Human Again: A Dystopian Sci-Fi Novel (Cryonemesis Book 1) (2 page)

Chapter 3

I wasn't hungry until Isaac mentioned eating. I realized I hadn’t eaten for years. My stomach made those digestion sounds that triggered salivation, and Isaac no doubt heard them. Still sitting on the simulation bed, I wondered what food they produced underground.

“We need to go back inside the simulation,” said Isaac.

“The food isn't real?”

“Oh it's real, better than real.”

We both slid inside the headrest and closed the lid. It felt weird at first, but in a second we were sitting by ourselves in a fancy restaurant. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, candles on the tables, a vine fence decorated the outskirts of the sitting area and we wore twenty-first century clothes.

“I hope you like my decorating; I try to have fun with it sometimes.”

“You conceived this place?”

“Yes, this is Knaan survival lesson number one. Anything you can think of can be created by your mind inside the simulation; from a famous piece of art to your most dirty fantasy. You can choose to share it with others or not. You create your own world.”

“So I can create any food that I want?”

“Exactly, although you don't have to think too hard. Make a mental image or think of the name of the dish you want. Your brain will tell the simulation the rest of it.

“I don't know what I want to eat.”

“I've been told that most people choose steak, or spaghetti Bolognese.”

“I'll take the spaghetti then.”

In a split second a plate with steamy spaghetti appeared in front of me. It was hot and red, and smelled like meat with fresh tomatoes and basil. Isaac looked at me with intent.

“Eat, don't wait for me.”

I took a fork and started swirling the pasta on it. It even sounded like real pasta being swirled around a plate. Some sauce sprayed on my shirt. In the meanwhile Isaac had produced a bowl of noodle soup that he started to eat with chopsticks and a spoon.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s called Pho, a Vietnamese soup,” he said. “Do you want to taste?

“Can’t you like, transmit your thoughts to me?”

“This is lesson number two. I can't transmit my thoughts to other people, or my body to other people's worlds without being invited, or granted permission.”

“I allow you to transfer the soup’s taste.”

My head was filled with different flavors entirely; soy, red chili and a hint of anise. It was if I was eating two dishes simultaneously, no pun intended.

“What about learning? Can you transfer knowledge directly to my brain?”

“Learning is a deep and complex process. For you to own a memory or ability it has to be shown or taught. Your brain needs to create physical neural connections in order to create learning.”

I took another bite. The pasta was delicious. The sauce filled my body with warmth and energy. I felt like I was regaining my strength, and was becoming more relaxed. But then it hit me.

“Wait...” I stopped eating.

Isaac smiled like he knew what I was about to say.

“What am I really eating? This isn’t pasta, right?”

He smiled.

“Is it?” I asked again.

“The simulation tells your brain it is.”

“So what do I eat in reality?”

He hesitated.

“The bed is equipped with a little straw that slides the food down your mouth.”

“What food?”

He hesitated again.

“Do you want to know? Or do you prefer just eating normally?” He asked, gesturing to our feast.

“I want to know everything about this place.”

He held a piece of green onion with his chopsticks and ate it.

“Well, you asked for it. You sure you don't want to grab another bite before I tell you? You might lose your appetite.”

I dropped my fork to the table and looked at him with a straight face.

“Just tell me.”

“It’s a mixture of algae, jellyfish and bugs.”

I coughed out the chunk I was chewing.

“What bugs?” I asked with disgust.

“What does it matter? It's the best source of protein you can find underground, and the only thing we can farm.”

“That’s disgusting!”

“You get used to it. Focus on your pasta.” He slurped more noodles from his bowl.

“I think I'll pass on that. So how is water made?”

“Water is water, we desalinate it from the sea.”

“Are you sure it’s not recycled piss or bug juice?”

Isaac laughed.

“I’m sure. Trust me; we don't get a lot of showers down here. Water is not something we make jokes about.”

“So how do you clean yourself?”

“Germs, there are special germs that live on your body and keep you clean and not smelly.”

“I'm starting to see why people choose to assimilate.”

“Well, you wanted to hear the truth.”

“What about bathrooms, what if I pee on this table right now?”

“Then you'd be peeing in your bed and stinking up the room we are in.”

“With all this technology couldn’t they figure out a way to feed us and to have a bathroom in the same place?”

“They could, but would you sit naked inside it and let a machine wipe your ass for you?”

“But you said people who assimilate never get out.”

“If you hook on intravenous feeding and a urine collector you can stay inside.”

“Ok, you win.” I finally gave up, lifted my fork and took another bite.

“The third lesson of Knaan survival is how to use the toilets. But first, there is another reason why learning how to create food is important.”

“Let’s hope it’s not as disgusting.”

“You lost your family and friends. Although they lost you a long time ago, for you they still exist. The simulation works on people just like it works on food.”

“I can recreate my family?”

“Yes, the simulation will create them from your memories and you'll be able to talk to them and get closure.”

“But it won't be real.”

“It’ll be real for your mind. I will wait for you outside. Come out when you're ready. And I'll show you how to flush a toilet.”

“Wait,” I called, but Isaac was already gone. I didn't know what to do alone in the simulation. Am I to talk with my dead friends now, with my parents? Tell them I am sorry I died? That I missed them? That I wish they didn't suffer? I felt weird. For me it was just a day gone. For them it might have been weeks of sadness. I was sent to protect my country, but I failed. I didn't return home safe. The country was saved anyway. Isaac didn't tell me otherwise. I didn't know how to feel. I had too much information to process and I couldn't believe anything he told me. Maybe I wasn't dead, and this wasn't the future at all. Nothing made sense. It all felt like a dream. Maybe I was still going through surgery and this was my hallucination under the anesthesia.

I just couldn’t do it. It was too much to face on. So I quit the simulation.

Isaac seemed surprised that I didn’t stay.

“I can’t,” I said.

“That’s ok, whenever you’re ready. You know what to do,” he said before sitting down on his bed.

I took a long-long breath. I had to focus. It all felt too overwhelming.

“So what year is it?” I asked.

“2321,” he said with pride.

“Wow…” My mind went blank. I couldn’t even imagine this gap in time.

“When I was a child,” he said, “I expected the world to have hovering skateboards, holograms and laser swords. It didn't happen. So at least I can make it happen in the simulation. You can go crazy without seeing the sun in years…living in a grey room like this one.”

“You haven’t been outside since you got here?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No one goes outside except security guards. It's too damn hot.”

I looked around the grey room, and then at the light that came from the ceiling.

“This isn't natural light, right?”

“Right, it's just mimicking the color.”

“I need to know what happened to my family.”

“You mean, three-hundred years ago?”

“If they put me here they must have been planning to meet me here.”

“I never heard about your parents, or about anyone looking for their kid.”

“Maybe they’re still inside.”

“Cryogenics was expensive. Maybe they could only afford it for you.”

“It doesn’t make sense to me.”

He stood up and stretched. “I would love to talk more but I have to go and teach.”

“Can I come with you? I don’t really have anything else to do.”

“To be honest kid, I think you might scare the kids,” he said, smiling. “Maybe after the color returns to your cheeks, yeah?”

And the old bastard left me in that grey room.

Chapter 4

I did cry again after he left; you can’t help but feeling alone and isolated from everything. At the time I couldn’t grasp the meaning of waking up three-hundred years in the future. Maybe it was a defense mechanism that prevented me from realizing my terrible situation in its full scale. I felt like I had enough simulation time for one day and I didn’t want to drift away to old memories again so I stepped outside.

I started walking around, staring at people and things. They stared back. I didn't know what to say and if I should even say anything. I thought,
“Hi I’m Roy, the new defrosty.”
It sounded crazy to say it, even in my own mind. After a few minutes of walking along the curve of the main street, my lungs filled with a mixed smell of rust, mold and stale air. I went looking for the clinic I was in on the first day to find some answers. Eventually I found it after circling the whole city twice. I went inside and saw a bunch of doctors behind the one-way mirror I was being watched by yesterday. They were in a middle of an operation, though instead of using their own arms, they used a robotic arm to dig inside someone’s body. A doctor came out to greet me.

“Can I speak with doctor Ashish
?
” I asked.

“I'll let him know you're here.”

He went back into the surgery room and pressed something that looked like an intercom. I watched the doctors observe the robot hand dissecting the body. Bodies are still bodies, doctors are still doctors. After a moment Dr. Ashish came out from another room. He smiled at me.

“I bet you came to see the cryo lab.”

“Yes.”

“Come, I'll show you everything.”

I followed him into a smaller room with computer screens. They looked like curved semitransparent surfaces simply hanging from the ceiling. The keyboard and touch panel were part of the screen and you used it standing up. We passed that control room and got into the cryo lab. There were dozens of metal containers connected to a central hub via wires and pipes. The air was super cold.

“This is where you came from,” he said with pride like he was showing me the facts of life itself.

“Why did you unfreeze me?”

“You were next in line.”

“Yeah, but why?”

“You were next in line, next in queue.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, what did you expect?”

“No one asked you to unfreeze me?”

“You were next. We didn't know who you were until we started the process and discovered you were a young man. It was quite a surprise.”

“Is there any chance my parents are here?”

“Let's take a look.”

We came back to the control room, and he ran a search query.

“Yes, I see there’s a notification here about missing parent containers.”

“Oh! So they were frozen with me!”

“But they are not here.”

He ran the search again. I could realize by the sound of the screen that he found nothing.

“It doesn't make sense,” I said. “Why would my parents put me here but not come themselves?”

“Cryogenics was unstable back then. Maybe something went wrong.”

“I can't believe they just put me here.”

“Maybe something happened and they weren't able to immediately freeze themselves. The global crisis was pretty nasty.”

I probably looked helpless, like a boy lost in a public space.

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“I can try to ask the other cities’ doctors. Maybe your parents got there somehow.”

“There’re more cities like this?”

“Yes, one in the north and one in the south.”

He opened a communication window and there was an indication that there was a failure establishing connection.

“I can't access it now. There's probably a sand storm above us right now, disrupting the signal.”

“Are you sure? Can you try again?”

“Trust me; I'll make sure you'll get answers at the minute I get them myself.”

“Thank you.”

I shook his arm and left. I felt hope that I might have someone to belong to after all. I left the clinic and saw a line of guards walking in my direction. As a habit I learnt on my first day I stood with my back against the wall to let them pass although there was plenty of room. I didn’t want to get a syringe in my neck again. But on the other hand, Isaac mentioned that the only ones who go outside were the security guards. That kind of trouble was worth the risk. I had to do something to join them and see what the world had become for real.

The guards passed before me.

“Is everything ok?” I asked the last one of the line.

“
Just routine maintenance.”

“What maintenance?”

“
Sorry,
” he said, walking faster to avoid me.

“Outside?”

“E
xcuse me kid I have to…
” and he ran off with the rest of them.

Kid? I could be his grand-grand granddad. I kept following the guards until they took a turn into the inner circle of the city. They went up the dark staircase into another room. Their guns’ rattle echoed in the narrow corridors. Then they started dressing up in these weird camouflage suits made from thin metal fibers. First they put on the pants, than the vests, then the sleeves and then the head pieces. They got dressed up pretty fast, and then stepped on a platform that lifted up into the surface. The hatch dilated like a camera’s shutter. The light from above was so bright that my eyes shut automatically until they readjusted to the light. When the platform elevator pushed them up it looked like an alien spaceship was abducting them. The metal grinding sound was unpleasant and when it was over I felt a relief. I searched around and quickly found another suit that was left hanging. Was it damaged? Did they not have enough guards to do maintenance? I had to try it on because it was my opportunity to see the outside world, so I dressed up the way they did. The thin metal fibers were so spiky that I had to stop and readjust it every few seconds. It felt like little thorns pierced my skin. How did they do it so quickly? When I finished dressing up, I realized walking in that thing wasn’t pleasant either. I made sure no one was coming near the room and went next to the platform, yet nothing moved. A voice from an intercom on the wall barked at me.

“
Where have you been? Everyone’s already out,”
she said with judgmental tone.

“
Bathroom stop,
” I said quickly.

“
Where’s your gun?
”

Shit, my gun. What was I thinking? That they will just let me out?

“
Someone else took it for me.
”

“Scan your eyes please.”

A red light under the intercom speaker flashed and I hesitated.

“
You know what? I think I still don’t feel well. Stomach issues.
”

I turned away and started to remove the suit’s parts. By the time I finished and ready to leave, two other guards were already there to intercept me. They weren’t holding any guns, just unfriendly bats.

“Hi guys,” I said while raising my hands in the air like I was about to be arrested, wondering whether I could take them in a fight. Probably not, I hadn’t fully recovered yet, but in a few weeks, no problem. One of them took out a pair of handcuffs.

“
You must come with us.
”

“Ok,” I said and extended my wrists. I shouldn’t cause more trouble on my first day. Or was it the second day? It’s not like I actually did something wrong, I was just touring the city and stumbled upon this room.

Before one of the guards cuffed me there was another brief power outage, but before I could escape in the dark, a red light started flashing above our heads. A quiet siren sounded as the platform was lowered, letting the light inside. One guard was holding two wounded guards who were moaning in pain. Blood was dripping off the platform. I could hear gunshots echoing from the outside. The two guards that came for me rushed to take a stretcher off the wall. It wasn’t the first time I saw gun wounds.

“What happened?”

“
Stand aside kid!
” The stretcher holders shouted.

“
Fucking Purists!
” said one of the wounded guards. The other one was already unconscious, and they rushed him out of the room.

The wounded guard looked at me like I was an alien and I immediately jumped in and pulled him off the platform. The platform shot up and the room became dark again. I pulled apart the suit around his wound, cutting my hands and mixing my blood with his. He was holding his pain, releasing a little bit of it with every breath. He was in great danger if the bullet hit a main artery. I tried to tear some fabric off my overalls but I was too weak so I just put pressure on his wound with my both arms.

“
Don’t leave me
!” He commanded. Lucky for him, I knew the procedures. A gunshot in the future was still a gunshot. And a gunshot to the thigh can be lethal. I had a chance to do something good, and I liked it.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” I told him, but I could see he was lost in the pain. I believed my own words though; if they could resurrect people they could treat gun wounds.

A few seconds later the doctors came and took him away on a stretcher. I noticed their whole crew was looking at me with surprise, so I looked back with fiery eyes:
Yup, it’s me again. Same guy who kicked your ass and escaped yesterday. And I’m here to stay.

I was detained in that room for another half an hour before the guards started coming back from above, all dirty from desert dust and sweat. A cleaning crew dressed in green overalls also came by to wash the muddy blood off. It was then that they finally sent someone to talk to me. She was a slim elegant woman, wearing white overalls with silver threads woven into it. Her hair was short and neat and her features were strong but welcoming.

“You must be Roy,” she said, extending her arm for a shake, which I apprehensively returned.

“I’m president Padma, and I wanted to meet you in person but I didn’t think it would be this way.”

She didn’t sound welcoming at all.

“I wanted to thank you for saving a man’s life but you did try to dress up as a guard and go out.”

“I did what I had to do.”

She didn't seem to care.

“I consider you a child of mine. I try to keep all my children safe. I get disappointed when they disobey the rules, and I get angry when someone puts others at risk.”

“I couldn’t stay inside, I had to see—”

“—I realize adapting to this place will be hard for you, but you could’ve gotten yourself killed or kidnapped.”

“By whom?”

She paused and studied my face. I studied hers and could feel my old skills come back, though sluggishly.

“I must continue the investigation of this.”

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to ask her permission to go out anyway, and I also wanted to know things about this place and about whoever shot the guards. Yet timing matters.

“I won't fail you again.”

She smiled like she didn’t buy my honesty.

“You need to realize something. You have your old habits and traits still alive in you. But it doesn’t work like that here. If you do anything that might put my children at risk one more time I'll have you assimilated.”

If that wasn’t a threat I don’t know what is.

“Get your skills tested tomorrow; we’ll find you something productive to do. Or at least acceptable,” she added, and then left the room before I could reply.

When Isaac came back to our room that night I was afraid he’d start lecturing and preaching, but he said nothing, like he didn’t even care. Maybe nothing could surprise this old man. Or maybe he was just disappointed in me.

“Tell me about the Purists,” I said, trying to break the silence.

“I’m tired. Do you still have your balls attached?” He asked.

So he knew about what happened.

“Tell me about the Purists. I was right there when they shot those guards.”

“It’s too long.”

“You told me you’re a storyteller but you sure didn’t tell me the whole story about this place. Tell me the truth: the power outage didn’t happen out of nowhere, did it?”

This statement got on Isaac’s nerves. He sat down on his bed and stroked his knees like he was trying to avoid something that’s uncomfortable.

“What do you want to know?” He asked.

“Everything.”

“The Purists began in my time. The world’s temperatures rose and hunger started to spread because it was harder and harder to farm crops. Climate change was the faceless enemy that turned everyone against each other. Bigger groups looted from smaller groups. So what the Purists first did was teach people how to farm in those extreme conditions. And people started to get dependent on them.”

Isaac paused, clearly appraising his fatigue and frustration. But I could tell he really wanted to convey this.