A new beginning, cryonics after the thaw
He has to get chipped. The day is warm, and the sun is high in the sky. It must be noon, or close to noon. He looks at the people he passes, as he walks. Their clothes are strange. For one thing, everyone seems to be wearing glasses. Although when Kenny looks closer, they are more than glasses. He can see small images from the glasses projected onto the faces of the people he passes.
They don’t seem to know he is passing by. However, there are no collisions. In fact, the more he observes the street around him, the more he feels convinced no one is looking at the street at all. The street is familiar. At least there’s that. It looks as though a hundred and fifty years didn’t change this part of his old city. He doesn’t recognize any of the buildings until he gets three blocks further up. On the corner of one of the busiest intersections Kenny has ever seen sits the old courthouse.
It looks exactly as it did one hundred and fifty years ago. As his eyes fall on the structure he feels such an intense rush of deja vu that he nearly blacks out. Therefore, he stops, and leans against the building beside him. It’s almost too much. He still can’t understand what went wrong. The Android technician coached Kenny for ten minutes. Then handed him a strange looking card and the directions to where Kenny was going to get his chip.
A New Beginning
“You won’t be able to do anything without the chip. Money, as you knew it, no longer exists. As a courtesy, and the result of a class action suit, every experimental cryonics survivor is given a week’s survival credits. This helps adjust for the lost time. It’s meant as a new beginning.”
Kenny stares at the Android There is no face. Only a red, blinking light, where the robot eyes should be. Pretty creepy he thinks, as he watches the robot watch him. Or not watch him. Who could tell? Whoever thought up this design isn’t very imaginative. Also Kenny is still wondering when the humans will appear. The ones who will look at him in shocked disbelief! After all, he is a medical marvel. He was 43 when they froze him. Now it’s 150 years later. So technically he is 193 years old. Then it hit him.
Every experimental cryonics survivor…What happened all those years ago? Cryonics was the future back then. If anyone should know, he should know. Shouldn’t he be part of a miraculous community? One where incurable diseases and conditions were finally conquered? Shouldn’t he be considered a pioneer?
After the Thaw
The Android continues coaching Kenny on the basics. He was to use his Bio-card for his purchases until he got his microchip implant. Something he had to do by 5 p.m. tomorrow, because the Bio-card would no longer work after that time. The Android gave him a Monocular. Something Kenny was unsure about except that it was for one eye only. Apparently it links with an implant in the skull.
As far as Kenny knew he didn’t have an implant in his skull. Except he couldn’t really be sure about anything at the moment. He had been asleep for one hundred and fifty years. That’s plenty of time for someone to install an implant or do some probing. Now Kenny is having even more uncomfortable thoughts, so he tries to think about something else. He should think about his pod. That is where he is going at the moment. To Pod Park.
A Place for the Night
The Android told him he could find a room, and a new beginning, there. After that the Android told him to leave. Kenny didn’t see one human after the one who woke him either. Additionally, he felt ignored with every question he asked. It was as though the questions were irrelevant. No. That wasn’t quite right. It was as though Kenny was irrelevant.
Pod Park. Kenny just stares for a little while. It isn’t what he thought. But at the same time it is what it sounds like. Ahead of him, and off the street, is a large parking lot. On the other side of that, is what looks like a four story wall of egg shaped pods. This might be a new beginning but not one Kenny could ever have imagined. Furthermore, as Kenny stares, one of the pods moves forward, and drops smoothly to the sidewalk below. The lid opens, and a young gentleman steps out.
First A New Beginning
Once the young man is a step or two away the pod closes and smoothly rises back up, and then back into, its original position. Oh hell no. It’s the first thing that comes to his mind once he realizes what he is supposed to do. Furthermore, what if he needs to go to the bathroom? He turns and looks around. Everywhere he looks are high rise buildings. In fact, he doesn’t even know if it’s still the same land he once knew. For a moment he has an acute sense of what an amnesia patient must go through. Especially in the moments after waking.
Fifteen minutes later he is staring at the open pod in front of him. It came from the ‘top floor‘. As he examines the egg shaped pod. And he feels like it isn’t built for long stays. According to the Pod Manager, Kenny’s check out time is eleven in the morning. Kenny steps into the pod and sits down. He thinks about an old saying from his childhood. The one about going from the frying pan into the fire. His heart beats fast, as the pod door slides shut, and the darkness takes him.
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A New Beginning