Norm shook his head. “That’s not really our field of expertise. We’d love it if someone else did that though.”
Sounding a little incredulous, Warfield said, “You think someone else should do that?! Isn’t your company the one that stands to benefit?”
Seeing that Norm looked a little taken aback, Jonas said, “Morgan, I think our patients also stand to benefit enormously. Not just those with cancer, but your patients in the Emergency Department.” He went on to describe his vision of how critically injured patients in the ED, or even in the prehospital setting could be put in stasis to await the gathering of resources to deal with their problem.
Warfield waved this away, “We do pretty damn well the way things are.”
A little angry, Jonas responded, “That kind of bullcrap’s been the rallying cry of people afraid of change since the beginning of time. Morgan, you were around during the Covid-19 pandemic. Imagine how much better we could have done if we’d been able to staze patients in critical condition until better treatments had been developed!”
“If,” Warfield said, bordering on derisive. “If being stazed didn’t make them worse! He turned his attention to Norm, “Have you stazed any other large animals?”
“Um…” Norm said. His eyes went to Schmidt.
Schmidt put his hand up. “Me.”
“What?” Warfield asked, obviously not understanding.
“Me,” Schmidt said, standing up. “I’m a large animal that’s been stazed. I’m here to tell you that when you go through a stasis event, you can’t even tell it happened.” He didn’t give Warfield time to interject, instead turning to the large coffin-shaped device. “Just so you guys’ll know how this works. This is our prototype stazer.” Schmidt pulled up on one end, and a lid rose like the hood on a car. He folded down a side panel showing the mirrored interior of the coffin which was filled with a gleaming Stade. He said, “Both sides fold down to allow patients to be slid laterally into and out of the device. As you can see, right now the interior’s filled with the Stade of a dummy we put in the cavity to demonstrate how it works.” He pointed to cavities on the side of the Stade, “These sockets are shaped to allow you to put your fingers in to lift the Stade and carry it somewhere, though normally we’d expect you to slide it onto a gurney like you normally do to transport patients. If you needed to staze another patient right away, you could carry the first Stade over and put it in the corner. If you had a lot of patients in extremis, you could stack the Stades to the ceil—"
Warfield broke in, “You’re assuming that—”
Looking irritated, Schmidt put up his hand. “Let me finish. If you guys aren’t interested in this technology, there are a lot of other hospitals that are.” He focused an intense gaze on Warfield, “Therefore, I have no desire to stand around here catching any more of the angry bullshit you seem determined to give us.” He turned back to the device and said, “Norm, can you close it up while I set the machine up to destaze?”
Holy hell! Jonas thought. I’d love to have had the courage to bark back at Warfield.
Norm was closing the side of the stazer and pulling down the lid. Schmidt was typing on the laptop.
Warfield took advantage of their preoccupation to start in again, “I’ll guarantee that some harm must accrue to an organism when it has its chemistry interrupted. DNA repair, energy production, oxygenation; all that stuff happens extremely rapidly. It wouldn’t be proceeding like it’s supposed to. You might think no harm has occurred, but…”
Warfield had paused when Schmidt hit a final key and a “snap” emanated from the stazer. Schmidt nodded at Norm who opened the lid and flopped down the side of the chamber, revealing Seba laying inside. Seba sat up, stretched, and gave everyone a big smile.
“Don’t make any effort to smile at these bastards, Kaem,” Schmidt said, sourly, “We’ve been preaching to a hostile audience.”
Kaem’s eyes focused on Jonas, “Sorry Dr. Jonas. I, of course, am not aware of what’s been going on while I was in stasis. Perhaps you could fill me in?”
For a moment Jonas felt he’d been put on the spot. Then he decided, What the hell, and spoke the truth as he saw it. “We’ve had a couple of testy curmudgeons butting heads. Dr. Warfield,” Jonas indicated the crotchety man, “and your Mr. Schmidt. Dr. Warfield feels strongly that the interruptions of intracellular chemical processes during stasis must result in changes to the organism. He feels Staze should look for such changes with extensive laboratory and other testing before it should be used in humans.” He grinned, “Mr. Schmidt feels strongly, from his own personal experience, that nothing bad happens.”
“Ah,” Seba said as if he grasped the issues. He looked at Warfield, “You understand that we’re instantaneously stopping, then instantaneously resuming time within the Stade? That this stop and resume occurs fast enough that chemical reactions underway should resume as if uninterrupted?”
Warfield rolled his eyes. “So you think. Personally, I’d like a little more assurance than your opinion.”
Seba nodded, “What assurances would you like?”
“Complete biochemistry panels on hundreds of small animals pre and post stasis. MRIs and neurological testing of larger animals pre and post.”
Seba nodded, “Sounds expensive. Who would fund such evaluations?”
“Your company,” Warfield said as if speaking to an idiot.
“Ah,” Seba said, “and what do we do about later assertions that Staze’s financial support biased the results?”
“It’s a problem,” Warfield said gruffly. “Followup studies would need to be done with public funding.”
Seba frowned, “Seems like it would be much more cost-effective and timely to move directly to publicly funded
