His body arrived around midnight, fresh from his death-bed. I had to start work immediately, every second lost means thousands of his cells would decay. It meant cranking up the lab in the middle of the night; it set a very Frankenstein-like mood, especially as there was a storm outside. I joked to my assistant that if it didn't work first time we should just hook him up to a lightening rod. Actually, that assistant's name was Igor too.
Igor helped me to immerse the body into an electric bath. My theory was that when the brain required the body to move, the corpse would be able to obtain the necessary energy from the surrounding water. I had no idea if this would work; I'd never even tested it on rats. I could be doing nothing more than giving a corpse a Jacuzzi.
Igor switched on the electric bath and we watched the water bubble with energy. Eric's brain was hooked up to a machine that would deliver a precise electric charge to stimulate the cells used by the brain in the original activity. The first experiment was simply to try to get him to lift his left arm two feet in the air.
I fed the instructions into Cecilia. In life, Eric had raised his arm a million times, mostly to smoke the fags that killed him, so Cecilia was loaded with the information about the brain-cells used in the process. All I had to do was press the green button. Outside, the sky rumbled and sparked with lightning, electricity causing atmospheric chaos. In the comparative quiet and safety of the lab, Igor and I watched the bath-bound corpse of our first volunteer. A little ripple appeared in the water, the first evidence of action.
More ripples appeared and slowly, unrealistically slowly, the arm started to move upwards. Far too slowly, it would take me months to get his movements working at a natural speed. In the end it needed a complex adjustment to the electric pulse I sent to the brain, as different areas of the brain functioned more efficiently than others post-death. That was a real technology within a technology, even now I'm still tinkering with Cecilia's programming, trying to get it as close to perfection as possible.
Eric's hand stayed in a raised position for a full six minutes before it started to tire and eventually flopped down. Six minutes is a very long time. Anyone actually keeping their arm in the air that long would use a different brainwave pattern after the first minute or so, as they used more muscle power or different muscle combinations to keep it upright.
I had these data, of course; I'd measured everything Eric did. I just wanted to see what I could achieve with the simple stuff. As time went on I did eventually learned to keep the arm up longer by changing the brainwave message and consequently using a more efficient combination of muscles, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The all-day Hitler salute was months away.
Igor gave a little dance of joy and we allowed ourselves a few minutes of celebratory glee. That simple hand gesture was a scientific landmark, a Nobel-worthy breakthrough. Not that I ever got my Nobel Prize, it went to a Swiss scientist who'd started to clone slugs. I've never understood that decision. I can only assume he threatened to let the slugs loose on the judges' vegetable patches if he didn't win.
I digress. Igor and I eventually calmed down and continued our work. The next test was to repeat the experiment on Eric's leg. I programmed the request into Cecilia and pressed the green button. There was a great splash of water as Eric's right leg slowly rose out of the bath, staying in the air for a full five minutes. I've tried to do that in my aerobics class; it's really hard when you're alive. I clearly had a super fit corpse on my hands.
I tried various combinations of leg and arm movements, getting Eric to clench and unclench his hand, then simple gestures, waving, saluting. I tried clapping, but that was beyond us at that stage. I stayed up all night, like a child with a new toy, like a scientist with a new science. I WAS a scientist with a new science. This was the ultimate leap forward. I was metaphorically dropping apples on Newton's head. I was a giant stomping on the shoulders of the scientists and philosophers that had come before me.
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