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You transport Cijan's corpse and the pod into the room with the Life Machine... the party decorations even overflowed into here. You'd think this would be put in some high-tech science room by now. You put the pod down.
<span class="mu-r">”Dad, didn't you say that the life machine only works on living things? Couldn't you, like, spit inside the machine?”</span>
<span class="mu-b">“I mean, maybe, but I wouldn't want my DNA to get all mixed up with his.”</span>
“Jale, you said yourself the machine has a healing mode that it uses for something that simply enters- used for the serfs and pets- but the Aristocrat said something about transformation as well. The interfacing allows us to control this?”
<span class="mu-b">”I hope so. I don't think a dead thing will work on its own. But perhaps with something alive we can trick it to work- direct it towards Cijan.”</span>
Looking around the room, you see the flowers again, from the party, and you know you could use one. If the machine switches on to “heal” this- maybe it will heal Cijan too. But how can you trick it to work on a dead person? Tetak seems confident in his abilities but...
I mean you know this is pointless. This isn't going to work. The machine can't bring the dead back to life- and Cijan is capital D dead. His brain waves ceased, his body is cold, no matter how well preserved until time for his funeral. But I mean.... when does something really die?
This flower. You plucked it from its root and stem. It will die, but it isn't dead yet. It takes time to wilt. If you put a flower in a vase, it will absorb the water and last longer. Scientists say this is because of <span class="mu-i">capillary action</span>- there is no intelligence or life behind that motion, it is merely a physical law. But everything that happens to a living thing is because of physical laws anyway. Energy stored in ATP is released by simple physical triggers. Blood circles through the body because of liquid dynamics and pressure- an artificial heart pumps blood just as well as a real heart does. Even if the flower is plucked some of its cells, somewhere in there, are still alive, right? Still producing pollen, some still trying to photosynthesize. It's like if your hand got cut off- your skin tissue and blood in the hand will still be trying to repair the damage. They'll just be confused, sending pain and stress signals to a brain that isn't there anymore, but it's still alive- still alive until it runs out of energy. A severed head still thinks for a while too. There's no off switch- it just keeps going until it can't anymore. That's how life works.
