Chapter 7

The Grave Robber

Johns Hopkins Research Site, Maryland Mountains: Late April, 2017

Wooly lived up to his name. He had grown a heavy coat of dark brown hair and was shedding it everywhere in the spring sun. He had grown to 650 pounds and was friskier than ever. Wild prairie grasses were trucked in to slake his voracious appetite. His little companion wouldn’t be born for a few months yet, so he garnered the entire spotlight.

Since the first press release, a weekly hologram went out to hope-starved populace, so used to travail that the little guy offered levity and hope that if his species recovered, than the world would too. The plan was that he would be kept here until his potential mate was born, and then, once she was big enough, they’d be shipped to an undisclosed site in the high prairie, to be joined by others being cloned to join them. There would initially be ten of them, all from different frozen specimens. The Siberian Republic had already offered to take a similar group to the steppes near Mongolia. There was hope that the hardy animals could eventually provide meat for the starving.

President James had given an ultimatum to the United Nations. She begin with,

“If I may dare to paraphrase the late, great Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only thing we have to fear is ourselves. I do not wish to be blasphemous, but God can’t save us—we must save ourselves. Either we strangle slowly to death in our own humanity, or we come to grips with and solve our serious population problem.

It is no longer good enough to hide behind religious dogma, government policy, or even a genuine concern for the poor, unheard from, masses. I behooves us to use whatever means possible, no matter how stringent, no matter how seemingly cruel, to stem the tide of population growth for the good of all. You have seen what has happened to the weather. You have seen what has happened to our food. You have seen disease decimate us. You have seen our lives degraded to mere existence. You have seen the despair of the cold, hungry, starving masses.

It is not a question of who will die—we all will. It is a question of how we will live and die. Do we have to take all life on the planet down with us? I say no!

The United States has begun the process. We are mandating abortion for all who cannot provide proof of substantial support for each child through college. We are mandating benign euthanasia for those whose lives have become unsustainable or have a terminal illness. We are mandating swift death sentences for those serving life without parole, convicted of violent crimes, and convicted of crimes against the environment. Ladies and Gentlemen, we must reach a worldwide sustainable population less than two billion by the turn of the next century, or life, as we know it, will disappear from the face of the Earth, … forever.”

She then collapsed from the emotion of what she had just said. The delegates were stunned, but resigned to the truth in her words.

For those who had not seen the International Net holocast, the media picked it up and rebroadcast it for all to see. To some, the announcement was a relief. To others, it was confirmation of their worst nightmare. The tyranny of growth had finally caught up with us, and we had to pay the price—decide who would live or die. Nature had always decided for us. But we had pushed nature back until nature was deciding again. Only this time, instead of letting the strong live, we would all die—unless--unless we reversed all our dogma about the value of human life and the technology that sustained it. To go forward, we must return to our ancestors—hunt and gather no more than it took to sustain us.

The staff had watched the President’s speech in rapt attention, then returned to their projects. Their missions were even more important now. Albert’s mind was on his next. He couldn’t sleep that night. He left the next morning.

The Interstate was nearly deserted. Gasoline, diesel and propane were just too expensive. When he got to Staunton, he turned onto U.S. 250 and headed west into the mountains. So many houses dotted the slopes now that it appeared like Pittsburgh or Morgantown. Only many of the houses, abandoned and unkempt, made the area look blighted, like it had a disease. The bright spot was the redbud, azalea, and forsythia that bloomed brightly near every house, abandoned or not.

His memory was strong of the time he’d driven that old Mustang on this road for the very first time, nearly a half-century before. The hillsides were only sparsely inhabited them, before the rush of retirees with golden parachutes from the Eastern seaboard invaded. As these expatriates from the city grew old and died, there was no one who could afford to buy their places. Eventually they became havens for raccoons, possum, bats, snakes, owls, and other creatures from the nearby forest.

As he climbed the road got narrower and the houses fewer. Finally he was in the state forest as he remembered it, fighting the wheel on the switchbacks as he climbed the mountain. As he reached the Appalachian divide and West Virginia, the road improved, but about five feet of snow remained from the previous winter. The road was clear and dry, so his descent was easy. The electric braking in the Chevy handled the steep incline with ease. Except for his memory, there was no sign of the white-knuckle trip with faded brakes he’d had in 1971 with his Mustang. He was grateful for that—one less thing to worry about.

He streamed some old ‘70s music from a satellite and cruised on to Green Bank. The familiar arcs of the radio telescope antennae loomed above the trees. In spite a many upgrades, the equipment here at the National Radio Observatory was now obsolete. NSF scientists had moved on to space-based radio scopes to avoid earthly interference. SETI was stronger than ever. A whole cult had grown up around finding an extraterrestrial solution to our problems. They were planning SETI II …. But, … that wasn’t what was on his mind.

He was thinking of Esther, how he met her that day when he arrived, and how he loved her. Tears welled up in his eyes. He didn’t stop. He knew no one there anymore. Green Bank was a museum of the Twentieth Century. It was also too much of a reminder of her.

Albert drove on, through retirement communities and played-out strip mines until he reached Beckley, about 3pm. He got himself a motel room, bought some red roses at a florist, and then headed out to the cemetery.

Basking in the glow of the end of a warm spring day, the hillside cemetery was alive with color and activity. Otherwise, it was deserted. The grass was springtime green. The azaleas were brilliant red, purple, pink, and white. The redbud trees were pink. The dogwoods were white up under the canopy of larger hardwoods. And the forsythia cast a bright yellow against the gray headstones. Birds darted from tree to tree, singing mating songs, and bees buzzed loudly as they savored the bouquet before them. Albert had never been there, but he had little trouble finding her grave.

Esther Caddell Repaul

April 27, 1948 – August 25, 1975

“Her Spirit Soars as She Rests with the Angels”

His tears flowed uncontrollably. He hadn’t expected so much emotion. It all came back to him now. He didn’t think about coming here to free her, he just put down his flowers and cried. Afterward he felt much better. As he descended to the little white church below, he thought about how pale his roses were against the backdrop of nature’s beauty. Here, she could hear the birds sing and the children laugh as they came to Sunday school. Here, she rested in peace. Should he change that? He put the thought aside.

From the car in the church parking lot, he sent encrypted messages to Anne, Ping, and Khundi, saying how elated he was to be able to participate in an experiment that could help save the human race and bring Esther back, too. He hoped that the NSA or FBI hadn’t intercepted the transmission. He didn’t think so; there were billions of them each day.

It was dark as he left the cemetery. He stopped at a favorite restaurant of theirs for dinner. It was now a hangout for retirees, but otherwise the same. He dragged out his meal as long as he could. He wanted to put off the anticipation and dread that was welling up in him—he couldn’t.

Back at the motel, he watched the latest Tiger Woods action holo. In it, Tiger defeats a hoard of spore-crazed mutants from the dregs of 22^nd Century Chicago. The coastal cities were, fortunately, not involved because they were all under water. At least Albert could slow down the action scenes to try to catch what was happening. Kids these days liked to speed them up and try to guess the outcomes before they happened.

News feeds and little erotica brought him to 2am and time to go. He was shaking as he walked out into the cool spring air. With the Chevy wrapped around him like a cocoon, its warmth and motion helped quell the fear. He reached the cemetery too soon. Parking behind the church so as not to be seen from the road, he gathered a prepared backpack and put it on.

He climbed the hill in the cool darkness of a half moon. An owl hooted in the distance and he could hear the flutter of bats chasing flying insects overhead, otherwise it was quiet. When he reached the grave he put the pack down and steadied himself for the task at hand. He took a battery powered heavy-duty, all-purpose drill out of the pack and attached a 3-inch circular drill bit. He picked a spot about two feet from and centered on, the headstone. In a minute, he had cut a plug of sod and put it aside.

Then, he took a three-inch auger, four feet long, in two, two-foot sections. He locked the sections together and attached it to the drill. The auger dug quickly through the porous soil, hitting the casket with a “thud” after about ten minutes of boring. Removing the auger from the hole gently and setting it aside, he added another, smaller auger to the tip. Dropping it gently back into the hole, he applied pressure and bored a hole into the casket. When it broke through, a pungent odor rose from the hole and he gagged a bit as he turned away.

Fortunately, after the initial burst, the smell was bearable. Albert pulled the auger from the hole again and removed a telescoping endoscope from the pack. The endoscope had a light and a camera on the shaft and a carbon steel cup-shaped cutter on the end. A four-inch square flat panel display on the handle helped him guide the endoscope into position. As it entered the hole in the casket, it picked up the bright red and yellow of the wrap Esther had worn that fateful night. It shocked him at first until he realized that sealed in the coffin, the fabric hadn’t faded in all those years.

Esther’s body was another matter. It had dried, not unlike Seti’s. After groping around where to cut, he finally settled on a spot. To activate the cutter, capable of cutting bone, he merely had to squeeze a pliers grip on the handle and powerful motors on the head would operate the halves of the cutter. After retrieving the first piece of tissue from what appeared to be her arm, he inserted the endoscope three more times to be sure he got enough. He didn’t want to have to return.

He pushed the augured dirt back into the hole. He had to probe it with a rod and tamp it to get it all in. He placed the plug of sod in place. Except for a small amount of excess dirt, the spot looked untouched in the moonlight. With Esther’s tissue safely in special vials in the pack with the tools, he carefully descended to the Chevy. He didn’t relay his success, just drove back to Beckley and the motel. He was just another grave robber stealing away in the night.

Albert slept fitfully until dawn, then left early and retraced his route to the Johns Hopkins Center. They were waiting for him. Ping ran up and gave him a big hug. “Did you do it?” She whispered in his ear.

“Yes, I did.” Suddenly, the tension of the mission was over. It was time to work. “There are four samples in the pack. The equipment worked perfectly.”

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