I awoke with the sudden “jolt” one experiences after waking up during a dream of falling into an endless void.
“Ok! What the fuck was that!?”, I said frantically pawing at my arms, legs, neck, and face checking for damage. Upon the quick confirmation that I hadn’t just fallen apart like Humpty Dumpty, I noticed I was wearing an unfamiliar pair of white shirt and pants, similar to a set of medical scrubs.
I looked up to take in my surroundings. I shit you not, it appeared as though the architect of this room had tracked down every stock photo of a “waiting room” on the internet, and just gone from there. It was a remarkably unremarkable space.
I found myself sitting in the middle of a dozen or so basic cushioned chairs, facing directly toward a white non-descript door in the center of the room. Upon closer examination, I realized the door was slightly ajar, and like clockwork, the door was slowly opened by the occupant inside. Not so slowly that it would illicit comparison to the creaky door of a murder mansion in a bad B horror movie, but more so in a way that was seemingly trying to project a sense of calm into the room. I was greeted by a slender young woman with long brunette hair, sporting a lab coat and what looked to be a tablet device of some kind, as she slowly stepped out of the doorway.
“Dr. Scott?”, she asked after looking up from her tablet to find me.
“Yes?”, I said, momentarily unsure about the validity of my statement.
“Excellent!”, she said while fiddling with her tablet.
“You can follow me right this way”, she said, turning around to make a quick retreat to what I now could see was an office space of some kind.
So far, this experience was throwing off some major “uncanny valley vibes” as my student’s would’ve so succinctly put it. But with no clear alternative, I stood up to follow her into the room. Upon standing up I noted how good my body felt. No back-pain, no neck-pain, no aches or discomfort of any type.
My memories prior to waking up in this room were a blur. I remember leading the field trip, hiking to the hot spring, finding an awesome set of dinosaur footprints to add to my collection, and proceeding to hurl myself off the side of a mountain like a rag-doll, in avoidance of what was probably a non-venomous snake. After that, the memories only appeared in flashes, likely due to my brain compensating for the pain by turning itself on & off. I vaguely remember a helicopter, a hospital, and the muffled crying of what sounded like some of my students. The last thing I remember was the ceiling of a hospital room, and the disembodied voices of several people I didn’t recognize, all seemingly arguing over rights to my still warm body.
Had the cryopreservation process really worked? Had they actually managed to thaw me out and patch me up, just as the CryoEterna employees had tried so hard to convince me? I wasn’t gaining any new information by just standing around, so I moved to join my greeter in the room she’d so politely invited me into.
In a similar fashion to the waiting room, the office space appeared as stereotypical as possible. The small space hosted a few shelves of unmarked books, a basic white desk (at which the room’s occupant was now seated), and a small window on the wall behind the woman covered by some fairly standard-looking window blinds. The space also appeared to be incredibly well-kept. As someone who’s occupied their fair share of office spaces in my career as an academic, the only time I’d ever had an office this clean was on the day the Geology department finally moved into a new building. The only noteworthy thing about the room was the presence of a large (& admittedly mysterious) cube-shaped device sitting neatly on the desktop.
“So uh, what’s with the cube?”, I said nonchalantly, the first thought in my head coming straight out of my mouth in typical A-D-D fashion.
While she was seemingly trying to hide it, the question had appeared to catch the young woman off-guard.
“That’s not really important right now Sam”, she said while gesturing for me to sit down.
“Just take a seat and lets start from the beginning.” I sat down at one of the two seats in front of the desk and matched my gaze to that of the desk’s owner.
“So, what’s the last thing you remember?”, she said with a distinctly clerical-tone that confirmed my belief that this routine was one in which my interviewer was well-versed.
I described my final moments to her as I had recalled them seconds earlier. She continued to mess with the tablet now sitting upright on the desk, seemingly checking something off a list with each recalled fragment of time I offered up. I was definitely being evaluated, but given what I thought was going on right now, that was to be expected. A sort of Quality Assurance check on the brains of the recently unthawed.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“So how am I here right now?”, I said trying to remain calm.
“In fact, where is ‘here’? And ‘when’ is now??”, I said now failing to conceal my internal panic.
“Woah there! Calm down Sam! One thing at a time.”, she said like a teacher trying to fend off a student playing “twenty-questions”. “I promise I’m going to explain everything. For now, let’s start with the WHEN, work our way through the HOW, and circle back around to the WHERE? And the WHY? Alright?”
Her response had offered little in terms of answers, but it was reassuring none the less. I gave her a head-nod, and the still unnamed figure began her introduction.
“As you’ll recall, you had subscribed to the services of ‘CryoEterna LLC’ for the cryopreservation of your remains upon your untimely demise. Does that ring a bell?”, she asked while reading from her tablet.
“Yes, I do recall that.”, I said while restraining myself from arguing over the semantics of who had and had not technically “subscribed” to the aforementioned “services”.
“Ok, great!”, she said with an ever-so slight grin on her face.
“Firstly, my name is Neera, and let me be the first to welcome you to the 22nd century.”, she said in a manner far too casual for the gravity of the statement, at least from my perspective.
“Today is August 20th, 2177. In other words, the first day of the rest of your existence!”, said Neera now unable to conceal her excitement.
Her careful use of the word “existence” in lieu of the obvious choice of “life” couldn’t help but strike me the wrong way. Was I not alive? ‘I think, therefore I am’, right?
I was definitely thinking, I could seemingly interact with the environment, and a 3rd party had confirmed my existence. In that moment I consigned myself to stick to the belief I was in fact alive. The young woman continued with her explanation.
“Following a series of increasingly dramatic events in the twenty twenties and thirties, your contract with CryoEterna and any rights you held as the remains of a potentially revivable person, were rendered ‘null and void’ following the country’s brief takeover by an overtly religious political regime called the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony, more widely known as F.A.I.T.H.”, she said sounding slightly less chipper.
“Let me go ahead and reassure you, I am not a member of F.A.I.T.H. In fact, no one is. Not really. Not anymore.”, she said trying her best to present herself as ‘friend’ and not ‘foe’. “I’m actually a Remote Mission Specialist with the Eurasia Space Control Center, a publicly-funded space agency similar to NASA and part of the United States of Eurasia.”
“So let me get this straight. I died back in Death Valley. My body was frozen, stored, and stolen by priests. And then, it was stolen BACK by a SPACE AGENCY, who decided to wake me up?”, I asked trying not to sound like a complete smart-ass.
“Something like that, Sam.”, she said in an exasperated tone. “But your version of the story is still missing a few key details. Some of which you may potentially find difficult to accept.”
“Just lay it on me.”, I said tired of the continual tip-toeing around the elephant in the room.
“Alright. Here we go.”, she said obviously finding it difficult to formulate her next statement.
“When F.A.I.T.H. took ownership of your remains and the remains of thousands of others, they declared them ‘an afront to God’ and sold them off to the highest bidders, many of which were private companies working in the commercial application of AI and robotics.”
“You see, after finding basic machine intelligences unable to effectively operate some of the more ‘complex’ services they offered to the public, they opted for a different approach to the problem. A group of researchers developed a method of precisely scanning the synaptic structure of the brain, and also created a specially designed digital storage medium capable of supporting an active real-time simulation of that scan. The procedure was admittedly an incredible leap in mankind’s understanding of the brain and consciousness, but it came at a real cost.”, she said in a low tone.
“Oh shit.”, I said, now sufficiently sure that the ‘Platinum-package’ had lost any and all sense of value it once held. She continued, showing signs of genuine frustration. She was obviously not a fan of this story’s ending, and I was starting to think I wouldn’t be either.
“’Oh shit’, indeed.”, she said.
“I’m sorry to say, that with no regard for the final wishes of their subjects, these groups took the remains and essentially ‘downloaded’ the consciousnesses of hundreds of individuals like yourself in an irreversible and destructive scanning process. All for later use in commercial and government automation projects that needed a proverbial ‘human touch’.”, she said, her voice clearly projecting a homogenous mixture of shame and remorse toward the situation.
I felt sick, but remained silent. What could I even say?
“That brings us back to this ominous little artefact you asked about earlier.”, she said casually gesturing to the glowing blue cube sitting on the desk between us. “And to this!”, she said in a much more cheerful tone!
She quickly swiveled around in her seat and made a gesture I could only compare to a Jedi attempting to convince someone that “these are not the droids you’re looking for” toward the wall in front of me. In an instant, as if she’d just cast ‘dispel illusion’, the wall faded away from existence to reveal the world beyond it.
The sun shined dimly through a cloudless sky. It’s weak light illuminating the distinctly red and rocky landscape I’d only ever seen in the high-resolution imagery of NASA’s various satellites and rovers.
She turned back to face me with a grin steadily growing between her cheeks.
“Dr. Scott.”, she said obviously pausing for dramatic effect as I slowly took in the alien environment she'd seemingly conjured from thin air.
“Welcome to Mars!”