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PART I

     I had been studying the effects of hypothermia and its ability to slow and arrest the functions of the human body when a strange case was brought to my attention.

     An article landed upon my desk about a man some thirty years of age. He had suffered a most unfortunate accident whilst rock-climbing. He had apparently fallen some fifty feet and landed, somewhat the worse for wear, in a glacial-fed creek. The unfortunate soul had not died from the fall, but he had suffered sufficient injury to disallow his self-extraction from the icy waters into which his body had fallen. From the marks the rescue team had found on his body, it was evident that he had fought a valiant fight in a vain attempt to pull himself out and onto drier surroundings. Unquestionably, he had failed to do so.

     He had been discovered partially submerged, devoid of those basic functions which generally constitute life. There was no obvious circulation, breathing, or heartbeat. The individual had a pallid, sickly complexion and was inflexible. It was the opinion of the rescue team that this unfortunate adventurer had fallen no fewer than two days prior to his being discovered. Showing no obvious signs of life, he was declared dead, wrapped and bundled, and tied to a stretcher. By means of a stout hawser, the corpse was pulled rather crudely up the steep embankment for its removal. Before being put into the coroner’s wagon, the doctor on location checked for signs of life. Being of the same opinion as the first examiners, he pronounced this particular individual as past hope. The lifeless carcass was conveyed to the nearest hospital where a third medical team looked at the pitiful state of the man before them. In unison with the other examiners, these professionals also pronounced that the hiker was dead.

     The press reported that, as fortune would have it, one of the nurses, whose duty it was to wheel this exanimate body back to the morgue, was also a metaphysical student who questioned the evanescent departure of the soul from our earthbound flesh. She theorised that at the time of death, an astral form exists which does not necessarily have to part from the physical entity, especially upon an untimely demise. Her conviction had been strong and this registered nurse had yearned for an opportunity to test that refutable proposition. The hiker, despite his designation as being ‘dead’, a diagnosis the medical teams arrived at with the knowledge they possessed, was a perfect specimen. Although her chances of success were remote, she took steps to turn this naturalist’s misfortune into a scientific examination to test her hypothesis.



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