Reawakening - an excerpt

The following is an excerpt from Audrey Austin's second novel titled Reawakening.

The Powers That Be exercised extreme care in the selection process. It was well-known by these decision-makers that there existed Earthlings who, in their opinion, out-lived themselves. These humans were not only afflicted with old age but they were also condemned to apparent uselessness when, before death, they succumbed to another dread disease labeled with the strange name of Alzheimer.

The Powers in their wisdom had done their research. They knew that an Earthling known as Emil Kraepelin applied the name of Alzheimer to this debilitating disease in honour of his colleague, Alois Alzheimer.  Dr. Alzheimer was not a candidate to be brought to Notsew as a Newold because he was not a human from the continent of North America.

He spent his years on Earth in a country called Germany in a continent named Europe and therefore escaped the Notsewian selection process.   That was of no concern to The Powers That Be on Notsew. What interested The Powers was the work that had been done by this professor of psychology.  It was claimed that he justified his existence with excellence when he gave his first lecture on November 4, 1906 on a type of dementia; a degenerative disease that affects the nerve cells in the human brain. 

Dr. Alzheimer shared his findings and taught other physicians to look for symptoms such as reduced comprehension, memory loss, disorientation, paranoia, auditory hallucinations, unpredictable behaviour and psychosocial impairment.

There was no way the citizens of Notsew could cope with and bring about an efficient transition of a human victimized by Alzheimer Disease.  Knowledge of this disease was a great aid in the Notsewian selection process and never, since the date of the good doctor’s discovery, was a human with the misfortune to have this sickness transported to Notsew.  Long ago some such afflicted Newolds created chaos in the reawakening centres throughout the universe.  

Today there were enough problems for the Primes and Midescents who worked with the new arrivals to handle when they were dealing with Newolds who suffered from nothing more severe than old age.  Before contracting the illness called death they were otherwise in health that was as good as could be expected considering the lifestyle of human beings on the North American continent. Because The Powers That Be exercised critical care and caution in their candidate choices the most difficult dilemma Jim encountered in his career was that caused by the natural aging of human beings who succumbed to the dread disease of death.

The terrible symptoms of this frightful, foreign disease were somewhat similar to those displayed by the Olbabes in Notsew. Both the Newolds and the Olbabes were helpless in the physical sense and these categories, both Nufem and Numas, demonstrated total dependence upon Prime Caregivers who were required to provide their basic physical needs.  But this state of helplessness was where the similarity between the two categories ended.

The newly arrived Newolds, unlike the Olbabes, were, without exception, ugly in physical appearance.  They were pale, stiff and lifeless upon their arrival.  Once they were reawakened in the Notsew laboratory many of them remained not easy, in fact, quite difficult to observe because they looked loathsome and unsavoury.  They all had folds of loose, flabby flesh covering their useless bodies and pockets of dark, wrinkled skin beneath unhealthy, rheumy eyes. Many of them had lost much of their ability to see and not a few were incapable of hearing.

They were helpless and totally reliant upon their care-givers but, in spite of their dependent state, Jim still had to be very careful.  Attention to detail was essential. He was under strict order of The Powers to use absolute accuracy when making the vital distinction between Numas and Nufem. To Jim’s recollection an error in this regard had been made only once during his period of justification. Though it happened several years ago he would never forget the occurrence because it was the result of a stupid mistake on his part.

Reawakening published by Wynterblue Publishing Canada is available as a Kindle Book.  Visit my author page at http://www.amazon.com/author/audreyaustin
Print copies are available from me.  Email.

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