Somewhere
They say that you don't dream when you're dead.
They say that you can't feel anything when you're dead.
They say you don't notice the passage of time, that all of existence comes to a halt when you're dead.
He figured They had never been dead themselves, because They were dead wrong.
But then again, he wasn't sure if he actually was dead, or just 'mostly' dead. There was a difference, he'd heard. He would have to remember to compare notes with anyone he met that was definitely dead if he got the chance.
In the meantime, he had nothing better to do than to dream, and feel, and notice that he'd been dead (or mostly, maybe) for a long time, and that he still seemed to exist.
They should really try this. He should remember to give them the opportunity first hand if he got the chance.
There were a lot of things he told himself he needed to remember. He just wasn't sure if he was remembering them all, or whether he was telling himself to remember the same things over and over again. Memory is kind of weird like that, when you're mostly dead.
He could remember with perfect clarity his first stealthy grope of a girl in school (and the slap that he got for his pains). He could remember his first kiss (which also earned him a slap, he should have asked first he guessed). He remembered the first time he had sex (it was his turn to do the slapping, though). He remembered the first time he ever killed someone. He remembered when the doctors told him that he was going to die. He remembered dying.
Or was that mostly dying?
But try as he might (and he tried hard), he just couldn't remember if he'd already decided to remember things ever since he mostly died.
He had to admit, he didn't know just how long he had been, for argument's sake, mostly dead, so They might be sort of right about the whole "passage of time" part. And if he'd only been mostly dead for a short time, then chances were pretty good that everything he was telling himself to remember, he was doing so for the first time. But he had no way of telling, so he couldn't say for sure.
But not the dreaming bit - his dreams were really more fragments of consciousness drifting around, mostly oriented towards girls, girls, and more girls, with the odd girl thrown in for variety. At least the dreams he cared to remember. The ones he'd rather forget were more along the lines of nightmares. So he was certain that They were wrong about dreaming.
They should all rot in hell that he could dream nightmares.
Damn them.
Damn them all.
-
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Granite Mountain, Arizona, Earth
"Miss French?" She turned to examine the man who had interrupted her dinner, her fork halfway to her mouth.
"Which part of 'I'm eating' did you miss coming in, Thomas?", she asked sarcastically, and smiled as he made a mental double take then went red with embarrassment.
"I'm sorry Miss French, only we've found something."
She looked forlornly at the chunk of reconstituted steak substitute speared on the tip of her fork.
"Is it something worth disturbing my dinner?"
"Jackson thinks so, Miss French, he was the one what sent me to tell you. They hit something with the drill on the bottom level, and the drill face caved in." She groaned. That means someone was hurt, she bet, which would mean reams of paperwork needing to be filled out. Worse, if the equipment had been damaged, she'd have to try to justify getting it repaired or replaced.
"How much damage did the collapse cause?" She ignored the dirty look she got from the man.
"None, the collapse was inwards, not outwards." That got her attention.
"Inwards into what?"
"They managed to drill into another cave. The rubble fell into it, not the shaft." She breathed easier, she wouldn't have to face the damage issue after all. If they'd found something, she should probably go look. This was her project, after all. She sighed, placing the fork and her knife on her plate then standing, pushing the chair backwards with her legs.
"If this is a wild goose chase, Thomas, your ass is mine." He gulped. He knew she'd had people fired from the project in the past for the most trivial of offenses. She strode past him, heading towards the elevator, and he struggled to keep up with her.
"Nice legs, shame she's a cast cobalt bitch." , he thought from behind her. She always got ratty if anyone tried to walk beside her, so they'd all taken to walking from behind. That gave them all a perfect view of her ass and legs, but none of them would dare say a word about it. Not with Miss French, oh no.
Once they were both in the elevator, she reached up and pulled on the wire mesh gate, dropping it down. She stabbed at the lowest button on the elevator control box, and the elevator gave a lurch as it began its descent into the depths of the mountain.
A cave inside the mountain would be a bonus for her, she figured. If it was large enough, they might be able to get away with excavating it more, saving time and, much more importantly, money that would have been spent making the artificial cave they planned to create larger.
Not a word passed between them as the elevator made its way down the main shaft, until it jarred to a halt. She opened the gate up and stepped out into the tunnel, Thomas following behind, before making her way to one of the loader carts. Self-powered and self-guiding, it was cheap, effective, and unreliable, but it was the only way to reach outlying drill faces without having to walk miles.
She climbed onto the cart at the driver's station, leaving Thomas to try to hold onto the sides of the load bed as best he can. She looked at the controls and flipped a toggle to the automatic setting, and the cart started moving quietly, the storage batteries inside it driving the electric motors. She could feel the burr of one of the motors, it was in need of maintenance, but she ignored it.
This project wasn't very high on anyone's priority list, and it didn't get any financing worth a damn. When the new scrubber technology had come out, enabling old style nuclear materials to be cleaned of the "dirty" isotopes, she'd proposed going back to old nuclear dump sites, removing the waste from its glass-like protective vitrified state, and shipping the "cleaned" fuel offworld for use as a cheaper fuel source on planets where either the locals had no say in how much pollution was dumped into their atmosphere, or there was no population to care.
A great idea in theory, but she hadn't thought the whole thing through. How was she supposed to know that the regulations required the cleaning facility be isolated and insulated in case of accidents? That had led to the need for this, building an artificial cavern deep underneath a mountain, capable of shielding and containing any "accidents". Unfortunately, the correct levels of rock to fulfill that requirement were a bitch to drill through.
So, instead of a plush desk job somewhere as a reward for having come up with a way to save money, she'd been stuck here overseeing the creation of the cavern. She was pretty sure that somewhere further up the chain, someone was taking advantage of her being sent off into obscurity to claim the credit for what had been her idea to start with.
This only partially accounted for her lack of social graces, however. She really was a cast cobalt bitch anyways.
The sled pulled up to the end of the tunnel, at least as far as its basic computerized brain had stored in memory, and she could see from the distance to the high intensity work lights in the distance that she'd have to walk a few hundred yards more to reach the drill face. She made a note to fire Thomas as soon as they got back to the surface, it didn't matter if they'd found the Lost City of Atlantis, it wouldn't make amends for her having to walk through the water that condensed on the walls to run onto the floor of the tunnel.
Feeling a little brighter at the prospect of wielding power over another so devastatingly, she even managed to smile at him as he handed her a pair of knee-high rubber boots, and as they started walking he wondered how long before he'd be fired. She only ever smiled at people before she canned them. He sighed, hoping forlornly that what they had literally stumbled into would be enough to change her mind.
As they reached the drill face, she saw the driller had been backed up and moved aside, giving everyone better access into the cave beyond. There were a handful of work lights strung up on the other side, but not enough for her to see much further than a hundred yards further on. As they reached level with the driller, a large man stepped forwards, the sweat-streaked grime on his face giving him an almost sinister appearance.
Jackson was one of the few people at the site that scared her. It wasn't so much his physical size, although that was intimidating in and of itself, but rather it was the fact he was, to her at least, untouchable. When you got right down to it, he was much more valuable to the project than she was, removing her most effective weapon - and worse, he knew it. She always felt that he was laughing at her every time they met, although as usual his scarred face wore a dour and taciturn expression.
"Miss French."
"Mister Jackson. I'm told you found something?" He nodded, gesturing needlessly to the hole behind him.
"We hit it about half an hour ago. We were drilling along, then all of a sudden the driller goes into overdrive. We shut it down, backed it off some, found the face had gone down. Drill had been running at full speed going through the rock, so when there was no rock to bite against, the bits spun out of control." She looked at him, wishing he'd not told her that, and dreaded the answer to her question.
"Any damage?" She'd tried to ask lightly, but it came out far too sharp. She was relieved when he shook his head.
"None, Thomas there was on the controls, he shut it down before it had a chance to rev much beyond red line." She looked at the young man she planned to fire in a little while.
"Good job. I'll make sure there's a little bonus in your next paycheck." "Which will be an hour after I get out of this damned hole, and the bonus will be your marching orders for bringing me down here." Thomas looked at her in confusion, the idea of a bonus was a surprise considering he'd not been expecting to ever get another paycheck on this job.
"So what's in there?", she asked. She knew someone had already gone in for a look, to put those work lights up if nothing else. She was betting on Jackson doing it, he was the type to go in and risk himself rather than send in some flunky, like Thomas. She won the bet, but the answer surprised her.
"I didn't go in too far, just enough to get some light in there. I came out when I saw it's a man made cave though."
"This deep? You're sure?" Jackson nodded, and pointed in through the hole to a spot just underneath one of the work lights. She could see some sort of metal plate with pipes sticking out of it. She cursed, loudly. If someone else had already drilled down here, did they have a claim on that cave?
"Whoever drilled it, it looks like they abandoned it. I don't think anyone's been in there in a very long time." She was a little mollified by the news, but not much. Just because it hadn't been visited didn't mean someone couldn't claim it. For a brief moment she considered ordering Jackson to seal up the hole and forget they'd ever found the cave, but then she realized that he'd probably say no.
She was pretty sure that he reported over her head, too, which didn't help matters much. If she gave the order to try to cover up the discovery, head office would probably know about it before she finished the paperwork to fire Thomas.
"Fine, let's go see what's in there then.", she decided, trying to take back control of the situation. Jackson just nodded, and handed both her and Thomas a flashlight each, before turning and heading towards the hole.
When they were inside, she noticed right at the start that there was no moisture on the ground. Compared to the tunnel they had just left, it was a startling difference. She sniffed a little, testing the air, and it was bone dry as well. Given their depth underground, there should have been some moisture, seeping through the rock. If there was none here, that would mean this was being climate controlled somehow.
She noticed Jackson watching her intently, and blushed.
"You noticed it too, huh?" She nodded curtly. Jackson turned and shone his light on one of the walls near the hole. She turned to look at where he was aiming at, and couldn't stop a small gasp escaping her lips as she saw the smoothness of the rock.
"You're right, this is a man made cave! But who ...?" He just shook his head.
"Not a clue, Miss French. But judging by all these metal plates on the ground, whoever made it had something down here for a while." She looked as he pointed his flashlight beam downwards to one of the square plates he mentioned, the same as the one she had just glimpsed earlier. It was around two feet square, with two metal pipes coming out of the middle. The lack of moisture in the air had prevented any rust from forming, but she could see from the tarnish that they were old.
She bent down to examine around the plate he was illuminating, when there was an echoing shout from further inside the cave. It startled her, and she jumped up before looking around guiltily, only to notice Jackson watching her, again. Damn that man! The shout came again and she recognized it as Thomas, he must have gone on ahead. She resolutely strode in the direction she thought Thomas' voice had come from, but had to change direction when she spotted the light from his flash a little further over to one side, the echoes had thrown her off.
Jackson, of course, had figured out where Thomas was before she did, and was almost there, she had to hurry to catch up. As she arrived, Thomas turned and pointed his flashlight into the darkness, the eagerness on his face was obvious. She gasped as what he had found came into view.
Maybe thirty or forty feet long, and fifteen feet across, the giant white object looked like a huge pill, or maybe a space ship ready for take off, sitting as it did in a cradle that angled it upwards towards the cave roof. The upper end was domed, looking like some sort of lid, although she couldn't see any hinges or anything that looked like them in a cursory examination. It looked strangely out of place yet also natural, sitting here in the middle of a deserted cave. Glints of light on the ground caught her eye as Thomas and Jackson played their lights over the length of the cylinder, and she focused the light from her flash downwards. She saw another one of the metal plates, the two pipes leading up from it connected to the bottom of the cylinder, just behind the cradle.
"What is it?", she asked, almost reverently, whispering despite herself. It was Thomas who came up with the answer, surprising her.
"I've only ever seen them in museums. It's called a cryostat, they were used at the start of the 21st century for cryonic preservation." She looked at him blankly, mumbling a well thought out and clever "Huh?". To her annoyance, it was Jackson who continued the explanation.
"Kind of like coldsleep. It was some crackpot idea to freeze people who were dying until the tech had advanced far enough they could be cured, or something like that. It never really took off, it cost too much." She looked at both of them, then to the cylinder, then back at them, incredulously.
"So there's a dead body in this thing?" Her voice was rising at the end of her question, and she knew it, hated herself for it. But the idea of being in a cave several miles underground with a crate of dead bodies was giving her the creeps.
"Could be, might just be a bunch of heads too." She gasped.
"Like I said, the cost was too high, but you could get it cheaper if they froze just your head." She shook her head, trying to come to grips with the whole concept.
"What was the point of that?" Jackson shrugged, looking bored.
"They figured that they'd get thawed out once cybernetics was advanced enough they could have a new body built for them." She looked at him with her mouth open. They had their heads cut off so someone could build them ... they ...
"That's insane!", she finally blurted. Jackson laughed, his deep voice bouncing off the vault's walls, and ending up sounding more sepulchral than she liked. Thomas made the mistake of joining in with his own comment.
"That's why they're called The Crazy Years." She glared at him, and he realized his mistake and shut up. Too late, he thought, but she'd already made up her mind to fire him, there wasn't anything he could do about it even if he knew. If he had known he was already done as far as this project was concerned, if not his career as a drillman in total, he could have at least made the most of it.
"So what do we do with this?", Thomas asked of no-one in particular, trying to sound professional again. She casually dismissed the question, and the cylinder.
"Disconnect it, toss it in the garbage." Jackson looked at her, before speaking slowly.
"We can't do that, Miss French" She looked at him and if looks could kill, he'd have died right there on the spot. As it was, he felt an icy feeling run up his spine. He knew this woman had no authority, not over him at least. Not only was he the best drillman the Company had on Earth (and a large number of other planets, come to think of it), but he also had done ... special jobs, for some of the Company executives, meaning they owed him favors. But still, he made sure to watch his back around her. She might not be able to hurt him through her position with the Company, or as the one running this project ... but he was a drillman, and all sorts of unfortunate things were possible for someone in such a high risk job.
"Really? And why is that, Mr Jackson?", she asked acidly.
"Company has a standing order on all of these things, they're to be recovered and shipped back to the R&D labs." She looked at the cylinder again.
"Why?" He shrugged once more, a gesture she was finding almost as irritating as she found Thomas at the moment.
"Beats me. Something to do with the money these poor sods had put aside for when they got thawed out. I figure if the Company has the bodies, it probably has a claim on the cash. Four hundred years worth of interest makes a nice wad." She thought about it for a minute, before reaching the only possible decision, although she hated herself for having to say it, since Jackson had so effectively pointed out it wasn't her decision to make.
"Oh very well", she snapped, irritated and angry. "Arrange for it to be shipped, then clear out the cave and see if it's usable. We're losing more time as it is, let's hope we can make some of it up."