What Happened Tomorrow

The Tread of Us

"Resurrection initialized."

A bright light. Dark blue walls, a gray floor. A high ceiling. Surgery. A white table at the center. On it lay a girl's body. Not very tall, slim, fit, with wavy brown hair. Serene. Beautiful. Dead.

"Scanning," a soft female voice from the computer echoed. At that moment, three metal tubes emerged from the floor. Inside them were scanners, bio-printers, manipulators, and other medical instruments. They arched around the table, locking into place on the opposite side. Mere seconds later, the body was bathed in a soft blue light. The first phase had begun.

"Scanning complete."

"Object: Agniela Dimitriyevna Huerzi."

"Age: 28."

"Cause of death: Depression. Suicide. Physical body deformation caused by temporal transaction."

"Nanite operating system synch initiated. Connecting... Synch completed. Access granted." The active stage of the procedure began. Doctors gained full access to the patient's nanites. Her body contained tens of thousands of microscopic robots, designed to protect it from external threats. They healed wounds, mended bones, regulated blood flow, and even briefly restarted the heart in the event of an arrest — even after death.

"Software version checkup. Checkup complete. Software compatible." The nanites made the procedure possible. The system confirmed that the bots' software was suitable and started sending commands. Sending them to the brain, for example.

They needed to act fast. Very fast. The patient was dead — had been for the past 400 years, and that was a long time. Resurrection was meant for the young. Death was one of the many conditions of the body, like life. However, it was not socially acceptable, unlike life. Yet, they had a few things in common: the transition from one to the other required very little time but a lot of effort. Suicide, euthanasia, or body decay for death, and resurrection, mind transfer, or rebirth for life. This procedure aimed to restore life. Tiny lights on the arcs glowed green: the process began. The bots surged toward vital parts of the brain: the cortex and cerebellum. Neural reconstruction was about to commence.

"Personality copy transfer," the nanites recorded every millisecond of their host's life. This included everything: her memories, experiences, views, perceptions. Her deepest regrets and concerns. Her feelings, fears, desires, and even love. Memory digitalization and transfer had been common for centuries, and now, they were meant to save the girl on the table from losing herself in her reborn life.

In her brain, there was an incredible flurry of activity. The computer had uploaded neural tissue data into the nanites and set them to multiplication mode. Every millisecond in the patient's head, a tiny explosion occurred. One nanite multiplied into dozens of similar ones, and the process repeated. A minute later, there were a million more. A billion more after two. The speed of mechamitosis grew. When multiplication ceased, a biomechanical cell chemically restructured its robotic components, becoming purely organic. After ten minutes, eighty-six billion new brain cells restarted the dead brain. The same process took place in the cerebellum, while the rest of the nanites supplied the organs with oxygen and prevented blood from coagulating. External medical systems sustained body temperature and monitored all internal processes. The body was slowly reconditioned to a socially acceptable, healthy state.

"Scanning," the computer said again. The arcs lit the body with a blue light, which turned green after a few seconds.

"Scanning complete. Patient state — stable. Current condition — clinically dead. Cardiac arrest." The next moment, a swarm of medical drones appeared above the girl. One split into two and floated over her chest.