A Visitor to the Future - 1 - Awakening
I came to slowly and groggily - like waking up after a particularly long night out with only four hours of sleep. Everything seemed stiff, and I appeared to be lying in what felt like a bath of custard. My arms wouldn't move themselves. I risked opening my eyes - I appeared to be in what seemed like a high-sided bed, with round walls.
There was an androgynous human face leaning over the side of the 'bed' I was in, like the sun peeking over the top of the horizon. Its owner had tan skin a little on the lighter side, brown eyes and medium-length light brown hair, like a longer pixie cut. As I stirred, they stood up - they were dressed strangely in what seemed to be a long, flowing mix between a shirt and dress. I'd sort of been expecting that - I only had to think of the differences between the clothing worn a thousand years ago and today. I stopped a moment at the thought - and my memory pieced itself together. Better make that two thousand years ago.
"Welcome!" they said in a bizarre accent that I couldn't place. "Good to know you're working well. Please excuse my language, English is not as commonly spoken these days."
I blinked and tried to croak a response. Nothing came out.
"Be patient. You have been in cryo-containment for one-thousand years. There are some breaks to still work out."
"My illness?" I finally managed to say.
They smiled at me, closing their eyes briefly as they did so. "Fully healed. You'll be glad to know your trip was not for nothing."
"And... money?" I said, coughing.
There was a chuckle from them. "Astounding. Your priorities are just as in some of the projections set in your time. First survival, then money. Remarkable." They seemed deep in thought at that, until I coughed slightly. "No, no money."
My body didn't seem to be able to process shock at the moment, which I suppose was a good thing. I might have fainted otherwise.
"That is to say, you will not need money here," they continued. "That is firmly a concern of the past."
"Who are you?" I asked.
They clasped one hand to their chest and gave a very short bow - barely more than a nod. "Bio-Developer Sarkona Grant. You knew my great-grandfather, Andreas Grant. Don't worry if you can't see the family resemblance, there isn't one right now. Though I did follow the family tradition and enter the medical field."
Andreas Grant - the man who had put me under? Great-grandfather? My head spun, this was too much to take in. There was a faint trilling noise in the distance that Sarkona turned to look at. They frowned and turned back to me.
"I think that will be all for this particular hour. Rest now."
The custard began to feel odd around me, and my senses drifted into numbness.
_
I woke up some time later in more familiar surroundings. It seemed like a regular hospital room, but without a window - the smell was wrong though. I'd been in more hospitals than I could count and all of them smelled of cleaning products of one kind or another. There was no odor here at all. I was glad to see that I was now comfortably wrapped up in a bed, not the mess I'd been in earlier, though the duvet felt a little heavy. I experimentally flexed one hand - everything seemed fine. I moved the covers, and carefully swung my legs around, sitting upright on the side of the bed. I appeared to be dressed in a simple shirt and comfortable leggings.
The door opened and Sarkona walked in, wearing a slightly different version of the clothing I had just seen them in. At seeing me upright on the bed, they smiled and gave three short claps of excitement.
"Super! We had worried that our instruments were not properly calibrated for your biology, but you appear to be fine. I hope you don't mind, but I'm very much looking forward to publishing my paper on your recovery, it has been most interesting. How are you finding the padded bed?" The last two words were said strangely, with a note of disgust.
"Seems alright to me, thank you," I said.
"Great," they noted, "They're a rarity these days. Bio-gel is far more popular - I tried sleeping on a traditional bed once, couldn't catch a minute, too uncomfortable. Now, if you don't mind, we should take a moment to check everything is good with you. Our readings don't indicate any damage, but there are a few good ways to check. First, what should I call you?"
"Oh," I said, "Nat. My friends call me Nat. I never really liked my full name. My last name is MacEwan."
"That explains one thing - on the surviving records, the first three letters of your name were underlined. One mystery solved!" said Sarkona, smiling, "Next, could you try and remember a fond memory for me - perhaps something that happened in your childhood. It doesn't have to be anything personal - just something that happened to you. Anything will do!"
I hesitated for a second as nothing immediately came to mind, but soon a happy memory surfaced, "Playing catch with my family's dog. Why?"
Sarkona seemed deep in thought for a few seconds, before nodding, "I'm just checking your brain activity. Yes, everything seems to be checking out as planned - no issues, as anticipated! Congratulations - but if you do feel any discomfort at all, please do let me know."
I glanced around the room for a moment. "So, where am I?"
Another smile from Sarkona, this one more brief. "I will answer that question fully over time. My colleagues and I agreed that we should slowly calibrate you to the world around you. I will answer in part - you are in a Biodev room currently, which is essentially the equivalent of your time's hospitals. We are monitoring your systems to ensure that your calibration to our time and way of life is not traumatic. I have been chosen to assist you as I am a little more knowledgable then most about your time period - I would love to talk your head off about your favourite automobiles at some point, if you would let me."
I stood up slowly, but my inner ear protested at the movement. A wave of nausea overcame me. There was another faint trilling noise - I wasn't sure where it was coming from.
"Nausea?" said Sarkona, brow furrowed, "Just a moment." The sensation quickly faded. "Try now."
I moved around without issue, experimentally putting one foot in front of the other. I had no problems at all - in fact, quite the opposite. I felt great - invigorated, strong.
"Biodevelopment has come quite some way since your time. Here, catch!" they said, throwing what looked like a coin-sized featureless disk in my direction. I caught it easily. "Quite the tune-up, yes?"
I was speechless. From my perspective, only a number of hours ago I'd been bedridden, unable to walk, signing the contract with Dr. Grant with the last of my energy. Humanity had been busy without me, it seemed.
"Now," said Sarkona, "If you're feeling up to it, I suppose you'd like to know what's going on. Thankfully I don't have to do all the work on this one. Here's a projection that might answer your immediate concerns. I translated it into English for you, I hope that won't be an issue."
They reached out towards me, palm open to take back the small disk I had caught. I handed it over, and Sarkona placed the round disk on the table, which pulsed with light for a moment. One of the walls of the room suddenly lit up with a perfect projection of an image of photorealistic quality - it was a title card, which read "Cryocontainment Case Law with Lawmaster Terrin Trevin". The title card faded away to show a lecture hall setting, and a young, handsome man began lecturing in a confident fashion.
_
The law around cryocontainment has posed a difficulty to our civilization for some time. As you may recall from our lecture on CI rights, one of of the principle laws of the Consortium is that of self-determination. This is problematic because cryocontained people are effectively unable to make decisions for themselves, and the only way in which we could find out what they want would be needlessly destructive. They are for all intents and purposes in a physically inert state.
So, where do we turn to to find out what to do with them? Thankfully the vast majority of cryocontained expressed their wishes in writing prior to their freezing. The only problem with that is that those wishes were made without full knowledge of what the future holds. The most famous example of this is that of Ralph Halliwell. Projected behind me is his contract - and yes, that is on paper and signed with ink, as I'm sure all you oldtechs will appreciate. He specified that he did not want to be unfrozen before the year 4000.
Now I'm sure you can all see the problem with this. We have the technology to remove Ralph Halliwell from cryocontainment. We also have the technology to restore him fully to life. But we have no legal authority to unfreeze him - because, yes, you guessed it, Consortium law favours self-determination. His documented instructions supersede any desire that we have to unfreeze him. This has the rather extraneous effect of making it so that those who did not leave instructions related to their unfreezing, or had them lost or destroyed over the years, have been unfrozen earlier than those before them. Behind me is a projection of the meeting of James Croft - born in 1964, and Nadia Heart, born in 2012, shaking hands - which I'm told was a common enough greeting for both times. Both of them have been unfrozen before Ralph Halliwell, despite the fact he was frozen a decade before either of them.
There have been calls for reform on this subject for a number of years, but given just how few individuals this actually affects it has not received Governance attention. In any event, records show that all affected individuals expressed a wish to be restored before the end of the year 5000.
_
Sarkona stopped the projection there and turned to address me. "So you see, because you contracted to be stored for a thousand years in exchange for the money, we could not wake you up earlier - despite the fact that the technology to cure you has existed for approximately four hundred years."