Chapter 15b

Erwin Packard's days were long and his nights were tragically short. He lived to be very old and, during that time, tried to practice sleeping as much as possible. His dreams, when he had them, were fitful and strange but he relished them. This world only had one escape for him. Those dreams provided it.

He sat over a cup of coffee many years after his abrupt awakening and considered them. That was how he usually spent his time awake. The world in his dreams, no matter how bizarre, never ceased to feel more real to him after that. He supposed that many coma patients woke up with renewed zest for life. He hadn't. He didn't envy the others, though. He thought they were fools. Then again, he wasn't aware of anybody having survived in that state as long as he had.

Occasionally somebody would still talk to him about that time but he never had much to say. Erwin told them all that he didn't remember it. Doctors, nurses, therapists, he didn't talk to many other people but he would have told them all the same thing. "It's just a black spot in my memory. It's like if I'd gotten too drunk and woke up twenty-five years later with the worst hangover in human history." They would laugh. He would not. It's not a joke. It's a lie but certainly not a joke. In fact, the statement was a fair description of a terrifying experience which, most people agree, is not terribly funny. Despite the proof offered, however, the interpreted meaning of the statement given here is conjecture.

To remedy this obvious problem with reliability given the lack of factual evidence, please respond honestly to the following survey and return to Ω12:

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We would like your individual input on an issue.

Results are kept anonymous but respond with a S.A.S.E. and you will be entered for a chance to win one of 4,000,000,000 all expense paid pacific cruise for four!

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On a particular date a person spoke the following phrase:

"It's just a black spot in my memory. It's like if I'd gotten too drunk and woke up twenty-five years later with the worst hangover in human history."

Is this statement humorous/a joke/a description or a terrifying experience?

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The years have been unbelievably kind to him. He's had more than most anybody. Some twenty or thirty years after he woke up, doctors again took interest in Erwin Packard. He was a medical anomaly, after all. To have survived at all and then to survive decades longer. That wasn't why they took renewed interest, though, not quite.

Most people had already forgotten about him in the general population, nobody knew or cared about if the sum of his existence equaled a 1 or a 0. The real anomaly wasn't that he was alive. It wasn't really even the incredible progress of his recovery, not really. It was more the catalyst of his recovery that caused interest.

Around this time doctors discovered a strange symbiotic bacteria in Packard's body that seemed to reinforce his immune system to such a point that his body did nearly none of its own maintenance. When this story was featured in the Transnational Reinquirer many touted it as science-fiction, speculation or even just lies.

The findings led to multiple breakthroughs in medical science, allowing entire organs or limbs to be regrown. The process remained elusive to most as the particular bacteria was never successfully cultivated outside of a living human body and had a very high probability of growing to dangerous levels and killing said hosts, usually within the first eight hours of introduction. Less than two-percent of trials with living patients have been successful to date. Most commonly, doctors will remove the unhealthy organ or partial limb, immediately apply a biochemical salve containing the super-antibiotic (or whatever it is) in question, and through ionizing radiation use the bacteria are bolstered long enough to rebuild the organ. Once the process is complete the radiation is removed and the bacteria cleanse the tissue as they die.

The entire process takes about two days in most cases. There have been some instances of radiation poisoning if the bacteria die off too quickly and currently over twenty have died from remaining traces of the bacteria overrunning their bodies. When this happens the the bacteria also stop bodily functions that it incorrectly senses could be dangerous to the host. Typically motor skills are lost first usually followed by organ shutdown, most commonly the lungs or heart.

Although some have survived the process, none have been kept alive long outside or the normal bounds of human lifespan. The oldest surviving patient of the process lived to be one-hundred-six, placing that person's year of birth approximately five years after Erwin Packard woke up from his coma.

The use of these methods has been kept quiet despite thee controversy around it and the general public has neither knowledge of nor access to these methods. When questioned on the topic and what he thought of the one-hundred-six year old woman's passing, Packard said it was sad that people die.

It occurred to him at random intervals that maybe he really was the last one. How many more chances can he get? Can this really keep him alive forever? What happens when the world dies? When the sun dies? When the galaxy dies?

The math still doesn't add up, no matter how many numbers he adds to his side of the equation, his chances of living forever are exactly 0% every time he runs the numbers. He tries to push the thoughts from his head and can't. He tries and tries and can't and can't.

Maybe there is a decision to be made, maybe he has some hand in his own fate. Nothing else has worked but the technology is there to launch him into the sun. Of course he knows it would still be a fairly long trip but, really, he's already spent the last century just waiting to die, what else was he going to be doing? The problem might be getting the launch set up but, hell, he had time to figure that out, too.

Obtained key 15
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