Blackwater Files: The Immortal Keith Clinton

Part One: The Decision

This is the first of a two-part entry into the community wide collaborative sci-fi Project Blackwater by

The Chronicler

. Part 2 will be out next week!

“Take a good look, Doctor. I’ve been like this for over fifty years, yet I haven’t aged one day.”

Ernie sat in the cafeteria with his cheek smushed into his right hand. On the table in front of him stood a steaming cup of half-caff, still black, with none of the sugar packets or those weird little cream cups he grabbed added to it yet. Honestly? He didn’t really want the coffee, even though it was three in the morning. He’d just downed two cups of double strength an hour ago so he didn’t need the half-caff swill he requested.

No, that cup and the three sugar packets and the pair of creamers - one French Vanilla, the other Hazelnut - they were excuses. A way out. A moment of peace and much needed decompression after having to deal with him again.

Patient# 34011-3

Name: Keith Clinton

Age: 37

Sex: Male

Race: Caucasian

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Brown

Height: 5’9”

Weight: 177 lb

Perfectly average Keith. Well, average according to his vitals and basic information. In truth, Keith had been one of the program’s premier anomalies. Where most people signed up for something around a six week stay, the majority of them itching for that $17,000 cash payout, Keith had been here for months. Ernie wasn’t sure how many because it wasn’t his job to know and he frankly didn’t give a fuck. He just wanted to be done dealing with Keith’s shit, a sentiment that he was thankful wasn’t literal in this case. Sometimes, rare though it was, nurses like himself would have to deal with certain cleanup procedures after patients had particularly difficult dives. At the very least, Keith had never displayed that particular problem.

No, that man’s issues were much worse than accidentally shitting his pants in his sleep. Keith came to be something of a whispered legend among Elysium’s medical staff. People liked to call him, “The Immortal.” Damned if Ernie knew why. It wasn’t as if there was any truth to it. A single look at his body was enough to prove that, and if that wasn’t enough then his records should’ve dispelled that stupid nickname.

But they didn’t, even though they clearly showed that his muscles had begun to atrophy from lack of use. Why had this happened? Because Keith had the worst dive of any living patient in Elysium, one that left him in a coma.

And that would’ve been fine for Ernie, if care for a coma patient was all it entailed. It wasn’t as if he liked cleaning up human waste or filling feeding tubes, but he could handle that. Besides, Elysium was a state of the art facility. They had Sleeping Beauty hooked up to all sorts of equipment to automate his feeding and cleanup. In any normal hospital, this would’ve been just the sort of cushy gig a nurse would jump at. But this was no normal hospital.

Normal hospitals didn’t have coma patients that talked to you.

A hand clapped Ernie hard on the back. He jumped in his seat, nearly knocking over his untouched coffee. “Back to the grind, Ernie-boy!” came the jovial voice of an older man.

Jonas. He was one of the other nurses, a royal pain who talked way too much for his own good. Ernie checked his watch. 3:12 AM. He passed the end of his break by two minutes.

“Gonna see The Immortal again, buddy?” Jonas asked as Ernie stepped up from the bench of his cafeteria table.

“Don’t remind me,” he grumbled in that nasally voice he’d been cursed with.

“Ah, c’mon man. It can’t be that bad, right?” Jonas laughed and clapped him on the back again. “I mean you’re working with the legend!”

“Yeah, it’s great,” Ernie snarked as they headed for the hall. He noticed that Jonas stopped to swipe his coffee and grimaced when he saw him drink it straight. “I love having to talk to a mumbling coma patient three times a day because Dr. Pleasance can’t be assed to do it himself.”

“Well you won’t have to worry about that much longer,” Jonas said between sips. “Dr. Pleasance is due back tonight.”

“Thank god,” Ernie sighed. “I’d rather start cleaning bedpans again than deal with this for another week.”

“Oh don’t be such a baby,” Jonas mocked. “With how automated coma care is now, that shit’s cushy work.”

“Oh yeah?” Ernie said as they rounded the corner to the elevator room. “Maybe I’ll tell HR to put you on the rotation next time Dr. Pleasance has to leave for an out of state conference.”

Jonas laughed as he punched - literally - the down call button. “Shit yeah, man! Sign me the hell up!”

“I have become what many men have dreamed of, an immortal. And yet…”

Dr. Samwell Pleasance wasn’t the highest rated doctor on Elysium’s payroll. That is to say, he was no Dr. K. But that didn’t mean Dr. Pleasance didn’t have his own accolades. He studied neuroscience at MIT and graduated with honors after completing their master’s program, then went on to obtain his PhD and tenured status at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. He was, well and truly, one of the most sought after names in neuroscience and behavioral studies in the world, and they paycheck offered by Elysium for his skills certainly reflected that fact.

As it did the need for secrecy in what they were doing, a skill in which Dr. Pleasance had become something of an expert in. Even so, that did little to settle the nerves of Dr. K and other members of the board over his recent escapade. Thanks to his tenure at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Pleasance was sometimes expected to speak at the various conferences held there. Over the last couple years working with Elysium, he’d missed no less than seven of those conferences, and the university heads were starting to express concerns.

This left him solidly wedged between a rock and a hard place. Dr. Pleasance knew all too well that the board would want to extensively interview him upon his return, all in the name of making sure that none of their valued secrets slipped out. Readily, he agreed to this, even going so far as to state they could begin on the very hour of his return. Now that he was sitting here, the lengthy interview mercifully reaching its end after well over an hour, he regretted that particular promise.

“Well, Sam, I can safely say the board and I are quite satisfied both with your answers and the work you’ve been doing for us here,” Dr. K said. There was a polite tone to his voice that bordered on joy, but his expression was eerily blank as he spoke. It was something Sam started to notice in him more and more as the weeks and months went on.

“Thank you,” Dr. Pleasance replied. “I appreciate the vote of confidence. Now, if we’re done here, I’d very much like to get a little bit of sleep before I head back to work.”

“I’m sorry, Sam, but I’m afraid that won’t be possible just yet,” Dr. K said.

Dr. Pleasance expected this. In his absence the other doctors would have to pick up the slack of his work, and doubtless Dr. K wanted him to comb over what they’d observed during his week away so he could check for anomalies or any other details in his patients that might’ve been missed. He didn’t like it, but he was ever a professional, so rather than let it show he put on a smile and nodded.

“I understand. A quick look at the necessary records from the last week before I turn in?” he asked.

To his surprise, Dr. K shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said.

When the board members explained the decision that’d been reached with Patient# 34011-3 while he’d been away, Dr. Pleasance went red in the face. “You can’t be serious!” he barked. “Keith is the closest we’ve ever come to finding the answers we sought, and you want to pull the plug?!”

“My decision is final, Sam,” Dr. K said flatly. “He’s become too much of a drain on our resources, namely yourself. ‘The Immortal,’ as the nurses and orderlies have taken to calling him, has become a liability. Besides, your reports have shown no change in either his behavior or his catatonic state in weeks. It’s time we move on to more promising ground.”

It was hard for Dr. Pleasance to argue against that last part, even if his gut told him that Keith was the key to what they sought. “Distinguished members of the board, I implore you to reconsider,” he said, this time much calmer now that his initial shock had passed. “I understand that the patient has been… slow to show any changes in his condition, but there have been gradual increases in his brain activity across the last few weeks. Increases that are in line with and even exceed many of the most promising results we’ve seen from other subjects.”

“Be that as it may, these shifts in the results are too slight and slow to justify not only the expense of continuing to maintain the patient’s life in his comatose state, but also your removal from greater involvement in the program,” Dr. K said. “Sam, quite simply, I have more important things for you to do than deal with a coma patient.”

Sam tried to argue a little bit more, but to no avail. The best they’d give him was the opportunity to run one final series of tests on Keith tonight, a last check to see if his condition showed any significant change in the last week. Doubtful. The gesture was little more than a concession, but it was better than nothing. Ruefully, he agreed. Tonight, Keith Clinton would give his final interview to Dr. Samwell Pleasance. After that, “The Immortal” would be no more.

“…there hasn’t been a day, an hour, a second, where I haven’t thought about death.”

Keith lay in the exact same place he had for the last five months, in a hospital bed on sublevel 9 with his body hooked up to various life support functions. He was completely still, body unmoving save for the slow rise and fall of his chest as he took in air from the ventilator that assisted his breathing. He had no idea this would be the day he would die.

Dr. Pleasance sighed as he looked over the charts. Information from the last week was sparse, and what little was there was all but useless. What in the hell were they thinking having a low ranked nurse handle his job for him? If ever there was proof the board had been planning to flatline Keith for a while, this was it. Ernie, the nurse in question, had been clumsily attempting to conduct Keith’s latest interview when Dr. Pleasance walked in. He was sent out immediately, an order he seemed all to happy to oblige.

Ignorant. All of them. How they couldn’t see the potential in what they had here, Dr. Pleasance truly didn’t understand. This sole coma patient showed more promise in discovering the answer to the riddle that was on every board member’s minds than anyone else who joined the program: eternal life.

From the outside, it didn’t look promising, Sam would admit that much. Keith’s body had become emaciated, muscular atrophy having taken hold. But it was his mind that mattered here and despite the coma his mind showed remarkable activity. The problem was the stagnation. Something inside his subconscious must have changed in the last two months because the steady growth in activity he had been showing had suddenly plateaued.

Dr. Pleasance had numerous hypotheses as to why this might’ve happened. His first instinct was to check for signs of damage to the brain or nervous system. There was none. The next thought was the possibility of overstimulation. Farfetched, yes, but then the entire Blackwater project was farfetched. The problem was that Sam didn’t really know how to test for it. A similar struggle existed with his third hypothesis, which revolved around the general idea of mixing up one’s physical fitness routine to avoid plateauing results. His hope in the coming weeks was to experiment with stimulating Kieth’s brain activity with a variety of triggers in hopes of spurring that growth again, but that was out of the question now.

One last interview. That’s all they’d allow Keith to offer him now. A thoroughly unfortunate turn of events, but unavoidable. The board members wouldn’t change their minds, especially not with Dr. K delivering the order personally. Whatever he got out of this last interview, it would have to be enough.

Dr. Pleasance rose up from his chair and crossed the room to the equipment surrounding Keith’s bed. Various meters and nodes relayed information on the patient’s vitals. Heart rate, blood pressure, hydration, brain function, and more were all on display for the doctor to see. However, there was one specific machine he was interested in among all the others. A small white box, it had a series of knobs and switches along the top and was connected to a small, skinny green metal tank which was in turn connected to the ventilator. Tentacle-like masses of wires extended from the sides of the little white box. Those wires ended in a dozen diodes that were adhered to various points across the patient’s body. with four of them placed around his head. The doctor turned two of the dials, gradually upping the voltage that ran into the diodes as well as releasing gasses into the ventilator. The tank hissed as its concoction flowed through the pump and into the breathing tube. Other than the green “active” light on the box, that hiss was the only indicator that the gas was flowing.

After about a minute the box chimed and the blue lit LCD display flashed READY. Dr. Pleasance flipped the switch on the top. Keith’s body jerked, his back fully arched for just a moment before he flopped back onto the bed. Another moment later and his chest slowly rose, then fell, as he entered a state of calm deep breathing.

“Alright then,” Dr. Pleasance sighed as he took a seat next to the bed. “Keith, can you hear me? It’s Dr. Pleasance.”

The patient was silent for a long time, but when Dr. Pleasance said his name again Keith answered with a breathy, “Yes.”

“Good, good. We’ve got one more interview to do today. Do you think you can handle that?” the doctor asked.

“Yes,” Keith breathed out.

“Excellent. Then let’s begin.”

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Part Two: The Interview coming soon.

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