Okay, there are gonna be a lot of wild and fantastical elements here, and I really need everyone to ignore the parts that I need y’all to ignore, and accept these parts as functional black-boxes for the duration of this post.
For this scenario, I present you a living human body. It has been heavily modified in a number of ways, but one modification that was deemed “too extreme” was replacing all the skin with a layer of artificial polymer.
This body spends up to 10 years in a chamber, completely submerged in some kind of incompressible fluid.
Things to ignore for this scenario:
- The body will always maintain the correct temperature, no matter what the temperature of the outside fluid is.
- The body will never suffer diminished blood flow of any kind for any reason. Blood will always arrive to the places it needs to go, regardless of any pressures on the body or temperature changes.
- This body has no eyes. The ocular nerves have been sealed away.
- This body has no nose. The olfactory nerve has been destroyed and sealed away.
- This body has no ears. The holes at the sides of the head are nowhere to be found.
- This body has no lungs or trachea. It is supplied oxygen and cleared of carbon dioxide through a black-box method.
- All psychological effects of this existence are outside the scope of this scenario. This body has the psychology of a simple computer program, and experiences no desire and no boredom.
- The body’s nutritional needs are always met.
- Any waste material from the body mysteriously vanishes without flowing out of any part of the body. The body still produces sweat, however.
One of the major challenges I have discovered for this scenario is something called “skin maceration”, where skin contact with moisture causes the skin to lose plasticity, soften, rupture, and become prone to infection. This can happen very quickly, too. Some sources say 12 hours.
One paper suggest dropping the temperature of the water will reduce the consequences, but I’m also wondering about some other solutions, too.
Some questions to promote brainstorming:
- If blood flow is guaranteed to be maintained, and body temperature is guaranteed to be maintained, would an extremely-frigid fluid be preferable?
- If this fluid is something like saline, would it help if the fluid were continuously sterilized and filtered, as it is pumped through the containing chamber?
- Is there an incompressible fluid that would not cause skin maceration, if we assume the fluid is continuously sterilized?
Goals:
- The body must be intact after 10 years of being submerged. Any changes during this time should be easy to undo.
- The body must not suffer a wound which causes bleeding.
- The body is still capable of infection, and must not contract a bacterial, fungal, viral, or amoeba disease during the full 10 years.