The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [98]
Laurel frowned at Floyd’s unexpected revelation. “You mean doctors and technicians were in on this?”
“In on it? No. We thought it was financial chicanery, a way of saving money.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“Therapeutic hibernation is for the rich; it costs a fortune to provide for someone who may be suspended for years. Part of the deal Hypnos has with the government involves a degree of research to improve the system. There’s an inexhaustible supply of willing human guinea pigs out there—disenfranchised people with incurable illnesses inclined to accept inclusion in research programs—but labs are expensive to run. To use the center spaces for in-house research was Hypnos’s original idea—sort of running their everyday investigation under the noses of the DHS and having them foot the bill. When the tanks’ final design was submitted to Congress, the wasteful arrangement of space became obvious and they asked for a redesign. But somewhere along the line a compromise must have been reached, because the centers remained empty. I got the gist of the story eons ago from Peter Blake, the chief scientist at Hypnos.”
“Now I get it. You thought the inmate they had asked you to revive was a Hypnos research subject.”
“You got it.”
“How were you contacted?”
“First by phone, then at a meeting.”
“But I thought you’d never seen—”
“I was blindfolded, but Tyler was there. Once we met him I recognized his voice.”
“And they told you the center inmates were a Hypnos setup?”
Floyd didn’t answer for a while, his thumb absently caressing the back of Laurel’s hand. “No, they didn’t; it was my assumption. Another wrong one, by the looks of it.”
Like the Russian nested dolls, that’s how Hypnos and the DHS had planned the use of the centers in their tanks; a ploy within a ploy within a ploy. She blinked, assimilating for the first time the vastness of the deceit: fifty sugar cubes in the homeland, with between fifty and three hundred tanks each; thousands of center spaces with room for tens of thousands. Worldwide, the numbers would be staggering.
“Half a million, at least.”
“What?” Laurel snapped from her calculations to focus on his eyes, bright and tinged with a veil of sadness.
“That’s the number you’re seeking. Half a million is a fair estimate of the capacity Hypnos has to house the nameless to run its research and, at the same time, provide a limbo for whoever crosses swords with the DHS at home and God knows with how many foreign government agencies in countries where the system is in operation.”
“Where’s the origin of the system’s flaws? Its use? The safeguards?”
“There are many flaws—some in the system, and others in the hibernation process.”
Laurel nodded. Unlike most technologies, hibernation didn’t appear to have been helmed by people driven by good intentions.
“When Vinson Duran, then an obscure scientist, isolated the protein mechanism governing the onset of torpor,” Floyd continued, “he didn’t publicize his discovery but instead founded a corporation and set out to find the most profitable way to use his technology. As it turned out, it became a commercial venture successful beyond Hypnos’s wildest dreams. Once achieved, their goal has been to perpetuate their monopoly by denying others the research tools to further the science.
“And here lies the origin of the flaws. Hibernation needed ten years of open research to iron out the kinks present in every new technology. Instead, Hypnos offered the government a solution to an otherwise stubborn problem: the prison system. But there was a condition. Hypnos would run it. Our government jumped at the chance and built a dicey legal framework, because they didn’t understand the technology or its implications. Only Hypnos knew some of the finer limitations of hibernation, and they weren’t about to make a full disclosure. As a result, our government imposed a new system controlled by a corporation.