After Zero
2.

His things were all gone. Objectively, he knew that, but they echoed in a different sort of hole when he was awake. Most of them weren't precious things, really. Just things that had accumulated around the place. Clothes. Scraps of paper. Trinkets he couldn't even recall. And then there were the important things. Like Skysensor. Like the golden tooth that had been the key to saving them (even if he'd pulled it out of a dead man's mouth). Like the laptop that had been his livelihood… though he'd known it had become a product of his mind a hundred and ninety eight years ago.

Everything felt strange, now that he had a body again. They felt like rock: rough and tearing at his nail-pads until he wished they'd bled, if only to prove it wasn't his body too fragile to cope with this new world.

'You'll get used to it,' they said. That didn't hide their bafflement though, because he knew they'd long since been preparing prioritising for adjustment issues with his mind and now they found it wasn't an issue at all.

His mind had watched the world. His body had been in a container at absolute zero temperature.