The Samsara Project by David Burgess (ebook reader screen .txt) 📖

secure for the week and if any are killed as a result of a terrorist attack we can bring them back. All they have lost is up to one week’s memory. If they ask any awkward questions we’d tell them they’ve been in a coma for a week since the incident.”
“Has anyone ever been ‘brought back?” asked John.
“Remember the UK attacks in July a couple of years ago,” continued Peter, “and the whole country were looking for the mysterious fourth bomber. We knew where he was and what he had done. It was never announced to the public but at the same time the tube trains and buses were under attack so was Checkers, the PM’s country retreat. One member of the staff was a sleeper. He was a well known, well liked and trusted member of the PM’s staff and as such could pass through security checks with nothing more than a nod. What we did not know was he was bringing in explosives that on the day were strapped around him as he turned himself into a human bomb, a so called suicide bomber. On that morning in July he walked into the PM’s quarters carrying the PM’s breakfast. He placed it down of the table, said good morning to the PM, handed him his cup of tea, stood up next to him and blew himself and the PM to kingdom come.
Word of the explosion and the PM’s death was not released; the sound was put down to work being carried put in the grounds. Within half an hour of the security forces sealing off the area we started our work. Six days later there was a cloned PM, perfect in every detail, with full memory of everything that had happened up to the attack. Think back, at the time of the attacks it was not Tony Blair who was in charge of the country, it was John Prescot. Where was Tony Blair, we were told he was on holiday in the Caribbean and was being kept up to date with events, very happy that the country was in good hands. It was Tony Blair Mk II that returned to the UK a week later. This is also the main reason why he resigned. Cheating death once was more than enough for even the most robust person. Personally I can’t say I blame him.
There is a bonus to all this though. If we can bring back the PM, we can also bring back the bomber. Just think about it. Here we have a fanatical terrorist who thinks he’s on his way to Allah and eternal happiness with his fifty virgins and endless feasts. Where is he when he wakes up? Chained to a hospital bed, alive and well surrounded by a lot of people with a lot of questions they want answers to. Also as far as his handlers are concerned he is dead, they will never look for him. No one knows he is alive and well and a prisoner. At this point the Geneva Convention is ripped up, it’s gloves off and he can be interrogated however it is felt appropriate to get from him everything he knows about the group he was operating from. Once we have that information it’s bye-bye. How do you think we know so much about the cells in the UK, who they are and what they are up to. Remember the guy who set fire to himself at Glasgow airport and died a few days later. We got a mine of information from him, kept MI6 going for months. Here’s a question for you. Has the USA ever been attacked on its home soil since nine eleven, has the UK ever been attacked since that July morning? Think that’s just a coincidence?”
John and DCS Hughes were both astounded at what they had just learnt. This went far beyond what either had imagined.
“OK Peter,” said John, “Where do I fit into all of this. Everything started to happen to me after my visit here to have the two blood samples analysed.”
“At the time we had no idea that there was anything amiss with the samples I tested for you. They were just two blood samples that matched and that was job done. What we didn’t know at the time was that one of the samples matched a specimen sample we had worked on a few years ago. Putting the same sample back through the system alerted certain agencies to the possibility that there was a security breach. One of the agencies alerted was the HSS. They are usually the good guys but for reasons I’ll tell you about later some of their agents had an agenda of their own.”
“You mentioned specimen samples,” said DCS Hughes, “what are they?”
“Once all the major hurdles and obstacles had been solved our scientists started to clone small animals from cells. This though was not groundbreaking and the technique was well documented, tried and tested. What we wanted to do was produce a clone from a blood sample. At first the results were very disappointing with failure after failure. The team though never gave up, they all shared what they had learned with their colleagues and eventually we started to achieve success. These only small at first, maybe less than ten percent of all the experiments resulted in a completely successful result. This was all new territory we were working in, no one had even thought of what we were doing let alone experimented with it, so we had no one else’s work to compare our own to. Then we had our breakthrough, I’ll not go into those details with you but it was huge, and as all the best scientific discoveries are, it was purely by accident.
This gave us the ability then to clone from a blood sample. Again we cloned small animals, then larger ones such as chimps. The elation we felt was unbelievable, we had achieved something that had never been achieved before. All the scientists working on the project were on fire, they were working twenty hours a day seven days a week. Then we reached a point where we had only one experiment left, we had to try and clone a human from a blood sample. I wrote to every police force in the country and asked them to send me, via the university, the oldest blood samples they had. It did not matter how old it was or what condition it was in, we just wanted it. I made out that it was for a new experiment in DNA forensic testing. Most forces were helpful and we ended up with over eighty samples to choose from. The first thing we did was sex the samples, we had no idea who the samples were from or how old they were and we only wanted to work on female samples. We thought that would be best all round.”
“Not on this occasion,” said John, under his breath.
Peter still heard what John had said, “That was something we had not expected. But first, we selected the final fifteen samples. We decided it would be best to work on one sample at a time. This would allow everyone involved to focus on that one subject. We all went through a very steep learning curve, the first three all resulted in failures and we were very close to giving up. We had expected failures; this was a whole new science that so far was fixed firmly in the realm of science fiction.
After the third failure all the senior managers and scientist met. It was decided to have one more attempt. A fourth sample was prepared, all the papers, notes and processes we had from the previous three experiments were read and re-read. Everything was checked and checked again. After everyone was satisfied there was nothing further we could do the fourth sample was brought in to the lab and the experiment began. For the next six days no one went home, sleep was taken as catnaps, takeaway food and coffee became the norm. I think that by the end of the week the atmosphere in the lab must have been awful as I don’t think anyone was able to have a proper wash.
After six days the first stage of the experiment was complete. The Samsāra Project looked to have its first success. It was still early days and the subject was kept sedated for another seventy two hours while we carried out a battery of tests to ensure everything was alright. Blood tests, cat scans, X-rays, ECG’s and brain scans all came back normal. The experiment now moved into phase two.
The medication that had kept our subject sedated was gradually reduced down to zero. Machines and medication that had been used to monitor her vital organs were all disconnected. For the first time Samsāra One was living independently of any medical aid or assistance. Three hours after she received the final sedative Samsāra One started to come round. Fortunately for her, she was still very drowsy. The one thing we had never really considered was the subject, how would they react when they were re-born? We had never taken into account the mental shock and trauma that our experiment would produce. In this instance we had a woman whose last living memory was from the eighteenth century. She was now living in the twenty first. How would you cope with that?
We quickly brought on board highly trained trauma, bereavement and counselling staff. All had experience working for the military in most of the world’s worst trouble spots. Samsāra One was allowed to fully wake up, three of our most experienced nurses and one doctor were in the room when it happened. At first she was confused and frightened, the cause was not so much her surroundings but it was more the staff we had put there to help. She did not recognise how they were dressed, how they looked, the hair styles were completely different from anything she had ever seen before. Even their physical size was a shock to our patient. During her previous lifetime everyone had been smaller. Three hundred years of human development had increased our height on average by six inches. That may not sound a lot but it was enough to cause some anxiety in our patient.
Nurse Rae was the first to approach her, “Hello,” she said in a soft voice, “my name is Tracy. Can you tell me your name?” The patient now sat up in bed, just starred at her, her eyes glancing quickly around the room at the other people in there. Joan asked the others to wait outside, she thought that one to one would be less threatening for our patient and maybe she would start to relax a little. She was right. Over the next hour and a half Tracy sat and talked to her patient. It was a one way conversation with no replies given or expected. Tracy decided it would be best to leave and let her patient have some rest. She told her patient what she was going to do, and then stood up to leave. “Rachael,” her patient whispered, “my name is Rachael.” Tracy sat back down, with one hand she gently held Rachael’s hand, and with the other she stroked her hair. “Hello Rachael,” she whispered, “welcome back.” Tracy then started to cry. Nurse and patient both hugged and both cried. I still believe that moment was critical for everyone that followed. Over the next few months Tracy became Rachael’s rock, she got her through all the difficulties and problems that coming to terms with living in a new time had brought up and with Tracy’s help Rachael started to develop into a very confident and mature lady.
Once we were confident that Rachael was in good health, both