time-keeping scientist.
'We've just passed the one-minute mark,' Donald said. 'As you can see, there are no external signs of life, but again, we don't know how long this is going to take.'
The second minute passed with no change in the corpse's activity, as did the third. By the fourth minute, Donald was becoming a bit antsy, and by the fifth, the stomach cramp had far overtaken the tingle of excitement. The sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh minutes consisted of increasing degrees of being pissed off.
'I would like to stress once again that nobody knows how long this is going to take,' said Donald, who felt that he probably had flop-sweat dripping from his teeth by this point. 'This type of human accomplishment has never been accomplished by humans before, and so we have to be patient. Mr. Brant, at what point would we consider Project Second Chance a failure?'
'There are never failures in science, only opportunities to learn from our mistakes.'
'Okay, so, at what point do you decide that tonight's experiment is an opportunity to learn from your mistake?'
'Obviously we're going to continue to monitor the cadaver for as long as it takes.'
'I understand that, but let's pretend that eventually we need to go to a commercial break…'
The time-keeper scientist pointed to the corpse's hand. 'We've got movement in the index finger of the left hand.'
Donald's frustration vanished. 'Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll look closely, you'll see that we do indeed have a tremor in the corpse's finger. In fact…yes, it looks like the middle finger is twitching as well. My God, this is incredible. Approximately twelve minutes into the procedure, two of the corpse's fingers are showing unmistakable movement.'
And then, without warning, the corpse sat up, screaming.
CHAPTER THREE
Stanley Dabernath sat up, tubes popping free of his body, and shrieked as if waking up from the Godzilla of nightmares. 'Shit!' he wailed. 'Mother of fuck!'
Where was he? What had happened to him? Who was that guy with the camera?
'Holy shitting damn shit!' he screamed, looking around the room, eyes wide. His vision was kind of blurry, but he could tell that there were a couple of guys dressed in white and some guy holding a microphone.
Had he been on the operating table? Had he almost died? This place didn't look like a hospital room. Maybe these people were conducting illegal experiments on him.
He screamed some more.
'Stanley, can you hear me?' asked one of the men in white. 'Can you understand what I'm saying to you?'
'Shit!'
'Stanley?'
