Lovers in the Great Collapse ◊ NOVELLA

i. » The Pod

i.

THE POD

It's a strange sort of sleep.

The cryopod is not what they promised. The way Hakim talked, it was so... miraculous. No more plague. No more nuclear bombs. I'd slip under the shimmering blue fluid and watch it crystallize the glass before my nose. Bloodflow slowing, heartbeat stuttering, drifting off to sleep...

One blink of an eye, and it's a brave new world.

Except... it's not like going to sleep, and it's not like blinking an eye. It's... beyond, I think, what anyone ever expected. Not awake, but aware of consciousness, unable to stir. Every once in awhile, adrenaline slices through the fog, fluid-filled lungs gasping to life, eyes struggling to flutter open, floating in empty darkness...

But mostly, the pod is just cold.

Ice. Chapping my skin, burning beneath my fingernails, jolting my synapses to life rapidfire: streaks of orange and the faint scent of scrambled eggs, tingles brushing my lips, the cloying perfume of daisies. The taste of Jacqueline Gray.

My worst fear is that it hasn't been a day, it hasn't been a single hour, and I'll stay frozen forever, Jackie's cryopod right next to mine... separated from her for this eternity and the next by steel, and fluid, and ice.

Not twenty more years, not ten, not five. Please, God, no.

But whenever the panic surges, I realize I was only conscious for that one moment, and I'm dragged back into a sinkhole of soft snapshots and pretty smears, and the world inside my eyelids is just as big as the one outside it.

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The syringe was so blue. The thick liquid inside glimmered malevolently in the laboratory lights.

"That's it, huh?" I asked softly. Goosebumps thrilled along my spine. "That's what'll put me to sleep?"

"Essentially," Hakim replied quietly, wiping his fingerprints off the glass and setting it back down. Strands of silvery-gray streaked dark, brushed-back hair; patches of unnoticed shaving cream dotted his jaw. He peered not unkindly from behind the thick-rimmed, circular glasses that continually slid down his prominent nose.

Dr. Hakim Hussein. The man who would save my life.

He haunts each one of my frosted dreams.

"Humans, surprisingly," he continued, "are not supposed to be frozen in boxes. We're meant to be warm. Stasis would kill us if we didn't firm up our cells first. This keeps blood from crystallizing, so the ice doesn't split apart our cell walls." He offered a smile that fell far short of lighthearted. "That would be fatal."

I swallowed.

"The next trouble area is eyes. First we apply a few chemical eyedrops," Hakim gestured to a small pot of yellow fluid. "Next..." He handed over a case. I pressed the clasp, revealing rows of contact lenses, opaque and milky. "These will protect you from blindness, but must be removed immediately after waking. They're unsuited for UV rays."

So many commands to keep straight, not like formulas to remember for an algebra test—this was do this or you die; this was do this or Earth dies. I pushed the lense case back over to him, voice shaking as I ventured, "What if... we're not capable of getting the lenses out? What if we can't pull out the tubes? What if we're not even strong enough to get ourselves out of the pods?"

Hakim smiled. "Gillian Larchwood, not strong enough for something? The very thought!" Then he sobered. "Yes. It will be... disconcerting. Just remember, waking up is the pod's job, not yours. The Mayflower will thaw you gradually, micro-adjustmenting temperature and oxygen levels. It won't be fun, but... trauma will be minimum. Reminiscent of emerging from a hangover—" he looked over the rims of his glasses, chuckling— "not that you'd know anything about that!"

"Not really. I've only ever had one beer." He did a double-take, looking so aghast that I burst out laughing. "Wait! Blame Jackie!"

"'Blame Jackie,' she says!" he moaned, lifting his eyes to the ceiling. "Gillian, just to be clear, you absolutely cannot be intoxicated during stasis, else your blood is likely to freeze. So please curb your budding alcoholism."

"We split half a hard lemonade!"

But he seemed so scandalized that I dropped it.

He walked me through the rest of the procedure that day, from the oxygen tubes they'd feed down my throat to the finger clip for monitoring my heartbeat. When he was done, I quietly shut the notebook in which I'd been jotting down the whirl of instructions and warnings, ice and steel, asleep, asleep, asleep—

"It's terribly invasive," I said softly.

"Oh, yes," Hakim replied, pausing to look at me from behind those big, round spectacles. "I thought you knew better, Gillian. Everything is invasive, now. There are... moments in human history in which we all collectively straighten our spines and buckle down. Whether or not it's comfortable, whether or not it's why we'd prefer, whether or not it's... safe." He smiled, so bittersweetly. His fingers curled against the tabletop. "We all do what we must."

He took a deep breath.

"We all do what we must."

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