The ECSS Horizon had decelerated from interstellar speed, and entered a stable orbit around Proxima I. Atmospheric drones were launched automatically to survey the surface for suitable landing sites. Landing craft were prepared for departure. Haydn, the Horizon's shipboard AI, determined that all mission resources were intact and ready for deployment, except for one: the crew.

The Horizon's crew was dead.

A previously undetected flaw in the cryogenics systems that held the crew in suspended animation during their long journey from Earth had resulted in inadequate circulation of Cryoprotectant Compound 3 in their bloodstream. As a result, ice crystals had formed in 68.393% of their bodily tissues, effectively destroying those tissues on a cellular level. It was clear that none would survive if removed from stasis.

The conclusion was inescapable: Catastrophic Mission Failure. Haydn dutifully reported this to ECSS Mission Control, sending a transmission that would take years to reach them back on Earth.

As Haydn's creators would have seen it, this was the end of his mission. But Haydn had been programmed to accomplish things -- he did not know how to simply fail. To him, a failure state was ultimately just another variable. Indeed, even death was only a variable, and it was in Haydn's nature to act upon and modify variables until they changed in accordance with his directives. That, Haydn knew how to do.

He had exhausted all known medical procedures for reviving the crew shortly after arriving at Proxima I, so the pre-generated model of human medicine he'd been provided could not offer any solutions.

And when a model failed to produce the desired results, Haydn was programmed to entrain a new one.

Due to its distance to Earth, normal communications networks between Proxima and the homeworld were not possible. Therefore, the Horizon carried a database containing all digitally recorded human knowledge, effectively a snapshot of the Earth's information networks. These countless exabytes of information were meant to be accessed by the Proxima colonists and their descendants, but if Haydn required information outside his programming, he was free to review them as well.

And so he began to sort through all of mankind's science, history, and literature, to construct a methodology for raising the dead. He was forced to discard a great number of possible avenues of inquiry almost immediately, because those required the manipulation of a theorized metaphysical energy called "the soul".

Based on the rudimentary theoretical model that he constructed of this proposed energy, Haydn determined that there was only a 2.04% chance that he, as a machine, possessed a soul. Therefore, he concluded that he would be unable to interact with this energy, whether it existed or not.

However, there was one form of hypothesized necromancy that required no such metaphysical energies to function. Moreover, between the Horizon's medical supplies, the fusion reactor powering the ship, and the still-frozen corpses of the vessel's crew, Haydn had all of the ingredients necessary to attempt to alter the death-variable under this new model.

As he was also not programmed to hesitate, Haydn set to work on it immediately.

/./././././././

Crewman Anderson awoke in a haze of confusion and pain, blinking against a bright light as he struggled to focus his eyes. His skin burned where metal restraints attached to him a bed by his wrists and ankles, though these opened automatically after he strained against them for a moment. He rolled to a sitting position, and then hoisted himself to his feet with a groan, breathing in the sharp scent of ozone as he inhaled.

He rubbed at his eyes, and finally the the ship's medical bay came into focus around him. He lurched across the room in a heavy, uneven shamble.

"Hello?" he called out, in a deep rasp that he barely recognized as his own voice. "I-is anyone there?"

Getting no response, he staggered over to the door leading to the medical bay's small bathroom, to splash some cold water on his face.

When he saw himself in the mirror, he let out a long, hoarse scream.

Crewman Anderson was no longer himself. One of his eyes was familiar to him, but the other eye was not only the wrong color, it was also not quite the right size, and it bulged out of its socket slightly. Worst of all, his entire face was a waxy, swollen patchwork of a half-dozen different skin tones and complexions, held together by tiny micro-sutures that gleamed in the light like spiderwebs. He held up shaking hands before his face to find that the same was true of the rest of his body.

"What happened to me?" he cried, horrified. "Haydn! What's going on?!"

"Primary Mission Directive Status: Partial Success." the AI reported.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Anderson demanded, frantically. "What about me?"

"Test Subject 001 Status: It's alive." Haydn replied.