Man Made God 001 - Scene 3

The next morning began the same as usual. After kissing Aris awake, Adam washed her body and hair, toweled her off, dressed her, and combed her hair before making breakfast. Since the process of curing Mortems Disease involved being put to sleep for a certain period of time, Adam made her favorite: red velvet cinnamon rolls with homemade frosting.

Fayte had also liked the cinnamon rolls.

In fact, Adam thought Fayte enjoyed the cinnamon rolls even more than Aris.

“Are you two ready?” Fayte asked after everyone was finished eating.

“Not really,” Adam admitted.

“I would like more time with Adam,” Aris confided.

“Then… do you want more time together?” asked Fayte in a cautious voice. “I can give you at least a week. Age of Gods doesn’t become playable until next week.”

Adam and Aris debated with each other the merits between going ahead now and waiting another week. If they went ahead and put Aris under now, and she was cured, then she would be cured that much faster. If they waited a week, she would be cured a week later. Both of them were eager to have the threat of her disease no longer hanging over their heads.

On the other hand, if they put her under and the process was not successful, then they would have wasted two or maybe even three months, and Aris would likely die shortly after. Another week of being together before she died was a small consolation, but it was still something.

“I think… we should begin now,” Aris said.

“Right.” Adam sighed. “No time like the present, right?”

“Hee-hee. Yes, that is exactly what I was thinking.”

Fayte clapped her hands and stood up from the couch. “In that case, let me take you to the room with the equipment that’s going to cure Aris.”

With Adam pushing Aris’s wheelchair, the group traveled into the third bedroom, which was not only sealed shut with an incredibly high-tech security lock that had obviously not been part of the original floor plan, but also required a passcode and retina scan to open.

“I’ll install your retina map on the scanner so you can enter as you please. That way you can visit Aris while she’s healing,” Fayte said to Adam. “Anyway, let’s go inside.”

The room on the other side looked like a complex laboratory or a medical professional’s office. Littered with all kinds of medical equipment—such as scanners that measured a person’s vital functions, medical computers that displayed a variety of charts, and life support machines that were used to feed a person nutrients—this place looked like something he’d expect from an expensive private hospital for rich people.  

In the very center of this room was a cryobed. It was a device that reclined on the ground, was about three yards long and three feet wide. Made from synthetic alloys and shaped like a pod, the device featured a clear glass dome that would allow people on the outside to look in and a computer system at the foot.

Adam felt like all the breath had left his lungs as he stared at the cryobed, at the equipment in this room, which was about ten or fifteen years ahead of the current most advanced medical practices. He was so shocked that he stumbled forward and almost dropped Aris on the floor.

“A-Adam!” Aris shouted in surprise. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

With wide eyes, Adam glanced over at Fayte, who froze upon making eye contact.

“Adam, why are you looking at me like that? Your gaze is a little… disturbing right now.”

“Fayte, do you know who your grandfather hired to make this device?” asked Adam, trying harder than he ever had to keep from shivering.

“I only know a little bit,” Fayte confessed, giving him an odd look but answering nonetheless. “According to Grandfather’s journal, he ran into a person calling himself Lucifer. The man claimed he could cure Mortems Disease but needed funds. Grandfather was skeptical, but after seeing Lucifer perform a miracle of some kind, he decided to trust him and invested hundreds of billions of dollars to have this cryobed created. Why do you ask?”

“No… no reason,” Adam mumbled, closing his eyes.

No wonder this device could supposedly cure Mortems Disease. If it was made by that man, then it would undoubtedly be capable of curing any disease the world over.

This device looked a lot bigger than the one he remembered, which had been more compact and streamlined. It was clear that Lucifer had become more adept at building this machine later on in life. What sat before him now was clearly a prototype that had been created as a proof of concept machine. As he stared at the device, another and very similar but more streamlined cryobed overlapped with this one.

Adam closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to dismiss the images. It was hard. Even now, he could feel the phantom pain from when his body was strapped into that cryobed and injected with hundreds of thousands of different types of energy. His heart felt like it was shriveling.

“A-anyway, this cryobed will place Aris in a form of suspended animation,” Fayte tried to get back on track and explained how the device was used. “Once her body’s functions have been suspended, the chamber will release a substance called Leefa Drug. This substance is a poison that kills off any and all diseases and harmful bacteria, including Mortems Disease. The reason we need to place her in stasis like this is because the Leefa Drug is also a powerful poison. I don’t know how it works, but the poison will be destroyed while the machines somehow keep her body from coming to harm. Once the drug has destroyed her Mortems Disease, the cryobed will begin a unique process that sucks out all the poison in her body. Only after the poison has been completely removed will the cryobed bring her out of suspended animation.”

Everything Fayte said made sense to Adam. He also understood why there was a huge chance of failure.

Poison and medicine often went hand in hand. In fact, one could even say that poison was just a different form of medicine and visa versa. It made sense that a powerful poison could annihilate something like Mortems Disease, but using poison to cure a disease was like trading one death for another.

This was why Aris was going to be put in suspended animation. While her body and vital functions were all frozen, the poison would sweep through, eradicate her Mortems Disease, and then the cryobed’s last function would activate and suck the poison back up, removing it from her body. It would be as if she’d never been poisoned or had Mortems Disease in the first place.

Adam felt a moment of fear as he realized how many things could go wrong with this process. The cryobed could break, the stasis effect that froze her body’s functions could stop working, or the cryobed’s last function that removed the poison could short circuit and release her with the poison still in her body.

Even knowing this device was created by the one man who could cure Mortems Disease did not help. He was plagued with all the things that could go wrong.

He looked at Aris again, took a deep breath, and did his best to calm down.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Aris looked at him and smiled. “I am.”

“While you can wear clothes in the cryobed if you want, I recommend taking them off. To put you under a state of suspended animation, the chamber will release a chemical called Arctic Gel. I’m not sure what that is, exactly, but it freezes your vital functions, putting you in a death-like state. It would be best if that stuff wasn’t stuck to your clothes after the process is over,” Fayte said.

“Right,” Adam grunted a little as he lifted Aris off the wheelchair, placed her on his knee as he knelt, and began removing her clothes.

She was wearing a simple sundress, so peeling it off was easy. Underneath the sundress was pure white underwear. He took those off as well, sliding her panties down her hips, unhooking her bra, and setting them on the ground before carrying Aris over to the cryobed.

Standing there for a moment, Adam finally realized just how hard this moment truly was. What if this didn’t work? What if it failed and she died? He couldn’t bear the thought of something going wrong, and it caused him, someone who had unhesitatingly slaughtered hundreds of people without batting an eyelash, to freeze.

“Adam?” Aris called out to him.

He shook himself out of his stupor. “Sorry. I froze for a moment.”

Aris’s eyes softened as she gazed lovingly into his. “Don’t worry. This cure will work, and once it does, we can spend the rest of our lives together.”

“Right. You’re right. Thank you, Aris.”

They shared a smile before he gently set her on the cryobed. Fayte came over and grabbed a small cord attached to the cryobed. A needle was stuck to one end, which she gently inserted into Aris’ arm. According to her, the poison was released through this needle, and it would be sucked back out through this needle, though Adam had no idea how that worked.

He leaned down further to give Aris a kiss. Out of a slight reluctance, Adam remained that way longer than a normal kiss would last. Aris didn’t seem to mind.

“Have a good rest.” Adam smiled and tenderly brushed some hair away from Aris’ cheek. “I’ll see you when you wake up.”

“Yes. See you then.”

Aris closed her eyes and Adam stepped back.

Fayte went over to the computer at the foot of the cryobed and typed in several buttons. The cryobed thrummed with life as the lid slowly slid closed and sealed shut. Adam pressed his hand against the glass, and Aris smiled as she also pressed her hand against it, though her hand soon fell back down as she lost strength.

Aris closed her eyes.

Fayte pressed another button. Green gel sprayed from vents near Aris’s feet, head, and sides. It was not long before the entire interior was filled with that green gel. Aris, who was completely immersed in it, looked like she had been frozen in time.

~Excerpt from Man Made God 001: Chapter 4