Gears and locks started groaning
behind the frozen stone walls and the freezer door slowly opened. Brian took a
deep cold breath in through his nose. He entered the freezer and turned on the
light array. The cold bulbs flickered to life over the cold storage canisters
that lined the freezer walls. The canisters were labeled according to the
subject’s date of cryogenic freezing and sex. Brian took a clipboard off
subject 11388-F and flipped to the last page.
“Good morning Darla,” said Brian.
Brian looked in through the thick
frosty glass of Darla’s cryogenic canister. He could make out the subtle
softness of her beautiful features. She was one of the first subjects to
volunteer for the cryogenic program at Black Mountain Research. Her day had
finally come for reanimation.
“It’s going to be your first morning
in,” Brian flipped through her chart, “150 years Darla.”
Brian smiled at the thought of
sitting with her and explaining how much the world had changed since she was
first put into the freezer. Medical technology had finally advanced to the
point of curing the original terminal disease she’d developed and had caused
her to volunteer for the cryogenic program. She was a model of some kind when
she first went into the freezer and had made enough money to buy her ticket
toward immortality. She was still just as beautiful today as the day she was
put on ice.
Brian put the clipboard back and put
his hand on the glass over Darla’s face. He brushed the frost away gently and
he smiled. He couldn’t wait for her to open her eyes. According to her chart
her eyes were blue. Brian loved blue eyes. They had become very rare in his
present and he wanted to see them. He wanted them to gaze longingly into his
own eyes.
He moved toward the control panel
next to Darla’s frozen tube and started entering the reanimation sequence. The
canister had to slowly heat, reinsert the fluids, electrically stimulate the
neural synapses, and restart the heart. Brian was excited. The cold of the storage
facility was hardly noticeable now as the machinery whirred to action.
There were three hundred other cryogenic
patients waiting for reanimation but none of them held any place in Brian’s
heart. He’d researched Darla extensively ever since he first saw her frozen
face on his first day at the Black Mountain facility. He had gone through the
quantum internet files and had pulled up all of her photographic work, images
that were taken before the 3D filters. He fell in love with her. He’d found
some old interviews where she talked about wanting to see the future and how
she had wanted to know what life would be like then. She was the woman he’d
always dreamed of and now he was going to be the first face she’d see in a hundred
and fifty years.
Brian adjusted some numbers on the
readout screens and followed the reanimation sequence carefully. Each stage of
the process was dangerous for the patient, but that couldn’t stop Brian’s
excitement. He was eager to hear her take her first breath in the new world. He
imagined himself like Prince Charming delivering the waking kiss to Snow White
and living happily ever after, just like the Old World fable had said, before
being banned.
Darla’s fluid insertion went
according to the specs, the heating process was fully underway, the synaptic upgrades
were firing and her heart was slowly beginning to re-activate. Brian licked his
dry lips as he watched her progress on the monitors. Her canister was automatically
lowered into the med bay area and the medbots moved her to the recovery
chamber. Brian followed with the Compupad, eyes fixed on Darla’s slowly rising
blood pressure and heart muscle activity.
Brian wondered if her heart would
beat for him like it did in his imagination. Would she look at him like a hero?
Would she be forever in his debt for bringing her back to life? He activated
the vaccination program and the medical cure for her terminal disease was added
to her regeneration protocol. She would be cured of her illness and her
lifespan greatly increased. She would stay as beautiful as she was when she
first underwent the cryo process.
Darla’s heart began to beat
regularly and Brian’s began to thump harder. It was so close now he could taste
it. She was put on the regulator by the medbots and her resurrection was on
automatic. It was so close now. The canister seal of the cryo-bed unlocked and
the cryoseal opened. Darla was free from the canister for the first time in a hundred
and fifty years. Brian went to her side and looked at her fully exposed body.
She was pristine. The bioscans carefully phased her and all her internal
systems were in perfect order. The neurofilter showed brain activity rising. At
any moment she would open her eyes and see the future, what she’d always
wanted.
Darla twitched, as if having a
nightmare. Her eye lids began to flutter and Brian leaned in closer over her
face. He wanted to be the first person she saw. Her eyes twitched and then
fluttered open like a butterfly’s wings after escaping the transformative
cocoon. Her blue eyes opened and looked at Brian’s looming face. He smiled at
her.
“Welcome back Darla. Can you hear me?
Indeed they are so blue.”
Darla’s pupils adjusted to the
bright light overhead. A figure came into focus but she couldn’t respond. She
saw something familiar in the figure’s face, but something not right. She tried
to squint, but her face felt sore, wind burned, or sun burned. Her mouth was
too dry to respond.
“I’m Brian. I have brought you back
to life.”
Darla tried to nod. She felt as if
she had a bad head cold. She was stuffy and cloudy and sort of muddled in her
thinking. She wanted to say hello but she could only think of the color purple.
She couldn’t make her brain work. She could hear a song playing in her mind,
some old Benny Goodman tune her grandparents had loved, but it was deep and
echoed, like it was playing in a cave.
“I’m going to run a few tests on you
Darla,” said Brian.
He bit his finger as he looked over
the perfection of Darla’s body. She was in pristine form. She looked as if she
had been frozen yesterday. There were no cracks or freezer marks, no defects or
deformity. He smiled and felt his heart beating fast.
Darla’s eyes slowly focused and she
looked side to side. She saw the edges of the cryotube and could sense the
motion of the man around her. She felt cold. She realized she was naked. She
remembered something about falling asleep at the hospital. The very hospital
where she was born. She was part of something, some program, some research,
some sort of test. She remembered she had a cat and wondered if anyone had fed
him.
Brian moved around the cryotube and
moved the medbots away. He reached down and took Darla by the wrist and he took
her pulse. He felt himself get breathless as was finally touching her.
Darla felt the cold hand on her arm
and she forced her eyes to look down. She saw the four fingered hand, the
oversized thumb, and the mixed colors of the skin on her wrist. Her eyes bulged
in disbelief. She looked up at the figure with the eerie but calming voice.
“I see you,” said Brian.
“Gah,” gurgled Darla.
She tried to pull her arm away but
it only twitched limply.
“There, there, Darla, take it easy.
No one is going to hurt you my love,” said Brian.
Her eyes opened wider as the figure
leaned over her. Its skin was swirled, black and white and brown, the eyes were
mere slants, the nose was wide and open, the mouth was small, and it was
hairless. Darla wanted to scream but couldn’t.
“Take it easy Darla. You’ve been
asleep for a hundred and fifty years; things are a bit different than you
remember. But it’d be my honor to show you everything,” said Brian.
He smiled in her face, revealing
sharp little teeth. Darla closed her eyes.
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