“….should start the reawakening process.”
What?
A soft hiss, and the realization of being overwhelmingly cold overcame me. My eyes slowly fluttered open; I was encased in some sort of coffin, the lid a opaque blue. My eyes shifted down; naked. Of course. What crack house did I stumble out of this time? I went to rub my eyes, but it seemed my wrists were bound to the floor of the coffin. “Hey,” I croaked, lifting my head. “Where the fuck am I?” I glanced through the window; a beautiful woman with long jet black hair was jotting something down on a tablet. Another person, a young dark man with multiple piercings and vivid green hair, stood with his hands resting on his knees as he stared with a quirky smile into the coffin. “Hi there! Give us a moment and we’ll have you ejected in a sec.” he said. “Uh…okay.” I muttered. The green haired man vanished behind a console, occasionally glancing up at the pod in which I was contained. A few minutes passed by, and a soft click rang in my ears. The lid of the coffin ascended upward. The young man came back around and began unbinding me from the capsule. “Koji Hoshizora?”
“Y-Yeah.”
“I’m Dr. Jaffery, let’s test you out then get you dressed and we’ll discuss to you what has happened.”
Dr. Jaffery came back and strapped what looked like a touch screen watch to my wrist. “…..smart watch?” I inquired, raising my eyebrows. He laughed lightly, “Close. It records your vitals and sends them to my desktop over there.” he pointed over his shoulder to a glass desk where a holographic monitor sat. I stepped out of the pod and looked back at it. Looks like something straight out of Metroid, I thought. The woman with jet black hair draped a warm pale blue blanket around my shoulders, smiling softly. She was beautiful….too beautiful. She looked every bit human, yet something about her was….off. “Thank you.” I muttered shyly, wrapping the blanket tightly around me. Dr. Jaffery led me to a wall opposite of the pod I woke up in where a row of lockers sat neatly. He reached for his pocket and brought a card to the lock of a locker with the name “K. Hoshizora” was displayed on some sort of screen, a soft beep emitted from it. The door slowly swung open, revealing neatly folded clothes and a pair of beat up combat boots. “Here are the clothes you came in with.” he said, handing them to me gently with a smile. “There’s a bathroom over there, go ahead and get dressed and we’ll debrief you.”
—
I looked myself over in the full length mirror; white T shirt beneath a leather jacket, black cargo pants, and a pair of combat boots. I unfolded the glasses that were in the pocket of my jacket and slipped them on, the world around me sharper and less blurry. The make up I had on was smeared, and I did my best to fix it with the water running from the faucet and my finger tips. I sighed, and approached the door. It beeped softly and slid open. The two doctors glanced up from their tablets and smiled. “That’s better!” Dr. Jaffery piped cheerfully. He motioned to a seat in front of a glass desk, where a holographic monitor sat displaying what looked like vitals. “So, Koji, you must be wondering where the hell you are right now.”
“Hell yeah.”
He laughed. “Well…” he glanced at his monitor, jabbing and pinching away at the hologram, “You came in to our office with your application to be cryogenically frozen on January 13th, 2018. You were severely depressed and had no hope in living, and you were hoping to live a better life in the far future. Do you remember any of this?”
My heart stopped. Everything started coming back to me; I stumbled in, high off some street drug I picked up cheap on some corner. Next thing I remember was being asked questions by some psychologist and then just….losing it. I had no place to truly call home, although I lived at home dependent on my parents, the only people I had to call “friends” were my drug dealers and prostitutes that I regularly visited. I had hopes for being some sort of hacker, but with my disabilities it made everything so much harder than they should. So I spent most of my days drugged up and buried beneath the blankets of my bed, vividly hallucinating. The emotions of these memories came over me, and tears began to fill my eyes. Dr. Jaffery’s eyebrows furrowed together in concern. Before he could ask, I wiped the tears away and claimed to be fine, just overwhelmed. He smiled reassuringly. “It has happened to our previous patients. The realization of how long they’ve been asleep is a big change. Do you want to know what year it is now?”
Like I have a choice? “Sure.”
He glanced at his watch, and looked back at me. “It’s February 19th, 2099.”
The feeling that overcame me was like being hit by a truck. Of all the drugs and drink I’ve drowned my sorrows in, nothing could compare to this feeling. My mouth hung agape in shock. I was lost for words. Suddenly, the floor beneath me seemed slip beneath my chair. I slumped over, clutching my churning stomach. A trash bin flashed in front of me before the vomit that projected out of my nose and mouth could even hit the floor. After emptying myself, I looked up with a heavy sigh at the still smiling Jaffery. “Thank you.” I croaked.
“It’s the drugs forcing themselves out. They’ve been in you for eighty one years with no way out.”
I took a deep breath. Straightening up, I sat back in the chair. 81 years….
“Holy shit. So that makes me-”
“105 years old.” a voice behind me said. I turned around; the beautiful woman with jet black hair stood holding a tablet in her arms. “Birth name; Lauren M. Ford. Born December 22nd, 1993 on a military base in Okinawa to Richard James Ford and Maria Lynn Ford. You had a half sister on your mothers side named Haylee Rose Ford. In an attempt to leave your abusive past behind you after being thrown out of your parents house for coming out as transgender, you changed your name to your pseudonym frequently used in your online life, but quickly crumbled without the aid of your psychiatric meds and fell into a life of drug abuse and alcohol consumption.” her soft emerald green eyes looked me over, sending a shudder down my spine at the accuracy of the information she spoke. “You frequently sought a way out, but constantly failed. You felt that the only true way to get away from the hell you lived in was to go to a place where nobody has heard of you-”
“The future…” I said, finishing her sentence. The pieces of the puzzle started falling back into place. And then it hit me. “So does that mean-”
“Your family, your friends are gone. Your father died of a heart attack in 2023 and your mother died from liver complications after her cysts went out of control. Your sister, on the other hand, seemed to have been the successor of the family and produced another child shortly after you came in here. Her name is Harley Quinn Martinez.” Despite the tears that continued to stream down my face, a smile broke through. Fucking nerds,I thought to myself. “What has happened to my nephew?”
The woman glanced at the tablet in her arms, frowning. “Frankie Martinez went missing in July of 2043 after police were called when the landlord of his apartment found a large blood stain in the middle of his living room. He hasn’t come around since. No calls from his mobile, and his bank accounts were closed.”
I frowned; was my Frankie, the little Frankie that I remembered crawling and drooling on his teething toys, responsible for a murder? Or was it something else….? I shook my head at the thought, dispersing it.
“How exactly do you know all this?”
Dr. Jaffery stood from his desk chair and approached the woman. “Gen is one of our androids. She keeps track of records of our patients here.” Dr. Jaffery glanced at his monitor from his current position and nodded. “Your vitals look good, now let’s see how your reflexes are.”
Dr. Jaffery then began to do the customary doctor thing where he takes out a pen, holds it at a distance and watches my eyes follow it, shined a light into my eyes, checked my ears, threw a ball at me to see how my coordination is….the usual doctory stuff. After about ten minutes of this, he put the items he used away in a steel cabinet next to his desk. “Considering you’ve been comatose for eighty one years and most of our patients couldn’t even catch the ball, I’d say after a few more tests and a couple nights of recovery here in the hospital we can get you set up with housing and help you find a job.”
“W-wait. A job?” I stammered. “I’m not exactly mentally fit for a job. I’ve applied for SSI several times and was denied because I never worked.” I thought for a moment; this was the future, a concept I’ve obsessed with since my late teens. Surely they have some sort of cure for mental ailments at this point? “Maybe there’s a program out there that can perhaps teach me skills that I could use for a job?”
“And what skills would you like to learn?”
I hesitated. I can’t outright say “hacking”, how am I supposed to know the government is a tyranical mess that executes anybody who associates themselves with the likes of hackers? Unless they took the side of the government…then maybe….
“White hat hacking.”
Dr. Jaffery’s eyes brightened with joy. “Perfect! Honestly, we’ve been in a cyberwar with North Korea since the fifties — 2050s, of course, is what I mean — and the government could use someone with those skills.” His eyes darkened, a grim look shadowing over his usually cheerful demeanor. “But be warned; should you stray from the government and align yourself with the likes of Anonymous, there will be major consequences-”
“Holy shit, Anonymous is still a thing?” I exclaimed. He nodded. “It almost died out in the thirties, but with the assassination of Mark Zuckerburg they started rallying and popping up everywhere.”
In my heart I knew that the death of someone who provided the corrupt government a website that collected private data was probably for the best. “So did Facebook shut down or…?”
“Pretty much, now there’s just the base code for the layout hanging out there when you log in. It’s eerie, really. Anyway,” he approached his desk and sat down, pinching and tapping away at the holographic screen. “I’m setting you up with an appointment with Mr. Jeff Ranstein. He’s going to take care of you and your housing needs as well as helping you with covering the costs of living with temporary social security for as long as you’re in the skill building program. I’m paging someone to take you to your hospital bed, since it’s only 5 in the morning.”
At the mention of the time I was suddenly hit with a wave of fatigue. “Yeah, sleep sounds pretty awesome right now.” I muttered, rubbing my eyes. Just then, a tall dark skinned man — presumably an android based on how gorgeous and flawless he was — wheeled in a wheelchair with a smile. “I’m Andrew, I’ll be taking care of you for the next week while you recover.” he said in a voice as smooth and soft as silk. He gently grabbed my hand and lead me to the chair, where I collapsed wearily and leaned my head back against the headrest. “I’ll come see you when you wake up.” was the last thing I heard Dr. Jaffery say before I passed the fuck out in that comfy ass wheelchair.
