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Chapter One
The Iceman of Kilimanjaro
“Oh, my God—it’s a man!”
“Are you sure?”
“Can’t you see the face? Look, right there…”
“Christ, Rick…I think you’re right…”
Not 6000 feet shy of the summit of the northwestern face of Mount Kilimanjaro, the side facing Olduvai Gorge and the Great Rift Valley, newlywed mountain
climbers Richard Wallace and his bride Sheila Lake had made the discovery of a lifetime. The kind of discovery that lands an ordinary person on every television show
from Nightline to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, on every magazine cover from Time to Scientific Weekly, and in the next 200 issues of every drooling tabloid from
The Star to the National Tattler. Right there, frozen in the ice where he had rested for God knows how long, they—he, a wealthy Wall Street financial planner with
Madison/Klein, she, an adjunct professor of Sociology at the prestigious Ivy League Yancey University—had found…him.
“Who is he?” Lake wondered in preternatural astonishment. “How long do you think he’s been up here?”
“Look at his clothes,” Wallace responded, clawing frantically at the surrounding heaps of melting ice, snow and rocky ejecta. “That’s not modern gear. Looks like
animal pelts…leopard, maybe.”
“His skin is dark,” Lake observed. “Do you think he was black?”
“A prehistoric African?” Wallace puzzled rhetorically. There was no way either of them could know for sure. “Possibly. He may have darkened from freezer
burn. But what would he be doing way up here?”
“Migrating?” Lake answered with a wisp of faux authority, flexing all the weight her doctorate degree afforded her. “Searching for something, perhaps.”
“Maybe he was on his honeymoon, like us,” Wallace begat ironically. His fingers had long since gone numb, but continue digging he did. Lake banished her
astonishment and joined him in what had become a grand mission of recovery. A recent avalanche had done most of the work releasing the frozen man from his icy
grave. It didn’t take long before they had disentombed him. There he lay, astonishingly well-preserved, locked deceptively peacefully in that awkward position that
betrayed the trauma of his demise. Soon came the realization that a frozen corpse weighs considerably more than a living body.
“My God, Sheila, if we can get him down the mountain, we could make a fortune,” Wallace shouted over the rising winds. “Yancey’s Anthropology department
would kill to have a specimen like this! Do you have any idea what we’ve stumbled onto here?!”
“It’s too dangerous, Rick. He’s too heavy. One wrong move and we could break him into a million pieces—not to mention ourselves!”
“Then let’s figure it out, woman,” Wallace cried, his Wall Street greed genes kicking in. “You don’t walk a way from an opportunity like this!”
“Watch me! I won’t risk my life, mister—and neither will you! We’ll have to come back for him.”
“But, Sheila, if we could just--!”
“No, Rick! We do this the right way! I’m damned if somebody’s gonna come up this mountain a thousand years from now and find my frozen ass up here next to
his!”
And so Dr. Sheila Lake put her frostbitten foot down, clearly establishing early in this marriage that it was she who was the brains and balls of this relationship.
Not one to be deterred, Wallace rummaged through his well-equipped backpack, casting various items carelessly in the snow—rappelling gear, food packs, flashlight,
compass, canteen…
“What on Earth are you looking for?” Lake wondered with an irritated tone.
“Ah, here it is,” her husband replied, holding up a shiny object for her inspection. It was his global positioning system beacon, the one designed to help rescuers
locate idiot yuppies when they got hopelessly lost or endangered while fooling around atop desolate mountaintops. He tore a drawstring loose from his parka and used
it to lash the device to the iceman’s wrist.
“Smart idea,” Lake congratulated him. Wallace wobbled his head arrogantly and pasted a smirk on his face, one that conveyed without words the notion, See, I
came up with something important. I’m smart, too.
Two months, twelve days later, the dynamic duo was back on Kilimanjaro’s unforgiving, windswept face, leading a team of anthropology experts from Yancey
University to the site of their epochal discovery. Wary of losing its prize, the university’s law department had orchestrated everything by the books. In full
compliance with international law and the government of Tanzania, they had filed scores of permits, legal briefs and enough paperwork to utterly suffocate the
residents of the tiny village of Moshi 18,000 feet below. Said documents afforded them full rights of recovery and scientific study, while legal ownership would
ultimately remain with the Utete government. We shan’t even discuss what this agreement cost Yancey in bribe and treasure. But the academic powers-that-be had
determined it was well worth the expenditure.
Following a short helicopter ride from Moshi to the Tanzanian capital of Dar es Salaam, the carefully bundled Wallace-Lake package was whisked off toward its
new home 5000 miles west on the sprawling grounds of Yancey University’s campus in sleepy Braintree, Massachusetts, where destiny breathlessly awaited.
The Inter-departmental Dick-slamming Contest
Nestled atop a gently rolling hillside on the campus’ eastern boundary was the fastidious 279-year old administrative building, Adamany Hall. Therein, down the
corridor and adjacent to university Chancellor Dr. Alexander Spaulding’s office was the voluminous faculty assembly room. Encompassed by mahogany walls that
positively reeked of academic majesty was the room’s centerpiece, a monstrous round table that effected some misplaced attempt to recapture the mythic glory of King
Arthur’s Camelot. Arrayed around that table was a constellation of Yancey’s finest academic minds, as well as a smattering of other parties keenly interested in the
outcome of the debate surrounding the handling of the entity that had widely come to be known as the “Iceman of Kilimanjaro.”
Speaking first, clearly from his position of supreme authority as chancellor, Spaulding, a graying, patrician old coot quite still possessed of rapier-like wit and fire,
held court in that quasi-dictatorial manner that made many enemies but yielded excellent results.
“Good afternoon, ladies, gentlemen. Let’s get right to it. First, I would like to welcome our benefactor, Rochester Yancey, whose generous endowments to the
university this past year have allowed us to recapture our rightful position as number one in academic excellence.”
Everyone around the table stood and applauded the impeccably tailored billionaire seated to Spaulding’s left. His family founded the university in 1726. He
nodded politely in acknowledgment and implored them to sit.
“I would also extend our warmest greetings to Minister Adnan Zaramo, head of the Tanzanian Ministry of Cultural Affairs,” Spaulding continued, “who is here to
observe our deliberations.”
“Thank you, Chancellor Spaulding,” the tall, exceedingly dark-skinned African stated in his Oxford-educated perfect English accent. “Prime Minister Utete eagerly
awaits my report on your initial findings regarding our national treasure.”
“Mmm, yes, your Iceman, as you say, minister,” Spaulding grumbled, reluctant to concede even a scintilla of dominion. He quickly moved forward with the
formalities. “Minister, allow me to introduce the key members of our esteemed Board of Regents who will be spearheading the project. To my immediate right is Dr.
Igor Sharansky, head of the Anthropology Department, who organized the Iceman recovery team.”
“Dosvedanya,” the wrinkled old Russian Jew bellowed, looking all the world like a cartoon version of one of those grizzled prospectors during the California Gold
Rush of 1849.
“Next to him is, I believe you already know, Dr. Sheila Lake, who, along with her husband Richard, made the quite remarkable discovery late last year. How is
Richard, my dear?”
“Fine, thank you for asking, Dr. Spaulding,” she responded, throwing her blonde hair back, showing off for effect. “He’s back on Wall Street leveraging some
corporation’s retirement funds out of existence, I imagine.”
“Next we have Dr. Delbert Quisling, head of the Genetics and Bio-engineering Department, whom I believe is eager to make some fairly remarkable statements
today.”
“Minister,” Quisling bowed reverently, grinning Cheshire-like, barely able to contain his childlike exuberance. He was certain he and his department would emerge
as the stars of this show.
“And last, but most certainly not least,” Spaulding ruminated, “may I introduce Dr. Quantez Phillips, head of the Psychology Department and resident human
behavior expert.”
Zaramo arched an eyebrow and smiled warmly at the final introducee, who rose to firmly shake his hand. An unspoken aura of brotherhood respect passed silently
betwixt them. As usual, the visiting Tanzanian minister notwithstanding, Phillips was the sole face of color in the boardroom.
“Dr. Sharansky…” Spaulding said, yielding the floor to the sputtering old scientist.
“Yes, indeed. Already, our 3-D imaging x-rays have yielded some remarkable findings regarding our, ahem, guest. Aside from a broken arm and a few relatively
minor lacerations, he is in pristine condition. I believe that a comprehensive forensic study might tell us quite a bit about the fellow that would open the secrets of—”
“You mean an autopsy,” Dr. Quisling very rudely interrupted. “Slice and dice him, tell us how much his brain weighed, what he had for dinner the day he died,
that sort of thing. How commonplace! How utterly boring!”
“Excuse me for talking while you were interrupting, Quisling,” the Russian protested. This, obviously, was not their first go-round. “Don’t start with me on—”
“Settle down, Igor,” Spaulding intervened, cutting him off at the knees.
“Chancellor, if I may?” Quisling said, not wasting the opportunity to weasel into the feeding trough. “My biotech boys would like to take a crack at the Iceman
with a new breakthrough atomic force microscopy technique. Quite simply put, we believe we can reconstruct his ice-damaged cells on the molecular level utilizing
nanotechnology—” he paused for maximum impact, “—and bring him back to life!”
Lake erupted into an hysterical outburst. “What are you, fucking kidding, Delbert? That’s impossible!” A murmur of agreement reverberated around the room.
Spaulding did not bat an eyelash. “Is this one of Lex’s hair-brained schemes? More of that Star Trek ‘Borg’ tomfoolery?”
“Chancellor, surely you know me and my students better than that. You’ve seen what we can do with this vital emerging technology! This is an opportunity to
put Yancey University lightyears ahead of everyone else in the biotech field!”
Yancey looked around the table askance, hopelessly lost. “Hold on, somebody help me,” he requested. “Nanny-tech-what?”
“Nanotechnology,” Quisling said animatedly, pressing his thumb and forefinger together to indicate something very small. “The science of microrobotics. It is a
field that is already revolutionizing everything—manufacturing, computing, chemistry, agriculture—everything! In this case, medicine.”
“Perhaps you should give our benefactor some background, Delbert,” Spaulding instructed him.
“With pleasure, sir,” Quisling concurred, rising from his seat. “Mr. Yancey, in 1990, researchers at IBM demonstrated for the first time in history that it is
possible to manipulate single atoms. Using an atomic force microscopy instrument, they positioned 35 xenon atoms on the surface of a nickel crystal to spell out the
letters ‘IBM,’ creating the world’s smallest corporate logo. Thus began the era of nanotechnology, a hybrid science combining engineering and chemistry.”
Quisling had an audience and was good and fired up now. He began gesturing flamboyantly with his arms, voice rising with the fervor of a Sunday morning
sermon.
“Open your minds and imagine the potential! The applications are boundless! By manipulating matter on the atomic level, we can radically change the very nature
of physics itself. Nanotech will produce materials 100 times stronger than steel with a fraction of the weight. The entire contents of the Library of Congress can be
stored in a memory module the size of a sugar cube. Famine could be eradicated by micromachines that fabricate foods to feed the hungry. We will enable clean,
pollution-free manufacturing, regenerate the thinning ozone layer to thwart global warming, produce more-efficient renewable energy without cutting down a single tree
or drilling a single oil well.”
“And this applies to the Iceman how, exactly?” Yancey demanded to know.
“Medically speaking, one day very soon, patients will drink fluids containing nanorobots programmed to attack and reconstruct the molecular structure of cancer
cells and viruses, rendering them harmless. Nanoscopic medicine will allow us to slow or even reverse the aging process, increasing life expectancy beyond the wildest
dreams of Ponce de Leon. Nanosurgeons will work at a level one thousand times more precise than the sharpest scalpel, operating on patients without leaving scars,
and offer bioengineered tissues to replace damaged ones. In short, we can repair the crystallization process that occurs when biological material freezes and restart the
Iceman’s heart!”
There was a long pause while Quisling graciously allowed his plodding colleagues to absorb the magnitude of his hypothesi. It was Minister Zaramo who ventured
the first comment.
“This is most unusual,” he muttered, clearly unbalanced by this conceptual abstraction far beyond his grasp. “It was Prime Minister Utete’s understanding that
the Iceman would be embalmed and mummified for display at the Museum of Antiquities. What you are suggesting—”
“What I am suggesting, good sir,” Quisling said condescendingly, “is that we can give you a living prehistoric treasure! What I am suggesting is the end of life—and
death—as we know it! Nanotechnology is coming, and it’s coming fast! For the first time in history, a technical revolution will approach the abruptness of a political
event. No one in any age has heard, seen or felt anything like it. But you will. A.D. 2005 will be reckoned as antediluvian not in fifty years but in fifteen. It’s a small,
small, very small world! The term ‘think outside the box’ has been shattered irrevocably. Quite frankly—” there was that theatrical pause again, “—there is no box!”
Again, another pause. All those collective puzzlers arrayed in that room were stumped. Finally, this from Spaulding:
“Delbert, what would be the ramifications of this?”
And that’s when that very clever gentleman momentarily suspended being a man of science, turned wryly toward finance-minded Yancey, and spake the fateful
words.
“Let’s talk in language you will better appreciate—we’ll make a fucking fortune!”
“With some revisions to the original contract and the appropriate portion of profits accruing to the Utete government,” Zaramo established very quickly. It was
implicit that his approval was tantamount before signing off on the mad scheme.
“Of course, old chap!” Spaulding agreed readily.
Cha-ching! Say no more. Yancey and Spaulding were fully onboard. Zaramo’s eyes sparkled like Cartier diamonds at the merest whiff of his anticipated
kickback—the perks of nepotism. Quisling positively slavered with delight over his patent rights and anticipated fame. Lake at this point had already been paid off
and was merely along for the ride. Even crusty, cantankerous old Dr. Sharansky conceded he had been outmaneuvered by his counterpart. That left just Phillips.
“Then what?” the black psychologist succinctly inquired. Every head snapped in his direction.
“Wh—what do you mean, doctor?” Quisling asked, stupefied.
“You bring him back, you resurrect him, he’s alive. Then what?”
“Then we, uh—that’s when we, uh—well, we could, uh…”
“What, Delbert? Slip him a couple of bucks, help him find a decent job at a good wage and send him on his merry way? Or maybe we follow a variation of
Minister Zaramo’s plan—build him a state-of-the-art display cage over at the Boston Zoo, where he can live out his days throwing shit at screaming children with
cotton candy-covered faces? C’mon, Del, dazzle us with your game plan.”
Phillips was irritated. Quisling was apoplectic.
“Hey, Phillips, lay off, man. I’m just your tech guy. Honestly, I don’t have a clue what we should do next. You got any bright ideas?”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” he responded, tapping an index finger on his bald head. “You guys are the ones rushing into this half-baked debacle and opening
Pandora’s Box. But I tell you this much—I predict it’s going to end badly. Think about it. Your so-called Iceman—who, if your plan succeeds, will be a living,
breathing person—could conceivably be anywhere from 500 to 20,000 years old. He won’t know the language. He won’t know the culture. Hell, he won’t
comprehend what a cigarette lighter is. This isn’t some lost Japanese tourist stuck on the T Metrorail asking for directions…”
“He’s got a good point, folks,” Yancey said in a surprising show of support. “However, I am hearing many compelling reasons to move forward, albeit cautiously.
Suggestions?”
And how many dollars constitute “many compelling reasons,” Phillips wondered. In his mind’s-eye, he was seeing one thing only: just another hapless black man
being exploited by a phalanx of greedy white folk engaged in a lurid exercise of pathological justification. Before he could summon up a comment, Spaulding chimed in.
“It strikes me, Dr. Phillips, that this university lavishes upon your ladyfriend Dr. Haynes a considerable sum to serve as a linguistics expert—what were those five
languages she’s fluent in again?”
Spaulding very well knew the answer, but he was a complete dick who enjoyed grandstanding for his guests’ entertainment.
“French, Spanish, Latin, Swahili and Japanese,” Phillips replied, concerned about how bloody his Armani shirt would get from biting his tongue.
“Japanese! Well, there you have it! Get her onboard and perhaps our wayward tourist won’t be so lost after all! And I imagine that doctorate degree in
psychology you earned in these hallowed halls might just come in a tad handy while handling our ice phoenix. Assuming you are even remotely interested, I am
assigning you to head up the post-resurrection team. Here’s a chance to do some groundbreaking science and maybe get your name in a few more textbooks. And by
the by, your subsequent lecture tour won’t exactly leave you indigent. Well, I’ll be damned—a little something for everyone! So if you’re done grieving your father
and are ready to cut short your sabbatical--”
Spaulding produced a fat cigar from a platinum case in his jacket pocket and fired that bad boy up in bloated, self-congratulatory fashion. The dictator had spoken
and, goddamnit, the trains would run on time!
“I will admit I am intrigued by the science and golly-gee-whiz aspects and all that,” Phillips said in his soft-spoken manner, “but I still think this is a bad idea.
Aren’t we going to follow procedure and present this before the full Board of Regents for review?”
“Too many cooks in the kitchen, my boy,” the chancellor sniffed, adding ominously, “I think we can handle this situation. Besides, we’ve got you here to keep us
honest.”
Phillips risked Spaulding’s ire, stating, “Honestly, sir, this rush to decision stinks of the Bush war cabinet.”
“Well, then, I guess that makes you Colin Powell, doesn’t it?” Quisling burst out riotously. The subsequent guffaws left Phillips quite unamused.
Lex’s Sideshow
Somewhere down in the dank bowels of Yancey’s Science Hall, the geeks in the biotech lab tinkered and toiled away on their various pet projects. Only God
knows what was likely to burble up from the twisted imaginations of those maniac souls ensconced inside. God, and Dr. Quisling, who, by the way, fancied himself as
something of a front-runner replacement, should the position of deity suddenly become available.
It was on the following Tuesday that Dr. Phillips found himself deposited therein, punctual as ever (this brother didn’t do “C.P. time”) for his first appointment
with the point man heading up Quisling’s crafty scheme. He had to concede that he was fascinated by the prospect of this project, acknowledging that if anyone in all
of academia could pull it off, it would be one of Quisling’s boys. The number of patents that had been generated in that laboratory had nearly doubled in the five years
since he took over as department head, a point underscored by the miasma of security procedures required to gain entrance.
Once escorted by armed guard inside the inner sanctum, Dr. Phillips was directed to a lab-coated, gum-chewing young technician scrupulously inspecting some
object invisible to the naked eye through an electron nanoscope. So intent was he on his subject, the youth accidentally knocked a cup of hot coffee on himself while
reaching for the mouse attached to a nearby computer to record his data.
“Holy shit goddamnit!” he yelped, stumbling back from the lab table. “Doc’s gonna kill me!”
“I won’t say anything if you don’t,” Phillips said as he approached, helpfully offering up a nearby roll of paper towel.
“Thanks,” the addled youth said gratefully, swabbing himself dry. Several hand-written pages and a Branson’s Modern Science textbook were likely ruined. “Uh,
hi. Who are you?”
“I’m Quantez Phillips,” he replied, offering a hand to shake. He was never one to banter the semantics of position and title. “I’m looking for someone named
‘Lex.’ I’m afraid I don’t know his last name.”
“Dr. Phillips?!” the boy gasped, wiping his coffee-drenched hand on his lab coat before offering it up. “Wow, this is quite an honor, sir. Us trolls don’t get many
visitors down here in the dungeon, and certainly none of your stature!”
“And you are--?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir, I’m having a blonde moment! I’m Lex.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lex. Any remote possibility you have a last name?”
“Yes, sir. Lex Spaulding.”
“Spaulding?” Phillips was taken aback. What were the odds? “Any relationship to Chancellor Spaulding?”
Lex threw a finger to his pursed lips in a shh-ing motion. “Yeah, he’s my dad—and no, trust me, there’s no relationship. I’d rather not go into it. It’s less of a
headache for me around here if people don’t know who I am.”
Alexander Spaulding, Jr. That explains the secretiveness about the last name, Phillips thought. Understandable. He was already struggling to not dislike the kid.
Guilt by association is a motherfucker. He put on his best psychologist’s poker face and trudged forward.
“Got it. So, Lex, where is Dr. Quisling and the rest of your team?”
“Out to lunch—literally and figuratively. I’m holding down the fort, so it looks like it’s just you and me, Dr. Phillips. Say, can I fetch you a cup of coffee?”
Phillips chuckled lightly, saying, “I think you’ve had enough Starbucks misadventures today.”
Lex laughed in agreement. “So, I take it you’re here to have a look-see at the Iceman? Dr. Quisling told me about your assignment. I’ll be working with the two of
you through the reconstruction phase.”
Great, Phillips grimaced with a resigned sigh, I’m stuck babysitting der Fuhrer’s pimply-faced white-privileged whelp. I bet this dizzy punk barely knows how to
wipe his own ass, much less find his way around this laboratory.
“How old are you, young man?”
“I’m 22,” he said, smiling broadly with pride. “Don’t let the babyface deceive you. I’m about to graduate this summer with an advanced degree in Bio-engineering.”
“A young prodigy, huh? What were you working on just now?”
“It’s way cool, Dr. Phillips! Have a look.”
Phillips peered through the nanoscope into a strange new universe of negatively charged particles, nanoassemblers and nanoscale microprocessors. It was a sublime
dance of subatomic particles on an inconceivably tiny scale.
“What exactly am I looking at?”
“I call it a ‘nanite cage,’ a robot designed and created to neutralize the protease component of the human immunodeficiency virus, and then attract and capture the
defanged bug in an atomic binder that will flush itself out of the bloodstream with other waste materials from the body.”
“My degrees are in sociology, language and human psychology, Lex. How about running that by me again in layman’s terms.”
“I’m sorry, doc. I’m used to talking to other techno-geeks all day. If I can figure out how to keep the nanites from embedding and accumulating in the body’s
heavy tissues, then you are looking at the cure for AIDS.”
From the mouths of babes… Phillips was stunned. Suddenly, little Spaulding was a player, his stock rising one thousand percent.
“Why, that’s…that’s amazing,” he finally regurgitated. “How long before this can be deployed and how much will it cost?”
“Depends on how long it takes to work out the bugs,” Lex explained. “Couple of years, maybe, plus FDA approval time. And to answer your second question,
probably about a trillion dollars, once the robber-barons upstairs finish artificially jacking up the asking price. But it’s not about costs, man. Do you know how many
lives this will save?”
Actually, he knew exactly how many, starting with Phillips’ best friend Troy Parker, whose HIV antiretroviral combination therapy was beginning to fail him. Lex
Spaulding, it seems, was full of surprises. He was nothing like his irascible progenitor. Looks like I’m going to have to cut this kid a break, he mused.
“Here’s the real shit and giggles part, doc,” the youth continued unabashed. “All this is going to look like a mere sideshow compared to what we’re proposing to
do next.”
Spaulding motioned for Phillips to follow him to another section of the voluminous lab complex. Several yards distant, there was a door on the far wall that
roughly resembled one found on a restaurant walk-in freezer. Indeed, the temperature inside the vault was a scant few degrees above zero Celsius. The two men
navigated through the outré assortment of equipment within to arrive at their destination—a metal pullout drawer one naturally would associate with a coroner’s
examination slab.
And there he was, laid out like any other black man who had suffered a premature demise at the hands of a cold, cruel, barbaric “civilization”—the Kilimanjaroan
Iceman. His ancient scarred corpse was covered with a white sheet marked with the words “Property of Yancey University,” a distasteful little aside emblematic of
Quisling’s overarching arrogance. Only his face and badly matted hair were exposed for routine inspection.
“We’re thawing him out very carefully,” Spaulding said informatively between annoying pops of gum. “We don’t want to do any further damage to his internal
organs. He’s already gonna need some serious transplant action. No problem. Our guys over in the cloning lab have that under control. There’s a compound fracture
in his left arm. We’ll set that. New corneas and blood transfusion, too. He’s type B-positive, by the way. We’ve arranged for Boston’s top cardiologist, Dr. Inez
Cabrera from the university’s medical center, to come in to examine his heart and attempt to jumpstart his ticker. She’s a really great lady, from what I hear…”
Lex had pretty much lost Phillips by the word “thawing.” The psychologist’s complete attention was now riveted on the Iceman’s face. That wondrous, powerful,
hypnotic face.
“My God,” Phillips murmured unconsciously, “he’s…beautiful.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Phillips, did you say something?”
“What? No, no. I was just…surprised. He has remarkable, keen features.”
“Yep, he was probably a lady-killer back in his day, whenever that was.”
“May I?” Phillips inquired, signaling his desire to remove the sheet and inspect the dead figure in his entirety.
“Be my guest.”
Phillips gingerly pulled back the sheet, as if unveiling some treasured Christmas gift. His pupils dilated tellingly as his brown eyes danced across the prostrate
form like a searchlight, up, then down and back again, from face to chest to torso to penis to legs to feet. Whoever this man was, he appeared to be in excellent physical
shape, and well endowed with many desirable attributes. All in all, a most magnificent creature despite those many scars, Phillips decided—an individual possessed of
all the stunning physical beauty any gay man such as himself would be predisposed to.
Phillips couldn’t resist placing his palm flat against the cold, still chest, casting his mind forward on a fanciful flight of imagination to the rapidly approaching day
when that noble, primeval heart might beat anon. He made a supremely conscious point not to let his fingertips linger too long, lest young Mister Spaulding’s
suspicions be aroused.
“Well, what do you think, doctor?” the budding scientist asked excitedly.
“He look’s…tall,” Phillips observed. “Any idea what height he’ll be when—?”
“Yeah, it’s a little hard to tell, the way he’s all gnarled up like that, but we guesstimate about six-feet-two, perhaps.”
Damned if that wasn’t Phillips ideal height for a mate, being two inches shorter himself, and all. Perfect, he conjectured, but can you imagine what kind of
prehistoric, barbaric mind is coiled inside that magnificent head? He’s probably no better than a thugged-out crackhead niggah off any street corner! And damned if I’m
going through that nonsense again!
He quickly gathered his wits, mentally excoriating himself for permitting his mind to take him there. This iceman was, in the grand scheme of things, after all, a
mere science project, not a candidate for amour. He turned his attention back to Spaulding.
“He’s going to need weeks of rehabilitation therapy, I’d imagine?”
“Yes, sir. Even with the miracle of reconstruction nanosurgery, let’s face it; this guy’s been frozen in position for eons. And who knows what state of mind he’ll
be in or even if his memories will be intact. We have every reason to believe so, but nothing quite like this has ever been attempted, so what the fuck do we know,
right? Oops, excuse my French, Dr. Phillips.”
“Don’t give it a second thought. If it turns out we can communicate with him, the challenge of getting him up to speed with the 21st Century will be considerable.
It seems we all have our work cut out for us, Mr. Spaulding.”
“Can’t be any worse than trying to reason with my girlfriend. I’m down for it, sir. I’m really honored to be involved in this project. Anything I can do to be of
assistance…”
“That’s wonderful to hear. So what do we need to do to get started?”
“We introduce the cellular reconstructive nanites into the Iceman’s body first thing tomorrow morning. The next time you see him, he’s going to be hooked up to
the nanoinfuser and looking like a human pin cushion. Then we wait. By the end of the week, he should be good to go. Then it’s Dr. Cabrera’s show. After that—if
she’s successful, he’s all yours.”
“Then by all means, let’s begin,” Phillips sighed, bracing himself for what he instinctively knew would be the singular consciousness-altering mission of a lifetime.
“I’m most eager to meet our Iceman.”
And thus began the Iceman of Kilimanjaro’s final day of peaceful slumber. Locked somewhere deep within the crevasses of his icy grey matter, the encoded
chemicals bearing ancient memories—an inglorious juxtaposition of all-too-human conflicts and contradictions. Memories of his heroism. Memories of his barbarism.
Memories of being king!
Chapter Two
The Entire History of the Black Race
Yancey University’s Dorffman Auditorium was packed to the rafters—standing room only. But then, of course it was. Dr. Radcliff White, Pulitzer Prize-winning
author of the encyclopaedic treatise, The Entire History of the Black Race, was in the house and had it going on like that. He hit campus, the latest stop on his
exhaustive lecture and book-signing tour, with all the thunder and fury of a ravening hurricane. How many weeks had that thing been number one atop the New York
Times best-sellers list? Thirty-two? Thirty-three? Whatever the case, it was the hottest property in the literary world, and it’s pudgy author was the toast of the
high-end cocktail circuit.
As he concluded his standard stump speech from up onstage, pontificating about this injustice to the black race and that horrible statistic about drug abuse and
imprisonment, the crowd, a potpourri of academic-types, black literati, bemused gawkers and others, vaulted to its collective feet, exploding into thunderous accolade.
Basking in the glow of absolute adoration, White girded himself for the inevitable next phase-—he frantic Q&A session.
“Are there any questions?” he asked rhetorically, as though there were even a remote possibility there weren’t hundreds. Hundreds of hands shot into the air.
“Ooo! Ooo! I have a question,” a voice boomed out from the front row. The person who said it uncharacteristically jiggered and flailed wildly in mock
excitement. It was none other than Dr. Quantez Phillips, Ph.D.
White smiled broadly at his best friend of two decades, bracing himself for what he ostensibly knew would be some off-color remark or taunt. This was an old
routine. He pointed to Phillips, saying, “Yes, that gentleman—and I use that term loosely—down in front.”
“Yes. Your old dorm mate would like to know what you’re doing for dinner tonight? I would have asked you over the phone, but that feckless publicist of yours
refused to put my call through.”
Faculty and students in the audience who knew their back-story chuckled with delight. They loved seeing the usually stoic Dr. Phillips float down from his ivory
tower and let down his (hypothetical) hair. There was no telling what grand comedy this exchange would engender.
“That wasn’t my publicist, that was me!” Both men burst into laughter. “Ladies and gentlemen,” White said between fits of giggles, “my dear friend, the pre-
eminent head of Yancey University’s esteemed Psychology Department, Dr. Quantez Phillips!” Another round of applause. Phillips was both very well liked and
respected in these parts. “To answer your question, ‘Tez, I’m going to the fanciest dive in town and having the most expensive item on the menu—your treat!”
“Done! All that money, and you’re still the same cheap bastard you were when we were flat broke freshmen drinking out of Flintstones jelly glasses, I see. Hope
you don’t mind if a couple of familiar faces join us.”
Two figures, one male, one female, resolved themselves from the rear of the hall and made their way down the aisle. The woman, strikingly fetching in her
deceptively conservative Donna Karan ensemble, spoke first.
“Hey, Cliff, you still remember us mere peons, I hope!”
“Ruthie!” White gasped, his semi-corpulent frame shaking with excitement. “And is that Troy Parker I see with you?! Oh, my fucking gawd!”
“It most certifiably is indeed, Radcliff,” the gaunt Parker roared, doing his best to keep up with Dr. Ruthenia Haynes, with the assistance of his walking cane. “I
have a question, as well: You didn’t, by any chance, plagiarize that book of yours the way you used to copy the answers off my dissertation assignments, did you?"
“You know damn well I had to tutor you in that remedial law course you couldn’t seem to pass, you pimp-delicious corporate shyster,” White howled. “Get up
here!”
Phillips, Haynes and Parker clambered onto the stage and the old friends practically smothered one another in warmest embrace. They four hadn’t all been together
in the same place in seven years. For that exquisite moment of reunion, they dropped the staid bourgeois professional pretensions and retrograded back into Tez,
Ruthie, Cliff and Tee— the “Fab Four—” the top graduates of the Class of 1986. And get this—they were all black! Yancey University had never seen anything like
their ilk before or since. For the length of that embrace, it was as if no one else in the entire auditorium even existed.
“Let’s let the big-time author get back to his audience,” Phillips implored. “We’ve got him the rest of the night.”
“Handle your business, Cliff,” Haynes said in agreement, leading the others away. “We’ll be waiting behind the stage.”
That they did, for the duration of the 90 minutes White’s adoring fans consumed his time with questions, remarks and autograph requests.
Dinner With the Girls
“I love what you’ve done with this place, Tez,” White said, peering around the spacious living room of Phillips’ house in suburban Quincy. Flickering light from
the fireplace danced across the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses.
“That’s right, I forgot you haven’t been in town since I moved here from Brookline. The commute was kicking my ass and I needed to be closer to campus.”
“I’ll fix us all a drink while you give him the nickel tour,” Haynes said, while doffing her Manolo Blahniks.
“No more ‘Blue Motherfuckers’ for me, sweetness,” White chortled. “I’ve graduated to Vermouth.”
“My, my, ain’t we all growed up,” Parker interjected. “And don’t you dare correct my verbiage, you wicked shrew.” That retort was aimed at Haynes. The hazel-
eyed professor was, alas, the head of Yancey University’s Language Department. “Here, let me help you…”
“Relax, Troy, I’ve got it,” she insisted, outracing him across the hardwood floors to the well-stocked bar.
Parker became slightly irritated, saying, “I’m not an invalid, Ruthie. I’m living with AIDS. I’m not dying of it.” It was a well-rehearsed line.
“Yeah, how are you feeling these days, Tee?” White wondered, a serious tone entering his demeanor.
“There’s good days, and then there’s bad days, my brother. Today’s a good day—hallelujah!”
“ Amen,” Ruth added. She was the deeply religious one of the bunch and, incidentally, the only one of them who wasn’t gay. Privately, back in the day, they used
to jokingly refer to themselves as “the Fag Four.”
“I thought about you the other day, Troy,” Quantez said as he hung up the last of their jackets. “There’s a student in our Bio-engineering Department who’s
working on what sounds like a very promising, very unconventional cure for HIV. I’ll introduce you while you’re in town.”
“Is this the same kid you were telling us about earlier?” White inquired. “The one who’s working on resurrecting your Neanderthal? What’s his name--?”
“Lex Spaulding,” Haynes jumped in. “Der fuhrer—oops, I’m sorry,” she paused mid-sentence, eyes darting furtively to and fro, placing her hand facetiously over
her mouth in faux embarrassment, “—Chancellor Spaulding’s son.”
“Careful, Miss Thang,” Parker sniggered, “your Freudian slip is showing!”
“Hey, that’s my line!” Phillips loudly protested.
“And he accuses me of plagiarizing,” White sneered with icy malice. “Demand your royalty check, Tez, girl!”
He could get away with calling Phillips “girl,” nestled here in the safety zone of privacy. Parker was all the way out regarding his sexual orientation. White and
Phillips were still closeted, except around a few extremely close friends like Ruth. That was the reality of life on a conservative campus.
“Anyway,” Phillips exclaimed, forcing the conversation back to its previous topic, “Lex and Dr. Quisling’s bio-tech team will be done with the preliminary phase
early tomorrow. It’s amazing what they’ve done so far. You should see the data. As far-fetched as it sounds, it looks as though they are really going to bring the
Kilimanjaro Iceman back to life. And he’s a Homo sapiens like us, not a Neanderthal, Cliff—you of all people should know better, being a so-called expert on ‘the
entire history of the black race’ and all.”
“Neanderthals were indigenous to Europe, you partially literate twit,” Haynes blasted White. “Even I knew that!”
“Can you even spell ‘Neanderthal,’ Ruthie?” White hissed cattily. “Be careful, girl, the h is silent!”
“Then by all means, you insufferable dragoon, mimic the h and shut that big trap of yours!” she fired back. “Or shall I cuss you out in Swahili to make my point?”
“Thank God we’re all friends here,” Phillips whispered to Parker riotously. Ah, yes, was there anything more entertaining on a Friday night than three doctorate
degrees and a partner in a prestigious Hollywood law firm verbally jousting (i.e. reading each other and talking deep shit!) to demonstrate their unending love for one
another?
“Whatever,” White spat dryly. “Fuck the house tour, Quantez. I want to hear all about your Cro-Magnon, or whatever the fuck he turns out to be.”
“Hear, hear!” Parker agreed lasciviously. “Regale us with tales of your ancient Mandingo homunculus! What does he look like? Does he have body? He’s not all
fucked up and shriveled from the freezing, is he?”
“Sigh,” Haynes sighed in disgust. “The find of the century, and you fey bitches are reducing him to the mere object of one of your beefcake sex fantasies.”
“Oh, don’t go there, Miss Polly Pristine Pureheart,” Parker protested. “I remember your sophomore year when you broke half as many hearts as balls! Here,” he
said, reaching into his shirt pocket, “hit this blunt and get over yourself! This is some of that good California shit—I got it from Nicholson himself. I even have a
prescription from my doctor—thank God for medical use marijuana!”
“Fire her up,” Phillips instructed. “Let me toss Erykah on the CD player—World Wide Underground, of course—put Bud out into the yard, get dinner started,
and I’ll tell you all about him.”
Half an hour later, they were all good and toasted. Bud, Phillips’ gentle old Chow Chow pet companion, also affectionately known as the PeePee Monster, had
taken care of his doggy business out in the yard and was enjoying exquisite table scraps from his master’s loving hands. Over cocktails (weed, alcohol and, in Parker’s
case, protease inhibitors), Phillips laid out the entire life-restoring nanotech scenario as he understood it. Haynes had heard all this before on campus, and was still
trying to get it to sink in that she and her department would play a critical role in helping Phillips translate whatever primitive dialect they encountered from the Iceman’
s verbal palette. In fact, by now, it was all anybody at YU was talking about. White and Parker were agog, completely blown away. You could have knocked either
one of them off their dining chairs with a poorly chosen metaphor.
Somewhere betwixt smoke-induced coughing and gagging, and the songs “I Want You” and “Woo,” they retired to the plush, tastefully adorned living room for
dessert.
“We’ve carbon-dated the ice surrounding him, but the results have been imprecise,” Quantez explained. “He may be anywhere between 8000 to 15,000 years old.
To be honest, we may never know for sure.”
“Sometimes, modern science really scares the dogshit doodoo out of me,” Parker said.
“Tell me about it, Troy,” Phillips concurred. “Think about the sheer magnitude of it—at the turn of the 20th Century, the industrial world was powered primarily
by coal and steam. We were just beginning to figure out how to get electricity from Benjamin Franklin’s kite key to the outlet sockets on the wall. Forty-five years
later, e=mc2 wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today, Quisling tells me, nanotechnology will likely signal the dawn of the fusion era by the next decade.
Inexhaustible energy, made from simple hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe. No more gasoline, no more pollution, no more global warming. And did I
mention that we will be able to bring dead people back to life?”
“You always did make me sick, Tez,” White grumbled between bites of almond Amaretto cheesecake. Everyone else frowned. What could possibly be sticking in
his bearded craw now? they puzzled. “After the Pulitzer, my life’s been insane. I had to threaten my publishers with a revolt and a lawsuit just to sneak these couple
of vacation days in. Now I’m going to be back on my laptop slaving over at least two major rewrites of the book! A new chapter at the end chronicling your incredible
achievement—reviving a ten thousand-year old African—”
Haynes’ eyes lit up with the realization of what came next. “—and a brand new prologue documenting everything we learn from the Iceman about life in ancient
Africa—five, maybe ten thousand years earlier than any known recorded history!” she completed his thought.
“Making history by making history,” said Phillips in reverential reflection. How truly fortunate, how blessed he was to be so intricately involved in such an
astonishing undertaking. The profundity of it all was not lost on a single solitary one of them.
“Wow,” said Parker simply, wishing he had some insightful nugget of wisdom to toss into the conversation.
“Leave it to you to top my untoppable achievement, you baldheaded cur!” White ranted with jealous admiration. “Congratulations, my brother! I am so very
proud of you!” He raised his Vermouth-filled glass in toast. The others followed suit.
“Congratulations to all of us, Radcliff,” Phillips replied graciously. “We have all achieved glorious things. And I never could have done it without you guys. Each
one of you helped me get through some really bad times.” His mind flashed back to the forlorn days of his naïve youth, not so terribly long ago. That crackhead ex-
lover Todd Owens had thrown the gay psychologist for one old loop. The spectacular flameout very nearly took Phillips and his prestigious career down with him.
“We made a pact 20 years ago, Tez, that the four of us would always go the extra mile to not only achieve the highest standards for ourselves, but also for each
other,” Parker ruminated. “You always were the best of the best, man. I would die for you.”
“Thank you, my brother,” Quantez replied, eyes misting with sentiment. They had all made it to the motherfuckin’ top! “You know I feel the same about
you…all of you.”
“Well, in that case, I need a big favor,” the diminutive Parker exuberantly jested. “I want some digital nude shots of ‘Brother Icicle.’ I could make a killing selling
them around Hollywood and the Internet! What about his dick? I bet it’s uncircumcised!”
Phillips hurled a sofa pillow at Parker in response to the preposterous request, saying, “You know, I have to remind myself occasionally that you hold in your
possession a law degree, you unsavory little faggot.”
They all laughed in that hysterical way that only very old, very dear friends could. Phillips got up and began to clear the cocktail table of soiled dishes, sending
Bud scampering for another lap to deposit himself into. The unfortunate pooch was shit out of luck. At just that moment, Erykah Badu’s signature riff, “Danger,”
began to play, instigating the quartet to its collective feet to gyrate and twirl like four complete fools. Hey, it was the songstress’ fiercest tune since “Call Tyrone!”
“Ooooh, that’s my shit!” Radcliff baritone bellowed.
“What you know ‘bout dat, niggah?” Quantez roared. “That’s grown folks music!!”
How they all laughed and danced, and laughed some more. For no particular reason, or perhaps for a very particular one, Phillips exquisite mind clicked into
psychologist mode, analyzing, collating, extrapolating those explosive lyrics.
“This is a call from the correctional facility.” Prison reference.
“Glock on cock, the trunk stay locked.” Gun reference.
“Might have to flush the yayo.” Illicit drug reference.
It was a masterful composition that Phillips was filtering through a new consciousness that had been altered by his Iceman experience. The electrifying song spoke
of a single mother struggling to keep her man’s illegal drug business running at the end of a gun while awaiting his release from prison. Suddenly, his joy evaporated, his
stomach soured and his blood ran cold.
My God, what type of a world are we about to bring this Kilimanjaroan into? he hypothesized. Racism, murder, drugs, homophobia, AIDS, famine…war—and
that was just today’s headlines de jour. It was a disturbing conundrum, to be sure. For Quantez, the party was abruptly terminated.
“Make yourselves at home,” he entreated his guests, not wishing to wreck their festive mood. “I’m going into the study to finish compiling some notes and
prepping for the event.”
Ruth, as a colleague in daily contact, was closer to him than the others. She instantaneously sensed his consternation, although she fathomed neither its origin nor
reason. Placing a reassuring hand upon his broad shoulder, she said, “Relax, Boo, you’ll do fine. I’ll keep these clowns under control so you can get some rest. Handle
your business—and go make some history.”
“Yep, he exhaled wearily, fractionally betraying his despondency, “tomorrow’s the big day…”
Tomorrow…or 12,000 Years Later, Depending on Whom You Ask
The scene outside the Yancey University Science Hall at nine a.m. the next morning was, to put it succinctly, a pandemonium. News crews jockeyed for prime
positions, breathlessly awaiting the anticipated stunning announcement. Every wannabe poobah and department head curried favor and sucked up, frantic to claim even
a particle of historical significance by virtue of mere proximity to the action. With a dismissive wave of his ironclad fist, Chancellor Spaulding dispatched all but a
principal few.
Inside, anthropologist Dr. Igor Sharansky was there to study the scientific aspects of the operation. Rochester Yancey, too, because his fat family coffers
bankrolled much of the university and its vast system of subsidiary offshoots and, quite frankly, because he was damned if anybody was going to tell him he couldn’t
be there. Naturally, egomaniac Dr. Delbert Quisling and brilliant but mischievous band of creative misanthropes, including Lex Spaulding, the chancellor’s offspring,
were holding court by means of their nanotech expertise and authority. Dr. Sheila Lake sat ceremonially perched as wide-eyed as an eagle owl in desperate need of
powerful tranquilizers. Student videographer and journalism major Ma Bong and her crew snaked through them, recording for posterity every word of even remote
relevance. Phillips and Haynes huddled side-by-side, furiously jotting down last-minute notes and consulting by cell phone with nearby members of their respective
departments and other experts on this minutiae of detail or that.
And so, there they all sat, watching through plexiglass windows, transfixed in awe and wonderment, in the small gallery around the periphery of the oxygen
compression chamber inside which eminent cardiologist Dr. Inez Cabrera, assisted by her technical team, prepared to work her miracle. Everyone present
acknowledged her boggling wizardry, dating back to that day two years ago when she inexplicably managed to revive that small child who had drowned in the frigid
waters of Dorchester Bay and had been submerged for nearly three hours.
As for her “patient” sprawled out on the operating table, his prospects were looking better by the hour. The vast and incomprehensible pre-surgical procedures
were very nearly complete. The nanites had clearly accomplished their mission and the bristling array of nanoinfusers, reminiscent of an acupuncturist’s needles were
being carefully removed by Cabrera’s medical team. His once-pallid skin now appeared vibrant, very nearly alive. Cuts and abrasions had been cleaned, dressed and
sutured, and even that pesky broken left arm had been placed in a cast in anticipation of a positive outcome. His badly matted mane was shaved clean as a whistle,
matching Phillips’ cranial bowling ball smoothness. A scant few remaining items on Cabrera’s checklist, and the historic procedure was about to get underway.
Pop! went Lex Spaulding’s gum prematurely, although he didn’t intend it to.
“Goddamnit, boy, spit that thing out!” Papa Spaulding erupted in typical dictatorial fashion. “You’re wearing my last good nerve out!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know—the one you’re saving for the inevitable tax audit,” the young namesake mocked back. He could afford to talk trash. Everyone knew it was
his genius that precipitated the nanotechnological breakthrough that made this epochal moment feasible. Even Quisling deferred to the man-child’s burgeoning intellect.
Phillips had decided to take pity upon the youngster.
“Everything okay there, Lex?”
“Forgive my mania, Dr. Phillips. I’m bipolar and at moments like this I get really, really jazzed.”
“Are you taking anything for it?”
“And squash my creative manic juices? What are you, nuts? Save your Zoloft prescriptions for your zombie-fied patients, doc.” That comment was aimed more
at Senior than Phillips.
“So be it,” Phillips said, making sure to speak loudly enough for Lex’s father to hear. “Can’t argue with the results.”
The old man squirmed uncomfortably. He had been forced to learn that, in the course of assembling the finest staff conceivable for his precious university, he was
going to have to stomach all manner of—what did he call them?—aberrant behaviors. Phillips himself had to be called to task back during that unsavory Todd episode
two years ago. But let’s not go there just yet. Besides, the psychologist was busy having a microphone shoved in his handsome face.
“May I ask you a few questions, Dr. Phillips?” Bong inquired politely.
“Certainly, young lady. It would be my pleasure. Shoot.”
“As we stand here poised at this history-making moment, what are your thoughts about the Lazarus Project?”
“Lazarus?” Phillips replied, arching an eyebrow, momentarily confused and unbalanced. “Is that what they’re calling this? Um, okay. My thoughts…well, as a
psychologist, I certainly revel in the singular opportunity to probe into the workings of the Iceman’s prehistoric mind. What we learn from this individual will
revolutionize anthropology and our understanding of the basic tenets of human evolution and development. As an historian, I am floored by the idea that what we
achieve today here in this room will be read about and marveled by future generations for eons to come. As a black man, I am humbled by the symbolism represented
by our frozen friend. He harkens, by our estimates, from a period so distant in our primordial past that it is conceivable that every person of African descent carries
this man’s genes in our bodies.”
Before he could gather his next thought, his cell phone vibrated on his hip, momentarily distracting him. “Can we pause for a sec?” he asked, flipping the device
open and activating it. A scandalous text message from Ruth awaited him.
What about as a homosexual? What are your thoughts? The message was punctuated with a yellow smiley-face.
He gasped, snapping the phone closed, eyes darting guiltily around the room as if everyone was in on the secret conversation. Haynes erupted into hysterical fits
at his embarrassment.
“Remind me to kill you later,” he snarled at her as she dabbed a tear from her eye. They loved to trainwreck one another at inappropriate but harmless moments.
She was now one up on him.
The chancellor fidgeted like a man besieged by one too many antacid tablets raging through his cantankerous bowels. “Anything you care to share with the rest of
the class, Dr. Phillips?” he testily demanded.
“Absolutely not!” came the evasive response.
Spaulding glared at Haynes in true taskmaster fashion, clearly irritated with the juvenile delinquency swirling around him. She threw up her hands and averted her
gaze in a gesture that indicated, I don’t know nothing about it!
Must be a black thing, Spaulding decided in his poisonous mind.
“My apologies, Miss Bong, where were we?” Phillips said, returning his attention to the perplexed student. Before she could resume her interrogation, a voice
came over the audio system from inside the compression chamber.
“I’m about to begin, ladies and gentlemen,” Cabrera informed them. “We’re at the optimal window.”
“Wait,” Bong shrieked, “I still need to get another camera in position!”
“Who’s idea was this?” Haynes whispered to Phillips, who had quickly returned to his seat. “The junior league Francis Ford Coppolas, I mean?”
“Spaulding wanted to keep every aspect of the project in-house wherever possible,” he quietly replied. “You see anyone in here not on YU’s payroll?”
“For the love of God, young lady, get cracking,” Quisling ranted. “We’re not exactly drowning in leisure time here! Timing is crucial!”
The embarrassed undergrad scurried to mount her equipment and gave a nod of readiness to the patiently waiting cardiologist.
Over the next 45 minutes, with ballet precision, she and her team went to work, pushing state-of-the-art heart drugs and adrenaline into the stagnant corpse. A
blood transfuser drained the gooey, old ichor, replacing it with fresh blood—Type B positive. Tubes inserted down the Iceman’s throat began the process of
oxygenating the moist tissue. All in all, there were more than two dozen procedures Cabrera enacted upon her patient, several of them not found in any standard
textbook of modern medicine. They worked, that maverick team of cardiovascular geniuses, professionally, furiously and with startling clarity of purpose. If any one
of them doubted the outcome of this marvelous endeavor, it could not be found etched upon their furled brows. And then, that all-encompassing instant of drama,
without which something surely would have felt lacking.
“Paddles,” Cabrera commanded, leaning toward a nurse to wipe the light patina of sweat from the crest of her keen nose. Her technician, Dr. Alfred Maxwell,
materialized a set of defibrillator paddles, rubbing them together to equalize the charge. “Set them for 200.”
Haynes’ hand jutted out instinctively, grasping Quantez’s arm in spine-tingling anticipation. Old man Spaulding would have liked to pop his rivets, if rivets indeed
he had. Quisling was a sputtering wreck, looking every inch the man who hadn’t slept all week. A battalion of janitors could have mopped the floor with the sweat
saturating his armpits. He had more riding on the successful outcome of this project than anyone else, with the possible exception of the man from Kilimanjaro himself.
“Clear,” Cabrera barked authoritatively, ordering her personnel to disengage from physical contact with the still body splayed before them. ZAP! In a sizzling
electric kinesis, 200 amperes of raw energy flashed lightninglike through the ancient brown African flesh, eliciting a reflexive spasm. That shock vicariously passed
through the souls of every witness huddled in that room, for they all twitched as if having received the jolt themselves. Prayers flowed upward toward the divine from
unlikely sources. Hearts pounded madly at the romantic notion of imminent resurrection—all save the one that mattered most. The prehistoric corpse remained
woefully unanimated.
Cabrera was positively unflappable, undeterred. There was a blank spot in the history books where her name would yet be inserted, as well. As a surgeon, she
was as ambitious as Mephistopheles, and sought to usurp God’s dominion over the blurred line between life and death in like fashion.
“Again!” she rasped with Frankenstein fervor. ZAP! That second volt damn near knocked several witnesses from their seats in the outer gallery. The anticipation
was suffocating. Disappointment from the non-result was palpable.
Cabrera: “Up it to 300, Max! Clear!”
ZZAPPP!!
Silence permeated both inner and outer chamber. Activity paused while Cabrera pondered the serene face of the patient on her table, willing his heart to pump, his
blood to flow, history to be made. Nothing.
“Again?” Maxwell, the technician inquired doubtfully.
With resounding resolution, she replied, “Charge to 400.” That was dangerously reckless, and risked frying her patient’s heart. She gambled that he was of sound
enough stock and health to weather the blast. She need not be correct, for in those final seconds before her theory could be put to the test, a tiny sound issued forth
from a nearby monitor, a feeble mechanical utterance that belied the seismic magnitude of the event it demarcated. A simple beebeep of cardio activity that shattered, in
one cataclysmal instant, all conventional wisdom, and ushered in a stunning new era of science, ethics and, moreover, reality.
“Holy shit!” Yancey hollered fanatically. “Did you hear that?! She’s done it!”
Jaws dropped. Quisling fainted into Lake’s lap, Sharansky peed his pants. All eyes fixated upon the monitor screens.
A second tentative beebeep. Then another. Beebeep.
“We’ve got to stabilize him,” Cabrera uttered, endlessly astonished by her own glorious achievement. “Max, push a fifth of epi!”
She and her team exploded into an octopoidal melee of hysterical motion that cast illusions of neatness and order out the window. Somewhere beneath their dozen
flailing limbs, the object of their frenetic activity took his first breath in twelve millennia, even while remaining blissfully unconscious of the exotic hullabaloo. After a
period of not more than ten minutes, Cabrera turned to look at the anxiously awaiting faces beyond the chamber glass. Bong zoomed her lens in close on the
cardiologist’s beige face to record the epochal pronouncement, a Neil Armstrong moon landing moment she envisioned playing across global televisions screens today,
tomorrow, and forever and for all time.
“We have succeeded in achieving a cardiovascular event. Ladies and gentlemen, the Iceman of Kilimanjaro lives again!”
A bomb of unfettered emotion detonated within the room, instigating a calamity of unlikely bedfellows crashing and cascading into one another’s arms for hugs,
kisses, noggin rubbing, back- and butt-slapping and all the usual accouterments of congratulatory self-aggrandizement. The next pop came not from young Lex’s spent
gum, but rather his patriarch’s vintage Cristal champagne bottle as its cork vaulted in high arc across the air.
“Yeah!” Lex exclaimed mightily, hijacking the piss-elegant hootch and imbibing a hefty gulp. He wasn’t about to let his stodgy father ruin the spontaneity of the
moment with snappy protocol. In turns, they all, even prim Rochester Yancey, swigged like sailors, laughing, belching, and nervously searching for a second bottle.
There was not a single one of them who could believe the highly unlikely circumstance that had just transpired. Poor unconscious Delbert Quisling missed the freak
show.
Soon, Dr. Cabrera joined them in their revelry, removing her surgical mask and gloves and unloosing her hair from its tortured state. She approached Yancey and
the senior Spaulding directly, conveying in that lyrical Hispanic accent, “We’ll continue monitoring him extremely closely. We’ve inoculated him against everything we
have an inoculation for, but with his primitive biology, I’ll be stunned if there aren’t at least fifteen complications. We’ve set his broken arm, but he won’t need the
cast very long. Dr. Quisling has nanites programmed to knit the bone in less than a third of the normal time. Speaking of whom, how is he doing?”
They all turned to the slumped figure, whom Dr. Lake had somehow managed to erect into a nearby chair. Only Lex managed to locate sufficient gallantry to tend
to his fallen instructor.
“Harrumph,” Spaulding grumbled. “I’m not so much concerned with that nutcase now that his role in this enterprise is more or less complete. It’s Drs. Phillips
and Haynes’ health,” he said, scanning the didactic duo with a jaundiced eye, “that is of tantamount interest to me now.”
Only useful as long as we’re useful, Phillips spitefully mused. Quantez looked his best friend Ruth Haynes in her hazel eyes and stated, “Well, Missy, looks like
we’re next up at bat.”
“I can hardly believe it,” she said, tears flowing down her delicate cheeks.
Believe it she must, for there he lay, the reanimated African snatched from beyond icy death and deposited into a world he couldn’t possibly hope to fathom. It
was hers and Quantez’s job to help him fathom it. His magnificent hairy chest rose and fell, each breath drawing him ever closer to a rendezvous with startling destiny.
In the miraculously revived Iceman’s addled sub-conscience, the last moments of his previous life replayed before his mind’s-eye.
Running. They were running, the Kilimanjaroan and his beauteous queen Thula, as fast as they possibly could across the frigid mountainscape. The cold, rarified
air tore at their flesh, whilst blind panic gripped their rapidly pounding hearts. Most of the others in their entourage had scrambled to safety in a concave in the
mountain face. They two were alone in their haphazard jeopardy. Shards of ice and billowing plumes of snow crashed down around them in unimaginable tonnages,
tugging them agonizingly farther and farther apart from one another. Doomed lovers whose glorious reign was rapidly drawing near its end.
“Thula!” the bataffa screamed at the top of his lungs as she cascaded down the treacherous slope out of his sight. She never heard his final anguished cry over the
thunderous din of the avalanche, nor he hers as she plunged headlong into the fathomless abyss—all her hopes, dreams and desires dashed into oblivion oh so terribly
far below.
His demise was not long forthcoming. Tumbling head over heels, his final thoughts were of his beloved queen and the amazing life they shared in the lush kingdom
on the other side of the mountain, before the floodwaters came, sweeping away everything in its path. And so, the lion-maned, barbarian-born king, master of all the
lands of the world of black men, savior of his people in their hour of greatest challenge, died alone, suffocating in abysmal white darkness as a frosty grave packed itself
all around him. Lost to antiquity, forevermore. Forevermore—that is, until now.
Inside an oxygen compression chamber somewhere in Massachusetts, somewhen in the early part of the 21st Century, that hopelessly lost soul coughed and
gagged fitfully. Various body parts twitched and spasmed in recognition of newly restored life. And then his big brown eyes popped open. One nightmare ended. A
far worse one began.
Chapter Three
White Folks Shit
The Iceman of Kilimanjaro had awoken with a start. The first thing that registered was blinding florescent light. His eyes had not been open—or alive, for that
matter—in some 12,000 years, and his brand new nanosurgically attached corneas were still a little tender. Confused beyond reckoning, he squinted painfully until his
eyes adjusted to the glaring brightness. At first, the bizarrely chattering figures swirling around him seemed as if mere ephemeral ghost-beings in a washed out
dreamscape. With a determined series of blinks, his vision crystallized into focus. And then his big brown eyes quite nearly popped out of their sockets.
Were he able to focus on them, there was not one single solitary object in that room, one single aspect of the room itself, that was not inconceivably abstract to his
primordial mind. Not the plastic tubes down his throat, nor the plaster cast upon his arm. Not the sheet draped across his prostrate form, nor the operating table he
lay upon, and certainly not the outré medical equipment surrounding it. Nothing. The tiles on the floor and walls. Doorknobs or the doors they rested upon. The fire
extinguisher mounted on the wall or the glass case it sat inside. The artificial light showering down from overhead. The computers and the digital scrawl upon their
respective screens.
But the reborn African couldn’t concentrate on any of those (not-so) innocuous things. What positively riveted his attention was something that, in his mind, was
far more alien, exceedingly more horrifying, infinitely more sinister. The remaining members of Dr. Cabrera’s cardiac team. White people!
They have no color on their skin! the Kilimanjaroan mentally screamed. What kind of creatures are they?? What is this place? Where is the giant Kuffa Rock we
were climbing? Where are my mbutus? Where is Thula, my queen??
“Hey, Dr. Cabrera,” Dr. Maxwell, the anesthesiologist yelped, “he’s awake!”
Outside the oxygen compression chamber, the gathered crowd of Yancey University faculty and assorted interested parties snapped to attention. They, all of
them, rushed to the window, curious faces pressing against the glass in a manner befitting prospective thieves casing interiors ripe for plunder. So many faces so
horribly devoid of color. They were unlike anything this African had ever seen in all his travels and days as king. Surely they must not be human!
As videographer Bong jockeyed and elbowed for proximity, Cabrera burst back into the room to analyze her astonished and astonishing patient. As she and the
other members of her team leaned in close, attempting to do those things that doctors do, the reconstituted Iceman panicked, sensing that he was under attack by dark,
or in this case, white, forces of malevolent evil.
Away from me, foul watufi! he attempted to curse them aloud. The breathing and oxygenation tubes stuffed down his throat prevented that, spawning new
horrors for the beleaguered ancient African. He choked and gagged violently, finally regurgitating a half-digested gooey mix of bananas and wildebeest meat he had
consumed earlier that day—a day 12,000 years past.
What have the white demons done to my voice?? he wondered to the mighty spirits above. Instinctively, he groped at the plastic obstructions and began pulling
them free.
“Oh, shit, he’s freaking out,” Lex observed.
“He’s disoriented! I was afraid of this,” Phillips said, deeply concerned. He was, himself, momentarily frozen with indecision, speculating that it was best to let
the professional medical doctors handle the situation. Bad move.
“Calm down, big fella,” Cabrera said, placing a reassuring hand upon the thawed Iceman’s forearm as she would any normal patient in her tender care. Worse
move. With a tremendous flex of that powerful biceps, the esteemed cardiologist found her head ringing and the rest of herself dashing against the closest wall. She was
out of the picture.
“Dear God in Heaven,” Chancellor Spaulding erupted, “he’s going berserk!”
Now many of the others, Cabrera’s team, Yancey, Lex, Bong’s soundman and Phillips, leapt into action, piling into the room and onto the violently thrashing black
behemoth. By now, he was upright, kicking and swinging maniacally, desperate to beat back this white otherworldly assault upon his royal personage.
Nooo! They will drag me into the dead world! Destroy them! Crush their heads!
These soft, elite 21st Century wimps were nowhere near a match for his barbarian rage and animalistic prowess. White lab coats and eyeglasses were flying in
every direction imaginable.
Dr. Maxwell was going to have quite a considerable knot upside his fractured dome. Consequently, the revived African recoiled in blinding pain. He had used his
broken left arm to deliver that crushing blow, and boy, did it hurt like hell! That was his first inkling of the cast. He fell naked from the operating table and huddled
defensively with his back to a wall. Somewhere in the midst of the melee, the tubes and IVs were torn loose, and now he went to work on that foreign object encrusting
his arm.
Aghast, he wondered, What is this white rock upon my arm, causing me pain? I must remove it before it bites me again!
A lionlike growl issued from his bellowing lungs, warning his adversaries to approach him at their own peril, even while he went at banging the cast against the
tabletops and the wall, chipping away pieces of it. The pain of each successive blow was excruciating, but no more so than the many wounds he sustained during his
many conquests.
“Somebody call security and grab a tranquilizer, goddamnit!” That invective spewed from Rochester Yancey’s mouth. He had turned beet red in the face, as so
many white people do when placed under extreme duress. Such a startling change in epidermal appearance did not sit well with his Kilimanjaro meal ticket, and served
to confirm his worst primitive fears.
“I know where the tranks are,” Lex uttered, scrambling toward the outer door in the direction of his bio-engineering lab down the corridor.
“Damn it, Lex, stay out of this,” his father implored him from his cowering position of relative safety in the operating room’s gallery. He was less concerned for
his son’s safety than he was about the fiery excoriation sure to emanate from his child’s mother should any harm befall her baby boy.
Several of the men had the African cornered in an attempt to prevent his escape into the outer hallway. Dr. Phillips was trying unsuccessfully to push his way to
the forefront of the action. Probably best that he didn’t at first, for the African, using his good right arm, began throwing whatever objects were conveniently within his
reach at them, even if he didn’t have a clue what they were; clipboards, a stool, someone’s displaced pager.
“Ow! Shit!”
That was Yancey getting klonked upside the head with the pager. The frightened African was whittling them down one by one, all the while searching desperately
for any sign of Thula, his beloved bataffa-mate. Where is she? She was just by his side a moment ago, somewhere atop that mountain. What have they done with her?
He was prepared to slaughter every person in that room with his bare hands to get his answer.
“Stop antagonizing him, you damn fools,” Phillips yelled. “He’s disoriented and terrified! You’re only making it worse! Back off and give him some room!”
“Do as he says,” Spaulding commanded, attempting to appear as though he were exerting a semblance of control. And so they did, retreating to the periphery of
the operating sphere. It was only then that the ancient African got his first clear glimpse of Dr. Phillips and the comforting familiar brownness of his skin. Their eyes
met for the first time, these two black men separated as much by time as culture, and instantly some invisible, unspoken creed was established between them.
One of my mbutu tribesmen, the African king mistakenly thought. He is in danger, too! He was terribly confused by Quantez’s bald head and the strange
garments in which he was adorned. Nevertheless, with lightning swiftness, he snapped into mode of protector, a role he played so often as supreme ruler of his people,
ready to sacrifice his own personal safety for that of those under his dominion. Phillips flinched hysterically as the denuded figure raced to his side, placing himself
between the psychologist and his “watufi attackers” in a purely defensive posture.
“<All will die who lay hands upon him!>” he growled in whatever that ancient language was he spoke. Of course, none of the 21st Century folks had the faintest
clue what he said. It would come in useful later, however, as the entire event was being recorded by Bong in addition to two video cameras mounted at juxtaposed
points on the ceiling. Haynes’ language team would pore over every word that came out of the Iceman’s mouth in their ambitious translation endeavor.
Speaking of whom, Ruth was positively mortified that her best friend was in dire jeopardy, given the African’s threatening demeanor and proximity to him.
“Tez, be careful,” she cried out through the plexiglass window.
“Ruthie, stay out of the room,” he replied, swinging an arm in her direction in a halting gesture.
The African risked taking his eyes off the gaggle of pink-skinned individuals long enough to glimpse at her. He cast his gaze upon her rich velvet features and
gasped in hope and confusion. Damned if she didn’t bear a vague resemblance to his queenly mate—notwithstanding that face paint, bizarre configuration of her hair
and mesmerizing hazel eyes.
“Thula!” he uttered, his primordial mind plotting how best to get to her side as quickly as circumstance would allow. He would not risk losing her again. He
grabbed Phillips by the sleeve in an effort to prompt a tandem escape, leapt upon the tabletop closest to the window and made a fantastic dive toward the rectangular
“open space” in the wall.
Thud.
The Iceman can be forgiven for slamming headlong into the reinforced glass. After all, he had no idea that glass even existed. Quantez was thrown terribly off-
balance by the chaotic motion and splattered to the ground in utter disarray. As luck would have it, Lex scrambled back into the room at precisely that moment and,
assuming that Phillips had just been attacked, aimed the tranquilizer gun he had retrieved from the lab, and fired a dart into the Iceman’s muscular thigh.
He screamed in anger and pain, eyeballing the strange object sticking out of his leg. Perhaps in his archaic mind he thought it was some manner of mutated tsetse
fly or other airborne mosquito. He reached down and grabbed it, tearing it loose, ignoring the trickle of noble blood streaking from his leg.
“Good shot, boy,” older Spaulding congratulated younger. It was more luck than anything. Lex had never fired a shot before, nor had he, in fact, ever even held a
gun of any kind. His hands were trembling violently and the adrenaline rush verged on making him puke.
The African was really addled now. So many inexplicable things were happening. And now this room (although he didn’t comprehend it as such) was spinning
precariously. His lips quivered, unloosing a rivulet of drool, and those big brown eyes rolled up in his shaved head.
A dream, he imagined with a surprisingly comforting smile. It was all just a dream.
Phillips had barely regained his own footing in time to catch in his arms the collapsing dark figure, who weighed considerably more than he. Together they slumped
clumsily to the ground, two beautiful black men locked in one another’s embrace.
Jesus, this fucker must weigh 200 pounds, the psychologist calculated. One-eighty was more like it, but that just goes to show how puny Quantez was by
comparison. What dominated his thoughts was how the Iceman’s fearsome face had transformed into one of unexpected surreal serenity.
“Let’s get him to a gurney and strap him down,” scowled Dr. Maxwell, blood cascading from his pounding forehead. “And would somebody get me a fucking
doctor, please?”
“Dope him up heavily,” Yancey pleaded, nursing his own wound. “I don’t want a repeat of this fiasco.”
Several of the others moved in and hoisted their miracle man temporarily back onto the operating table. Ruth entered and stooped to join Phillips on the floor as he
plopped back against the wall in consternation.
“Great,” he mumbled so that only she could her, “we resurrect a black man from a certifiably gun- and drug-free society, and the first thing we do to welcome him
to the 21st Century is shoot him and turn him into a dopehead. That’s some white folks shit.”
Speak of the devil. Spaulding approached them with that irascible sour look that spelled nothing but trouble.
“Phillips—my office—right now!”
Nothing to do with Being a Nigger
The atmosphere in Chancellor Spaulding’s office was thick as molasses, but considerably more poisonous, a clear representation of the nature of its lordly
inhabitant. The old despot had launched into one of his classic misguided diatribes, and it was Quantez Phillips who bore the brunt of today’s invectives. Spaulding
didn’t like him very much—correction—Spaulding detested his guts, this situation going back two years to that wretched day when the closeted psychologist’s ex-lover
Todd showed up on campus high as a kite, and clowned. Badly. The insipid incident marked the end of that relationship, and very nearly Dr. Phillips’ prestigious
career at Yancey University as well. Now, Quantez was back in the chancellor’s hot seat once again, as Drs. Quisling and Sharansky, and Rochester Yancey looked on.
“What the hell was going on back there at the lab?” Spaulding asked demandingly.
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you, sir,” he replied with sheepish hesitation.
“No sooner does your African friend wake up, then he starts attacking everyone in sight! Everyone, that is, save you!”
Oh, suddenly now he’s my African friend, Phillips smirked inwardly. “What are you implying, chancellor?” he responded defensively.
“Let’s cut to the chase, young man,” Spaulding said abruptly, as he did with most things. “He attacks all the whites in the room, but didn’t lay a hand on you.
What exactly did you say to him?”
What?!? That accusation really pissed Quantez off, but there was no way he was going to lose his cool. He was the consummate professional, after all.
“Oh, you mean when I went up to him while we were all dodging hurtling stools and whispered ‘Hey, brother man, kill all the white people’?”
Well, he tried to keep his cool but, hey, sometimes the old goat could really bring out the worst in people. He continued, “Sir, did it ever once occur to you while
you were scouring your mind for conspiracy theories that our African friend has never seen a white person before, and that perhaps he was…uncomfortable being in
your presence?”
“Is that supposed to be some kind of racial wisecrack, Phillips?” came Sr.’s barked reply.
“You know, he’s probably correct, Alexander,” Sharansky, ever the consummate anthropologist, said. He could call Spaulding “Alexander” because they enjoyed a
couple of decades of mutual history. “If the Iceman dates back as far as we have theorized—10 or 12 thousand years—then it is indeed unlikely that he would have
ever had contact with anyone but other Africans of his immediate region.”
“Bah!” Spaulding spat back. “Well, I don’t like it! Not one bit!”
“What do you propose to do about it, sir?” Phillips wondered. “Apparently, he doesn’t like white people.” Imagine that, he mentally added.
There was a long pause as all of them looked to the chancellor for his response. He was carefully weighing the circumstance and realized succinctly that his was a
most sticky situation. He groped for a solution.
“What’s your take on this, Delbert?”
Quisling sat up suddenly in his plush seat, still somewhat nonplussed that he had fainted earlier during all the action. It was his intention to stay receded in the
background of this potentially explosive debate.
“Ahem. I am not a behavioral expert as Dr. Phillips is, chancellor,” he dodged, “nor did I have any designs on being involved further in this project beyond what I
and my students have already contributed.”
In other words, Keep me out of it until you have the situation under control.
“Sir, if I may,” Phillips interjected, “I believe that the Iceman’s reaction was born of fear—fear of us, fear of his strange new surroundings, fear of the unknown. I
would like to take a crack at him, one on one—approach him in a manner similar to one I would take with an autistic child, or an Alzheimer’s patient.”
“And if that ape-man attacks you?” Spaulding asked.
“First of all, sir, he’s not an ape-man or a vicious animal. He’s as fully human as you and me. He was utilizing what sounded to me and Ruth like organized
language. His is a unique case, one that will require a lot of patience, radical thinking and extreme care.”
“Well, I recall the stunning success you enjoyed with those severely abused mentally-handicapped children a few years back, Dr. Phillips,” Yancey stated with
surprising firmness, while dabbing a bloodstained cloth on his bruised scalp. Phillips had not expected an ally in him. “You have my vote of confidence. I will,
however, insist that you employ several security guards, both for your safety as well as the Iceman’s.”
“Thank you most kindly, Mr. Yancey. I greatly appreciate that. I can’t promise you the same success as with those children, but I’ll have Ruth with me every
step of the way. She’s a brilliant linguist. We’ll do our best to ensure rapid progress. And, at the risk of a sexist comment, the involvement of a beautiful woman may
serve us well in our early dealings with our guest.”
“I will expect a full daily report, Dr. Phillips,” Spaulding said. “I want to know every single detail of what you learn. It’s my ass and the reputation of this fine
university that’s on the line with this so-called ‘Lazarus Project.’”
“Uh, yeah, about that, Chancellor Spaulding,” Quantez ventured, feeling confident enough with his enhanced position to push his luck just slightly further. “I was
hoping to persuade you to change the name of the project to something a little more befitting.”
Quisling very nearly choked on his own ego. He’s the one who came up with that grandiose name, and took offense with any meddling. Suddenly he was engaged
again.
“And just what is wrong with ‘Lazarus Project,’ Dr. Phillips?” he protested.
“What was that phrase you used last week, Delbert? ‘How commonplace, how utterly boring.’”
Igor Sharansky got a big kick out of that rebuke, particularly because he was then the victim of Quisling’s twerpish scorn. He snickered audibly. Quantez threw
him a quick wink.
“What do you propose replacing it with?” the bio-engineering egomaniac badgered.
“Something a little unexpected, like the Iceman himself,” Quantez said, eyes sparkling with visionary aplomb. “Something inspiring, that more accurately
represents his indomitable spirit of survival while simultaneously showing the forward thinking of the university.” That bullshit about the ‘forward thinking of the
university’ was a not-so subtle tongue-in-cheek poke at all the old farts stationed in the room.
Spaulding rolled his eyes, his razor-thin patience growing narrower by the nanosecond.
“Spit it out, mister.”
“How about the ‘Black Phoenix Project’?”
“Preposterous!” Quisling blanched, predictably rejecting the idea. “Phoenixes rise from fiery ashes, not ice!”
Spaulding was more put off by the black reference than the hair-splitting semantics of wordplay, saying, “And yet, we’re not trying to bring race into play here?
It’s my opinion that we’re—”
“That will be fine, Dr. Phillips,” Yancey coldly interrupted. “I like it—and you are the lead on the acclimation team. I certainly appreciate how a small but
symbolic gesture of this nature can propel an entire endeavor of this magnitude in the public’s consciousness.”
Mr. Moneybags had spoken. Much to Spaulding’s and Quisling’s dueling chagrin, that debate was forever over.
“Thank you again, Mr. Yancey. I promise you won’t be disappointed. And now, with your permission, I believe we all have a news conference to prepare for.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Phillips,” Yancey said with a handshake and wave. “We’ll meet you over at the atrium shortly.”
Quantez got out the door and made it about eight steps down the hallway before he lost his composure. Making a pumping motion in the air with his fist, he
silently mouthed the word, “YES!”
Back in Spaulding’s office, the conclusion of the conversation took on a parenthetically different tone—the kind of turn that occurs when there are no longer
contentious ears of color present.
“Well, gentlemen,” Yancey sighed, “in the words of the immortal bard, ‘May fortune favor the foolish.’”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Rochester,” the chancellor said ominously. “You know what they say: ‘Give a mouse a cookie, and he’s going to want a
fucking glass of milk!’”
“Just keep a close eye on those two—Phillips and Haynes, I mean. And let the record note that this has nothing to do with them being niggers, Alexander. I’m not
a racist like that. What I will not tolerate, however, is a homosexual agenda playing out on this campus bearing my family name. We’re Mayflower Americans,
goddamnit.”
“No argument there, old sport,” the salty old bird Spaulding agreed emphatically. “Trust me, since that abomination of gay marriage was rammed down our throats
by the Massachusetts Supreme Court, if it weren’t for the deep roots and 279-year tradition of these hallowed halls, I would personally dig up every brick and relocate
this institution to some God-fearing part of the world where they know how to appropriately handle these kinds of grotesque situations.”
“The fucked up part of it is, we dare not fire him,” Yancey conceded. “Aside from his brilliance and the accreditation he brings to this institution, we can’t risk the
wrath of the black community if he should decide to go off and write a tell-all book.”
“Screw the black community, Rochester! It’s the fags, the ACLU, and all their mamby-pamby allies that would come swarming over the gates that keep me awake
at night! These people whose only mission in life is to subvert and desecrate civilization as we know it.”
Sharansky shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It could have been from the fact that, as a Russian Jew, he knew where such talk would inevitably lead. Or perhaps
he had his precious lesbian niece in heart and mind. The biologist Quisling, surprisingly, beat him to the punch in protest. Clearing his throat to signal dissent, he
stated unequivocally, “I’m no fan of Phillips, but in the good name of science, I must intervene. We have now amassed sufficient proof that homosexuality is genetic in
nature. You cannot condemn the man for an aspect of his biology that is beyond his control.”
It was certainly worth the ol’ college try. But Spaulding was having none of it today.
“Then my suggestion, Delbert,” he snapped, raining down verbal nuclear venom, “is that perhaps you should go back into that Frankenstein lab of yours, whip up
a batch of your little microrobotic nanites, and figure out a way to excise that unfortunate trait from the human gene pool once and for all.”
Now the meeting was over.
The 21st Century Chronicles of ThuggThe Barbarian King
BDC BOOKS
Where a Universe of Bipolar Madness Awaits You!
